The Advantages of Modern Life: Vaccines

That thought resulted from reading this part of a newsletter from ancestry.com:

This portion of an 1880 schedule from Cottonwood Township, Brown County, Minnesota, shows a devastating diphtheria outbreak that took the lives of multiple children in several of the households.

A look at nearby townships showed even more diphtheria deaths, and a quick internet search revealed that it had reached epidemic proportions around this time. If your ancestor’s family disappeared from the area around that time, this could be an explanation. You may find evidence of other events in mortality schedules. I wrote this article about a story I found in some Boston mortality schedules that led to details about a fire in a cotton factory.

And My Jaw Dropped

From a Matt Yglesias post:

"In response, Stoller gave me seven rather than ten “FDR, Lincoln, Grant, Washington, T. Roosevelt, Truman, LBJ" (The "Stoller" is a Matt Stoller, apparently a leftish type.)

What caused my jaw to drop:  Grant. Grant!!  For most of my life Ulysses S. Grant was ranked in the bottom of U.S. Presidents, with a reputation for ignoring corruption that was hard to shake.  I think only Harding and Buchanan were usually considered worse.  But his inclusion in a top-seven list, even if idiosyncratic, probably means that his support for Reconstruction is winning him support among some.

North America's Farms: Why Mexicans Emigrate

Canada, Mexico, and the US are trying to provide agricultural statistics across the 3 countries.  Here's a map showing the distribution of farms, with each blue dot equaling 200 farms. Because it's static, not interactive, the map isn't great, but it's still interesting.  Canada has an interesting distribution: no farms above the western Great Lakes, but many east of the Rockies and a surprising concentration north of NH and VT. Mexico has about twice as many farms as the US, so the southern part of the country is solid blue.

I'd also note the Amish concentration in Lancaster county, PA. The concentration of smaller farms shows up as an almost blue dot. 

SSA Bureaucrat

The Post had a laudatory article on a Social Security bureaucrat Thursday. It seems she figured out that not all diseases/disabilities are the same. By segregating  out and fast tracking those disabilities which are in some sense obvious (i.e., Lou Gehrig's disease--ALCS, etc.) she drastically improved the turnaround time for the claims.

This fits one of my mantras I developed over the years.  If you tried to design a software system which would handle all possible situations, you rapidly got yourself into the weeds, lost in a maze of conditions and with software which would be hard to test, hard to train on, and late to deliver.  The better strategy was trying to handle 80 percent of the cases with something simple and fast.  The big advantage was intangible: software developers felt lots better because they were accomplishing something to help the county offices, the users; the users felt better because they got something halfway timely which helped them.

Overlapping Missions? USGS and NRCS

Here's a study of nitrates in rivers in the Mississippi basin, showing no consistent decline over the last 28 years (1980-2008).  What struck me is, while reported via a USDA agency (extension.org), the study itself was done by USGS.  Turns out there's something called The Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Action Task Force.  I guess NRCS is a part of it--there's an Ann Mills on the task force, though because the URL behind her name is screwed up I wasn't able to check on her.  The Task Force has EPA, Corps of Engineers, Interior (USGS), Commerce (NOAA), USDA (NRCS and extension), and the National Tribal Water Council.  Quite a group of agencies.

Herr Roesler and the German Melting Pot

Here's his wikipedia bio, of Vietnamese ancestry, he's a German politician, currently a cabinet minister, which blew my mind when I saw his picture.

We don't think of Germany as being a melting pot; a Google search for the term doesn't yield much.  This after all is the land of ethnic purity, but no more it seems.

Chopsticks to China

Via Freakonomics, here's an article on an entrepreneur who's making and shipping chopsticks to China from Georgia--turns out we've got cheaper wood than they do.

I must say, when we spent our honeymoon in Britain many years ago, I was struck by the difference in traveling from London to York and from DC to New York.  Miles and miles of trees and unused land in the US; not so much in Britain.

AMS Follows My Advice? NAIS

Unlikely, but AMS announced a proposal for animal identification that:

livestock moved interstate would have to be officially identified and accompanied by an interstate certificate of veterinary inspection or other documentation, such as owner-shipper statements or brand certificates. The proposed rule encourages the use of low-cost technology and specifies approved forms of official identification for each species, such as metal eartags for cattle. However, recognizing the importance and prevalence of other identifications in certain regions, shipping and receiving states or tribes are permitted to agree upon alternative forms of identification such as brands or tattoos.

 That's essentially what I suggested a while back when they asked for comments on the previous NAIS proposal: a two-tier system, one tier for animals moving in the big commercial channels, the other tier for locavore/food movement types.  Now it seems from Walt Jeffries post at NONAIS.org that my compromise isn't enough, but I'm not clear how his toes are being stepped on. Last I checked his meat was sold at outlets in Vermont only, so he wouldn't be subject to the regs.  Though it's possible he has a mail-order business which reaches outside the state but I'd think the rules could easily cover that case. 

How Good Is Crop Insurance: Is This Strange?

From Bloomberg, hat tip Farm Policy:

The worst Texas drought in more than a century has left cotton-crop conditions that rival the Dust Bowl of the early 1930s, forcing farmers to abandon more fields than ever before.
Most growers will at least break even  [emphasis added] this year from insurance claims, with the reimbursement rate on policies higher than the price of New York cotton futures, according to a Bloomberg News survey of seven analysts, brokers and farmers.

 I think there's a problem here, either with crop insurance or perhaps with the writing.  If you look lower in the story, the break even bit may reflect one grower's expectations.  But it appears the insurance covers $1.23 a pound, which doesn't seem right, though I'm stuck in the days of a target price just above $.70.

History Makes a Difference: Bees and Levy Flight

Once, long ago, I was good at math.  No longer.  But I still have a soft spot for math-like writing.  Here's a Technology Review post on the math describing how bees search for nectar sources.  It's something called "Levy Flight", described as:

The most effective way to comb an area is to search it at random using jumps that vary in length according to a power law.

But new research has shown while that works for cases where you just have nectar sources spread out in space, if you introduce a third variable, a predator, the pattern is changed as the bees adjust their flight patterns to avoid the predator.  In short: history makes a difference.