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.

Organic = Smug Self-Righteousness?

That's my impression from the research reported on at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.   It's not eating the organic food which makes one a jerk; it's being exposed to the concept.  Apparently the logic is the exposure makes one more conscious of morality, hence more judgmental and less willing to help others.

Small Dairy Help

Cornell U. extension has some things to help "small dairies", which have been going out of business in New York forever.

They use a 100-cow dairy as an example of "small", which still strikes odd because 30 or so was the average when I grew up (we had 12).  Though in surfing the web the other day I ran across claims of being able to handle milking of 200-300 cows with one person (maybe on the Wikipedia talk page, not sure).   That's not Moore's law of transistors, but it's a better improvement in productivity than higher education.

Cornell also has a map showing "Small Plants for Pasteurized Milk, Yogurt, etc.).  and a set of benchmarks (size of farm, milk per cow, acres per cow, etc.).  I'd think breed would be important: one farm has 25,000 lbs per cow, which has to be Holstein, another has 13,000 lbs, which has to be Jersey or Guernsey or whatever.

Move to Massachusetts, It's Best

Here's a reasonably convincing article at Slate which boosts that far-left bastion of liberalism, Massachusetts. There's some surprising and counter-intuitive statistics included.

Who Invented Plywood?

Sometime ago there was a listing of the most important inventions of the 20th century.  I thought of that while viewing this video on plywood (it's rather arty and for all the warning about table saws, they don't use a guard)--I owe a hat tip to someone, not sure who.

Anyhow, I went to Wikipedia and found the answer(s):

1. the ancient Egyptians
2. Imannuel Nobel, father of the Alfred of dynamite fame.  Although his Wikipedia entry just credits him with inventing the lathe used in plywood manufacture, but that may have been the key innovation needed to make plywood on a mass scale.

The father invents something which is a prerequisite to modern society and the son something to destroy prerequisites to modern society.  And so it goes.