Secrecy Is Needed--If You're Rebelling, or Forming a Government:

That's the lesson of our founders. As rebels, they signed a secrecy pact. (yesterday's National Archives document of the day); as constitution writers they worked in secrecy in 1787.

Hay Bales and a Blast from the Past

During the 50's we mostly had our hay baled in "square" bales.  Square in quotes because they weren't really square--they were close to being square in cross section but  about twice as long as they were wide.  Think bricks, but larger, and scratchier.

Extension talks about stacking bales as an almost lost skill.  Actually, it's the skill of arranging loose hay on a jay wagon so that it stays in place that's lost.  That's a skill I never mastered.

Dairy Management, Cheese, and a Lousy USDA Web Effort

The Times has an article pointing out the contradiction between USDA urging a low-fat diet and "Dairy Management's" promotion of cheese usage, particularly in the form of cheese pizzas, working with Dominos. Dairy Management turns out to be the umbrella organization for dairy research and promotion efforts, thus receiving the checkoff fees from dairy producers. Although the article notes the bulk of the money the organization spends ($140 million) comes from fees, it claims it also gets several million from USDA.  It calls it a "creation" of USDA. It doesn't go into the details of how research and promotion efforts are approved (via a referendum of producers) and funded. 

The article was, for a while, the most emailed article on the Times website. According to this Treehugger post Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle are outraged.  Given the article's tone and content, I'm not surprised.  Even knowing more of the background and growing up on a dairy farm I'm bothered by the conflict.  As an ex-bureaucrat, I'm more distressed by USDA's website for failing to provide good information. The Agricultural Marketing Service, which administers the research and promotion efforts for the various commodities, all of which are authorized by Congress, doesn't have a good, short explanation of such things in general, or dairy in particular.  Do a search for "Dairy Management" , using quotes, on the website and the first page gives you no hits for the promotion organization. 

The best response I could find on the site was a generic statement that  the programs are fully funded by the assessment fees, which might mean the federal money the article refers to must be that used for oversight. But trying to troll through the reports to Congress seemed to indicate USDA was reimbursed for its oversight expenses.  So the "several million dollars" the article refers to might be research money funneled through ARS, but who knows.  I'd hope after the people in the ivory tower (USDA Administration Building) get through scrambling around to respond there will be a big improvement in the USDA/AMS site.  I hope, but I'm skeptical.

On Evaluating Others

One of the problems of the federal bureaucracy, at least the part I knew, and I believe one of the problems of the teaching profession and, as outlined in Dilbert, the other bureaucracies of the world, is how to give honest evaluations.  Part of the problem is the lack of clear standards, usually because it's difficult in a bureaucracy to set such standards.  And part of the problem is our human tendency to avoid conflict.  Maybe I see that tendency so clearly because it's such a big part of my own psyche.

Anyway, all of the above is prologue to this blog post:  Historiann is a feminist professor in Colorado who's passing on an appeal for advice from another professor. Note the conflict between adherence to professional standards of excellence and avoidance of conflict with the student and her advisor.  (No, I won't go with "ze" and "hir", the feminist neutral pronouns.)  Easy for an outsider to judge this, not so easy if one's in the room.

Deja Vu All Over Again

There was a movie release in 1981 called "Rollover", in which the ticking bomb is the question:  will the Arab oil barons rollover their investments in US bonds. Sounds like current concern over whether China will keep buying US bonds.

Ineffective Bureaucrats at Apple

Apparently someone at Apple forgot about changing from daylight savings time to standard time and vice versa, so new I-phones misbehave when the switch occurs.  I can only imagine the glee with which conservatives would greet such a mistake by some government bureaucrats, but this episode won't lead anyone to doubt the efficacy of private enterprise.

Inside Versus Outside

Probably as long as we have had government, people have been critical of it.  And as long as we have had government, many such critics find it's different when you're working within government.  Here Ned Hodgman links to an interview of someone who moved into FDA, and learned that lesson.

Horses. Bears. and Bison

In the 19th century there was controversy over whether horses, when galloping, ever got all four feet off the ground.  One of the first time-lapse photographers proved they did.  (Foregoing based on aging memory).

I was reminded of that when I saw the pictures of a bear chasing a bison down a road, CNN via Treehugger.
When you're running for your life, or for your dinner, you get all four feet off the ground.

And a Merry Christmas to Federal Employees from the Tea Party

Via The Monkey Cage, here's a blog post outlining the logic for a government shutdown in December.

On Not Knowing the Negative

One frustration of an RSS reader (I assume it applies to all, not just Google) is you never know when the feed stops working.  Is it that the blogger got tired, switched to Facebook or Twitter, lost his ISP, or maybe died?  Or did the feed stop working?  Or, worst of fates for a blogger, does one never wonder about them.

Anyhow, I've discovered my Berry Deep France feed wasn't working, so belatedly found some of Dirk Beauregarde's posts, including this moving one on the death of his mother.