Understatement of the Month

Musings from a Stonehead:

"They think keeping chickens is cheap and easy with minimal effort involved.
The reality is somewhat different.'

The First Woman (CED in OK)

The NYTimes Magazine yesterday had as its theme obituaries of people who died in 2011.  Included was a piece on people who were the "first African-American" to fill various positions.  I thought of that when today I saw this obit for Lori Ross of Ardmore, OK. It includes the paragraph:

"A 1952 graduate of Wayne High School, Wayne, Okla., she then attended East Central University, Ada, Okla. Mrs. Ross was the first woman in the State of Oklahoma to hold the position of County Executive Director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Farm Service Agency. Following her retirement after more than 30 years of employment with that agency, she worked at the Marietta Public Works Authority and also the First National Bank of Marietta. She and Marty Ross were married in Dallas, Texas, on March 13, 1971.

I understand that different states accepted women as CED's at different times.  I remember one district director in NC telling me confidentially he didn't believe in them: women shouldn't be subject to the rough language irate NC farmers could use.  One longs for such Southern chivalry today.  Or maybe he was pulling my leg?

EU Standards for Poultry, and Spanking

Via Musings from a Stonehead, I learn that the UK has new standards for poultry, bigger and better cages if I understand.  This is, I think, the wave of the future. The richer we get, the more we pamper our children, our animals, our environment.  (I realize "pamper" reveals my age.)

See Megan McArdle's piece on spanking, the decline thereof.  She argues that modern parenting is much more intensive, which to me reflects the greater availability of time and energy for child-rearing, due in part to having fewer children per household.
[Updated--put comma in title for clarity]
[Updated 2-- a link to an effort to provide homes for former battery chickens. I guess some Brits really love their fowl.]

Merry Christmas

No posting til Monday.

Retirement Parties, Past and Present

As I said I went to Star Bryant's retirement reception/party last week, which caused me to remember some retirement parties of the past.

Some 30 years ago the usual party was at a restaurant, it was in honor of a white male, the man had started his ASCS career in a county office then moved to Washington,  the party usually had been organized by the female secretaries in the division in which the man worked, it featured a lot of drinking, most of the attendees were white men, predominantly of the political party of the honoree.

Star's party reversed most of those things, but the one constant was she started her career in the county office in Johnson County, NC in 1970 or so.  As she told the story, at least as I remember her telling the story, her minister sent her down to the CED at the time (William Weller(?)) because someone good/strong was needed to integrate the office (or maybe it was the tobacco market recorder position), or maybe both.

Afghanistan Status

Here's a Foreign Policy article reporting some of the positives from Afghanistan in the last 10 years: more peaceful (at least violent deaths are down from the 1990's), healthier, better educated, more equal for women. more prosperous.

Drones and Aerial Photography

Here's a piece at TPM about the use of drones within the US.  I wonder how long it will be before FSA's aerial photography is done by drones?  And disaster reporting? Fly a drone and provide a digital feed to a ground station to get good data on the extent of flooding, etc. Won't drones eventually be more economical than small planes or helicopters?  If they can stay up for 36 hours they can presumably accomplish more photography than manned aircraft.  And streaming the data back to the base station offers a lot of flexibility, particularly if you can feed it in as a layer to the GIS system.

I don't know: is FSA compliance still being done by aerial photography? Does ACRSI include spot checks?

The Proper Role of a Subordinate (Cont)

A while back I blogged about the proper role of a subordinate in the context of Suskind's "Confidence Men," suggesting Geithner slow-walked an Obama decision and Obama's subordinates didn't always jump to.

I'm now reading "Steve Jobs", by Isaacson which includes an anecdote praising Steve's subordinates for refusing to obey his decision:

"Veterans of the Mac team had learned that they could stand upto Jobs.  If they knew what they were talking about, he would tolerate the pushback, even admire it.  By 1983 those most familiar with his reality distortion field had discovered something further: They could, if necessary, just quietly disregard what he decreed.  If they turned out to be right, he would appreaicte their renegade attitude and willingness to ignore authority.  After all, that's what he did." page 145

 The anecdote relates to the selection of the disk drive provider for the Mac (eventually Sony, rather than the upstart manufacturer Jobs said to use).

Misguided Obeisance to the Military

The Post's blog writes about a directive to TSA to expedite clearances for military personnel which was included in the appropriations bill.  As I comment there, the biggest terrorist toll in the U.S. since 9/11 was the work of a uniformed military man.  Our military thankfully still reflects our society, for all its good and bad.

On the Absolute Importance of Financial Incentives

From a Post article on the difficulties of drafting quarterbacks, the Dallas Cowboys personnel man opines:

Wooten said he also shied away from players considered unmotivated because they weren’t yet on an NFL team’s payroll.
“You inevitably hear a coach say to you, ‘When he starts getting paid, it’s going to be different,’ ” Wooten said. “That should send a red flag. I have been around long enough to know that money doesn’t make players better. If anything, it makes them worse.”