How Do Economists CAPTCHA This Data?

Guy Gugliotta has an article in the Times on the use of Captchas to interpret scanned text through a special software program.  Apparently when you see 2 words in the Captcha, one is a true word which the software knows, the other is scanned text which the software isn't sure of.  So if you get the true word right, you're a human and the software will consider your answer to the other.  Very interesting. They claim 500,000 hours of brain effort are being spent on replying to Captchas, so their software converts that to useful work.

It raises the question to me: how are economists capturing these gains to utility (or however they'd word it)?  It's unpaid work, but it's very useful, converting the poorly scanned texts of old NY Times and 19th century books into readable, accurate English. Come to that, how do they account for the improved research which historians can now do using Google Books and Google Scholar?

My Loss of Faith in Japan

The Japanese are great engineers, right?  And their society is unified.  And in the face of disaster they cooperate, they don't loot, they work together.

But my faith is severely undermined by this factoid, from a Times piece on the supply of electricity:

In theory, the Tokyo area could import electricity from the south. But a historical rivalry between Tokyo and the city of Osaka led the two areas to develop grids using different frequencies — Osaka’s is 60 cycles and Tokyo’s is 50 cycles — so sharing is inefficient.

 Darn right it would be inefficient.  That's even worse than the division of the US into separate grids, where the Texas grid doesn't really connect with the others so the idea for wind power on the High Plains doesn't work well.  It reminds me of the difference in railroad track gauges which we used to have.  (The Erie Railroad had a wider gauge than others; Southern roads varied.  The idea was to create a monopoly, a niche. It's rather like the difference between Apple and Microsoft: Gates went with open architecture and the advantages of networking; Jobs went with closed architecture and the advantages of specialization.  For years it looked as if Gates had the better argument, but now we're starting to doubt.)

Best Sentence of Mar 29

Comes from Tom Rick's The Best Defense, a pilot explaining the deficiencies of the F-22 for ground support.

"The Raptor also lacks the armor and the price tag required for fecklessly dueling Grunts who own automatic weapons and hate pilots who make more money and look better than they do."

The Farmland Bubble

Yes, 4 percent appreciation a month equates to "bubble".

From Farm Policy:

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Williams and Marcia Zarley Taylor reported on Friday at DTN (link requires subscription) that, “Midwest farmland is appreciating so fast that even professional appraisers are humbled by the pace. A good-quality parcel of farmland sold for $11,500 per acre around Bloomington, Ill., earlier this month. That’s up $3,000 to $3,500 from a year earlier, said Charles Knudson, an appraiser with 1st Farm Credit Services.
“In September, Knudson appraised a central-Illinois property at $8,100 per acre for an interested buyer, but it sold at auction in February for $10,150 per acre. He’s now appraising farmland at 4-percent-per-month gains, a rate that landowners once savored on an annual basis.”

 And see Robert Shiller's discussion at Slate.

The Rabbit, the Carrot, and a Tail of Locavores

Via Marginal Revolution a fascinating story on carrots.

Now carrots should be one of the quintessential locavore vegetables.  They're easily grown, provided you don't have heavy clay soil and keep the weeds down, they can overwinter in the ground if the frost doesn't go too deep (protect them with leaves), they're nutritious, and furry critters like them.  As I remember, we used to store them in our cold cellar (actually the pump room off our regular cellar).  So under locavore theory it should be possible to raise and sell locally grown carrots in most of the U.S. The food movement also attacks the big industrial farms producing grain and cotton which they claim is founded on the basis of government subsidies. By implication, fruit and vegetable growers are smaller and unsubsidized.

But, as it turns out, two companies grow 80 percent of the carrots in the U.S.  And recent growth in their sales has been, not through flogging organic, naturally grown carrots, but by producing packaged "baby carrots", all clean and ready to eat.  (Disclosure: I buy them regularly.)

