Wisdom for the Day

From Dan Drezner, at the end of an interesting comparison of Iran and Honduras (both places where the right has assumed power over the left...):

"Bear in mind, however, that life never holds everything else constant."

Docking Tails and Hurting Animals [Updated]

Sometimes you have to practice tough love, whether it's with animals or humans. And we always have to learn. This post at Stonybrookfarm reminds me of both imperatives.

[Added: And here's a Slate piece of a few days ago on ringing free-range pigs and spaying. Some of the same issues.]

Our Founding Mother

Back in the early 1960's Harvard U Press published paperback editions of the letters of John and Abigail Adams as part of their Adams papers effort. Since I was into history, I was introduced early to Abigail, who later became an icon of the feminist movement and a beacon to women's history: "Remember the ladies, John". Laura Linney did her justice in the recent HBO series.

But just surfing through her letters, and reading the occasional description of her as keeping the home fires burning, raising the large family etc. didn't give me the picture of her as an investor as did a piece this morning by Woody Holton in the Post. He's a U of Richmond professor who has a bio coming out, but he extracts a series of rules for wise economy/investment from her life and presents them well. (Including a rule on how to outwit a Founding Father.)

Have a "Happy Fourth"

I'm passing on those words, which I received as I left our community (organic)garden after watering our beds (we had a wet two months, followed by 2-3 weeks of dry, so it's time to start watering), from a fellow long-time gardener. He happens to be African-American (immigrant from Africa some time back) with whom I exchange hellos when we cross paths. His garden is an obnoxiously neat and organized one, with raised beds and great soil. He grows the usual variety of vegetables, although he always has a great bed of carrots into the winter.

He was weeding as I passed and offered those seasonal greetings. I replied, and went on (I'm too shy to initiate many conversations). I wonder whether he finds more meaning in the Fourth than I do. I don't think I've used those words on my own initiative: "merry Christmas", "good Thanksgiving", yes, but not a "happy Fourth".

In the spirit of enjoying the Fourth, read this Washington Post article containing the responses of a number of immigrants to the question: "what do you like about America".

Faith in the Execution

Obamafoodorama has had a fight over the possibility that lead from sludge used on White House lawns was a danger in the new organic garden. The blogger seems to have had the better of it, but shows a touching faith in the ability of a bureaucracy to execute:

"The other bizarre element to the whole bashing thing is that anyone who thinks the White House left a single stone unturned in planning the garden is...what's the most delicate, diplomatic, term? Oh yeah, silly. The White House was well aware that the first food garden planted on the campus since WWII was going to be big news. Of course all details were accounted for. Of course appropriate testing was conducted. The White House has the finest minds in America, experts in every field, available for consultation. It's beyond silly to imagine that the garden wasn't thoroughly "vetted.""

The Obama administration may be different, but I doubt it. They're human, after all, and humans can screw up.

Locavore Versus "Industrial"

Walter Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm has a post on his hot dogs, which I'm sure are very good, mostly. But because he has to rely on others, there's some problems in achieving a consistent product. Industry has trained us consumers to expect the same thing every time and every place; a McDonalds french fry tastes the same from coast to coast. McDonalds can demand its suppliers meet its standards. But a locavore food producer doesn't have the cash flow or the size of operation to compete on uniformity. (I'm reminded of a memoir from Ontario county, NY where the writer remembered that every farm had a different recipe for its bacon and ham.) The same is true for restaurants. My wife and I like the Tortilla Factory in Herndon, but some days their chips and their machaca are better than others.

There's always a tradeoff.

I Always Like Historical Nuggests

From the 1930 blog summarizing the Wall Street Journal articles for the day:

U.S. Treasury surplus for fiscal year ended June 30 was $184M. Receipts were $4.178B vs. $4.033B in 1929; expenditures $3.994B vs. $3.848B in 1929. Public debt was reduced by $746M due to surplus and $554M of "sinking fund" operations charged to ordinary receipts. Original estimate of surplus before start of fiscal year was $225M; 1% tax cut last fall reduced this estimate to $145M.

