Bits ‘n pieces from east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

John Deere reincarnation: Older farm machinery is fetching between $18,000 and $61,000, a bargain compared to a new model at $150,000. The bonus, farmers said, was no “irksome software.” There’s no waiting in a far field for a service truck to fix your tractor’s computer problem, The Week reported.

An average MRI scan costs $450 in Britain; in the U.S. it costs $1,420. A $32,200 angioplasty in the U.S. costs $6,400 in the Netherlands and $7,400 in Switzerland, according to The New York Times.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe announced plans to build the largest solar farm in North Dakota, not far from where the fossil-fuel fed Dakota Access Pipeline is located. Upon completion, the 1000-panel solar farm is expected to provide power for 12 reservation communities in both North and South Dakota. The $470,000 project has backing from several nonprofits.

Parvo, a deadly viral canine disease, attacks a puppy’s GI system. But now fecal transplants, once used just for humans, are showing promise for saving pups with parvo. Nonetheless, Dr. Karen S. Becker, in her online veterinary column, advised getting a vaccination to dodge the deadly parvo virus.

Grappling with concrete: It is estimated that by 2050 the planet will have 75 percent more infrastructure, a good portion of it concrete. But, said officials with the World Wildlife Foundation, concrete processing accounts for up to 10 percent of global greenhouse emissions. WWF is helping the industry find more climate-friendly actions, such as using new aggregates, like shredded post-disaster debris; banning illegal sand mining (sand is a major concrete component, and mining it from river beds causes waterway instability); and addressing over-building and over-design.

A portion of right-wing advocates, who once regarded Russia as a dire threat, now admire the nation, and praise the Russian president for promoting Orthodox Christianity and “traditional values.” But, wrote Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic, just 15 percent of Russians said they are involved with religion. Meanwhile, Russia has one of the world’s highest abortion rates and one province is officially ruled under sharia law. The right-wing fans may not like that the nation has six times more Muslims than the U.S.

Joe Stiglitz, 2001 recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics, recently outlined how to assess a nation’s economic health. He advised first looking at health and happiness, and noted that, since 2017, U.S. life expectancy has fallen with midlife mortality reaching the highest rates since World War II.

That is likely due to increased drug use (legitimate or not) to address despair and the uninsured healthcare rate rising from 10.9 percent to 13.7 percent in just two years, reported Vox.com. As well, Stiglitz said that the median full-time male wages are 3 percent below what they were 40 years ago. The government’s economic health has declined following 2017 tax cuts that favored the rich, while it borrowed close to $500 billion a year to compensate for its depleted tax base.

Some 75 percent of people polled wanted the Senate to allow witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, but Senate Republicans voted against it even though 69 percent of Republicans polled wanted witnesses. The senators voting to impeach the president represented 18 million more Americans than were represented by the Republicans who voted to acquit, Mother Jones noted.

On Feb. 6, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who also was implicated in the Ukraine controversy, ordered that the FBI cannot investigate political candidates involved in the 2020 campaign unless Barr provides his approval.

Because we could use a chuckle: At a political event, presidential contender and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren was asked who would be her Mike Pence, i.e., who was going to look at her with adoring eyes?

“I already have a dog,” she responded.

Blast from the past: For the 1988 presidential election Lee Atwater boosted Republicans’ chances with the Willie Horton ad. It portrayed blacks as a safety threat and implied that Republicans would keep people safe via the death penalty.

Two years later Atwater was diagnosed with brain cancer. In a Life magazine interview Atwater expressed regret for being an “ardent” practitioner of negative politics, saying, “My illness helped me to see what was missing in society was what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood…I have learned a lesson: politics and human relationships are separate. It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth.” Atwater died two months later.

And another blast: Thomas Jefferson, describing George Washington, wrote “Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed…” Washington served as president from 1789 to 1797. After the Revolutionary War, many proposed Washington become the new nation’s king. But he said he abhorred the ruler-for-life idea.