A confession: I quietly love flying. This year, I've done 163,581 miles of it. I love that when you fly a lot, the airport social media staff say 'hello' on Twitter when you arrive and the cabin crew on your home route (or even on the Brisbane-Dubai non-stop route) recognise you from last time. I like getting great service, and see so many things about systems-thinking that work well in airlines, that I'm happy to forgive small indiscrepancies when they occur. All that said, flying strangles our planet as much as eating too much red meat, and for many, many reasons, I've wanted to stop flying quite so much, while not restricting the spread and growth of the ideas from our firm, NoTosh. I'm quite sure that nobody reading this blog really cares about how much I travel, but keeping an annual count on it has become a new year habit. When I started working at Channel 4, and then continuing when I created NoTosh, I wanted to keep track of what seemed like an interminable number of miles on the road and in the air. By 2012, 2013 and last year, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever be able to get the number of miles down when they seemed to represent even more trips to the moon and back each and every year. When you run a company based in Edinburgh with a great team living in Melbourne, you could easily spend your life on a plane - one flying to Melbourne feels better than two or more flying to Edinburgh. Indeed, in 2012, 2013 and 2014 it felt like I really did spend my life on a plane, as I went to the moon and back in my annual travel, with anything up to seven trips a year to Australia. What is the author likely to do after their next trip to Melbourne? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - visit family in Norway - not enough information - backpack through Australia - fly back to Edinburgh
fly back to Edinburgh

I'm going to take something that happened to my daughter for this answer. Billie Jo (our daughter) was probably around ten years old when it happened. We had a young Black Labrador dog who had become quite smitten with chewing things up that she wasn't supposed to. The list grew longer as the months passed. Looker, our black lab, had chewed up and eaten a $10 bill, my VCR remote control (probably around 1987), and a sticker-filled blackberry vine my wife had planted. How she did that one without serious repercussions is beyond me. She also had a habit of grabbing the mail as it slid through the slot that was in our front door, taking it out back and 'sorting' it for us. So what happened really came as no big surprise. My daughter was a very diligent student, never wanting to let down her teachers by not turning her homework in as soon as she got to school (at least until she hit 14). One morning our daughter was trying to find the math homework that she knew she had completed the night before. My wife assisted in the search and soon found a partially chewed up piece of our daughter's homework page. Our daughter was devastated! How could she possibly walk in to school and publicly announce, "My dog ate my homework!" without becoming the laughing stock of the school? Like this: Mama Bear (my wife) storms into the classroom and vehemently upholds our daughter's "dog ate my homework" bit, showing the teacher the half eaten paper. Funny thing was, the teacher would have never doubted our little girl for one minute. Back then, Billie Jo was the sweetest, cutest, most polite and well mannered child a parent could possibly hope for. And her teachers loved her. So, if you have partial proof, it can be a valid excuse. Who is Billie Jo's teacher? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - A teacher at her school. - A friend at school. - not enough information - A janitor at school.
not enough information

Q: LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON As U.S. political candidates make their final appeals, voters in 35 states will decide policy issues Tuesday that include legalizing recreational use of marijuana and restricting access to guns and ammunition, voting yes or no on nearly 160 state ballot initiatives. California's Proposition 64, which is leading in the polls, could create a multibillion-dollar marijuana industry by legalizing the recreational use the drug for adults in the state. Similar measures are on the ballot in Arizona, Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts. Marijuana could be legalized for medical use in Florida and three other states. Medical marijuana is already permitted in half the 50 U.S. states, and recreational use is allowed in Alaska, Colorado, Washington state, Oregon and the District of Columbia. Marijuana is banned under federal law, but U.S. officials have taken a hands-off approach on the issue. Voters in Maine and Nevada are considering measures that would expand background checks for gun purchases, which is already required for buying guns from dealers, by extending the provision to private sales. Californians will consider measures requiring background checks for buyers of ammunition and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines. Washington state has a measure that would allow the courts to bar the sale of guns to individuals deemed an extreme risk to themselves or others. Californians are considering whether to eliminate the death penalty with Proposition 62, or to maintain capital punishment and make the process more efficient with Proposition 66, which supporters say makes it more fair to victims of violent crimes. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have abolished or overturned capital punishment on the grounds that it is unequally applied to minority populations and that innocent people are sometimes convicted. South Dakotans will decide whether to make statewide offices nonpartisan and create a citizens commission to redraw voting districts after each 10-year national census, removing... Who was considering measures that would expand background checks? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - Florida - not enough information - Nevada and Maine - California
A: Nevada and Maine

Q: U.S. President Donald Trump says he may veto a $1.3 trillion spending bill because it does not offer protections for young undocumented immigrants who arrived as children and does not fully fund the border wall. In a Twitter post Friday morning, Trump said he is considering a veto of the omnibus spending bill based on "the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded." Previously, White House officials said Trump would sign the spending package, a move that would head off a potential government shutdown due to a lack of funding. The measure funds the federal government through September 30. If Trump does not sign the legislation into law, the federal government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. The Senate passed the bill by a 65-32 vote early Friday morning after the House of Representatives approved the measure Thursday. Lawmakers had just hours to read the nearly 2,200-page bill released Wednesday night. With midterm elections looming in November, the bill likely marks the final time Capitol Hill considers major legislation this year. The measure fulfills Trump's vow to boost military funding but provides funding for limited parts of his immigration agenda. The bill includes a 2.4 percent pay raise for military personnel. After extensive negotiations between Republicans and Democrats, the bill also provides $1.6 billion for physical barriers and 150 kilometers of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, short of the $25 billion Trump requested for the project he repeatedly touted on the campaign trail while pledging Mexico would pick up the cost. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi touted the agreement in a letter to her Democratic colleagues, saying negotiators "fought for and achieved drastic reductions to the Trump/GOP plan," including much less funding for the wall than Trump requested and a limit on the number of immigrants that can be... What is Trump probably sitting while writing this tweet? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - on the toilet - in the oval office - not enough information - in the rose garden
A: on the toilet