Usefulness of EWG's Database Impaired

A time or two I've noted that using crop insurance instead of direct payments has the effect of hiding the increases in governmental liability (assuming prices and/or yields rise over time) and getting around the payment limitation provisions.  Another side effect is noted in this language in a Grist post:

EWG's Cook is concerned about another potential problem with the proposed new subsidy. With the current set of farm payments, groups can track exactly how much government support individual farmers receive (as EWG does with its Farm Subsidy Database). But with the "shallow loss" plan, says Cook, "the subsidy lobby" is creating a new "income-guarantee entitlement aimed at the biggest commercial operations" that will likely be "totally opaque to the public." Which means no more tracking who gets how much.

I assume there will be no tears shed in the farming community over this.

What Happens When There's No Card Catalog?

One of the ways I try to help people do Google searches is to tell them: type in the window the words you would use in searching the old library card catalog.  But what happens when that advice no longer makes sense?  This was triggered by a post on the NYTimes article describing a private west coast school which banned all technology.  Does searching in Google come naturally, or is it learned? 

I think the later. 

In some ways this is like learning to type--I vaguely remember an article saying that kids were picking up typing by the availability of PC's, etc. with keyboards.  But how many of those kids will be able to do 40 wpm with 1 mistake?

I guess I'm starting this week as a grump.

I Don't Really Believe This: Tomatoes from Korea

Apparently it's true else why would there be regulations?

These Young Farmers Are Wimps

From the Life of a FArm blog:

The highlight of haying this year was the addition of the New Holland 570 square baler. After putting up 400 square bales we have affectionatley[sic] named them “idiot cubes”.  There is so much work in squares it sure makes you wonder if it’s worth it.

 Of course, that's why farmers have gone to round bales, even though there's a significant loss of hay in the weathering of the outside layer. (I remember the first round bales, back in the early 50's, which were roughly the size of the square bales.  Difficult to handle and because ratio of the surface to the mass was more equal, a lot more loss if you had a rain storm during haying.  You couldn't leave them in the field, so it was a technology which was quickly abandoned, or that at least went back to the labs to be developed later.

Powerline and Climate Change

Back in the spring, the conservative blog Powerline made a big deal of the skepticism of Prof. Richard Muller about climate change. John Hinderaker's last words:

More importantly, Muller is heading up the new Berkeley Earth Temperature Study, which will review and analyze all of the data on this subject starting from scratch. Unlike the Climategate cabal in Britain and in our NASA, the Berkeley group will share its data with all comers. Keep your eye on this; it will take time–years more than months probably–but may prove to be the thread that unravels the main prop of the climate campaign.

Yesterday Kevin Drum observed the results.

Today every liberal is jumping on the bandwagon, gloating in Muller's reversal.  It's really a shame to see liberals stoop so low:  we should be better people than to gloat.

I love it.

How To Do a Demonstration

By chance, NARA had this as document of the day:  

The boomers did do some good demos.

She Won't Be Mother of the Year

Not this year.  She asks these questions:

Why? Why does David have to work so hard to do what comes easily for most? Why does he still sometimes struggle even to call us by name? Why does he sometimes have to make things so difficult?

Why? Why does he take such joy in things that most people don't even notice? Why is he so easy to please? Why is he almost always happy? Why does he work so hard each and every day?

The Advantages of Animals Over Technology

I'm generally favorable to technology, but as my mother used to observe, there were advantages to animals. For example, when field work for the day was over, you could pretty much let the team of horses find their way to the barn.  And, according to her though I never experienced it, if you took a load of potatoes from her folks' farm to the city (Binghamton) to sell, once the load was disposed of the horses would take you home with little or no guidance.

I'm reminded of that when I read a recent post on Ricks' "The Best Defense".  Earlier I'd seen the progress people were making on developing a pack robot, four-footed, self-powered, capable of crossing irregular terrain carrying 1-200 pounds.  It looked impressive. Then there was Sgt. Reckless, a war horse in the Korean War, who carried 5 tons in 51 trips.  I bet she was a lot quieter and a lot cheaper to develop.

The Definition of Wheat

What's fun is to watch a bunch of academics and city folk at Volokh.com try to understand the AAA of 1938 and the Wickard v Filburn case (excess wheat), representing the furthest stretch of Congressional power under the commerce clause of the Constitution.

Either they don't understand the Act, they don't understand farming, they don't understand current farming, or they're just off on tangents.  There's 240+ comments on a post several days old, so I didn't read them all.  Towards the end some of the nonsense gets weeded out.

The Decline of Standards

How do scholars expect to get respect when they don't dress the part:

Beyond the conference, as some commenters note, we almost never teach in suits.  The men in my department tend to wear long-sleeved shirts and ties when they teach, but most of the men professors in other departments wear jeans or khaki pants with a fleecy vest and hiking boots.  (That’s the preferred look around here, anyway, but it’s probably more casual on average than other parts of the country might be.)

In my day the professors wore suits, when they didn't wear corduroy sports coats with the leather elbow patches.  Things have gone to the dogs.