Apparel from Wood

Proof that American innovation is unceasing--the Foreign Agricultural Service is seeking OMB approval to collect information on this subject.

Foreign Agricultural Service

Title: Agriculture Wood Apparel Manufacturers Trust Fund.
OMB Control Number: 0551-0045.
Summary of Collection: Section 12315 of the Agricultural Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-79) authorizes distribution out of the Agriculture Wood Apparel Manufacturers Trust Fund (“Agriculture Wool Trust Fund”) in each of calendar years 2014 through 2019, payable to qualifying claimants. Eligible claimants are directed to submit a notarized affidavit, following the statutory procedures specified Section 12314 (c) or (d) of the Act.
Need and Use of the Information: The Foreign Agricultural Service will use the information provided in the affidavits to certify the claimants' eligibility and to authorize payment from the Agriculture Wood Trust Fund [Underlining added]

I can understand one typo, I could even understand consistent typos, but why one word correct and 3 incorrect?

I need to vent in a future post about the absurdity of these approvals.

Anyone Want a New Outer?

Verizon sent me an email with the heading:

Get a new outer for $199.99 plus taxes and shipping‏ 

 Somehow they think our household does a lot more e-stuff than it does.  

The case of the missing "r".

I'm Late, I'm Late--re: Krauthammer

Read a review of a book on Lewis Carroll over the weekend, which probably accounts for the title of this piece.  But to the meat:

Last week the NYTimes had a piece on Marco Rubio's finances.  One of the bits was the fact he bought a boat for $80,000.  Now the Times, being a good Democratic paper, was impressed by that.  Then Charles Krauthammer in the Post devoted a column to handicapping the Republican candidates, including the quote which appears below.  I wanted to snark at him in a letter to the editor, thinking perhaps it could make this coming Saturday's "Free for All" page, but I procrastinated so long I've decided to use my snark here:

"With his usual insight, Mr. Krauthammer encapsulated the difference between Democrats and Republicans into less than 30 words in his "GOP Racing Form, Second Edition".  "The New York Times’ comical attempts to nail [Rubio] on ...  financial profligacy (a small family fishing boat — a “dream dinghy,” says a friend of mine — characterized as a “luxury speedboat”)."  

 So Krauthammer and his Republican friends look at an $80,000 boat as a dream dinghy; Democrats look at the same boat as a luxury speedboard.

Me, I'm a Democrat. 

Truest Headline Ever

The man who wrote "Headless Body in Topless Bar" just died.  But I nominate this as the truest headline:

"Oldest Person in the World Keeps Dying"

Word of the Day: Decerebrated

James Fallows has declared jihad against the "boiled frog" anecdote, the idea that if you turn up the heat slowly, a frog sitting in a pot of water on a stove will not jump out.

Turns out the original experiment a couple centuries ago had the frog either decapitated or "decrerebrated", i.e. the brain removed or brain function destroyed.

Now who do we know who seems to have been decerebrated?

What Washington Really Thinks of Tourists

"On Washington, D.C. tourists: “You can always tell when it is summertime because you can smell the visitors. The visitors stand out in the high humidity, heat, and they sweat.” (April 2008)

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/harry-reid-retires-best-insults-116450.html#ixzz3Vbh0dh95

I Shoulda Stayed with History--It's Expanding

I tried and failed to become a historian, dropping out of grad school after a year and a half. 

Prof. Fea passes on a report which shows I missed out on an opportunity--the past is expanding.

Crisis in the Orchard

John Phipps links to a great report on troubles in the North Carolina orchards.  It's got some age on it, which explains why you haven't read about the crisis in today's media, but the poor guy is going to lose his tractor.

Who Knew Wikipedia Had Bureaucrats?

It does.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats

Now that the found of all knowledge has succumbed to bureaucracy, it's only a matter of time before we bureaucrats take over the world.

Great Sentence of the Day

From Northview  Diary:

If turkeys have the reputation for not being likely candidates for Mensa, it is guinea fowl which come right for the factory devoid of anybody home upstairs but a rapidly whirling hamster on crack.

An Exercise Bordering on Sadism: John McPhee

John McPhee is one of America's great writers, and apparently teachers, as one can gather from this piece in the Princeton Alumni mag by Joel Achenbach.  To understand the following, "greening" is McPhee's word meaning the excision of words from a piece as needed to fit space, etc. but without damage to the author's content and style.

