British Agriculture in the Modern World

I found this long piece from the London Review of Books very interesting. The writer's hook is Brexit. The EU budget is heavily focused on agricultural subsidies, but the EU also imposes regulations, so he can find a mix of opinions.  The writer interviews farmers about Brexit and considers the various impacts, but the piece ranges broadly. What's especially fascinating to see what's common to English and American agriculture, such as expanding farm size and conservation concerns, and what's different, particularly the continuing position of the wealthy/noble landowners. And finally the writer discovers the variety which exists behind all the stereotypes of farmers.

A couple quotes:

"[a farmer involved in conservation] was grateful for one aspect of his new life: he gets to meet people when he talks about his work. Mechanisation has isolated farmers. Wright and his brother farm alone where once 14 people worked."

"When the English government recently had the chance to carry out its own, independent CAP reform – in agriculture, there essentially is an English government, with the four parts of the United Kingdom having separate policies – it proved eager to go on subsidising the big landowners"

 Read it.

Thanks to commenter "rupello" for the lead.

Haspel on Vertical Farming

I respect Tamar Haspel's work, so I buy her conclusions on the tradeoffs involved with indoor, vertical farming.  Bottomline: because of the energy involved, the carbon footprint of current day vertical farms (of lettuce) is much bigger than for more conventional operations.  Efficiencies might import, and the lettuce produced has some advantages.

I've mocked vertical farming before, but that's the plans relying on sunlight.  I'd observe that growing lettuce is, I'd guess, the choosing the easiest path for artificial light farming.  And while these operations fit the locavore template, they don't fit the organic template.

"Grunt Work" and Organizing

Read a post this morning through my RSS feed from LawyersGunsMoney, a  site of mostly liberal college professors mostly, and mostly a bit left of me, but interesting just the same.  The post was entitled "Don't Diddle, Organize", being a call for leftists to get out and organize.  The writer included what seemed to be a snide dis of "grunt work" and a clear dis of the Democratic party.  Both riled me, so I was resolved to post a fiery comment.  Went onto the site just now, and found a lot of comments on the post, most making the same points I would have made--Democrats need to rebuild the party at the local and state level by doing the "grunt work" of organizing, not by devoting all energy to single, ad hoc causes which provide a platform for the talkers but lack the doers who make an organization formidable.

The Agricultural Revolution as Insurance

I forget whether I've mentioned listening to Harari's Sapiens, as an audiobook (Mr. Bezos is taking over the world).  It's slow going, not because it's not interesting or well-written, but because I'm only listening when I use my exercise bike, and these days I'm mostly able to get exercise in the garden or by walking. 

Anyway, he's discussing the agricultural revolution, adopting the stance of Jared Diamond and others that it was bad for individuals, because hunter-gatherers had less work to get their food than did the early farmers.  While agriculture meant a given area of land could support more people, which was good for the species, it meant harder work and misery for the individuals.  His explanation for the revolution is mostly materialistic, a gradual accumulation of changes resulting in domesticated grains and animals, each change seeming an advantage but the overall result was poor.  An alternative explanation is possibly religious, citing an example of great stone columns erected by a hunter-gatherer culture in the same area where einkorn wheat was domesticate.

One thing I think Harari misses is the influence of climate and the seasons.  One of the outstanding features of our staple grain crops is storability.  There are food items a hunter-gatherer can store: acorns, dried fish, dried grapes, etc., but in most cases these are limited.  Grains can be stored indefinitely.  While Harari emphasizes the variety of foods hunter-gatherers could obtain, I'm not convinced.  Checking the climate for Jericho, a place he mentions, there's big seasonal changes: a cold wet season and a hot dry season.  What that means to me (operating on logic with no knowledge of the facts of the area) is that the life of a hunter-gatherer is good half the year, not the other half.  So growing and storing grain for the dry season would be rewarding.  A store of wheat was insurance against the risk of starving during the hot, dry season.

Culture Change and Name Change

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution writes on Ban the Box (i.e previous convictions on job applications).  The suggestion is that employers who don't get the specific information may revert to disqualifying black applicants based on a possible greater likelihood of past convictions. He cites academic research (see the abstract below the page break).

What hit me was the method the researchers used to tell black and white applicants apart--names.

Now back in the day "black names" (or rather "Negro names") were stereotypically "Washington", "Franklin", "Lincoln", etc., meaning there really wasn't a distinguishable difference.  Which brings me back to Cassius Clay, who famously changed his name. He, along with Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm Little, was part of the early trend of blacks dropping their "slave name" in favor of a more distinctive name, a trend existing alongside the Black Pride and Black Power movements.  These days it seems there's less dropping of surnames, but lot more distinctive given names.  It's ironic that a change which affirms identity has become a means for people to discriminate against that identity.

Gun Control and Civil Sanctions

Some, like Conor Friedersdorf and Kevin Williamson, have problems with the no-fly list, saying it penalizes people without any legal process or chance of redress.  There's also the FBI terrorist watch list, which apparently overlaps no-fly but is different. In a different area, we have the sex offender lists. IMO all three lists deprive people of abilities they'd normally have. The right says that denying guns to people on such list is denying them their Second Amendment, Constitutional right, which is wrong.

I think Friedersdorf and Williamson have a point: there should be a legal process for review and possible challenge when people lose, possibly for the duration of their life, some abilities.   I think that's true even for sex offenders, who have already gone through a legal process. People can grow and change, people can be convicted in error.

The Senate is to vote on the issue in this coming week--several proposals, none of which are likely to pass.  I've not studied the issue, but I think, provided there's a review process at some point, it's reasonable to deny guns to those on those lists.

And having said that, I don't think such a restriction would do much to avert mass shootings.  Even Mateen would have passed that test, since he wasn't on the FBI list when he bought his guns. 

I like the New York gun laws, including the requirement for friends to sign onto the application for a permit, but even with those laws Jiverly Antares Wong killed 13 people just a few miles south of where I grew up.

Such a Fine Day for Flash to Ruin

A little humor from the New Yorker, having just attempted to update my Adobe Flash.

Forms

National Archives has a document of the day, and this was for the 16th. As a bureaucrat I'm always interested in forms. What struck me about this was the opening--the President is telling the U.S. Marshal to arrest John Dillinger. That's a carryover from the days when the monarch gave orders to his officers, a carryover surviving into the 20th century. The Bureau of Land Management has the document confirming the sale of 80 acres of Illinois land to my great grandfather, a document signed by the President. Seems amazing to think they'd ship a document all the way to Washington for his signature, but they did. Such is the power of history and custom over the minds of men.  

Surprising Father Facts

"Republican and Democratic dads have the same number of children, an average of 2.4, and on average they start their families at the same age — 28. They are also equally likely to be employed. In other words, the demographic data tells a story of very similar fathers in the two parties."

From this Post article describing a study of fathers and their attitudes and party affiliations.  Otherwise the differences between the groups are about what you'd expect, Republicans more authoritarian, Democrats more self-accusing--in other words the studs versus the wimps.

Coffee Drinkers Are Concentrated, Gun Dealers Are Not

That's the lesson I took away from this Flowing Data post 
mapping Starbucks and other common chains against gun dealers.  The key is the comparison is based on circles with a 10-mile radius. If the circle has more Starbucks stores than gun dealers, it's one color, otherwise another.