Best Sentence of May 18

"As long as there is snow up there we will have wind. "

From a post at Life on a Colorado Farm, talking about the state of the crops and the mountains which surround the farm.  Don't know why I like it so much--is it iambic pentameter? It's good science, if I remember my college geology 101. It's good philosophy for a farmer--you can't control the weather, you just live with it. Anyhow, I recommend the post and the site.  (Though, to be frank, the author's photographs gain from the topography whereas the Cotton Wife's photos gain nothing from Virginian topography but lots from cute red headed kids.)

There's Always Something, Even in Quantum Cryptography

Technology Review has a post on the ways errors in practice might create loopholes in quantum cryptography:

When it comes to secure messaging, nothing beats quantum cryptography, a method that offers perfect security. Messages sent in this way can never be cracked by an eavesdropper, no matter how powerful.
At least, that's the theory.

Actually, I was also bemused by the fact someone is actually creating and selling quantum cryptographic systems.  My grasp of modern physics ceased with the old solar system model of the atom, with the orbiting electrons.  Quanta and strings are a couple generations beyond me.

The Very Model of a Superior Social Security Bureaucrat

Via Volokh Conspiracy, a profile of the head of the Social Security Administration. The last lines quoted from his poem "Cancer Prayer" remind me of Walt Whitman's poem, Dressing the Wounds, which my wife and I heard put to music by John Adams at the Kennedy Center last night.  There is a time to welcome death.

Terrorists and Miranda

Back in the Bush administration there was a flap related to the Army's publishing of its manual on interrogation techniques.  Some argued it was wrong to described permitted and prohibited methods in detail, because it would enable terrorist organizations to train their members to resist interrogation.  That seems to make sense: we can't exaggerate how wily and tricky these terrorist networks are.

But if that makes sense, then surely there's no need to modify the Miranda warning and law with regard to U.S.  citizens and residents.  Any smart terrorist organization understands that these people have rights under the Constitution, rights which aren't dependent on the Miranda warning.  Any libertarian will tell you there's no obligation to say anything to a law enforcement officer.  So smart organizations will train their US citizen recruits in their constitutional rights, and modifying the warning will do nothing.

So there's a choice: believe in smart terrorist organizations and don't change Miranda; or, believe terrorist organizations are less than smart, that Murphy's Law operates there as well as elsewhere,  and the terrorist threat becomes too small to warrant any changes.

Farmers Markets Are Inefficient

That's a reality recognized in this post at Ethicurean.  Adam Smith recognized the virtues of specialization, but farmers' markets make the farmer be good at both growing and selling.  A farmer who has to spend much of the summer standing in a stall at a market is prevented from growing as much as she can.  Granted some select farmers can attract enthusiastic interns who can fill in, but it's not a formula that works for growing that sector of the agricultural economy.

A Symptom of the Times in USDA Succession

Here's a post on the new order of succession at USDA. In old days this was more important, since people worried about nuclear war.  These days the order is more symbolic.  I don't remember the exact order, but the Under Secretary over FSA and FAS used to be up there.  No more--he's now next to last among the under secretaries.

EWG Subsidy Database and the Farm Bill

The Environmental Working Group is knocking USDA for failing to provide farm program payment data tied to individuals when the checks were written to entities.  Seems USDA is estimating it would cost a bunch of money ($6.7 million) and Congress changed the law so they don't have to.  I'm not a real fan of EWG, I didn't like it back in the last century when they won their court case to get the payment data, but seems to me they're in the right here. Given Obama's emphasis on transparency, it's going to be difficult for the ag committees to hold the line on this one.

Us and the Brits--Transition and Budgets

There's been a little comment in the blogosphere on the transition in Britain. Took a day or two to come up with a coalition government, but now the Brits have all their cabinet in place and beavering away--no long drawn out confirmation hearings and the occasional embarrassing disclosures for the British. That's just a piece with the other ways in which their government differs from ours. I found this in a writeup on the British budget approval process:

The British Parliament has no ways and means committees, no budget committees, no appropriations committees. The committees that do scrutinize government departments lack the power to authorize new government programs and spending. Britain has one dominant figure who controls most of these functions: the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Roughly speaking, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Treasury/Finance Minister for the British Government, yet he has unparalleled power compared to the US Treasury Secretary.

The Chancellor has sole responsibility for setting tax rates. He does not preside over a tax committee. Rather he makes all of his tax decisions in an annual statement to Parliament, which is referred to as the annual Budget Statement. In essence, the Chancellor is a one-man Ways & Means Committee. The Budget Statement he presents (discussed below in greater detail) outlines not only tax rates, but also the total amount of money that will be spent on all government activities (both mandatory and discretionary).

Thus, the Chancellor is also a one-man Budget Committee.

If I understand, the finances and spending bills get considered and there's the possibility for change, except if the government doesn't agree to the change, they can make it a vote of confidence and win that way. 

Rebound in Prince William County

Post had an article on Wednesday describing a rebound in Prince William county, VA. Schools are full and housing is moving.  That fits what I've noted on visits to my mother-in-law in Manassas Park--fewer "for sale" signs up for shorter times.

In my mind this is the way the real estate market revives: the new households formed, whether of immigrants who band together to finance a house, young people finally able to buy instead of rent, low-income households rising up the ladder, all find places where houses are affordable, as in Prince William.  They buy new houses and existing houses.  The owners of the existing houses then may have the money to finance a more expensive house, and so on up the ladder.  Instead of the "trickle-down" theory of wealth, this is the "build from the bottom" theory of housing prices.  (And it's one reason why I've still got the bee in my bonnet that the anti-immigrant fervor of 2005-7, as in Tom Tancredo, helped to pop the housing bubble.)

Anyhow, the future is looking a little brighter.

USDA Bureaucrat: Lyster Dewey and Hemp

The Post has an article on Lyster Dewey and his diaries, which record his work growing hemp, as well as other things, in the USDA gardens occupying the site where the Pentagon was built. USDA bureaucrats do many things.

Incidentally, during WWII the USDA also had a War Hemp program.  Find other links by googling "War Hemp".  I remember in the early 70's someone contacted the ASCS records people looking for the old records (I think the program was probably funded out of Commodity Credit Corporation funds.)