That's what I took away from their article today on teenagers. Apparently the true token of love today is information, specifically one's password. All very touching, but surely the Times should point out the truth: you shouldn't have just one password, but multiple passwords.
[Update: see this Consumer Reports piece after Zappos.]
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
War Horse and Agriculture
Just saw the movie War Horse, a very pretty film. But Steven Spielberg is no farm boy. The first third of the movie is pre-war, when the thoroughbred Joey, the War Horse to-be, is trained both as a riding horse and a plow horse. In order to pay the rent, the father has promised the landlord to plant a field to turnips. Supposedly the field is both virgin and stony, impossible to plow. Sure enough, it's on the side of a hill and the ground is strewn with stones (though it's not clear whether they're weathered from the bed rock, which in Devon would be sedimentary, or glacial, rounded by water).
For dramatic purposes I can understand the decision to plow uphill, it makes the task for Joey more imposing, though it makes no sense from an erosion standpoint. When you see the first furrow plowed, and all subsequent furrows, somehow there's no stones in the soil, just good black soil.
Once the field is plowed, the father, limping from a war wound, starts sowing seed by hand. broadcasting across the furrows (no harrowing recorded). I could almost swear it was oats in the container, but I can't swear to it. Now, through the miracle of Hollywood, all that broadcast seed turned several weeks later into neat rows! of turnips. Unfortunately there's a big storm which somehow seems to uproot all the turnips, ruining the crop and creating another crisis for the family to face. I suppose the torrents could have eroded the dirt between the rows, but that didn't seem to be what happened.
I could go on to criticize the placement of the machine guns, but I won't.
It's a must see, if only for Emily Watson, who's always great.
For dramatic purposes I can understand the decision to plow uphill, it makes the task for Joey more imposing, though it makes no sense from an erosion standpoint. When you see the first furrow plowed, and all subsequent furrows, somehow there's no stones in the soil, just good black soil.
Once the field is plowed, the father, limping from a war wound, starts sowing seed by hand. broadcasting across the furrows (no harrowing recorded). I could almost swear it was oats in the container, but I can't swear to it. Now, through the miracle of Hollywood, all that broadcast seed turned several weeks later into neat rows! of turnips. Unfortunately there's a big storm which somehow seems to uproot all the turnips, ruining the crop and creating another crisis for the family to face. I suppose the torrents could have eroded the dirt between the rows, but that didn't seem to be what happened.
I could go on to criticize the placement of the machine guns, but I won't.
It's a must see, if only for Emily Watson, who's always great.
Learning Self-Reliance in Scotland
The Stonehead and wife believe in self-reliance, so their sons learn cooking early.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Agriculture Is Solar-Powered
I have posted on hydroponic lettuce growing. If you believe the advocates of organic agriculture, commercial agriculture is essentially hydroponic, in that the soil is exhausted so the plants are growing using the nutrients supplied by chemical fertilizers. That's an exaggeration, but there's a bit of truth in it. That bit of truth means the salient fact about commercial agriculture is: it's solar-powered.
I wonder if anyone has done the calculation of the energy required to grow the crops we raise in the U.S.? If they have, then you could do a graphic showing the sources of all the energy required to maintain our economy, presumably with solar power being a significant contributor.
Being optimistic about the power of search engines, I tried to answer the question in the previous paragraph, which didn't give an exact answer but did lead to an interesting Harpers article including this:
I wonder if anyone has done the calculation of the energy required to grow the crops we raise in the U.S.? If they have, then you could do a graphic showing the sources of all the energy required to maintain our economy, presumably with solar power being a significant contributor.
Being optimistic about the power of search engines, I tried to answer the question in the previous paragraph, which didn't give an exact answer but did lead to an interesting Harpers article including this:
Nonetheless, more than two thirds of humanity's cut of primary productivity results from agriculture, two thirds of which in turn consists of three plants: rice, wheat, and corn.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Done List, Not To-do
I've probably been doing to-do lists for 60 years, off and on. I get a spasm of will-power, a resolve to do better than I've done in the past, a desire to be better organized: result, a to-do list. I write this because today's paper included a discussion of a new app for maintaining a to-do list. I used to be an early adopter, picking up new technology and new software, but no more. No iPhones or iPads for this geezer, no modern apps.
My obsolescence doesn't make a difference; my to-do lists in the past have always petered out very quickly, like water draining into the sand. The number of jobs on the list was always too long, the life of my resolve was too short, and the result was disillusionment.
Two weeks is no basis to judge, but I just may have found an approach which works better for me: the done list. Unfortunately I can't remember where I saw this suggested, but it's definitely not my idea. What I've done is forget the list of projects, it's not important, I know well enough the things I'd like to get done. The "done list" is simply a log of days and notifications of what I've done. My willpower extends (so far) to spending a little time doing something each day. By recording what I've done I get some reinforcement. It's the same psychology as the advice manuals on how to write: they say write something each day, every day.
