Robots helping farmers is here.
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Steve Milloy over at JunkScience.com posted an interesting stat recently
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Crazy graph showing how jobs have tanked in the above mentioned industry. Now just under 11,000 employed.
H/T Mark J. Perry
The Dallas Cowboys have signed a two year deal with
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How people listened to music in the 1980’s with their portable radios
Present day device for a portable speaker which you can listen to music from a device like your cellphone. You can buy it at Amazon.com for $36
This is the TDK A12 TREK Micro NFC Bluetooth Portable Mini Wireless Outdoor Speaker. It weighs 6.6 ounces and product dimension of 3.2 x 3.2 x 1.2 inches. Power source is one AAA battery.
Via The Washington Free Beacon:
The US Navy has begun to test the firefighting abilities of a humanoid robot it has been developing for several years. The Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) walks on two legs, operates a fire hose, and even wears a track suit. The Navy is hoping SAFFiR can one day supplement its traditional human firefighting teams.
“This is a program that’s been going on for about five years basically to develop a humanoid capable of fire suppression,” Thomas McKenna said in an Office of Naval Research (ONR) video about the project. “There’s substantial losses incurred when you have a major fire and you can’t suppress it at an early stage.”
John Farley of the Naval Research Laboratory said that he sees the robot’s quick learning curve as a likely lifesaver.
Economist Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute provided a piece showing the technology marketplace and how competition helps not only bring more products to the marketplace but also cheaper pricing.
Pictured above are some color TVs from the 627-page 1964 Sears Christmas Catalog, available here at the WishbookWeb website along with many other Christmas catalogs from 1933 to 1988. The original prices are listed ($750 for the Sears Silvertone entertainment center and $800 for the more expensive one), and those prices are also shown converted to today’s 2014 dollars using the BLS Inflation Calculator: $5,700 for the basic 21-inch color TV model and $6,100 for the more expensive model.
Click on this link to see what he found you can buy with the amount of money in todays dollars from the televisions listed above.
He also leaves on this final note and one reason why the U.S. is still one of the greatest economic innovators the world has ever seen.
As much as we might complain about a slow economic recovery, the decline of the middle class, stagnant median household income, rising income inequality and a dysfunctional Congress, we have a lot to be thankful for, and we’ve made a lot of economic progress in the last 50 years as the example above illustrates, thanks to the “magic and miracle of the marketplace.”
Hoosier Econ 