Catch the Movie then the Interviews

Wife and I saw The Informant this week.  We ended up really liking it.  Then C-Span reran its interviews with the author of the book, Kurt Eichenwald, which I caught part of, but the transcript is here.  As he says, a betrayal of capitalism. And, incidentally, a revelation of how what C.Wright Mills called "the power elite" works. It's a great story, but I'm too cheap to buy the book; I've got it on hold at the library.

Great Piece on Health Care

Via Marginal Revolution, this piece describes how airline travel would work if it was run like health care. It's good for a laugh, and some thought.

Sometimes I Think Free Marketeers May Be Right

This post on the USDA blog boasts about the new advances:

MyFood-a-pediashould be your first stop. Here you’ll find quick access to nutrition information for over 1,000 foods.[emphasis added] MyFood-a-pedia has calorie count information and can help you figure out how what you’re eating contributes to your health. It also shows the number of “extra” calories in foods from solid fats, added sugars and alcohol.

Sounds good, right?  But then I remembered reading Ms. Slatalla's Thursday column in the NYTimes about her efforts to reduce her middle age spread:

Lose It! [an Iphone app] has its own database listing the calories in a few thousand different foods. And if a food was not listed? I could always find it in another iPhone app, the LiveStrong calorie counter, which lists 450,000 foods.

So maybe Mr. Vilsack should call Mr. Jobs? (I actually doubt there's 450,000 foods in the world, but maybe food/quantity combos is reasonable.  Anyway, rather than nitpicking the Times again, the important point is this is a case where private initiative can do better than the government.  What USDA should do is doublecheck the data Lose It! uses.)

Food and Population

This is in the nature of a followup to the post on the NY Times article--FAO is estimating we need 70 percent more food by 2050.  But world population is expected to rise by only 1/3; the remaining increase is needed for a higher standard of living, among the poor and the rich.

Farm Income Drops

From Farm Policy:

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts farm income of $49.1 billion in 2009 when adjusted for inflation. That would be a 39% drop from 2008, a record year when U.S. farmers earned $80.4 billion after expenses.

That's a bigger drop than most in this recession, though housing prices are falling further in some areas, I believe.

Greg Craig and Guantanamo

The Post has a piece saying Mr. Craig is off the Guantanamo issue.  Craig says he thought there was a consensus to close Guantanamo, instead he's run into resistance from both sides of the aisle.  Understanding Government has a post on it. I differ with their conclusion by going back to Tip O'Neill's saying: "all politics is local"--in other words, not in my backyard. The whole country could agree on putting the detainees in the Yucca Mountain repository, except for Nevada (whoops, that's nuclear waste). I don't see any of the left demonstrating in the streets in favor of any particular prison.  Hypocrites, all.

Ted Turner Is the Son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

This is from the 1930 Blog:

Largest contributors to League of Nations are Britain $559,712; US $450,000, and Germany $429,728. Of US contribution about $430,000 is private, mostly from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. US is not a member of the League.

(Ted Turner gave a billion to the UN several years ago. This JDRjr tidbit is a reminder of the internationalist outlook of some of the elites--Carnegie before WWI.)

Overconfidence Helps, But Why Underconfidence

Technology Review has a piece on why overconfidence (the idea one is an above-average driver, etc.) is evoluntarily sound.

In fact, overconfidence is actually advantageous on average, because it boosts ambition, resolve, morale, and persistence. In other words, overconfidence is the best way to maximize benefits over costs when risks are uncertain.

So why are some people lacking in confidence (as in social relations), why do that evolve?

Diversity and Races

The past was a different time. I stumbled across this in an article discussing the emigration from Ireland as a result of the Great Famine.  It's interesting to see the use of "races".  And the social analysis:

Since it must be so - since so large a part of our British fellow-subjects must join a foreign allegiance, or a colony all but independent, we rejoice to see, in this inevitable event, the providential means of a beneficial mixture of races. The history of this island shows by how many invasions, conquests, compromises, and fusions of races the British character has attained its noble though composite excellence. A walk in our villages or streets, the survey of a market, a church, or a dinner table, will bear out the truth of history that Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, Dutch, Flemish, French, and even more races, go to the happy composition of an Englishman and English society. Hence the versatility, hence the enlarged sympathies of the race. It is ascribed to our position in a fluctuating climate, and temperate zone, that we are able to adapt ourselves to any region of the earth, and pass with little injury to extremes of heat and cold. To an unparalleled variety of national ingredients, and the kindred facts of our complex social state and mixed constitution, we owe it that we excel in so many departments of human ambitions, and enjoy so many internal sources of prosperity and happiness. The experience of our own good fortune makes us wish to see the Celtic race allied to more vigorous and fortunate elements. The fates, however, seem to forbid that fusion in these islands. The Celt calls Ireland his own, and is jealous of interlopers, while in England also our superior wealth and cultivation have created an Interval which can seldom be passed. Religion also stands in the way. That part, too, of our industrial system which would otherwise offer the best opening for union and improvement is too full and too fixed to admit a Celtic Immigration. A Connaughtman may bring his family into Manchester and hide them in a cellar, but he could hardly get a night's lodging in an agricultural village, except once a year, for himself and his sickle. Now America supplies the opportunities of national fusion and perfection which are impossible at home. In those vast and thinly-peopled countries labour is precious, has friends and elbow-room, finds openings and opportunities every where, and, what is more, feels itself neither intruder nor exclusive owner, but simply a free citizen on a free soil.

The Complexities of the Earth for Liberals

I consider myself a liberal, mostly, but the world is sometimes too complicated.  Consider today's NYTimes:

• liberals like historical preservation, but Greensburg, KS was leveled by a tornado.  The result, as they build from scratch, is highly environmental friendly town.  Lesson: there's trade-offs between history and efficiency. Technology in this case is a friend to the environment.
  
•  a judge rules USDA needed to do an environmental impact statement before approving GMO sugar beets.  But there's the claim: "Mr. Grant, who is also the chairman of the Snake River Sugar Company, a grower-owned cooperative, said easier weed control allowed farmers to reduce tillage, which in turn saved fuel and fertilizer and reduced erosion." People don't realize it takes significantly less energy per unit of output now than in 1970 for most major crops, precisely because of such advances in technology.
  
• the UN bought carbon offsets for the cost of its meeting on climate. "They offset those emissions by directing money to a power project in rural Andhra Pradesh, India, through which agricultural leftovers like rice husks and sunflower stalks are turned into electricity for the local grid." I always shudder when I hear such promotion of this use of biomass.  Don't people recognize that organic farming requires the return to the soil of organic matter, such as rice husks and sunflower stalks?  Otherwise you're mining the soil, to use a familiar idiom.
  
• an article describes a decade of stability in global temperatures and the problems it creates for  people pushing the fight against global warming.