Shame on Tom Davis: the Cost of Being Wrong

I sometimes contact my representative and senators, but not often.  Never did before I retired.  I think the first time I did was to write Tom Davis, the Republican who was then my representative, supporting the idea of authorizing needle exchanges, perhaps in DC, perhaps nationally.  This was in the late 90's, when AIDS was still a terror. Congress had banned funding for needle exchanges and for research on needle exchanges.

Davis was a moderate Republican, who'd work across party lines, though shortly after I think he became chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign committee.  He later retired at a relatively early age.  He's well respected for his knowledge of politics and has often been interviewed on TV on various issues.   All in all, he was the sort of Republican who might have supported needle exchange.

But he didn't. He wrote back with an explanation of why he couldn't support the proposal.

It's now close to 20 years after my letter.  Congress, controlled by Republicans, has just removed the ban on funding needle exchange programs (see this fivethirtyeight post).  There's no telling how many lives were cost by the decision not to research exchanges.

Chinese Agriculture Is a Mess

That's the message I get from this interesting blog post.  It seems they have excess corn inventories and screwed up prices and programs.  It's a compendium of reports from Chinese officials and media.  This is just a taste:

The Caixin journalist observes that reforms of agricultural subsidies and procurement policies have been brewing over the last two years. Chinese officials have laid out a principle of detaching subsidy support from prices, but they have no clear policy to replace market-distorting price supports. The Caixin journalist observes that the government has put its hope in target price subsidy policies they have been testing for cotton in Xinjiang and soybeans in northeastern provinces since 2014, but many industry experts are pessimistic that these policies can be expanded to other commodities due to the extremely high administrative costs and other problems.

 It sounds as if they're where we were in the 1980's. [I've added the blog to my RSS feed.]

Farming as a Living and a Way of Life

Via the Rural Blog, this essay in Salon.  The writer grows 10 acres of organic vegetables in California, made $2500. (I'm not clear, that may be $2500 in addition to roughly $100 a week.)

I remember my mother grousing about the land-poor farmers, who'd be better off by selling and investing the money at 6 percent.  (I don't think that's particularly right--land values in upstate NY in the 1950's weren't that high.  And maybe it was my high school ag teacher who made the point in accounting for farming you needed to charge the cost of capital (land) and labor cost, before you got to management income.)

As she says, almost all small farmers these days have "city" jobs as my mother would have called them.  The full-time small farmer is mostly gone, or just surviving because she has the land and the house paid for, so low cash flow isn't that bad.

The rewards of a small farm are a degree of control and independence (though cows and hens are a ball and chain, and being a slave to the market counters the illusion  of control).  It's also great for raising kids--they get loads of time with their parents, and all sorts of learning experience, plus blisters.

Without lots of small farmers you don't have much rural life or community, because there's no one to support the churches, the farmers organizations, the community suppers, etc 

Defining "Engaged": Farming Versus Selling Guns

For several days we've known that Obama was going to announce actions on gun regulation which he could take on his authority, without relying on Congress to pass new laws.  I've been curious to see what they would be.  Remember that his actions on immigration are currently tied up in court because, it is claimed, he needed to follow the rule-making process in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and didn't   So my question was: would he try the same sort of thing on guns, or could he find some other ways to affect the sale and possession of guns.

It seems that he mostly has, and partially by definition of "engaged", which I find to be a parallel with the "actively engaged in farming" issue in payment limitation regulations. (Search for "actively engaged" to see prior posts on this.)

From this Post piece (currently with 1430+ comments):

That distinction centers on the phrase "engaged in the business." Those who are engaged in the business of selling firearms, such as firearm dealers, need to conduct background checks. Those who aren't, such as individuals selling guns, don't.

