218 Frogs, Not a Prince Among Them

Speaker Boehner is quoted in a Politico article bemoaning the difficulty of assembling 218 frogs from his Republican caucus in order to pass a bill.

How a Stonehead Handles Phone Solicitors

His post.  One surprise is the casual mention of receiving solicitations from outside the UK.

The State of Morality

By many measures the state of morality in the US is strong, and getting stronger.  That's not the way the people see it though, according to this Politico report.

Farmers Didn't Like Big Cities: Corruption in the Capitals

John Sides at The Monkey Cage posts on a study which shows the level of governmental corruption is higher when the state capital is more isolated. One factor is there's more news media coverage when the big media are closer to the capital, therefore less corruption.

Thinking about our capitals, most of them are not in the principal cities of the states.  I presume it's because there was a tug of war between the rural districts and the urban areas.  The farmers didn't want to add to the power of New York City or Philadelphia or Boston by making it the capital, so the compromise, given the power of the rural areas, was to make a smaller city the capital.  Today we just think that Albany, Harrisburg, and Springfield are naturally the capitals, without realizing the path by which they got there.

Saverin: Why Singapore?

Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield in the movie, is receiving lots of attention because he's renounced his U.S. citizenship, presumably to avoid paying some taxes on his money from Facebook.

One thing's not been explained in the news articles I've seen: why Singapore?   Well, as usual Wikipedia has the answer: Singapore's tax rules encourage tax evasion.

France Is Safer Than US and the French Are Tougher

That's my takeaway from Dirk Beauregarde: " Even on Tuesday (May 15th), as the newly-inaugurated président’s motorcade drove down the Champs Elysées, François Hollande stood up in his open top limo waving and smiling at the crowds, as torrential rain poured down."

There are some of us who remember Presidents in open limousines as they were before Nov. 23, 1963.  None remember when Presidents were rained upon in their inaugural parades.

Google's Driverless Car Comes to Washington

Here's a Politico report on the car's success in navigating Capitol Hill streets, not the halls yet. It includes this question:

But there are questions about its viability — will consumers buy into losing control behind the wheel?

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76459.html#ixzz1vEYR7joD

Speaking only for myself, I could see buying it--I'm nearing the point where my self-confidence is my driving ability is starting to fade, so an old geezer I've love the ability to delegate 99 percent of the driving to a computer.  I suspect that's how the innovation will come; something like Segway which was promoted as revolutionary but has turned out to be a niche filler.  Between geezers and drunks there's a big niche to fill.

A Glimmer of Hope for Target Prices?

Apparently House Ag Committee is leaning to preserving target prices, but perhaps on planted acres.  That's according to today's Farm Policy.

There's fear of a collapse of prices.

And there's infighting between regions and crops.


And so it goes.

Good Looking Redheads and Drone Aircraft and Tractors

Not that I'm a chauvinist I have a weakness for good looking redheads.  Mary Cummings is such a person, also former F4A and F-18 Navy pilot, also farm girl, also MIT professor, also working with John Deere and Office of Naval Research.  This is a Wired Conference interview with her, talking about the current status and future prospects of drones on aircraft carriers, in warfare, and in agriculture.  Brief video of 2 John Deere robotic tractors spraying an orchard.

The last piece of the interview (total about 18 minutes) is the most surprising one, albeit military and not agricultural.

Poor Software Design: British Style

A couple blogs I follow have noted a report over in the UK that there are 17,000 pregnant men in the National Health System.  At least one of the blogs commented it's a reminder of how easy it is to get garbage into an automated system and thus we should be careful in our reliance on reports. 

That's all true, but the problem really is a design problem: apparently there's no validations on the entries for this particular field, or at least there's insufficient validations.  One could presumably also find in the report some women with prostate problems and men with gynecological problems.  Absence of thought is a universal.