Thought for the Day

Via Marginal Revolution, Hal Varian (a Google man) on management and IT:

"Back in the early days of the Web, every document had at the bottom, “Copyright 1997. Do not redistribute.” Now every document has at the bottom, “Copyright 2008. Click here to send to your friends.” So there’s already been a big revolution in how we view intellectual property."

True enough, but it's still working its way through society.

Brad DeLong Is a Conservative Old Fogey

He may be a mostly liberal economist, but when it comes to matters of academic teaching he's a stick-in-the-mud. He believes students should study on their own. Apparently his university is giving students what, back in the day when I was in high school we called a study hall period.

See his post.

Texas Is Worthless

I love writing those words.

The basis for the assertion is a paper from farmgate, where some ag economists tried to assess what farmland would be worth if there were no farm programs. They came to the conclusion Texas cropland was worth $0. Or, actually, they said 100 percent of the value of Texas cropland was due to farm programs. Economists have long said the value of farm programs was capitalized into the value of cropland. It makes sense--an owner can get higher rent for land with bases, and therefore higher sales prices too.

There's some modifications and qualifications, as you'd expect with any scholarly paper from economists, but I like my first impression: Texas is worthless.

Clayton on NAIS

From Chris Clayton's column a few days ago:

if anyone wonders why animal ID is so screwed up, it's partially because USDA gets no definitive direction from Congress on just what should happen with the program. Some members in the House and Senate want a national, mandatory program. Others say no way. So now, USDA gets potentially half the money to keep the program on some sort of life support.

That's the way legislation works. If Congress comes to agreement, fine. If Congress fudges, and papers over disagreements in order to get a piece of legisltion, the poor bureaucrat suffers.

Health Care Factoids

From extension.org:

Right now, the government pays about half of the health care bill, insurance pays roughly a third, and around 10 percent is paid directly by patients either through things like deductibles and copays or simply when you go to a doctor, you hand over a check or cash.

Via several sources, but originally spurred on by a statement in Understanding America, private insurance covers about 15 percent of the British population.

It says to me the easy rhetoric about a proposed government takeover of health care is much too simplistic.

Agriculture Used To Be Important

From the 1930 blog:

Decline in steel production blamed on drought; with extent of crop damage still uncertain, industries dependent on farm purchasing [emphasis added] are curtailing steel buying. These include low cost autos, farm machinery, can companies. Structural steel remains strong. Some price declines seen in steel and iron products; steel down to lowest price since 1922.

Synthetic nitrate producers reach agreement; German industry expects it's first step to forming cartel to bring production in line with consumption, but initial agreement considered unsatisfactory due to short duration and lack of commitments to reduce production.

The first bit shows the importance of farming back in the 1930's. And steel was one of the basic industries then (coal and autos being others).

The second supports my doubts over Prof. Pollan's (and others) narrative of the adoption of nitrogen fertilizer (post WWII war surplus nitrates from explosives).

Broadcast Surgeries

Slate has an article explaining that with the coming of laparoscopic surgery it's very easy to broadcast surgeries live. With the old-fashioned open wound surgeries, all the hands got in the way of the camera, but with laparoscopy you just copy the feed from the camera and instruments and blast it across the web.

The article emphasizes the entertainment value because apparently such broadcasts are de rigeur at medical conferences. And they're done live, not on DVD, because it's more grabby.

There's little discussion of education, but there must be a lot of that going on in med schools. Remembering shows like St. Elsewhere (with a young Denzel) using DVD's of laparoscopic procedures have got to improve education productivity by a lot, a whole lot.

Einstein and Midnight Corn Planting

From a Joel Achenbach report on neutrino detection experiments: he justifies basic science research by pointing out Einstein's relativity theories led to Minnesota farmers being able to plant corn at midnight using GPS.

Is that a stretch? Probably not--there's a nice book on Poincare (a French physicist who came close to the theory around the turn of the century--he was dealing with the problem of timing across zones--at the end of the 19th century they'd reached the point of technology where setting simultaneous time at two different points on the globe was impossible--the time it took for an electrical signal to cross the telegraph wire (moving at the speed of light) was that long, compared to the accuracy of the time pieces. That's not clear, I know, but search for Poincare in Amazon and you'll find the book. I'm feeling lazy today.)

Maybe planting corn at midnight is the reason our farmers surprised the crop estimators by getting the crop planted so fast. That and 60-acre per hour corn planters.

Obama's in Trouble

Harshaw's law: whenever a politician is in trouble, he or she will start dissing the bureaucrats, as in Obama's pledge not to let a government bureaucrat come between the citizen and health care.

Govt Contractor Calls Rahm Anti-Christ

I thought this was a joke. Having just watched "In the Line of Fire" a couple weeks ago (Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service man trying to live down Nov 22, 1963 in Dallas) which included some extras on training, and reading a Post mag article on a class of trainees, I was particularly interested in this front page story: the Secret Service uses actors and ex-military to develop role-playing exercises in the DC area. Very good article, very reassuring training

But one of the contractors who role plays uses the idea Rahm is the Anti-Christ in his dialog with the agents. I figured that was pure imagination, but when I google it, there's over 10,000 hits.

I guess I underestimated the delusions of some people.