President Joe Biden on Friday had a 90-minute audience with Pope Francis, the first time in more than half a century a U.S. president did so at the Vatican.  Biden is a devoted man who on his wrist wears son Beau's rosary beads.  But there is that matter of abortion, and conservative American bishops don't want him to receive communion.  Well, Saturday night, with the Pope's blessing, he and wife Jill did so in Rome.  Read this article for the  details , for a good Catholic undergoes this service, the one with the bread and wine, nearly half the time they attend mass. I also found this photo of Biden meeting with Pope Benedict...a decade ago.  Joe certainly looked older then. I was scanning through my email this morning and noticed this  Quora  entry: Should I even apply to Stanford? I have a 3.5UW and 4.5W GPA, 1300 SAT, and will have taken 12 AP tests when I graduate. I have coded, organized, and currently publish on a web site dedicated to gett...

The past couple of months have been exhilarating for  really old whiskys .  Macallan announced their 71-year old and  Glenlivet an 80-year old  ( right ).  Now comes a Yamazaki 55-year old, a bottle which was found and auctioned for $795,000.  So Suntory decided to create a new 55-year old by blending three spirits from the 1960's. Gold today costs $1807/ounce.  That Yamazaki was worth $31,000 per ounce.  This is getting absurd, but a  5-carat diamond, which weighs one gram, costs between $36,000 and $395,000 .  This calculates into a range of $1272 to $14000/ounce.  So one ounce of that Yamazaki was more than double the cost of an equal weight of that more expensive diamond. If you have nothing to do tonight, why not taste that new composite?  Watch a  Hawaii News Now video  on where and how to do this in Honolulu.   Bar Maze  can be found in The Collection, a Kakaako condo across the street from SALT,...

  First, from the   New York Times   this morning: With this kind of difference, you shake your head and wonder why  Republicans and mothers for their 5-11 year old children  are resisting vaccinations.  ( Click on that graphic to read it .)  In short,  regarding Republicans: ... the conservative movement for the last 50 years has been built largely around creating a “political identity emphasizing suspicion, hostility, and antipathy toward the government, particularly the social welfare state.” The right has tied its political fortunes to railing against, and eroding, collective government and civic responsibility. Forced to choose between saving lives and the paranoia that has helped their hold on their political power for decades, they have, once again, chosen paranoia. Regarding children, sure, they are far less likely to die if they get COVID-19, but almost as much as adults, they do contract this ailment, and while their symptoms are less se...

                                  From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):          DAY    USA    WORLD     Brazil      India      South Africa June     9    1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22     1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21  ...