They All Look(ed) the Same

Saw a picture related to a review of a book on Calhoun, Webster, and Clay.  The picture is here.

I've long been aware of sameness in people.  Back in the day,all mainland Chinese wore Mao jackets, and there were no Yao Mings then.  Visiting ballet companies from the Soviet Union didn't present much diversity in size or complexion. Military parades showed soldiers almost uniform in height.  We still see some of this when viewing reports from North Korea, although my impression is that there's more diversity at least in dress there.

I've always related this uniformity to cows and hens--visitors to the farm could not see how we could recognize our cows by sight--to them all cows looked the same.  We of course knew different, but when it came to our hens they really did all look the same.  (Not really--when looking at group of hens I'd recognize differences while I was looking, but it wasn't possible for the differences to make enough of an impression for me to remember individual hens the next day.)

Anyhow, what's interesting to me in this picture is how similar all the Senators, and onlookers, look.  They're all dressed the same, and their faces look the same--typical WASP faces.  Compare the picture above with this showing the new House members:

Free Land in Britain

When I studied American history the influence of the Frederick Jackson Turner Frontier Thesis was waning, but still being considered.  A part of the thesis was the presence of "free land" as a safety valve for workers in urban areas. Then I had a government professor, Theodore Lowi, who divided government functions into regulation, redistribution, and distribution (of goodies). Finally I had a history professor, Paul Gates, who did a lot of work on land issues. 

With that background I've often been interested in such issues; most recently today when I read a review of a biography of Thomas Cromwell in the Times, a review which included the statement that one-third of the land in Britain was taken from the church and redistributed when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in a process overseen by Cromwell. That seems incredibly high to me but I don't know.

I wonder about the long-term economic impacts of the distribution--presumably buying and selling of land by monasteries was less common than when the laiety took title.   Herman DeSoto has a theory on the importance of having land titled as paving the way for mortgaging and selling land.

No Shortage of Presidential Candidates

According to Ballotpedia, a site I recommend:

• More than 430 candidates have already filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in 2020, including 128 Democrats, 59 Republicans, 18 Libertarians, and 10 Greens.

"It's" the Deterioration of Age

Among the nits I'm bothered by is the misuse of "it's" as possessive.  "It's" of course is a contraction of "it is" and should never be used otherwise.

All through my life I've adhered to this rule with little problem. 

But now...

Now it seems that my brain and my rules are on different pages.  I routinely type "it's" when it fits as a possessive.  Apparently the age-related impairment my recent MRI found involves undermining that aspect of my typing memory which knew the difference.

The good news is that part of my brain which proofs what I've done--I think it's a general capability not limited to reviewing my writing--still seems capable.  So I type "it's position is..." and then go back and delete the apostrophe.

HR 2--Farm Bill

HR2 has now passed both Houses of Congress.  Here's a summary:

"The bill modifies agriculture and nutrition policies to:

• require farmers to make a new election to obtain either Price Loss Coverage or Agricultural Risk Coverage for the 2019-2023 crop years, which may be changed for the 2021-2023 crop years;
• replace the Dairy Margin Protection Program with Dairy Risk Coverage and modify coverage levels and premiums;
• make Indian tribes and tribal organizations eligible for supplemental agricultural disaster assistance programs;
• reduce the adjusted gross income limitation for receiving benefits under commodity and conservation programs; [the nieces and nephews provision[
• modify funding levels and requirements for several conservation programs,
• consolidate several existing trade and export promotion programs into a new Priority Trade Promotion, Development, and Assistance program;
• legalize industrial hemp and make hemp producers eligible for the federal crop insurance program;
• establish an interstate data system to prevent the simultaneous issuance of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program) benefits to an individual by more than one state;
• increase the loan limits for farm ownership and operating loans;
• modify the experience requirement for farm ownership loans;
• authorize a categorical exclusion from requirements for environmental assessments and environmental impact statements for certain forest management projects with the primary purpose of protecting, restoring, or improving habitat for the greater sage-grouse or mule deer; and
• modify the organic certification requirements for imported agricultural products."

I find I'm no longer current enough with the law to comment.  "Qualified pass-through entities" instead of partnerships and joint ventures?  Don't know what it signifies. 

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2

The Boy, the Hammer, the Nail, and Trump

The old saying is: give a boy a hammer and he'll see everything as a nail, as something to hit with the hammer.  It's true enough--we get set in our ways so we use the same approaches to every problem. And when we have a tool there are opportunities.

But I realized today you can change the saying, almost reverse it.  Suppose the boy has a nail to pound and no hammer?  Then everything he sees becomes a potential hammer.  It's "necessity is the mother of invention" time.

Silos: Culture Versus Change

I've written before on the problems of combining organizations--typically I've seen the problem through the lens of organizational culture--for example, ASCS and SCS had very different cultures when I was working.

But I saw something today which caused me to think of another consideration.  The story: I was doing my morning walk, coming through the Hunters Mills shopping center, which now is your standard strip mall. In a couple places I saw they'd placed cobblestones and fine stone next to the curb.  The places were at the corner of an intersection and the logic of placing the stones was to handle cases where the turning radius of a long tractor trailer was larger than the radius of the intersection, meaning the rear wheels of the trailer would jump the curb and put ruts into the grass.

I came up with a "just so" story to explain this:  back in the day when Reston's roads were designed, some 30-50 years ago, tractor trailers were shorter than they are now.  So you had one organization working on road design standards and other organizations designing tractor trailers to provide the most cost efficient transportation.  Each organization had its own focus and its own evolutionary history and impulses, their culture.  But what's important is the changes happening within the organization, not any cultural conflict between the two organizations. 

So, coming back to ASCS and SCS--the bigshots in USDA could look at them and see a static picture, meaning changes ordered by management would be the only thing going on (particularly when IT types were ignorant of programs).

The Farm Bill and Payment Limitation

The Post editorial page says that Rep. Conaway got his nieces/nephews provision (see my previous post under this label) included in the farm bill, which will be included in the final appropriations bill, assuming Congress and the President can come to some agreement on it.

This seems to fit a long lasting pattern where public attention is limited in both time and scope.  So when people pay attention to how the farm bill is being put together in House and Senate payment limitation will get attention.  Attention means that the power of the lobbyists and "special interests" is somewhat diminished as the more fringe players have more of a place at the table.

But when public attention moves away from the subject the lobbyists/special interests then have more power.  Typically they exercise their power by adding provisions to appropriations bills or omnibus "must pass" legislation where the voices which oppose the provision, like the Post editorial writers, are drowned in concerns over the bigger picture--as now, whether or not part of the government will be shut down, mostly over a dispute over the President's "Wall".

Update on Vertical Farming

Via @TamarHaspel, here's a piece on Medium assessing the current status of vertical farming.  Bottom line: the vertical farming startups are very close-mouthed about their data, which leads the writer to doubt whether many of them will succeed. 

Given that current farms focus on greens sold at premium prices, there's also skepticism over whether the concept can achieve more than niche status.

Dairy in Japan

Google's official blog has a  post on a big (900 cow) dairy in Japan.

While most/many Asians may be lactose-intolerant, there seems to be enough exceptions to support a dairy industry.

Some googling found this paper by the Japanese Dairy Council which covers the ground from a to z.

A couple highlights--no. of dairy farms has declined from over 400,000 in the 60's to 20,000 in the 2010's, number of cows has been relatively steady at about 1.4 million or so.  Consumption is about half in milk and half in cheese/butter.  For anyone with more stamina than I there's an explanation of how milk is marketed and how the government's subsidy/regulation setup works.