Maybe I Won't Vote for Obama

First his White House doesn't know English, then I see this (one of a series of photos in one of the posts at Obamafoodorama on the Easter egg roll):

Always had problems doing pushups.

"The Principal Is Your Pal"

Has no one ever heard of that? Does no one have an English teacher named Ms Murgatroyd who harped on the differences between "principal" and "principle", between "capitol" and "capital", between "its" and "it's"?

Apparently the answer in Obama's White House is "no", as witness this post from a deputy press secretary: "White House Report – The Buffett Rule: A Basic Principal of Tax Fairness"

I do wish the world weren't going to hell in a handbasket. 

A (Corn) Straw in the Wind

Des Moines Register reports China bought 50,000 tons of corn from Ukraine.  With corn prices high, we're going to bring a lot of land into the production picture; all it takes is the right land, the right climate, the right knowledge and the right infrastructure.  Over time the result will be a glut of corn on the market and depressed prices.  That's my geezer talking.

Reston and Tall Buildings

Matt Yglesias dislikes DC's low buildings--says true urban advantages come from high density and tall buildings.  Along those lines, the father of Reston is interviewed here and says:

"Tall buildings are good because they preserve open space. If you take a tall building and take it all down to two, three or four stories, you use up all the grass and use up all the open space. So if you have a tall building, you are helping the community."

 The original plans for Reston had more townhouses and fewer single-family houses, but that mix didn't sell well in the 1960's and 1970's.  Times have changed.  The Post had an article today on the redevelopment near Mount Vernon square, which is the location of the original main DC library.  Apparently there's now good demand for downtown apartments from people like Mr. Yglesias.

The Green Jacket Wearer Says: Open the Doors

Via John Sides at the Monkey Cage, from a post reporting on interviews/surveys of golfers:

Does it bother you that the club's membership excludes women?
The players say... No: 90%
"Nothing about the club's policies bothers me."
"It's their club. They can do as they like."
"You're asking the wrong people this question."
Yes: 10%
"Yeah, I care, and you can quote me on it." —Bubba Watson

In Defense of Conferences

The lead sentence of a Matt Yglesias post:

"I was at a Kaufmann Foundation conference of economics writers late last week, and as usual at a good event like this I feel I learned a ton of stuff in informal conversations with people there and sharpened my own thinking on tons of points." [my emphasis]

 I think that's true and it's one reason why teleconferencing and similar alternatives to in-person meetings can only go so far. When dealing with people in the flesh, particularly people you've never met or don't usually deal with, you learn a lot.  That logic is why, according to Walter Isaacson's bio, Steve Jobs was careful to design Apple's building to foster meetings.  And a similar process occurred in Bell Labs.

I Don't Understand: FSA Versus NRCS

I was solemnly assured by a number of people (all ASCS/FSA employees) that the SCS/NRCS conservationists spent all their time riding around in their pickup trucks and never could be found in the office.   And ASCS employees never lie.  So what's with this Federal Computer Week article on the NRCS "streamlining plan" which reports:

Currently, the USDA field conservationists report spending as little as 20 to 40 percent of their time in the field working with customers

The expected outcome of the initiative is for field staff to be able to spend up to 75 percent of their time in the field with customers, the plan said.

The initiative will free up the equivalent of an additional 1,200 to 1,500 field technical staff that will be redirected back into customer contact, the USDA said in its plan.

  Here's the plan which is only 5 months old (only the latest news on this blog). It's actually part of the USDA plan.  Funny, though, it sounds basically like the vision which Kevin Wickey and other NRCS people were trying to implement back in the Glickman days.  Which as I understood it, was putting everything on a laptop which a conservationist would need in the field.

Urban Greenhouses

The NYTimes reports on plans for 100,000 square foot greenhouse on the roof of a former Navy warehouse in Brooklyn.  Here the plan is for hydroponics.  Unlike vertical farming, these things make some sense to me.  I say "some" because I've got reservations: in this case I'd assume the economics are based on both a successful hydroponic farm and use of the warehouse.  Presumably if one or the other runs into trouble, the whole enterprise becomes a bit dubious. And a dual-function site requires two sets of expertise so perhaps two sets of  management and labor, which means it's more complicated than just a site dedicated to one function. But if the people can make it work, it's better use of the area and the resources, as well as reducing the need for transportation of the crops.

See this treehugger piece on a similar project

Your USDA at Work, Promoting Aussie Happiness

Beer paddles in Australia, via James Fallows and, according to him, sponsored by the USDA:

Hot News--No Marketing Quota

Ironically, given the prominence of Wickard v. Filburn  in the arguments over the constitutionality of the PPACA (healthcare), USDA just announced there will be no marketing quotas for 2013 crop wheat.  (Because the 2008 farm bill only covered through 2012, the 1938 AAA comes back into effect for 2013 wheat.  If the Secretary thought quotas were needed to balance production and demand, he would have announced they were in effect and called for a referendum of wheat producers to vote on whether the quotas would be implemented.  If the producers approved quotas, then we would be back in the situation which created Wickard v Filburn.