Believe it?

Hard to believe

Tiangong-1 is coming

In 2016 China lost control of a space station called Tiangong-1 and it has been moving towards earth since then. It is expected to land this Sunday, April 1. As to where it will land, we have no clue. It may even break up before landing.

Net Worth

Much depends on the accuracy of the census

Wilbur Ross' proposal to ask whether a respondent is a citizen will likely result in some residents not completing their census form. As a result, we will not know how many people live where. Which will translate into how congressional seats are apportioned, how state and federal dollars are distributed, where businesses choose to ship products and where they build new stores. It would also effect the accuracy of much economic data and other statistics that businesses, researchers and policymakers depend on to make decisions, including the numbers that underpin the forecasts for Social Security beneficiaries.

It does not sound like a good idea.

A Rescue

Who funds the NRA?

She's 11-years-old

On the cusp

Throwing the game

That's what some losing NBA teams are doing so that they can improve their position in the player draft. The league is aware of it and trying to stop it. It fined Mark Cuban $600,000 for telling his players, "Losing is our best option".

It's just another indication of how low we have sunk as a country.

The Cost of Our Wars

The Watson Institute of Brown University has been looking at our wars in the Middle East since 2011. Here is a summary of their findings: 

Over 370,000 people have died due to direct war violence, and at least 800,000 more indirectly
200,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict
10.1 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons
The US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is about $5.6 trillion dollars
The US military is conducting counterterror activities in 76 countries
The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad

The Dog as Art Form

Ban military assault weapons

Former Senator George Mitchell of Maine is proposing a renewal of the ban on military assault weapons that was in effect from 1994 to 2004. The law was not renewed due to typical pressure from the gun lobbyists.

Mitchell addresses the claim that the law was not ineffective by pointing out that mass shootings fell by 37 percent during the ban and then increased by 183 percent after it lapsed. Also, gun deaths from mass shootings fell by 43 percent during the ban, and then increased by 239 percent afterward. Furthermore, the 10 deadliest mass shootings in our country’s history all occurred either before or after the ban was in effect.

More fat Americans

The latest federal health report shows that nearly 40 percent of we adults were obese in 2015 and 2016 and 7.7 percent were severely obese in the same period. In 2007 and 2008, 5.7 percent were severely obese and 33.7 percent were obese.

Fast food sales in the United States rose 22.7 percent from 2012 to 2017 while packaged food sales rose 8.8 percent. Could this be a factor in the increase?

Young people (ages 2 to 19) are doing better. 18.5 percent were obese in the 2015 and 2016, while 5.6 percent were severely obese.

Where does that plastic bag wind up?

Running out of water

The UN said some 5.7 billion people may run short of drinking water by 2050

How old do you think Sadie Cox is?

The BBC featured Sadie Cox (above) on the "Must See" section of their website today under the title 'A 100-year-old woman shares the secret of her young looks'. Her photo has gone viral on the net. 

While she does look younger than 100, her doing so is not that much of a surprise to me. That's because I live at a retirement home where most of the women - and the men - look a lot younger than they are. A fourth of the population is 90 and above.

Her secret:

"I can't stand old people. I'm not on their wavelength. They only talk about hospitals and the various appointments they've got. I don't want to know if you're getting your piles done tomorrow. 

 "Younger people always have something interesting to talk about, they talk about real life and what's going on now instead of reminiscing about how things used to be. 

 "Talk about what's going on today because that's the only thing we've got. What's been has been."

Another section of hell in Venezuela

When was the last time you heard of someone having tuberculosis? It's been years, many years, for me. But in Venezuela it is becoming more and more prevalent. The government no longer releases health statistics, so you have to look elsewhere. But at two vital tuberculosis centers in Caracas, the capital, the share of new patients who tested positive for the disease increased 40 percent or more in the last year alone. In one hospital 5% of the adults evaluated from 2013 to 2015 had TB. The number went to 9% in 2017 and is now at 14%. This is happening in a country that once was among the most robust in the hemisphere, with the nation boasting one of the lowest rates of infection in Latin America. One doctor comments, “All these forms of tuberculosis that we forget about are starting to reappear.” And, the problem may spread to other countries as more and more Venezuelans flee the country. And as the Venezuelan health system has fallen apart, the government’s ability to respond to epidemics has collapsed.

Rating Happiness

The UN publishes the Happiness Report every year. This year there is not much change when you look at the top 10. The same countries have appeared there for the past three years:

Finland 
Norway 
Denmark 
Iceland 
Switzerland 
Netherlands 
Canada 
New Zealand 
Sweden 
Australia

The countries are ranked on the following - income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity.

