Behold, the lowly corncob has found a new role in energy efficiency.
Using corncob waste as a starting material, researchers at University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) and Midwest Research Institute (MRI) in Kansas City have created carbon briquettes with complex nanopores capable of storing natural gas at an unprecedented density of 180 times their own volume and at one seventh the pressure of conventional natural gas tanks. The technology has been incorporated into a test bed installed on a pickup truck used regularly by the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality.
"We are very excited about this breakthrough because it may lead to a flat and compact tank that would fit under the floor of a passenger car, similar to current gasoline tanks," said principal project leader Peter Pfeifer of MU. "Such a technology would make natural gas a widely attractive alternative fuel for everyone." [More]
While this strikes me as one of those gee-whiz energy ideas tumbling out of research labs everywhere today, the political push for the biofuel solution may keep it just a curiosity. On the other hand, rather than being used for cars, what if we could store and handle methane (natural gas) as easily as propane? It would mean a lot cheaper heating.
It is convenient to blame yesterday's market turmoil on the Chinese. After all, they are inscrutable, ya know. And to be sure the decision by their "Fed" to curtail irrational exuberance was a key factor. There are also plenty of other factors.
But for those who view things from Greenspan's perspective, there are worrisome indicators. Orders for durable goods — covering everything from jet engines to computers, as well as washing machines and other household appliances — fell more than forecast last month, the Commerce Department announced, a sign of ongoing weakness in manufacturing. The 7.8% decline was the biggest since October. Another important indicator of business spending, orders for nondefense capital goods not including aircraft, fell 6%, the third drop in four months.
Even though a new report from the National Association of Realtors showed that sales of previously owned homes rose 3% in January, the median price of those homes fell to $210,600, down 3% from the same period last year. Inventories of unsold homes also remain high. [More]
But the rest of the story is perhaps better understood by trying to figure out who is actually at risk now and how much.
Not an easy job.
One concern is that the heavy wiring in the markets could not keep up with the rapid changes. Another is the rapid growth of derivatives. The problems in the subprime mortgage sector have focused attention on the slicing and dicing of risk using sophisticated instrument such as collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps. Banks have used these to shed credit risk, but it is not clear where all that risk now lies. Financial shares were hit particularly hard on Tuesday, suggesting that nerves are starting to jangle over this uncertainty. Shares in Goldman Sachs, perhaps the smartest of the financial alchemists, ended down 6.6%. This was partly due to its Asian exposure (it owns a stake in a big Chinese bank). But its role in conjuring up and trading exotic financial instruments was probably also a factor. [More]
While farmers are struggling to cope with options strategies, guys in suits worth more than my pickup are devising exotic financial instruments to hand risk around like a hot potato. Tuesday, somebody ended up holding it.
To be honest, I have trouble with options strategies. It's easy to misplace what success looks like. Moreover, I am comfortable with the production and price risks as they occur in the real world.
While I doubtless could make some money being more aggressive in the use of risk instruments, my guess is it would take utilize time that I can be doing something else more personally or financially rewarding. Just because an action makes money doesn't mean it doesn't have to compete with other choices that offer different or even better rewards.
A 9 percent slide in Chinese stocks earlier set the tone for U.S. trading, a day after investors sent Shanghai's benchmark index to a record high close.
Investors' confidence has been knocked down by a slew of data showing that the economy may be decelerating more than anticipated. A Commerce Department report that orders for durable goods in January dropped by the largest amount in three months exacerbated jitters about the direction of the U.S. economy, which were raised a day earlier when former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the economy may be headed for a recession. [More]
Volatility in major markets triggers efforts to avoid risks. However, farmers often pay too much for fixed rates, in my opinion. My last comparison was 1.25% difference. Assuming a steady rise, rates would have to increase 2.5% over a 1 year operating loan for example, to break even.
Today's action shows me nothing that could suggest the Fed ramping up that fast. In fact, another day like this and recession looks closer, with the Fed belatedly lowering rates to spur growth.
