Blast from the Past: Guadalcanal Diary

Guadalcanal Diary was one of the books on my family's shelves,

Mention it because the invasion occurred this month, as noted at the AmericanStudies blog.

My Hypocrisy: Coal Versus Corn

There are reports that the Republican governor of WV is looking for government subsidies for coal production.  My gut reaction is to immediately oppose them.

However, what's my logical basis? Am I being a hypocrite?  I assume the idea is to keep coal mines going through a bad spell, perhaps a bad century, providing jobs for coal miners, at worse easing the transition to a non-coal future.  (Actually Gov. Justice has a "national security" rationale, perhaps somewhat like the old subsidies for wool and mohair.) Compare that with my rationale for some farm programs: keeping farms going to ease the transition to a future with fewer farmers.  (Full disclosure: that's one of two rationales I mostly buy, at least with respect to historical farm programs, the other rationale being the production adjustment one.)

So can I come up with a way to distinguish between farmers and coal miners as worthy recipients of government subsidies?

One difference is clear: farm subsidies go to farmers, coal subsidies would go to coal mining companies. Is that sufficient?

How Bureaucracy Works

Jonathan Bernstein has good observations on the bureaucracy:

Or, to put it another way: Normal presidencies have a process in place in which important policy questions are brought to the president -- not just security briefings, but domestic problems as well. Just the need to present the president with serious briefings forces the White House staff and various agencies and departments to figure out what's important and what's not, to find potentially viable courses of action for the president to consider, and to be prepared in case the president asks tough questions in either an initial briefing or down the road. Good presidents won't just passively absorb briefings; they'll challenge the information and the options they're being presented with, reinforcing the need for everyone up and down the line to do their best work.

Sometimes the stimulus for action is from the top, sometimes it comes up from the bottom.  Either way the bureaucracy can't be much better than the person at the top.

Detroit

Just saw Ms. Bigelow's new movie: Detroit.

It's similar to her previous three movies: K-19, the Widowmaker, Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty, in that it's based on facts and avoids many movie cliches.  Our verdict on it: "interesting".  I think that means, it's worth seeing, just as it's worth seeing your dentist, assuming your dentist is very capable and you've got some dental problems.

In Defense of Bureaucracy

The Post has a new history blog, with one of its posts defending bureaucracy.  I think it's a sign of the popularity of the subject that it has no comments.

The Hostas and Caladiums With No Leaves

There's always a tradeoff.

What's the trade off for viewing deer from your living room window?

Having hostas and caladiums with no leaves. :-(

Interesting the way different groups of hostas have been more or less attractive to the deer.  While the deer got most of the hosta leaves in June, they just got the caladium leaves last night.

What Next: Numbered Eggs

This NYTimes article is on a problem with tainted eggs in Europe (pesticide contaminated egg-washing solution).  Among the steps taken:

The Dutch consumer safety authority has published a guide on identifying the tainted eggs through a 10-digit serial number stamped on the shells.

 Unfortunately I was never much good at languages so I can't read the Dutch.  I can sort of see how, if we have machinery which can roll a sticker onto an orange or apple we could also develop machinery which might print a number on the egg with ink that wouldn't penetrate the shell.  Presumably the number is a farm number, not the number of the hen.

The Foxes From My Window

Blogged earlier about the deer from my living room window. We also have foxes, as of today. We've seen single foxes occasionally during the past few years, but today is the first time I've seen three. A rainy day, explaining the drops on the window.

New Tech Shorts Panhandlers

The move to the cashless society means it's a harder life for panhandlers, according to a Post article.

Unfortunately, the people earliest to adopt new tech and move to cashless apps are the people who were most likely in the past to give to panhandlers.  (That's me, not the Post, but it's true, at least in the sense that panhandlers are most likely in urban office areas, reflecting the density of traffic not necessarily the generosity of the individuals.)

An interesting note--sometimes giver and panhandler form social bonds, that's the Post.

Dairy in NZ and US

That Forbes article I referenced earlier? Turns out it's wrong--NZ has experienced a significant decline in farm numbers under their current free-market regime.  See this graph.

I hasten to add that the decline in the U.S. has been more severe over a longer time.  As this Congressional Research Service report summarizes:

"Increased dairy cow output and advances in dairy farm technology and management have led to a sharp reduction in the number of dairy farms (Figure 3). Annual losses averaged 96,000 operations in the late 1960s and 37,000 in the 1970s. In recent years, the annual drop in dairy farm operations has slowed to about 2,000 to 5,000 farms per year. Operations totaled 65,000 on December 31, 2009."

I've not really looked at the comparative size of the dairy farms in the two countries.  In both there's been consolidation, but I don't have the data on how much and the productivity of cows.  It's worth noting that in NZ the total number of cows has increased slightly; in the U.S. the number has decreased by a lot. The dairy industry in the U.S. sells in the domestic market while in NZ they export. I'm sure that makes a difference in discussing dairy support programs, but I don't know how.