White House Fall Garden

The White House had a fall harvest of their garden recently.  Obamafoodorama had posts, as did the White House blog: 

Armed with large baskets and wheelbarrows, they scoured the garden for peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and other fall vegetables. The First Lady joined them, rolling up her sleeves, to dig up enormous sweet potatoes, including a near record-breaking four pounder, and to pick deep purple egg plants.  The children and the First Lady also admired the two pumpkins growing in the garden – just in time for Halloween.

The pictures I've seen look really good. I would nitpick that peppers and tomatoes aren't fall vegetables, what the writer should have said is they were harvesting the final round of tomatoes and peppers and the first round of broccoli and lettuce. I'd also note they're claiming a total of 1600 pounds of food over 2 years.  Last year they claimed 740 pounds, so this year's was 860, which doesn't represent much of an increase, considering the garden was enlarged and they got it planted timely this year.  Of course, the mixture of vegetables may have changed, and they may well have been more systematic on record keeping this year.

Anyhow, they deserve credit, except I haven't seen any evidence the kids are doing any of the work. Unfortunately, the Obamas can't have it both ways: preserve their kids' privacy and yet have them serve as inspirational models for the nation.

The Mind-Body Split

It lives in the headline of this article:

"Obese teens may be lacking in brain size, not willpower"

The headline writer and the researcher miss the possibility that "willpower" resides in the smaller size of the region of the brain the article discusses.  In other words, the theory could be: the obese lack the willpower neurons.

No Guts, No Glory

I'm going to predict that the Republicans take 50 seats in the Senate, and end up flipping a Senator (Nelson or Lieberman) to take control. In that I agree with the Oakton High School in the Post's contest to pick the results of the election.  I'm picking, not with logic or my gut preference, but just because that would make for the most interesting political scene over the next few months.

Dirty Campaign, Not Up to the Standards of Our Forefathers

Via Cliopatria, here's a video which shows how far we have declined.

A Harvard Professor Misses the Point

Professor Mankiw of Harvard wrote a while back about the marginal tax rate he faces and its impact on his decisions on how to allocate his time.  Now he's linked to an article about Keith Richards, who seems to have been a famous rock singer back in the day (my familiarity ends with Elvis) who claims his group moves from country to country in order to minimize their taxes.  Ezra Klein comments on it here.

It seems to me neither Mankiw's original piece nor this example is on point. The classical theory is that the rich, faced with high marginal tax rates, will stop working so hard thereby decreasing the total wealth of the economy.

But in the case of Mr. Richards, there seems no indication that he and his group reduced their output of songs nor were they deterred by the confiscatory British tax rates back in the 1960's.  At most, they've expended effort to travel to take advantage of the lowest available rates.  That might be an argument for standardizing tax rates from nation to nation.

In the case of Mr. Mankiw, he seemed to say he was being dissuaded from giving more paid speeches, presumably spending his time on the research and teaching for which he's receiving a salary from Harvard.

I'd think the high tax rates might have more impact on people who are choosing their occupations--high tax rates might discourage choosing hedge fund operation and encourage teaching math in high school.  That's not a bad trade, IMHO. Or, as it did in the case of Britain in the 1960's and 70's, it could change the location in which work is pursued.  For the minority of people who really find their satisfaction in life from their work, certainly including Prof. Mankiw and Mr. Richards, I remain unconvinced their output is being much reduced by the disincentive of high tax rates.

This Is Sick

Assuming the post is correct, because the crime rate has been failing since the Clinton administration (or thereabouts--no causal relationship implied but Dems are happy to take credit) the supply of prisoners for private prisons is down.  So what should be done to renew the supply: crack down on illegal immigration, as in the Arizona law, which seems to have been pushed by the private prison lobby.

52 Dems in Senate?

That seems to be the current projection.  Of course, if the Republicans could persuade Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to caucus with them, perhaps by giving Nelson the chair of Senate Ag, they could drop the number to 50/50. Then it just takes one upset in the last week, or one unexpected death among the Dems, to lose control of the Senate.

(Did I say I was feeling down today--switching to a new computer is depressing.)

Change of Address and Government Gab

The Government Gab blog has a post about changing one's address, which includes this sentence:

"The good news is that you can find all the government address change contact information you’ll ever need on USA.gov."

Unfortunately, it's not true.  The linked page has the links for USPS, IRS, and SSA, but nothing for FSA, Treasury, TSP, VA, Extension, Education, etc. etc.  Granted, for all the value the USA.gov page provides, you can achie

My Mother Always Said: Drink Your Milk

John Phipps quotes from research showing that milk was the secret weapon of the barbarians who sacked Rome (my distant cousins, I believe).

More Information Than the World Needs

Ozzy Osbourne's genome.  (Not that a geezer like me knows who he is, other than one of the weirdoes popular culture threw up after my youth.)