John Tierney Explains South Carolina Politics

In the NY Times, John Tierney reports on a study of the impact of gossip on judgments. The bottomline, when it comes down to it, we believe gossip despite the evidence of our eyes. Or, more accurately, gossip sways our decisions even though we know the full story. (Of course, the study was a bit unrealistic--we rarely are in situations where we know we know the full story.) The only positive bit--positive gossip had as much power as negative gossip.

Maybe this explains the recent reports on the Obama is a Muslim urban legend, or the anti-McCain gossip in South Carolina in 2000--the gossip persists and spreads because we're tuned into it as intrinsically valuable, not only do some of us believe it, but it's worth passing on.

"Organic" Dairies

Interesting piece here--excerpt:

Watts Brothers, which started milking cows in December, is Washington's largest organic dairy with 2,200 milking cows.

State regulators and some small dairy farmers speak highly of it, but critics question whether milking thousands of cows is worthy of the term "organic."

In part, this is a lesson to those leftie liberals, who want to write laws to solve problems. You write a law setting up standards for things like "organic" and you have certain pictures in your head. (See Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion). And you write the law based on those pictures. But the reality is that smart and determined people want to make a buck, so your law tends to be evaded, at least in part. Far from the picture in textbooks, administering law is like a long conversation, back and forth, between two people, who might stay married for 50 years, or might get divorced in 6 months.

I was also tickled by this quote:

"People want to picture cute 50-cow dairies all over the countryside, but our economics don't allow for that everywhere anymore," said Georgana Webster, an organic-livestock inspector for the Washington Department of Agriculture, which determines whether dairies like Watts Brothers are following national organic standards.

Having been brought up on a very uncute, mini-dairy of 12 cows.

Philip Roth Does Not Know Dairying

Wife and I watched "The Human Stain" last night. An unsuccessful movie with great actors based on a good-selling novel by Philip Roth, who was passed over for the Nobel this year. It's not doing too badly on Netflix, probably because of all its assets in themes (racism, political correctness, cowardice, spousal abuse, cross generation sex, "crossing" color lines) and actors: Hopkins, Kidman, Sinise.

But, assuming the movie was faithful to Roth's book, which I haven't read, it's unrealistic. Kidman works on a dairy farm, but also in a store and as a janitor on the local college (from which Hopkins was fired). That's unrealistic right there--if you're doing two milkings a day you don't have the energy for two other jobs. And then Hopkins and she make love at all times of day and night. Roth's forgetting the first law of dairying:

"The cows have got to be milked"

Whatever else you do, they've got to be milked, and milked at the same times every day. You might indulge in a quickie. But you can't have a long night of sex then a leisurely breakfast--Kidman has got to pull on her clothes and get back to the barn for the 4 or 5 am milking.

(But how was the movie--I see why it failed commercially but it's worthwhile on Netflix.)

A "Tipping Point"?

I really hate to write this. I thought of it a couple months ago, started the draft 10 days ago, and only now got up the nerve. Here goes: Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea of a "tipping point"-- the idea that certain happenings in society, and in nature, occur as the result of slow subtle changes suddenly reaching a critical level, resulting in sudden and dramatic change.

In nature, the gradual lowering of temperature resulting in water icing over. Or adding sand to a pile to the point where the pile collapses in an avalanche.

In society we can have tipping points in fashion: men wear hats, until all of a sudden in the late 50's early 60's they don't.

In wars we can have tipping points. Looking at Iraq, it seems to me that one was averted early this year. The situation was deteriorating. The "surge" stabilized and reversed the deterioration, meaning we didn't have the sort of collapse we can see in South Vietnam in 1975.

Now, it's perhaps possible that we are seeing a possible "tipping point" the other way. Sunnis in Anbar province have changed their position. Today's Times carries a front page article on the souring of relations between the Shiites and the militias. For anyone growing up in the age of guerrilla warfare, as I did, that's important; for as Mao said--the guerrilla fighter must be as a fish in the water of the society. Another straw in the wind is, as Megan McArdle notes, an uptick in the Iraq Index on power.

It's too early to say, but it's possible for the appearance of things to change quickly.

President Hillary?

I post because two leaders of conservative opinion, Charles Krauthammer in the Post and David Brooks in the Times, both grudgingly note her:

Charles: "Nonetheless, if 2008 is going to be a Democratic year, as it very well could, Hillary would serve the country better than any of her Democratic rivals."

