Sensationalist Headlines

The BBC website has a post on a "alien star" having "buzzed" the sun.  Apparently 70,000 years ago it may have come within 1 light year of the sun.  Now that's real close, after all Pluto is all of 13.5 light hours from the sun.  So it's exactly like this foreign star has buzzed an airfield (from WWII movies I recall buzzing as coming close enough to the control tower to aggravate the officer on duty).

Farming and IT (and a Very Bad Headline)

The NYTimes has an article today on the topic of information technology and farming, focusing on an Indiana farmer, Kip Tom, who handles 20,000 acres, up from 700 acres in the 1970's. The article is not bad, hitting the big data involved in precision farming, the use of drones, the rising status of women, etc. etc.  It includes a quote from a former farmer who now is one of the 25 employees of the Tom operation, which includes 6 Tom family members.

It's titled: "Working the Land and the Data, Technology Offers Some Family Owned Farms a Chance To Thrive and Compete With Giant Agribusinesses".  While the headline is fine, the subhead is worst one I can remember in a good while.  It's based on this sentence in the article, a line which is undermined by the rest of the article: "It [technology] is also helping them grow to compete with giant agribusinesses].  The truth, more clear in the accompanying video, is that by going heavily into technology, and being smart enough to pick up land in the 1980's, when values had crashed, the Tom family were able to expand and thrive, when their neighbors went broke and sold their own operations.

Consider just the data in the article: the 20,000 acres of the current operation represents the equivalent of 28 farms in the 700 acre range from the 1970's.  And those 700 acre farms in themselves probably represented several smaller farms from the era of horsepower (which Tom's father remembers his father plowing with). Leesburg, IN, by the way, has lost about 10 percent of its population since 2000.

At the risk of over-analyzing, I suspect the writer was impressed with Mr. Tom, considered him one of the good guys.  Logically then, if he's a good guy, he must be competing with bigger operations, those soulless agribusinesses.  A good guy can't be someone who succeeds by driving others out of business.  Yes, "succeeds by driving...." is harsh, and not the way we usually think about individuals.  Because of the invisible hand of the market, it's not any one individual/enterprise bankrupting others, it's just the way things are; some people win and some people don't. 

Even a Blind Hog Department

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

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.

Editing Mistakes and Crop Insurance Fraud Used as a Weapon

In the political infighting over the farm bill, with supporters of farm programs attacking SNAP (food stamps) the SNAP people are fighting back by citing crop insurance fraud.  There's an article in the NY Times this morning on the subject--obviously the SNAP proponents have dug up some ammunition, including the recent NC case and a GAO report.  That's all good. 

What's not so good is this correction:

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the annual spending for the food stamp program and the amount of fraud involved. The budget is $75 billion a year, not $760 billion. The amount of fraud is around $750 million, not $760 million. The article also contained another error: Federal data shows that the rate of food stamp fraud, which has declined sharply in recent years, now accounts for .01 percent of the $75 billion program, or about $750 million a year; not 1 percent.

 Apparently the Times has fired so many fact checkers that they've no one left who knows the difference between 1 percent and .01 percent.  They were right the first time and their correction is wrong.

Discovered: The Undetectable Extension Charm and Rolling Thunder

Wife and I recently watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, on DVD in which Hermione's handbag with its inexhaustible contents plays a key role.  Turns out it's because she applied the "Undetectable Extension Charm" to it, making it capable of infinite expansion.

According to this Washington Times article, there were 750,000 motorcycle riders in last year's Rolling Thunder. And this says 500,000 are expected for this years.  Apparently someone will apply the charm to the Pentagon parking lots, which are the staging area for the riders. 

Why do I say this?  Well, lets say 4 motorcycles can fit in the space for one car.  Most of the cycles I see on TV have only one rider, so lets say 500,000 divided by 4 = 125,000 car equivalents, but take off 25,000 to allow for double riders.  Assume that all the people at the Pentagon drive to work with no car pooling (not true--car pooling and subway and bus all serve the building), so there must be 100,000 people working there?

Not so, it's more like 30,000.   Bottom line is, the organizers of all demonstrations in DC claim numbers which are too high, including even the vets, but the media never scrutinize the vets.  That would be politically incorrect.

(Wiki answers says the Pentagon has 8,000 parking spots.)

Old Timers Are Forgetful: George Will

George Wills is one of several whom identify as close contemporaries (i.e., born within a year or two of me).  We tell kids not to put on the Internet anything which they'll regret later, but the same could be said to geezers like me and Wills.

The other day he had a nice column taking off from the PBS broadcast of "The Central Park Five", which tracks the history of how five minority youths were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park.  He writes: "Journalism, like almost every other profession relevant to this case, did not earn any honors. Until now."

Fine.  Good for George.  But today, Mr. Steve Dutky of Takoma Park throws Wills' words of 1989 back in his face: "In his May 1, 1989, op-ed column, “They went ‘wilding,’ ” George F. Will called “The Central Park Five” boys “evil.” He went on to write: “Punishment in this case will be interminably delayed and ludicrously light. The boys know that; that is one reason they were singing rap songs in their jail cells.” The nastiness of this column has stuck with me these 24 years."

He suggests Wills should apologize.  I agree.

Post Versus Times

Both newspapers had articles today on the same subjects; in both cases the Post article seemed a tad better:

Both reported the shooting death of a woman's rights advocate in an Afghanistan province. Both described previous deaths and both suggested Taliban involvement.  The Post, however, also described another possibility: the woman's male relatives might have been responsible.  No way to know for sure.

