Even though everything seems to be getting worse (the world is a lot more complex, and there are a lot more people), over the long term, they have been getting a lot better. Here’s an infographic that illustrates how things have changed for the better over the past two centuries. I thought this was interesting.
I am not able to make this bigger. Sorry!
I’m reposting this in remembrance of Sophie Scholl, a student activist protesting Hitler’s Nazi regime, who was executed on this day 76 years ago.
Sophie Scholl was a young political activist who led the White Rose resistance group against Hitler and Naziism in WWII Germany. She and her brother Hans were found distributing anti-Hitler leaflets at at the University of Munich, and were charged with High Treason. She and her brother were both executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943. She was just 21 years old. Her sacrifice and inspirational last words have special meaning for us now.
Sophie Scholl Biography (Wikipedia)
This is quite possibly, my favorite post I ever wrote, or it’s in my Top Five anyway. Enjoy! Let me know what you think in the comments.
I have a vivid memory of myself as a mosquito-bitten, golden-tanned and skinny little girl of seven and eight years old happily playing and exploring on the the tidal flats of East Brewster, along Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts, where my parents had rented a vacation beach cottage for two weeks during two consecutive summers in the late 1960s.
The sandbars and network of warm tidal pools and rivulets left behind by the retreating tide stretched far, far into the distance–so far that the deeper water where the sand was never exposed was only a thin royal blue line against the horizon and sometimes was not visible at all (I read recently that the Brewster tidal flats actually can extend up to two miles at low tide).
I played out…
View original post 1,285 more words
credit: Blog of the Ginger
One of my long-standing interests is demographics, and the interplay between the different living generations. Here is a video that explains the interactions between the four living generations born before 2005 (or possibly, 2001 — the jury’s still out on the last birthyear of the Millennials).
The birth years are based on Strauss and Howe’s “Generations” and “The Fourth Turning,” both books I have read and highly recommend for anyone interested in how generations impact history (and are, in turn, impacted by history). I agree with these birth years over the more popular ones used by most marketers and the popular media. I also believe there are “cusps” that straddle the generations and bleed over several years in both directions, so someone born in a cusp year would have characteristics of both adjacent generations. Of course, these are just guidelines (some have compared generational types to astrological signs) and some people may not fit their generation at all, but maybe a different one.
The generations discussed here:
1. GI Generation (Hero generation, born 1900 – 1924) — few still alive.
2. Silent (Artist generation, born 1925 – 1942)
(Silent/Boom cusp subgeneration: War Babies born about 1936-1946)
3. Boomer (Prophet generation, born 1943 – 1960)
(Boom/X cusp subgeneration: Generation Jones born 1955-1965)
4. Generation X (Nomad generation, born 1961 – 1981
(X/Millennial cusp subgeneration: Generation Y born 1976-1986)
5. Millennial (Hero generation, born 1982 – 2005 (?)
If you’re interested in this stuff, I recommend these two books by William Strauss and Neil Howe:
Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069
The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy — What the Cycles of History tell us about America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Lucky Otters Haven 