Could this be affecting corn prices? I dunno. It'd really hard to sort out the spec money actions, let alone predict. But if corn falls too far, a bigger mandate for more ethanol is my bet.
I have been fielding comments on post previous posts about basic economic scenarios. One of the most frustrating of these strange theories for me has been the agrarian absurdity that low prices force higher production:
But computer chips and crops work differently. Say you're an Iowa corn farmer and the price of corn futures drops after you've planted the spring crop. Unlike Intel, you can't slash production any time soon; you have to wait until the next season's planting.
Worse still, when the time comes to put the next season's crops into the field, you're faced with a harsh fact. If you decide to plant less corn, there's no guarantee that the corn price will rise. Why? Because unlike Intel -- which essentially shares the chip market with AMD -- you have thousands of competitors. Unless you can figure a way to organize a significant portion of them to join you in cutting production, you're not going to succeed in pushing prices up.
Since no mechanism exists to coordinate farmers in their planting decisions, they tend to respond to price drops in a way that would be alien to an Intel exec: they plant more corn. The calculation: If they're going to hold their income steady while prices fall, they'll have to bring more product onto the market. But since thousands of other farmers are making the same decision, the market just gets flooded with corn and prices fall further. [More unadulterated drivel]
OK - it all sounds so down-to-earth reasonable, doesn't it? Followed to its extreme, if nobody offered to pay for corn, we farmers would cover the planet with it. What is wrong with this logic chain?
First, let's look at the flip side. Prices are rising for corn and farmers are planting more of it. Ask seed or fertilizer salesman. It seems if you can make more money with a crop you choose to do so. Gosh - if only I had thought of this earlier! I have heard no hints of "holding back" to keep income level. So I think it is safe to say if prices for corn go up, farmers plant more corn.
But wait, according to the above, when prices go down, farmers plant more corn. So it would seem no matter what prices do we plant more corn. Obviously not.
One of the key ideas in the agrarian economic explanation is we farmers can increase our production at any time by doing things like plowing up pastures, polluting, and applying more chemicals - in short, fair prices keep us from doing bad things that will raise production. And our only goal in life is to keep our income steady.
Oddly my experience has seen no economic return to erosion, in fact it is a really bad production idea. Similarly when corn was $1.80 I was skimping on fertilizer, cutting spray rates, and lowering population to cut costs. As prices drop, we have to lower costs to make money, we can't just command the field to have higher yields. Now with $4 corn, I'm going to try some fungicide I never could quite afford. According to the salesman, this will increase my yields and profits. (Yeah- well, we see about that - but only with high prices would this idea be feasible)
If I can increase my income at any time as suggested by agrarians by magically increasing my yields, or planting some apparently unused acres, why don't I? Is the income I am making right now "just right"? "Oh, no thanks, I've got all the money I can handle, thanks."
Producers try for the highest yield (income) they can afford every year, not just in down years.
As corn prices drop, producers switch to other crops to see if they will make more money. This cuts supply, as well. Check out soybean acreage this year, for example.
Finally, we really don't have that many idle acres around that we can bring into production cheaply, as agrarians would suggest.
The supply curve slopes up, not down. And the proof is the explosion of corn acres as $4 corn continues.
The other danger of such pseudo-economics is the perpetuation of the idea producers are helpless to control their business. This Is debilitating dogma.
On the other hand, believers in such clap-trap are not competitors I have to worry about.
Cotton producers are taking Will Rogers seriously:
"I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've every said, and I used it in the FOLLIES of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on."
With oddly optimistic reports of utterances from WTO Chief Pascal Lamy of an impending breakthrough, Big Cotton is fearing the worst. Add in the tide flowing away from open-ended access to the Treasury by enacting some sort of payment limits and ending the three-entity rule, and the business plan for cotton production looks shaky.
