Things I learned lately 21 July

• McDonald's has 'anti-veto' menu items. These are menu items that might convince people who normally don't go to McDonald's, to agree to go with a group (and not veto the suggestion). One of those items is..... the Filet-O-Fish.
• Most of your Facebook friends have more Facebook friends than you do. In other words, if you have 104 friends on Facebook, more than half of your FB friends have more than 104 friends themselves. Check it out. Let me know if this isn't the case.
• Most investment managers like to make like they're knowledgable, but statistics have shown over and again that they are nothing more than gamblers. Sometimes they win, most times they lose. Oh, but they still get their fees. People who get their hands dirty and handle their own investments are no better. It's not any different than playing the lottery.
• You can't legally own more than 4 cats in Wellington, Kansas.
• There are currently negotiations to create the world's biggest high speed rail network.  It could run from China to the United Kingdom, and over 17 countries in between.  Parts are already operating (China, Europe), and the hope is to have a fully connected network by 2022.
• A store in Brisbane is now charging customers a $5 'browsing fee' which will be refunded at the till if you buy something. The fee is meant to discourage 'showrooming', where the customer views articles in person only to leave and buy them cheaper online. This store obviously wants to go out of business.
• Amazon owns 10% of North American e-commerce. That's as much as Office Depot, Staples, Apple, Dell, WalMart, Sears and Liberty's e-commerce sales COMBINED.
• Knevel - what we used to call that hair on the face before we borrowed the word moustache from the Spanish.
• Evil Knevel - the kind of moustache an evildoer would have. I totally made that up.
• Remember that plane that crashed in SF? KTVU was fooled into airing the names of the pilots on the plane: Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo. There were others as well, but those were all that was necessary. It made it to air. I can't write stuff this good if I tried.
• There are about 6 million unsold Microsoft Surface tablets about to hit retail shelves at very deep discounts.