Gottlieb Got Milk

Don't say the Trump administration has never done anything for dairy farmers.  His FDA head, Scott Gottlieb, says he'll crack down on "milks" from vegetative sources.

Taking the Bad With the Good

We've been dry for 3-4 weeks, meaning the perennials are browning and the vegetable garden requires watering.

So a storm rolled through an hour ago, causing a power surge which set off a shrill continuous tone and seeming to fry half of my backup power/surge protector bought many years (20?) ago after losing a PC to a power surge. It took flipping all the circuit breakers in the breaker box to finally kill the sound, with the quiet permitting a more considered analysis of what happened.

It's interesting--with the smart phone available, I no longer feel a need for backup power, so my replacement will just be a surge protector.

The dugouts at National park, where the All Star game will be played tonight, are flooded, along with some roads.  But at least we got some water.

Median Farmers Aren't?

Saw an interesting chart today on Twitter, which I was able to find again by using the search function:

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What's amazing to me is the disparity between the farm and nonfarm income. The bottom line would seem to be that median farmers get their income from nonfarm sources, so why call them farmers?

(I've some thoughts on the age of farmers which I'll stick in another post.  I think my logic there will somewhat undermine the picture above.)

The Ups and Downs of Sport

When I moved to Reston in 1976, tennis was big.  There were a number of recreation areas with multiple tennis courts, tennis leagues, and tennis coaches.  That soon declined.  The Southgate area which had 4 courts, converted two to basketball.  I've not noticed anything on the leagues and teaching in recent years and seldom see anyone playing on the one set of courts I pass with some regularity.

Horse riding was a part of the early Reston, but when I arrived the stable was on its last legs.  The building finally collapsed a few years after I arrived, which led to a long fight within Reston Association about whether to rebuild or convert the stable and riding area to other uses.  The other uses finally won, so a parking lot, two basketball courts, and a soccer field went in, a sign of the sports which were popular then.

By the early 2000's construction was booming and so was soccer.  The soccer field, by which I pass on the way to my garden plot, was very busy.  Youth teams, and teams of young men, probably mostly Hispanic immigrants, were were omnipresent on the weekends and I suppose in the evenings.

Then came the recession and the collapse of construction and then the recession of immigration from the area.  First the men's teams were no longer evident, then the youth teams dwindled away.  While in the early years the maintenance people had problems keeping the grass growing, especially in front of the goals, there's no problem now.

As a capper, this trend has been confirmed by the media authority, the NYTimes, in this article

Guns and Drones and Second Amendment

I wonder, with drones becoming more and more capable and technology advancing on other fronts, how long will it be before we run into some constitutional questions?

For example, the Second Amendment confers the "right to bear arms".  These days that means literally carrying a gun around, and pulling the trigger.  Suppose we get drones with lethal capacity.  Will the person who controls the drone be considered to be "bearing arms"? 

An Arms Race in Robocalls?

My wife and I were being annoyed by robocalls.  Saw something about Nomorobo and signed up for it.  It's free for landlines (which all we needed).  The way it works requires the phone to ring once, but before it can ring again Nomorobo figures out it's a robocall and intercepts it.  So the ring-once is still a bit annoying, but at least you don't have to pause the movie, move the cat out of your lap, and get up to answer the phone, only to find it's robo.

So we've been happy with it; only the occasional call has been getting through.

But this morning two calls got through, one was even masked by seeming to come from someone in our telephone exchange (at least if we still had telephone exchanges).  So I wonder whether the robocall people have started to figure out Nomorobo's algorithms and begun to change  to counter them?

Skewing the Stats--A Greenie Crime

I wrote a letter to the NYTimes on an article in last week's NYTimes magazine:

When I read Brook Larmer’s article: “E-Waste Offers an Economic Opportunity as Well as Toxicity”Image” I was very surprised.  According to the article the US generates 42 pounds of e-waste per person per year.  For our 2-person household, our PC, laptop, cellphones and TV would barely amount to 100 pounds.  We don’t replace those items very often.  Something seemed off.

 So I did a little googling on the UN University site, finding this: “The weight of e-waste generated worldwide in 2016, including used refrigerators, TVs, personal computers and cellphones, was up by 8 percent from 2014, when the previous study into the problem was conducted.” http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201712140050.html

Turns out UNU defines e-waste as anything that uses electricity, not just electronic gear. (http://collections.unu.edu/view/UNU:6120)

Including all kitchen appliances, lamps, etc. in “e-waste” certainly gives a bigger headline figure, but are the problems in recycling appliances really the same as in handling cellphones and laptops?

In answer to my question--I don't think so.  Maybe in the future when everything is on the internet, but not now.

I should also note that this isn't peculiarly a failing of the environmentalist movement; everyone and her brother do it.

How Far Ahead Are Democrats Thinking?

There's lots of comments about the impact of Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.  There's also Democratic proposals for what they want to do if and when they are elected in 2020.  I wonder though about  this issue:

Given the decision on Obamacare (this name seems to be fading in favor of ACA--not sure why the change) by SCOTUS, what sort of constitutional basis can the Dems use for future health care legislation?  Can they fix ACA in 2021 by reviving the provisions Trump is killing?  Would such revivals find support in SCOTUS?  There would still be the 5 Justices who supported its legality but on divided opinions.  Would the Dems need to redo ACA to base it more firmly on the authority to tax?  Would they want to?

And how about the next bridge further--legislation to provide Medicare for All?

Who Runs in 2020

My cousin asked me about my opinions on who the Democrats should nominate for 2020.

I found it difficult to answer.  So far there's no one head and shoulders above the crowd.

If I had to choose, maybe Hickenlooper, the Colorado governor, but that's based on almost nothing. My feelings now are somewhat similar to my feelings in 1969-71.  We have a president I can't stand, who's not a likable person.  What the Democrats ended up doing was choosing McGovern, a very fine man, but too easily caricatured as out of the mainstream and Nixon won by a landslide.

That's my fear this time: our dislike of Trump and Republican/Trump positions will be so strong we end up with a candidate who can't win.

Why No Americans in Thai Rescue?

This is (not) serious:  I understand while we had American military--Seals--on the site of the rescue of the Thai soccer team, they didn't go into the cave.

Why not?

Could it be they're too big--Accu-weather said the tightest opening was 15 inches, which is smaller than the 2 feet I'd heard before.  Seems to me likely that Americans would usually be too big to fit through the smaller opening. 

Bottomline: we need more immigrants in the smaller sizes so our military can be ready for any eventuality.