Worst Web Site Design?

See here (hat tip to Treehuggers).

Go North, Young Man, Go North

That's not Horace Greeley reincarnated, it's Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, making a good case for why Canada is a society that works better than the U.S. (One example, its banking system is rated #1 in the world, ours is 44.)

The Swallows Return, First Tourist to Iraq

The NYTimes yesterday reported the first Western tourist returning to Iraq. The Iraqis seemed to agree that reviving tourism was premature, but if tourists can go to Antarctica, Mount Everest, and space, they surely will brave the perils of Iraq.

First Gardening of 2009

Yes, the weather has turned warmish in Reston so I did my first gardening of the year--turning over some soil. I had assumed it might be still frozen, but it wasn't (the shredded leaves from the association probably helped). It's definitely premature--you know all the warnings about the soil being too cold and wet, particularly with our good clay soil, but who listens to written wisdom when the weather is in the 60's?

ASCS as an Incubator of Tolerance?

I've blogged about the Pigford case, in which USDA, the former Farmers Home Administration, and its successor, FSA, get attacked for being racist. That rests on the idea that either the local bureaucrats were racist, and/or the programs they administered were skewed against minorities. Regardless of the truth of the attacks, there is another side--as a federally funded bureaucracy, there were rules and pressures from Washington to override local prejudices. And sometimes those worked, as shown in this story about two men, one black, one white, working summer jobs with ASCS in Texas in 1965.

(A bit of background--ASCS used to hire lots of summer help to measure crop acreages, often one way it recruited its permanent employees. Over the years changes in the programs and the use of certifications and spot checks have lessened the need for measurement, and aerial imagery has enabled in-office measurement, saving taxpayer dollars.)

Where To Cut Back

Extension.org reports on a survey of where people may cut back their spending:

gym memberships
fine dining
magazine and newspaper subscriptions
shopping at high-end department stores for apparel
organic foods
entertainment, such as movie and theater tickets.

Crop Insurance

I feel uncomfortable talking about the crop insurance programs which cover revenue, but this caught my eye:

An attractive feature of CRC insurance this year is that the price used to establish the estimated revenue guarantee for wheat in 2009 is $8.77 per bushel. Wheat futures for spring wheat are currently trading in the $6 to $6.50 per bushel range for September. That means that CRC is providing an opportunity to insure the price, one component of expected revenue, well above what the futures market believes the price will be at harvest time. If you have not purchased a CRC policy already, visit with your local insurance agent before March 15.

Sounds like a no-brainer, but there must be a catch (like maybe the futures markets are wrong, as if that ever happens).

USDA and Race

Mulch posts a link to a Colorlines Magazine article on farm subsidies.

Maybe I'm Wrong, GPO and Google

I've posted, I think, in the past about my impatience with government web sites--I don't see why I can't just Google them. (Yes, I know that you can run Google on some, but I want every document to be as Googlable as any magazine or newspaper article.) But yesterday GPO released its new search site. The discussion in the comments about using meta-data is enough to raise a slight doubt in my mind. I'll have to see how this works out.

Remember Snow Fences?

The Journal-Gazette and Times-Courier have an online site which promoted a conservation meeting, but this piece caught my eye. Yes, it's mostly local news, but I too wonder whatever happened to snow fences? I guess global warming has reduced the amount of snow in the areas I live in to the point where it's not economical to put them up. (They are mentioned in Wikipedia and there seem to be a scattering of articles, mostly in the West, including this one about a Wyoming youngster testing various design.)