Deprivatizing the Iraq War

This Post article from Monday reports on the phase-out of private contractors in Iraq, partially by converting from contractor personnel back to government. Much of it is due to Blackwater's being no longer welcomed by the Iraqi government. And to the fact the agreement between the US and Iraqi government doesn't cover private contractors, so their possible use of force is not protected.

Thus, the US is moving some work (and the experts) back into government. That way, the people are government employees protected under the US-Iraq agreement.

As I've said before, there's always trade-offs, in this case the flexibility of private contractors has both bad and good aspects.

Blogging Without Knowledge

A cynic might say my title fits all bloggers. But it fits this post. I've done no research into cryonics. But I do follow Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias, who seems to have that bee in his bonnet. The problem I have with freezing my brain in the hopes of future technological advances is: my brain is used, not just previously owned, but used. It's got lots of miles on it. So my choice is: kill myself now, before my brain is entirely defunct in the hope of a future refurbishment which still preserves my memories (some I'd gladly forget), knowledge and personality or continue on. There's no mystery which I'd choose, and which choice most any human will take.

You Think?

From Power Line:
"The 2002 NIE estimate claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction seems to have been wrong"

Vilsack, Congress, and the Pay Limit

Secretary Vilsack is still plugging the changes in payment limits according to Chris Clayton (wrote a letter to the Des Moines Register) and here, despite the fact the House Ag is four-square against
and here

I think (and since I started this 3 days ago, most have agreed) OMB or the Department screwed up the original proposal in the budget--it sort of makes sense that if the Census shows farms with gross income < $500,000 decreasing to tie your proposal to that metric. Except it doesn't, if you know anything about farming or had some history in the farm programs, so I agree with Peterson's guess that it wasn't really staffed with USDA. That aside, if you like the point of the policy, the metric can always be fixed. Use an AGI of $x. Or, adopt my pet idea, a graduated reduction based on AGI, following the EU.

Senators Are Like Horses

Publicity about "Sunshine Week"--making government more open. But a cautionary note pops up in a Post op-ed on the Charles Freeman fight (the pick for the National Intelligence Council who withdrew). The writer, in minimizing the importance of the council, notes the National Intelligence Estimate prepared before the Iraq war was read by only 6 senators, and 77 voted in favor of the resolution. So senators are like horses, you can make the document available, but you can't make them drink it in.

The Decline of Garbage, and the Post

The Washington Post has an article on the decline of garbage (the Post itself is in decline--it announces it's doing away with its separate business section) because people are cutting back in the recession. A sidebar, not online, says the U.S. had 250 million tons of garbage, 12 percent of which was food, or 30 million tons. That means about 100 pounds per person per year. Sounds high, although I suspect it includes stuff like my grapefruit rinds, apple cores, and coffee grounds. But it's also my share of the fruits and vegetables which get rejected at the grocery.

Apparently most of the drop is in packaging, which is the single most common category of garbage--we're buying less so tossing less styrofoam and cardboard.

NRCS Is Right Behind (Stimulus)

NRCS has a signup for floodplain easements, using stimulus funds.

Intriguing Title

Implementation of a Dose Standard After 10,000 Years

And the Winner: Kansas State FSA Office (Stimulus)

It's the first FSA office to claim it has disbursed stimulus funds (for farm operating loans), at least whose claim has reached the media. See this link

Our British Cousins Have Their Own Problems of Identity

This is a post from Musings of a Stonehead, a "crofter" in Scotland dealing with his problems with credit rating agencies. I found it fascinating. Reading between the lines, in the UK the social security number (or its British equivalent, if any) is not used to coordinate financial data between the different credit raters (apparently the UK has the same ones we do). That puts the burden on matching names and addresses. As in the U.S., rural addresses are likely more free form than urban ones, which is the problem the Stonehead ran into. It's not clear whether the UK has the equivalent of 911 addresses. (For city readers, most, perhaps all, rural counties in the US have now assigned numeric street addresses to their rural residences so that responders to911 emergency calls can be given a specific destination.)