Sciences: Geology, Economics

Noah Smith has a post discussing whether economics is a science.  Having taken geology as the "gut" course filling my science requirement albeit some 55 years ago, I'll raise my hand and say if geology is a science then economics is a science.  Geology was then a historical science, with some lab work involved.  I assume the lab work has expanded as knowledge has improved (didn't recognize continental drift back then, or was just starting to), but you've a similar problem, figuring out how the application of scientific generalizations over time has resulted in the current state of affairs.

Clarke's Magic and the Past

Arthur Clarke is famous as a science fiction writer, one prominent in my youth.  He famously wrote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

That's the third of his three laws. 

I think there's a converse to it.  J.L. Bell at Boston 1775 notes an article on the importance and complexity of wheels in the colonial era.  One of the blogs I follow has posted videos showing someone doing stone age technology; I think this is one of them but I don't remember the source.

Let me play with it: "Any sufficiently out-dated technology seems simple and isn't."

Take the two laws together and modern humans seem advanced and super intelligent.

Laboratories of Democracy: the Case of the US

Justice Brandeis praised states as "laboratories of democracy", considering federalism is a way for states to experiment with different programs and arrangements before we try them on the national level.  Think of how "Romneycare" in Massachusetts served as a test for Obamacare.  Liberals are reconsidering their belief in federalism as they oppose the Trump administration--it's great for California to lead the way on climate change.

I hadn't considered until I read this post at Jstor how the U.S. itself served as a laboratory for democracy, an example for Canada of what not to do as they constructed their government in 1867. Notably, they wanted to avoid the features of federalism which had cost their neighbor to the south over 600,000 dead.  They distrusted the 10th Amendment and the strong president (the dictator Lincoln).

Did Trump Watch "West Wing"?

I ask because Comey quotes him as referring to "that thing".  For me at least, that evokes the West Wing, though when I search this post says it's long been established as a thing, but the Joe Harley comment confirms my memory.

The answer to the question is obviously "no"--if he had he'd understand a bit about how the government operates.

Good and Bad for USDA--ARS

Politico has a piece entitled: "A tour of the government's 'nerd labs': The cutting-edge (and sometimes secret) labs where Washington tries to hatch the future.  ARS (Ag Research Service) is number on the list, after NIST and before DARPA.  That's complimentary.  What isn't so good is the date given for the establishment: 1953.

That's ridiculous; USDA was doing this work back in the 19th century, arguably even before USDA was established.  What they mean, of course, is that the agency was formed under its current name in 1953, but still.

Representing Acres, Not People

President Trump famously passes out maps of the US showing the counties he won and those Clinton won, the result being a very red US. Liberals like me carp that the map represents acres, not the people.  He also is proposing to change the air traffic control system to a nonprofit corporation.   That idea has run into the reservations of senators representing many of the acres shown on his map.  The problem being that the more sparsely settled areas of the country are also more dependent on air traffic (Alaska is perhaps the biggest for small planes).  So the senators fear the impact of this possible change.  And the senators are mostly Republican.

A case of principle (smaller government) conflicting with the real world, IMHO.

The Virtues of Hypocrisy

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue"  wrote La Rochefoucauld  (learned something from the bio, I had him pegged as late 18th century, wrong by 100+years).

As shown by its presence as a label, I've written fairly often on hypocrisy.  The political parties are liable to it, as their positions on some issues, particularly procedural and legal, flip-flop with the election results.

There's also hypocrisy in issues like global warming and the Paris Accord.  Both Trump and his critics pretend the accord is more powerful and more binding than it actually is. In a way they've a de facto agreement to misrepresent it.  By portraying it as very important, they can rally their backers to greater and greater efforts to defeat it/defend it as the case may be.

See this Keith Hennessey post for a somewhat similar perspective on Paris:

A surprising dynamic often surrounds QTIPS policy changes—the most passionate supporters and opponents have a common interest in arguing that this particular policy change is enormously important, while downplaying the reality that its direct impact is barely measurable. These mortal opponents have a shared goal of hyping the issue and the battle.

 The key point I'm getting at, and Hennessey also does, is the two sides agree on the same thing.  