We'll be looking for any hints from USTR Susan Schwab at the Commodity Classic in Tampa. (Now with added fiber from Wheat!)My experience with is good negotiators don't drop hints, and if they did it would likely shoot over my head. My prediction is a pretty tightly scripted recital of administration policy, but ya never know. If she gives a press conference something might pop up.
I think there is immense pressure to salvage some hope of a deal, and any deal will mean goodbye to LDP's and CCP's. They are simply too market distorting. Now handing out rent stamps - er, fixed payments, I mean - seems to be trade neutral.
Compounding cotton's worries are upcoming meetings over Brazilian complaints against our cotton program. Cotton growers are not optimistic.
The NCC says the WTO has slated a compliance panel to hear oral arguments in the Brazil-United States Cotton Compliance dispute Feb. 27-28. Hard on the heels of that will be a “high profile” March session on cotton at the WTO headquarters in Geneva. The two meetings focus too much attention on U.S. cotton at a time when WTO leaders obviously are trying to restart the suspended Doha Round negotiations, according to Jay Hardwick, chairman of the American Cotton Producers, the producer arm of the NCC. The timing of the sessions is “an unfortunate turn of events that can severely undermine the credibility of the WTO dispute settlement process,” says Hardwick, a cotton producer from Newellton, La. [More]
Cotton will see the biggest changes, and it has already begun. Some cotton farmers will grow corn. In fact, Southeastern corn users such as Big Chicken (don'tja just love these "big" labels?), may be counting on it in case a supply crunch ignites the basis in August to ration the last 17 bushels of corn.
Completely off-topic: Under the heading of "What could go wrong?", while working on this post I found this great insight from Mike Woolverton at KSU:
Some producers have expressed concern that after luring them with tantalizing visions of historic profits, the corn market will collapse. Two things might cause that to happen, neither of which seems likely. First, if corn producers overshoot and plant 12 or 14 million more acres and if growing conditions give record breaking yields across the country, corn price would drop from the current level. One or the other of those might happen, but the likelihood of both happening this year seems small. Secondly, ethanol processing margins might go far enough into the red to cause some of the plants to shut down. The subsequent decrease in demand for corn would cause price to fall. In order for that to occur, oil price would have to fall more than it has in recent weeks; even then, Congress would likely raise the ethanol-in-gasoline mandate levels to prevent injury to grain producers, farmer/investors, and rural communities that would result from a demise of the ethanol industry. Soybeans, cotton, wheat, and other crops are on track to lose the battle for acres this year, although producers of those crops are already benefiting from prices higher than the fundamental supply and demand factors for each of those crops separately would justify. But this is just the first battle in the ‘ground war’ that is likely to intensify and continue for years to come. [More]
One thing the administration has successfully managed - their proposal has anchored the farm bill debate. By offering a full-range of ideas, they have co-opted isolated competing ideas for public scrutiny.
One of my gripes with the USDA is it fails to put farm economic figures in context with either the nation or the globe. My experience is most farmers have wildly inflated ideas of their contribution to their local and national economies.
Here's how to find out for yourself. Click here for county level income numbers. (How the people in your county earn a living)
Click on CA05 - Personal income and detailed earnings by industry
Choose NAICS data for the most recent. The BEA switched industry categories a few years ago - this is the new list.
Pick a state, click next.
Pick a county (or the whole state) and year (s), hit "Display"
Line 81 is farm earnings. Compare that with total earnings (line 10). Also compare with line 47. Transfer payments are mostly SS checks, Medicaid, federal pensions, etc.
In almost all rural counties I have looked up transfer payments are 3-10 times higher than farm earnings.
I was personally stunned when I first looked up Edgar County, IL. It's covered with farms and has no big city, and yet farms contribute only about 8% of the local income. Meanwhile, transfer payments bring in 21%.
My conclusion: to save rural America, save Social Security.
