Achieving your dream

Rent or buy

It flies through the air

The AirCar is equipped with a BMW engine and runs on regular gas. It takes two minutes and 15 seconds to transform from car into aircraft.

He likes triathlons

James Lawrence, 45-years-old and the father of five, is known as the Iron Cowboy. Every day for 100 consecutive days he has run a triathlon, which is no small feat as it consists of putting in 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling and a marathon on foot, or 140.6 miles, every single day. He began this venture on March 1. He began each day at 5:30 each morning and ended around 8:45 p.m. It was a daily regimen of 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling and a marathon on foot, or the equivalent of a full-distance triathlon. 

He had company. One man followed by completing 18 full-distance triathlons. Another lost 35 pounds while joining in dozens of swims, bikes and runs. A Ph.D. student in Dallas moved to Utah and did nearly 20 marathons with Lawrence.

The weather was not always friendly. In the first weeks of his program, Lawrence navigated icy late-winter roads, howling wind, snow flurries and freezing rain. By June, temperatures had soared above 90 degrees and the crowds had swelled. So had Lawrence’s lower lip. The sun and dry air had scorched it puffy, yellow and scabbed.

Why are Covid vaccinations taking so long?

Rating asset values

Simulation can be fulfilling

A friendly walrus

 

A really premature baby

Richard Scott William Hutchinson was born 131 days (5 months) prior to the expected due date and weighed just 11.9 ounces. Richard was so tiny his parents could hold him in a single palm of their hands. Guinness said he is the world's most premature baby. His mother, Beth Hutchinson, suffered medical complications that caused her to go into labor.

In December 2020, after spending more than six months in the hospital, Richard was able to go home with his family and celebrate his first birthday.

                                               Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Walking on a string

It's called highlining and it's a dangerous walk done on a string over valleys. A narrow strip of strong, nylon webbing — usually an inch wide and a few millimeters thick — is strung between two anchor points and serves as a kind of balance beam. A record in the sport may have been made a few weeks ago when two brothers walked over a string 2,800-foot (853-meter) long across a series of gulleys that plunge 1,600 feet (488 meters). The walkers wear a waist-harness that links to a 3-inch steel ring around the webbing.

This walk was not made in one trip. It took six days. The hikers used the help of 18 friends and fellow highliners to navigate their webbing through and across the landscape — hiking lines up from the valley floor, rappelling down from the cliffs above and maneuvering through countless tree branches.

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Lighting up the sea

This light is the light that some living creatures, such as plankton, emit from their cells.

Sinatra and one of his best

Animal battles

Climate change on an island

A gathering of sea lions

A miner at age 9

Who are the big borrowers?

We're not doing too well

What do you think of these numbers from a piece by Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times?

Greeks have higher high school graduation rates. 

Chileans live longer. 

Fifteen-year-olds in Russia, Poland, Latvia and many other countries are better at math than their American counterparts 

One-fifth of American 15-year-olds can’t read at the level expected of a 10-year-old.
The Social Progress Index, a measure of health, safety and well-being around the world, ranked the United States No. 28. Even worse, the United States was one of only three countries, out of 163, that went backward in well-being over the last decade.

The I.M.D. World Competitiveness Ranking for 2021 put the United States No. 10 out of 64 economies. 

The World Bank ranks the United States No. 35 out of 174 countries.
The World Bank Human Capital Project estimates that today’s American children will achieve only 70 percent of their potential productivity.

And my comment:

All empires eventually fail; they are having shorter life spans. I think we are on the downward spiral.

Mining the ocean

Largest wind farm in the world

 

The Mice Attack

The weather in New South Wales, Australia, has been almost ideal; farmers have had bountiful harvests and many predators died during the years-long drought. However, one of these predators has prospered. Mice are running rampant. They have forced a jail to relocate thousands of inmates while it carries out cleaning and renovations. The jail has had to relocate thousands of inmates while it carries out cleaning and renovations.

Here are the mice in action:

Should we worry?

