After reading a list of U.S. states ranked by carbon dioxide emissions I began to wonder if Red (politically conservative) states had higher or lower annual average emissions of carbon dioxide than Blue (politically liberal) states do. In this analysis, I included the state's:

• annual CO² emissions
• population
• conservativeness (how conservative the state voted in the last 5 presidential elections)
• total square miles
• population density

What I found may shock you . . .

Forever Stamps went on sale in April 2007 for $0.41 each and are good for use as First Class stamps . . . forever. So in April 2008, a month before the price was to change to $0.42/stamp I prepared an analysis of an investment in Forever Stamps.

Taking this historical cost of stamps I charted the real and nominal price of a first class stamp since the beginning of the US Post Office. Then, I figured out the annual average increase in the cost of sending a one-ounce letter (not including inflation) was 3% per year with a standard deviation of 0.09. If one was to hold the stamps for 10 years then they could have earned 14.3% on their money. To make the changes in value more recent, I considered only a 10-year moving average, which had an average annual increase of 2.67% with a standard deviation of 0.01. Taking this in to consideration, if you were to hold the stamps for 10 years you have made only a 12.36% gain on your money. All of this assumes that there is no spoilage and that the stamps are sold at 100% of their value (e.g. you use them yourself). Currently, stamps are increasing in value per their historical average, rather than their average in the last 10 years.

The Instructamerical is the commercial implementation of Reactive Video.

Reactive Video is video that updates itself and reports on its usage. Think "choose your own adventure" for videos. The process is modeled after natural human communication – where attention (interest) goes, the conversation flows. In the autumn of 2002, I architected and implemented the framework for this product before registering it for a provisional patent.

The Instructamercial allowed advertisers to repurpose their videos into advertisements that could be handed out on physical media (e.g. CDs) or downloaded on the Internet. Keep in mind that dial-up Internet access was ubiquitous at that time.

Think of a video showing a golfer taking a chip-shot from the bunker. If the person viewing the video clicks on the golf club and/or the ball to learn more, then that person is likely interested in golf equipment. If the viewer is more interested in the golf shirt and pants then they are likely interested in golf apparel.

See a demonstration.

Washington DC is my favorite city in the world. I have lived and visited internationally, so my opinion is based upon a reasonable amount of experience.

Since I am getting more requests to suggest itineraries for visitors to the Nations Capital, I thought I would post this generic advice. You can still write me to get a more personalized suggestion or to suggest improvements to this list.

overview

DC is more than government buildings and museums. There are plenty of green spaces, restaurants, dance clubs, and other things to see. The best part is that are many free attractions.

VisitingDC and 10Best have relatively good generic guides.