What Makes for Contented Cows? Robots!

Nathanael Johnson at Grist has a post describing on the use of robots by dairymen, quoting an observation that cows may be more contented (robotic routines are more stable [until they aren't]).

A Billion Is a Token Amount

So says the greenies, the National Sustainable AGriculture Coalition commenting on the Republican budget (from agriculture.com)

“While we continue to oppose re-opening the farm bill, we are thankful the draft House budget resolution released today is asking for farm bill cuts of only $1 billion …over the next decade, though it raises the rather obvious question of why bother to go through an agonizing re-opening the farm bill via the budget reconciliation process for such a token amount."

Sen. Ev Dirksen had the famous quote about "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you've got real money. Back then the federal budget was a bit over 100 billion, not the 3-4 trillion of today.

Just Say "No" in Olden Days

From a post by a museum curator discussing an exhibit of mostly 18th century shoes:

A pair of French garters (c. 1800) features early metallic clasps, as opposed to the ribbons typically used by men and women to secure their stockings just above or just below the knee. One garter says ‘Halt’ and the other ‘You can go no further.’ Some garments are on display, including one pairing of an 1837 silk brocade wedding dress and matching shoes.

FSA Gets Publicity for Midas

Farm Futures has a post on FSA implementation of MIDAS, based on some interview/speech by Dolcini.

I see they're doing a pilot project in a few IL/IA counties to handle acreage reporting for both FSA and crop insurance.  I wish them the best, though if you search on "acreage reporting" in this blog you'll see it's been a long slog.  I wonder if FSA got the $10 million Congress promised for progress by last Sept. 30.

2008 GAO Helps Clinton on Email Records?

In the flap over Clinton's emails, I've not seen any mention of the GAO report in 2008 on problems in preserving e-records.  Turns out I included much of its summary and commented on it back then.

I won't repeat it here, but this paragraph is interesting in light of the current controversy:

"Preliminary results of GAO's ongoing review of e-mail records management at four agencies show that not all are meeting the challenges posed by e-mail records. Although the four agencies' e-mail records management policies addressed, with a few exceptions, the regulatory requirements, these requirements were not always met for the senior officials whose e-mail practices were reviewed. Each of the four agencies generally followed a print and file process to preserve e-mail records in paper-based recordkeeping systems, but for about half of the senior officials, e-mail records were not being appropriately identified and preserved in such systems. Print and file makes no sense--electronic is cheaper [regular type is GAO, italic is my 2008 comment]

 Let me repeat words: "followed a print and file process..."  In other words, the idea in these agencies, and I think generally throughout government, was:

1. not all emails were official records worthy of retention, just as not all paper documents generated within an agency were official records worthy of retention. 
2. someone was supposed to winnow the wheat from the chaff, go through the email, select the ones which merited retention, print them out, and file them in the paper filing system which was governed by records retention schedules approved by NARA. 

My comments then, though not well expressed, were based on these ideas:

1. the cost of retaining all electronic records was low, and becoming lower with every year Moore's law applied
2. the cost of reviewing, printing, and filing email as prescribed by NARA  was high
3. the likelihood of a bureaucracy doing no. 2 in an effective way was very low, as borne out by GAO's report
4. therefore, agencies should just keep all email in a searchable repository.

In the context of Clinton, there's two issues: the propriety of using a private email server for her work, on which I've no comment, and whether she complied with rules on preserving records, on which I will comment.  Clinton seems in the end to have complied better with the 2008 rules than many of the senior officials GAO looked at.  Were there changes in the rules after 2008?  I'm sure there were, as NARA continued to play a game of catchup, trying ineffectively to bring its filing systems and records retention systems into the modern word.  So I'm not saying she followed all applicable rules--she may have, may not have. I am saying her end result, in terms of selection and preservation, is well within the range for other senior officials. 

I'm also saying I was right in 2008--the simple effective rule is to retain all email records from email servers used for any government business, and let them be searchable.

It's Pi Day--Not

Both Post and Times have pieces today on Pi day, the idea that today's date, 3/14/15 expresses the first digts of Pi.  Aside from providing an excuse for mathematicians to place pieces in newspapers (otherwise a rare occurrence) and perhaps for pie shops to sell a few more, , it's a stupid idea.  In a rational world (i.e., in Europe) today's date would be 14.3.15 or 14.3.2015, with the data in ascending order.  In a rational world there would never be a Pi-day.

A Praiseworthy Blog Post: On the Failure of Foresight

Credit where due: Will Oremus at Slate has a post, a very meritorious post.  (Have I ever admitted I was wrong? Don't think so.  Then I'm not wrong much.)  Subject: Snapchat.  Some sentences:

And then I wrapped things up by predicting that he'd look back someday in bitter regret at passing up the $3 billion. It was a pretty zingy blog post, if I may say so.
It was also, as is probably quite clear by now, utterly wrong.

It Takes a System

That's what I'd name this Vox post, which is actually named: "These 4 Big Inventions Were Terrible...Until Somebody Fixed Them".  My favorite is the time gap between the invention of the tin can and the invention of the can opener.

ARC and PLC Costs Increase

David Rogers in Politico reports on the new CBO estimates of program costs under the 2014 farm bill.  ARC and PLC costs will be higher than estimated, at least in the first years.

Should Social Security Handle All Government Websites

FCW reports SSA has most of the topranking Federal websites.