Update on White House Garden

Obamafoodorama tries to keep it real, saying the White House garden (nor the beehive) won't be feeding the Indian PM at the state dinner.

The Kitchen Garden is currently wintering over, and not producing enough vegetables to feed hundreds of guests a multi-course vegetable-based State Dinner; the photo of the garden, above, was taken yesterday afternoon. It's a little barren. There's still some lettuces, some spinach, and a variety of herbs growing, but that's pretty much it at the moment.

I think they could be growing more--turnips and rutabagas, kale and collards, but I give the site props for honesty.

Milbank Explains the Filibuster

Dana Milbank uses Tennessee Williams to describe the debate and vote on cloture last night.  In doing so, he also describes the reason for the Senate rules on cloture, i.e., why the filibuster is effective:

Landrieu and Lincoln got the attention because they were the last to decide, but the Senate really has 100 Blanche DuBoises, a full house of characters inclined toward the narcissistic. The health-care debate was worse than most. With all 40 Republicans in lockstep opposition, all 60 members of the Democratic caucus had to vote yes -- and that gave each one an opportunity to extract concessions from Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid.

Bottom line is that Senators never want to give up power and the filibuster gives power.

Asian Brains

From Google's competition for programmers:

Last year's champion, Lou Tiancheng of China, code-named ACRush, once again took top honors and the $5,000 grand prize. Qi Zichao of China won second place, and Iwata Yoichi of Japan came in third.

The Corn Genome

The good people at USDA (plus a bunch of egghead types) have deciphered the corn genome.

Down the road this is important.

Farm City Novella Carpenter

I enjoyed this book, maybe because I like too much humor (the complaint of one Amazon commenter). Child of hippie parents creates a garden in a vacant lot in the bad part of Oakland, including eventually chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits and pigs.  She's honest and accurate, though I did wonder about collard greens in July--I think of them as a cool weather crop but I guess not.

From my praise you can guess there's a minimum of locavore/organic ideology in the book.  The main thread of the book is the garden, but the small bits about neighbors, friends, and relatives make it more than one-dimensional.

Instant Nostalgia--The Weekly Reader

Via John Phipps, believe it or not The Weekly Reader is still around.

Windows 7.0 and Change

A household mantra here is: "change is bad", which is meant two ways--a statement of how we operate, being resistant to change, and a reminder that being open to change is good.  For some reason, I have a lot less problem being a relatively early adopter of some technology (though not Facebook, cellphones, or Twitter) than I do getting out and meeting and greeting people.

Anyway, be that as it may, yesterday I upgraded both desktop and laptop to Windows 7.0.  Went reasonably well, no major glitches.  I can't say I'm greatly impressed by it yet, except for this:  Microsoft games, particularly the chess Titans game. It's been 50 years since I played much chess, and I wasn't much good then.  This game seems sure to be another way to eat up time.

And How Do We Explain Rich Indians?

And all the other business operators, from a study:

In the United States, the typical Indian entrepreneur has an average business income that is substantially higher than the national average and is higher than any other immigrant group. Net annual income in the United States is 60 percent higher than the overall average. Meanwhile, in Canada and the UK, Indian entrepreneurs make similar incomes as other immigrants, but employ more employees than almost any other ethnic group.

You're Prosperous Because of Bureaucrats

That idea is ratified by Dr. Mankiw, former chair of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and Harvard economics prof, who refers us to MIT economist Darin Acemoglu in this article, which compares the Nogales cities:

"The key difference is that those on the north side of the border enjoy law and order and dependable government services — they can go about their daily activities and jobs without fear for their life or safety or property rights. On the other side, the inhabitants have institutions that perpetuate crime, graft, and insecurity."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/world-poverty-map-1209#ixzz0XQg2dAQU

Infoshare

By the time I'd retired, I had a collection of coffee mugs.  One was labelled "InfoShare", which was about the only product of a multi-million dollar effort, originally instigated by Secretary Madigan and carried on for a while by the Dems, to get the various USDA agencies which work with farmers to share their information.  One of the areas was the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation and ASCS (by 1994 RMA and FSA).  Both got reports of which fields were planted to which crops so it seemed a no-brainer that there should be a common reporting date, a common acreage report, disaster reports, etc. Well, this week FSA issued a  notice which represents a some progress in that supposedly simple change. 

Reading between the lines I see the simplification and standardization effort still has a ways to go.  This much progress wasn't a result of the initial Infoshare project, but of Congress putting a provision in the farm bill.  (Not the 2008 farm bill, but the 2002 farm bill--only takes 7 years to make progress.)

I really feel guilty, at least a little, mocking USDA for this.  It's true there were and are reasons for the differences in the operations of the two agencies, and therefore the data collected by each.  So, unless you have someone with a 2 x 4 in the right position, progress is difficult.

[Note:  I'm upgrading to Windows 7.0 today, so blogging will be light.]