Senate may direct the Secretary of Agriculture to investigate the multiyear decline in cotton prices. Resolution would budget $125,000 to investigate "the cause of the decline, the amount of short selling, and by whom."

The first item is a reminder--8 months after the Wall Street crash, there's no stimulus from the budget.

The second item seems to be a perennial--always suspect the speculators. Maybe that's because we are paranoid, or maybe because speculators are always more visible in times of boom or bust.

The Cost of 500 Square Feet of Garden

About 47 hours and $938.

Michael Tortorello is blogging at the Times on his garden, keeping track of his hours worked and dollars spent. But not the hours of enjoyment.

Cost of Wheat

This webpage shows the cost of growing wheat in Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Romania, and the UK. The UK has the highest yield, more than twice that of Canada, and its cost per ton is lower than the ABC countries. It's an example of the advantages of climate, I guess.

Surprising Factoid of the Day

"Federal government now employs 587,665 people, not including military, legislative, judicial, and DC government employees." From the News of 1930, for Tuesday, July 1.

I don't know why I'm surprised, or whether I should be, but I am. (My guess is about half the employees are USPS.)

Best Simile of the Day

Today is Canada Day and the NYTimes had an op-ed composed of paragraphs by different people about Canada. Lisa Naftolin comes up with the best simile:

I miss the snow. Yes, I know the United States gets snow, but to my Canadian eye, American snow is like American health care: sporadic, unreliable and distributed unevenly among the population.

An Offer You Can't Say No To

According to the Washington Post, an ex-CIA man has an offer you can't say no to:

"This month, he's providing room and board in his home to a young but experienced worker. In the fall, he hopes to offer young farmers room and board on his land in exchange for farm labor. If that's successful, he aims to solicit several more acres from neighbors to expand the farm. He envisions small tenant houses where young farmers could gain experience and save money to start out on their own. The plan is in the early stages, but Dunlap says his neighbors are supportive in theory." [emphasis added]

Dunlap's 11-acre farm is in Loudoun County, amidst the McMansions. He supplies farmer markets, farming with no tractor if I understand the article.

As the story says:

High prices also make it difficult for those already farming to find workers. Dunlap has been unable to hire full-time help. He has not had a day off since mid-February and puts in about 80 hours a week in the fields.[emphasis added]

A Warning on Locavore

In 1840 Ireland was primarily locavore, organic agriculture.

This piece from extension.org reminds us of the problems of such agriculture

"Late blight, a potentially devastating disease of tomato and potato, has been found in Ohio and may threaten home gardens and commercial operations alike — particularly as wet, cool weather conditions this week in most of the Buckeye state will create a favorable environment for the spread of the fungal pathogen that causes this disease.[It's the disease which caused the Great Famine in Ireland.]"

One of the limitations of local agriculture is its vulnerability to local weather, local disease, local earthquakes.

More Transparency Than We Need?

Transparency is on my mind, given the Obama initiative on it. We're all in favor of transparency, it's a good thing. But good things can be carried too far.

NYTimes has a piece about Air New Zealand, titled: Nothing to Hide, Really:

"The instructions in Air New Zealand’s new in-flight safety video are given by employees who are nude except for body paint and strategically placed seat belts."

There is, after all, a reason we mostly have doors on bathrooms.

Those Arches

Here's the front page photo of the Washington Post this morning--captioned as showing a supporter of the ousted president near the presidential palace.. Note the golden arches in the upper left.

Women Farmers

The Post runs an article describing the number of women who are now farming, mostly people who changed careers to farm, often with a mate who retains a city job.

" "In Maryland, the number of farms in which a woman is the principal operator jumped 16 percent between 2002 and 2007. In Virginia, female-run farms also grew by 16 percent."....

