Alabama Dairy

According to this Alabama has gone from 3,500 dairy farms 60 years ago to 50 now.

Analogy of the Day: Phipps on Farm Bureau

"To be sure, farmers as a whole are heavily clustered on the political right, although their actual policy preferences are a mix of blatantly leftist protectionism (sugar, dairy) and subsidies (crop insurance) scattered like chocolate chips in a cookie of free-market rhetoric."

Phipps has had qualms about the Farm Bureau and its representation of farmers for years.  (Its claim of 6 million members is inflated by its insurance operation.)  In this article he lays out his case for leaving it. 

Boyd and Equipment Prices

John Boyd continues to get into the national media.  Here's an Atlantic article citing his views on the rising prices of farm equipment.  Again, while southside Virginia isn't close to DC (roughly 200 miles from Reston), it's closer than Ottumwa, Iowa.  Boyd's activity seems to have picked up, as here his group is opposing a bank merger.

Trump and the Administrative Procedure Act

I've posted before about the Administrative Procedure Act and the Trump administration, most recently here.  Yesterday's article in the Post provides an overview of the extent of their problems, although still not pointing to the role of Judge Rao (she's been confirmed) in failing to do things in the right way.

Modernity Amazes Me: HD Delivery

I suspect that occasional posts on this blog show that I'm sometimes amazed by how things work today.

Another such episode today:

Yesterday I bought $300+ worth of 2 x 12 boards to replace the old ones forming the walls of my raised beds in the garden.  This morning they were delivered:

• got a phone call from the delivery telling me she was on her way
• drove to the garden plots to meet here.
• the delivery vehicle was a tractor with a flat bed trailer and a fork lift (truck?) on the back end.
• I told her where to drop the boards, she found a parking place, unstrapped the pallet with the wood, started the fork lift and moved the boards off the trailer to the spot.
• took a picture of the boards, got in the truck and drove off.

The whole process took about 45 minutes and was accomplished by one person.  She wasn't a Home Depot employee, and the truck wasn't an HD vehicle, it was a Penske rental.

College Side Entrances and Carl Van Doren

Somehow the current scandal on the "side entrances" for college admission through fake athletic credentials or fake SAT tests reminds me of Charles Van Doren.

Why?  Because some of the reactions to both see (saw) the episodes as undermining the prestige and validity of the elites of society.  Van Doren, for those who weren't born in the 50's, was a contestant on a televised quiz show which was a big hit.  This was back in the day where, if you were lucky, you could choose among three TV networks, but more likely were limited to one or two.  Van Doren was part of the educational elite, a young professor who was the son and nephew of prominent academics. Finding out that someone with such a background who seemed a model had stooped to cheating was a shock.

Van Doren and Sputnik are linked in my mind as creating and epitomizing discontent with US society of the late 50's, a discontent which both JFK and Nixon tried to ride.

How Big Is Denmark?

This bit quoted in Marginal Revolution struck me funny, regarding the need for subtitles in Danish movies to be played in movie theaters in Denmark?

Pedersen blames the necessity for subtitles on the evolution of the use of Danish in movies. Whereas in the past, actors were focused on articulating themselves in a way understandable for everyone, their main emphasis has now shifted to being as authentic as possible. Hence, many actors have chosen not to imitate more common dialects and have stuck to local versions of Danish. “It’s a small country, but there are big differences between the Danish dialects,” Pedersen explained.

A check of wikipedia shows Denmark to have 5.8 million inhabitants, about size of Wisconsin, but Wisconsin is about 6 times bigger. Where Wisconsin has lakes, Denmark has islands, 443 of them, some 74 of which are inhabited.  That likely explains some of divergences in the Danish language.

The Market in Farmer's Markets

The market in farmer's markets is not good, according to this NPR story.  Too many markets chasing too few buyers.  Another case where the free market in agriculture is overly productive.

Kids Are (More) Less Mature These Days

Was reading a Slate article by a woman who thought she could pass on what she learned as a teenager navigating romances to her daughter.  Turns out, according to the woman, her daughter needed no teaching; she found the waters very different given social media but handled them just fine.

Then there's this NYTimes piece entitled Children Are Grown, But Parenting Doesn't Stop.

I like to bridge opposites, so I suggest that in different times/societies people develop different faculties at different rates.  Perhaps today's society provides more models of how to develop emotionally for people to learn from while simultaneously making it more complicated to maneuver through society.  Compared to my youth individual development is more emphasized and more important, while discussion of social forces is more restricted to race and gender.

Beto and the Bulletin Board

Philip Bump in the Post has an article describing Beto O'Rourke's background as a "hacker". 

It brings back memories, including when Jeff Kerby started running a BBS for ASCS, and the periodic upgrades of my modem--back then progress was real and tangible.