MOOC's and Globalization

A "MOOC"  is a massive open on-line course which has gained a lot of attention in recent days.  One of the justifications for ousting the president of the University of Virginia was she wasn't moving fast enough to deal with such challenges.  Somewhere in the newspapers today was a discussion of them, with the casual information that most enrollment in the biggest MOOC's came from outside the U.S.  And Margaret Saletan, of University Diaries, has commented on the foreign students who signed up for her MOOC (a mini-MOOC on poetry).

I wonder about the impacts: if I'm a professor in Italy, or Kenya, or somewhere else and some of my students start to compare my course with the MOOC from Stanford, what happens? Do I raise my game? Do I try to outlaw such competition? Do I learn from the MOOC? 

On a different subject, it's interesting the new President of Egypt has a Phd from SoCal. 

Once Rural, Always Rural

And, a press release a while back from Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) stated that, “Today, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment to S. 3240, the Farm Bill, offered by [Sen. Moran] that will make certain rural communities throughout Kansas remain eligible for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development loan and grant programs. In the absence of this amendment, nearly 1,000 rural communities across the country would have become ineligible for USDA funds due to small increases in population identified by the recent 2010 Census. USDA Rural Development programs help provide affordable single and multi-family housing, finance water and waste loans and grants, and support essential community facilities like hospitals and schools.”

My interpretation: once you're "rural", you're always "rural".  Increasing population would seem to say the RD programs are working, so when do you declare success and leave?  (Granted, the fact Sen. Moran is a conservative is one reason for me to ding him for hypocrisy.)

Commenting on Commenting

Sometimes I learn something new.  Just the other day I realized I should be used "reply" to address comments, rather than just adding a comment.  Why it took years to learn this, when I was well aware of it when I comment on others' blogs is a mystery.

On the Faillibility of CBO Projections

"A major point of contention has been the crop insurance program, which cost about $7.3 billion last year, up from $951 million in 2000, or about $1.2 billion adjusted for inflation.”

Now I copied that from somewhere, but I've now had a senior moment and forgotten where--perhaps the NY Times story on the consideration of the farm bill.

Anyway, my point: I don't know how CBO scored the 2002 and 2008 farm bills, but I strongly suspect they didn't project $7.3 billion.

Got going and found this:

More specifically, when the 2008 farm bill was enacted, CBO estimated that the five-year cost
(FY2008-FY2012) for the major farm support programs—commodities, conservation, crop
insurance, renewable energy, and exports—would be $83.3 billion, or an average of $16.7 billion
per year. More current CBO projections, which include actual spending in FY2008 and FY2009
for these programs, show that spending for these programs is expected to total $86.7 billion (an
average of $17.3 billion per year), or $3.4 billion above the five-year 2008 CBO estimate. Most
of the difference between the 2008 estimate and more recent estimates, however, is attributable to
higher than expected crop insurance spending ($6.7 billion above estimates in 2008), [emphasis aqdded] which is offset by lower than expected spending for farm commodity and farm conservation programs.

My point: CBO is the best we've got, but their record isn't perfect. And decisions Congress makes based on the projections (which they often ignore) will also be imperfect.

The "Nanny" State, Keeping Us Alive

Sarah Kliff at Ezra Klein's blog provides data from the New England Journal of Medicine on what we die of.  (Around 1812 some of us exploded.)  There's a chart summarizing the differences between 1900 (my parents were alive) and 2010 (I'm alive).  I'm copying the graph:

I think the declines in many causes are attributable in part to "nanny" government, that government which ensures people, particularly in urban areas, have clean water and good sanitation, which oversees inoculations for things like diptheria and flu, which fights  TB (which my mother had),  (I understand some will argue against government intrusion.  I remember when I got my TB vaccination in school, then my arm started to get swollen and painful.  It was then I learned  about mom's TB, which meant that my body reacted to the shot. There are gains to government intrusion, as there are costs, but I'm more impressed by the gains, at least in the field of public health.)

You really ought to read the Journal article in its entirety.  Who knew that in 1912 they were worried about sedentary life caused by the automobile, or boasting of the superiority of Americans at the Olympics because of the diversity of our races?  It's  fascinating how other strands of our history appear in the annals of medicine.

John Boyd Speaks

In Washington Post's Magazine, here.

Farming: Capital Requirements Keep Growing

Seems to me a story which the news media never covers is the continual increase in the capital needed to farm successfully.  I go back to roughly 1950, when dad bought a John Deere tractor (model M, I think) and sold the team of horses. Turned out it meant investing in a new suite of machinery to make it work.  If the farm was marginal before, with the increased capital requirement it was even more shaky.  When you were talking making a living on the farm in that time frame, it was "go big or go under."

All that was triggered by reading this report from Illinois on the increase in the value of machinery from 2000 to 2010.  Though the study is interested in the curves, and the cost per acre curve is interesting (i.e. big acreage is more cost efficient), I'm most struck by the absolute dollar figures, from the mid 6 digits up. Oh, machinery prices also increased.

The Holier Than Thou Organics

Research summary:"These results suggest that exposure to organic foods may lead people to affirm their moral identities, which attenuates their desire to be altruistic."
 

EPA and Aerial Observation

From Farm Policy this morning:

"And, Pete Kasperowicz reported yesterday at The Hill’s Floor Action Blog that, “Rep. Shelley Moore Capito and 10 other House Republicans want to prevent the EPA from conducting air surveillance of farms.
“Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and 11 other House members introduced a bill Tuesday that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from conducting aerial drone surveillance of farms to enforce the Clean Water Act, or using any other overhead surveillance.”

And this report on the farm bill passing the Senate this afternoon reports:

On a 56-43 vote, Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) came surprisingly close to winning a flat ban on the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct any aerial surveillance to inspect or record images of agricultural operations

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77703.html#ixzz1ySpSETnZ

I'm just waiting for these efforts, or a renewed court challenge based on the Bill of Rights,  to spill over on FSA's aerial photography

EWG Loses One

An issue I personally think EWG should have won on: I believe in transparency. But here's the Washington Post editorial on the farm bill:

But if there’s anything the farm lobby dislikes more than losing its subsidies, it’s letting the public follow its money. Senate leaders barred consideration of the Begich-McCain amendment, which means there won’t even be a floor debate on increasing transparency in farm programs over the next five years. It’s not an auspicious start.