Clinton's Email Problem

I'm resisting the temptation to defend Hillary on her use of a private email account.  I'd observe that the chickens are coming home to roost based on NARA's failure over 20 years to deal effectively with emails and even more critically management's (i.e. President and Congress) failure to worry about such issues.  Records management was never a priority, not since the 70's.  I'm not impressed by the current commentary, such as the NYTimes piece here.  The number of historians who will ever read 30,000 pieces of email can be counted on one hand. I don't have an answer, but no one else does either.

Food Movement and China

One advantage of community-supported agriculture is the idea that the customer knows the source of her food.  But this Times article on China shows there's another way for the customer to know the history of her food, by using technology.  Because China has a bigger problem with adulterated food (ie. the communist state is weaker in regulation than our free enterprise government is), there's a greater incentive to come up with innovative solutions to the problem--at least that's my take on the situation.

Actively Engaged

Another chapter in the saga of "actively engaged"--from Farm Policy's report on the Senate Ag hearings:

Sen. Stabenow: “And finally, Mr. Chairman, one of the things I’m concerned about is that we’re hearing that the USDA feels constrained when defining actively engaged on the farm. I know this is a very challenging issue going forward. But I just want to clarify that the lead negotiators, those of us in the House and the Senate, understood the existing authority and discretion of the department, and want to work with you on this.
“When we look at the fact that CBO is estimating that the PLC and marketing loan programs could pay out as much as 16 billion more than we anticipated, it’s very important we have accountability, and [those go] actually to those who are farming. And so it is very important.
“I would just urge you that in our bill, nothing in the farm bill is preventing the USDA from exercising existing authorities or discretion to make the definition as clear and strong as possible. And I think for the effectiveness and the integrity of the programs it’s really important that the department move forward on this, and look forward to working with you on that.”
Sec. Vilsack: “The way in which the farm bill was crafted strongly suggests that whatever we do does not specifically apply directly to family farming operations. Also, with reference to family farm corporations, the limitation of one management exemption applies. So what we are focusing on are the general partnerships and limited partnerships that have often been the source of concerns.
“And that is where our jurisdiction, I think, is relative to actively engaged, and that’s what we’re focused on. And we will definitely come up with hopefully a more concrete and more specific definition so that folks understand precisely what applies and what doesn’t apply. But I think it is important to point out that it’s primarily focused on partnerships, limited and general partnerships.

Aerial Photography and Drones

Farm Policy reports that NRCS got questioned over the possible use of drones for their work:

Rep. Sanford Bishop: “Can you tell us if you have any plans to utilize drones to assist in the collection of information, because you do a lot of photography, put a lot of contracts out to take pictures, and there’s a tremendous amount of interest in the use of drones in agriculture, particularly in assisting the optimal design and layout of fields for water assessments and other related issues.
“Have you looked at this issue? Are there any current interagency discussions with FAA or other agencies concerning the growth in the use of drones? Obviously there are some security issues involved, but there’s also a great deal of interest for commercializing that practice and using it in agriculture.”
Mr. Jason Weller: “Absolutely. It’s a new technology, but we also have to be careful because folks do have privacy concerns. The FAA also had safety concerns. So in part NRCS, we sort of said full stop, let’s wait for FAA to actually come out with a rule.
“Now that the rule has been issued, we’re trying to figure out how the NRCS can work within that to do remote sensing, but in a way that protects privacy, assure landowners who are not there there’s a regulatory component, because I know folks have some concerns when the federal government starts flying drones over their property. So we just need to make sure NRCS is doing this technology in a way that’s appropriate, that’s sensitive to landowners’ concerns, but also then helps us do a better job of managing resources.”

 The question may be whether the use of drones by USDA agencies evolves from the field/bubbles up or is top-down, or some mixture.  My guess is there will be more experimentation at the local office level than WDC is expecting or will realize.  Drones are too cheap for it to be otherwise.

Fraud in SNAP and Crop Insurance

EWG is not a particularly impartial source of commentary on modern agriculture and the USDA.  However, they're worth following.  They've a post comparing the fraud rates in food stamps and crop insurance:

The USDA Inspector General’s audit, released last year, estimated that the crop insurance program’s error rate for improper payments was at least 5.23 percent in 2013 and could be higher. The 2013 error rate was significantly higher than the 2012 error rate of 4.08 percent.

