Importing Brains, Exporting Ideas

A quote from a Bloomberg piece:

Of the 1 million foreign nationals enrolled at U.S. schools, nearly one-third are from China -- double the number of any other country. Chinese students receive 10 percent of all doctorates awarded in the U.S., most of them in science and engineering. Some 80 percent of Chinese doctoral holders stay in the U.S. and work after they earn their degrees. There are more Chinese engineers working on artificial intelligence at U.S. technology companies than in all of China.
From Bloomberg

IMHO it's better for us to export our intellectual property to China while importing and keeping their best brains.

Janesville and Liberal Government

This book just won a prize for nonfiction writing.  If you don't want to read the whole thing, this New Yorker piece of last year will substitute.

I'm still reading it, but I want to note one failure of government: Obama came, promised help, his man visited, listened, did nothing before leaving for a better paid post.  It's an old lesson of bureaucracy--you need unrelenting pressure from the top to accomplish the difficult.  President Nixon, despite his flaws, knew this and his administration was successful in removing the WWI "tempos"

now the site of "Constitution Gardens". 

Much as I like Obama, and my regard for him as a person is only increased by comparison with his successor, I don't see him as a good manager of the bureaucracy.  (The most glaring failure was, of course, healthcare.gov.)

Liberals believe in the power of government to help, but Janesville is disappointing in that respect.  The conventional wisdom is that job retraining programs are a necessary part of global free trade and/or fighting recessions.  The results from Janesville don't support their efficacy.  The job retraining seems to have worked somewhat like farm programs, easing the transition from a good past to a dimmer future. 

DOD and the Wall?

Today's story is that President Trump wants the military to pay for his wall on the Mexican border.  He's being mocked for it, and deservedly so.  But I believe that a good liberal congressman once upon a time put money in the Pentagon's budget for medical research.

"The Office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) is funded through the Department of Defense (DoD), via annual Congressional legislation known as the Defense Appropriations Act. For most programs, the DoD sends a multi-year budget request to Congress in the form of the President's Budget. However, dollars for the CDMRP are not considered part of the DoD's core mission, and are therefore not included in the DoD's requested budget. Rather, the dollars to fund CDMRP are added every year during the budget approval cycle by members of the House or Senate, in response to requests by consumer advocates and disease survivors."

"The CDMRP originated in 1992 via a Congressional appropriation to foster novel approaches to biomedical research in response to the expressed needs of its stakeholders-the American public, the military, and Congress."

CBO has an old post supporting the ending of this practice.

Two Small Livestock Farmers: Different Strategies

I follow a handful of farmers: a couple are gradually withdrawing from farming while two of the younger ones (i.e, maybe 45-50) are involved, but with different strategies:

Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm (sadly no longer regularly blogging about his family) specializes in hogs, while Dan Macon at Foothill Agrarian does sheep.

Walt has expanded his operation, using vertical integration, by which I mean he raises hogs and markets the meat, both directly and to stores.  Over the years he's changed from using a commercial butcher to building and running his own butcher shop, just recently receiving his USDA certification so he can sell across state lines instead of just in Vermont.  When you follow him over the years, his determination and drive and the obstacles overcome are amazing, For that reason, I don't recommend his past blog posts for new farmers--they might well be intimidated.

Dan's most recent post, linked to above, explains the logic which leads him not to do marketing, but instead sell his lambs live.  He also notes the economic realities which mean he isn't a full-time farmer.

I recommend both.

[updated to expand on Walt]

USDA a "Lighthouse Agency"

That's from this FCW piece on some GSA IT contract awards:

"The awards support the first phase of work at five IT Modernization Centers of Excellence. Work will begin at the Department of Agriculture, which was selected as the government's "lighthouse" agency.
SIE Consulting Group will be working on cloud adoption, McKinsey & Company is tackling infrastructure optimization, ICF Inc. won two contracts for customer experience and service delivery analytics, while Kaiser Associates was awarded a contact center contract."

Don't know what "lighthouse" means--presumably a new bit of jargon that sounds good but turns out meaningless, like "tiger teams" back in the 90's. 

