The Loss of Quality

One of the things which has happened over my lifetime is a loss of quality:

1. in music.  Used to be we had audiophiles who spent thousands on their amplifiers and tuners, their speakers and turntables.
2. in photography.  Used to be we had photo buffs who spend thousands on their camera, and meters and lenses, and filters.  Then we had digitial photography, with the arms race in the sensors.

Now we have smart phones which take good-enough pictures and which produce good enough sound.

The Post and Corn

Yesterday's Post, as part of a concentration on corn, had an interesting article defending corn. What was interesting was the use of calories per acre:

"In the calorie department, corn is king. In 2014, average yield in the United States was 171 bushels per acre. ... Each bushel weighs 56 pounds and each pound of corn yields about 1,566 calories. That means corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre. ....If you had taken our 2014 corn harvest of 14.2 billion bushels and used it to feed people, it would have met 17 percent of the entire world’s caloric needs.
By contrast, wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million. Rice is also very high-yielding, at 11 million, and potatoes are one of the few crops that can rival corn: They also yield about 15 million ....Other vegetables, while much more nutritious than corn, wheat or potatoes, are far less energy-dense. Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million."

Each person needs about 1 million calories per year. 

The Draft for Women? Blast from Past

I was a draftee.

Can you believe that the wikipedia entry for "draft" refers to a sports draft?

If you want the real thing, you need to search for "conscription"

Prof. Somin at Volokh Conspiracy blogs about a current suit alleging that requiring only 18 year males to register is discriminatory.  It probably is, though despite my believing there were benefits for society from the draft, we should probably just junk the whole thing.

Jail Breaks and Inertia

Two notable jail breaks recently--the Mexican drug lord and the two cons in Dannemora prison.  In both cases the escape route was a set of passages connecting the jail cell to the outside world.  I don't know how often there are these sorts of escapes, but they've been happening at least since Dumas wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo".

It's bureaucratic inertia at work.  The easy way to screw up such plans is simply to move prisoners around to different cells at unpredictable intervals.  Someone can invest the time and energy and willpower to create a passage from a cell to the world only if reasonably assured that they will benefit by it--remove the assurance and they won't invest the effort.  But given that prisons are bureaucracies devoted to maintaining control and order, the idea of creating uncertainty is unthinkable.  (To be fair, such transfers would likely disrupt established social routines within the prison, so might well be more undesirable than an escape every x years.)

Anyone Want a New Outer?

Verizon sent me an email with the heading:

Get a new outer for $199.99 plus taxes and shipping‏ 

 Somehow they think our household does a lot more e-stuff than it does.  

The case of the missing "r".

Two Recommendations--An Empire on the Edge and Ghosts of Versailles

Just because, I'd recommend a book and an opera.

The  book is one I haven't finished reading, but I like very much.  It's "An Empire on the Edge", a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer.  It's the British side of the road to our Revolution, with lots of stuff I didn't know. (John Brown played as big a role in the Revolution as John Brown did in the Civil War.) Particularly like the interplay of politics, personality, economics, and government, with just a tad of bureaucracy thrown in.

The opera is "The Ghosts of Versailles", which we saw at Wolf Trap Friday in a chamber version. No DVD available for anyone outside the 1 percent, but if you have a chance, go see it.  Laughed until I cried.

House Ag Appropriations

From the House appropriations ag subcommittee;

Here's the committee report on MIDAS:


"Information Technology Waste

.—GAO and USDA’s OIG have issued reports that highlight poor program performance in the past and uncertainty regarding USDA’s capacity to effectively manage IT acquisitions in the future. Auditors found that the Secretary halted further development on the MIDAS program after spending almost $500 million for nearly a decade on planning and development of this critical system. This investment of time and limited resources has resulted in the delivery of about one-fifth of the functionality intended for twice the projected cost. While the Secretary has highlighted saving hundreds of millions of dollars on IT, the Committee notes that MIDAS is a prime example of government waste and inefficiency. MIDAS is still expected to cost another $330 million over the lifecycle of the project, yet the system will have severely reduced capacity. The total cost will equal almost three times the original projections.

GAO noted that problems with MIDAS were due to the lack of implementation of USDA and Farm Service Agency (FSA) program management policies and best practices covering key disciplines such as requirements for development and management, project planning and monitoring, system testing, and executive-level governance. Following project stoppage, the Department has been exploring other options—at an additional cost to taxpayers and time spent on these modernization efforts—to provide the functionality that USDA had promised Congress and the agricultural community, including a modernized acreage reporting system and an online office for American farmers and ranchers to access. Given the lack of IT leadership demonstrated by the Secretary on the MIDAS investment, the Committee remains concerned as to whether the Department will be any more successful with IT acquisition activities moving forward than it was in the past with MIDAS. The Committee includes statutory language that places spending controls on both MIDAS and other IT acquisitions.

FSA IT.


—FSA’s management of certain IT projects has produced increased costs, bloated budgets, and inaccurate budget estimates. These projects include the MIDAS program and increased or inaccurate charges from the National Information Technology Center, for which costs have tripled since fiscal year 2014. The agreement includes statutory language that allows FSA to release funds for farm program delivery IT projects only after review by the GAO and approval by the Committees on Appropriations of the House and Senate. The roadmap submitted by FSA in fiscal year 2015 was the first step to bringing accountability and guidance to almost a decade of mismanagement. In this regard, the GAO and the OIG are recommending that FSA establish a plan to guide the agency in adopting recognized best practices and in following agency policy. The GAO also recommends that the agency adhere to specific practices within key management disciplines before proceeding with further system development. FSA is directed to continue quarterly briefings in writing for the Committees on Appropriations of the House and Senate regarding all IT projects and activities related to farm program delivery.

And an "attaboy" for NRCS:

The Committee commends NRCS for its organizational realignment of administrative functions and appreciates the savings this will generate. NRCS has worked to become a more efficient, accountable organization, and the Committee encourages NRCS to work with other agencies within USDA to do the same

Clear Writing

Clear writing seems to be a perennial topic.  When I started work, the (retiring) lead editor in Directives had completed a series of writing classes and had incorporated her wisdom in the handbook.  10 years later Jimmy Carter came along and we had to certify that our regulations were clearly written. 

Skip ahead to today and this Post piece describes a new effort.  The problem is eternal, and the fight against jargon is worthy.

Dairy Farming in Italy?

I'm sure this isn't representative of Italian dairies. The story about driving cows 100 miles between winter and summer pastures is interesting, though it leaves many questions unanswered. (Since the lead character is a cheesemaker, I'm assuming these are dairy cows, though the wikipedia entry is less clear. )  My big question: when and where are they milked? Milking during the drive seems unfeasible, which would seem to imply milking only at one end of the drive or the other. So these surely aren't milked for the 300 days standard for Holsteins in my youth.  And where are the calves--do they make the drive as well?


I vaguely remember in my youth reading about herds in Switzerland going from one pasture to the other. I suppose the same issues arise.

GAO Report on MIDAS

Full report

It seems a bit harder on USDA than the OIG report.