While men tend to run larger farms focused on such commodity crops as soybeans and wheat, women tend to run smaller, more specialized enterprises selling heirloom tomatoes and grass-fed beef to well-heeled, eco-conscious consumers.

These smaller enterprises have gotten a boost from the popularity of farmers markets and programs in which people pay in advance to receive weekly produce baskets, as well as renewed consumer interest in buying locally."

The Public Option for Insurance

Prof. Mankiw of Harvard has a column in tomorrow's Times (yes, for once I'm getting a jump on the news) on the case against the "public option" in a national health care program; running a government health care insurance program alongside the private programs.

He's much better educated than I, so I should not disagree with him. But that only sometimes has stopped me from voicing opinions.

I'd point out to the good professor that the US has already run an experiment of having private insurance plans and government plans side by side. And what happened? Was the professor's prediction that the government would be "virtually the only game in town" fulfilled?

No. We've had parallel crop insurance programs ever since the FCIC was created towards the end of the New Deal because it was felt private insurance plans didn't do the job. And government did not drive out the private companies; today there is no government insurance operation, just private plans, albeit heavily subsidized by the government.

Mankiw's mistake is to assume there would be a straight competition on economic grounds between the private and government options. Not so. There would be a continuing political/economic struggle in which the private companies would have the advantage. Once the push for national health care is over, the public will lose interest and focus and the role and power of the special interests will return to the fore. In that struggle, government will be the loser.

NY Times on Animal ID

The Times has a rather sympathetic story on the resistance to the National Animal Identification System here. Cites a New Mexico rancher and a couple others, with a pro forma defense from Hammerschmidt.

Proud To Be a New Yorker

Yes, my mother was very proud. New York was the best state around, having the most people and best places to live (that is, excluding the city). It's declined in the rankings over the years since her time but I'm glad to see it's now taking the lead in one very important area, a field where Nebraska is the last but New York is now the first: the number of houses in the state legislature. NY now has three, the Assembly, the Democratic Senate, and the Republican Senate. See this NYTimes article.

(The background is a closely divided body, in which people of dubious achievement have switched back and forth, leading to a comedy of competing leaderships. Mark Twain would have thoroughly enjoyed the situation. The rest of us, not so much.)

$450 Mill for FSA IT

Via Keith Good's FArm Policy, here's the FFAS Under Secretary James Miller talking about FSA IT. Total bill, estimated $450,000,000.

Best Sentence of the Day

From Ta-Nehisi Coates, from a post discussing reaction to the Sanford: "What good is marriage if it doesn't humble men?" Mr. Coates believes in humility. (So do I.)

Wrong Again, on Carbon Sequestration

House Ag has the text of the agricultural amendments to the carbon bill. (There's also a summary.) I was wrong in my assumptions on how it might work--I was figuring a direct NRCS to farmer linkage. Not so, instead there's provision for "offset project developers" and "independent offset verifiers" which sound like private entities. So the NRCS would be working through these third parties. (This is based on a fast skim and I don't claim any expertise in the area.)

Seems to me this is partially political. (I know you're surprised.) By using third parties you increase the chance of getting influential supporters and contributors on board. Use a government agency, you only get the agency's employees. [Updated: Did I ever link to the National Farmer's Union testimony? They're currently acting, I think, as an offset project developer. They've got an interesting website application show in the testimony as well.]

Because I'm on the weak government kick recently, I'll go on to say this is an example of how and why we end up with weak government (otherwise known as protecting our liberties); the process of getting legislation enacted requires logrolling and obeisance to local power centers.

Don't Send Your Son to College

To paraphrase an old song, because Henry Farrell at the Monkey Cage says:
" university funding people act like starved, feral weasels"

Student Aid Applications and the IRS

The NYTimes has an article on:

The Obama administration is moving to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, a notoriously complicated form that asks students seeking financial aid for college as many as 153 questions.