Earlier this month, USDA’s Risk Management Agency reported that the improper payment rate for crop insurance rose to 5.58 last year and was expected to stay above 5 percent through 2016...

By contrast, the error rate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name of the food stamp program. fell to an all-time low of 3.2 percent in 2013, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Rule-Making Process

The FCC just changed its rules on regulating the Internet--they're going to treat it as a public utility.  A post at Vox takes them to task for being slow and untransparent in their rule-making process.  While the process for regulatory commissions like the FCC is a bit different than for agencies like FSA, I have to agree that everyone could gain by revising their process to take account of the Internet.  It's a forlorn hope, however--things don't change fast, particularly when you've got lawyers involved.

The Rise of the Pods

A post here on America's coffee habits.

When I was a child, I could get a little tea in my glass of milk, but couldn't have coffee, as it was bad for kids.  Of course that made me more determined to drink coffee, which I've indulged ever since I grew of age (maybe 15 or so?). Back then instant coffee was new, and the family gradually switched from the percolator pot to instant.  During my working life I usually had a coffee cup on my desk, filled from the big coffee maker (12 cup maybe?).  Who would refill the coffee pot and buy the 3 lb cans of coffee were often big issues among the office staff.

Now I'm addicted to Starbucks, using it as my big incentive to get out of the house and take some exercise.  I've discovered to my surprise that the jars of instant coffee are no longer stocked at the local Safeway; they have the envelopes of instant instead, but mostly the "pods" for something called a Keurig.  Which brings me to the post I started with.  Apparently using a spoonful of instant coffee and boiling the water were too burdensome for modern Americans; instead we have the self-contained appliance.

How Many Insurance Companies Do We Need

From Farm Policy a quote from Vilsack testifying before Congress:

"“And I’m pleased with the fact that we’ve had a net increase in the number of companies writing crop insurance in the last 12 to 24 months. We’ve lost a couple, but we’ve gained four, so that the net is two, so I think it’s an indication that this is still an industry that can continue to expand [appropriately] and financially. We expect and anticipate roughly $8 billion plus to be invested by taxpayers in this system over the course of the next several years. And the payouts in the last time since I’ve been Secretary equal $55 billion, so it’s obviously an important program.”

 The administration thinks crop insurance costs can be cut; the crop insurance industry says not. What's the right answer?    Seems to me simple economics, the only kind I halfway understand, says that if an industry is profitable, and costs of entry are reasonable, you'll have more firms entering.  Conversely, if the industry is under stress, the weaker firms will fail or withdraw from the market.  So since the number of companies is increasing, that says to me the administration's position is more nearly right.  Maybe we ought to have a target for the number of companies: maybe five or six (in the good old days we had about six car companies and six computer (mainframe) companies, so six sounds like a good round figure. 

How about it?  :-)

When Less Is More

Fairlife is less than whole raw mil--the question is whether the manipulation of the "natural whole milk" into something which might better suit some people will pass the scrutiny of the food movement.

Signup and Registers

The idea of a "register" has long been established in FSA/ASCS--I suspect it goes back to AAA.

Still works, according to this (Vilsack in front of Senate Ag):

"But, according to one of the farmers the committee invited to testify about the farm bill, local Farm Service Agency administrators have concerns about a last-minute rush of landowners deciding on changes to base acres and yields by the deadline this Friday.
Roberts asked Vilsack if it’s still correct that USDA won’t extend the deadline and will rely instead on a registry at local offices. Using a registry allows anyone who shows up before the deadline to get on a list of appointments to return later to finish the paperwork.
“I think it’s incumbent on us to continue to monitor the situation,” said Vilsack, who is now getting daily reports on signup progress. He was monitoring signup progress weekly."

(The committee heard praise from farmers for their local FSA offices, BTW.)

Monarchs in Hawaii--Who Knew?

A reminder that it's all too easy for the media and its audience to become focused on certain undeniable truths, so narrowly focused that the larger truth is completely obscured.  Such is the case with monarch butterflies.  We know they're endangered, put at risk because farmers use herbicides and eliminate the field boundaries where milkweeds used to grow.  We know they're beautiful, and anything beautiful and endangered must be rescued.