Wall Street on Parade has some interesting observations on the economy. The authors read a lot. Here are some quotes by supposedly quite knowledgeable analysts from their recent readings:

“People always ask me what is going on in the markets. It is simple. Greatest Speculative Bubble of All Time in All Things. By two orders of magnitude. #FlyingPigs360.”

“All hype/speculation is doing is drawing in retail before the mother of all crashes. #FOMO Parabolas don’t resolve sideways; When crypto falls from trillions, or meme stocks fall from tens of billions, #MainStreet losses will approach the size of countries. History ain’t changed.” FOMO stands for “fear of missing out.”

“Biggest bubble in world history getting bigger. Biggest crash in world history coming. Buying more gold and silver. Waiting for Bitcoin to drop to $24 k. Crashes best time to get rich. Take care.”

“A confluence of events that includes easy money and government stimulus has created a situation where we no longer have to look back almost four hundred years to tulip-mania to wonder, ‘How could such lunacy prevail?’ We now are living with real time examples of modern, digital, tulip level bubbles. Despite these excesses, with economies re-opening and fiscal stimulus still flowing, we may still be in the early stages of what may later be viewed as the bubble to eclipse all prior bubbles….”

But more stunning is the fact that according to the OCC, JPMorgan Chase’s equity derivative contracts represent 63 percent of the total $4.197 trillion of equity derivative contracts held by all federally insured banks and savings associations in the United States. To put it another way, there were 5,033 federally insured banks and savings associations in the United States as of September 30, 2020 according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). But just one of them, JPMorgan Chase, accounts for 63 percent of all equity derivatives. 

What’s up with the Post Office?

The Postal Service used to be one of the most efficient government services. But that was before Trump appointed Louis DeJoy Postmaster General last year, and things started slowing down. I had to change when I paid my bills as the companies started charging me late fees. A friend of mine received notices tracking a package she sent to Mississippi; it took more than a month to arrive at its destination. 

Now DeJoy has a plan to raise prices and slash services. His plan would slow down the delivery of first-class mail while increasing the rates; instead of two to three days, nonlocal mail could take as many as five days to reach its destination. And he is also under investigation by the FBI as to whether he committed campaign-finance violations while a GOP donor. He denies any wrongdoing.

Complaining has begun. The attorneys general of 21 states and the city attorneys for San Francisco and New York have instituted a case maintaining that delaying mail delivery would violate USPS' statutory duty to provide "regular and effective" access to postal services for rural communities. 

The robber was caught

For the past few weeks the town of Thornton, NH, has had a number of car break-ins. Well, they finally found the criminal when he appeared on a surveillance video. They did not arrest him because it was a black bear. The police think he was hungry and was searching for food.

Meet Muja

Should he be reinstated as President?

 

Fighting a crocodile

 

An Act of Human Kindness

Last night I had dinner at Carbone's, a quite good local restaurant, with my daughter and granddaughter. It was a pleasant evening. We decided who was going to pay the bill and called the waitress. She did not have the bill. Why? It had been paid by a gentleman sitting near us. He had been the beneficiary of an act of human kindness and wanted to create his own act of human kindness. We were amazed as this was the first time we had benefited by the act.

He was not finished. I had trouble getting up. He helped me to do so. At least two acts of human kindness yesterday.

Where are the million dollar homes?

A fair and reasonable prison sentence

The Ganges is in trouble

 

                                Here's a closer look:

In two days reporters counted 2,000 bodies on May 12 and 13 alone as they traveled 700 miles along the river.

China in space

Birth rate declining

A disappearing car

What do you know about pangolins?

A You Tube star at 84

Buried in the ocean

Forests in the world

An interesting post by the World Economic Forum.

Some conclusions:

The world has lost an area the size of Libya in woodland since 1990, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 

Deforestation causes almost as much greenhouse gas emissions as global road travel. The new data shows that net losses of forest have slowed since the 1990s. Reforestation could reduce carbon emissions by a quarter, according to research. 

Forests store as much as 45% of all carbon on land. 

Let's go for a ride

Electric cars are on the rise

I guess the whale preferred a fish

A rocket does its work

Courtesy of a childhood frend

Are men becoming less fertile?

