Whose Bureaucrats Are Better: US or Marshall Islands?

Apparently Transocean, a company involved in the Gulf oil spill, likes to put its rigs under the Marshall Islands flag.

Maybe we should outsource parts of the government to the Marshall Islands?

Kids Don't Like Vegetables, Particularly Beans

That's the lesson I get from Ed Bruske's latest report from the school lunch front, spending time in school kitchens from DC to Berkeley.  Apparently roasting vegetables helps, and camouflaging them within the recipe also helps, but at the end of the day school kids won't eat them.

Although the school lunch reformers Ed talks to retain their optimism, I wonder. If kids are used to snacks, and they're living in a society which gives them the right to say what they like and which honors their decisions, what's the use? Maybe in 10 years or so the foodies will have evolved a set of recipes which are nutritious, cheap, and eaten by kids. But maybe not.

 I  remember (vaguely) my own school days.  We had a kitchen where the food was prepared.  The cooks were neighbors, sometimes mothers. The food was standard 1950's fare, meat loaf, liver, etc. Almost all the time I carried my lunch--a sandwich, fruit, maybe carrots, and milk. So I don't remember how much choice you had in the cafeteria, but my impression is: very little.  Adults had authority and you took what you were served.

Unless and until we're willing and able to deprive kids of their "right to choose", I'm afraid the school lunch people are rolling a rock uphill.

No Bird Brains Here

Don't know how they did it, but this article (hat tip Ann Althouse) says birds can distinguish between wheat that's conventionally grown and wheat that's organically grown.  And, wait for it, they prefer the conventional, apparently because it has more protein.

I'm a bit skeptical--wheat strikes me as a crop where growing it organically isn't much different than conventional, but we need to trust the wisdom of our feathered friends.

Extension Service in New York City

The Times has an article on an extension specialist who retired in March. Turns out he's the father of urban farming, at least in NYC and at least over the last 35 years:

You have most likely never heard of Mr. Ameroso. Yet from a rubble-strewn vacant lot in Brooklyn where he showed New Yorkers how to grow food in 1976 to a three-acre stretch of Governors Island that he’s helping to sow now, he has been behind nearly every organized attempt to grow and sell food in the city, as well as many of the city’s best-known food organizations.

He was New York City’s first extension agent focused on farming, and now probably its last one. Mr. Ameroso formally retired in March and will spend the 2010 growing season removing himself from the daily work of city farms and making sure his colleagues — many of whom he’s trained — can carry on without him.

Extension started to help farmers improve their farming methods, taking advantage of research at the land-grant institutions.  It expanded to include homemakers, demonstrating canning techniques, teaching nutrition, etc. IMHO it reflects the Progressive impulse to teach and organize, improving things by using reason. Now, as one can see at extension.org  it takes on a much wider scope of problems--aging, caregiving, psychology, management, etc.  As indicated in the Times piece, there was an attempt to extend extension's reach into the city.  While many in the city could have benefited by the advice and information now available, serving urban needs hasn't been a success.  There's the isolated cases as described by the Times, but extension never figured out how to fill urban needs in a way which would cause urban politicians to support appropriations for extension.  It could be a case study in the limitations of organizational flexibility: in the case of extension you could take the extension worker out of the country, but not the country out of the organization.

Mongolian Locavores

David Lawrence has an interesting post on Mongolian diets (so heavy on the meat his family almost starved its hired help) at PSD--World Bank.

I wonder how obese Mongolians are, but at least they're following Michael Pollan's rules about what a good diet is: something your grandmother would prepare.

The Old Familiar Story: Surpluses in Agriculture (Pot This Time)

Via Ann Althouse, here's an NPR story on a crash in marijuana prices in California.  Seems there's an oversupply of field-grown pot; buyers prefer the indoor stuff.  It ends, as other farm stories have ended over the decades:

"California's pot economy is transforming, and it's starting to resemble a real commodities market where only big players can compete. It's a shift that could leave some growers in the dust."

AFTERTHOUGHT: This is also a case where consumers presumably prefer the product of industrialized ag over natural field grown stuff.

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.