But this column by an entomologist in today's Post reveals that monarchs are in Hawaii, Tahiti, Australia and New Zealand. It's the monarchs migrating to and from Mexico which are stressed,  but apparently millions winter in California. 

Sensationalist Headlines

The BBC website has a post on a "alien star" having "buzzed" the sun.  Apparently 70,000 years ago it may have come within 1 light year of the sun.  Now that's real close, after all Pluto is all of 13.5 light hours from the sun.  So it's exactly like this foreign star has buzzed an airfield (from WWII movies I recall buzzing as coming close enough to the control tower to aggravate the officer on duty).

Healthcare Behind the Scenes

Politico has a piece describing problems in the overall healthcare.gov system, mostly in the backend linking the signup process with the insurance companies, and extending into handling payments and change of life events.

Sounds a bit familiar from the good old days of the System/36.  One of the enduring lessons I learned was that for everything, whether it's a building or a software system, highways or ships, everything requires maintenance.  What that means for new systems, like healthcare.gov, is that you may implement and release a set of processes while planning to come along later with additional features.  But once you have the first release out, your time gets absorbed in the maintenance of those features, and the schedule for releasing version 2.0 slides.  And the sliding means that the jury-rigs to cover the gap grow and grow, and the problems of transitioning from the jury-rigged current system to the version 2.0 system, once available, also grow.

Improper Payments, FSA, and OIG

From today's Farm Policy, reporting an exchange in a hearing with House Appropriations and OIG:

"[OIG] In some of the other programs, say the RMA and NRCS programs, the improper payment rate is much higher, in the teens, maybe near 20%. There are probably a number of reasons for that. We are paying very close attention to that. And let me just offer the chance to comment to Gil and Ann.
Gil Harden, Assistant Inspector General for Audits: The thing that I would add to that, too, I mean, we are mindful of it, but the FSA percentages for their high risk programs for FSA are lower, some of the lower percentages. But we do keep them on the radar screen.
Ann Coffey, Acting Assistant Inspector General, Investigations: And I’d like to just address the question you had raised about what sorts of resources we’re allocating towards FSA investigative work. Historically, we have focused quite a bit of our resources on the SNAP program, but FSA is an area that we are definitely looking for an increase and expecting to increase our investigative work in those areas. We have had some very good cases within the last recent year with high dollar amounts, and so we do anticipate that within FY16 we will be increasing our work in FSA.

The Challenges of On-Line Versus Bricks: Banking and FSA

Had an experience the other day which IMHO shows the hurdles FSA and other agencies face when they try to combine bricks and mortar offices with online service.

The situation: dealing with my bank, with which my wife and I have several accounts, savings, checking, brokerage, IRAs, etc., basically operating under an umbrella which they call the PMA. They're the result of a history which started back in 1968 when I set up an account in DC in a bank which has been merged and remerged and remerged, and as my wife and I made decisions about savings and investments and consolidating accounts.

Anyhow, we have a branch office near our home, but we mostly do our banking online.

Though I haven't seen an organization chart for the bank, I deduce that they have a unit responsible for their branches,  a unit responsible for PMAs, a unit responsible for their brokerage accounts and IRA accounts, and a unit responsible for online banking. So we go in the branch to get a safe deposit box and straighten out a situation with the 1099 for 2015 taxes (I won't go into detail on that, because it's an embarrassing story--recalling the old lesson for software: when all else fails, read the manual.)

So the banker with whom we talked couldn't resolve our problem, so she made a call to the PMA help desk unit. We talked with the PMA person, without success, because she needed to talk to the online banking person.  At that point we decided to go back home and work the phones from there. I called the online banking help, who couldn't resolve it, and wanted to talk to the PMA people.  About that point I realized that it was my screw-up so I said thank you and hung up.

What's my bottom line:  in the old days dad would take the egg check and milk check to the bank, deposit them, get cash.  He knew the tellers and the bankers because it was a locally owned bank.  I'd imagine the general operations were very similar to those of the ASCS county office back in the 60's or before.  But as banking got more complicated, with different lines of business,, and more automated, that's changed, as witness my frustrating day.  More complexity means less mastery by the teller/clerk--even though the person is likely more educated, specialization means less total comprehension.