Many producers like to argue that just means farmers aren't getting paid enough, but crimony - how high would prices have to get to move it up much? For example, in IL farms contribute all of 0.4% of the Gross State Product.
Some also say we should judge by gross income (sales), but then you would have to judge other industries the same way. Besides, why are we so proud of how little we keep of the dollars that flow through our farms? The BEA sets the rules for measuring economic clout, and it uses your schedule F. Farmers can't play the game AND referee too, ya know.
Illinois is not about farms. Neither is IA, IN, ND, SD, MN, CA, NJ, etc. Look it up for yourself.
As a rule farmers are upset when I share these numbers. I have been accused of "talking down" farmers. If the facts are disrespectful to our image of ourselves, my assertion is the problem is with our self-image.
We don't have be the center of attention to be a vital part of a community or state economy. In fact, when we stop insisting it's all about us, we improve our chances of being truly happy.
Not only are we living longer, the rate of longevity increase is accelerating.
But these statistics do not relate to anything as mundane as prices. Rather, they are about the more gruesome topic of death. Specifically, Blake is predicting how long our children, and children's children, will live - and his conclusions are striking: over the past century, life expectancy in the western world has not only risen, but the rate of increase has accelerated. While someone in the 1840s lived, on average, to 40, today's generation can expect to hit 80, "and for our grandchildren, it could be 160," says Blake, stabbing a pale green corner of his fan chart. Until recently, such morbid number-crunching was of interest only to actuaries, the pensions industry, scientists and doctors. After all, death is not a topic that many of us want to discuss - except in the most abstract terms. And the pensions world was such a slow- moving, sleepy backwater that it rarely attracted the interest of high-flying bankers. [More]
While this may offer an investment opportunity for financial wizards, for most of us it presents a good news/bad news scenario. The probability we will outlive our plans and resources grows every day - and not is a good way for most.
If you have not been on the front line of caring for the very old, you may not fully appreciate how many times you will mutter, "I don't want it to be like this for me" even as you become more convinced that is your future.
I have tastelessly remarked from time to time that all the "good" deaths are being eliminated: the "grabber" in the corn crib, the undiscovered cancer that kills in months, infections that overwhelm, the relative quick decline of a lonely widow(er) from simple malnutrition by forgetting to eat, or simply wearing out by overwork.
Nope - what we have to look forward to is Alzheimer's, prostate cancer, dementia, strokes, and assorted lingering wasting deaths - all of which will be funded by somebody.
By this point, I have likely offended some who are still grieving a loved one. I deeply regret this, but it does not change my rather bleak assessment of what modern medicine is trying to accomplish. We are adding some pretty grim years onto many lives at great cost.
There will always be a #1 cause of death. Looking at the contenders:
Number of deaths for leading causes of death
Heart disease: 654,092
Cancer: 550,270
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,147
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 108,694
Diabetes: 72,815
Alzheimer's disease: 65,829
Influenza/Pneumonia: 61,472
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 42,762
Most of us have long suspected that being a father messes with your head. Now scientists have verified our fears.