If I understand, the biggest part of the idea is to piggyback on IRS 1040 data. Apparently there's lots of overlap, so the Education Department is willing to forgo some questions of value only in special circumstances, and the applicant is willing to permit Ed to access IRS data, the entry process can be simplified, speeded up, and made much more accurate.

Seems to me there's a trend at work--people are more comfortable with having their data online. Whether they trust the government (or Google or whoever) or it's just an evolution as we get more used to the Internet, I don't know.

Blowing My Mind--Fertilizer Misconception

"By 2005 corn yields in the Midwest and China were about the same, but Chinese farmers were using about 525 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre compared with 83 pounds in the Midwest, and farms in northern China generated nearly 23 times the amount of excess nitrogen than those in the Midwest."

That's from a press release from Cornell U about a Science article one of their professors participated in (via Extension.org).

I guess I've still got images of "The Good Earth" at the back of my mind. Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of us would be surprised at this.

Metro and WMATA

The Post runs an op-ed by Doug Feaver keyed to the Metro accident two days ago, decrying the fact Metro doesn't have dedicated funding:

"That Metro exists is a small miracle. Its construction required the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia, the D.C. Council and the U.S. Congress to agree on the same word-for-word, comma-for-comma enabling language. That nailed down the construction agreements.

Construction is fun and politicians love it. Running and maintaining something, however, is hard work, and it is much less visible to constituents, until something goes wrong. As Ted Lutz, Metro's former general manager (and later a Washington Post Co. vice president) once told me, "You never saw a politician cut a ribbon at an asphalt overlay project."

That fits two of my hobbyhorses: the weakness of our governmental structure, as in the extraordinary exertions and leadership needed to create WMATA (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority), and the parochial nature of politics.

Our Weak Government, Unemployment

Via Understanding Gov, a Wall Street Journal piece on the inequities of the unemployment insurance system, which is run by individual states, not the Feds:

"People in the same state, and even neighbors, can be treated differently, because benefits are awarded by the state where they worked, not where they live."

On a related issue, the Obama administration didn't propose any change in the regulation of insurance companies by states when they revealed their overhaul of the regulation of the financial industry. Insurance agents and companies have big clout in government.

The Decline of Hierarchy

For some reason the other day I got to thinking about cars. (Maybe it was prompted by the bankruptcy of GM.)

In the American Revolution, one of the strands was the rise of democracy and the decline of aristocracy. Where once people tipped their hats in respect to their "betters" (and elders), that sort of deference declined. John Adams was mocked for his enthusiasm for aristocratic and monarchical seeming titles. Then the great Scots-Irishman Andrew Jackson became President and the people were really rising.

But all the historical emphasis on the rise of democracy obscured the ways in which hierarchy still ruled. In my youth it was cars. GM and the others had a deliberate hierarchy--start with a Chevy then move up the ladder until the apex of the mountain was the Caddy. You could drive down the street and place people by the make and age of their cars. A new Cadillac was king of the road, a crapped-out old Chevy had to cower in the side streets.

No more. The Big Three are gone, their vehicular hierarchies are dissolved, the distinctions among cars are blurred. Now when you walk by the community swimming pool the lifeguards may be driving small foreign cars or bigger SUV's. Who knows.

I'm sure there are other hierarchies remaining or evolving, but I notice most the changes from my youth.

More About MIDAS Next Week?

A test of CIO Kundra's dashboard project, as described in this Nextgov post, is whether the MIDAS of FSA is included.

Greg Mankiw Has a Stupid Moment

Greg Mankiw is a Harvard economics professor, author of a best selling economics textbook, formerly on Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, and blogger who doesn't accept comments. His most recent post recounts his time on jury duty--he was peremptorily challenged and observes the: "The only information they had about me at the time was based on a brief questionnaire, which did not say much more than my name, address, and occupation."

Why do I say it was a stupid moment? Because IMHO Mankiw underestimates his fame, particularly in Boston, and the ability to research him. I'd guess the lawyers at least had a laptop, on which they could and would Google the members of the panel. Given his relative conservatism, I would guess the plaintiff's attorneys filed the challenge.