And the effect of the specialization/automation online operation is to create a frustration trap for customers and operators: 90 or 99 percent of the time it's a routine operation which goes smoothly, but the minority of the cases become much more problematic simply because there's a lack of centralized knowledge. [added--The point with my bank is the interaction among their various silos/units; the point with FSA would be the same.  The fiscal silo and the conservation silo and the payments silo all look separate to the Washington bureaucrat; they're one thing to the producer in the field.]

How successful has FSA been in moving its producers into online program servicing?  I don't know.  But organizing and educating to make that process work will be very challenging.

Eggs--Score One for My Mother

My mother used to get very upset in the 50's and 60's.  Not upset at me--I was the apple of her eye.  But upset at the people who were dissing the "perfect food", perfect in her mind, the egg.  On our farm dad did the cows and mom did the hens, so she was far from an unbiased observer as doctors and experts declared that cholesterol was the key to heart attacks, and we should all eat healthy by avoiding cholesterol-rich foods. Hens were her thing, a part of her identity, and she was a hard-headed German-American, so no one could persuade her that government experts knew better.

So today, some years after she died and many years after she gave up her hens comes word that the government is changing its advice.

Mom, you were right and us government types were wrong.

Cross Agency Collaboration

Steve Kelman in FCW on cross-agency collaboration:

"There is a common view among public management experts in academia and government that, as problems government faces become more complex, successful collaboration across agency boundaries grows increasingly important for delivering good results.
That collaboration is not easy. I remember reading in political science courses I took in graduate school decades ago about cross-agency coordinating councils. The view then was that it is extremely difficult for these activities to be effective, because agencies simply used them to advocate for the approach they took to problems, and tried to get other agencies to go along with that, rather than actually adapting their own behavior. Furthermore, these tended to be low-priority activities, to which organizations assigned the people least likely to be missed from their regular jobs."

 That's exactly what happened in Infoshare days--each agency had their pet idea which we tried to sell to the other agencies.  SCS wanted a laptop for field work, for example.  I wanted a new basic producer and farm data setup.  We didn't have the power to commit our agencies, not really, so when the impetus from the top faded, the whole house of cards collapsed. 

Actively Engaged

Politico anticipates the proposed rule defining "actively engaged" in farming, as the lead bit in an interview with Secretary Vilsack. 

The Agriculture Department is getting ready to tell a lot of people who’ve been getting farm subsidy checks without lifting a hay bale, swinging a pitch fork or driving a tractor that they’re cut off

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/usda-city-farm-subsidies-114955.html#ixzz3QyJyf6vf

It will be interesting to see what's proposed and how it fares.  My own bet--nothing will be finalized in this administration. 

Definitions Revisited

USDA is posting about its data and the brave new world of open data.  Among its goals for the coming year is this:

 " Work with AgGateway on standards and definitions – so “corn” or Common Land Unit (CLU) has the same definition for the data producer and the data users "

Now that aim isn't bad--presumably it can be met by being explicit in the definitions, but I'm reminded of the difficulty in the previous century of getting to common definitions.  To the layman and the big shots a common definition of "corn" between RMA and FSA and NRCS just makes sense.  But when you get into the nitty-gritty there's the qualifications and conditions which entangle the definition into the agency's mission and programs.  A Venn diagram would show circles which overlap maybe 95 percent of the area, but not 100 percent.

Acreage Reporting

Ever since 1933 reporting and checking crop acreages has been perhaps the biggest single workload item in AAA/ASCS/FSA's portfolio.  Hence threats to it raise the alarms:  

"Continuing on the subject of acreage reporting I want to assure you that NASCOE is leaving no stone unturned as we monitor the acreage reporting project that allows producers multiple options to file a report ( at FSA, with crop insurance, on line or other). Your leadership team understands that acreage reporting is the bedrock of all that we do at FSA and it is important that integrity in this process is maintained"

With the development of precision agriculture, and the growing value of having data tied to a specific tract, twill be interesting to see how acreage reporting changes in the future.


From the NASCOE newsletter

Farewell to System/36?

From the NASCOE newsletter

While I am sure most of your NASCOE officers will be covering some of the highlight of the past Calendar Year I will be focusing on the NEA Programs side of NASCOE. This year we should finally say goodbye to the wretched beast some call the 36 or AS 400. Of course, this good bye brings something new(ish).
We just received MIDAS release 2.0 which we’re told will work without a single hiccup.
We will at last have one system of record for maintaining Producers name, address, and TIN.
We are also anticipating new MPP software, new MAL software, and as well new software for ARC/PLC, which is already out. We’re also now using different software for FSFL’s.