How We Discriminate, Maybe

NYTimes has a piece on research into how primates/humans recognize faces:

"These dimensions create a mental “face space” in which an infinite number of faces can be recognized. There is probably an average face, or something like it, at the origin, and the brain measures the deviation from this base.

A newly encountered face might lie five units away from the average face in one dimension, seven units in another, and so forth. Each face cell reads the combined vector of about six of these dimensions. The signals from 200 face cells altogether serve to uniquely identify a face."

 I don't understand this fully, not in the sense I understand "2+2 = 4", and the article doesn't go into the idea of an "average face". At least the first page of the Cell report doesn't go into an "average face" either, so I'm sticking my neck out when I write the rest of this post. 

Assume there is an "average face" stored in our memories which serves as the baseline against which the coding of a new face takes place (like the Greenwich Meridian, serving as the starting point). I'd guess there's some innate biology we're born with, but the pump is primed by our early childhood experiences.  So maybe by 1 week, 1 month, or 1 year we have an "average face" pretty well constructed.

Note the implications: we'll find faces more similar to our average face easier to recognize and likely more attractive. ( (It'd be a neat experience to test adults on facial recognition to see if they recognize faces similar to their mothers faster or as more pleasing than others.)   That would account for the common idea that "all X's (insert race or ethnicity of your choice) look alike". 

Now those implications aren't supported by the article or report--there's no implication that there's learning involved in recognizing faces.  The way the biologists did the experiment they weren't likely to see it.  

Cracks in the Facade?

ThinkProgress reports that Kellyanne Conway's husband tweeted in reaction to DJT's morning burst, saying that Trump's tweets might make some people feel better, they won't help with the Supreme Court.

One wonders about his state of mind--why withdraw from a nomination to the Justice Department, then openly criticize your wife's thin-skinned boss?

Jumping the Line

Seems to me that cutting into line is one thing which arouses  a lot of anger. It does with me.  Even in traffice, where I understand the theory of the "zipper merge" leading to smoother flows, I get mad when someone zooms up the right lane and cuts in in front of me.

So guess my reaction to this weak statement:

"“I feel badly that I have the means to jump the line,” he said. “But when you have kids, you jump the line. You just do. If you have the money, would you not spend it for that?”"

That's from a NYTimes article, part of a series on the "velvet rope" economy, by which the writer means a growing tendency for those with wealth to be able to buy advantages. In this case it's on concierge medicine; for fat yearly fees a medical practice will provide on-call service and cover all medical needs, except hospitalization.

I suppose the two cases aren't that comparable.  In the one the guy is gaining a bit of time, and costing me and others behind me a bit.  In the other the injury to the rest of us is harder to see, presumably slightly higher costs and/or long wait times to see a doctor, although a free marketer might argue that the high fees the jumpers pay will eventually lure more people into medicine.

The fact the injury is vague and possibly debatable means a standard test of morality is less obviously applicable.  I mean the Golden Rule--in this case the line jumper sees no "other" to consider.  This leaves me in a confused and peavish mood, lacking a clear villain to oppose, but not satisfied with the outcome.

Balz: Everyone Knew the DNC Sucked

Now he tells us. 

Strikes me as a big failure of journalism.

Balz starts:
"Of all the reasons Hillary Clinton thinks she lost the 2016 election to President Trump, the least among them was the state of the Democratic National Committee. That it was a mess long before she became a candidate was well known."

I don't remember any Post articles describing the mess.  Yes, from reading the Post you'd know that Obama wasn't doing much with the DNC, and in 2016 there were stories on the chairwoman.  But in 2016 I was sitting fat and happy, knowing that the DNC had a better operation than the RNC.  Not so, despite my regular donations to the DNC.

Aging means the loss of illusions.

Why the Democrats Should Follow the Beatles

This is the 50th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is getting attention in the media.  Listening to the radio I heard the announcer say that three of the Beatles weren't that enthusiastic about it; Paul was the one who liked it.

Why my title?  The lesson here for the Democrats is that you go along to get along, and while the Beatles didn't agree on the record, they reached a consensus decision to go ahead with it.  That sort of give and take is important for any organization, and will be important as the Democrats go forward.

A Gem from the National Review

"It is not unconstitutional to be a fool"

from NR

Two Airborne Command Centers?

This Defenseone piece says the AF wants to replace the Air Force 2 planes and the Doomsday command center planes.

