Ben Franklin, the Chinese and Soybeans

I understand Ben Franklin imported the soybean  because of  tofu.  Today China accounts for 60 percent of soybean imports.

Suicides and Combat Deaths

According to this military suicides exceeded the number of combat deaths in Afghanistan in 2012. We don't pay much attention to either these days but apparently suicides are up and combat deaths down.  There might even be a relationship: possibly combat creates meaning which is missing when based in the states?  I don't know.

Nevada and Voter ID

I don't have much problem with phasing in voter ID requirements, as long as it recognizes the problems of the elderly (and others).  I'm struck by this paragraph in a Politico story:

"One state, Nevada, is proposing a different kind of voter ID law — one that would cull photos from the DMV and state databases rather than making voters bring their IDs to the polls. If a voter doesn’t have a photo in the database, they would be photographed at the polling station.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/voter-id-battle-set-to-rage-again-86080.html#ixzz2Hmgw08u0

Makes sense to me.  If the bureaucracy already has a photo associated to a name, why not put the burden on the bureaucracy instead of the citizen.

The Oscars and Bureaucrats

The papers today note some of the top movies are favorable to DC figures, although the Post calls them "bureaucrats".  I don't think Lincoln qualifies as a bureaucrat, he was a politician and a good one.  The heroes of "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" could be called bureaucrats I guess, and since they'll never make a movie, good, bad or indifferent, about a USDA employee, it's about the best we can do.  (I enjoyed "Lincoln" and "Argo", haven't seen ZDT yet.)

The Past Was Long Ago--Pope Pius XII and the Nobility

Via Brad DeLong, this is the speech Pope Pius XII gave to the "nobility" (I think of the Vatican, but I'm not clear on it) in 1943.  (DeLong is blogging WWII.) What struck me was how archaic the sentiments seem: the belief in the duty of the nobility, the patriarchy, the antagonism towards both the Reformation and the Enlightenment, etc.  It's a long way from this speech to Vatican II.

Video Teleconferencing Systems

This notice announces that systems bought in 2009 for FSA state offices are no longer under warranty and may be repurposed or disposed of.  Apparently they've been replaced by Cisco systems.  That should tell me two things:

• video teleconferencing has been very productive.  I suspect, though I'm too lazy to check, I've expressed skepticism on the point in the past.  So I'm glad to hear I was wrong, because in theory I'm all for it.
• the Cisco system is a very big upgrade over the Microsoft system.  If not, what's the justification for replacement?  There may be a hint when the notice says that many of the Microsoft systems are still workable; maybe they weren't very durable.

Profiling the Customer

Had an appointment at my HMO yesterday (Kaiser).  For the first time the technician was filling out fields for my race, languages, etc.  He was apologetic, explaining it was a new requirement.  I was struck by the parallel with FSA/USDA getting similar information from its customers. 

But his explanation was a bit different than FSA's would be: because Reston has so many people from different countries, the big justification for the data was to determine whether there were language barriers and, if so, whether Kaiser could get an interpreter with the right skills.

Whoops--Meade Screws Up

From my RSS feed I see this at the Ann Althouse blog:

The Clown Suit Solution.

by noreply@blogger.com (Meade)

Did you see the comment by Patrick that Glenn linked to:

“I think it would be the ultimate act of honesty to dress the Secretary of the Treasury in a clown costume. I have no objection to that at all.”

Well that gave me an idea. What would be the value of having all 14.5 million federal government employees - starting at the top with the President - made to wear clown suits for, say, the next four years? Who knows? But the free market should give us an idea, right?

For whatever reason, this is no longer on the blog.  I don't know if the blogger thought better of the taste of the comment, but I doubt it, or actually checked his facts and found there are more like 2.1 million federal employees.  I'm tempted to put it down to the conservative mindset, but I'll attribute it to a screw up, nothing more significant.

[Update: this morning the post is back up on the site, with no change]

Words for the Ages?

"A little petting each day goes a long ways towards making the livestock [people] manageable."  From the Sugar Mountain Blog, brackets added.

Killing Farm Subsidies

That we should do so is Robert Samuelson's opinion in today's Post.