David: "No Republican would design asset-building plans the way Clinton does. No Republican would pay for them the way she does. But at least she has a middle-class agenda. Right now, the general election campaign looks like it’s going to be a replay of the S-chip debate. The Democrats propose something, and the Republicans have no alternative."

Some in USDA Also Serve

From the speech of the acting Secretary at the USDA awards ceremony:

I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge the special contributions of one of today's honorees, Paul McKellips from the Farm Service Agency. Paul has volunteered for three details to Iraq as part of the State Department's Go Team. He has helped draw attention to the plight of Iraqi farmers struggling to develop their own operations into a steady source of income for their families. Paul has willingly stood in harm's way in service to his nation and in service to agricultural producers. I do applaud that commitment, and I extend my gratitude to all of the USDA employees who have volunteered to help farmers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Currently we have eight agricultural advisors in Afghanistan and Iraq and another 18 advisors will be detailed by November. Last week, of course, I was saddened and we were all saddened to announce the loss of one of our brave USDA employees. Tom Stefani of the Forest Service was serving on a provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan as an agricultural advisor when he lost his life in an explosion. Tom had worked hard to implement a number of improvements for producers in Afghanistan including a poultry rearing facility and a cold storage facility. Tom was a respected rangeland management specialist in Nevada, and his colleagues there and, of course, throughout our USDA family will miss him greatly.

On a different note, I see Willie Cooper, long time state executive director of FSA in Louisiana (most SED's change with the administrations, Willie doesn't) was leader of a team honored for responding to Katrina and Bob Manuel was a member.

International Courts, 19th century

I didn't do well in my political science courses in college but the issue of the relationship of different governmental entities is always interesting. Add in slavery and it becomes more interesting. Here is a piece in the Boston Review on the efforts to control the international slave trade in the 19th century. The author claims that Britain devoted a significant part of its economic output to this effort.

The Agony, the Agony

Josh Marshall at TPM has a piece that's about me, although he thinks it's about NY Times columnist Roger Cohen, whose meditations on liberal hawks he mocks. He ends:

It's a revealing sentence because it's one filled with a telling self-regard. He agonizes. And to agonize is to achieve merit. Cohen doesn't jump reflexively to one side or the other, but agonizes over the thorny complexities of the great questions. It's a serious pose because Cohen is a serious person who loves to mop up his own moral seriousness. Puncturing that bubble is a grave offense.

I plead guilty.

Regulation Ratchet and the Grasp of Government

Tyler Cowen in the NY Sun (via Volokh) reviews Naomi Klein's new book and says:

First, the reach of government has been growing in virtually every developed nation in the world, including in America, and it hardly seems that a far-reaching free market conspiracy controls much of anything in the wealthy nations

Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias talked of a Regulation Ratchet--the idea that when bad things happen, government steps in with regulation, but there's no equivalent process for deregulating.

And today, Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution notes the short time between the physics discovery recognized by the Nobel and its usage in Ipods, etc.

Why do I put these three together? Because I think the mental model latent in the first two cases is contradicted by the third. I think Cowen would agree with the "regulation ratchet", the idea that government always expands and never contracts. And I think both Hanson and Cowen are unconsciously seeing society as fixed. ("Society" being the environmental niche in which the "reach of government" is growing.) But, as Tabarrok implicitly recognizes, change happens, innovations occur, things advance, and society changes and evolves with it. The Ipod rests on a technological advance, but the Itunes storefront depends on a network of governmental regulations which may, or may not, need to be changed to deal with digital rights management (DRM) of songs. If the FCC or Congress or the courts, or all three, change the rules for DRM, is that really an extension of the reach of government. How about the government's rules for Western Union, the old telegraph monopoly--have they not vanished into the past?

The Benefits of Government

This is an interesting article, from an interesting site, via the Drudge Retort.

Theme:

"For most of us, most of the time, government is not some faceless bureaucrat [emphasis added] who is constantly ordering us around; it is more like a guardian angel: an invisible benevolent being that accompanies us throughout their day, easing us through potential difficulties and protecting us from impending harms. Admittedly, the angel analogy is a bit exaggerated, but the underlying truth is not: government has an extensive and overwhelmingly positive effect on our everyday lives."