Things I learned lately - 11 March

• American Airlines no longer offers emergency or bereavement fares.
• The Police Chief of Anapolis MD tried to use a hoax article about marijuana overdoses from the Daily Current website to bolster his position that marijuana is harmful. Luckily, one of the senators listening to the testimony recognized the hoax evidence from Comedy Central.
• Folsom Lake in California, near Sacramento was at 97% of its capacity in July 2011. In January 2014 it was at 17% capacity.
• Canada gets about 16 million visitors per year. France gets the most visitors, at over 81 million per year.
• Sandra Bullock will likely earn more than $70 million for her role in Gravity.
• Greater Las Vegas depends on Lake Mead for 90% of its water. Soon Lake Mead is expected to fall below the level of the first of two pipes that connect it to the city. So a deeper $816m "third straw" is being built to maintain the water supply. Officials also want to lay a 300 mile pipeline to bring water from the north of Nevada to Las Vegas.
• Lake Mead can (at maximum capacity) have a surface elevation of 1221 feet. That was the case in 1983. It is now 1119 feet. That may not seem like a big drop but consider the volume of water that is gone. Lake Mead's maximum capacity is 26,134,000 acre-ft. Its current capacity is 13,479,170 acre-ft and falling. An acre-ft is an acre of area by one foot deep.
• Traditional silicon solar cells are only 25% efficient. That's about to double.
• Mozilla (the makers of Firefox) plan to sell a $25 smart phone.
• According to Wolfram Alpha, the average age of all the Karls alive is 50. All 81,968 of us.
• France has 58 nuclear reactors that provide 75% of the country's electricity. It also exports power to Switzerland, Italy and Belgium.
• Paul Allen, a Microsoft co-founder, tried to sell his 303 foot yacht (named Tatoosh) over the last 4 years for a cool $160 million. No bites, so it's off the market. Allen also has a bigger 414 foot yacht (Octopus).