So how does fatherhood create these changes? Gould's group found that fatherhood increased the number of receptors in the prefrontal cortex for arginine vasopressin, a peptide hormone involved in the formation of social bonds. They propose that the resulting increase in vasopressin signaling could have caused the increases in dendritic spines. Their previous enrichment work, meanwhile, indicates that behavioral changes that go with fatherhood could also contribute to the observed spine changes. Interestingly, they provide evidence that the abundance of vasopressin receptors was reduced over time as infants aged -- suggesting that this particular change is temporary and driven by recent contact with infants. A comparable examination of whether the spines also tended to decrease over time, in parallel with the reduction in vasopressin receptors, would have been informative. If the increases in dendritic spines demonstrated more permanence, the case for the experience of fatherhood as a form of enrichment would be strengthened. [More]
It gets more complicated. Vasopressin is the "monogamy hormone":
Sometimes it takes a while for scientific research to filter down to the great mass of society, and even longer for the appropriate action to be taken. Today's example: a seminal (so to speak) study, published in Nature in mid-2004, about two species of vole -- one in which the male is monogamous, one in which he plays the gigolo. Scientists identified and extracted the monogamy hormone, vasopressin, from the loyal prarie vole, and bred it into the cheatin' meadow vole (above). Result: the male meadow vole, fortified with vasopressin, stopped fooling around, settled down with his beloved, and raised the little voles right. The news caused a minor stir when it first came out. Then it started cropping up in popular science books, such as last year's bestseller, The Female Brain. And in the future ... well, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that women are going to want to carry vasopressin around in their purse in easy-to-apply pill form, is it? Vasopressin is already available in pharmacies, and is often used therapeutically. It won't be long before every bar-hopping woman on the planet is going to want a vasopressin test, or better yet, a vasopressin roofie to slip into some smooth-talking lothario's drink. [More]
I suppose it could be that simple. Men are pretty straightforward humans. And while it can creep you out to realize strange chemicals can change the way you think, try not to worry too much.
Well, there are over 64,000 intersections of whole degrees and somebody had the bright idea people should visit them and post a picture.
The project is an organized sampling of the world. There is a confluence within 49 miles (79 km) of you if you're on the surface of Earth. We've discounted confluences in the oceans and some near the poles, but there are still 11,255 to be found. [More]
By now we all know that our food industry is dominated by horrifying behemoth polluting uncaring corporate faceless dehumanizing, ah..somethings. But what if they change?
It could too happen:
But many quality restaurants, like Tree Room, use Sysco responsibly—shying away from pre-made items they can disguise as their own. Bardia Ferdowski of Bardia's New Orleans Café in Washington, D.C., purchases only raw and unprocessed Sysco products such as flour, potatoes, and beef, and receives frequent deliveries so that ingredients are as fresh as possible. For its part, Sysco has also been upping the quality of some of its offerings. It now distributes more locally grown meats and produce, and teams up with companies like artisanal cheesemonger Murray's to deliver specialty foods. Chef Tom Hosack of Hudson's at the Heathman Lodge in Vancouver, Wash., for instance, buys most of his greens through Sysco, and they're almost all regionally grown. [More]
Our lack of faith in the market to send appropriate signals up and down the chain is discouraging. Even as we wring our hands, I'll bet CEO wannabe's are scheming to push those evil organizations to capture the value now grasped tenuously by local/organic/natural niche marketers (and make their careers in the process - of course)
Who will we despise if they convert? Can you be Big and Good? Is virtue impossible on a large scale?
This is why everybody should do their own taxes...
Item One: The "adjusted gross income" means test proposed by the administration:
To receive commodity payments, producers must also meet a limit on Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), which includes wages and other income minus farm expenses and depreciation. This plan reduces the AGI limit of $2.5 million to a new limit of $200,000. If a producer has an annual adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more, that individual would no longer be eligible for commodity payments. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data for 2004 indicate that 97.7 percent of all American tax filers have an AGI under $200,000.
"Two hundred thousand dollars to the average guy is a lot of money," Chambliss said. "But what we in agriculture know is, $200,000 in adjusted gross income means once you get to that point, then you've got to pay for that $250,000 combine, that $100,000 tractor that you've got to have to operate your facilities."
Folks, these are two unrelated events.
Let's review briefly. Grasping your Form 1040, skim down to Line 37, labeled oddly, Adjusted Gross Income. Now notice that it includes all income (wages, farm income, capital gains - the whole pile) minus adjustments for health insurance, moving, and whatever else Congress thought was a good political move at some time.
The important thing for farmers is Schedule F income shown on your 1040 (line 18) is NET farm income, not gross. The gross income goes on line 11 of Schedule F. The cost of new combines and fertilizers and pickups has already been accounted for by the time the AGI is calculated. We call the machinery stuff Sen. Chambliss moans about "depreciation" (Sch. F, line 16). Perversely, those rules have been seductively generous for some time. (Which is why I am sooo doomed in 2008 when all mine runs out thanks to Section 179)
You don't have to love the proposal, but at least read the instructions.