"He made us green a couple of lines from the famously lean Gettysburg Address, an assignment bordering on sadism."

[corrected spelling in heading]

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)

Hard Work or Luck: the 17 Billon Dollar Question

We liberals have always suspected that the rich just luck into their wealth, but now we have proof due to the divorce proceedings of billionaire Harold Hamm, as reported here by NBCNews.  Seems that if he can prove his money is just the result of luck, his wife gets zilch; if it's the result of his skill and effort, she gets a share.  So he's instructed his lawyers to say he was a lucky SOB, just like all of the rich.  So Texans may "remember the Alamo" but liberals will say "remember the Hamm".

The Persistence of Myths and Cartoons

I suspect anyone who works in a given field long enough will find numerous errors and myths in the mass media depiction of the field.  This has not, I think, changed with the Internet. Whenever I go to wikipedia on some agriculture related stuff, I find errors.  If I had energy I might correct them but I don't, mostly. (For example, US agriculture says agricultural activity occurs in "most states".) Or many general statements about agricultural subsidies are wrong or misleading.

The Post's Glenn Kessler recently identified an error in the pages of the NYTimes, in columnist Tom Friedman's column.  (It took as fact Dean Rusk's comment in the Cuban missile crisis, that we were eyeball to eyeball and the other guy just blinked--not true.) 

I'm reminded of a famous cartoon, I think it was, showing a guy working late and telling his wife: 'there's something wrong on the Internet".   But the Internet is great--I just googled to find that cartoon so the link was added after I wrote.

Speaking of cartoons, I strongly recommend this book--very funny

You Gotta Laugh, Even If You're a Bureaucrat

From today's Post:

"In November, we reported that the NSA and Homeland Security Department were none too pleased about parody products sold online using an altered image of their logo, such as a T-shirt with: “Peeping while you’re sleeping” inside the NSA seal and under that, “The NSA, the only part of the government that actually listens.”

When will people learn that laughter is valuable, even if you're the butt of it.

Great Metaphor If Politically Incorrect

" it’s like an epileptic with Parkinson’s dancing under strobe lights in a discothèque."

Dirk Beauregard on the joys of driving a crap car.  Read the whole thing.

Ode to Mud, Sweat, and Baths

Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm.

" The extra protein allowed for our brains to grow swelling our heads until we thought we were masters of the Universe"

The Joys of Old Age: Earwigging

One of the joys of old age is finding pleasure in small moments.  One of the pleasures of recovering from a cold is being able to enjoy a book without guilt.  I enjoy Mr. Grisham, and got a kick out of a legal reference in his latest, Sycamore Row, which is a return to Jake, the attorney played  by Mr. McConaughey, many years ago, back before he won the Oscar.   What was the reference?  Earwigging the chancellor is a violation of legal ethics.

Mississippi has courts of chancery, over which a chancellor presides, to try issues of estates, divorce, etc.  Earwigging means talking to the chancellor outside of court to influence his or her actions.  It's unique to MS.  Only after I enjoyed a long hearty laugh at the phrase did I research and find that I should have previously seen it mentioned last fall on Volokh.com, where it came up in reference to the trial of Richard Scruggs, the MS lawyer who sued over tobacco and later pled guilty of corrupting a judge.

An Amazing Sentence

From an Ann Althouse post on Andrew Sullivan's defense of Obama:

"Sullivan's analogies and metaphors are a crazy quilt of a mixed bag of bouillabaise."

We're Bloodsuckers, Not Farmers?

From Chris Blattman, I think, the Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity, which purports to show the imports and exports of countries around the world.  I say "purports" because I don't really understand it, except the link gives a graphic showing US exports by category in 2010.  Major items are labeled, so "soybeans" is a nice gold block with ".87%" in its corner, which I assume means soybean exports accounts for that much of total exports.  Fine and dandy.  I get the idea.

But wait, down in the left hand corner there's this pinkish purple block which is labeled "Human or animal blood" and it's got "1%" in its corner.

Is Harvard really trying to tell me that we suck that much blood out of ourselves and our animals to ship off to whom? Blood is more valuable than soybeans?  Where are the world's vampires who are importing that blood?  Someone needs to get on this story, which has been totally unreported until now.