A Derecho?

While I was sleeping a derecho moved through Reston and on east.  Reports of 450,000 power outages in Dominion's Northern Virginia area, out of roughly 850,000 served.  2 deaths and lots of disruption. One tree went down near the house, but fortunately fell parallel to the townhouses so not much damage. One power outage at Reston parkway and east, but we're west, so we have power and internet, if not phone or TV.

And I slept through it all.
[Updated with link]
[Updated to correct the name to "derecho ]

On Obesity and Exercise, and Children

I'm going to relapse into geezerhood and say the reason Americans are so far is they use strollers for their children.  It's a good way to containerize and control your kids, but it doesn't get them used to exercising.

The other day coming back from the garden I encountered a woman pushing a 2x stroller with a couple kids sprawling across the seats.  Granted, if the three of them were walking, the woman would have had problems; the kids looked as if they'd be two handfuls.

I was reading something somewhere the musings of a person who observed really young children in a foreign society being useful and handling dangerous tools, like a machete at age 3.   Now that's a tad young.  If I remember I was kept out of the barn until I was 5 or so, parents thought it was too dangerous.  But I was anxious to help, to prove I was old enough to do something.  That's not something usually possible for today's suburban kids.

Where I Used to Work: South Building

The photo is from a Government Executive piece on the House ag appropriations bill,  which leads off:

The White House is challenging a move by House Republican appropriators to deny the Agriculture Department any funds in fiscal 2013 for repair and upkeep of its buildings.

The South Building has been undergoing renovation over several years; not sure how far they've gotten.  Some factoids about it:  used to be the largest office building in the US (supposedly the world), see wikipedia; covers two blocks; the legend was the architect had just completed a prison for Michigan or somebody and he used those plans as the basis, may hold about 10,000 of USDA's employees.

It's "South" because the USDA Administration Building (AKA "the ivory tower" of Chet Adell) is on the north side of Independence Avenue.  The picture is taken from the NE corner of the intersection of 12th St NW and Independence, with one of the two exits from the Metro's Smithsonian station in the recess just visible.  Also visible is the disabled entrance required by ADA, as  well as one of DC's food/souvenir trucks.

Minitel and Compuserve

The Times has a story on the impending demise in France of Minitel. Minitel was once the very popular French version of the Internet, or rather an intranet since it was all proprietary hardware and software.  The French were way ahead of the rest of the world with computerization in the home.  The U.S. had some experiments, which failed, one of which was by Time-Warner, but the French developed such a widespread platform even Norwegian bachelor farmers in Brittainy adopted it, using it to maintain the registrations of their cows, etc. 

But since it was proprietary and not open, it's lost out in the competition with the Internet and PC's, lost out at least in the marketplace if not in the hearts of some of those aforesaid farmers.

Compare France with the U.S.  Compuserve was an early networking outfit, but because we already had PC's penetrating the market it was software only; the hardware was PC's.  Compuserve was eventually ousted and then bought by AOL, which reached for the stars in merging with Time-Warner, only to fail in competition with the open interface of Internet browsers.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

Shrewd Decision on ACA

The way I see Roberts decision is that it was Solomonic: he gave Obama what he wanted, the ability for ACA to go forward; he gave conservatives what they wanted, a limit on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce; he gave Romney what he wanted, the ability to beat Obama up over his "raising taxes" without the necessity to come up with positive proposals to replace ACA.

Just my two cents.

[Updated: Ezra Klein agrees.]

Farm Bill in the House

I get the impression the House will likely oppose the conservation compliance requirement for crop insurance and the payment limitation, and since there's weak support on Senate Ag, if it goes to conference it will be out.  I also get the impression the House may retain a bit more of the current structure (i.e. counter-cyclical programs, etc.) than did the Senate.

I'm always impressed by Farm Policy's  completeness and Sustainable Agriculture's good analysis (even though I don't always agree with their policy positions, they seem to know their stuff).

The Chobani Paradox

Stealing from the Wall Street Journal bia Keith Good, just because I'm interested in NY dairy (the background is the rise in popularity of "Greek style yogurt":

The Journal article noted that, “Meanwhile, the long-struggling dairy farmers of New York aren’t seeing their bottom line soar thanks to the Greek yogurt boom—and they aren’t adding to their herds to meet the demand.
“So instead of expanding his plant here—in a region trying to reverse a trend of population and job loss—Mr. Ulukaya is building a factory in Idaho, in part because he can be sure of a steady supply of milk there. The New Berlin plant will remain open, but Mr. Ulukaya said he might have expanded it instead of opening another if he knew he could get enough milk.
“Milk production in states such as Idaho has surged in the past decade. Land is cheaper and dairy farms tend to be larger than in New York, making it easier for farmers to grow their herds. New York farmers say they are weighed down by property taxes and the high cost of land. Since their herds are smaller, expansion tends to be riskier.”

 Much of upstate New York is hill and valley country.  In the old days, your hay fields would be the valley and lower slopes, the pastures would be the steeper slopes.  But farmers have discovered that cows waste energy walking to and from pasture, so that sort of dairying is less economical.    If you can grow or buy corn, you can feed your cows all year round.  I assume those are some of the facts behind NY's loss.

Another factor would be interstates: presumably Idaho yogurt can be economically shipped around the country, just as Wisconsin cheese can be. That's unlike whole milk, where getting it to New York City was the big hurdle, first solved by the railroads, then by trucks.

If It's Good for the Military, It's Good for ?

The White House is pushing the idea of making it easy for the military and their spouses to transfer licenses from one state to another.  See this release touting the 23rd state to pass such measures.

This is laudable, but I don't see any reason to limit the scope to the military; make it work for everyone. 

MOOC's and Globalization

A "MOOC"  is a massive open on-line course which has gained a lot of attention in recent days.  One of the justifications for ousting the president of the University of Virginia was she wasn't moving fast enough to deal with such challenges.  Somewhere in the newspapers today was a discussion of them, with the casual information that most enrollment in the biggest MOOC's came from outside the U.S.  And Margaret Saletan, of University Diaries, has commented on the foreign students who signed up for her MOOC (a mini-MOOC on poetry).

I wonder about the impacts: if I'm a professor in Italy, or Kenya, or somewhere else and some of my students start to compare my course with the MOOC from Stanford, what happens? Do I raise my game? Do I try to outlaw such competition? Do I learn from the MOOC? 

On a different subject, it's interesting the new President of Egypt has a Phd from SoCal. 

Once Rural, Always Rural

And, a press release a while back from Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) stated that, “Today, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment to S. 3240, the Farm Bill, offered by [Sen. Moran] that will make certain rural communities throughout Kansas remain eligible for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development loan and grant programs. In the absence of this amendment, nearly 1,000 rural communities across the country would have become ineligible for USDA funds due to small increases in population identified by the recent 2010 Census. USDA Rural Development programs help provide affordable single and multi-family housing, finance water and waste loans and grants, and support essential community facilities like hospitals and schools.”

My interpretation: once you're "rural", you're always "rural".  Increasing population would seem to say the RD programs are working, so when do you declare success and leave?  (Granted, the fact Sen. Moran is a conservative is one reason for me to ding him for hypocrisy.)