Forecasting anything is tough these days, but the "peak-oilers" have been taking it on the chin for a while. Those who truly believed have suffered along with them.
Finally, a practical reminder: If there is an imminent peak of oil extraction, should not then the prospective shortage of that increasingly precious fuel result in relentlessly rising prices and should not buying a barrel of oil and holding onto it be an unbeatable investment? But a barrel of a high-quality crude, say West Texas intermediate, bought at $12.23/b in 1976 as a nest-egg for retirement and sold before the end of 2006 at $60/b would have earned (even when assuming no storage costs) about 1.2% a year, a return vastly inferior to almost any guaranteed investment certificate and truly a miserable gain when compared with virtually any balanced stock market fund. And a freedom-at-55 investor who bought that barrel at 30 years of age in 1980 and sold in 2005 would have realized a nearly forty per cent loss on his precious investment. Being a true believer in imminent peak oil may be fine as a provocative notion but not as a means of securing a comfortable retirement. [More]
It's easy sport to make fun of serious analysts whose projections get waylaid by surprising events. But the peak oil theory may be fundamentally wrong. Moreover, its plausibility may help ensure its predicted outcomes are incorrect. To the extent that alternative fuels were extolled because we "are running out of oil" demand has been partially met by these usually more expensive choices.
The problem for "apocalytophiles" is effective Doomsday business plans are tough to write. We depend on a framework of some order and rationality to exist at all today. Even "Foxfire" hermitages would be cheerless prisons while the rest of the world melts down.
When I was a kid worried about the Ruskies nuking us, I assumed we would survive out on the farm, but after that, when anarchy broke loose, were you better off to be all prepared and cozy - and thus a ripe target for those who forgot to stockpile canned goods, or should you just enlist in the mob straight away and hope to rise to some executive level with good job performance?
I think widespread social chaos and anarchy is something I want to experience unprepared. At least it will show if my instinctive reactions mark my genetics as suitable for enduring. Think of the sheer excitement! The amazing home videos! Plus it saves a lot of time not spent trying to imagine every threat.
Those wacky Russians had a rocket problem about a year ago. A missile and satellite ended up in a bad orbit and a couple of days ago, suddenly decided to blow itself up. (We think).
This made for some spectacular photos for Aussie astronomers and a reminder that there are more than few things whizzing over our heads today. Also reminder for the world to duck as some 1000+ fragments start arriving.
Meanwhile last month the Chinese tested an anti-satellite weapon with apparently successful results. Although to be fair, from some photos it looks like it would be hard to miss everything especially when debris keeps zooming out more or less for ever.
But China's Jan. 11 test of a primitive anti-satellite weapon against an aging weather satellite boosted the population of trackable debris by more than 900 objects--an instantaneous 10% increase in the 50-year figure--that threaten all spacecraft flying below about 2,000 km. (1,243 mi.).
Still as we mutter about our GPS signal when we are planting, we need to remember it was spending ridiculous amounts on the space program that got us here. And defending and advancing that technology might become just as important as defending dirt.
There are worse investments for public dollars, I believe.
Nope - we're just committing the same unforced errors as usual.
Peanut butter happens to be a pretty safe food when it comes to microorganisms. That's because the nuts are blanched, roasted, and ground up at temperatures high enough to kill any salmonella bacteria that might have gotten into the raw ingredients. But the germs can still contaminate the product in the "post-processing" phase of production—when the finished product is loaded into jars and labeled for sale. The only other known outbreak of peanut butter-related salmonellosis occurred in Australia in the mid-1990s: Post-processing contamination with fecal matter was the likely culprit.