Did any one know the Navy also runs a Doomsday command center plane?  Next thing I'll learn that the Marines and the Army each have their own plane.  After all, they each have their own air force.

Imagining the Future--the Founders

John Fea comments on Sen. Mike Lee's Am history--good read.  Lee wrote that Alexander Hamilton could never have imagined the sort of big government we have today, implying that therefore such government was somehow illegitimate.  Fea points out that neither Hamilton nor the other founders could have imagined the society and economy we have today.  I'll go on to note that while Franklin and Jefferson IIRC wrote about the U.S. filling the continent and the expansion of the populace, as is usually the case they just imagined more of the same: more people, more farmers, etc. 

Cut My COLA?

If I understand the Trump budget, he would decrease the COLA's (cost of living adjustment) for those in the Civil Service Retirement System (like me) by .5 percent each time.

I can handle that, though I'd rather see a graduated decrease: say .1 for those with smaller annuities, 1.0 for those with larger ones.

All the Farmers Are Above Average?

It's hard to be above average.

USDA Reorganization

You can comment on the proposed reorganization here.

Apparently USDA had problems with some of the comments received, because OFR shows 9 received, but only displays the text for 3.  The process is described here:

This count refers to the total comment/submissions received on this docket, as of 11:59 PM yesterday. Note: Agencies review all submissions, however some agencies may choose to redact, or withhold, certain submissions (or portions thereof) such as those containing private or proprietary information, inappropriate language, or duplicate/near duplicate examples of a mass-mail campaign. This can result in discrepancies between this count and those displayed when conducting searches on the Public Submission document type. For specific information about an agency’s public submission policy, refer to its website or the Federal Register document.

Hay and Peas

We've had a rainy May. It's raining again right now.  It's good for our garden peas but I can't help thinking of the farmers trying to get their hay into the barn.  One of the most frustrating parts of dairy farming was encountering a long stretch of rainy weather, particularly back before we had good weather forecasting.  Cut hay, get it rained on, rake it,get it rained on, turn it over, more rain and then you had nothing worth putting in the barn except it needed to get off the field so it wouldn't kill the grass.

How the Bureaucracy Copes

Trump supporters believe there's a "deep state" composed of Democrats in the bureaucracy who will take every opportunity to sabotage the administration by illegal and/or unethical leaks, obstruction, and delay.  It may be so. Sometimes they resign as described in this Grist piece.

However the bureaucracy is also composed of careerists, who want to preserve their careers, remain in their jobs, keep their functions going.  To that end, they may over-conform, as obsequious panderers to what they perceive as the administration's wishes. The Post has an article
describing "re-branding" efforts: "While entire departments are changing their missions under Trump, many of these rebranding efforts reflect a desire to blend in or escape notice, not a change in what officials do day-to-day — at least not yet, according to 19 current and former employees across the government, and nonprofit officials who receive federal funding."

Or, as Mr. Comey did when in the fed law enforcement Oval Office meet and greet, they try to fade into the woodwork and avoid the notice of administration offices  Hope it works better for them than for Comey.

Canadian Dairy and the Effects of Supply Management

This is an interesting piece by a Canadian dairy farmer, which shows how differently that country manages dairy industry.  Canada uses a supply management system, which sounds similar to the system ASCS managed for our tobacco industry until this century.

To me the bottom line is that supply management can work for a number of years, as it did for Canadian dairy and American tobacco and peanuts, if "work" means maintaining smaller producers. It doesn't work if the priority is innovation and efficiency over the long range.

How To Influence Congress: Townhalls

The Congressional Management Foundation has a helpful post.

An Understatement of the Month?

Keith Hennessey (GWB's former economist) is commenting on the Trump budget and apparent disagreements between OMB Mulvaney and Treasury Mnuchin:

"Two trillion dollars is a lot of money..."

Ukrainian Skippers--Really??

The operation of the human mind (at least my mind) is a puzzle.  I was reading this NYTimes piece this morning, which describes how richer people can hire boats and skippers to smuggle them into Europe:

"The family of six had paid about $96,000 to travel from Afghanistan to Turkey. The last leg of their journey, a cramped week’s sail through the Aegean and Mediterranean seas aboard a cerulean 15-meter yacht, the Polina, piloted by three Ukrainian skippers, cost $7,000 a head. It dropped them in Sicily in relative style."

