What color is it?

Tell me more about the new tractor Mr. Beagles.  I'm guessing it's a big garden tractor, as opposed to the type used on farms, simply because you don't have hundreds of acres to plow.  At one time tractors were color-coded according to the manufacturer but I don't know if that's still true; I can't picture a blue John Deere.

But a tractor by itself is useless, it's the accessories that make the magic happen. I don't know if there are industry standards for the add-ons so you can use your old plow, mower, or whatever with the new tractor.  Getting a new tractor is one thing but getting new versions of everything else would be a real burden.

One of the neatest tractor features that I recall is the power takeoff where you attach a big leather belt and run other machinery.  It was weird to see a tractor in a heavily wooded area running a big saw to cut lumber.  There's a lot you can run with the proper tractor,  pumps, generator, all kinds of neat stuff.  I miss seeing that kind of equipment in the city where you connect different machines together, following the engineering practice of Rube Goldberg.

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What's up with that Kim character in North Korea?

He may be a victim of Trump's strategy of bullshit and bluff.  No one knows what he will do, including himself; everything is on the table and the first guy to blink loses.  It would be funny if the stakes weren't so high.  Not the best way to conduct foreign policy, I think.

Trump used to say that other nations were laughing at the US but they're not laughing now, especially in the European Union.  Der Spiegel had a recent editorial that closed with these two lines: Clever resistance is necessary, as sad and absurd as that may sound. Resistance against America.

The worm is turning.

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I'm a sucker for online quizzes and tests, sometimes they're general knowledge, other times trivia, and once in a while I'm smarter than a fifth-grader.  A different type of quiz showed up in the New York Times where you can test your copy editing skills, using copy that was published but later found lacking.  Fellow Institute members may find it enlightening considering the amount of words being slung about.  There are only twelve questions but some are real head-scratchers and make you think about the subtleties of the written word.  I am not good editor but a little better than the average NYT reader, which is a scary thought.  A lot of dummies must be reading the Times.