More of a very helpful explanation of what is going on in those jars. Not to trivialize, but 300 people getting sick implies a 1 in a million chance. Thanks to modern communication outbreaks terminate quickly and while no picnic for the victims, fatalities are rare.
Here at the ND Ag Expo in Grand Forks the conversations have flowed almost inevitably from "things are pretty good, I guess" to "how long can it last though?" We seemed to be determined to put a cloud in front of this silver lining.
Still the gossip was flowing and rated ex-cell-ent! Some choice "I-heard-from-this-guy" morsels. (Believe at your own risk):
Some minor crop processors - notably edible beans - got caught with their acres down and are having a hard time to convince growers to shift away from corn. Bids have been raised three times at least to get contracts signed. Ditto for potatoes (although watch the "quality" fine print) and sunflowers.
Seed corn dealers are being allotted 40% of their orders from one major (I'm always suspicious of rumors with actual numbers).
Urea is over $400 and then only to long-time customers.
Sugar beets could be in for a big boom as the world price rises to our "rigged" price due to cane diversion to ethanol. The sugar program could fade away as can enters from Mexico next year.
Some guy bid $160 for cash rent in Cass county today for approximately 110-bu. ground.
CNH 2377 combines are not hot sellers.
If it wasn't for lack of APH, more ground might go to corn. (ND really digs crop insurance.)
Most amazing to me was the relative lack of interest in the farm bill debate. Could it be slip-sliding into ethanol-irrelevance?
And don't tell me men don't gossip:
Men gossip as much as women. The study found that men gossip at least as much as women, especially on their mobiles. Thirty-three percent of men indulge in mobile gossip every day or almost every day, compared with twenty-six percent of women. Men gossip for just as long and about the same subjects as women, but tend to talk more about themselves. The study did find a sex difference in 'gossip partners', with men more likely to gossip with work colleagues, partners and female friends, while women gossip more with same-sex friends and family. Male and female gossip also sounds different, as women use more animated tones, more detail and more feedback.
(Check in from time to time to put your problems in perspective.)
This is also one reason we think the world is so much more dangerous and threatening. We can now share in every piece of bad news, where before we would have missed virtually all of it.
The two-decade experiment in "self-esteem" is being evaluated. And the grades are not good.
Dweck and Blackwell’s work is part of a larger academic challenge to one of the self-esteem movement’s key tenets: that praise, self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together. From 1970 to 2000, there were over 15,000 scholarly articles written on self-esteem and its relationship to everything—from sex to career advancement. But results were often contradictory or inconclusive. So in 2003 the Association for Psychological Science asked Dr. Roy Baumeister, then a leading proponent of self-esteem, to review this literature. His team concluded that self-esteem was polluted with flawed science. Only 200 of those 15,000 studies met their rigorous standards.
After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement. It didn’t even reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort. (Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem.) At the time, Baumeister was quoted as saying that his findings were “the biggest disappointment of my career.”
Now he’s on Dweck’s side of the argument, and his work is going in a similar direction: He will soon publish an article showing that for college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further. Baumeister has come to believe the continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that “when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves.”
By and large, the literature on praise shows that it can be effective—a positive, motivating force. In one study, University of Notre Dame researchers tested praise’s efficacy on a losing college hockey team. The experiment worked: The team got into the playoffs. But all praise is not equal—and, as Dweck demonstrated, the effects of praise can vary significantly depending on the praise given. To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific. (The hockey players were specifically complimented on the number of times they checked an opponent.) [More of a must-read article]
It seemed reasonable at first to worry about low self esteem, but how to help children raise their self-opinion was the tricky part. The worst consequence could be a generation that will struggle to find much fulfillment.
A few Mac users are pointing out politely how my travails with Vista could have been avoided. This leads to an obvious question: If Macs are so obviously stable, easy and reliable, why is their market share still so small?