My obsolescence doesn't make a difference; my to-do lists in the past have always petered out very quickly, like water draining into the sand. The number of jobs on the list was always too long, the life of my resolve was too short, and the result was disillusionment.
Two weeks is no basis to judge, but I just may have found an approach which works better for me: the done list. Unfortunately I can't remember where I saw this suggested, but it's definitely not my idea. What I've done is forget the list of projects, it's not important, I know well enough the things I'd like to get done. The "done list" is simply a log of days and notifications of what I've done. My willpower extends (so far) to spending a little time doing something each day. By recording what I've done I get some reinforcement. It's the same psychology as the advice manuals on how to write: they say write something each day, every day.
7 Feet Ain't What It Used To Be
Back in the days of my youth, long long ago, the 7-foot high jump was, I believe, a barrier. It represented something like the 4 minute mile, the 16 foot pole vault, the 60 foot shot put. Wikipedia confirms it was a barrier, which was broken in 1956.
But now it's not. Reston's Rashaan Jones, a high school junior, cleared it this week in an invitational meet. Congratulations to him. From the blog post:
But now it's not. Reston's Rashaan Jones, a high school junior, cleared it this week in an invitational meet. Congratulations to him. From the blog post:
Jones is among only seven others in Virginia high school indoor track history to have ever successfully cleared seven feet.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Grand Promises
Secretary Vilsack said, according to the Des Moines Register: "
I.e., bottomline, the task force was not going to achieve its goal timely, and likely wouldn't do it at all.
The members of the task force gulped, and proceeded to ignore the information. The textbook was actually delivered in 8 years, and was never used.
Two points Kahneman made: when the meeting took place, the members were near the peak of their commitment to the effort, and had just tackled some of the big, easy pieces, so they underestimated the drain on the effort from lessening commitment and grim reality.
“We are updating our computer software, which dates from the 1980s, so that farmers will be able to do much of the application and paperwork from home rather than have to personally visit a USDA field office,” Vilsack said during a stopover in Des Moines on his return from Hawaii, where he had addressed the American Farm Bureau Federation."By chance this came just as I was reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow", and had reached the point where he recounts a story that's appropos. Seems he was on a task force to come up with a textbook in Israel. They'd been working for a while (maybe a year, don't have the book handy), had an outline and a couple chapters drafted. So they were planning on when they'd finish, which they thought would be 2-2 1/2 years. Then Kahneman asked a task force member about his experience and knowledge of other similar efforts. The person asked, who had been in full agreement with the 2 year estimate, said that 40 percent of such efforts had never produced anything, that the rest had taken 7 years to accomplish the result, and that the task force in question was below average (in resources, etc.) compared to the other task forces he knew of.
I.e., bottomline, the task force was not going to achieve its goal timely, and likely wouldn't do it at all.
The members of the task force gulped, and proceeded to ignore the information. The textbook was actually delivered in 8 years, and was never used.
Two points Kahneman made: when the meeting took place, the members were near the peak of their commitment to the effort, and had just tackled some of the big, easy pieces, so they underestimated the drain on the effort from lessening commitment and grim reality.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Ambivalence About Farming
I wonder if there's any occupation/profession where there's no ambivalence. I felt a little ambivalence when I left the farm. And Bob at Pasture Raised... expresses his ambivalence in his most recent post (after a long absence). There might be more ambivalence among those who didn't grow up on a farm, but came to it later in life, perhaps with some rose-colored glasses.
Immigration and False Facts in NYTimes
The NY Times has an interesting op-ed article by a professor Dowell Myers, of SoCal, arguing that the immigration problem is over, because birth rates have fallen drastically, so our policies need to change. I'd like to believe him. Unfortunately, his facts are wrong, at least one of them:
Indeed, with millions of people retiring every week [emphasis added], America’s immigrants and their children are crucial to future economic growth: economists forecast labor-force growth to drop below 1 percent later this decade because of retiring baby boomers.If we have 2 million people retiring each week for 50 weeks, that's 1/3 of the nation retiring in a year. How easy it is to destroy one's credibility.
Surprising Energy Fact--Gas Prices
From the Des Moines Register, in an article discussing the adverse impact of lower natural gas prices on renewable energy:
"Natural gas prices have dipped from $11.50 per thousand cubic feet in mid-2008 to $2.77 per thousand cubic feet this week on the Chicago Board of Trade."
"Natural gas prices have dipped from $11.50 per thousand cubic feet in mid-2008 to $2.77 per thousand cubic feet this week on the Chicago Board of Trade."
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