John Boyd Makes the Front Page

A soft piece on John Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers, in today's Post. Obamafoodorama is enthusiastic, even though the piece is implicitly critical of Obama for being slow on delivering the $50,000 for 70,000 black farmers.

I'm sorry, but it seems sloppy to me. Two quibbles, aside from the merits of the Pigford suit: the author says Boyd is a fourth generation farmer, but the National Black Farmers Association says he's third generation; and she says he's been active for 8 1/2 years, but the NBFA says it was founded by Boyd in 1995.

Sen. Proxmire Rises from the Grave

The late Senator from Wisconsin used to mock government science projects by awarding a "golden fleece" award monthly to the most useless expenditure of government money. Some of his mockery was directed at earmarks, some was earned, some was mistaken.

But I thought of him when I read this summary of research from ERS--funded by them but actually conducted by a private firm. I've bolded the bits which struck me.

"This study investigated factors that influence students’ participation in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP). The analysis used recently collected data on a large, nationally representative sample of students certified for free and reduced-price meals during the 2005–06 school year. Results show that, although eligible students are very likely to participate in the programs (i.e. pick up the meal offered that day), eligible elementary school students are more likely to participate than are middle or high school students. Likewise, students who like the taste of the meals are more likely to participate than are students who do not like the taste. In addition, if students now eligible for reduced-price lunches were instead given free lunches, they would participate more than they do now. The same was not strictly the case, however, for breakfast. Finally, the study suggests that analysts should use caution in relying on parents’ reports of a student’s participation to estimate yearly school meal participation. Parental reports of the previous day’s or previous week’s participation tend to overstate participation, which results in higher reported annual participation rates than is true according to administrative data."

I hasten to add I've not read the report and there's value in quantifying the obvious--we know parents don't know what their kids do, but what's the extent of their ignorance?

Offsets and FSA?

I've been assuming NRCS would be the lead agency within USDA if and when the Waxman-Markey bill passes with USDA involvement in handling carbon offsets within agriculture. But this article indicates it might be FSA (of course, I'm surprised when any mainstream media person knows the difference between the two agencies so this is meaningless). But just to stir the pot:

"The deal also could appease Farm Belt lawmakers by giving the U.S. Agriculture Department's Farm Service Agency greater involvement in oversight of the market for "offsets," credits for projects that cut greenhouse gases. Many of the projects would likely come from the agriculture sector, such as planting trees that absorb carbon dioxide.

Will Social Conservatives Boycott Google?

See this post on Google Operating System for a reason they might.

SAIC, FSA, and GIS But No NRCS?

This post has SAIC describing the great work they'll do on GIS for FSA. All good. But whatever happened to the idea of a service center GIS, supporting NRCS and RD as well as FSA? It seems the Bush administration let it fade away.

French Education

When I say our government is weak, this is the model I'm comparing it against, everyone in the country taking the same test at the same time.

While I had this in draft, I noticed this Kevin Drum relay of two comments on the content of a French exam, on philosophy. He wisely cautions against assuming the superiority of the system, but it impresses in some ways.

Carbon Offsets

Vilsack's testimony before House Ag is here:

"The systems we establish will need to recognize the scale of the changes needed, the capabilities of farmers and land owners involved, and the infrastructure that will be required to deliver information, manage data and resources, and maintain records and registries. In addition to bringing offsets to scale, we must also ensure that the offsets markets have high standards of environmental integrity to ensure that offsets result in real and measurable greenhouse gas reductions while bolstering efforts to conserve soil, water, and fish and wildlife resources."

The NYTimes has a post describing the concerns and back and forth between ag and EPA. One proposal, not something NRCS would like:

"Kenneth Richards, an associate professor at Indiana University, said the current bill needs language ensuring that the same project can be verified by three separate investigators. That concept, which made it into a climate bill considered briefly in the Senate last year, would cut down on inaccuracy and fraudulence surrounding measurements of carbon, he said."