 The Post piece includes an interview with a law professor, whose discussion could equally apply to the "actively engaged" issue.  To recall: as Sen. Grassley can testify, some in Congress want the USDA to interpret "actively engaged" very strictly,  others want a very loose interpretation.  Typically because the farm state legislators are more continuously involved, USDA tends to follow the loose interpretation.  This favors the farm interest: everyone actively engaged can receive payments up to the limit.  For gun control, the politics reverse themselves: everyone actively engaged in gun dealing faces the regulations on sales.

The open question at the moment is a comparison of how Obama is promulgating his interpretation of "engaged" (i.e., proposed rule under APA or simply instructions to the bureaucrats) versus FSA's use of the regulatory procedure.  More to follow.

The Past Was Different

Via Brad DeLong, from Eleanor Roosevelt, a list of some of things not available in Britain in January 1946 (Roosevelt was about to travel to the UK):

"Then came these little items among the things the traveler must be sure to take to England.

• 'Women's hose—none available.'
• 'Low-heeled walking shoes—repairing impossible.'
• 'Clothes hangers.'
• 'Soap (hand, laundry, shampoo)—none available.'
• 'Razor blades—none available.'
• 'Shaving material of all kinds.'
• 'All cosmetics, creams, perfumes, colognes, nail polish, etc.'
• 'Bath towels, face towels, wash cloths, any necessary medicines, vitamin tablets, sugar, cigarettes, matches, chocolate candy, fruit juices, flashlight, personal stationery.'

It took a long time for the Brits to get back on their feet and end rationing.  In comparison the U.S. was in good shape.

 

The Importance of Grinding, Even Today

Got an interesting book for Christmas: Cuisine & Empire, Cooking in World History.  It's a survey of different cuisines over several thousand years.  I've read part of the part.  One of the early surprises was the discussion of grinding grain.  What's really involved is a shearing action. With hand tools, like the metate, it takes a long long time for the woman to grind the grain for a family

The Times has an article on the ways in which solar electricity is coming to areas of India which don't have power lines.   It includes this quote:

"“We still have to do manual grinding of grains and spices,” Mr. Kalayya said. “It takes up a lot of time. The next loan can be for a machine that will do this.”

Love Letter to Public Services

It would be nice to know how public services operate in Turkey, but here's a love letter to public services in the US. 

Happy New Year

Season's greetings

Tipping, An Old Tradition

My newspaper delivery person(s) send Christmas cards with envelopes with their return address, as a gentle plea for a tip.  ("Person(s) because I get two papers, though in one delivery, but apparently the Times and Post have separate people, who've made a side deal to save gas by handling me in one visit.) 

That's an old tradition, though maybe I should hold out for a poem, as they did in 1766, according to this Boston 1775 post.

The Problem of Consciousness in Self Driving Cars

Technology Review has an article on why self-driving cars must be programmed to kill, which is one of their best of 2015, which attracted a whole lot of comments.    The starting point is the old philosophical dilemma: in a choice between killing one and killing many, which is the right choice?  Do you push the fat man onto the railroad tracks to derail a train bearing down on a stopped school bus, or whatever? Does a self-driving car go off the road and over the cliff to avoid killing people in the road, if it kills the driver?

It strikes me as a problem only for the self-driving car which is conscious.  What do I mean? A computer processes one bit of information at a time, it's sequential.  The philosophical dilemma is one of consciousness: because humans are conscious we know, or think we know, things simultaneously: both the fat man and the school bus and the possible different courses of action.

But how would a computer know those things?  Say its driving a car which rounds the curve on the mountain road.  Maybe it knows there's no shoulder on the side, just guard rails which it will try to avoid. At some point it starts to see something in the road. It starts braking immediately.  It doesn't take the time to distinguish between live people and dead rocks, it just does its best to stop, perhaps being willing to hit the guard rail a glancing blow.   Presumably its best is a hell of a lot better than a human's: its perception is sharper, its decision making quicker, its initial speed perhaps slower.  I suspect the end result will be better than either of the alternatives posed in the philosophy class.  

The self-driving car is going to be optimized for its capacities, which don't include consciousness.