Am I Still With It?     
My Dementia Test      

   Rather than endure a tedious, expensive medical exam, I designed my own mental check up. 

   As we all know the names of our 50 U.S. states, it should be revealing to list them from memory, alphabetically, and score the results for our self. So, here goes:

Alabama, Alaska, California, Canada, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Guam, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mexico, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New England...

   How am I doing?

Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Toronto, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington DC, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Arizona.

   Ut oh. I count 38. I remember only 76 percent of the 48 states. Well, at least I didn't waste any money on a professional exam.

Twinkle, Twinkle Trillions of Stars 

   Stargazers say the universe offers light from a billion trillion stars. Astrophysicists used a satellite to sum up all this light, measured in particles called photons. 

   By their estimate, over history, stars have emitted 4 times 10-to-the-84th-power photons into the visible universe.  

   Let's make this simple for you. 

   That's 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons. 

   You're welcome.

       Jimmy