Automated Crop Appraisals?

Crop insurance relies on crop appraisers to sample an acreage of disaster-affected crops and project the reduction in yield which will occur.  It looks as if automated intelligence may be on the way to assist in the job, if not eventually to replace appraisers.  The first crop: cassava.  From Technology Review:

"Some cassava farmers may not be able to tell one plant’s debilitating brown streak from another’s troubling brown leaf spot—but a smartphone-friendly AI can.
Wired reports that researchers have developed a lightweight image-recognition AI that can identify diseases in the cassava plant based on pictures of its leaves. That could be useful, because cassava is one of the most commonly eaten tubers on the planet, but is grown predominantly in developing countries where access to expertise to diagnose unusual crop problems may be limited."

Life Used To Be Better

This can't be dismissed as nostalgia.  Growing up I remember being able to see stars at night, even the Milky Way. Now if you're Kevin Drum you have to travel to Ireland to see it.

Don't know if it's significant but mentions of the Milky Way have declined significantly since the 19th century according to Google Ngrams

Vietnam on TV and in Iraq and Afghanistan

Have now watched most of the Burns/Novick Vietnam series (missing the first one but I'd just completed the Lagevall book) and the last minutes of the longer episodes.  Had my memory refreshed but didn't learn a lot that was new, given that I'd lived through the period, following the media closely, and ended up in Vietnam for a shortened tour (11 months/11 days).  That's my general take, but I did learn more about the divisions in the North's leadership, i.e, the role of Le Duan.

While I found the range of individual stories and responses on the American and South Vietnamese side to be familiar, the stories from the other side were newer, particularly when critical.

Came close to tears twice, once when an American recounted his first glimpse of women in ao dais

which tracked my reactions when arriving in the early morning at Tan San Nhut airport, once in reaction to the piece on the Vietnam War Memorial. 

I'd say the series missed a couple areas which seem important to me, but which aren't the focus. 

One is the ways in which Vietnamese and American societies started to intermix and separate.  The usual way in which this gets covered is prostitution, with the real blend of the offspring of Americans and Vietnamese.  That got mentioned in the series.  But the blending, the intermixture was more than that.  As soon as Americans arrived, we started hiring help, slowly at first but then more and more.  For example by the time I left in May 67 we had barbers, laundry workers, hootch girls, generator helpers (don't know their exact title, but they helped with the generators), and others which time has erased.  Also mentioned briefly in the series was the black market.  I remember buying my jungle boots (with canvas uppers instead of leather as in the standard issue boots) through the black market--more comfortable than the regular boots but at that time restricted only to combat troops.  In both cases, as in our Afghanistan war, the influx of American money had a great impact on the Vietnamese economy and on the people--some good, some bad.  (Not a new phenomenon--recall the complaints of the Brits in WWII--Yanks were overpaid, over-sexed, and over here.)  

The blending, the intermixture, was accompanied by increasing separation.  When I arrived we were operating generators in compounds in Saigon.  I was then stationed at Long Binh, the main logistical base outside Saigon where we did our best to separate from Vietnamese society--we ended up with aluminum hootches on concrete pads, not the tents we started with.   Think of the "Green Zone"  

in Baghdad.  The logic is understandable: we don't want our soldiers killed so the best way to do that is to isolate them. 

The other point not covered was standard in accounts of the war: the fact that most troops were REMF's, as I was.  Lots to be said about that, but not today. 

Grain Surpluses

Illinois farm Policy News reports that 2017 is going to be another year of more grain produced than consumed, the fourth year in a row.

And when focusing on U.S. farmers, the Reuters article explained that, “Even as farmers reap bountiful harvests, U.S. net farm incomes this year will total $63.4 billion – about half of their earnings in 2013, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast.

20 years ago I predicted grain surpluses once the Russians and Ukrainians got going.  So I was right, right, right!  Just didn't realize they'd be so slow about it.

Hugh Hefner and Ayn Rand

New Yorker piece on Hefner. My first memory of Playboy was my freshman year at college.  My roommate had arrived earlier, and had decorated his bookshelf with a recent centerfold.  As a naive rube from upstate NY it was both shocking and intriguing.  Not enough of either for me to ever subscribe to it, but it continued to be a presence in my mental world.

For some reason now I pair Hefner and Ayn Rand, both libertarians.  I was probably more influenced by Hefner than Rand, since his views seemed more mainline than hers.  I don't know if that's a common linkage; googling doesn't seem to bring up that many hits.  Her general influence seems to have persisted more than his, at least intellectually, though his impact on the culture was greater.

War Gaming Disasters

I'm tempted to say the Trump administration is probably getting some undeserved* flak over their reaction to Hurricane Maria.  What I wonder is the extent to which the bureaucracies war game their responses to disaster.  Does FEMA do a war game, do they war game with state agencies, or is the gaming at the DHS/DOD level?  Or how about at the Presidential level?

We know, I think, that the national security establishment has war gamed North Korea.  Has the national disaster establishment war gamed Hurricane Maria, or other emergencies (like an 8.0 earthquake in California, sun flares that zap transmission lines, etc.?

My guess is they haven't, or the war gaming has at best extended one length beyond the worst disaster that's already happened.  In other words, after Katrina hit NOLA, there likely were simulations and games using a 5.0 hurricane, but I'm guessing the simulations of a Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands wipeout haven't happened.

*though the comparison to the response to the Haitian earthquake leads me to qualify my sympathy.  My point, once again, is the Harshaw rule--we haven't had a major hurricane which squarely hit American territory in the Caribbean for years and so, without a war game, the bureaucracy is doing its thing for the first time.

McArdle on the Trump Tax Plan

Megan McArdle has a good post on the Trump tax plan outline. We would be hit by the loss of state tax deductibility, but that's okay with me, if only they'd reduce the cap on mortgage interest deductions.

Change and the Geezer

Was musing over the changes I've seen in my life: used to be only the Catholics did gambling--bingo nights funded them, another proof if one was needed, and it wasn't for my mother, of the wickedness of the Catholic church.

Another change is in cars (have I posted yet on my car-leasing experience?)--still feeling wiped out from yesterday.

Puerto Rico and Disaster III

I suspect when the federal response to Irma and Maria in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico is studied by academics, the conclusion will include these points:

• FEMA's usual disaster response implicitly assumed that the disaster is on the mainland, not on islands.  So its capacity to respond to island disasters was limited.  For example, recognizing that power crews would need their trucks transported to the island.  (To me this is another aspect of a general rule that island life is limited--so some (all?) species tend to grow smaller on islands, etc.)
• FEMA was able to learn from prior mainland disasters (like Katrina and later ones), partly because of feedback from the affected areas, feedback often routed through federal elected officials--representatives and senators.  For example, after Katrina the agency was changed and Fugate, Obama's head of FEMA, got kudoes from Congress and the press for doing a good job.  But IMHO it's likely the job he did was deficient for PR and VI. 
• Two problems: the media doesn't pay attention to our Caribbean citizens and their elected representatives don't have the clout that mainland reps do.

Billy Grabarkewitz

I flatter myself as being fairly knowledgeable about baseball, except for the long dead.  So I read this FiveThirtyEight piece on Aaron Judge, the Yankee rookie, with interest.  When I came to the list of outstanding rookie seasons, I was totally stumped by this 1970 rookie.  Turns out he had one good season.