Cost of Flying Air Force One

Interestingly, Airforce One costs $206,000 an hour to operate. That is about 10 times more than the $20,000 an hour to fly a similar sized commercial jet.

An email that I got from an admirer

An email that I got from an admirer. This is easier to show than most simply because it doesn't have a string of swear words.

On Monday, July4, 2016, at Monday, July 4, 7:25 PM, Margie Levinthal wrote:

The Crime Prevention Research Center is today's version of the Council for Tobacco Research, pedaling lies, false statistics and fake science all the while getting paid to harm the lives of many innocent and good people. Nice career and legacy you've built for yourself and ironically I'm sure you know exactly the damage you're doing. Hope the salary justifies it for you because it's always about the money for fools like you. Just can't imagine what lengths your descendants are going to go to to disassociate themselves from you and that legacy. Feel good as you rake it in because if you ever have a time to reflect on your life and your mission here on planet Earth with your fellow homo sapiens you may come to realize you can't take the money with you but you leave that legacy behind and it cannot be easily erased.

Help the person helping run Students for Concealed Carry replace her laptop

I met Crayle Vanest this past summer at the Students for Concealed Carry convention in August.  She was extremely important in getting the convention going and she is still working to get the organization going.  In any case, her laptop broke and she is trying to get people to help her replace it.  You can go here to help.

Computers get better at English when they learn other languages

Given that one would probably think that Chinese and English are such different languages, I found this particularly interesting:

For instance, if the system learns Chinese after learning French and English, its French and English skills would also improve as it learns Chinese. . . .

This blog is one of the Fab50 blogs, receiving the award for best firearms related blog

Here are some of the winners from the "Fabulous 50 blog winners."

Harvard student making bomb threats was peace essay winner

From the Harvard Crimson:

Eldo Kim, the Quincy House sophomore who was charged Tuesday in connection with Monday’s unfounded bomb threat, lived as a freshman in Thayer Hall, one of the four buildings in which he allegedly threatened to place explosives, according to former Thayer residents.
Kim’s entry in the freshman register for the Class of 2016 says he hails from Seoul, South Korea, and attended Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, Wash.
On the website of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, a profile of Kim from last academic year described him as a prospective psychology concentrator, while a cached version of Kim’s taken-down LinkedIn profile identifies him as a psychology and sociology concentrator. The Crimson could not immediately confirm Kim’s concentration. . . .
In 2009, Kim's essay, "Cultural Genocide: A Look into the Unknown," was the 1st place winner for the state of Washington in the U.S. Institute of Peace essay contest.
Edward Cho ’16, an Adams House resident who lived in Thayer with Kim last academic year, said it is “pretty surprising to hear that [Kim] went to such great lengths to avoid a final that he probably would have done well on anyway.” . . .

There are two ironies here: 1) That Kim was the peace essay winner and 2) that in a lot of classes most people get an A.  A humorous take on grade inflation at Harvard is available from the New York Times:

A longtime government professor at Harvard lashed out Tuesday at what he deemed a system of rampant grade inflation after learning that students are receiving mainly A’s.— The Boston Globe, Dec. 4From: The Dean of Harvard CollegeTo: The FacultyIn light of the controversy regarding so-called grade inflation, please take a moment to review the grading guidelines rubric, reproduced below:¶ The A+ grade is used only in very rare instances for the recognition of truly exceptional achievement.For example: A term paper receiving the A+ is virtually indistinguishable from the work of a professional, both in its choice of paper stock and its font. The student’s command of the topic is expert, or at the very least intermediate, or beginner. Nearly every single word in the paper is spelled correctly; those that are not can be reasoned out phonetically within minutes. Content from Wikipedia is integrated with precision. The paper contains few, if any, death threats.A few things can disqualify an otherwise worthy paper from this exceptional honor: 1) Plagiarism, unless committed with extraordinary reluctance. 2) The paper has been doused in blood or another liquid, unless dousing was requested by the instructor. 3) The paper was submitted late (with reasonable leeway — but certainly by no more than one or two years).An overall course grade of A+ is reserved for those students who have not only demonstrated outstanding achievement in coursework but have also asked very nicely.Finally, the A+ grade is awarded to all collages, dioramas and other art projects. . . . 

