You Gotta Laugh, Even If You're a Bureaucrat

From today's Post:

"In November, we reported that the NSA and Homeland Security Department were none too pleased about parody products sold online using an altered image of their logo, such as a T-shirt with: “Peeping while you’re sleeping” inside the NSA seal and under that, “The NSA, the only part of the government that actually listens.”

When will people learn that laughter is valuable, even if you're the butt of it.

A Divided Country and a Flawed Commentary

The NYTimes Charles Blow weighs in on the recent Pew report describing how divided and partisan the nation is becoming.

He leads with this:

"For an increasing number of Americans, the tenor of politics has reached a near-religious pitch, in which people on opposing ends of the ideological scale take on theological properties: good or evil, angels or demons, here to either save our way of life or destroy it."

After a discussion of the report he writes:

"There are some moral issues on which there can be no ambiguity. For instance, people cannot be treated differently because of the way they were born, developed or identify;  women must have access to the full range of reproductive options; and something must be done about the continued carnage of gun violence in this country. "

I commented with this:

Though I think Mr. Blow and I share the same positions, mostly (liberal Democrat, Obama contributor, etc.) I disagree with this paragraph: "There are some moral issues on which there can be no ambiguity...country. " We cannot, in our political life, distinguish between moral issues and other issues. In politics everything is subject to practicality, to compromise, to limits. Outside the political sphere everyone is welcome to believe any damn thing they believe, but our politicians should lead us to compromise in our policy. Roe v Wade was an example of such a compromise, not a trumpet call to a pro-choice position. The alternative to compromise can be seen in someplace like Ulster over the last century.

Kevin Drum has a take on the report.

Great Metaphor If Politically Incorrect

" it’s like an epileptic with Parkinson’s dancing under strobe lights in a discothèque."

Dirk Beauregard on the joys of driving a crap car.  Read the whole thing.

On Blogging--Personal and Policy

Was reading a fine post by Sharon Astyk here which starts off by commenting on the observable differences in parenting ability she finds among the domestic animals and wildlife on their small farm.  I've seen the same, though I was nowhere near as observant as she is.

She then segues into a discussion of human parenting, of which she's seen much, as she and her husband are parents and foster parents of a large number of children.

When I first started reading her, she was blogging as a peak oil/locavore activist.  She always had an interesting voice, interesting enough to overcome my knee-jerk reaction against the positions she favored and the dire future she forecast.  But time happens to us all, and these days she's less into policy and much less into blogging and much more into managing a large and variable household.  Whether her blogging, as opposed to the subjects she blogs on,  has changed that much, I don't know, but I do find myself liking her writing a lot more.

Residents and Tourists

Living in the DC area I intuitively knew what these anthropologists spent time and money figuring out--the travel patterns of residents and tourists are different. The fact leads to things like tourists seeing sights and visiting vicinities which the resident has never seen.

When I was in the Army stationed at Ft. Belvoir I did a lot of tourist stuff.  Since I've lived here, hardly any, except when escorting visitors.

As far as the "settling in" of new residents, my guess is it's personality-dependent: the amount of exploring before establishing habits/patterns will vary.

Politics in FSA

 From a Government Executive piece on VA problems

“Health care is by definition an enormously specific, patient-oriented, detailed business process,” he said. “The agency itself was designed to be sealed against political influence,” he added, noting its 9,000 to 1 ratio of career to political appointees, compared with a 2,000 to 1 ratio at the Defense Department and a 500 to 1 ratio at most agencies.

In FSA when I was there: 50 SED's, 5 area directors, 4 deputies, associate, and administrator, plus maybe 5 aides--call it 65 total political. That's a 200 to 1 ratio at FSA, meaning it's more politicized than the average agency. 

Our Couch Potato Dogs

Modern Farmer reports on research that says "agility dogs" (i.e. farm dogs) do better on tests than do "companion dogs" (i.e., those dogs who spend their lives on the couch alongside their masters).  Must be why Walt Jeffries boasts of his talking dogs.

Buffett on Government, No It's Private

Brad Delong posts Warren Buffett's lessons learned:

My most surprising discovery: the overwhelming importance in government business of an unseen force that we might call “the institutional imperative.” In business school, I was given no hint of the imperative’s existence and I did not intuitively understand it when I entered the government business world. I thought then that decent, intelligent, and experienced civil servants managers would automatically make rational government business decisions. But I learned over time that isn’t so. Instead, rationality frequently wilts when the institutional imperative comes into play.

For example: (1) As if governed by Newton’s First Law of Motion, an government agency institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, government corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any government business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of government consultants peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.

Ode to Mud, Sweat, and Baths

Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm.

" The extra protein allowed for our brains to grow swelling our heads until we thought we were masters of the Universe"

Those Were the Days--Were They?

An old man gets nostalgic reading this Life on a Colorado Farm post about haying, then and now.  But the voice of reality insists:

• I wasn't putting up beautiful alfalfa hay, but less pretty timothy/meadow grass/weeds hay, sometimes having gone through a rain or two which severely diminished its value
• it wasn't early June but likely early July, since we had to wait for the neighbor who did the baling to get his hay done first--a penalty for being a small farmer
• I didn't work on a crew of four, except for a few occasions when I hired out, but usually just with dad, perhaps my sister, and sometimes one neighbor helper
• it wasn't a beautiful blue sky on top of a Colorado mesa but a likely cloudy sky in a New York valley
• and the cut ends of the hay scratched the hell out of my forearms.

Nice how modern machinery enables an older couple (still younger than me) to continue farming but being realistic I suspect there's few to no young neighbor boys around to help--machinery means the population is thinning out in rural areas and getting old.