Michael Phelps and Food

Everyone else is writing about Michael Phelps, so I might as well join the parade. He's gotten lots of publicity for his 12,000 calorie diet, including this webmd piece (which is skeptical).

It doesn't seem to include the right proportions of fruits and vegetables, but it may include the secret behind Mr. Pollan's "In Defense of Food" blurbs on behalf of traditional diets. A traditional diet, whether the all-meat diet of the Inuit or the cattle-blood diet of some cattle herding tribes, is usually matched by a traditional way of work. Michael Phelps' diet, and that of other athletes, is coordinated with the work they do. You can eat a traditional diet if you do the traditional work. If not, not.

CSA Trials

The Post has an article on CSA, part of a series. The writer is having to cook and juggle recipes to make use of vegetables she's not familiar with. Another problem is illustrated by a post on my local freecycle board (for those not familiar, freecycle is a neighbor swap meet on the Internet--you post what you want to give away or what you want and much of the time you can get a match, at least that's my experience. Google freecycle.org for more info.) The offeror apparently was going to be out of town so wanted to give away her weekly delivery.

Point being--there's tradeoffs for CSA customers--you get the freshest vegetables, but there's overhead and rigidity--you lose the flexibility of deciding on the spur of the moment to buy something from the local supermarket.

Flowing Info

Via Treehugger, this application is neat in concept. Use Google maps to locate your house, take advantage of knowing the N/S E/W orientation of the house from the map, then enable an app to calculate the size and cost of a rooftop solar power panel installation and match to local utility info to compute year savings. Unfortunately, they only cover CA as of now. But it's just an example of how the Internet enables the rapid flow of information. And the economists point out the problem of information costs, which the Internet is reducing to nil.

Weak Blogging

Not to pick on Megan McArdle, because everyone shares the problem, but this is weak (apropos of the Georgia/Russia situation):

"I think we should do something about it, not that I think we will. But we could certainly do more than we are, which is nothing."

Remember, electrons may not be precious but our time is. If you're going to comment, at least do a specific suggestion. I doubt there's anything to be done, unless someone can arrange cold showers for Putin and Saakashvili. So, if you have nothing to suggest, just snark someone else's post.

How an Economist Views Marital Habits

As efforts to minimize transaction costs--see this post at Freakonomics. I understand and agree his point, but it's not always wise to minimize such costs. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's found that new experiences shared with the spouse, where you both need to negotiate, can improve the marriage. Of course, sometimes not.

Haunted by History, Hungary Redux?

Fred Kaplan in Slate opines on Georgia.

His comments remind me of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, at least of the post-mortems in the U.S., though they don't seem to show up in the wikipedia article. As I recall, the Dems blasted John Foster Dulles for comments seeming to call for the "rollback" of the Iron Curtain and Radio Free Europe for broadcasts by exiles. The gist was that, in our hopes for democracy, we had said things and forgotten the realities. The "liberals" inside Hungary heard what they wanted to hear, that the West was with them body and soul, while the reality was that we were with them in spirit, but the flesh was unwilling. Ike and Dulles knew better than to do anything militarily.

It was a lesson in realpolitik, which left schoolboys throwing molotov cocktails at tanks.

See this link to The Moderate Voice for a discussion.

"Dad, Can We Eat This One?"

So much for the innocence of childhood, but Abby is cute, even though a bit ... Her father, Ron, is equally evil, posting great pictures of all the produce from his garden.

Farm Constitution Rears Its Head

The farm bill included a 10-acres base provision--no payments to "farms" with a base for the crop of under 10 acres. Now people are waking up to the implications and complexities. Via Keith Good (who's always good) the Lancaster FArming site reports on concerns of the PA Farm Bureau:

"PFB believes that the original intent of the measure was to allow farms with 10 or fewer base acres to be aggregated or combined with any farm or farms with base acres — whether owned or rented — to exceed 10 acres.

But according to Pallman [PA FSA head], the law is clear that the only way farm base acreages can be consolidated is through land purchase."

One complication, with which I became familiar in the early 1980's, is a "farm" is a "farm" is a "farm". So if disaster provisions are keyed to losses (on a farm) of production due to a natural disaster or the new ACRE program is keyed to expected revenue (on a farm), FSA has, in the past, maintained only one definition of a farm. So in Pennsylvania where farms originally were small, and operators are renting them from their owners (who may be the spouse, children, or descendants of the original farmer), if FSA treats each ownership tract as a separate farm, it increases the likelihood of eligibility for disaster payments. But it can make participating in other programs more difficult, as the acreage conservation reserve in the 1980's or the payment program now.

Map of Religions

Here's an interesting map of the US, showing the leading churches by county. I knew the Mennonite/Amish community was spreading, but not to Kansas. (The Presbyterianism of my father's side is a minority faith everywhere, even in its western PA heartland.) Hat tip to Religion in America.

New Term--Biodynamic Farming

Stumbled across a new term, new to me anyway: "biodynamic farming". Apparently there's a conflict between "organic farmers" and "biodynamic farmers". Best I can tell, it's mostly theological (I mean that literally--it reminds me of the differences among the Presbyterians during most of their history). The biodynamic faith is an offshoot, and more religious than plain organic farming.