I'm skeptical, but maybe there is a compromise possible, at least for policing it: Record the offsets on a GIS layer and make it publically available. Farmers get the offset payments but have to give up the secrecy now applied to their acreage uses. Because, as Professor Richards observes, NRCS isn't (at least wasn't) comfortable being a regulatory agency (witness sod/swampbuster), give FSA a role. (Cynics among you knew that was where I was headed.)

Dairy Problems, Even in UK

The plight of US dairy farmers has received attention. Here's a post from Britain about similar problems there. (They have co-ops too.)

Obama, the Fly, and Ford

By now everyone has heard Obama killed a fly during a TV interview. This post is typical, even citing PETA's reservations. But there's something I haven't seen commented on, something which reminded me of Jerry Ford.

The story goes that shortly after moving into the White House his dog did his business in the Oval Office. A Navy steward moved to clean it up, and Ford told him: "No, no man should have to clean up after another man's dog." I like that, I like it very much.

So what did Obama do: after a bit of repartee with the camera crew and staff, the last bit they showed on Lehrer last night was the President using a tissue to pick up the dead fly to dispose of it. Not quite on the same level as Ford's action, but IMHO it showed the same instinct of taking responsibility for one's personal actions. Of course, that didn't make Ford a great President, but it sure made the commentary at his funeral. (Google: Jerry Ford cleaning up after dog).

Policy on Iran

I don't usually comment on foreign policy but some have criticized Obama for keeping hands off Iran--not declaring a favorite. I understand, but I also remember in Venezuela, relatively early in the Bush administration, it looked for a few days as if Chavez would be ousted. The Bush people applauded the apparent result, and Chavez has never forgotten it. Sometimes it's right to push for change, sometimes not, and you never know for sure which is which.

The Poor and Food

An item in the Post this morning and the sight of a sale on canned tomatoes reminds me of a fact, or a series of facts, interlinked. Stereotypically the grocery stores in poorer urban neighborhoods are small and pricey. The urban poor typically do not have cars, being more reliant on public transport. (Even in Reston I often see people walking from the local Safeway to the once-subsidized housing complex carrying a couple bags of groceries.) The poor live from month to month. All of which makes it difficult to take advantage of sales at stores, to invest money in food which you may eat in 6 months, rather than 6 hours.

My wife and I will stock up on canned tomatoes on our weekly shopping trip, and thereby save about 40 percent on the cost. It's easy because we have the money, we have the car (I normally walk except for the weekly trip), and the store is handy. It's taking advantage of an opportunity (which we can do on other staples), not a determined effort to limit food expenditures to a budget figure, but it does mean our food costs are lower than for a poorer couple in different circumstances.

Inquiring Gardeners Want to Know: Mulch or Weed?

The White House garden got a splash of publicity yesterday, as the kids from the school harvested and ate a lot of stuff. It's a good time to deplete the lettuce; it's likely to bolt when hot weather hits. And the peas should be about at the peak. The cucumbers must be just starting to bear. We have problems with them--hope Michelle doesn't.

But in all the publicity and the photos I haven't seen the answer to one big question: are the gardeners using mulch to keep down the weeds, or are they just hand weeding? Mulch would be the preferred organic solution, but getting down on hands and knees and weeding works too.

Land Tenure

I've become quite aware of land tenure issues since my cousin got me more interested in Irish history. So while my great grandfather's family were tenants in County Down, with little or no chance to buy land because it was all owned by the large English landowners, once he got to the US and was ready to settle in frontier Illinois, he could assemble 300+ acres, a figure that would have put him in the top 1 percent in Ireland.

There's variations in the U.S.;in the East and South, land was sold often by the warrant system, meaning the survey came after settlement, rather than before, so you don't have the township/range system, the Southwest still bears the marks of Spanish/Mexican land system; the Native American tribes have different land tenures depending on how the Dawes Act affected them. And in the nation of Palau you see the ultimate in land tenure entanglements.

