A person of average height standing in a bus, tram or subway car has, roughly, three feet between the top of his head and the roof.

If he chooses to wear a hat, (which depending on the hat can extend his height 3 to 18 inches), there is still lots of room above him. So he keeps his hat on.

Now imagine the same person, sitting in the drivers’ seat of his car. The Head-To-Roof distance is much narrower, so narrow that to stay comfortable, a man would feel it proper to remove his hat.

It’s hard to get inside the existential paradox of [Nickelback front-man Chad] Kroeger’s life on tour: Every day, he gives interviews to journalists and radio DJs who directly ask him why no one likes his band. Every night, he plays music to thousands of enraptured superfans, many of whom love him with a ferocity that’s probably unhealthy. Every concert ends with a standing ovation; if he feels motivated, he spends the remainder of the night partying with forgettable strangers who will remember him for the rest of their lives. Eventually, Kroeger falls asleep. And then he wakes up in a beautiful hotel room, only to read new articles about how everyone in North America hates his band.

Each had paid American more than $350,000 for an unlimited AAirpass and a companion ticket that allowed them to take someone along on their adventures. Both agree it was the best purchase they ever made, one that completely redefined their lives.

[…] "I can’t even remember when I cracked 10 million," said Vroom, 67, a big, amiable Texan, who at last count had logged nearly four times as many. Rothstein, 61, has notched more than 30 million miles.

[…] In one 25-day span this year, Joyce flew round trip to London 16 times, flights that would retail for more than $125,000. He didn’t pay a dime.

[…] He was airborne almost every other day. If a friend mentioned a new exhibit at the Louvre, Rothstein thought nothing of jetting from his Chicago home to San Francisco to pick her up and then fly to Paris together.

American stopped selling the AAirpass in 1994.  By then it cost over $1 million.

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

It ends particularly well.

We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8).

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

Science and Theology (the study of God) are not competing forces. Faith and reason are not opposites. They are different ways of understanding and they do different things, the problem comes in when people misunderstand their nature and their use. Walk into a kitchen with a scientist and kettle of water boiling on a stove and ask the scientist why it is boiling. They may tell you about the laws of thermodynamics and how the heat energy is being transferred from the heat source through the kettle and into the water via radiation, convection and conduction. The molecules in the water, excited by the heat, spread farther and farther apart, which results in this case has resulted in the visible phenomenon of boiling […]. Walk into the same kitchen with a theologian and with the same kettle boiling and ask them the same question, "Why is it boiling?" They may tell you, "Someone wanted tea." They are both good answers but they take the meaning of the word "why" differently and yield different results.

Also worth reading in this same vein: Does Religion Hold Any Value for the Non-Believer?

His formula was simple: Bain would purchase a firm with little money down, then begin extracting huge management fees and paying Romney and his investors enormous dividends.

The result was that previously profitable companies were now burdened with debt. But much like the Enron boys, Romney’s battery of MBAs fancied themselves the smartest guys in the room. It didn’t matter if a company manufactured bicycles or contact lenses; they were certain they could run it better than anyone else.

Bain would slash costs, jettison workers, reposition product lines, and merge its new companies with other firms. With luck, they’d be able to dump the firm in a few years for millions more than they’d paid for it.

I don’t know how accurate this is. It seems well-researched, but it’s almost too bad to be true.  It’s so one-sided that perhaps the author has an ax to grind. Regardless, it’s a sobering look at what could happen when profit overrides the desires to actually build a decent, solid company.

Who would think of mistreating him? He was too kind. He was always upbeat and laughing and having fun with everyone, so why would someone think of hurting him?” When the roly-poly boy could no longer run or jump with his peers, they invented new games that suited or even featured him, and if the object at recess was to “get Earl down,” why, you’d better believe that Robert Earl was laughing hardest of all while he whirled in circles to bat away his mates. It never occurred to Fishhook children, separated from the faster world by income, geography, and opportunity, to tease a boy who was so much like them.

Sadly, the story ends about how you would expect for someone that heavy.

In the last 50 years, food and apparel’s share of family has fallen from 42% to  17% (and remember, we were near 60% in 1900) as we’ve found cheaper ways to eat and clothe ourselves. Food production got more efficient […]

In 1900, food was 43% of the American families budget.  in 2003, it was 13%.

We take so much for granted these days.  In addition to being so much more expensive, food back then was bland and repetitive.  You’d like eat the same meals 90% of the time.  Variety was rare.  Is it any wonder that spices drove world trade?  We’d do anything to make food more palatable, I would guess.

While specialists could often combat falling fees by doing more procedures, primary-care doctors get paid by the office visit, so all they could do was cram more appointments into a day and increase their panel size—the number of patients in their practices. For primary-care doctors to do a good job, says Bodenheimer, panels should be below 1,800. Today the average primary-care doctor in the U.S. is responsible for about 2,300 patients. At so-called Medicaid mills—clinics that see mostly poor patients covered by state Medicaid plans—panel sizes can reach 3,000 per doctor.

More patients, means less time.

One Canadian and U.S. study found that doctors interrupt their patients on average within 23 seconds from the time the patient begins explaining his symptoms. In 25 percent of visits, the doctor never even asked the patient what was bothering him. In another study that taped 34 physicians during more than 300 visits with patients, the doctors spent on average 1.3 minutes conveying crucial information about the patient’s condition and treatment, and most of the information they provided was far too technical for the average patient to grasp; disconcertingly, those same doctors thought they had spent more than eight minutes.

This is not new information, but the article cites lots of studies and figures, which is refreshing.

As the mystery unravels, it spawns into multiple political conspiracies.  Then, he story takes a twist at the end that – had it happened in some movie – you would describe it was “totally ridiculous.”  Yet, it actually happened.

Rodrigo Rosenberg knew that he was about to die. It wasn’t because he was approaching old age—he was only forty-eight. Nor had he been diagnosed with a fatal illness; an avid bike rider, he was in perfect health. Rather, Rosenberg, a highly respected corporate attorney in Guatemala, was certain that he was going to be assassinated