Dairy in the Cold

Via NAL, here's a description of running a dairy farm in cold weather (brings back memories).  I was surprised a bit--the farm milks 700 cows, and has 20 employees, for a ratio of 1 per 35 cows.  That's roughly the ratio I remember from my youth (my uncle had more and did most of the work himself, until his heart attack). I would have expected a bit more improvement in productivity.

The Declaration Over the Constitution

A post at the Edge of the American West describes the travels and displays of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  In passing, this sentence struck me: "The Constitution does not seem to have been exhibited much until the twentieth century.)" The Declaration, and George Washington's commission, seem to have been displayed regularly.  I'm not sure what this means--were 19th century Americans more focused on the Revolution, independence from Britain, and less on the Constitution? Or were they more interested in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and less interested in separation of powers?

I Second McArdle on CBO

Technically, I guess the folks at CBO aren't bureaucrats, they don't follow rules and deal with people, just Congress.  But their contribution is ignored, much as if they were bureaucrats, so I join Megan McArdle in wishing them well and happy holidays.

Stossel and Obamafoodorama

From a very limited knowledge, I'm not impressed by John Stossel, now a Fox reporter.  But I'll be watching what happens when he looks at the White House garden--an adversarial look may be informative, or maybe not.

They Were Wrong:

A few years ago a big theme among the international non-governmental organizations who focused on agriculture was decrying the absurdly high US subsidies to cotton.  End the subsidies, and people in Burkina Faso and other nations could make money planting cotton.  Well, as I like to point out, things are more complicated than often supposed, particularly by self-righteous advocates (of most any position, except those who agree with me).  A case in point is this article discussing the problems faced by cotton growers in Mississippi.  (Nationally, our production has declined from 20+ million bales 3 years ago to about 12.5 million bales this year, all without major changes in the cotton subsidy program, at least that I know of.)

Note:  I have to note the change out of cotton might possibly reflect the "Freedom to Farm" changes of the 1996 farm bill, of which I've been critical, or it might simply reflect that globally people would prefer to eat meat than wear cotton.

Where's PETA in Iraq?

I like the Tom Ricks blog, it's just enough contact with military matters for someone who describes himself as a natural-born civilian. This post reveals a disastrous situation in Iraq, where our esteemed soldiers are killing dogs, then carrying over the habit to Afghanistan.  (I don't remember Vietnamese being fond of dogs, and I won't try the obvious joke.) Unfortunately, despite the fact our military is composed of great people, you put a weapon in someone's hands and you create a situation where the person can abuse the power.

Some Christians Are a Little Strange

From TPM (though this is quite likely a hoax, thought the right didn't like the teabag label):

"Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn's instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn't show up at the vote the other night," the caller said.
"How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?" he continued, his voice breaking. [I think this is a take-off from Sen. Coburn's advice to pray that Dems would not show up.]

From NYTimes:

I asked Steve Bercu, BookPeople’s owner, what the most frequently stolen title was.
“The Bible,” he said, without pausing.
Apparently the thieves have not yet read the “Thou shalt not steal” part — or maybe they believe that Bibles don’t need to be paid for.

Precision Agriculture Versus Organic

Am I crazy or are there parallels between organic ag and precision agriculture? Because organic agriculture usually uses more labor, there's more intelligence applied to each square foot  farmed than in commercial agriculture.  But with precision agriculture (which as I understand it via GPS captures detailed data on what's happening in each square foot in the computer), you're also applying more intelligence.  This thought stimulated by this piece in farmgate:

Precision agriculture can lead to higher yield and profitability. IA farmer Clay Mitchell outlined his concepts to a MO agronomy conference, and noted several successes:
1) Controlling field traffic creates soil qualities yielding 30% above his county average.
2) Deep residue cover allows soil to mimic a forest floor protected from direct rainfall,
3) Water infiltration reaches 4 in. per hour, compared to 0.2 in. in neighboring fields.
4) GPS guided tractors exert 40% less effort driving on compacted lanes in the field.
5) Maps showing single row yield indicated an 83 bu. yield difference from a mistake.

What I Saw at the Metropolitan

A small wooden carving of a domestic scene of Mary, Jesus, and Joseph, with Joseph drying the swaddling clothes before the fire and a set of samurai armor made for and owned by a woman.

We're All Primates

What thunderstorms are approaching in our realm?

"Males display all the time for a number of different reasons, but when there's a big thunderstorm approaching, they do this real exaggerated display — it's almost like slow motion," Pruetz said. "And when I was with this one party of chimps, the dominant male did the same sort of thing, but it was towards the fire, so I call it the fire dance."

Quote from an MSNBC piece on how chimps understand fire.