Three Mistakes You Make

Found this quote in an old NoahSmith post:

There are three common mistakes that many Westerners make when observing or analyzing Japanese culture. First, they essentialize it - they assume there are some core things that never change, and that you can understand these things by studying samurai culture, or stuff like that. Second, they exoticize it - they assume that Japanese culture is very different from Western culture, and that there are deep secrets that only Japanese people themselves understand. Third, they homogenize it - they assume that the difference between Japanese individuals or subcultures is much smaller than the group difference between Japan and other cultures.

Seems to me we often make the same sort of mistakes in analyzing many things we don't  have first hand knowledge of:

• bureaucracy: bureaucrats are essentially [something--lazy, overpaid, not interested in the job, stupid, disinterested specialists, etc.]; Washington bureaucrats are not people like you and me, but a strange breed; bureaucrats and entrepreneurs are entirely different breeds.
• [do it yourself--apply the three mistakes to: blacks, whites, gays, professional athletes, weathermen, farmers, ...--see if the formula doesn't work for them]

Farmers Don't Make Money and Blue Jeans

Ben Smith  had a piece in the NYTimes recently complaining that farmers, specifically small food movement type farmers, can't make money.  He points back to past farmer organizations and  writes:

But none of these demands will be met until we start our own organizations — as in generations past — and shape a vision of a new food economy that ensures that growing good food also means making a good living.

He never deals with the idea that the Grange, the Populists, the National Farmers Union, the American Agriculture Movement, the various cooperatives weren't able to mold the environment to make the country safe for the sort of small family farmer he wants to preserve. 

I may have made this comparison before, but I forget.  :-(  Anyway, in my youth you could buy blue jeans from Sears or Montgomery Ward or buy Levis or Lees from department stores.  That was about it.  Blue jeans were associated, in my mind at least, with sailors coming back from active duty.  (Farmers wore overalls.)  Today you can still buy Lees, Levis, and Sears blue jeans, but also Lands End and LLBean and Carhart and Kmart and so on for many more brands, and that's not getting into the absurdly priced "fashion" blue jeans which go in and out of popularity. And at least the cheaper jeans are cheaper than when I grew up.  That variety is the result of our wealth as a country: we spend on food maybe a third or fourth of what we did when I was a kid, and incomes are much higher; therefore we can afford to indulge our tastes.

I see the same thing happening with food: a mixture of  fast cheap food, better tasting and often better food (even McDonalds food is better tasting and cheaper than the overcooked pot roast my mother made) along with a much greater choice and a much bigger price range.  I don't know what the best restaurants in New York City charged for a meal in 1950, but I'm sure it's gone up many times more than a basic diner meal has.

The Foodies and Their Myths

Nathaniel Johnson at Grist ties in a New Yorker piece on Vandana Shiva to talk about her big ideas, which he likes, and her analysis of the details, which he doesn't:

Romantic environmentalists tend to get the big-picture problems right, while fudging the details. Rationalists nail the details, but sometimes become so immersed in the minutiae that they lose sight of the big picture.

I don't agree with Johnson on the total big picture, but I greatly respect his willingness to look at the holes in some foodie arguments.

A more ascerbic person might consider "fudging" to be the same as "lying", but today I'm feeling generous, and willing to admit all parties have their myths: liberals, conservatives, foodies, production ag.

Pizzly Bears

A new term to me, but not to biologists who study hybrids.  A very interesting article in the NYTimes magazine.

EU Agriculture Policy

I've lost track of what's been happening in the EU farm programs over the last few years.  Here's a BBC piece of about a year ago.  

Some highlights:

• cost about $80 billion for direction farm payments and rural development
• direct payments to farmers in central and east Europe countries being phased in (those countries much more dependent on agriculture) but farmers in the old EU countries get most benefits
• fights over environmental incentives and payment limitations
• enjoyed this: "The definition of an "active farmer" has also been contentious. The current payments system is largely based on land area and past subsidy levels, meaning that landowners like airports and sports clubs, which do not farm, have been getting subsidies based on their grasslands or other eligible land areas."
• big farmers get most benefits

The Great Sharon Astyk on Reading to Kids

Several years ago I found Ms Astyk's Casaubon's Book blog, which then was devoted to the food movement, locavores, peak oil, etc.  I mostly disagreed with her views, but she wrote very well so it was worth following her RSS feed.  She and her husband live on a small farm in upstate New York where he's a professor and she's a writer/lecturer and, for some years now, a foster mother.  She has several sons of her own and an amazing procession of foster kids, all of which has made her blogging very very sporadic, and perhaps eliminated her writing and speaking.

Her occasional posts on the foster parenting experience are good, and particularly interesting as she meditates on the effects of class and culture. Her last post is  a long essay on reading to kids.  I strongly recommend it.

From Seeds to Tanks, the History of Government Giving

Lots of publicity these days about the government giving surplus military arms and money to buy equipment to the nation's police forces.  It reminds me of the good old days, back when Congressmen gave out seeds--no I wasn't alive then but those gifts are credited as the seeds (pun intended) which grew into the USDA.

Much the same political dynamic may be going on today.  The public always asks its government: "what have you done for me lately" and it's nice for Congresspeople to be able to point with pride to their gifts.  Used to be that they pointed to "pork", once they distributed seeds, in the 21st century they can point to shiny objects from DOD or money from TSA.  All part of GWOT.

Foodies Lose in Public Vote

Burger King tried "Satisfries", which are french fries with less fat and sodium.  After their trial, they allowed their franchises to choose whether to keep them on the menu or not.  Apparently 3 out of 4 franchises opted to stop cooking Satisfries.  

Voter Fraud--Almost Nonexistent

Actually my title is misleading.  This article doesn't report any voter fraud; it simply says that our voting files are in a mess. And that proven cases of fraud are rare. Dead people aren't removed; people who move aren't updated, etc. etc.  All of which would permit some fraud, but nothing has been proved.  Our federal system is prone to this sort of problem because there's no centralized clearinghouse.

What interests me is the fact that an NGO, IBM, and local election officials are developing a system to crosscheck records and cleanse the files.  As a bureaucrat, my kneejerk reaction is/was that the feds should have developed the system, but that's not going to happen as long as our governmental structure works/doesn't work the way it does.  So score one, or maybe a tenth of one, for the libertarians and conservatives who talk about order emerging, rather than being imposed.

Obama Greatly Disappoints Me

I think over the years I have mentioned my near-obsession with mono-spaced type.  To summarize: in the old days typewriters mostly were either pica or elite, using the same amount of space for each letter.  Once we moved to word processing, particularly with inkjet and laser printers, we could easily produce proportionally spaced type. There's now no reason to use monospaced type.  Readers do much better with proportionally spaced type.

So what does President Obama use for his War Powers Act letter to Congress?  See here.