Directives--the Past Repeats Itself

From a NASCOE report of meetings with DC officials:

" Chris gave an update on his initiative to review, consolidate and update directives. The goals of the initiative are to update handbooks and to limit actual policy to notices and handbooks. He is updated every two weeks as to the status of the review. He has also started a process where each amendment or notice is tracked through the clearance process to identify where any potential delay may occur. This should result in reduced time for directives to make it through clearance."

45 years ago ASCS had similar problems with directives:

• too many directives and the relationship among them was not clear to the field
• policy direction outside of the directives system
• slow clearance processes in DC.

EU Goes Back to SUpply Management

Via Chris Clayton at DTN,on the problems of dairy in the EU

A key to the EU aid package involved reestablishing some form of supply management for Europe's dairy farmers. The call to regulate milk production comes just one year after the EU abolished 30 years of dairy production quotas. The lift of the quota, coupled with a lack of increased market access, translated into a glut of milk on the market now across Europe. The new aid package calls for reducing milk production on a voluntary basis for up to six months with a possibility of extending those voluntary measures later.

Hijacking in the Past

Vox has a discussion of the airliner hijackings we used to have in the US (and elsewhere).

I remember the time, didn't remember we reached 130 in 1968-72, but a lot.  It's part of the fact that that period was also more violent: deaths due to terrorism were higher before 9/11 than after.  The discussion touches on the idea that publicity spurred the hijackings, making them in some respects similar to today's mass shootings.  You get a nut who wants attention, in 1970 he hijacked a plane, in 2016 he shoots a few people.

Creating a Context for Facts

The older I get the more I believe that humans create a context, stories, in which the "facts" they perceive make sense.  A neat demonstration of this truth is found in this video at Kottke
in which six photographers were given a person as a subject (short session), but each was given a different description/story about the person.  The results of their sessions show how the story influenced the pictures.

The Golden Rule (for Livestock Producers"

" breed the best of the best (that you have) and eat the rest."

Wisdom from Walter Jeffries.

Japan Agriculture and Cuba Agriculture

A fast check of the CIA factbook shows me that Cuba and Japan have roughly equivalent amounts of arable land.  Cuba is a third the size of Japan, but have about a third of the land arable, while Japan has about 10 percent.  John Phipps points to a piece on Cuba here, which includes the statement that Cuba imports 70 to 80 percent of its food. Meanwhile, Modern Farmer has a piece on Japanese agriculture after the Fukushima tsunami.

Though reforms instituted in the aftermath of World War II had drastically improved the California-size country’s self-sufficiency, the ensuing decades saw farmers abandoning the profession in droves. In 1965, 73 percent of the calories consumed in Japan were being produced there, compared with only 39 percent by 2010. During that same period, the area of land being cultivated had shrunk from 15 million to 11 million acres. The average age of a Japanese farmer climbed from 59 to 66 between 1995 and 2011.[emphasis added]

According to the CIA factbook, Cuba's population is 11 million, Japan's 126 million. Bottom line: Japanese agriculture is several times more productive than Cuba's.

Purchase One of Each

"I am a good deal in want of a House Joiner & Bricklayer, (who really understand their profession) & you would do me a favor by purchasing one of each, for me."

Via John Fea  a letter from George Washington in 1784.

A reminder that buying and selling people isn't unique to today's sports world, it also went on centuries ago.  And at least from the language, we can't tell whether George was after a slave or an indentured servant.

Trump Voter = Archie Bunker

Seems to me the archetypal Trump supporter is Archie Bunker, of All in the Family.

(Note: I've succumbed to the inevitable by adding a Trump label. )

The Half-Life of Information

In the dispute between the FBI and Apple over obtaining access to the terrorist's cellphone data I thought of the concept in my title.  Radioactive elements have a half-life, the amount of time it takes any mass of the element to emit radiation and convert to half the mass.  (Not a good definition but look up wikipedia if you want better.)  The point being each element decays at a set rate, fixed by nuclear physics.

Apply the same concept to the information of interest to law enforcement. Some types of information, say the DNA on a rape kit, would lose interest very gradually, perhaps losing interest entirely when the rapist is almost certainly dead of old age.  Other types, perhaps the appointment calendar, would lost interest much quicker. Assuming law enforcement knew who the person was likely to see, the calendar might be of no interest once the day of the appointment is past.

It's now been more than 3 months since the San Bernadino shootings, so my guess is that much of the information has decayed into relative meaninglessness.  We don't know the information, so we can't tell for certain, but I think it likely  The longer it takes the FBI to access the data, the greater the chance it won't be helpful.

My point: fast access to the data is worth a lot, which should be a consideration in determining whether and under what rules law enforcement gets access.

Deaths by Terrorism, Past and Present

Now we're in a relative lull in deaths by terrorism.  That seems an absurd statement, but it's the truth, as shown by this chart.  What's the difference between the past (i.e. 1970's and 80's) and now?

We forget how active the IRA groups and the unionist opposition were on the killing front.  We forget the Palestinian groups were terrorists in the 70's and 80's.  We forget the Basque groups.  We forget the small leftist/anarchist groups.  Put them all together and they caused more death than ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Perhaps it's just our amnesia. It's not the motivation--murdering because of religion was arguably what the IRA did--were they radical Catholic terrorists?  I think not.

More likely it's familiarity--most of the groups had a history and their terrorism was something we were more accustomed to so it somehow seemed less dangerous.  And importantly, most of the groups seemed to have a defined target, where today the ISIS terrorists seem to be attacking "Western civilizations". 

Bottom line for me: chill and think historically.