Alfalfa: I Didn't Know That

"  It take alfalfa about a week in hot drying weather to turn into hay. "  That's from this post from Life on a Colorado Farm.

In Broome County, NY alfalfa was not a big crop, wasn't even a small crop that I remember.  Now I'm assuming that Colorado's "hot drying weather" has lots less humidity than we had.  But the big factor would be rain: our usual pattern would be to get rain pretty regularly over the summer, enough to damage and often to spoil any hay in the field.  But the timothy/orchard grass hay which was common didn't take that long to cure.  Mow one day, rake the afternoon of the next day, and bale on the third day would be the normal pattern.  Leave the hay in the field much longer and the risk of rain would be too great. 

So that, plus the difficulty of getting a good stand of alfalfa established, probably explains why there wasn't much alfalfa grown.

The World Is Moving Too Fast, I Want to Get Off

Seems only yesterday I was reading about quantum physics, and something called entanglement, and how it might lead to faster computers some time in the future.One of those things you mentally file in the "don't have to worry about this, after my expiration date" folder.

Now comes the Technology Review  which posts this--Lockheed Martin just spent $10 million of its hard-earned dollars (they do some work for DOD so some of those dollars used to be yours and mine) for a "quantum computing system".

Mother Love

Via Kevin Drum, see the video of mother and kitten.

Factoid of the Day: Median Age of Adoption in Japan

"median age of adoption in Japan is somewhere twenty-five to thirty?"

From Freakonomics on succession of businesses within families. Also interesting Japan is second to the US in adoptions.

Bad News for FSA?

From today's Farm Policy, a bit from the chair of House ag:

Chairman Lucas also offered perspective on House action with respect to the timing of drafting the 2012 farm legislation.  The Oklahoma Republican highlighted a very important caveat to his current thinking on Farm Bill timing: “Depending on what comes out of Vice President Biden’s working group, if there is a grand compromise on raising the debt ceiling which would entail a substantial cut in spending immediately, that over rules the way I would like to do it.  And we could conceivably have a Farm Bill this fall or winter in a hurry-up fashion.”  (Related AgriTalk audio available here (MP3- 1:37)).

 That could be very bad news for FSA bureaucrats for two reasons:

• a hurry-up farm bill to implement a "grand compromise" passed late in the year would give very little time for FSA to implement.  
• I assume FSA management has planned their MIDAS project to reach milestones by next summer--that is to get over the hump before they have to switch their attention to the 2012 farm bill.  If that's true, and you have to assume FSA management plans ahead, don't you, then a rush farm bill is also going to screw up MIDAS.  

The only good bit about a possible rush farm bill might be in a time crunch there would be less opportunity for new programs to come out of the blue; more likely the Hill would make adjustments in the 2008 programs.

Zero

As a counter to the CRS study yesterday which I blogged on, zero is the number of federal employees who make more money than:

• the NCAA Division I football coach in their state
• the average employee salary of Goldman Sachs(2006) 2010
• any full season major league baseball player
• the winner of any PGA tournament

The Increased Productivity of Barbers

Got a haircut today.  Spent my time musing about the increased productivity of barbers.  When I first went to the barbershop the barber used scissors almost exclusively, except for using a straight razor and warm lather to trim the areas around the ears and at the nape of the neck.  Then they got an electric razor, which first was used to cut the sideburns evenly (what's a single sideburn).  Today the barber used only a razor, even to trim my eyebrows.

Presumably the switch from scissors to razor means the haircut takes less time.  But there's another reason for increased productivity: more time between haircuts.  I think it's fair to say the universal standard for men in the 1940's was the standard haircut about once a month, except maybe for crewcuts (why doesn't the spell checker recognize "crewcut").  I'd assume these days there is no "standard" haircut.  Maybe we're more standard than in the 1970's, when long hair was prevalent, but I don't think having the standard haircut is nearly as important now as in the 1940's.  (I'll have to check the haircuts on Mad Men the next DVD we get.) So I'd argue that the average time between haircuts is longer today than it was during the 1940's, again increasing the productivity for barbers.

But declining standards for hair grooming isn't the only reason for increased productivity; there's aging.  The male population is older these days, meaning the average male has less hair to cut and is also more experienced at receiving haircuts.  I'm sure it takes longer for a barber to cut the hair of a 3-year old than a 73-year old.

All Us Geezers Aren't Selfish

Matt Yglesias posts on the offer of Japanese geezers to work at the Fukushima plant struck by the tsunami.

Makes sense to me, though I'm not ready to volunteer quite yet.  Check with me when I'm wheelchair bound.

Overpaid Federal Employees?

The Washington Times headline story this moring is 77000 federal employees make more money than the governors of the states in which they live, based on a Congressional Research Service study requested by Sen. Coburn. Doctors and air traffic controllers were the biggest share of the employees.

It's an ingenious study, and terrible PR for the feds, though I'm not sure that it's any real use.

The Pets of Extras: Nothing Too Small for the All-Seeing Eye

The eye of the House Appropriations committee, that is:  From the report on the agricultural appropriations:

Animal Welfare Act.—It has been brought to the Committee’s attention that APHIS is using vital animal welfare resources to regulate the pets of extras in filmed entertainment. While the Animal Welfare Act’s intent is to establish minimally acceptable standards in the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers, the law was not aimed at regulating companion animals used as extras in the background of movies and television productions.  The Committee urges the agency to use the Secretary’s discretionary authority to seek alternative means of meeting its statutory mandate, including the option of issuing exemptions or master exhibitor licenses to these pet owners.