 Those were the days, my friends. I remember them well (cue Maurice Chevalier in Gigi, a stage production of which is now at the Kennedy Center).   I remember Chris Niedermeyer as "trail boss" in 1989? talking about running out of space on the System/36 and the need to immediately get new hardware.   And I'm pleased to see the "one system of record," only about 16 years late.

WTO-Doha Restrictions on Agricultural Payments

In the late 90's, IIRCC, we were just starting to deal with our commitments under the WTO, commitments which restricted nations' ability to provide support to their farmers. There were different color categories, depending on whether the payments had the effect of distorting trade.  One reason for changing from deficiency payments tied to planted acreage to direct payments based on past history (i.e, the Freedom to Farm formula in 1996) was to change the categorization.  The theory was that payments based on planted acreage increased production in a country, payments based on historical base acreage delinked payments and production.

Anyhow, years have passed.  Generally countries have reduced their supports and because negotiations for new WTO agreements failed, we haven't heard much about the subject in recent years.  Today though  Farm Policy quotes an article:

"...only the United States wouldn’t be able to meet the commitments assigned to it under draft 2008 Doha texts. However, that calculation is based on U.S. subsidies from 2012 and doesn’t factor in changes in U.S. agricultural policies in the new farm bill.
“Under the proposed commitments, the United States would have exceeded its trade-distorting subsidy limits by $3.6 billion in 2012. A diplomatic source said it’s unclear whether the farm bill will help or hurt in this area particularly because it’s not clear whether the U.S. will classify crop insurance as trade-distorting in its next subsidy notification.”

 My impression is that crop insurance used be considered as something which encouraged production; certainly EWG believes that, especially with regards to the Great Plains. 

The NUCC--a Great Discovery for a Lover of Bureaucracy

Who knew there was a NUCC in our world? 

What, you may ask, is a NUCC?

It's the National Uniform Claim Committee, the proud sponsor of 1500_Claim, which is one of the government's most popular publications.

Essentially it tries to standard healthcare claims. As they say:

"The NUCC replaced the Uniform Claim Form Task Force, which was co-chaired by the AMA and CMS and resulted in the development of the 1500 Claim Form, a single paper claim form for use by all third-party payers. With the transition of the medical community to electronic data interchange and the proliferation of data element definitions among various payers, it became essential that an organization be established to maintain uniformity and standardization in these areas. The NUCC is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the data sets and physical layout of the hard copy 1500 Claim Form.

From the provider viewpoint, non-uniform data elements have caused significant frustration, claims billing and processing delays, and rejections. From the payer viewpoint, claims that are not in the required format may be resubmitted several times before they can be processed. The result is a very labor-intensive and costly business practice for providers and payers.

Through an iterative process, the NUCC used existing implementation guides, data dictionaries and results from ongoing standardization efforts within the health care industry to consolidate the many current data sets into one set.  The NUCC continues to work to optimize, as necessary, coordination of implementation within the health care industry, working with ASC X12N as required, to resolve data maintenance and standards problems that arise from the NUCC's work.

Gloom and Doom

"Gloom and doom" was a popular term in the '50s--if I remember Republicans accused the Dems of embracing gloom and doom when Dems pointed with alarm at all the shortcomings of Ike's administration and the general state of the world.

On a day when spring seem far away, I thought I'd highlight a contemporary gloom and doomster, Leslie Gelb, writing as part of a Politico survey of learned people forecasting 15 years ahead:

The world of 2030 will be an ugly place, littered with rebellion and repression. Societies will be deeply fragmented and overwhelmed by irreconcilable religious and political groups, by disparities in wealth, by ignorant citizenry and by states’ impotence to fix problems. This world will resemble today’s, only almost everything will be more difficult to manage and solve.

Advances in technology and science won’t save us. Technology will both decentralize power and increase the power of central authorities. Social media will be able to prompt mass demonstrations in public squares, even occasionally overturning governments as in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, but oligarchs and dictators will have the force and power to prevail as they did in Cairo. Almost certainly, science and politics won’t be up to checking global warming, which will soon overwhelm us.

