Happy days not quite here again yet

Two sets of economic data of interest to Hawaii surfaced this week, neither of them yielding much good news for the state’s pocketbooks.

In the first, from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, isle residents found little aloha in their pay envelopes, with Hawaii finishing near the bottom rung of the income-growth ladder. Earnings rose only 0.9 in the second quarter. One of the few bright spots here was in dividends, interest and rent, a category that rose by 2 percent.

Not surprisingly — this from the second set of figures, from the 2010 American Community Survey — Hawaii came in on top for median rents, at $1,291 a month. Great news for landlords, but for the rest, not so much.

If you can dream it, it might be possible

Travel faster than the speed of light? A planet with two suns? What in the world — or universe — is going on?

In the first case, scientists in Europe announced this week they had clocked subatomic particles as moving slightly faster than the speed of light, contradicting Einstein’s special relativity theory, which one theoretical physicist said underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics." In the second case, astronomers with NASA revealed this month they had found a planet that orbits around two suns — just like Tatooine in the "Star Wars" movies. Binary star systems were known to exist before, but this was the first to include an observed planet.

How far can our imaginations carry us? How about this, courtesy of John Lennon: "Imagine all the people, living life in peace." You think that’s possible?