THINGS That Interested me this Week.

---China has 20% of the world’s population but only 7% of the world’s fresh water and 60% of that supply is contaminated to UN standards. The Great Lakes in the USA alone contain about 84 percent of North America's surface fresh water and about 21 percent of the world's total supply. About half of the global population could be facing water shortages by 2030 when demand would exceed water supply by 40 percent, says United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

---Ayn Rand famously said, "You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."

---Paleontologists recognize a total of five documented extinctions whereby over ninety percent of all species disappeared.

---At the height of the Dot-com boom, just before the crash CISCO (CSCO) was trading at 61 times earnings. Today’s high flyer is APPLE (AAPL) and it trades at a modest 16.7% P/E and sports a dividend of 1.52%.

---Texas created 40% of all the jobs created in the USA since 2009 while maintaining the 7th lowest tax burden in the country.
As a stand alone country Texas would be the 14th largest economy in the World. It’s exports were more than New York State and California combined.