USDA Supports Terrorists?

What can you call beings who decapitate other beings but terrorists?

Maybe you call them "decapitating flies", and distribute them in Alabama because they decapitate fire ants? All part of the service provided by your Department of Agriculture and the Extension Service.

Viral Contagion and Networks: the Early Republic

One of my things in recent years is becoming more aware of the importance of networks in various forms and contexts.  I've the pet idea that the American Revolution laid the basis for the nation simply by creating networks across colonies which then enabled various forms of innovation and development in the early republic.  That may be true, but Boston 1775 notes an occasion where networks were not good; the first(?) tour of states by President Washington also seems to have spread the flu into New England.

Software "Containers" and Object-Oriented

Back when I exited the field, "object-oriented" software was the buzzword of the day.  If I remember, the idea was that a given software "object" was self-contained; once the object was coded and tested, you could count on it.

So 17 years pass and now the NYTimes describes some outfit doing software containers as the hot new thing.  Too much time has passed for me to understand the difference, except for a vague idea that software containers may be more independent of their operating system and programming language than the old "objects'. 

Seems I'll have to add "containers" to "string theory" as cases where the advance of knowledge has left me in the dust.

Dairy Program, Number of Dairy Farms

USDA is reporting that over half the nation's dairy farms have signed up in the new dairy program.

What struck me was the small number of farms. According to Hoard's Dairyman as of 2012:

Since 1992, the drop in licensed, or so-called commercial dairy farms, has been 80,028 from 131,509 to 51,481. That’s a 61 percent drop during that time. Of the 80,028 dairies that exited the business during the past two decades, the vast majority, 57,497 or 72 percent, sold their cows between 1992 and 2002. That is an average of 5,861 dairy herds each year. Since then, the total has been cut more than in half. From 2003 to 2011, only 22,531 businesses left our industry for a nine-year average of 2,503.

Some law schools are concerned about the drop in enrollment, but they haven't seen a 61 percent drop.

Crisis in the Orchard

John Phipps links to a great report on troubles in the North Carolina orchards.  It's got some age on it, which explains why you haven't read about the crisis in today's media, but the poor guy is going to lose his tractor.

The Re-emergence of "Traditional Values"

One day we're told that college-educated get married and stay married, and marriage makes you happy.

Another day we see reports on the importance of self-control, the famous marshmallow experiment predicts success in life (4 year olds told if they don't eat a marshmallow now, they'll get 2 later).

A third day we read about how London taxi drivers, who have to memorize all the streets before they can drive for hire, are shown to have much larger areas of the brain associated with memory.

[Just saw a piece on the importance of family dinners.]

 I can remember when the family was considered oppressive, something to be freed from, and divorce was a step on the road to liberation.

I can remember when going with the flow was the watchword.

I can remember when practice and memorization were tied to the past, to the unenlightened past.


I grew up in a time and place where family was the norm, self-control was expected, and strengthening one's mind was the result of habits.


What lesson do I take from all these: in part there are intellectual fads, in part we humans ride a pendulum of theories, never coming to rest on the truth.

French Dairy Mating

Modern Farmer posts on a French site on mating dairy cows and bulls:

"A consortium of French breeding associations launched the site in October after a farming summit. Breeders write up their cows’ online profiles, recording age and race (eye color is assumed to be brown), followed by their ideal traits in a mate. Milking prowess in its female progeny, perhaps? Muscular fitness? Or perhaps an unfettered ability to knock up his mate on the first go-around?"

 I'm curious, since my impression is that in America the data on the bulls and their progeny are posted/public, not the data on the dams.  Not sure if that's a true difference, and if it is, why it might exist.  Certainly the universe of bulls is much smaller than the universe of cows, which might be one factor.

The Decline of the Mainline Church

The statistical summary for the Presbyterian Church is out.  Not good news for anyone tied to the church, either willfully or by ancestry (me).  Between 2010 and 2013, the active church membership declined by 12.6 percent. 

[Updated: added "active"]

Who Knew Wikipedia Had Bureaucrats?

It does.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats

Now that the found of all knowledge has succumbed to bureaucracy, it's only a matter of time before we bureaucrats take over the world.

Snow Day

Welcome to Washington all you newly-elected senators and representatives, welcome to the snow.

We had about 4 inches in Reston, enough to cause big problems because the forecast was for 1-2 inches and OPM and schools didn't close.   I wonder if Congress gave the Weather Service enough money to upgrade their model to surpass the Europeans whether they could have gotten a better forecast.

Of course people in the Syracuse area would sneer at us Virginians for not being able to drive in snow.

[Updated:  but Bao Bao, the giant panda cub, enjoyed it. ]