A New Way to Understand a Billion

How many leaves change color in New Hampshire? 608 billion!
The U.S. Forest Service says that there are 666 million colorful trees in the state's forest land. Assuming the average tree has 800 leaves, each weighing a tenth of an ounce, that’s 608 billion leaves.

Other ways to define a billion:

A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

700 billion dollars is the cost of the U.S. financial bailout plan. A bit more than the number of color-changing leaves in New Hampsire.

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Leaves Gone Wild

In spite of how grey the global economic situation may be, the colors of autumn leaves are dazzling the eyes of many people around the world. Aside from the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, these bursts of colors are the most magnificent displays of nature. For those of us who suffer in regions where the seasons don’t change - and for those who delight in this phenomenon regardless of where they live - here are three of my favorite Web Cams of autumn landscapes in the U.S:

Niagara Falls

Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests – Georgia

University of Virgina - time lapse movie of the trees at the Rotunda


(Please use the comments link below this post if you have any other URLs to share … especially those outside the U.S.)

Sleep Aid

If you’re having trouble sleeping, think in color. Just pick a color, any color. Then start visualizing things in that color. For example, if you choose yellow, start with things you’re familiar with such as yellow flowers, lemons, and rubber duckies. What's inside your refrigeration, your closet, or outside your window? Just let the images float by and don’t think about it too much. Some say it's easier than counting sheep.

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Amazing Color Palette Generators

If you've ever wanted to a second set of eyes to help with color schemes, Color Hunter (http://www.colorhunter.com/) is a color palette generator that uses photos to create a palette. You can upload an image of your own and get a color palette generated based on the colors in the image. For example, if you have a photograph of a colorful plate, such as the one above – and let’s suppose you want to use the colors for a color scheme for a web page or even your kitchen - upload the photograph and get the color palette, complete with hex codes. You can also enter a search term in the box at the top of the page and much more.

The Color Palette Generator located on DeGraeve.com (http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/) is a simple tool that also lets you use a photo from the web as the inspiration. It's a bit more basic than Color Hunter but that might be just what you need. All you have to do is enter in the photo's URL from any place on the web and the generator will create a color scheme based on the photo. (http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/)