Most Surprising Sentence About the UK

From Mr. Beauregard at Fabfrog, in a long essay on French youth and their concerns (with his characteristic misspelling :-) )

"Mrs T broughtt the social mobility to the UK that is still somewhat lacking in France." [I just realized, I might need to explain that's Mrs. Thatcher, given there's many adults for whom she is ancient history.]

My impressions of Thatcher derive from BBC programs (and US news reports) of the time, mostly anti, in that she was shown as driving unemployment and poverty up. So the image of her as freeing up social mobility and pushing higher education surprises.

Also interesting: "It seems almost natural to go to university."

Exaggerations With Respect to African Land

The headline on this piece, "50,000,000 Acres..." seems to be unsupported. It's carried over from the post to which it refers, but nowhere do I see any supporting figures which add up to 50 mill. 6 or 7 million seems more like it.

I'm skeptical these acquisitions will be terrible. It's not clear how they're going to be farmed. My prejudices say a big farm of 1,000,000 acres is not the way to go. I'd guess the Chinese aren't going to sell off 500 acre farms to Chinese farmers, although China has some recent experience with the problems of communally owned land operated as one enterprise. Assuming the countries can figure out how to manage the enterprises and the land effectively, things could work out. There would be an investment in infrastructure, which many places in Africa lack, and in equipment, fertilizer, and pesticides which African agriculture needs.

Of course the greens would argue organic agriculture in Africa has proven its ability to out-produce the methods currently used in African agriculture. The investments by the countries mean a different model of agriculture (I assume, but maybe the Koreans and Chinese are going for the organic model ;-). We'll see what works.

A Stereotype Confirmed: The Talkative Italian

From a post at treehugger talking about slow food:

Mr. Petrini points out that Italians used to spend 32% of their income on food. Now they spend 14% on food and 12% on their mobile phones.

(I missed commenting on a report showing that people in nations who ate slowly were less obese than those who eat fast. I wonder if the slow eating was the result of lots of talking.)

Concentrated Vegetable Feeding Operations (CVFO's)

Otherwise known as high-tech greenhouses. This LA Times story describes "energy-neutral" greenhouses, built by the Dutch in CA. (Of course the Dutch--who else believes so completely in human control over the environment, starting with reclaiming land from the ocean.)

The yields are high: 482 tons of tomatoes per acre isn't bad at all.

I'd point out the story describes an innovation which sits on a potential fault line between global warming people and foodies. On the one hand, the greenhouse complex has a low impact on the environment, creating electricity through a solar panel farm, reusing water, cutting water and fertilizer use. But there's some parallels to CAFO's, in the attempt to measure and control all the inputs and outputs. And there's certainly no locavore aspect or organic farming, at least in the romantic, living with nature branch.

Doing Regulations

GAO has a new report on the rulemaking process. (After a law is enacted, usually the responsible agency within a department has to go through rulemaking to come up with regulations which are legally binding on the public.)

Based on the limited information available, the average time needed to complete a rulemaking across our 16 case-study rules was about 4 years, with a range from about 1 year to nearly 14 years, but there was considerable variation among agencies and rules.

As far as I can see, the focus seems to be on the differences among agencies, the lack of data on the process, and the role of OMB's review body (the one Cass Sunstein is to head). Nothing on the impact, or lack thereof, of new technology and regulation.gov. Note if it takes 4 years to do a reg, a new President doesn't impact regs until he's almost out the door, or reelected. So much for fantasies of how oppressive the government is--we just can't act that fast.

The Military-Industrial Complex in WWII

Stumbled across this site (Pacific War Encylcopedia) via a comment on Volokh.com). Reminds me of my fascination growing up with the navy and WWI and II. Idly surfing it, and trying to exercise willpower, I came on this:

The Alaskas formed the heavyweight tier of a three-tiered cruiser family conceived in 1939 (the other two tiers eventually becoming the Baltimores and the Clevelands.) They were an utterly unnecessary design, doing nothing that an Iowa did not do better, and doing most things much worse; and, at $75 million apiece, they were not that much cheaper than the Iowas. They were originally a response to rumors that the Japanese had something similar in the works, which the Japanese did not.

I'd also cite this bit:

Allied interrogators did not as a rule employ any form of torture. They did not need to. Because the Japanese military code of honor absolutely forbade surrender, Japanese soldiers received no instruction on how to behave in captivity, and those captured felt such shame that they had little psychological resistance to interrogation. Many sang like canaries. However, the fact that officers almost never surrendered meant that almost all prisoners were enlisted men with little or no high-level information to impart.

The Limits of Public Input

According to this Post piece:

Forget about the economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and saving Social Security: An online opinion survey released by the White House this week ranks legalizing pot, playing online poker and cracking down on Scientologists as far more important issues

It reflects the limits of the public involvement campaign by the Obama administration.

Fun for FSA Offices--Direct Attribution

FSA just issued a notice on cleaning up their computer files which will be used in enforcing direct attribution of payments for payment limitation rules. Unfortunately the 2008 farm bill caught FSA partway through its change from the System/36/AS400 system (minicomputers in each county office communicating nightly with the mainframe in Kansas City) to an Internet-based solution. A problem with the first system which we fought beginning in 1985 with its first implementation is keeping all the data consistent between counties and mainframe (now it's called synchronizing and software packages handle it, then it was called a pain in the a** and it requires human intervention and troubleshooting). And that means you're dependent on everyone doing their job perfectly and no glitches in the process.

As far as I'm concerned, USDA's failure to get FSA's basic farmer and farm data moved completely to the Internet shows Secretaries Glickman, Venneman, Johannes, and Schafer were not good managers. (I'm sure they're all greatly concerned about my lack of regard for them.)

Race and Sex Classification of Farmers

USDA is asking for comments on its collection of race, sex, etc. classification of farmers:

This notice announces the OASCR's intention to
request approval for a new information collection aimed at
standardizing and consolidating the race, ethnicity, sex, national
origin, disability and age (RESNODA) data for agencies within the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) that serve agricultural producers and
landowners.

This is a result of GAO criticism of USDA's current records, which are based on visual inspection of the farmer.

I plan to write on this some more later. Comments are open through July 13.

The Role of Government

I'm reading a biography of Alfred Sloan (head of GM from 1920's on). Turns out a big controversy then was over safety glass in windshields. Sloan objected, because customers didn't want it, as witness the fact they weren't willing to pay extra for it. (Similar to the 1950's, when Ford (under Robert McNamara) tried to sell a steering wheel with recessed center column, among other safety features, and couldn't.)