We are ranked 18th. The reasoning: "The U.S. is in the midst of a complex and worsening public-health crisis, involving epidemics of obesity, opioid addiction, and major depressive disorder that are all remarkable by global standards." Plus high levels of income inequality, a "woefully inadequate" health care system, corporate deregulation and increasing screen time on new technologies. "The main issue for the U.S. is not the lack of means to address the crises of public health and declining well-being. Rather, perhaps the major practical barrier is corporate lobbying that keeps dangerous corporate practices in place and imposes untold burdens on the poor and vulnerable parts of the U.S. population, coupled with the failure of the American political system to address and understand America's growing social crisis."

Here are the 10 unhappiest countries 
Malawi 
Haiti 
Liberia 
Syria 
Rwanda 
Yemen 
Tanzania 
South Sudan 
Central African Republic 
Burundi

Is this the way you fire someone?

Trump's tweet re Tillerson:

Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!

What world does Trump live in?  

All the news that's fit to print

That was - and may still be - the slogan of the New York Times. But a recent Frontline program causes me to question it. The program aired in February and analyzed the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I just saw it today. Although somewhat too long, the program was interesting and reasonably comprehensive. The item that really caught my eye was the adulation and praise heaped on Saddam Hussein by the average Iraqi at the time of his execution. I and several of my friends could not recall any such demonstrations recorded in the media. Yes, the media has become less open in this century. But I would have thought that the praise of Saddam by his subjects would have been truly newsworthy.

Take a trip

From our Glastonbury correspondent

The next campaign motto

Smartphones can become addictive - and that's not good

Economies need competition

Edmund S. Phelps, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2006, argues that China has become a more competitive economy while the West, since the 1930s has become less competitive. Phelps believes that "most Western governments have seen it as their duty to protect established enterprises from competition, even when it comes from new firms offering new adaptations or innovations". Trump's tariff program is a manifestation of this.

In the past few years China has moved to increase entrepreneurship and innovation and has made it easier to start a company. It has learned by allowing foreign experts to work on new projects in the business sector.

The leader in solar panels

Learn about government finances

Studying Fake News

Three MIT scientists have performed a detailed study of fake news on Twitter. Their conclusion:
“It seems to be pretty clear [from our study] that false information outperforms true information. And that is not just because of bots. It might have something to do with human nature.” 

They found that
A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story. 
A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. 
While false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best.

Abstract 
We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.

Even penguins take selfies

Why is white skin better?

Compensating CEOs of Public Companies

One of the changes in the tax code made by President Clinton was to limit how much executive compensation was deductible against corporate earnings. However, the cap applied to cash pay only, not stock grants. So, stock compensation has become an ever-larger proportion of executive pay at public companies. 

Thus, the CEOs pay is based more on the company's stock price than its performance in its industry. Yet, the stock market can do very well or very poorly no matter what the company does. It is more dependent on the state of the economy, Federal Reserve policy, industry trends, bull-and-bear stock-market cycles and inflation. The CEO can do very well in a rising market.

Are our CEOs over-paid? They get more than CEOs in Europe or Japan. Today, top German executives make about half of what their U.S. counterparts are paid; Japanese CEOs get paid about 10 percent of comparable American CEOs. In 1965, an American CEO was paid about 20 times -- a ratio of 20-to-1 -- more than the median pay of other workers. Then executive compensation took off, peaking at 383-to-1 in 2000. The ratio checked in at 296-to-1 in 2013, according to Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.

Bringing back the Great Recession

That's what the Senate is proposing to do with a bill called “The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act.” This bill is aimed at reducing regulations for community banks. However, at the same time the bill includes the mega banks that were primarily responsible for the Great Recession. The bill eliminates several of the regulations that were aimed at the problems of the Great Recession. The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis showing that the legislation “would increase federal deficits by $671 million over the 2018-2027 period” while increasing the probability of a big bank failure.

Senator Warren discusses the issues below.

A race car driver of the 20th century

Is the 21st century any different?

Cows electrocuted by lightning in Australia

How much has changed since 1897?

That's when WEB Dubois wrote this.

99-year-old Aussie sets swimming record

An Irish Great Grandmother at 86

Europe is colder than the North Pole

It has been a truly weird winter here in Connecticut, the weirdest I've lived through. Temperatures have been as high as the 60s. Snow has been seldom and not very deep. But we are not alone in the weirdness. 

Europe is experiencing very cold weather recently. Norway has been the coldest, with a temperature of minus 43 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other hand, the North Pole is relatively balmy. It is not even freezing. The temperature has been as high as 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, and 78 degrees warmer than in parts of Norway.