Muslims will be the principal disruptive factor, whether in the Islamic world, where repression, bad governance and economic underperformance have sparked revolt, or abroad, where they are increasingly unhappy and distained by rulers and peoples. In America, blacks will become less tolerant of their marginalization, as will other persecuted minorities around the world. These groups will challenge authority, and authority will slam back with enough force to deeply wound, but not destroy, these rebellions.

A long period of worldwide economic stagnation and even decline will reinforce these trends. There will be sustained economic gulfs between rich and poor. And the rich will be increasingly willing to use government power to maintain their advantages.
Unfortunately, the next years will see a reversal of the hopes for better government and for effective democracies that loomed so large at the end of the Cold War.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/15-big-breakthroughs-in-2015-114486_Page3.html#ixzz3QKzclszz  

(I think he's by far the most pessimistic seer.)

Enjoy the weekend.

"An Accretion of Intention"

A phrase lifted from a New Yorker Around Town piece--the context is that the New Yorker's offices are moving from midtown Manhattan south.  (See their cover.)  Nick Paumgarten has observations on the moving process, the loss of familiar routines and landmarks, the need to go through years of accumulation hoardings.  He quotes an acquaintance as calling it "the accretion of intention", which I think is right on.  In my old office, in my home, in my life I've seen the gradual accumulation of stuff which were parts of good intentions: projects I wanted to do; things I wanted people to see me doing; stuff I wanted to have done, but always works which I never had the energy or determination actually to do.

One thing I did once do is pass my drivers test.  Adam Gopnik has an article on his late-life experience learning to drive. 

BTW I've a stack of last year's New Yorkers to get rid of--read most of most of them.

Farm Program Costs Under the New FArm Bill

David Rogers at Politico has a longish piece on projections of costs under the new farm bill.  The Congressional Budget Office has revised their estimates upward.  Rogers suggests maybe their estimating process has problems, that as prices fall and  the new direct payment programs increase their payouts, crop insurance costs will also fall.

Food Waste--Michael Roberts

Prof. Roberts doesn't blog often but he's good. His latest is a long spiel on the subject of food, especially food waste. Naturally his opinion and mine are reasonably in agreement, though his is longer and with added points: food waste is correlated to the cheapness of food; reducing food waste would increase the supply of food, making it cheaper.

Changing Norms

I follow the Powerline blog, even though it's conservative and I'm liberal. Sometimes they, particularly Paul Mirengoff, surprise me but mostly not.

Today Steven Hayward writes on manners and norms in the classroom.  His takeoff point is a university banning the use of titles in favor of using the students' full names when a professor calls on a student--i.e., "Mr. Harshaw", etc.  He pats himself on the back for using "Mr and Ms" when calling on his students.

Call me old, call my memory defective, but I believe I remember back in the late 60's when all good true conservatives would never let "Ms" cross their lips. So things change.

The Farmer's Risks: Death

Farmers are about twice as likely to die as police, according to this graph of deadliest occupations. 

Farmland Transfers

Chris Clayton at DTN has a piece on farmland transfers,given the high proportion of farmland owned by the old, who will be dying shortly, creating problems both for inheritance and especially for leasing.  The Iowa poet laureate wrote a play on the topic.

Here's the link to the website of the playwright

On User Interfaces

Via Technology Review (I think) comes this post discussing the design of the user interface of subway ticket machines for San Francisco and New York City.  It's got a twist in the middle, and having been a tourist in NYC myself, and being older getting more easily confused and less resilient in dealing with confusion, I end up valuing the design I dismissed when I started reading it.

Free Trade, Promotion Orders, and the Case of the Hass Avocado

Avocados

A while back foodies attacked NAFTA for permitting US farmers to export cheap corn into Mexico, thereby undermining small farmers in Mexico.

There's controversy over the constitutionality of "research and promotion orders", the Hass Avocado Board operates as the result of one.

Now the avocado is surging in popularity as described here.  One might assume that the importing of avocados from Mexico has ruined the market for California growers.  But looking closely at the charts there, that doesn't seem to be the case.  Imports have grown tremendously, but US production has also grown, if not so fast (it appears US avocados went from 600 million in 2007 to 1 billion in 2013.)  It seems at least for the moment that the combination of free trade (NAFTA) and government interference (the Avocado Board) have produced prosperity for everyone, at least as long as California doesn't dry up.

