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Trading partners of the United States:

RankG	Country	Exports	Imports	Total Trade	Trade Balance
–	World	1,620,532	2,347,685	3,968,217	-727,153
–	European Union	276,142	418,201	694,343	-142,059
1	Canada	312,421	347,798	660,219	-35,377
2	China	123,676	466,754	590,430	-343,078
3	Mexico	240,249	294,074	534,323	-53,825
4	Japan	66,827	134,004	200,831	-67,177
5	Germany	49,363	123,260	172,623	-73,897
6	South Korea	44,471	69,518	113,989	-25,047
7	United Kingdom	53,823	54,392	108,215	-569
8	France	31,301	46,874	78,175	-15,573

History of the EU from 1945 to present, from the EU.

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Site for visualizing school performance. 

Robotic fruit picking

Wall Street Journal article on fruit picking robotics.

Apple picking robot prototype from SRI spinoff.

CEO to worker pay ratios from Glass Door.

Brexit polling

For those of you who might not be aware of our arrangement with the Blue Hill Public Library, Beyond Labels does not meet on days the library is closed.

Since the library will be closed on Monday in observance of Memorial Day, our next meeting will be June 6, 2016.

See you then!

I promised to send a letter to Sen. Angus King to inquire about the background and format of the recent North Woods monument meetings. Since the Senator’s web site has an email “form” instead of an email address, here’s a copy of what I sent:

A couple of questions about the North Woods Monument

Senator King:

First of all, thank you for hosting National Park Service Director Jarvis in the two meetings to discuss the possible designation of Katahdin region land as a national monument. I think it is important for those most affected by the proposal to have a voice in the decision.

Two questions about the format of and publicity surrounding the meetings:

1) From your May 13, 2016 press release, it seems as if the format for the two meetings was also quite different, in that the general public was not invited to speak at the E. Millinocket meeting and, instead, only certain public officials were allowed to participate in the discussion. As indicated above, I’m very interested in hearing what the local folks have to say about the proposed monument, not just their elected officials. And, if the argument is to be made that these elected representatives are an adequate voice for the citizenry, it seems most fair to have adopted the same format in Orono.

What drove the choice of format for the E. Millinocket and Orono meetings? Was it done at the request of the local officials, Director Jarvis, your office or some other group?

2) I note that only the Orono meeting is available as a YouTube webcast. From what I’ve read, the attendees at the Orono meeting were of a substantailly different “composition” than those attending the E. Millinocket meeting–at least that’s what the op-ed writers seem to think–with E. Millinocket being attended mostly by people who live in the region and Orono being attended by a much broader swath of Mainers. In that light, I’d be very interested to see a video of the E. Millinocket meeting to see what those closest to the proposed monument had to say.

Is such a video available? If not, a transcript of the meeting? If not, why not? It would be unfortunate to stifle the publicity available to these (E. Millinocket attendees’) voices in the public dialogue.

Thank you again for fostering local dialogue on this subject and connecting those with an interest in the subject to the corresponding Federal government organization.

Scott Miller
Blue Hill, ME