"Computing the optimal road trip across the U.S."

"[W]e needed to look up 2,500 directions to get the 'true' distance between all 50 landmarks... Now with the 2,500 landmark-landmark distances, our next step was to approach the task as a traveling salesman problem: We needed to order the list of landmarks such that the total distance traveled between them is as small as possible if we visited them in order. This means finding the route that backtracks as little as possible...."

"To the American people, first I say thank you for the love they give me. I want the time to give my love to American people."

Says Elian Gonzalez, who once found himself "alone in the middle of the sea."

"For my family it has always been, we always have the desire to say to the American people, to say to each household our gratitude, appreciation and love that we have.... Perhaps one day we could pay a visit to the United States. I could personally thank those people who helped us, who were there by our side. Because we're so grateful for what they did."

ADDED: Back in May 2000, Steve Martin had a humor piece in The New Yorker, written in the voice of Elian Gonzales:

Yes, the photos were doctored. I was taken to a little room, where a photographer held me at gunpoint. Janet Reno came in and started into her irresistible shtick and I burst out laughing. The photo was snapped, and my head was Photoshopped onto another kid�s body. I was then taken to a play yard, where a man masquerading as my father threw a Nerf Ball that I was supposed to chase. My own father is quite fat, certainly not as attractive as the man who was chosen to pose as him... When I finally got back into Cuba, I was placed in a wooden box, which was then suspended from a scaffold in the town square while Castro himself held the ropes. I can still hear him saying, �Zees ees what happeeens to leettle boyz who sail acrozz zee sea.� ... All this just to make Castro look good. I think that this event was what made it possible for him to snag and marry Jennifer Lopez.... I guess blood is thicker than water.

 Maybe in 2000 that was funny. Here's the photograph that was taken on April 22, 2000:



Is it funny now?

"Having craved and even mythologised America in the 80s and 90s, Russians feel they have been snubbed."

"Despite their wealth and embrace of Western lifestyles, Russia�s elite feel they have not been accepted by the West as equals," explains The Economist, in "The Economist explains/How Russians see the West."

Teaching your children about the history of the United States � through reading and travel.

Is this something you've done or will do for your children? Did your parents do it for you? Mine did, a bit, with trips to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. I appreciate what they did, and I wish I'd done more. It's too late for me now to take any inspiration, but I was quite moved by a description I read yesterday of American History Parenting on a truly grand scale. I read it in in Robert A. Caro's "Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson)," but it's not something Lyndon Johnson did with his daughters. It's about Johnson's rival in the 1948 Senate election, Coke Stevenson. Stevenson had remarried (12 years after the death of his first wife) when he was 66, and a daughter was born 2 years later:
Click for more �

"There was the story about a man bringing a gun to an Easter church service � which went off when it got caught on his pants."

"Then we had a guy accidentally shooting his mother-in-law through the wall of her trailer when his target was actually an armadillo ('That bullet couldn�t have taken a more American journey if it had punctured a Kraft single, ricocheted off a Nascar trophy and got lodged in a painting of Elvis and Jesus holding hands at a rodeo,' observed Williams). But neither of these news stories could even come close to the report that succeeded in taking home the 2015 'Mercun Award crown..."

From a WSJ report on "The Daily Show"'s  awards based on the "popular social-media meme #Murica." The WSJ's link on the hashtag goes not to Twitter but to the Urban Dictionary, which defines the term in an openly bigoted manner: "The way un-educated Americans (generally rednecks, hicks, republicans, or very patriotic people) say America" and "The term 'murica' is the way how many people with extremely thick, American accents, pronounce 'America'. The term is used to denote extreme, extreme nationalism and patriotism, but not necessarily facism. It is generally seen as a derogatory yet humorous way to describe most Americans: fat, lazy, gunwielding, war loving, horse riding, saloon fighting, beer drinking, sex wanting or etc."

"[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

"But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did any where. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves."

Thomas Jefferson, January 16, 1787.