Actively Engaged Definition

Via Farmgate, an Iowa State interpretation of FSA notices.

Russians and US Work Together

According to a vendor at the farm machinery show--their GPS uses both US and Russian satellites.

Farmers Markets Are Not Simple

See this post.

The study identified five preference-based consumer segments: market enthusiasts, recreational shoppers, serious shoppers, low-involved shoppers, and basic shoppers -- each with significantly different demographics and behavior characteristics. 

The Reality of Government

Those of us who have wasted too much of our time attending to how the government works know the reality often differs from what's reported in any media. Via Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy, here's a piece on how federal judges are appointed. Similar processes are at work for other appointees.

Nationalism at Work

The National Archives has a post daily which shows a document from their archives keyed to that day's historical events.  Today they disgrace themselves by their nationalism:

John Glenn conducted the first manned space orbit of the earth on February 20, 1962. This is the transcription of his in-flight communication with Mission Control in Florida.
Read more at Our Documents

Or maybe just their youth. Yuri Gagarin was, of course, the first man to orbit the earth; Glenn was the first American into space. [Corrected--my memory is poor, Alan Shepard was the first American into space, Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. (Remember the fireflies in "The Right Stuff"?]

Those Tunnels in the White House Garden

The make-shift tunnel in our community garden is down--whether the owner took it down before the snow or whether it was damaged by the Dec or Feb snows I don't know.  I wonder how the White House tunnels have held up under the weight of the snow.

The End of the Most Surprising Post Today

From those dour lawyers at Volokh:
"But it is in fact theoretically possible that there will be three vacancies at the Supreme Court this summer."

Pigford Agreement

See here for the text of the statement from USDA and Justice.  I'm not clear how the process will work, whether it differs from the prior one. Congress still needs to appropriate $1.15 billion in addition to the $100 million already done.

All It Takes to Achieve Efficiency: Leadership?

From Federal Computer Weekly:

"When the Office of Management and Budget issued Bulletin 96-02 in October 1995, the number of data centers was believed to be about 200. The OMB directive ordered all federal agencies to close, consolidate, modernize and/or outsource their data centers to increase efficiency and reduce costs. "Industry experience suggests operational savings of between 30 percent and 50 percent from consolidation when compared with unconsolidated operations," then-Budget Director Alice Rivlin wrote.
Fifteen years later, the number of data centers stands at about 1,100, according to OMB."

People should remember such episodes when they focus on what the President can and can't do.

Back When Being a Millionaire Meant Something

From the 1930 blog:

"A record 511 people reported income over $1M in 1928; 26 reported income over $5M, with 11 of those in NY State."

Compare that to this, from Business Week (Bloomberg):

"The 400 highest-earning U.S. households reported an average of $345 million in income in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier, IRS statistics show."

So the incomes of the rich have multiplied many times since 1930.  (I won't give a multiple because the figures are apples and oranges.)