I Shoulda Stayed with History--It's Expanding

I tried and failed to become a historian, dropping out of grad school after a year and a half. 

Prof. Fea passes on a report which shows I missed out on an opportunity--the past is expanding.

The Big Advantage Government Has in Hiring

The big advantage government has over private industry in hiring is the possibility of work being important, in serving the society.  Sure, Google engineers can aim to do no evil, programmers could aim to make information free, but there's always the suspicion that what you're doing is enriching Larry Ellison. 

What's the trigger for this bit of euphoria: the sun peeking through the clouds and this post on the US Digital Service.  Get the salt shaker.

Boar Taint, Walt Jeffries, and GMO's

Modern Farmer has an article on "boar taint*" for which they interviewed Walt Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm.  Walt has bred "boar taint"out of his herd.  The issue raised in the article is whether it's okay to use genetic modification methods to remove the cause of boar taint from the genome of pigs.  Unlike the usual objections to GMO's, which involve transferring DNA from another species into a genome, this is an edit, an edit which as Walt has shown can be done using conventional breeding techniques.  (I raised a similar question in connection with wheat in this post.)

I suspect as we improve our understanding of genetics similar questions will come up.








* it's something which makes pork from boars unmarketable--see the link if you really want to know.

USDA Supports Terrorists?

What can you call beings who decapitate other beings but terrorists?

Maybe you call them "decapitating flies", and distribute them in Alabama because they decapitate fire ants? All part of the service provided by your Department of Agriculture and the Extension Service.

Viral Contagion and Networks: the Early Republic

One of my things in recent years is becoming more aware of the importance of networks in various forms and contexts.  I've the pet idea that the American Revolution laid the basis for the nation simply by creating networks across colonies which then enabled various forms of innovation and development in the early republic.  That may be true, but Boston 1775 notes an occasion where networks were not good; the first(?) tour of states by President Washington also seems to have spread the flu into New England.

Software "Containers" and Object-Oriented

Back when I exited the field, "object-oriented" software was the buzzword of the day.  If I remember, the idea was that a given software "object" was self-contained; once the object was coded and tested, you could count on it.

So 17 years pass and now the NYTimes describes some outfit doing software containers as the hot new thing.  Too much time has passed for me to understand the difference, except for a vague idea that software containers may be more independent of their operating system and programming language than the old "objects'. 

Seems I'll have to add "containers" to "string theory" as cases where the advance of knowledge has left me in the dust.

Dairy Program, Number of Dairy Farms

USDA is reporting that over half the nation's dairy farms have signed up in the new dairy program.

What struck me was the small number of farms. According to Hoard's Dairyman as of 2012:

Since 1992, the drop in licensed, or so-called commercial dairy farms, has been 80,028 from 131,509 to 51,481. That’s a 61 percent drop during that time. Of the 80,028 dairies that exited the business during the past two decades, the vast majority, 57,497 or 72 percent, sold their cows between 1992 and 2002. That is an average of 5,861 dairy herds each year. Since then, the total has been cut more than in half. From 2003 to 2011, only 22,531 businesses left our industry for a nine-year average of 2,503.

Some law schools are concerned about the drop in enrollment, but they haven't seen a 61 percent drop.

Crisis in the Orchard

John Phipps links to a great report on troubles in the North Carolina orchards.  It's got some age on it, which explains why you haven't read about the crisis in today's media, but the poor guy is going to lose his tractor.

The Re-emergence of "Traditional Values"

One day we're told that college-educated get married and stay married, and marriage makes you happy.

Another day we see reports on the importance of self-control, the famous marshmallow experiment predicts success in life (4 year olds told if they don't eat a marshmallow now, they'll get 2 later).

A third day we read about how London taxi drivers, who have to memorize all the streets before they can drive for hire, are shown to have much larger areas of the brain associated with memory.

[Just saw a piece on the importance of family dinners.]

 I can remember when the family was considered oppressive, something to be freed from, and divorce was a step on the road to liberation.

I can remember when going with the flow was the watchword.

I can remember when practice and memorization were tied to the past, to the unenlightened past.


I grew up in a time and place where family was the norm, self-control was expected, and strengthening one's mind was the result of habits.


