Raggedy, Notable among your celebrities is Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe is going to be made into a movie, and I would love to see that upon completion.
Laughed when I saw your anecdote. Good for you and the staff.
In keeping with dj's Miami parody, here's a news item of interest:
Youthquakes shake up gray-haired states
Thu Mar 10, 7:10 AM ET Top Stories - USATODAY.com
By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA TODAY
Immigrants and families moving from other states are giving gray-haired Florida and Arizona a youthful makeover, according to Census estimates released today.
The states remain top retirement destinations, but they're also among a handful that are gaining school-age residents. They also have some of the highest percentage increases in the number of people younger than 25.
Florida, which had the oldest population in 1997, has dropped to fifth with a median age of 39.3.
Eastern states are losing young people to the Sun Belt and aging in the process. Maine, which became the oldest state in 2002, now has a median age of 40.6. It's followed by Vermont and West Virginia at 40.2.
Florida and Arizona show significantly higher growth in their under-25 populations than the nation as a whole: up 10.9% in Florida and 11.7% in Arizona, compared with 2.9% nationwide.
"For Florida and Arizona, the retirement image needs to be redefined," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "You've got this fountain of youth, especially in the South and West. These are immigrants and suburbanites moving from the Snow Belt and from expensive congested states on the coasts."
From 2000 to 2004, Florida had the nation's third-fastest increase in the under-18 population, while the growth of its 65-plus population ranked 23rd, according to July 1 population estimates. Arizona ranks second after Nevada in the growth rate of school-age and under-25 populations.
"Florida has grown very rapidly economically," says Stanley Smith, director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida. "It's a national leader in job creation and has attracted a lot of migrants (from other states) in recent decades. There's also foreign immigration. All those migrants tend to be concentrated in young-adult age groups."
The USA continues to age as the oldest of 79 million baby boomers turn 59 this year. The Census estimates that the nation's median age increased from 35.3 in 2000 to 35.9 in 2003, the latest number available. But other industrialized countries are aging even faster because of low birth rates and improved health care. The median age is 42.9 in Japan and 40.7 in Europe.
Retirement-age populations in most industrialized nations are rising while working-age populations are shrinking or growing only modestly. Because taxes paid by workers support health care and other benefit programs for seniors, governments are concerned about the social and economic strains the demographic shifts will create.
In the USA, the children of younger baby boomers are hitting middle school and high school, shrinking elementary-school enrollment. More than two-thirds of the states saw high-school-age populations increase from 2003 to 2004. Only six had larger elementary-school-age populations: Arizona, Nevada, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Georgia.
Every state is recording an increase in people ages 45 to 64.
"It's the middle-aging of America," Frey says. "Yet the fastest-growing states are countering this with a young adult explosion. That's the two-edged attraction Florida has. It's still bringing in the seniors and still bringing in young people who are having kids."
Three states have not seen age increases since 2000. Arizona's median age dropped slightly. Nevada's and Colorado's stayed.
Soooooo, Florida isn't just an elephant graveyard now.