Both reported the results of an international test of 4th graders on reading and math.  US students were in the middle, below the usual suspects. Both reported that Florida was a state which volunteered to be tested as if it were a country, and its results were better than the U.S. as a whole.  The Post, however, interviewed a critic of Florida, who suggested that a policy of holding back 3rd graders who were below standards on reading had reduced the 4th grade population being tested (by a random sample) and improved the average ability.   Again, no way to know, but having the fuller picture was valuable.

Muffins Overreaction

I wrote earlier that the Obama administration might be overreacting to a report of $16 muffins at a conference. The DOJ IG has now conceded its report was wrong. Of course, the media will not learn any lesson from this and only the best will do a followup story,  The problem is we the public are all ready to believe that bureaucrats are invariably wasteful, so we're easy prey to such stories.

I've a vague memory of a flap over government conferences which resulted in a big clampdown in USDA, requiring the Secretary to approve conference.  If I recall, the problem there was the conference was held at a sexy location (i.e., some resort with a high style reputation), although because it was off-season it was arguably not a waste of money when you looked at transportation costs as well as housing costs.

Politico's "Errors" and My Jumping the Gun

FarmPolicy links to this Politico story on the outlook for farm programs.  It also links to this ERS graph


From Politico: 

 "At issue is the estimated $15 billion to $20 billion the government spends in subsidies each year. Originally a Depression-era program, farm subsidies have evolved into a complex maze of economic assurances for farmers: direct payments, federal crop insurance programs, counter-cyclical payments (which trigger when commodity prices fall below a certain mandated level) and other programs. "

From ERS: total payments have been below $13 billion for the last 5 years. 


Now Ms. Cogan might be including crop insurance in her definition, though she doesn't say. It would be good if she were including crop insurance, but I suspect it's more likely she's using a figure stuck in her head from earlier years.

[Update:  It should have been obvious from my quote she was including crop insurance as a subsidy.  So: I was wrong and she was right. 


 I emailed her complaining, she responded immediately, very nicely, and I got off my duff and checked the CBO estimates.  Essentially they've upped their estimate from $16.7 to 17.3 billion because increased crop insurance costs offset the decrease in counter-cyclical payments.  ]

Past Sins Recalled

Katrina Vanden Heuvel in the Post on having standards for pundits:

Fox News trumped even that, trotting out retired Marine Col. Oliver North, the former Reagan security staffer who orchestrated the secret war in Nicaragua, to indict President Obama for — you can’t make this stuff up — failing to get a congressional resolution in support of the mission in Libya.

Dan Drezner Decides to be Less Genuine

My takeaway from his post on being interviewed on cable news (taking off from Ta Nehisi-Coates post) is:

His fault: "I genuinely want to answer the question asked of me. "

His New Year's resolution: to improve as an interviewee.

Good Article on the Media

Via Ezra Klein, a good article on the media, which ends thus:

"This is complicated! You’ve got the Church of the Savvy, The Quest for Innocence, the View from Nowhere, Regression to a Phony Mean, He Said, She Said, the Sphere of Deviance. These form the real ideology of our political press. But we have to study them to understand them well."

One-third Lose Jobs in SEC Porn Scandal

Somehow that seems a fairer title for this story than saying "No one fired"

David Mamet Is a Troglodyte

He writes his rules for drama in all caps.  Hat tip: Marginal Revolution.  Though I hate the way he says it (all caps), I agree entirely with what he says.

Words Not Often Found in the Blogosphere

From Ezra Klein, re: Rep. Ryan:

But in the meantime, let me say how much respect I have for Ryan's willingness to engage with substantive critiques. And the reason he is willing engage like this is that he's confident that he knows his stuff. I've not been convinced by his position, but I always walk away from our talks with more respect for his position. Congress needs more like him.

Media Bias--Telling Us What We Want

Via Marginal Revolution, a study which seems to show that newspapers give their readers what they want, in the way of political bias--that is, there's a correlation between the political leanings of a paper's market and the political bias of the paper.

The Hidden Costs of the Storms

We subscribe to both the Washington Post and the NY Times, home delivery.  This week's storms have interrupted the delivery service, though the Post man is doing very good. Sometimes I have hit the local Starbucks to get caffeine and Times, but other days I'm forced back on reading online. The Post has a regular web site, while the Times has both its website and a new, standalone, Times Reader app. 

There's no comparison between the two for ease of reading.  The Times Reader is legible, fast, and easy to use. The best thing about the Reader is the ease of scanning through it. In the old days I used to read almost every word of the Times, but as I age I skim more and more, and the Reader is great for that. The Times might end up the loser from the storms, because I've found it so easy to use I'd almost be willing to sacrifice the paper copy and rely only on the Reader (which I think would be $4 a month, compared to like $90 for the paper version). If that's true of others, and if their profit margin is still bigger on home delivery, that would be their hidden cost.

I say "almost" because my wife wouldn't agree--she likes to take the paper paper and the cats off and read in bed.

Straws in the Wind--the Rise of New Media

Was channel surfing the other day and caught the tail-end of an interview with someone plugging a list of the 100 most powerful people in the world (I think).  Two media people made it--the head of the BBC and the head of X.

Tyler Cowen plugged a video on a new city in China which is empty, though it's built for 1 million.  (It starts about 1 minute in.)  It's done by X.

What is "X"?

Al-Jazeera

More About MIDAS Next Week?

A test of CIO Kundra's dashboard project, as described in this Nextgov post, is whether the MIDAS of FSA is included.