What struck me was the "Ukrainian" bit, which was the only nationality of skippers described in the article.  I was sure that the Ukraine was this land-locked country, so how in the world would they have people with expertise in navigating smaller boats?  

The short answer is: the Black Sea.  Ukraine is one of six countries with ports on the Black Sea.

I don't know whether I was confusing Ukraine with Belorussia, which is indeed landlocked, or just had a poor mental image of the map of Eastern Europe.

Factoid: did you know you can sail from the North Sea to the Black Sea (Rhine-Danube canal).

Post Readers Are Knee-Jerk Liberals?

Not so, at least on this evidence.  The background: Christine Fair is an activist who was at an exercise club where she saw Robert Spencer also exercising.  She raised a stink and the club banned Spencer. Today she has a post in the Post defending her actions.  When I checked about 1 pm she had drawn more than 450 comments.  When looking at the comment threads sorted by "likes", the top threads (maybe 5 or 6, didn't bother to scroll down through all of them) were all anti-Fair.

Count me in their camp--as long as Spencer was lifting according to the club rules, he should be left alone.  You want to protest his views, which are terrible, fine, but do it at his office or his speeches, etc.  And even his speeches, I'd follow the recent Notre Dame precedent, attend then walk out, or vocally protest for 10 minutes, then allow him to talk. 

Is Perdue on Board With Trump Budget?

The answer, it appears, is "no", according to this piece on his testimony today to the House appropriations.

Beer in Chinese Tanks Via Erie Canal

Via Northview Diary, here's a newspaper piece on the travels of Chinese beer tanks.

Apparently the US can no longer fabricate the large fermentation tanks needed for an expansion of a brewery, the Genesee brewery in Rochester.  So they were made in China, shipped through the Panama Canal, up to Albany, then on the Erie Canal (where the Northview blogger took photos) to Rochester.  The tow, carrying 2 tanks, is over 400 feet long. In total there are 12 tanks, which will make a lot of beer. 


Drink Genny.  Be a real man.

Trump Budget for USDA

Tim Mandell at the Rural Blog copies the gist of Chris Clayton's early analysis of the Trump budget--big cuts, including  payment limitations on crop insurance and farm programs.  USDA takes a 20.5 percent cut in discretionary, the biggest of any agency except State.

Dead on arrival and already starting to smell.

It's Always More Complicated

That's my rule in approaching generations about humans--society or history, at least it's the rule I try to remember.

Lyman Stone has a post here in which he challenges and complicates the story of immigrant groups outearning whites, which Mark Perry of American Enterprise Institute has pushed based on census data.

You need to read it all, if you're at all interested in the subject, but a quick and possibly flawed summary has two points:

1. "ancestry" and "race" are separate categories and shouldn't be used in the same comparison because of the way the data are collected. 
2. for many ancestry groups the comparison being made is flawed because it's based on "household income" and there's wide variation in the size of households among the different groups.

Based on some calculations Stone did it seems the best generalization is that immigrant Russians do have an exceptional record in earning, but otherwise it's complicated.

Overstaffed Congress

" "People think Congress has all these resources and staff. In fact Congress hasn't increased its resources since 1974, and the House of Representatives cut its budget by 20 percent since 2011 for each Member office."

From Congressional Management Foundation 

Part of the problem is the (mostly Republican) Congressional desire to be seen as responsible trustees of the taxpayers' dollar. The one thing they can control is the staff and their salaries.  And then they complain about lobbyists and the power of the bureaucracy. 

The Importance of Height

I speculated to Ross Douthat that height was important, that Comey's 5 inch margin on Trump was significant in his firing.

Sometime later Kathleen Parker agreed with me.

(If he can select people based on looks, he can fire people who make him feel uncomfortable.)

