Slyly Aggressive Cowen

I like Tyler Cowen, but today's post is definitely slyly aggressive.  He begins by saying he's cut back on his reading while in Berlin, then goes on to list 6 heavy books. 

Sentence of June 23

"You don’t have to tell a bureaucrat twice to withhold information from a rival agency."  From Stewart Baker at Volokh conspiracy

Our Priorities Are Skewed

From the Restonian blog, commenting on the plans for Tysons Corners:

What's pathetic interesting is the new definition of "low-income housing."

The Tysons plan calls for 20 percent of housing to be devoted to those who make $51,350 to $123,240, or 50 to 120 percent of Fairfax's median household income of $102,700. In exchange, developers would be allowed to build 20 percent more units.

Lynne J. Strobel, a land-use lawyer with Walsh Colucci Lubeley Emrich & Walsh representing several Tysons Corner developers, urged supervisors to cut the lowest tier of workforce housing, for those earning 50 to 60 percent of the median household income in Fairfax. That would include annual incomes of $51,350 to $61,620. Starting salaries for teachers and police officers in Fairfax County range from $44,000 to $49,450.

Yeah, who wants those icky teachers or police officers as neighbors? All that chalk dust, handcuffs, etc. We're just happy that people who make the paltry sum of $123,240 are finally being designated as undesirables in need of special accommodations to afford their 800-square-foot "condominium" overlooking a shopping mall, the end.

Don't Like Chickens, Love Their Manure

That was my feeling growing up, at least as far as liking chickens goes.  Turns out one study shows their manure improves cotton yields over chemical fertilizer because it conditions soil.

In their study, Tewolde and colleagues figured the litter's value as a soil conditioner as an extra $17 per ton of litter. They calculated this by balancing the price tag of the nutrients in litter with its resulting higher yields, a reflection of its soil conditioning benefits.
They found that cotton yields peaked 12 percent higher with organic fertilizers, compared to peak yields with synthetic fertilizers. With all benefits factored in, they found that chicken litter has a value of about $78 a ton, compared to $61 a ton when figured by the traditional method.

This isn't organic farming, per se, but it's close.

HHS--Can They Make Their Deadline?

The dirty secret of government is that many legislated deadlines are not met.  Congress tends usually to ignore implementation once the bill is passed, so agencies really face few repercussions if they fail to meet the date.  This Politico article on HHS suggests the circumstances under which failure may not be an option: you're working on a highly visible,very controversial keystone of the program for a political party.  (If memory serves, Mark McClellan did a good job implementing the addition of Medicare Part D (drug coverage) back in the Bush days.)  We'll see how HHS does this time around.

The Cat Lady's Memoir

No, not Eartha Kitt's, but Laura Bush's "Spoken from the Heart".  Somehow she reminds me of a cat, self-contained, attractive, and mysterious.  As some reviews have suggested, the first part of the book is interesting: her parents and grandparents, her early life in Texas, the car accident, etc. The second part not so much: mostly a recitation of her activities as first lady of Texas and the U.S.  Some things which struck me:

• the security scares, not only on 9/11 but the recurrent alarms.  I don't mean she was unduly worried, but she does pay attention to threats and scares which I don't remember in other memoirs.  I wonder how the Obamas are handling their scares. It must be draining, even if you know the odds are the scare is a false alarm, adrenaline must be racing.
• alcohol.  She makes a point of the extensive use of alcohol in the Texas culture, even though Midland was technically dry it was routinely used and abused.  She doesn't say her father was an alcoholic, but in today's more puritanical times he might have qualified, at least as a heavy drinker.
• friendship. She obviously has a gift for making and maintaining friendships.
• a couple anecdotes about her in-laws: George H.W. in his bathrobe undoing the plumbing to retrieve the contact she'd lost down the sink (George wasn't much good at mechanical stuff, apparently); Barbara being sharp-tongued with her friends (Laura treats her very gingerly).

Hypocrisy Among the Scholars

From the American Historical Association blog, discussing university pressesr:

Almost all authors want to see their books published in print, but as consumers (both in the libraries and off-site in their research and reading) they are clearly gravitating toward the consumption of electronic publications. So how long can these two patterns coexist?

Technology Marches Onward: Inseminating Queens

No, I'm not talking of the crowned heads of Europe, but of the instrumental insemination of honey bee queens. Artificial insemination of dairy cows was a big advance, but bees?  I'm awestruck.

Humongous Farms?

Marcia Taylor at  DTN has a post on really big (where's Ed Sullivan when you need him) farms:

Giant farming companies--those with 250,000 acre scale and up--may be a new phenomenon to us, but they already are changing the competitiveness of global agriculture. Whether such scale can succeed here is still a big question, but it's becoming the norm in the former Soviet Union, Brazil and Argentina.

The current setup of the farm programs is something of a handicap to such large farms in the US, but as a commenter notes, changing over to crop insurance with no payment limitations would change the parameters. If such farms do come to the U.S., there won't be many towns left west of the Mississippi, at least not farming towns.

On Naming

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen--having tried to deal with a few of the issues with names in my prior live, only to discover after 9/11 my efforts were quite inadequate, I really liked this list of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.

I wonder how long it will be before we all get email addresses at birth?  Of course, the younger generation no longer uses email, just Twitter and Facebook.