One more craziness about the frozen Iowa caucus today.   Republican candidates have spent $123 million in advertising so far.   With such low temperatures throughout the state tonight, it would not be surprising if only 123,000 show up to vote.  $1,000/vote????  In the  2020 presidential election, $14.4 billion  was spent to gain 155.4 million votes.  That calculates to around $10/vote.  Does this make any sense?  Incidentally, the first official primary election state for Democrats is South Carolina, although only Joe Biden will get votes.  Bet you did not know that  President Grover Cleveland is on the newest $1000 bill , which has been discontinued.  The  appraised value if you have one is $5000. We're better off in the USA than anywhere else.  I say this on the basis of the following from  Wikipedia  ranking household expenditure per capita/year: #1      United States          $43,931 #2      Hong Kong             $37,893 #3      Luxembourg           $33,647 #4      Bermuda   

Before I focus on the safest countries in the world, a quick run through of "newsworthy" items.  This is a regular Monday workday for most, but not West Virginia because  Governor Jim Justice  issued an executive order declaring today to be an official holiday for all public employees.  Tomorrow, July 4, is a day off for all in the USA, including West Virginians. I once loved roller coaster rides.  Not anymore, mostly because of old age.  Plus, I saw on TV one of them in Crandon, Wisconsin, with  riders stuck upside down ...for hours.  They were rescued. Turns out this happens a lot.   Watch this one after a power outage  in North Carolina. These riders were stuck for 45 minutes.  Everyone survived, and got two vouchers to return. On the other hand, some love going upside down in a roller coaster.  Here are  five of the tallest  that by design go upside down.  You got to watch this video.  The most severe is  Valravn at Cedar Point  near Sandusky, Ohio.  Itself has broken 10

In August  Time  magazine had an issue on the Metaverse.  As they will not allow you to read the article, I'll try to crystalize the essence as simply as possible, supplementing as necessary. What is the multiverse? A hypothetical iteration of the internet as a single, universal and immersive virtual world facilitated by the use of virtual and augmented reality. Or a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connections. Every few decades, there is a platform shift :   I started teaching computer courses when there were mainframes.  That was in 1972, half a century ago. Then came PCs and the internet. Now mobile and cloud computing. The internet today is worldwide with 40,000 networks, millions of applications, over 100 million servers, almost a billion websites and tens of billions devices. While everything is theoretically interconnected, just think, whoever controls the system, runs the world. That is one way of describing the metaverse, explaining why there is so much inte