Old Men

Eugene Volokh at Volokh Conspiracy posts a Kipling poem, which I'm going to steal:

"And it put me in mind of one of Kipling’s poems, The Old Men:

This is our lot if we live so long and labour unto the end –
Then we outlive the impatient years and the much too patient friend:
And because we know we have breath in our mouth and think we have thought in our head,
We shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really dead.
We shall not acknowledge that old stars fade or stronger planets arise
(That the sere bush buds or the desert blooms or the ancient well-head dries),
Or any new compass wherewith new men adventure ‘neath new skies.
We shall lift up the ropes that constrained our youth, to bind on our children’s hands;
We shall call to the waters below the bridges to return and to replenish our lands;
We shall harness (Death’s own pale horses) and scholarly plough the sands.
We shall lie down in the eye of the sun for lack of a light on our way –
We shall rise up when the day is done and chirrup, “Behold, it is day!”
We shall abide till the battle is won ere we amble into the fray.
We shall peck out and discuss and dissect, and evert and extrude to our mind,
The flaccid tissues of long-dead issues offensive to God and mankind –
(Precisely like vultures over an ox that the army left behind).
We shall make walk preposterous ghosts of the glories we once created –
Immodestly smearing from muddled palettes amazing pigments mismated –
And our friend will weep when we ask them with boasts if our natural force be abated.
The Lamp of our Youth will be utterly out, but we shall subsist on the smell of it;
And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands and suck our gums and think well of it.
Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that is the Perfectest Hell of it!
This is our lot if we live so long and listen to those who love us –
That we are shunned by the people about and shamed by the Powers above us.
Wherefore be free of your harness betimes; but, being free be assured,
That he who hath not endured to the death, from his birth he hath never endured!

This seems like Kipling in an unduly grim mood, and I don’t really buy the message, at least if taken at face value. Still, I think it’s a great poem."

The line particularly apropos for this blog is: "We shall make walk preposterous ghosts of the glories we once created"

Even a Blind Hog Department

John Hinderaker at Powerline catches the NYTimes Editorial Board in major hypocrisy on diversity.

College Profs Today--Not So Tough on Spelling

From a RateMyProfessors page:

He is a great guy and truly loves to teach. Wants you to learn. However, at least in this class, it's really hard to get an A on a paper. He really pushes you to improve your writing. (btw, he's a stickler for grammer and syntax)

Who Polices the Police: Organics in Poland and Junk Bonds Here

When I read this piece at Vox on how the organic certifications and EU subsidies work in Poland, I was reminded of how the securities ratings firms work in the US (as in assigning AAA ratings to various securities leading up to the 2008 crash).

And ‘everyone’ includes the organic certification companies, who, on their own admission, do not conduct on-site inspections of either fields or harvests, because they are not legally obliged to do so. “If the certifying company nonetheless expresses some reservations, it will quickly be replaced by one of its more indulgent competitors,” explains Teresa Ropelewska of Agro Bio Test. Worse still, overzealous certifiers may even risk court action. As a result, discipline and discretion have become watchwords for companies that want to keep their customers.

Innovation on the Farm

Agweb has a piece on farmers' ten favorite smart phone apps.

The End of the World (also Post and Times) as I Know It

Saw my doctor today for an overdue physical and checkup.  Somewhere I've lost about 1.5 inches in height over the years--has anyone seen them around?  I'm also losing my subcutaneous fat--i.e., I'm looking old and wrinkly (funny how looking in a strange mirror reveals something not seen when shaving every morning.

Finally, ran across (and lost) the results of a survey of expenditures on various forms of reading matter.  The piece was focused on the idea we spend about the same amount on ebooks as on physical books, but it had a breakdown by age.  Essentially no one under 45 spends anything on newspapers--it's people like me who still subscribe to the physical paper. So much for the future of the NYTimes and Post--the end of a 300 year history.

Surprise of the Day--London's Canals

London has twice the mileage of canals as Amsterdam, according to this article in the NYTimes.

Apparently housing prices in London have become the highest in the world, and some people are finding houseboats on the canals to be an alternative. 

SSA and Field Offices

SSA's field office structure has gotten some political attention recently, as they've closed some offices and have a study which recommends further changes Their unions, and AARP, are up in arms.  They still have 1250 field offices.

It seems to be a similar problem to USDA and its field offices.  The logic of computers and internet and declining populations in some ares leads to office closures, while the logic of serving the public and not further undermining the economics of localities lead to preserving the status quo.

SSA may have a better case for consolidation and online service than USDA: their programs don't need local data.  Presumably if you're disabled for work in Deaf Smith County, TX you're also disabled in Fairfax County, VA, and vice versa. If I need to apply for SS benefits it shouldn't matter if I'm in Florida on a vacation or not whereas USDA programs are tied to geography.

Rail Cars and the Capital Beltway

The Dakotas, that is their politicians and farm leaders, are upset over a shortage of rail cars to transport the big crop of grain, blaming in part the Canadians for mishandling and in part the transport of oil from the Bakken formation.

To those like me who live in the past, this seems familiar.  Sometime after I joined ASCS but before the end of the 70's there was a similar shortage of cars--I remember because the county ASCS offices were required to do a survey of their local rail facilities and report up the line. If memory serves it was a one-time deal.

What's my point and how does the beltway come into it?  I'd ass u me that there are cyclical surges and valleys in the demand for rail cars, and railroads are reluctant to spend money on more cars until they see a sustained demand (and until they have the money--which may have been a problem in the 70's--lots of big railroads going broke (NYCentral, Penn Central, etc.).  And of course there are surges and valleys in grain harvests, so there's the likelihood that sometimes railroads won't have enough cars, simply because it's easier to absorb a public beating once every few years than to have dollars sitting idle. For the same reason we won't usually have superhighways, like the Capital Beltway, free of traffic.  When we do, it's likely to be something named after a recent politician, a pork barrel project, not something like the Beltway.

More Farm Divisions Coming?

This article suggests two reasons for dividing multi-tract/multi-owner farms: allows landowners to make separate decisions on the new farm programs (ARC & PLC) and allows operators to put some farms in one program and some in the other, hedging their bets.

Maybe we have a sort of Platonic ideal of what constitutes a farm, perhaps based on Jefferson's image of a nation of yeoman farmers?  If we do, our reality doesn't match the ideal.  When I joined ASCS it took a while to figure out that agriculture in some areas, the north and west, differed from that in the South, specifically in the balance between landownership and farm operation.  Big landowners in the South, who often called the shots for the producers; small landowners in much of the rest of country, renting to operators who farmed multiple ownership tracts.

As the emphasis in ASCS/FSA programs changed over the years, the incentive for operators to combine or divide changed.  Production adjustment programs meant combinations so you could designate the poorest land to be taken out of production.  Disaster programs meant divisions so a loss on one tract wouldn't be offset by production on other tracts.