USDA Blog Process Needs Work

Today, I believe, is August 26. Today the USDA blog posted this. Vilsack proclaimed the community garden week August 6.

(I'd suspect this is a symptom of the fact the blog isn't integrated into the USDA institution yet. It takes a while to make such changes.)

Clayton on Musical Chairs: Lincoln as Ag Chair

Chris Clayton argues that Kennedy's death will move Harkin to chair the Health, Education, Labor committee, and Senator Lincoln to chair Agriculture.

Don't know enough to argue, but to observe this is our democracy's version of: "the king is dead, long live the king."

Why NAIS Might Seem Sensible

Today DC and MD students went back to school. Prince George's county has a trial going on--students have cards to be swiped when they board the school bus, which enables the system to track them. The broadcast reports don't say whether they also swipe the cards during the day, but I'd assume they do.

When we track our children and our pets, why not track our food?

The Voice of the Market Is Slow, Tech-Wise

I was curious about the Wall Street Journals archive, so I surfed around their site. They've not updated the browsers supported from IE 7.0 and Firefox 2.5.

FSA and ARRA--Update 1

I blogged last week about FSA's failure to update its Recovery Act (ARRA) data on the MIDAS program. I sent a message for the Administrator through the FSA site.

Well, I've not received a final answer to the message, just a boilerplate interim message. And the MIDAS report still has a 4/28/2009 date on it. But the overview ARRA page has been updated.

Do Students Still Applaud Their Professors?

I have a memory from my college days of a handful of times when, at the conclusion of a lecture, the students broke into applause. As that was 50 years or so in the dim dark past, this may be totally inaccurate. But I think it was a combination of the structure of the lecture, coming to a climax of the argument right at the 50 minute mark; the knowledge which was evident during the course of the lecture; and the clarity, passion and enthusiasm of the delivery. I might be conflating applause for the final lecture with applause for lectures during the year, but I'm comfortable David Brion Davis (American intellectual history) and Walter LaFeber (history of foreign policy) both got applause at times.

I wonder if students still do that, or are they too blase, too wrapped up in their laptops?

I suspect maybe Brad DeLong might get applauded occasionally. If not, I hereby applaud his philosophy, as stated here, despite the obvious error in his first sentence:

This is the University of California at Berkeley, the finest public university in the world. You are all upper-middle class or upper class--if not in the size of your parents' houses in your options and expections--and thus much richer than the average taxpayer of California. Yet, even at today's reduced funding levels, the taxpayers of California are spending $10,000 a year subsidizing your education. Why are they doing this? Because they believe that if your brains get crammed full of knowledge and skills than many of you will do great things that will redound to the benefit of the state, the country, and the world. Therefore it is my business to cram your brains full of knowledge and skills. It is then your business to go out and try to do great things--and if those great things happen to involve a lot of money, remember the investment that the poorer-than-you taxpayers of California made in your education, and pass some of the resources you will earn on to your successors here at Berkeley. If I am happy in December with how the course has gone, the median grade will be a low B+. If I am mezza-mezza, the median grade will be a low B. If I am unhappy, the median grade will be a B-. If people don't do the work I assign--or if I were to assign less work--I assure you I will not be happy come December.

Five "Myths" of Healthcare

T.R. Reid, whose book on living as a journalist in Japan I recommend, has a new book coming, which he publicizes by doing an opinion piece in the Post, his former employer. His five myths:


1. It's all socialized medicine out there.
2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.
3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.
4. Cost controls stifle innovation
5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

He claims to have researched Canada and many of the EU countries.

Reading the Bils

Slate has a post discussing the size of various pieces of legislation, why some are so large, and who actually reads the stuff. It's pretty good. Though I'd add the following as my two cents:

• the 2008 farm bill was 673 pages, I think (based on a quick Google).
• you need to distinguish between legislation starting from scratch and legislation amending existing laws.
  
• The first is conceivably something a layman, a high schooler, or even a Congress person could understand. The reason is if you're outlining a brand new program (like maybe Cash for Clunkers), you have to define your terms and specify the processes. Hopefully the definitions don't rely much on pre-existing law. (For example, if Cash for Clunkers was available in "the United States", did that mean just the 50 states, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, etc.?
• But when the legislation changes and modifies existing law, it's very difficult for even experts to understand. The reason is lawyers write it, and they somehow think it makes more sense to specify minute changes than to provide text that's understandable. I don't know why, except that's the way they've done it. Perhaps it's because they want to minimize the number of words used, perhaps because it takes so much time and money to set the text of laws in hot lead.
  

Clunkers

Somewhere, I think in the printed version of the Post this morning, I read that a significant number of the clunkers destroyed under the cash for clunkers program were old vehicles being driven by teenagers. Of course one can't assume they're now driving the new cars bought under the program; they may be driving the car the parent who is driving the new car used to drive. But either way they're significantly safer now, what with air bags front and side, etc. I don't know if we've saved 1 life, 10 lives or 100 lives, but it's a good thing.

I Don't Understand Quantum Physics and Farming

When I grew up, the planetary model of the atom was standard. Sets of electrons revolving around a nucleus of neutrons and protons, that was it. I've always been interested in science, so I've read enough to recognize some of the terminology of quantum physics. Unfortunately, as I age my capacity to absorb this stuff seems to have shrunk. I consoled myself by thinking quantum physics had little connection with my life. But this piece (actually not the original one I saw, which I think was in Scientific American, or maybe online--my memory for my reading is shrinking as well) on how quantum physics works with chlorophyll to capture energy really upsets my consolation.