Some things you may not know

I spend a lot of time each week reading as much as I can from as many different sources as possible to stay current on what's going on in the world and my aim is to read objective sources rather than subjective ones. So even though I'm a Democrat, I don't watch MSNBC because voices from the left are just as biased and prejudiced in one direction as voices from the right are in the other. Here are some things you may not have heard.

A new YouGov poll found that only 4 percent of Americans think they are less intelligent than the average person.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde was scheduled to address students at Smith College in Massachusetts but canceled after nearly 500 people signed a petition objecting to the IMF's "corrupt" policies. A week earlier, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was forced to withdraw as commencement speaker at Rutgers University after students and faculty members protested her involvement in the Iraq War while in April Brandeis University withdrew its offer of an honorary degree for women's rights activist Ayaan Hirse Ali amid controversy over statements she had made that were critical of Islam. Colleges and universities have long been the places where all perspectives are discussed, dissected and sometimes challenged but today they're becoming havens of the closed-minded. (The Week magazine)

America's four highest earning hedge fund managers earned more last year than the combined salaries of all 157,800 kindergarten teachers in the country (Vox.com)

61 percent of Americans say they want Congress to either leave the Affordable Care Act alone or tweak the law to make it better. 38 percent say the law should be repealed. (CNN/ORC)

The average U.S. college graduate can expect to earn some $800,000 more over a lifetime than the average high school graduate. (Slate.com)

80 percent of all Americans say they carry less than $50 on a regular basis, while nearly half say they carry less than $20. (The Washington Post)

The New York Times' Josh Barro says that owning a home is a terrible investment. Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post reports that over the past century, inflation-adjusted housing prices grew just 0.3 percent a year, compared with the S&P's 6.5 percent annual growth. Its one thing to romanticize the idea of owning one's own roof, walls and fireplace, it's quite another to think you'll make money off them too.

A Michigan school has sent a flyer home to parents urging that they and their children minimize the "competitive urge to win" at the school's annual field day, so as not to upset the other students. "We believe all of our students are winners," the flyer said. A parent of one of the students participating in the field day asked, "What are we teaching our students?" (The Week magazine)

Some New York City parents are now paying professionals up to $1,000 to pack their kid's summer camp trunks, and include comforts such as French-milled soaps, 1,000-thread-count sheets and scented candles. (The Week magazine)

Euthanasia has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, (The Week magazine)

Kari Taro Greenfield says in the New York Times that "it's never been so easy to pretend to know so much without actually knowing anything" because of our reliance on certain media outlets to confirm our own biases and prejudices.

52 percent of American women report having experienced physical violence at some point in their life, compared with 25% of the women in Sweden and 18 percent of the women in Italy. (Vox.com)

Mental illness reduces life expectancy by 10 to 20 years, more than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, a new study of 1.7 million people found. (NPR.com)

A CEO now earns about 257 times his or her average employee's salary. (Associated Press)

A Utah high school added Photoshopped clothing, including sleeves and T-shirts, to the yearbook photos of at least seven girls to make them look less sexy. (The Week magazine)

The average Fox News viewer is 68.8 years old with the audience of star host Bill O'Reilly even older at a median age of 72.1. (The New York Times)

And finally, we had an important golf tournament at Heritage Hills this week that few people knew about. It was the Nebraska Juniors Tournament that attracted junior golfers from all over the state. McCook's Megan Vetrovski won 3rd place on the girl's side and Noah Hoffman, also of McCook, was defeated by a young man from Omaha 3 and 2 in the 36-hole final on Thursday. Only 8 golf carts followed these young men around the course and 2 of them were occupied by the fathers of the participants. The event received little media coverage which is a shame for the young people representing McCook on their home course. I don't know if it was mentioned on the radio because, like more and more people these days, I don't listen to commercial radio anymore. It sure would have been encouraging for our young people if there had been a big turn-out to cheer them on.