"A Deal Deal"

One of my favorite movies is a minor Clint Eastwood film: Kelly's Heroes.  It's a weird combination of war escapade and satire, mocking both the military and the counter-culture, Westerns, and movies..   Eastwood leads a motley crew through German lines into a town to rob a bank of German gold.  However a squad of German tanks has also learned of the gold, so the good guys and bad guys face off in the town, eventually reaching an impasse.  That's the moment at which Don Rickles, playing a corrupt supply sergeant, persuades Telly Savalas that it's time to do a deal with the Germans to split the gold; as he describes it, a "deal deal".

 That's what Speaker Ryan did in the closing days of Congress, a deal deal.  That's what some Republicans, particularly Paul Hinderaker at Powerline, don't understand--politics as the art of the deal deal.

An End to Innovation: 3-D Printed Rocket Parts

Government Executive reports on NASA's development of 3-D printed rocket parts.

Discrimination in USDA

NYTimes has a piece on discrimination against Hispanics by USDA agencies.  Forest Service is mentioned.  It ends with this paragraph:

"The department’s Office of Advocacy and Outreach signed an agreement with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities in early December to fund 180 paid internships at the agency. The association represents more than 470 schools."

Farm Houses Better Than Hospitals

Benjamin Rush writes to George Washington, from Brad DeLong's blogging of the Revolution, describing the problems of his hospitals, which are more dangerous than Valley Forge.  He pleads:

Before any material change can be made in our System it will be in your Excellency’s power to stop in some measure the ravages our hospitals are making upon the army by ordering the Surgeons immediately to billet such of the sick as are able to help themselves in farm houses. The air and diet of a farmer’s kitchen are the best physic in the world for a Soldier worne down with the fatigues of a campaign.

More on Genetic Modification

Nathanael Johnson's piece at Grist on the complexity of defining GMO's. 

Bottom line: if you can't define it you have difficulty labeling it.

Cotton Humor from Chris Clayton

You have to know the background but this is from Chris Clayton's (tongue in cheek) 2016 Policy Outlook:

Cotton planting increases from 8.5 million acres to 16 million acres thanks to commodity certificates and USDA designating cottonseed as an oilseed eligible for PLC payments. The U.S. also files its annual report assuring the World Trade Organization that none of its commodity programs are market-distorting.

When Did the "East" Become the "North"

Brad DeLong blogs the American Revolution.  Today 
he quotes Washington's letter to the Continental Congress, his second in two days, on the dire situation of his army, now camping for the winter at Valley Forge:

We have, by a field return this day made no less than 2898 Men now in Camp unfit for duty because they are bare foot and otherwise naked and by the same return it appears that our whole strength in continental Troops (Including the Eastern Brigades which have joined us since the surrender of Genl. Burgoyne)....

You should read the whole thing if you're interested in history, but what catches my interest is the reference to the "Eastern Brigades".  The context makes it apparent that he's referring to men from NY and New England, people whom we today would call "Northerners" or "Yankess".  A glance at the map shows why the reference: New England does lie to the (north)east of the mid-Atlantic states.  (Maine is still known as "downeast".)

So why and when did the "North" become the "North", rather than the "East"?  I suppose the change in terminology would be associated with the rise of sections in the new nation, perhaps even accentuating sectional tensions.

Ag Policy and Crop Insurance

An Agpolicy piece on crop insurance, somewhat stale, discussing moves to have payment limitation on insurance and cut insurance subsidies.

Armed Forces Competition in Vietnam

Was channel surfing yesterday and found a professor, author of a book on bombing in the Vietnam War, talking about his conclusion. If the house weren't so full of books now, I'd buy it.

One of his themes was the competition between the Navy and Air Force over the bombing, including sending planes against a key bridge (which took 700 sorties to bring down) with no bombs, just to add another sortie to the scorecard.  That's sick.  It's also bureaucratic.

Dehorning Cattle and GMO

We mostly dehorned our dairy cows.  Why?  For safety, both for us (dad) and for the cows.   A cow has a whole lot of strength.  Cows have different personalities: some are affectionate, some are reserved, some are plain nasty.  Pair a nasty cow with horns and you have a risk of a bad injury.  Even a nice cow might injure you; it'd be an accident but still an injury.

So we dehorned our cows.  As soon as we could feel the nubbin of the developing horn we'd apply caustic paste which would burn away the growing point.  It really hurt the calf, but it was for everyone's good.  Kill dad and the cows would go for slaughter.  Keep him healthy and the cows would have more years of life, before going to slaughter. Such is the logic of the dairy farm.

Now CRISPR, gene editing, promises to eliminate that source of pain.  All good to my mind, but it's genetic modification. See this Mother Jones article