Top ten Hollywood Celebrities with greatest net worth

The top 10 list is obtained here.

1. Tom Cruise: $250 million 

2. Will Smith: $200 million 

3. Robert De Niro: $185 million 

4. Drew Carey: $165 million 

5. John Travolta: $160 million 

6. Demi Moore: $150 million 

7. Samuel L. Jackson: $150 million 

8. Bruce Willis: $150 million 

9. Denzel Washington: $140 million 

10. George Clooney: 

Strange fact: TSA made half million dollars from loose change left in bins sent through x-ray machines at airports

From Newser:

The change in your pockets is lining the TSA's, well, pockets. The Washington Post shares the results of the TSA's 2012 fiscal report, which shows that it made off with a record $531,395.22 in change that travelers forgot to collect from security bins. (From 2008 through 2011, the total was closer to $400,000.) The biggest take occurred at Miami International, where TSA workers collected $39,613; it's one of 13 airports where the annual haul was at least $10,000. . . . 

Very Neat: Finally, first real flying car is finally here,goes on sale in 2015,if u are in traffic jam can take off vertically!

"12 Weapons that Changed Everything"

The Fiscal Times has this list of "12 Weapons that Changed Everything." 

A couple of interesting fast food facts

The source of the facts is available here.

What computers looked like 61 years ago

This was more like a glorified adding machine.  From Fox News:

The 61-year-old Harwell Dekatron — about the size and weight of an SUV — was originally hailed as a slow, steady machine capable of delivering error-free calculations while running for 90 hours a week. It has survived to become the oldest original working digital computer following the announcement of its completed restoration by The National Museum of Computing in the U.K. on Tuesday. . . . 

Running the computer requires about 1,500 watts of power — roughly equivalent to the power consumption of a modern hairdryer. By comparison, a laptop might use just 50 watts (1,000 watts being the equivalent of a kilowatt). . . .

Progress has produced increased efficiency.  This is a pattern that we see all the time.

My third son Roger has set up a website

Roger is trying his hand at acting.  You can see his website here.

"Wife runs over non-voting husband"

From Politico:

An Arizona woman who can’t stand President Barack Obama slammed her husband — literally — for not voting, wedging him between the family Jeep and the street curb, a report says. 

Holly Solomon, 28, and her husband Daniel, 36, got into an argument on Saturday night over his failure to vote, news reports say. She then chased him around a parking lot in the Jeep, screaming, before hitting him as a he tried to run to a bigger street, witnesses told police, according to the report. . . .

Amazing pictures of NYC from hurricane Sandy

Below are just a couple of the amazing pictures from Elite Daily.

Copy of Robert A. Heinlein's great short story: "By His Bootstraps,"

A pdf of his story is available here.

One small reason that the speeds of Olympic Athletes might be increasing

I had no idea that they had put speakers behind the starting blocks for the runners.  But if this difference in sound can make the difference between who wins a race, it would appear that at least by that margin this change will make runners faster.  Should there be little asterisks next to newer times?  From The Atlantic:

When the Olympic runners take to their positions on the track later this week, they'll crouch on the ground, ears pricked, and wait for the starting beep. That's right, a beep. Not the pow of a gun, but an electronic tone, pumped through speakers, played by a "pistol" that's not a pistol at all, but something more akin to an electronic instrument with only one key. The pistol itself is silent.
The electronic "pistol" of this summer's Games was designed to overcome an astonishing problem: The speed of sound is too slow for Olympic athletes. That is to say, athletes far away from the starting pistol were delayed by the time it took for the sound to travel to them, and differences so tiny can matter in races in which the margins are so small. . . .

Can you name the only American to win medals in five consecutive Olympics?

The answer is available here.  Hint: Despite the achievement, it won't be a name that comes readily to mind.

Neat new iPhone app: Want to know down to the minute when it will start to rain and for how long it will last?

Click on picture to make it larger.

Anna Schwartz RIP

Together with Milton Friedman, Anna Schwatz co-authored the monumental and extremely influential "A Monetary History of the United States."  From today's WSJ:

In an October 2008 interview with The Wall Street Journal—a month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers—Ms. Schwartz criticized policy makers' handling of the 2008 financial crisis. "They should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down," she said. "Firms that made wrong decisions should fail." . . .