3 Facts, 3 Numbers, 3 Thoughts 

THE FACTS

* China is conducting another test of their digital Yuan. To start off the lunar new year, $1.5 million worth of digital currency will be given to 50,000 randomly selected Beijing residents. They will receive packets of 200 Yuan (worth about $30), and the digital currency will be available from February 10th to the 17th. China Daily reports that this is the third city involved in this third test of the digital Yuan (following Shenzhen and Suzhou), and brings the trial total to more than 100 million Yuan ($15.5 million).

* US billionaire Jared Isaacman will captain the first all-civilian mission to space. Having paid SpaceX an undisclosed amount of money to purchase all four seats, he is calling the mission “Inspiration4,” and is using it as a way to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. For reference, NASA pays SpaceX about $55 million for each astronaut that goes into space on a SpaceX capsule.

* Rosa Parks was not the first person of color to refuse to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama. Nine months before Parks’ famous act of protest, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move when the bus driver demanded it. In a BBC interview, Colvin remembered feeling like “Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hands were… on the other.” Even though Colvin was the first, the NAACP felt that the gentle, soft-spoken Parks would be better as the face of resistance to segregation than a teenager (who would soon find out that she was pregnant).

THE NUMBERS  

* 442,324 – the number of business licenses filed in California last year, per the US Census Bureau. That is a 21.7% increase from 2019 – and in the middle of a massive statewide shutdown. From a business perspective, just about everything is wrong with California: taxes, regulations, homelessness, and a massively bungled governmental response to COVID-19. Yet, there are still thousands of brave people in that state willing to start new businesses and, thus, create emerging wealth for themselves and others. Who woulda thunk?

* $50 million – the value of Bitcoins that German police “seized” after arresting a man for installing mining software in people’s computers without their knowledge. The problem: Government officials cannot actually seize Bitcoins without the password. According to the police report, they “asked” the man for his password, but he refused. They asked him why he wouldn’t provide it, they said, “But he didn’t say.”

* $62.5 trillion – the cost of a gram of antimatter, the most expensive substance on Earth. After the Big Bang, the universe was full of antimatter, but it’s extremely rare now. To study it, scientists made some of their own at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, but were able to do it only at the meager rate of 1.67 nanograms a year. You can buy it, if you want, but at $62.5 trillion a gram, you might do better investing in rare metals or Bitcoin or gold.

THE THOUGHTS 

* “Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

* “One of the virtues of good poetry is the fact that it irritates the mediocre.” – Theodore Roethke

* “There are three parts to a good education: discovering the most important facts, understanding the eternal truths that stand behind them, and learning how to question them.” – Michael Masterson