Drivers Monitoring Autonomous Cars

Two points on autonomous cars:

1. China has just authorized Baidu to run their autonomous cars on the highways.  The piece I saw noted that Chinese roads are more crowded and chaotic than in the US, thereby posing a bigger challenge to the software.  I'd add--doesn't that give them an advantage in development--a higher bar to surmount?
2. AEI notes that humans are poor monitors.  We get distracted and complacent and don't jump into action quickly.  I wonder if it would be possible to include a training module in the software--have the software test the driver by requiring intervention in a situation which is actually safe.  If the driver fails to react timely and correctly, do more testing.  If the driver continues to fail, discontinue the self-driving. 

[Added link]

What's 700 Points on the Dow Worth

Not a mention on the front page of either the Post or the Times.  Times have changed.

The Search for Buttermilk and Doom for Cows

My spouse was inspired by the recent St. Patrick's Day to bake Irish Soda Bread, for which she needed buttermilk.

She checked Trader Joe's: out.  I checked Safeway--not available.  Finally found a quart at Giant.

I was amazed, absolutely amazed though, by the pseudo "milk" on sale.  There were a couple upright coolers devoted to the usual 2 percent milk in gallons, plus a variety of milk of kinds and quantities. Next to them were two more coolers devoted mostly to half gallons and quarts of all the various kinds of "milk"--almond, soy, and I don't know what else.  There was another cooler partly devoted to cream products like half and half, whipping cream, etc. and at least another with specialty "milk" type products. 

Even with the authority of wikipedia behind them, dairy farmers are in trouble:

"In food use, the term milk is defined under Codex Alimentarius standards as: "the normal mammary secretion of milking animals obtained from one or more milkings without either addition to it or extraction from it, intended for consumption as liquid milk or for further processing."[22] This definition thereby precludes non-animal products which may resemble milk in color and texture (milk substitutes) such as soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, and coconut milk. The correct name for such products are 'soy beverage', 'rice beverage', etc.
Dairy relates to milk and milk production, e.g. dairy products.

Deep State? Shocking

I believe in the "deep state".

There's a poll out which shows support for a theory of the "deep state" is surprisingly high, surprising to some that is. 

Personally I think it's common sense, though I define "deep state" a little differently.  In my view there are a relatively small number (i.e. less than 1 percent of Americans) who routinely affect the way government operates in ways which aren't visible to Americans on a daily basis.  This would include all the riders and special provisions tucked into laws, particularly appropriations acts and omnibus or "must pass" legislation. It would include all the lobbyists, pollsters, and members of the "chattering class", as William Safire used to call them.  And of course it includes the bureaucrats and lawyers who are concerned with process and procedure, much to the dismay of some politicians.

In most cases the deep state is operating within the overall context set by the limits of public support.  An example on the liberal side--I could argue the "deep state" essentially legalized gay marriage. 

Teleworking and USDA

USDA made the paper this morning for cutting back on the hours employees can telework (here's GovExec's piece).

Teleworking developed after my time at FSA.  Obviously employees like it and environmentalists do as well.  Without any experience of it, I'm left with just opinions with no basis for them. 

But, as a manager, I would have had problems with it, just as I had problems with flextime.  Back when I was a young employee, we worked 8 to 4:30.  That meant first thing in the morning we might gather at the coffee pot to start.  It meant you always knew who was in and who was on leave.  It meant you could  easily schedule meetings (likely we spent more time in unproductive meetings than was good for us--I remember Roy "T"'s acid comments on the division director's staff meetings in the late 70's). 

The work of the unit I managed wasn't easily quantifiable--a manager could give work assignments knowing how much time it should take.

On the other hand, I often had employees in Kansas City working with the IT people on requirements and testing.  I had no problem trusting my employees with working a thousand miles away from the office, so why would I have problems with them working 20-30 miles from the office?  Two considerations:

1. in Kansas City they were working face to face with their counterparts, not alone.  That meant I could get a bit of feedback from my opposite number manager in KC.
2. the bottom line issue is trust  and it's the rare group of 6-10 people where all are equally trustworthy IMHO. So you either bite the bullet and trust all equally, or you recognize differences among the employees, meaning you don't treat them equally.

All in all, I'm glad I'm no longer a manager who has to make such decisions.