 

College Accrediting Agencies Do Not Always Accredit

The Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC) is one of those agencies. It seemed to favor the Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), which owned 16 college campus, none of which I had heard of. Some names - CollegeAmerica Phoenix, Stevens-Henager College, Idaho Falls.

ACCSC, in 12 years, raised concerns more than 30 times that colleges affiliated with CEHE were potentially failing to meet standards for quality, honesty, and other attributes crucial to students and taxpayers alike. Yet, CEHE never fixed the vast majority of these problems. An example - last year, a Colorado judge ruled that colleges operated by CEHE had knowingly engaged in deceptive practices, misleading students about graduates’ earnings, job opportunities, and ability to repay loans provided by the colleges.

Finally, in April 2021, more than a dozen years after concerns were first raised about campuses in the chain, ACCSC pulled the plug on CEHE by withdrawing accreditation—the seal of approval that makes the colleges it oversees eligible for federal student aid funds. Yet the colleges under the corporation already had received a collective $1.8 billion in federal grants and loans since 2008.

Flying with the birds

Courtesy of a Duncaster resident

Elephants on the move

Covid deaths disrupted the average a fair amount

Want a joint?

Then, you should move to the state of Washington and get vaccinated. But you can only participate in the “Joints for Jabs” program through July 12. If you don't want a joint, then you can get a free beer, wine or cocktail. 

If you don't want to go to Washington for a joint, you can go to Arizona where you can get free marijuana joints or gummy edibles if you're 21 and older and have received a vaccination. 

Whales like Australia

 

A talking starling

 The following appeared in Snopes as something that is true.

And according to Washington State University wildlife ecologist Rodney Sayler and many ornithologists, the European starling is particularly skilled in mimicry and can reproduce a variety of sounds, such as the calls of other birds, dogs barking, cars honking, and the human voice.

He loves his dog

When his dog, Bruce, had to be taken to the hospital for Parvo, a rare and severe disease for a dog, Bryson Kliemann, an eight-year-old boy from Lebanon, Virginia, decided to sell his collection of rare Pokemon cards to help his parents pay for the treatment which costs $700.

When his parents found out, Bryson's mother issued a GoFundMe and raised  over $5,000. Not only that but, the Pokemon Company, once it heard what Bryson had done, decided to send the boy several Pokemon cards to refill his collection with valuable pieces. 

A different competitor for the Paralympics

A different kind of bark

Basenji do not bark. Their vocal cords are unique among dogs; the cords have limited movement which leads to a higher-pitched yodel. The American Kennel Club described as “something between a chortle and a yodel.”

Who is getting vaccinated?

A computer crime

Now that the computer is an integral part of our economy, criminals have figured out ways to use the computer to make them wealthy.

A currently popular way of doing so is ransomware, which is a form of malicious software that encrypts an organization’s data, rendering it unusable until money is paid to cybercriminals. 

Last month Colonial Pipeline, which provides much of the gas and oil used on the East Coast, was a victim; it paid millions of dollars to free its data. This month it was a meat processor, JBS; it had to shut down nine beef plants; ransomware disrupted poultry and pork production. Last year, a spate of ransomware attacks on hospitals caused widespread concern.

We've got a problem.

The Cannabis State

Tipping and the virus

Magawa, hero rat

WOW!!!

Incentives for vaccinations

Elephants on the march

They've become adults

A different business

A swimming pool in the sky

 

Winners of the 2021 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition

From the Atlantic Magazine

Protecting her dogs

These shoes violate the high school’s graduation dress code

As a result, Daverius Peters was not allowed into his high school graduation ceremony in Boutte, La. The code stated that male students were to wear dark dress shoes, with an emphasis that “no athletic shoes” were to be worn. Peters' black leather sneakers with white soles did not meet the code.

Fortunately, a friendly worker at the school, who was Peters' mentor, saw the problem and acted. He gave the student the shoes off his feet. “It was a no-brainer,” he said. “This was the most important moment in his life up to that point, and I wasn’t going to let him miss it for anything.”

The mentor went back to his seat in his socks and watched his daughter, Peter and the rest of the students graduate. 

Working at 106