Growing More Liberal as He Ages?

Does that explain Prof. Douglas Kmiec, a conservative legal pundit, who just this year has endorsed Obama and now writes in favor of women? (Our stereotype is that people grow more conservative as they age, yet, at least on social issues, society has grown more liberal over the years, not only because the children are more liberal than parents, but because parents have grown more liberal as well.)

He attributes his views on women in law in part to having 3 daughters (2 sons). (There was a piece recently that suggested that legislators with daughters were more likely to vote for "feminist" issues than those without.)

Note that Orin Kerr and others are posting at Slate's "Convictions" blog.

Conflicting Priorities

Keith Good covers the conflicts over the farm bill. At issue, does the nation want more money for food stamps (recognizing rising food prices and unemployment), for conservation (recognizing the trend to plant more acres and farm more intensively in order to take advantage of $6 corn futures, etc.) or for farm payments (recognizing ?).

Althouse on Heston

Two striking bits from this post by Ann Althouse remembering Charlton Heston:

1. She's never seen his great films (Ben Hur, etc.). Somehow that amazes me--it shows there's less of a common culture than I had supposed. I would have thought anyone over 30 with a college degree had probably seen those films. How can you avoid Ben Hur on TV?
   
2. She initially remembers Michael Moore as being unfair to Heston in "Bowling for Columbine" when Moore pressed him with questions on the NRA, then later (to her credit) adds an admission that after rewatching the clip, it wasn't unfair. That's significant--shows how we all compress and simplify our memories, and all too often have knee-jerk reactions on the basis.

(I saw "Bowling for Columbine" after "FAhrenheit 451" and anticipated a simpler polemical piece than I saw on screen. Moore put together a surprisingly complex story there.)

Finally, my wife will remember Heston for the galley slave scene. RIP

Dairies in Poland

Elisabeth Rosenthal in the NY Times has an article on the problems of Polish dairy farmers. In the good old days, before EU, each farmer had a handful of cows (literally, since they milked by hand). The cows and the people may have lived in the same building (separate rooms). Under the EU's bureaucractic, industrialized agriculture regime, hygiene and sanitation become important, so dairies must either expand and modernize (a road that leads to 6,000 cow dairies and robot milkers), or revert to subsistence agriculture.

An excerpt:

[Farms are]"...a victim of sanitary laws and mandates to encourage efficiency and competition that favor mechanized commercial farms, farmers here say.

That conflict obviously matters to Mr. Master. But it is also of broader importance, environmental groups and agriculture experts say, as worries over climate change grow and more consumers in both Europe and the United States line up for locally grown, organic produce.

For reasons social, culinary and environmental, small farms like Mr. Master’s should be promoted, or at least be protected, they say. They not only yield tastier foods but also produce few of the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

In part because Poland has remained one of the last strongholds of small farming in Europe, it is also a rare bastion of biodiversity, with 40,000 pairs of nesting storks and thousands of seed varieties that exist nowhere else in the world.

I think the European locavores/organic people can dream, but it's not going to work that way. The economic pressures are too great--first there will be consolidation of dairying. The modern world wants safety and consistency in its products and the best way to get them is through industrialized dairying. A few of the sons and daughters of the current dairy folk may be able to find organic/locavore niches, but only a few. (Look at France--over the last 50 years they've devoted much time and effort to preserving their agriculture, big subsidies and governmental regulation, but still the combinations and modernization has continued. Government can slow the pace and ease the pains of the transition, which I don't minimize, but not much else.)

What Will They Be Able to Do Next? (Cows)

This is a blurb, from Brownfield Network, on the robot milkers at dairy show in WI:

The cow is identified by individual neck tags, lasers are used to locate the teats, they are prepped individually and then the teatcups are applied individually. On average, the whole process takes about 8 minutes so Rugg says one robot can do around 160 milkings in a 24-hour period. Now because a cow can choose [emphasis added] to be milked 3 or 4 times a day, the total number of cows milked will vary. “In a typical robotic facility, the average milking is 2.7 to 3.2 milkings per cow per day.” Rudd says that works out to 55 to 70 cows. The robot is also able to identify treated cows and will discard the milk, then wash the milker before the next cow enters. “It has a very, very sophisticated herd management system.” He says while the cow is milking, she is weighed, milk flow and quality is measured from each teat, “There is just a whole slough of management reports the farmer can utilize.”

Rugg says the robot is not for everybody, if you have good hired milkers and you like dealing with those workers, that is fine. “The advantage of the robot is it is very consistent.[emphasis added] ” Rugg points to the fact it is always there and it milks the same way every time. Another advantage he feels is udder health in that heavy producers can choose to be milked 3, 4 or more times per day. “It really depends on the labor situation and each individual farm.”

I like the fact that cows can choose (I assume a typo, though our cows could be damned choosy). And I think the consistency is key (as long as the equipment is reliable).

Modern Dairying

EWG highlights an article on dairy and manure (the two are inextricably linked) from Ithaca, NY. It's mostly on the pollution from a large 6,000+ cow dairy. But I found this quote interesting (and explaining why the robot milkers I linked to earlier):

"Why larger dairies?" said David M. Galton, a dairy management professor at Cornell University. "Well, why Wegmans? Target and Circuit City and Home Depot and Lowe's - they're doing it to dilute out cost and to maintain or improve standard of living. It's like every other segment of our economy. Larger dairies are trying to address the ever-rising cost of producing milk and standard of living."
In 1993, farms with 200 or more cattle made up 3.6 percent of the state's dairies, according to USDA statistics. By 2002, they made up 9 percent.
"The larger the dairy farm, the lower the costs are. And so, as the costs keep rising - fuel costs, feed costs, taxes - it puts more economic pressure on the individual farms to produce more milk,'' Galton said. "If you take the milk price of 1980 and adjust it for inflation, the milk price would be $38.92 per 100 pounds. The milk price today is approximately $20 per 100 pounds."

