Flash: Breaking News from the Post's Ezra Klein

The men of Congress are paragons of physical fitness. It's only the women who seem like they might have difficulty sustaining full-court press. Link

The Post on CAFO's

Yesterday the Post had an article describing a state-of-the-art CAFO, in the context of H1N1 flu and the dangers of pig-human transmission.  I suspect some may quarrel with sentences such as:"CAFOs such as Schott's are inherently safer than backyard pig farms, where the animals mingle with people and birds fly overhead."

As I think I've said before, a CAFO is to older farming as an airplane is to a car.  It's a safer mode of transportation, but a whole lot scarier and, when it fails, does a whole lot more damage.

Read the whole piece.

Identity and Surveillance

The Post has an article today on the adoption of mobile fingerprint readers, equipment originally designed for the military.Local police departments are using them to good effect in various scenarios. Meanwhile the NYTimes reports on the use and possible misuse of CCTV in Britain. Anyone who follows PBS Mystery will know how automatic it is for Brit detectives to check the closed circuit TV tapes.  But apparently, as with many innovations, once it's built it's used.  The Brits have a case where the school authorities used the tapes to try to determine whether a family actually lived in the district they claimed to.  Result: some upset

While some, like the ACLU, see such things as violating our right to privacy.  I'm reminded, however, in the small towns we used to live in there was no such privacy--everyone knew everyone without the need  of a fingerprint reader and everyone watched everyone, without use of CCTV.

Transparency in Government--Taxes

Via Kevin Drum here's a discussion of our past history in revealing tax information. I might be persuadable of the advantages of making all tax data accessible on-line (see the last part of the document).

The Second Most Dangerous Place in Washington

The first most dangerous place in DC is supposedly the space between a microphone and Sen. Chuck Schumer.  If so, the second most dangerous place is the space between a new program and an ambitious bureaucrat.  An example, from Farm Policy reporting on a discussion of how carbon offsets might work:

“But the government and companies buying offsets will want proof that the carbon is being properly held in the soil.”

Yesterdays article noted that, “These verifiers confirm project eligibility, ownership of environmental attributes and ongoing project performance and inspect data such as meter readings, fuel purchases and records.

“Gustafson says crop insurance adjustors would be a good fit for this kind of work.
“‘The crop insurance agents are very good and prepared to do many of those tasks,’ he says. ‘They already work directly with producers and they monitor farm activity and programs like this to make sure that they are complying with farm program requirements, as well as specifications for the crop insurance policies.’”

I have to admit I thought FSA could do this work.

It Takes All KInds

LATimes does an interview with a pioneer of the Internet.  His 99-year old mother is on the Net, but his wife just got e-mail 6 months ago.

The Second Amendment

As a good liberal who remembers exactly where I was (U of Rochester library) when I heard about JFK's assassination, I've always been a supporter of gun control.  And as someone who trusts authority, mostly, I bought the idea the Second Amendment related to militias.  Then, in recent years, scholars have made the argument that it really pertains to individual rights.  And enough have made that case, and as I've lived and crime has decreased, I've come to accept the idea that there might be an individual right to weapons.  (Looking at the Young Irelanders has also been interesting.) You might say I've learned a better interpretation of the Second Amendment.

But then, via Althouse, I stumbled on this site, which quotes the discussion in the House of Representatives on the Second Amendment.  Nothing there about individual rights.  (I realize that's not a clinching argument, but it certainly causes me to question my recent learning.

The Advantage of Bees

They work regardless. Obamafoodorama reports high production from the White House beehives (either 100 pounds or 140 gallons of honey, depending on who you believe. Neither source is audited by GAO--I'm waiting for a Rep to request one.)

A quote: "-Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass called the beehive "probably the greatest acheivement of the garden."

From backyardbeehive.com
:

Q. How much honey will I have?
A. Again, it really depends on a lot of factors, but you will definitely have enough to share once your hive really gets going. In my experience, the Backyard Hive will produce an average of 3 to 4 gallons of honey per year.

From Wikianswers.com:

Weight

The weight of honey varies slightly with the moisture content. One gallon of honey weighs approximately 12 lbs.

Analysis:  The photo I've seen shows only the one hive, meaning it must have produced 12 gallons or so to reach the 140 pound mark.

I think Enid is a little doubtful herself, as she says: "The numerically magical White House Beehive"

[Afterthought:  However skeptical one may be, I have to remember there's no beehives within miles of the WH, which means the bees have no competition.  And there's a fair amount of flowers around, although hardly an almond orchard.]

Corn for City Folks

For any "city folks" (my mother's term for those strange people who didn't live on a farm) who don't know how field corn is harvested, here's a photo sequence.

(Don't tell anyone, but I never harvested corn--dad had stopped growing corn for silage by the time I was conscious of farming activities.)

[Updated: And Erin has a nice picture marking the end of another farming cycle.]

USDA Reorganization

Government Executive has a piece on the reorganization of USDA administrative agencies. For some reason the USDA web site doesn't seem to have been updated to reflect the changes (which not to amount to much, except putting the staff offices and agencies under one person,  Pearlie Reed, formerly of NRCS, rather than reporting to the Secretary. Given that Vilsack apparently announced his intentions during the summer and implemented them effective for the new fiscal year, it reflects badly on the USDA website people.

[Updated--ran across this in a Farm Policy post: "

In a separate DTN article from yesterday, Jerry Hagstrom reported (link requires subscription) that, “Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan plans to continue managing the USDA budget even though a reorganization has placed the USDA’s budget office under an assistant agriculture secretary.
“‘I will be running the budget process at USDA,’ Merrigan said in an interview.
“Under the reorganization, the budget office is under the purview of Assistant Secretary for Administration Pearlie Reed. Since the change went into effect Oct. 1, farm lobbyists have expressed alarm that if an official below the level of deputy secretary made the presentations USDA would be in a disadvantaged position compared with other departments. One former USDA official said White House Office of Management and Budget officials always ask how they can cut farm subsidies, particularly cotton subsidies, and that only a deputy secretary or the secretary himself would be able to defend them against budget officials looking for programs to cut.”]