The number is 3,422. That’s how many members of the U.S. military have paid the supreme sacrifice in the war in Iraq over the last four years. But on this Memorial Day, when the nation remembers our war dead, how many of them did we know? The reality for most of us is that, in fact, we don’t know any of these 3,422 who laid down their lives for country and family. Nor do we know their 25,549 comrades who have been wounded in this war. If we have family over there, all we know is the quiet prayer that God would keep our loved one from adding to either statistic.

Sure you want to become a mother?  Here are some numbers you may want to crunch before you decide!  Statistics released this week in the latest Newsweek magazine reveal that the first two years of a new baby’s life will cost $32,000.  And if you’re wanting more than one child, you can plan on an added $24,000 for each additional child.  Just for their first two years of moving into your heart and home!

Don’t let them veto your future, graduates!  The press has been abuzz with news over the showdown this week between the executive and legislative branches of our nation’s government.  President Bush cast only the second veto of his presidency in rejecting the Iraq war funding bill passed by Congress, a bill that included a mandated troop withdrawal date, which the president opposes.

Six contestants left for America’s new idol.  How’s that for a headline this week?  As the Today Show on NBC ran a report of the elimination countdown to American’s new “number one” amateur performer, the screen caption throughout the report blazed, “Idol Worship.”  How clever, but how true!  Except for you and me, of course.

Candle light vigils have become a way of American life, haven’t they?  Columbine, Oklahoma City, September 11, and now Virginia Tech.  And a grieving public that privately wonders when the insanity will ever end.  Anybody know? Our politicians haven’t found the answer.  Nor have our law enforcement agencies.  Nor have our psychologists and school counselors.  Nor have the media.  Nor has the public.  Nobody knows how to stop the carnage, the massacres, “the terror by night . . . the arrow that flies by day . . . the pestilence that walks in darkness . . .

What can we learn from “shock jock” Don Imus’ meltdown?  In case you were fasting from the news this week (which isn’t such a bad idea, come to think of it), you know the public furor over the racially and sexually derogatory remarks that nationally syndicated radio talk show host Don Imus made about the Rutgers University NCAA women’s basketball finalists, words unworthy of repetition.  Both CBS radio and MSNBC cable television dropped the Imus show for two weeks.  Corporate sponsors pulled their ads and financial backing.  The public backlash has been quick and strong.

Millions of bees mysteriously dead!  Something off the front page of the National Enquirer?  Hardly.  It’s a developing news story that spans the nation.  One Pennsylvania beekeeper lost 40 million bees this winter.  Fruit and vegetable growers from California (which produces 80% of the world’s almond supply) to Pennsylvania (which grows the fourth largest apple harvest in the nation) are extremely worried, because the survival of their blossoming crops depends on the pollinating of honeybees.  No pollen transfer, no fruit—it’s that simple.

This past week Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow have put cancer into the headline consciousness of America. The wife of presidential candidate, John Edwards, and the president’s chief Whitehouse spokesman, in separate dramatic announcements of recurring cancer, bravely exposed their private battles for health and life to the public. And as a consequence they both have raised the level of our national conversation regarding this shared and dreaded enemy.

Ever wonder where Iceland got its name?  Having just returned from this small volcanic crag amidst the wind-swept north Atlantic (just south of the Artic Circle), I don’t wonder any more!  But did you know that this proud nation of glaciers, hot springs, geysers (a word we’ve borrowed from Icelandic), and active volcanoes is the world’s most literate population, with the world’s longest life expectancy and highest standard of living?  And so you won’t be surprised that they are also the most “wired” (technologically savvy) nation on earth, as well.

Wonder why the global markets have been gyrating lately?  The answer really isn’t that complicated at all.  It has to do with public and investor confidence.  When traders are feeling secure and confident about the economic and/or political future of their nation or other influential nations, they invest their clients’ capital in the markets.  But when investors become worried or uncertain over developing trends (economic or political or sometimes even ecological), rather than purchasing shares in national or multinational corporations they instead sell off their clients’ stocks.  And massi