I don't like the statistic in the middle (is the writer saying 3.6 percent of the dairy cows in the state were in dairies over 200 cows in 1993, and 9 percent in 2002--that would be the best fact to offer.

Sec. Spellings Gets My Praise

This week the head of the Department of Education announced a long-overdue change in statistics: standardizing the process by which the high school graduation rate is computed. I love it. The only way to discuss issues intelligently is if everyone is using the same words with the same meaning. Currently, states use different processes to compute a graduation rate. (If I remember correctly, my high school class had about 56 kids in 9th grade, by graduation we had 37 or so. The issue is the extent to which the rate accounts for dropouts. Because we don't have a system for tracking every child, that's difficult for the school bureaucracies--one system's dropout can be another system's in-transfer. I'll be interested to see how accurate the statistics can get.)

I have to say, this is a change that GW should have insisted on in the "No Child Left Behind" legislation. But then, his first Education secretary had played games with statistics in Houston, so Bush understandably didn't want to draw attention to statistics, particularly if they might undermine his major claim as Texas governor. (There--I had been too silent on GWB for a while--nice to get some criticism off my chest.)

But, progress is made in steps, and this is better late than never. Sec. Spellings should be commended.

Another Computer Project Bites the Dust

Via Government Executive, NextGov reports Commerce Department/Census Bureau is dropping a project to develop handheld computers for the 2010 census (for followups where the mail form was not returned).

'“I am here today because the Field Data Collection Automation project has experienced significant schedule, performance and cost issues,” according to Gutierrez's testimony. “A lack of effective communication with one of our key contractors has significantly contributed to the challenges.”

In his statement, Gutierrez calls the situation with the handhelds “unacceptable.”

He points to a dress rehearsal held in May 2007 as when “development and scoping problems emerged.” The bureau then identified “more than 400 new or clarified technical requirements,” he said, which were delivered to Harris on Jan. 16.

At a March 5 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Gutierrez said, "significant miscommunication concerning technical requirements between the Census Bureau and Harris" were a main reason for the failings.

In a statement sent to Nextgov, Harris officials said, "The handheld devices are one part of a larger, multifaceted process to move from a 'paper culture' to an 'automation' culture appropriate for the 21st century. We understand that such a significant cultural shift presents organizational challenges to any organization, and Harris is encouraged that automation is moving forward, even if in a more narrowly focused fashion.""

Communication and culture--the recurring nightmare for any change agent.

One wonders if they'd aimed lower at the start whether they mightn't have gotten something that would help.

Remembering 40 Years Ago

A lot of commemorations of the death of Martin Luther King. I had started work at USDA in Jan. 1968. I'd heard the news of his murder on the radio (didn't have a TV yet) in my efficiency apartment on 13th St NW. The next morning I went as usual to work--sometimes I'd walk through downtown DC and across the Mall to the Auditor's Building (right across 14th Street from the USDA South Building). Other times I'd go over to 14th St and catch the 50 or 52 bus. Don't know which I did that morning.

By 10 or so the rumors were flying. A bit later you could look north east across the Mall (it was a great location) and see smoke rising. Supposedly someone had set fire to Hecht's, one of the big department stores at that time located on 7th street (I think). I tried to ignore the commotion, finding security in keeping to my routine. (Or rather, since I'd spent 10 weeks circulating among the branches in the division, to understand the work and figure out where I should work, I was still getting used to the work in the Directives Management Branch, and to my co-workers. There were only a handful of blacks in visible posts in the Administrative Services Division, one clerk-typist who'd been hired 2 years before in my branch, a veteran who worked in printing (he later retired to Germany), and a couple others. There were others, not visible--a moving crew, mailroom staff, and file section.)

By 1 or so word came down that the government was closed and we were to go home. (That was my first experience of the government closing.) I knew the buses wouldn't be running on a rush hour schedule, assuming that they would run (at that time I seem to remember the drivers on the 50/52 routes were white). So I ended up walking up 14th street.

The first looting I saw was on Franklin square, between 13th and 14th--a D.J.Kaufmann's store was broken into and two or three people (young men) were moving in and out. I averted my gaze (if I didn't see them, they wouldn't see me) and walked on pretty quickly. I got to my apartment without incident, perhaps hitting the small grocery next door for food, and didn't leave for a couple days. The government resumed work only after the National Guard had been called in and was patrolling the streets.

The riot wasn't a particular surprise, or shouldn't have been. I'd been in Rochester in 1964 which suffered an early riot ("early" that is, in the sense of being early in the 1960's series of riots). Martin Luther King had to maneuver between the anger on the streets and the resistance and inertia of the society--something he managed to do for a while, something we like to mis-remember him as doing throughout his life.

What, Me Talk With Them? No Way

That's the effective reaction when bureaucrats are supposed to cross agency boundaries, as witness this report in Government Executive:

" Jay Cohen, the department's undersecretary for science and technology, said first responders were not always enthusiastic about sharing communications.

"We have some communities where the police chief only wants the police to talk to him ...," Cohen said. To a large extent, "technology is not the problem with interoperability ... it's the culture," he said. Cohen said that although the department was preparing to test a "phone-home" interoperable system for first responders, the jury was out on whether it would be widely accepted."