The Future Is Now: Amphib Warfare

Born before US entry into WWII, I grew up with a lot of military history available.  I didn't like the military when I served, but retain some interest.  Here's an excerpt from a Bloomberg piece on Trump's problems with our new aircraft carrier:

Last week, at Camp Pendleton in California, I watched a Marine landing exercise. First, drones came in to map out what was on shore. Then an amphibious landing vehicle hits the shore, but the first thing off it was a machine-gun-armed robot, not a human. Then the human Marines arrive. But they are being resupplied by drones. One quadricopter drone comes down to drop an MRE. Then, a Marine changes that supply drone into a strike one, by now putting on board it a grenade and flying it off to hit the enemy. Sounds science fiction? Islamic State is doing similar things with jury-rigged drones in Mosul, Iraq, right now.

 Back in the late 19th century the new thing for navies was the torpedo.  So we had torpedo boats intended to launch them.  And then the navies developed "torpedo boat destroyers", to counter torpedo boats, a name then shortened to "destroyers".  The article notes that our new destroyer is now comparable to a heavy cruiser of WWII.

How soon will we have "drone destroyers"--inquiring minds want to know?

Comments on USDA REorganization

An article at Progressive FArmer.

Majority-Minority: Love When I'm Right

Herbert Gans has an op-ed on the prospect for a majority minority nation by 2050.  He doubts it, as did I in this post.

Getting Customer/Client/Citizen Feedback

Sens. Lankford and McCaskill introduced " the bipartisan Federal Agency Customer Experience Act (S.1088), a bill to roll back a federal requirement that makes it difficult for agencies to get feedback from the public concerning their satisfaction with agencies’ customer service."

That's from the press release  but it seems to me the bill does something more and different.  I think I've seen agency websites use a standard web feedback form (from Foresight, or some such company) and I doubt they've cleared such collection of data through OMB.  No doubt the clearance requirements for public data collections are an obstacle, but the more important thing they require is annual publication of the data collected.  Way back in the early days of this blog I think I recommended a similar process, though I was suggesting a running total, like the data Google Analytics gave to bloggers. 

The missing piece though in the Act is something explicitly tying the data back to Congressional oversight--it's fine to collect data but if the bosses (i.e. Congress) don't use it, it's simply an exercise. 

Hattip: FCW. 

More on Cotton

IL extension has a comparison of cotton support versus other commodities

USDA Reorganization

A post here on it at ThinkProgress.

The USDA report to Congress on the proposal.

Basically it would move NRCS, RMA, and FSA under one new Undersecretary, leaving FSA and FS each with their own Undersecretary.

This sentence from the USDA post perhaps hints that there will be more attention to the consolidation/cross-agency work that has been going on over the last 26 years:

Locating FSA, RMA, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service under this domestically-oriented undersecretary will provide a simplified one-stop shop for USDA’s primary customers, the men and women farming, ranching, and foresting across America.

 The proposal gives more prominence to the FAS and international trade, which is strongly supported by the ag interest groups, which may be enough to overcome concerns among the conservation types over a possible/perceived downgrading of conservation.

We'll see.

Cottonseed Again

Illinois extension has a post on the cottonseed issue.  As it says, in greater detail than I have the brain cells to waste on, it's complicated, involving both the base acreage/"generic base" issue and WTO.  From the conclusion:

Much depends on the final details of any Congressional response but cotton farmers are currently receiving significant assistance from the 2014 Farm Bill and adding cottonseed may provide a windfall to them, including one recoupled to cotton planting decisions. Congress, if considering adding cottonseed, may also have to consider further revisions to the 2014 Farm Bill such as precluding payments on generic base acres for any covered commodities planted on them.

I May Be Wrong

On the Comey-Russia thing:

I doubt there's much going on between the Trump campaign and the Russians.  Most likely the Russians wanted to undermine Clinton and Trump wanted to beat her, but I doubt any real collusion.  People in Trump's campaign might have been more aware of Russian hacking than the general public, but I don't see them colluding.

As for the firing, I'd expect an investigation but the major effect will be a continuing distraction from other issues, no impeachment or anything similar.  Trump had the authority to fire the FBI director, however poorly it was handled.

Habituation II

I've suggested that maybe over time we'll get bored with President Trump.  In that spirit:

"From fiveThirtyEight

10 percent

During President Trump’s first 50 days in office, 62 percent of his tweets got more than 100,000 likes. In the following 51 days, just 10 percent of his tweets passed that benchmark. [Bloomberg]"

Billy Beer and Kushner

"Billy Beer".  That's an American icon, symbolic of the long time problem presidents have had with their relations.  Jimmy Carter's younger brother Billy got himself into trouble several times, most notoriously by endorsing Billy Beer.  Just within my memory, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, all had problems with siblings or children.  Going further back, Lincoln had in-law problems and Adams had children problems.

