Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs, American history, the food movement, and other interests. Often contrarian, usually optimistic, sometimes didactic, occasionally funny, rarely wrong, always a nitpicker.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Adaptability of People
Everyone who announces a position about people should remember examples like these.
Gardens in Lesotho
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Feminism Score--Four Stars
A Weak Government and Weak Newspapers Equal No Sports Fanatics
Ilya Somin at Volokh Conspiracy contrasts American sports fanaticism with that in Europe, and finds ours lacking (our fans almost never kill each other over games):
Where do newspapers come in? I read a report a few days ago, I think from a newspaper conference in Europe, that's relevant. As I remember it, European newspapers look at US papers and see lots of weak, local papers as compared to their setup where you have fewer, more national papers. For example, in France the Paris newspapers dominate the country; similarly in Britain the London papers are dominant. The closest we come is having USAToday, the Wall Street Journal and NY Times, but even those papers don't have the influence of the Times (of London). So the Euro papers see the problems US papers are having with the Internet and currently don't have the same problems, but anticipate they may down the road.Many European and especially Latin American soccer teams are also closely associated with governments. This often allows repressive and corrupt regimes to obtain propaganda benefits from the teams' victories. For example, the repressive Brazilian and Argentinian military governments of the 1970s increased their public support as a result of their national teams' World Cup victories in 1970 and 1978. In Europe, Mussolini, Franco, and the communist government of the Soviet Union derived similar benefits from their teams' successes. On a lesser scale, incompetent or corrupt local governments in Europe sometimes benefit from the victories of local clubs.
In the United States, by contrast, pro sports rivalries are based on geographic divisions that have little or no connection to deeper social antagonisms over race, religion, or political ideology. As a result, even the most heated US sports rivalries, such as the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, rarely result in violence between fans of opposing teams - and never in the form of the large-scale soccer riots that we sometimes see in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Potatoes, Co-ops, and Marketing Information
Abstract of a paper from SSRN:The whole thing is interesting for those who remember farmers struggles to cooperate over the past 90 years or so.
High potato price volatility, decreasing demand for fresh potatoes and prices below the cost of production led to a decision of a number of Idaho potato growers to organize the United Fresh Potato Growers of Idaho, a marketing cooperative. The programs and strategies of the cooperative target both production and marketing of fresh potatoes. To evaluate the effectiveness of the programs implemented by the cooperative, we examine the level and volatility of fresh potato prices during two periods: before the cooperative was organized and when the cooperative is in the market. We find empirical evidence suggesting that fresh potato prices were higher and less volatile during the period when the cooperative was in the market.
Medicare and SSN
I regard this with the disdain it deserves. The state of Virginia has phased out SSN's as the drivers license number. I recognize that Medicare is not used to issuing new cards every 5 years or so, but I assume they have procedures for replacing lost or stolen cards. And they have procedures for handling erroneous numbers (i.e., if they give out a card with the wrong number they're able to reissue a new card with the right number). Those two capabilities can be the basis for the changeover because they supply the business logic for the change. The third and missing element is a process to generate a unique 9-digit number for Medicare recipients. All they need is a cross-reference file matching their number to the SSN. Match all bills against the file so the provider can bill using either the SSN, if already in the provider's database, or the Medicare number.Ms. Frizzera, the Medicare official, said that issuing new Medicare cards would be “a huge undertaking.” The agency would need three years to plan such a move and eight more years to carry it out, she said.
Medicare officials estimate that it would cost $500 million to change their computer systems if they issued new ID numbers to beneficiaries. Doctors, hospitals and other health care providers use those numbers in filing claims with Medicare, which pays a billion claims a year.
The bottom line is, they're going to have to do it someday, might as well do it now.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Two Nations Forever
But some aren't so easily discouraged:With just two weeks until their first performance, Jefferson [chorus leader] jumped into practicing the two songs the choir planned to sing at the concert. For the slow "Lord We Worship You," he told them, imagine a quiet candlelight dinner with God. For the upbeat "Blessed Be the Lord," use "your country voice," he said.
And learn to move, he told them. Clapping was not an option at this point, as past attempts had ended with the black members clapping on the second and fourth beats and white members clapping on the first and third.
"It's not in everybody's culture to do the moving, so be sensitive," Jefferson said. "We're a little, how do I say it, challenged in that area. It's going to take awhile. We're going to bridge it together. Bridge the cultures."
Start with baby steps, he instructed. Tap your foot. Or rock back and forth.
"Just try not to laugh at each other."
How Americans Do Things
Bureaucrat Dies
The Monkey Cage picks up the story from the Post.