The Importance of Looks

Robin Givhan is a writer I mostly can ignore but the fashion/culture writer for the Post had a good piece yesterday: the theme being that the Salahi's were able to gate crash because they looked right--a thin blonde on the arm of a man in a tuxedo. Change any of the parameters and the security people would have been much more likely to challenge.  It's a sobering reminder of the importance of the genetic lottery in our culture (probably all cultures).

First We Kill All Middle Managers

No, that wasn't Al Gore's mantra, but he wanted to get rid of them and he thought he did.  Hope he is doing a better job on climate change.  These thoughts evoked by this piece in Government Executive on the use of numerical targets in managing government

Snow and Foxhounds

Baldwinsville, NY is in the snowbelt--meaning they get the lake effect snow off the Great Lakes, at least until the lakes freeze over.  But this year they haven't had much, if any, snow.  But the day after I got back to Reston we started to get snow, snowed most of the day yesterday, 5 inches or so of the wet, pretty stuff.

I got some nice photos this morning on my usual walk for Starbucks, but none as great as this first photo from the Post, showing the Middleburg hunt leading the Christmas parade.  The rest of the photos in the show are worth viewing as well.

The Restaurants of Baldwinsville

Returned from my trip last night and thought I'd resume blogging with thumbnail reviews of the restaurants at which I ate:

• Chili's.  Nothing to be said--a chain restaurant with a good southwestern chicken salad and too much beer (my capacity for alcohol diminishes as I age). 
• Mohegan Manor.  Downtown Baldwinsville's classiest restaurant, I suspect. This was new to me, though I've seen it on previous visits.  Had the black cod special, the fish on top of some tarted up mashed potatoes and steamed? spinach.  Enjoyed the food, but not the noise.  The restaurant's in an old building (long ago mansion I expect), which has been renovated down to the original floor boards, so there's nothing to absorb the sounds.
• Tabatha's. Have eaten here several times, usually try to hit it once each trip.  It's a home-style restaurant with good food and lots of it.  What makes it special are the desserts, particularly the pies. 
• Canal Walk Cafe. Deserted the hotel's continental breakfast for this place, which is by the side of the canal. It reminds me of the corner restaurant in Greene, NY.  Good food.  I almost said "simple", but their breakfast special Thursday was a "strata" something--a cheese omelot stuffed with Italian sausage, onions, and other stuff (I'm not exactly a discerning eater, BTW).  It was good, but so was the scrambled egg on Wed.  It  to be the sort of place with neighborhood regulars, and a friendly atmosphere where the waitress calls you: "honey". 

Any or all of these are recommended in case you're visting the Syracuse area.

Why Fruit Farmers Have It Easier Than Animal Farmers

Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw posts on apple producers who find a bumper harvest means prices go low, so low it's not economic to harvest fruit for juice.  He sees it as a textbook case of producers cutting back production.

I guess, but I'd point out, as I tried in the title, that animal farmers are in a different situation.  Yes, you can cut back production very marginally--you dry up cows a little earlier, feed your animals a little less.  But, given my parents stories of dairymen's strikes in the 1930 where producers had to dump milk, I'm sensitive to the it. An apple grower, in the fall, is facing the picking expense, which I'd guess is a significant portion of the total costs of the crop.  If she can't sell the produce to the juice people for more than the cost of picking, it's a no brain decision.  The situation facing a pork producer or a dairyman is more complicated--each day your animals live is another day of feed costs (plus labor, but here feed is probably the big item). So it's not a black and white calculation, it's a guess of what the future holds--lower feed prices, higher pork prices, higher milk prices, whatever.

NOTE:  I'll be traveling tomorrow through Friday so blogging is likely to be light.

Climategate and On-the-Ground Reality

The anti-global warming folks have labeled the emails stolen from the East Anglia University climate research unit as "Climategate". It's well and good to enjoy the discomforture (sp?) of your adversaries.

But it's also nice to recognize realities on the ground. "Ground" is not taken literally--this is the fabled Northwest Passage from a Post feature listing unnoticed stories from 2009:

The mythic Northwest Passage still captures imaginations, but this September, two German vessels made history by becoming the first commercial ships to travel from East Asia to Western Europe via the northeast passage between Russia and the Arctic. Ice previously made the route impassable, but thanks to rising global temperatures, it's now a cakewalk

Slow FSA Payments

 From a discussion of slow cash flow:

Another factor has been those USDA farm program direct payment checks from the Farm Service Agency that were about a month late in arriving this fall. That delay has also caused some farmers to scramble to meet cash flow needs.

I don't know if this was isolated or perhaps part of the learning curve involved in moving payments from county offices to Kansas City. Or maybe something else.

New Rules on Improper Payments

FSA has taken flak for issuing improper payments, including to deceased producers, although estates of deceased producers are eligible to receive payment but not forever.

But there's a new executive order which will make these more transparent, which may or may not apply to FSA programs:

During the next six months, the Treasury secretary, attorney general and OMB director must publish online information about improper payments for high-priority or high-cost programs. The data is to include agencies' current and historical error rates for incorrect disbursements; the known causes of the mistakes; the amount of money that has been recovered; and the entities that have received the highest amount of outstanding improper payments as long as those entities aren't being considered for referral to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Miller Apologizes

Undersecretary Miller apologizes:

"It is not the county FSA program technician's fault you're not getting payments. It is not the people in the state FSA office's fault you're not getting payments," he said. "It is my fault, and I apologize."
Efforts are under way to modernize the agency's computers, Miller said. But the effort will take several years and cost at least $500 million. In the meantime, the current system has to remain functional although its personnel and information technology services are stretched beyond the breaking point.

Miller's referring to MIDAS, which got money through the Recovery Act which, last I checked, FSA has not reported on. (Last update 4/30/2009)   FSA did award money for coordination, according to this. As a cynic, I suspect Torres is an SBA 8(a) firm (as Fu was in the mid-1990's when Info Share was the toast of the day, and later Soza was, when Greg Carnill was leading the effort and business process reengineering was the the fad of the day.) 

The Disease Benefits of CAFO's

An article of faith among foodies is that CAFO's are a cesspool of disease, incubators for death.  Maybe so, but this extension piece claims hogs in CAFO's have less lungworm, kidney worm, trichinella,  toxoplasma, swine dysentery, atrophic rhinitis, actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, brucellosis, classical swine fever (hog cholera) and pseudorabies