So all in all I don't take the problem of Jared Kushner's sister pitching EB-5 visas in China too seriously. It's unseemly, but we can't expect saintliness.

What Happened to Make Some Conservatives Smart?

For some strange reason I'm finding the reasoning of some conservatives much more impressive these days.  People like George Will, Charles Krauthammer in the Post and Kevin Williamson in the National Review actually can write columns with which I agree, or at least engage with.

There was a science fiction story in my younger days, something about a dumb person becoming smart, then reverting.  Flowers for Algernon, that's the story.   Did these conservatives have that operation last fall?  Will they revert back to their unenlightened ways at some time in the future?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Dirty Cows

Seen a couple pictures of dairies recently.  Always interested in them.  Here's a tweet, leading to a Post article on the Canadian dairy flap, but the article doesn't have the tweet's photo.

IMHO the cows shown are dirty.  Since it's a conventional setup and the focus of the article is Wisconsin dairy, and it's only April, my guess is that the cows mostly stay in the barn, as our cows did, and that's why they are dirty.  But our cows would get dirty because they lay down, got their tails in the gutter with the manure, and spread the manure to their flanks and legs.  In the setup shown, the cows are raised up on a platform, so the manure can spread across the lower driveway behind them.  (Likely have a skid-steer small tractor to doze the manure.)

Do I have a point?  Not really.  Given the realities, cows are going to get dirty part of the time. Perhaps for the big dairies where they never get to the pasture they're going to be dirty all the time.

Paragraph of the Day: Mirengoff

At Powerline, Paul ends his commentary on the passage of the 2017 spending bill with this:

Candidate Trump liked to say that under his presidency, he would win so much on behalf of America that we would get tired of winning. As yet, I don’t feel remotely tired.

Big Chickens: Taste and the Globe

Interesting piece in today's Times on chickens.  Scientists are trying to develop a chicken which tastes better and grows more slowly, and also is more active:

Today’s conventional broiler chickens have been bred over the years to produce the most amount of meat in as short a time as possible, reducing a farmer’s costs and increasing profits. In 1935, the average broiler chicken reached the slaughter-ready weight of 2.86 pounds in 98 days, according to the National Chicken Council. Today’s broilers are an average of 6.18 pounds at the time of slaughter, when they are about 47 days old.

 My uncle was a research scientist at the ARS Beltsville MD center, working on nutrition, which adds to my youthful exposure to chickens on the farm.

The food movement faces a conflict here:  on the one hand this fits the current emphasis on moving from "industrial agriculture" to more focus on taste and nature; on the other hand a slow growth chicken means a bigger impact on the environment because it eats more grain over its lifespan.

Trump's Achievement?

Trump will end with at least one undeniable achievement--he is disrupting institutions and norms.  He may and likely will become less disruptive as time goes on, but disruptive he has been.

The economists have a favorite concept for market economies: "creative destruction".  Among the things it means is the corporations and technologies dominant in 1950 are mostly gone by now: United States Steel, Bethlehem Steel, AT&T, Kodak, A&P, Sears and Montgomery Ward, etc. etc.

There's an easy parallel to make: creative disruption.  Is Trump triggering a political realignment?  We'll see.

The Difference a Job Makes for Marriage

A higher proportion of ever enlisted men (born 1980-1984) are marrying than their civilian counterparts. Find out more at #PAA2017 #CFDR pic.twitter.com/GLReTHLnWi

— Paul Hemez (@hemezp) April 25, 2017

That's a tweet which I probably could have better incorporated in this post.  Anyhow, the graph shows the marriage rates for whites, Hispanics and blacks, divided between "ever enlisted" and "civilians".  What caught my eye were the rates for enlisted blacks, very much the same as enlisted whites, and enlisted Hispanics, significantly higher than enlisted whites and blacks.  The rates for all enlisteds were significantly above those for civilians.

What I take from this is that secure jobs enable marriages.  I may be wrong, there may be significant differences between the men and women who enlist and those who don't.  But I like the idea that a steady salary leads to marriage.