To balance my recent post on the goodness of crop insurance, let me link to this Politico article on the returns crop insurance offers: when Rain and Hail was bought by the Swiss they promised Wall Street 15 percent return on investment. The Politico article mentions a new EWG study.
Here's a link to the EWG summary.
Both point out the $8 billion cost of crop insurance, greater than the direct payment and CFC programs currently cost. But a partisan of FSA can only feel schadenfreude, because EWG would make crop insurance free and open administration of it to competitive bids.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Florence Nightingale a Mathematician?
Yes, and inventor of a class of graphs. That's from this interesting site, which says:
Though known as a nurse who changed the standard of health care, she was actually a brilliant mathematician, and the inventor of a class of chart called the polar area diagram.
Those Vassar Girls Are Far-Sighted, and Supremely Confident
" Since Vassar is at present having a conference on the postwar world," is a phrase from Eleanor Roosevelts column, as provided by Brad DeLong (who periodically picks up WWII first person stuff under the heading "Liveblogging WWII". Eleanor was reporting on a group picnic at her house in Hyde Park which included some girls from Vassar, which is just a few miles down the road. More importantly the Canadian PM and FDR were around.
You might suppose the date was sometime in 1944, when I believe the UN was on the drawing board and the Allies were on the European mainland. You'd be wrong.
Nor is it 1943, after the tide had turned in the Pacific and on the Eastern Front and victory in North Africa.
Nor is it 1942, in the darkest days of the Battle of the Atlantic, Japanese advances in the Pacific, and the battle of Stalingrad.
It's Nov. 3, 1941, a month before we officially enter the war.
You might suppose the date was sometime in 1944, when I believe the UN was on the drawing board and the Allies were on the European mainland. You'd be wrong.
Nor is it 1943, after the tide had turned in the Pacific and on the Eastern Front and victory in North Africa.
Nor is it 1942, in the darkest days of the Battle of the Atlantic, Japanese advances in the Pacific, and the battle of Stalingrad.
It's Nov. 3, 1941, a month before we officially enter the war.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Why Crop Insurance Is Good
Speed. The farmer gets a check in 1 or 2 weeks. That's the story this farmer is pushing. (I owe someone a hat tip, but lost it.) It's an op-ed by a corn/soybean farmer. Since I usually diss crop insurance here, it's time to acknowledge a different view. (I guess the writer knows the insurance is subsidized but he likes the fact he pays for (a part of) it.
On Silos and Data Models
FSA issued a notice BU-729. It seems to me, though I may be wrong, it's just another example of data silos, and a reason why, in 1990's terms, FSA should have developed an integrated data model. Essentially the question is the relationship of geographic areas (counties) with administrative jurisdictions (county committees and local administrative areas) and county offices (of various types, shared management, etc.). To administer county elections you need part of that relationship, to administer funds you need an overlapping part, to administer real and personal property inventories you need a third picture, to coordinate with NRCS and RD offices and jurisdictions you need others. Unfortunately in my days at FSA each of those was administered by a separate office (or no office at all) and there was no overall coordination. Apparently from BU-729 there still is no coordination. My technocratic (Kevin Drum has a meditation on technocracy) heart is sore.
Project Management Software on the Cloud?
All I know I learned at Info Share. That sometimes seems to be the case. This announcement stuns me. Back in 1992 there was PC-based project management software used by the bureaucrats of Info Share. We're saying 19 years later there's still a niche for such software based in the cloud? Seems as if we could have made more progress than that.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Whoops, A Pollan Reversal?
Prof. Pollan has been quiet in recent months, really since he gave advice to Obama back after the election, so I've not mentioned him. But via Grist, here's a post on his position on high fructose corn syrup--it's more the quantity than the contets of HFCS.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Steve Jobs and Medicine
The blogger at Respectful Insolence specializes in taking down the "woo" merchants, by which he means anyone who pushes "alternative" or "holistic" medicine. I like his posts, though they usually run longer than I've the patience for and require more medical knowledge than I can muster. But today's post is on Steve Jobs and his pancreatic cancer and he surprises by concluding Jobs' life couldn't have been saved, probably, even if he had strictly followed all the prescriptions of conventional medicine.
