//I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jim Wallis speak at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena last night. He just released a new book called "The Great Awakening," and has just started a book tour to promote it. (I haven't read it yet, but I will soon!)
I'm a regular reader of Jim's work, and almost always love what he has to say. But I gotta admit: he's even cooler in person. Or as my friend Jon said, "He's pretty badass."
We sat in the second row, about five feet in front of Brother Jim, amongst probably 150 grad students, and listened intently as he brought hope to an otherwise rather dismal Super Tuesday. As of right now, 7am "the morning after," we don't yet know what will shake out from yesterday's primaries, but priliminary reports are saying that Mr. Hundred Years in Iraq McCain is leading the GOP (seriously, do we have to still call it that? It ain't so Grand anymore, folks!), and Obama and Hillary are tied on the other side (does anyone else hate that we have sides?).
But Mr. Wallis gave us some hope last night. Hope that despite whatever madness may occur between now and November, the real winner this year is CHANGE. We hear it everywhere, from the mouths of every candidate, from Democrats and Republicans, from reporters and journalists. And the reason they're saying it is because they heard it from us, the American people, first.
There's a social movement going on, and no matter what happens on Capitol Hill, it is US, the true grassroots force for change, that will make the difference.
Jim said that he started his book tour last week at the Bagdad Theater in Portland, and they were showing a movie after his talk. Up on the marquee it said:
I'm a regular reader of Jim's work, and almost always love what he has to say. But I gotta admit: he's even cooler in person. Or as my friend Jon said, "He's pretty badass."
We sat in the second row, about five feet in front of Brother Jim, amongst probably 150 grad students, and listened intently as he brought hope to an otherwise rather dismal Super Tuesday. As of right now, 7am "the morning after," we don't yet know what will shake out from yesterday's primaries, but priliminary reports are saying that Mr. Hundred Years in Iraq McCain is leading the GOP (seriously, do we have to still call it that? It ain't so Grand anymore, folks!), and Obama and Hillary are tied on the other side (does anyone else hate that we have sides?).
But Mr. Wallis gave us some hope last night. Hope that despite whatever madness may occur between now and November, the real winner this year is CHANGE. We hear it everywhere, from the mouths of every candidate, from Democrats and Republicans, from reporters and journalists. And the reason they're saying it is because they heard it from us, the American people, first.
There's a social movement going on, and no matter what happens on Capitol Hill, it is US, the true grassroots force for change, that will make the difference.
Jim said that he started his book tour last week at the Bagdad Theater in Portland, and they were showing a movie after his talk. Up on the marquee it said:
J I M _ W A L L I S A M E R I C A N _ G A N G S T E R
Ah yes, I believe so. //- Written out, a trillion is a one followed by 12 zeros, or 1,000,000,000,000. That's a million times one million, or a thousand times one billion. Multiply that times three and you have 3 trillion.
- Counting to 3 trillion at a rate of one number a second would take almost 95,000 years.
- One would have to circumvent the globe 120 million times to travel 3 trillion miles. Similarly, that would be some 17,000 round trips to the sun. The universe, 15 billion years old at the outside, would need another 200 such lifetimes to reach 3 trillion years.
- A trillion is a figure more commonly used when talking about outer space. A light year, the distance that light travels in a vacuum in a year, is about 6 trillion miles.
- There are about 6.8 billion people in the world, meaning that every living person would get $441 if $3 trillion was divided up. If the money was split among the 300 million Americans, everyone would take home $10,000.
- A person given $1 million a year to spend would need 3 million years to blow $3 trillion.
- Three trillion dollars is about what the federal government will spend this coming year for domestic and defense programs and benefit entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, according to President Bush's latest federal budget proposal Monday. ($3.1 trillion, actually).