Suckers Born Every Minute [Revised]

NPR has a story on custom-gardening--outfits who come in and set up your garden for you. They claim a 150-square foot garden will keep a small family in vegetables for a year. I suppose it all depends on your definition of "keep". If you eat at home every other day, maybe. If you're eating lots of vegetables every day, I doubt it. Our garden is nominally 500 sq feet, though probably closer to 400, once you allow for the compost bin and path. It keeps us in salads from late April to November or December, but we still buy vegetables (like potatoes and jicama) during that period, and tomatoes up to July.

It's easy to over-sell this stuff.

Soil Testing

Extension.org has many posts each day which I skim as fast as I can spin the mouse wheel. But there's one on farming fundamentals which caught my eye--"soil testing". The writer noted that Extension Service has pushed it for 100 years.

A question, though: If modern technology can meter the fertilizer applied to the soil according to the GPS coordinates of the soil, can't the technology do soil testing better than the way it was done 100 years ago?

Two Different Earths

There's this earth, as described at Powerline:

Due to the efforts of Heartland and others, the public is beginning to catch on to the cosmic scam that Al Gore, James Hansen and others--mostly not scientists--have been perpetrating. Meanwhile, the Obama administration, seemingly determined to inflict the maximum possible damage on the economy in the shortest time, is trying to ram a cap-and-trade carbon tax through Congress before opposition can be mobilized.

And there's this earth (or at least this America) as described by Joseph Romm at Gristmill (one in which a survey says):

Americans say they are prepared to incur significant costs [to fight global warming], as the figure above shows. In fact, they "support policies that would personally cost them more," specifically (emphasis in original):

I'm not sure, I fear a schizophrenic society.

Undoing Reforms--Administrative Conference of the US

This post at OMBwatch records the revival of the Administrative Conference of the US, a body which was killed in 1995, by, if I remember, Newt Gingrich. It's a deep in the weeds thing:

"ACUS was created in 1968 as an independent agency with a small staff assisted by outside experts in administrative law, government processes, judicial review and enforcement, and agency regulatory processes."

Did things like worry about the Federal Register and the Administrative Procedure Act. (Only bureaucrats care about such things.)

More Intelligence, Less Money?

Robin Hanson linked to this old post, which gives a startling quote:

Here is the shocking conclusion: in the recent years of the GSS (1991 to 2004), for people whose highest level of educational attainment is a bachelor’s degree, there is a negative correlation between intelligence and income. In the 1998 to 2004 data, each point higher on the Wordsum test causes a $1,200 decrease in income.

Didn't have the patience to dig deeply, but part of the answer is in the "bachelor's degree" bit--if you're smart enough to get a graduate degree, then your intelligence is rewarded.

Government and Farming in Scotland

Musings of a Stonehead is a crofter's blog. He had a feed problem the other day, which resulted in an inspection and a report. His post(s) on the experience make for interesting reading. It seems they're a bit more highly regulated in the UK than the US.

Women in Agriculture

"Lady Landowners" group? Encouraging such groups is a good idea for FSA.

Reston, Somewhat Walkable

Via Freakonomics, that's the score for my Reston neighborhood at walkscore.com (a site which for some cities evaluates how far you have to walk to reach amenities), which is about the same for the Lake Anne Center, the first part of Reston to be built. Mr. Robert Simon, the "father" of Reston, must be twirling in his Lake Anne apartment, as he dreamed of separating pedestrians and cars so that Reston would really be walkable. He didn't realize how lazy modern Americans would be.

What Happened to the ABA?

Here's a discussion by Jonathan Adler at volokh.com of possible bias in the ABA's evaluation of judicial nominees. An excerpt:

"[maybe] the ratings reflect the perspective of a somewhat-insular white liberal elite that has a tendency to give higher ratings to those who are most like them in background, experience and perspective."

Back in the 1950's, the ABA and the AMA were two pillars of the establishment, which was moderate to conservative. (Malcolm Gladwell's new book has a chapter on how the establishment looked down on some Jewish lawyers.) I don't know what's happened in 50 years to change the ABA (not that I necessarily agree with Adler).

Second Guessing the White House Garden

There's lots of attention to the White House garden, so it's fulfilling its symbolic function. I can't resist some cracks/comments:

• I'm a bit surprised at the kale/collards--we grow them as fall only. I guess they're buying seedlings.
• I'm not sure what the First Lady is teaching the school kids--making them work for 15 minutes and then a cookie break. I don't think the mother of either of the Obamas would be that lax--standards are slipping. (Even I can work 30 minutes straight before taking a break, and I'm old.
  
• 15 students, plus maybe 10 adults from the staff--that's 25 people for 1,100 square feet meaning each one does 40 square feet.
• were they hauling off the turf--is that to be used for patching elsewhere on the lawn (maybe after the Easter egg roll) or maybe on the Mall? If they composted it, and where's the plan for the compost pile for the White House--surely that's going to cause lots of criticism from the organic people, maybe that would reduce the carbon released from the sod breaking. Or maybe not: if you plow native prairie you turn under the sod, but I haven't seen that mentioned as a redeeming factor in converting land to crops.

I'm not sure of the relation between the Clinton's rooftop garden and this--certainly the rooftop garden doesn't pose any security problem, while this one looks dangerously accessible from the street.

Bottom line--anything a politician does in Washington is subject to second guessing. Because people feel so strongly on this issue, they'll get a lot of carping.