Bolthouse Farms sells nearly a billion pounds of carrots a year -- the carrots Farhang kept hearing about -- under a number of different brand names and supermarket labels. Only Grimmway Farms, a few minutes down the road in Bakersfield, California, sells more, just barely. Together, the two companies control more than 80% of the carrot market in the United States

A Doctrine, A Doctrine, Where Is the Doctrine?

Much of the commentariat is asking Obama to declare a "doctrine": a rule which describes when he will use military force and when he won't.  I suspect if he were a Republican in the same circumstances I too would be calling for the President to enunciate some rules.  As he's not, thank goodness, I'm more in favor of the "Pragmatic Rule": if it works, do it; if you can get away with it, do it; if you fail, the decision was wrong.

It's hard for any politician to declare the "pragmatic rule", but they follow it more closely than they do the "Golden Rule".  While most Americans would like us to be idealists, to be the city on the hill, I think even more vote based on the "Pragmatic Rule".  We'll see, both whether Obama's Libyan/Middle East policy works and whether voters reward or punich on that basis.

Government Reform

The White House's "Government Reform for Competitiveness and Innovation Initiative" has, I guess, learned some lessons from the first initiative Obama had to gather input, which was quickly overrun by birthers and assorted crackpots.  This time around they're limiting input to Feds, and this is the beginning of the terms and conditions:

As Federal employees, we want to hear your insights about government reforms that can promote competition and innovation. This invitation is limited to Federal employees.
We hope to receive many diverse ideas and opinions about what works and what we can improve. All contributions will be posted without identifying information. This is designed as a community-moderated event in order to retain focus on the designated topic and to ensure that the event remains appropriate for an audience of all ages. Accordingly, we ask all participants to agree to the following Terms of Participation:
• You agree to post only ideas related to making government more effective and efficient. Our goal is to produce ideas that will improve the way that government operates.
• Because Americans of all ages will be able to view these ideas online, we ask all those who elect to participate to conduct themselves in a civil manner - to refrain from posting threats, obscenity, other material that would violate the law if published here, abusive or racist language, and sexually explicit material.
• This is a forum for federal employees to submit substantive ideas on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government. This is not a forum for airing grievances against co-workers, supervisors, or anyone else in your organization. We reserve the right to take down any such inappropriate submissions or any other submissions that may compromise the privacy of federal employees or other individuals.
• Do not submit identifying information.

Sorry to say as a taxpayer I'm not really impressed with the ideas submitted.  And it's too bad 2 years into the administration they haven't figured out how to obtain good input.  Maybe they should hold a competition: give cash prizes for the input designs which produce the highest ratio of good input to trash.

Pollan and Fossil Fuels

Pollan claims, according to Tom Philpott's summary on an interview, that we won't have the fossil fuels to keep our current "industrialized agriculture"  going in 30 years or so.  I'm not clear what he means.  If he's assuming "peak oil" so the price of diesel and inputs to fertilizer plants go up, that's likely. My impression, though, is that large diesels are at least as efficient as small diesels, so unless Pollan sees a reversion from tractors to horses/mules/oxen I don't see the problem.  To the extent we replace fossil fuels in our transport, we'll also be able to replace them in agriculture for motive power.  If we go to electric vehicles with the electricity supplied by nuclear, by sunlight, by wind power, by fuel cells, by whatever, we can go to electric tractors. (I'm not sure whether electric motors or diesels generate more torque.) 

Yes, the phasing out of oil might raise the prices for fuel on the farm and possibly the cost of fuel, but I fail to understand how it would force a change in the mode of agriculture.

Social Security Deserves Praise for Missing Goals

Social Security administration hit some performance goals and missed others, according to this Federal Computer Week post. They deserve praise on two counts: first for publicly reporting and publicizing their results which I haven't noticed other agencies doing, second for setting goals ambitious enough they might not make them.  It's good to aim high, even if you fail.

The Definition of "Virgin"

Credit Walter Jeffries for the definition of "virgin", as well as "gilt" and "sow" and the Seven Silly Sisters.

More seriously, a reminder that small farmers have to sacrifice comfort and sleep to tend their animals.