What lesson do I take from all these: in part there are intellectual fads, in part we humans ride a pendulum of theories, never coming to rest on the truth.

French Dairy Mating

Modern Farmer posts on a French site on mating dairy cows and bulls:

"A consortium of French breeding associations launched the site in October after a farming summit. Breeders write up their cows’ online profiles, recording age and race (eye color is assumed to be brown), followed by their ideal traits in a mate. Milking prowess in its female progeny, perhaps? Muscular fitness? Or perhaps an unfettered ability to knock up his mate on the first go-around?"

 I'm curious, since my impression is that in America the data on the bulls and their progeny are posted/public, not the data on the dams.  Not sure if that's a true difference, and if it is, why it might exist.  Certainly the universe of bulls is much smaller than the universe of cows, which might be one factor.

The Decline of the Mainline Church

The statistical summary for the Presbyterian Church is out.  Not good news for anyone tied to the church, either willfully or by ancestry (me).  Between 2010 and 2013, the active church membership declined by 12.6 percent. 

[Updated: added "active"]

Who Knew Wikipedia Had Bureaucrats?

It does.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats

Now that the found of all knowledge has succumbed to bureaucracy, it's only a matter of time before we bureaucrats take over the world.

Snow Day

Welcome to Washington all you newly-elected senators and representatives, welcome to the snow.

We had about 4 inches in Reston, enough to cause big problems because the forecast was for 1-2 inches and OPM and schools didn't close.   I wonder if Congress gave the Weather Service enough money to upgrade their model to surpass the Europeans whether they could have gotten a better forecast.

Of course people in the Syracuse area would sneer at us Virginians for not being able to drive in snow.

[Updated:  but Bao Bao, the giant panda cub, enjoyed it. ]

Persistence of Culture: Navaho Farming

Vox has an interesting post on where "lady farmers" are. (Note: the writer used the much better term "female farmers" when she actually wrote the piece, but I assume I can blame her for the URL.)

There's an interesting geographic pattern.  The counties with the highest percentage of femal operators seem to be either Native American (the Four Corners of the SW = Navaho) or exurban counties, presumably women who find fulfillment in farming, using the earnings from their first career as capital.

Laugh of the Day

An interesting article in the NY Times magazine on Shell Oil's Arctic oil effort and its mishaps (many).   At one point the Coast Guardsmen on a rescue helicopter run into an unpleasant surprise: the smallest of the 18 crew members who must be airlifted to safety weighs 235 pounds.

Victory Lap: Ebola

Buried somewhere in the comments on Ann Althouse's blog is a bet/promise I made.  It was to the effect that if there were more people dying in the US from Ebola than the number of victories the Washington Skins won in the 2014 season, I'd do my shopping on Amazon through Ann's blog.

At that time the numbers stood at: Americans dead of Ebola--zero, others dead of Ebola dying in the US--one, Skins victories--three.  The final score for 2014 was 0, 1, 4.

I have to admit I didn't have the courage of my convictions or I would have offered a straight bet to all comers, but I can at least claim I was right and all the people who panicked were wrong.

Try These Resolutions

I've decided not to do New Years resolutions any more--the usual reason--they don't work.

But for those who do want to make resolutions, consider the resolutions (not New Years) of Rev. Jonathan Edwards.

No End to the HR Courses--Five Generations at Work

FSA just posted a notice on "Diversity and Inclusion Training on Generational Differences for
Supervisors and Managers".

It seems there are five! different generations at work these days, and they work differently, so managers must know how to handle them.

With tongue in cheek, I list the generations:

• old farts (my generation) who hang on and bore everyone with their talk of the good old days
• boomers who bore everyone with their talk of the day they'll retire
• gen X who bore everyone with their self-pity over all the boomers who don't have the sense to retire and make way for new blood
• gen Y (millennials) who are busily searching for a new job away from all the bores.
• post millennials, who are practicing up to be boring bureaucrats as soon as they get out of diapers

Although I mock, it's serious business, even having the imprimatur of a Harvard Business Review article. 

Next subject on the horizon: the different cultures of America, how to deal with the cultural differences between New Jerseyans and Texans, Oregonians and Floridians.  That should be good for a couple days training and a 5-digit fee to the consultant doing the training. 

(I need to create a label for this: should I use "boondoggle" or "human relations".)