Much fuss was made this week over China’s proposed tariffs on American Chicken.  At first glance, the situation is grave; 50-100% premium on imports of chicken from the US.  However, upon closer examination there are two other important data points to consider:a) the Chinese have a particular interest in parts of the chicken that we typically discard (namely the feet and the wings) and are virtually worthless in the US market and b) Russia announced that they would be allowing exports of chicken from the United States into Russia after a nearly  one year ban.

“640K ought to be enough for anybody…”            

Recently the hard drive crashed on one of our home computers, suddenly and without cause.  When we took it apart to replace the hard drive, we discovered it was a Seagate SATA 500GB / 7200 RPM.  It was a good opportunity to upgrade the operating system, and install a larger drive… perhaps 1TB.  About a year ago when the machine was purchased, 500GB still seemed large, now it seemed small and inadequate, particularly for storing our large and growing collection of home videos.  Cost to replace (without price shopping): $49.00.