A Shortage of License, Where Are Sodom and Gomorrah?
Marginal Revolution links to a nice piece on meritocracy, as in the decline of. It's good, though a bit light on solutions to our problem of declining mobility.
I may have done this before (the problems of a blogger with a faulty memory) but it's possible we have a shortage of vice in the country. After all, if we want people to rise in socio-economic class from one generation to the next, and I do, we equally want people to fall in class. I can't get into the Four Hundred unless one of the existing elite disgraces himself. With that perspective, one of our problems may be there's not enough vice, not enough ways in which the idle rich can go to hell, or the dogs, not enough ways to dissipate wealth.
It certainly seems as if society is getting more conservative in some ways: less crime, less divorce, less flaunting of wealth.
So my sermon for today is addressed to the 1 percent: go forth and sin some more.
I may have done this before (the problems of a blogger with a faulty memory) but it's possible we have a shortage of vice in the country. After all, if we want people to rise in socio-economic class from one generation to the next, and I do, we equally want people to fall in class. I can't get into the Four Hundred unless one of the existing elite disgraces himself. With that perspective, one of our problems may be there's not enough vice, not enough ways in which the idle rich can go to hell, or the dogs, not enough ways to dissipate wealth.
It certainly seems as if society is getting more conservative in some ways: less crime, less divorce, less flaunting of wealth.
So my sermon for today is addressed to the 1 percent: go forth and sin some more.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
The Case of the Missing Drill Sergeant
I've the feeling articles on why Americans can't be found to do [hard manual labor, whether harvesting crops in Alabama or wherever] are perennials. But I noted Italians can't be found to do the hard labor of making cheese, according to this Marginal Revolution post. So why?
It's not genetic: we know Italians did hard manual labor when they were immigrating to this country in the 1890's. We know WASPs did hard work back in the 1630's and 40's and we know our ancestors did hard work at other times. So why can't Alabama farmers find Americans to pick tomatoes instead of relying on immigrants?
I offer the solution; it's called the "missing drill sergeant". In my experience there were two things, and two things only, which could make me do hard physical labor: one was growing up with it; the other was a drill sergeant.
By growing up with it, I mean this: by growing to be a man on a dairy farm I incorporated ideas of what was hard and what had to be done, what would make me respected among my peers when I hired out. I also literally incorporated the muscles I needed to do hard work and the calluses I needed to avoid the pain.
The other way I learned to do nasty things was through my Army drill sergeants. I was constrained by the situation and forced to do things I'd rather not.
I'd say the same applies to our workforce: we don't have slavedrivers and drill sergeants in the modern economy. Those Americans who grew up to do the work have, if possible, made their escape, just as I escaped from the dairy farm. So we rely on people from elsewhere, whose frame of reference from growing up in a less developed country makes picking tomatoes or working on Italian dairy farms seem at least tolerable, considering the financial rewards.
[Updated with a couple links.]
It's not genetic: we know Italians did hard manual labor when they were immigrating to this country in the 1890's. We know WASPs did hard work back in the 1630's and 40's and we know our ancestors did hard work at other times. So why can't Alabama farmers find Americans to pick tomatoes instead of relying on immigrants?
I offer the solution; it's called the "missing drill sergeant". In my experience there were two things, and two things only, which could make me do hard physical labor: one was growing up with it; the other was a drill sergeant.
By growing up with it, I mean this: by growing to be a man on a dairy farm I incorporated ideas of what was hard and what had to be done, what would make me respected among my peers when I hired out. I also literally incorporated the muscles I needed to do hard work and the calluses I needed to avoid the pain.
The other way I learned to do nasty things was through my Army drill sergeants. I was constrained by the situation and forced to do things I'd rather not.
I'd say the same applies to our workforce: we don't have slavedrivers and drill sergeants in the modern economy. Those Americans who grew up to do the work have, if possible, made their escape, just as I escaped from the dairy farm. So we rely on people from elsewhere, whose frame of reference from growing up in a less developed country makes picking tomatoes or working on Italian dairy farms seem at least tolerable, considering the financial rewards.
[Updated with a couple links.]
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