Some good comments by everyone. Hman, while I agree with some of what you're saying in principle, I may differ on some of the specifics. Namely, I'm not certain Amish ground is all that more productive than those that farm conventionally. I know you live where there are a lot of Amish folk, and they have a reputation of being outstanding farmers, but I wonder if their reputation exceeds its worth. The reason I say that is that although I've no experience with the Amish, I do have experience with the Mennonites. They too, have a reputation as very good farmers. Indeed most have a strong work ethic. However, I used to examine their production records (pig farmers) and while, on average their production was above the mean, it was only slightly so. That improvement seemed to be dependent upon cheap labor (their large bunches of children). In the whole scope of things I'm not sure that agricultural model is the best for the planet (meaning the huge volume of people already on the planet). But like I say, I've little knowledge of the Amish, and even less of their specific farming practices. I will say that there are commercial corn growers getting over 300 bushel/acre, which is very productive indeed. One may think that kind of production is burning out the ground, but it doesn't appear to be so. I've seen some of that good corn ground in IL. It's been farmed for decades and decades, and still the richest looking black stuff you ever saw. I think part of the key is that the land was flat, so in the years where tillage farming was the rule, none of that good stuff was ever washed away. Probably the biggest threat to it is urban encroachment gobbling up that prime land. Keepitlow, Well said. However, I might take issue with the the part that our food quality has declined. This is pretty hard to discuss objectively though, because the word "quality" is so subjective. Additionally, it also depends on what years are being discussed. I'm just about through reading a different kind of American history book. It's the first book of it's kind that I've read. Most history books examine the "important" events of history (i.e. Revolutionary war, Civil war, etc.) and spend little time discussing the day to day lives of ordinary citizens. This book is the opposite. It's spends almost all of it's time discussing daily life, and ignores the "major" events. What I'm coming away with reading this book, is the profound struggle to survive before, and during the early part of the industrial age. This idea of southern plantations with abundance, defining the way of life was not the reality for the most folk. Before the modern industrial age the average American life span was amazingly low, largely due to inadequate and poor food quality. Even in somewhat later times, the food quality has seemed to improve. I remember hearing former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz speak. He gave examples of how food quality had increased since he was a kid (no worms in cereal, no worms in apples). I once read Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" about the meat packing industry in the early 1900s (actually I didn't finish it, it made me too sad. I may go back and finish it some day). Anyway, that book described conditions of meat packing as so bad, that reportedly Roosevelt was reading the book at his breakfast, and spit a mouthful of sausage across the table. From that book came the rigorous meat packing inspections we have today. This is getting a little long. Better stop here.

Some of my all-time favorite shows are British, starting with Monty Python (which I still watch on DVD), Absolutely Fabulous (which I also have on DVD), and Keeping Up Appearances, which I like better than Kevin does, as Hyacinth reminds him of his ex-MIL. She reminds me of our grandmother, although she was Alsatian instead of British, but she was an English professor. I do very much appreciate the British sense of humor. My German (Alsatian) grandmother had no sense of humor and my mother did not have much of one either. Germans are not known for humor, and in my studies of German literature, for which I have a B.A. degree, I rarely found humorous writings, although I think that is changing now. I did not study much German literature past the mid 20th Century. The only writers that I found that had a sense of humor were Jewish and reminded me more of Russian Jewish literature than German. Zalco, that is a good explanation, and I had not thought of it that way. I'll keep that in mind the next time I hear it. I do tend to be very literal and therefore miss out on a lot of jokes or even make some accidentally😵. Your analogy reminds me of Molière's The Misanthrope, in which one side says that telling white lies is preferable to brutal honesty. When I first read that play, I identified with Célimène, but I'm not sure I do anymore. If one is prefacing a potentially offensive statement with "to be honest..." I think that that makes the offense even worse instead of better. It just sounds like it is an excuse to insult. I lived with someone from New York for four years when I first moved to San Francisco, and it took me a while to get used to his sarcasm as well, and it was impossible to take many of the things he said literally, such as "Get out of here" (although I did take that seriously at first) and "Did you die?"

OutsidePlaying, I can't imagine how anyone in or out of government could reasonably benchmark or assess rates of spending or overspending for the kind of work NASA historically did. It's completely a one-off activity. I'd be very willing to accept overspending on account of inept management or misplaced good intentions. But it was just shut down. NASA's work historically advanced the knowledge and understanding of the universe for all of mankind, the value of which is priceless as far as I'm concerned. I know the Mars rover missions were financed on a shoestring by design, I was working with a company that was involved. Use off the shelf components, make due with compromises, yada yada and the end results were pretty impressive. Great achievements by innovative and capable engineers. If you were in Huntsville, I spent a very interesting afternoon not too many years ago at the Space and Rocket Center. We were lucky enough to be approached by a docent looking for visitors to amaze. The guy turned out to be a real "rocket scientist", recently retired, who enjoyed sharing special insights and giving as if private tours to small, family-size groups, which we were. A most memorable experience. He was also well acquainted and knowledgeable about the Nazi rocket scientists (who worked on the German V1 and V2 weapons) the US Army snatched at the end of World War 2 who formed the core of American rocket expertise for decades, along with their leader von Braun. I'd just finished a book on the subject and was curious to know more. It's a story few Americans know and most should, especially those of us who lived through the early years of the space race and thought so many of the US's accomplishments were done by Americans.

I noticed that coverage from Deutsche Welle was much different from that in the U.S. media. DW aired a lot of criticism from African countries that I did not see in American media, and it gave me the view that the British monarchy is not loved in many African countries, due to long histories of exploitation. OTOH, I did notice appreciation for Britain when I was in Fiji, and Fiji asked to rejoin the Commonwealth after having being granted independence, as the Fijians thought that that would help them with their problems. However, most of their problems seem to have arisen from the importation of people from India to do jobs that that native Fijians were not willing to do. Native Fijians thought that a five hour work day was sufficient, as that was what they were used to, but the British were not satisfied with that and therefore imported workers who would work longer hours. The Fijians were happy with what they could accomplish in a five hour day, and I have to agree with them. Fijians have a great appreciation for leisure time, and I support this. There is no "one size fits all" with regard to governments and work schedules.