Vertical Farming in Time

The people at Time have made the vertical farming system of Valcent the 16th best invention of 2009.

Now the writeup says: "pioneering a hydroponic-farming system that grows plants in rotating rows, one on top of another. The rotation gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients they need, while the vertical stacking enables the use of far less water than conventional farming."

The picture seems to show 6 racks of lettuce growing, though I don't see the mechanism to rotate them.  But assume it's there--then if you rotate the 6 racks through the 24 hours of the day, each rack gets 4 hours of direct sunlight.  I find it conceivable that lettuce could grow with that much sun--greens usually require less than vegetables.  What I do find inconceivable is that there's any place on this green earth where the sun shines overhead for 24 hours in the day.

Now I may be misunderstanding, instead of a vertical rotation they may be talking about a horizontal rotation. Again, I don't see the mechanism in the photo, but if you rotated the whole stand then each plant would get 1/4th of the available sunlight.  Again, I've my doubts.

Looking at the data on the company, I observe the stock price of Valcent, which is publicly traded, is much lower than in the past--not the profile of a promising company. Nor do the various releases cite any real concrete achievements, just a bunch of golden futures to come.

A Surprising Sentence

From Dirk Beauregarde's post on French introspection, a site to debate what it means to be French (the values Liverty, Equality, Fraternaity) in the context of winter snow and burqa wearing:

"However, contrary to popular belief, the Republican Trinity was not coined on the barricades during the French Revolution of 1789 – the idea of brotherhood (fraternité) was not added until 1880."

Is the Air Force Unconstitutional?

Inasmuch as the Constitution only provides for an army and a navy, it would seem anyone who is an originalist in constitutional interpretation would have to say that Truman should have initiated an amendment to legalize the Air Force.  (Comment triggered by a NYTimes review of two books annotating the Constitution).

Whither the Food Crisis?

From the FAO's Food Outlook:

The agricultural market situation today is different from that of 2007/08. World cereal stocks are at far more comfortable levels than they were two years ago, with the stock-to-use ratio at almost 23 percent, 4 percentage points more than at the time. Evidently, the balance of world supply and demand is not even across all commodities, with some markets facing tighter conditions than others. But, in general, supplies held by exporters are far more adequate to respond to rising demand than they were during the price surge period. For example, the wheat stocks-to-use ratio in major exporting countries has risen from 12 percent in 2007/08 to 20 percent this season.

A reminder things can change quickly and the conventional wisdom of today is often like the winter's snow, vanishing with the brighter sun and the longer days.

Transparency in Government--State and Local

Do you know that building codes and fire safety codes and similar material are not available for free?  I'd like to see that changed.

The Past Persists

A couple factoids--the Presbyterians around 1900 were still dealing with "Freedmen", some 30 odd years after the 13th Amendment was ratified.

And it seems the U.S. didn't require passports for women until well into the 20th century.

Terrorist Tipoffs and an Evolutionary Arms Race

Josh Marshall at TPM wonders something which I wonder too.  Namely, when we identify things as tipoffs, as suspicious circumstances warranting more investigation, what stops the terrorist organizations from adapting?  For example, John Doe is committed to blowing up an airliner.  So he boards an airliner paying cash for a one-way ticket with no luggage and using a false name.  All sorts of sirens should be going off, right?  But assuming some resources, what's to stop him, knowing what we consider as red flags, from using a credit card, his correct name, and a full set of luggage on a round trip ticket?

And Ann Althouse points to the Newark incident:

"The fact that these two individuals kissed and walked hand-in-hand does not and should not wash away suspicion. If it did, terrorists would know how to stage a security breach. Have male and female confederates. The woman passes through security and then lets in the man, who has whatever weapons/bombs on him that may be desired. The two act like lovers, and the TSA workers sit back and think ain't love grand. A few hours later, hundreds of human beings are blown to pieces."

 Biologists point to arms races in evolution where prey and predators, the eaten and the eater evolve defenses and counters. Maybe that's what we have here.  We come up with a profile of the likely terrorist, the terrorist organization figures out what it is (not a hard job) and how to counter the profile (carry luggage, travel with a female companion, whatever).  A successful attack, or at least one close to success, tells us we need to change the profile and the process continues.

The Problem With Statistics--Crime Waves and Falls [Revised]

Mathew Blake at Understanding Government links to a Wall Street Journal piece on the fall of crime rates. The piece quotes some experts who say that the graying of the boomer generation is partly responsible, since people over 50 are unlikely to commit violent crime (as opposed to financial crimes, perhaps?) and that age group  is the most rapidly growing.  Mathew has some doubts, but I have a different question. Suppose we went back to the high crime days of the 70's and 80's and normalized the statistics for the age distribution--what would the statistics look like?  I'm sure it would reduce the amplitude of the the peaks, but by how much?  And if public discussion and the media had used those statitstics rather than the gross figures they did use, would California today be spending more on public schools and less on criminal schools (i.e., prisons). That's a factoid which caught my attention today--Schwartzenegger wants to decrease the money spent on prisons because they do spend more on prisons than schools.

[Revision: thinking more about this issue, it strikes me the statistical adjustment would need to be tricky, not just for the number of young in the population, but probably also for the percentage of young.  Seems to me the boomers in the 70's gained confidence from being such a large generation, while those of us in the "silent" generation realized we were outnumbered. I suspect everyone has experienced the intimidation factor of a group of young, rowdy males on a public street where there's only a handful of adults around.  Conversely, a large crowd of middle-aged and old people can establish a standard of behavior that cows a handful of teens/twenties.  So the question would be, in this hypothesis, how often each scenario occurred. ]

Chris Clayton on Actively Engaged

Chris Clayton summarizes the debate on the FSA final rule on "actively engaged". Unfortunately he's a victim of the stupid GPO system, which doesn't give you a permanent URL for the document, so his link doesn't work.  And, it turns out, regulations.gov is no help, because, as of 4:30 pm, it hadn't been updated with today's issue of the Federal Register.

Fortunately, the expert bureaucrats at FSA have already updated their website with the link to the regs.
Way to go, JK and JB.

Best Sentence of Jan 7

" Coordination is the impulse of bureaucrats" from Chris Blattman's Blog on Development, a post about Clinton's speech on development.  (I'd also recommend the post on the other Clinton's Foreign Policy interview. Say what you will, the guy can be impressive.)