Bureaucratic Inertia in Schools

Via Kevin Drum, a report on charter schools:

At present there appears to be an authorizing crisis in the charter school sector. For a number of reasons — many of them understandable — authorizers find it difficult to close poorly performing schools. Despite low test scores, failing charter schools often have powerful and persuasive supporters in their communities who feel strongly that shutting down this school does not serve the best interests of currently enrolled students. Evidence of financial insolvency or corrupt governance structure, less easy to dispute or defend, is much more likely to lead to school closures than poor academic performance. And yet, as this report demonstrates, the apparent reluctance of authorizers to close underperforming charters ultimately reflects poorly on charter schools as a whole. More importantly, it hurts students.

Seems to me this shows the same human tendency to value the known and keep to the familiar as we see elsewhere, whether in USDA or GM. (The report is good--done by Stanford, though not pleasant for charter supporters.)

Patient Health Records and HIPAA

The Obama administration is all for electronic health records. Here's a Federal Computer Week article on the topic. It makes sense to me--I'm in Kaiser Permanente which does have its own system, which is much better than the records systems I've run into in my contacts with non-Kaiser setups. (Though that may change when I'm hospitalized.)

One of the aspects I haven't seen discussed is the issue of the caregiver. We're all getting older and we are caring for relatives who are even older and possibly more senile. But under HIPAA, access to someone else's records is severely limited. Essentially, even if you're next of kin you need a health care proxy to access records, including on-line records. I wonder how well computerized systems will handle that issue, because they tend to be designed and built with the idea of the patient handling his/her own data. And the problem is, even the best of us, like me, shy away from either executing his own health care proxy or asking older relatives for theirs. Just one more thing to worry about, and procrastinate on.

Rock Snot Is Spreading

That's the word in a NYTimes science article--apparently fishermen spread it on their waders, even including to New Zealand. The lede:

The Esopus Creek, a legendary Catskill Mountain fly fishing stream that is an integral part of New York City’s vast upstate drinking water system, is one of the latest bodies of water to be infected with Didymosphenia geminata, a fast-spreading single-cell algae that is better known to fishermen and biologists around the world as rock snot

Maybe as I get old and senile I get more enjoyment out of names: first karnal bunt, now rock snot?

Lies

Just caught our President in a lie--Lehrer Newshour was excerpting his remarks to the AMA, the part where he says he, Michelle, and the daughters are like the rest of America, just doing what the doctors tell them to.

What's the lie? He didn't follow doctor's orders to stop smoking. (I had a 2-3 pack a day habit, but I quit before I reached the big 4-0.)

Indian Agriculture

The greens love to cite India as a place where traditional farmers are under siege, where the green revolution has failed, and where unrest is common. For those with time I recommend some of the articles at this site, which give a somewhat different perspective on the state of Indian agriculture. This lead from February is noteworthy:

Mounting stockpiles may prompt the govt to lift a 3-year ban on exports of wheat, likely weighing on prices that have declined 52% the past year in Chicago

Funniest Regulation Title

"Records Governing Off-the-Record Communications. "

(The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is basically saying any communication on a regulatory matter has to be put on the record, even if it's oral and "off-the-record".)

Recession and Locavores

Mr. Wells in the NYTimes Magazine writes about adapting his family's food buying in light of the recession's impacts:

Until recently, whenever we went to the farmers’ market, we would lug home $50 pork roasts and $14 gallons of milk. We would spend over $100 on food that might not last more than three days. Sometimes we’d shop on Saturday morning and have nothing to make for dinner on Monday. I shrugged this off as one of those oddities of New York life, like getting a ticket because your neighbor put out his trash on the wrong day. But the $35 chicken made me reconsider. Buying sustainably raised beef and sustainably squeezed milk and sustainably hatched poultry is a way of life that, these days, I just can’t sustain.