Inescapable, inevitable, and irrevokable circumstances trigger the psychological immune system, but as with the intensity ofsuffering, people do not always recognize this will happen. For example, college students in one study signed up for a course in black-and-white photography. Each student took a dozen photographs of people and places that were personally meaningful, then reported for a private lesson. In these lessons, the teacher spent and hour or two showing students how to print their two best photographs. When the prints were dry and ready, the teacher said that the student could keep one of the photographs, but that the other would be kept on file as an example of student work. Some students (inescapable group) were told that once they had chosen a photograph to take home, theywould not be allowed to change their minds. Other students were told that once they had chosen a photograph to take home, they would have several days to change their minds - and if they did, the teacher would gladly swap the photograph they'd taken home for the one they'd left behind. Students made their choices and took one of the photographs home. Several days later, the students responded to a survey asking them (among other things) how much they liked their photographs. The results showed that students in the escapable group like their photograph less than did the students in the inescapable group.Interestingly, when a new group of students was asked to predict how much they would like their photographs if they were or were not given the opportunity to change their minds, these students predicted that the escapability would have no influence whatsoever on their satisfaction with the photograph. Apparently inescapable circumstances trigger psychological defenses that enable us to achieve positive views of those circumstances, but we do not anticipate that this will happen.
So what does this have to do with PC's and Macs? The primary gripe about Macs is a lack of choices for software, add-on hardware, and expansion. In short, choosing a Mac limits our choice in the future. It must be noted this problem has been significantly reduced in recent models.
It turns out we will pay premiums today for an opportunity to change our mind tomorrow. (This is also why puts are so expensive) Often this love of freedom carries a strange cost - less happiness. Mac users, I believe see their experience as positive even with the lack of choice because their brains work very hard to emphasize the positive aspects. This same phenomenon occurs within in strictly controlled groups (military), during deprivation (your Dad's Depression stories), and irrevocable choices (having children). The finality of the decision makes the brain see it differently and it usually chooses to make it seem OK.
PC users dread giving up the freedom of choices with Macs, and this certainly carries a cost. But this same idea could prove to be powerful as a world of new choices opens up to many in agriculture who suddently can afford options.
I doubt if we will end up much happier that we are now. In fact, the choosing process involved in investment choices could make us less happy.
I can't believe it. just when Jan and I had whipped Vista into some semblance of working order, IT STRIKES BACK!
To be fair it was my own fault. I tried to add a new wireless keyboard, and Vista warned me it may not be compatible. But I thought what the heck - if it doesn't work I'll just plug in the old one and uninstall it.
Wrong! Instead, I could not input at all once Windows started to load - no mouse or keyboard. The only fix (Tech support for Dell did not even answer chat, let alone phone) was to reload Vista.
"Herding calls from Gammelboning - In this song a special high-pitched vocal technique is used called kulning, a vocal means of expression mainly used by women in the grazing pastures in Scandinavia. It has been used since the Middle Ages and functions primarily as a means of communication between the shepherdess and the animals and can be heard many miles away."
I apologize for the screwy font size changes that occur sporadically throughout my posts. I think the problem starts when I excerpt more than one paragraph from another source. Despite my best efforts to date, I cannot resolve this - but I'm not giving up.
Worst of all, it doesn't show up on my preview screen.
Of course one obvious work-around would be to limit my excerpting to single paragraphs, but that means more work for me. Seriously it also limits the context for the point I'm trying to highlight.
Anyhoo, we are beefing up the AgWeb section of FJ media, so I hope to have some professional help soon.
(C'mon - you didn't expect me to yammer on about equality without quoting Orwell, didja?)
As our now perpetual presidential campaign enters the desperate last 21 months, one topic batted around in economist circles and by amateurs like yours truly has been inequality. But I have certainly fallen into the unhelpful habit of not differentiating which measure of equality I'm talking about.
For example, there is a growing inequality in asset distribution - who owns what. At the same time (and perhaps for the same reasons) there is a significant inequality in income which may or may not be growing (depending on whether you look at the US or the world), and income growth which definitely is widening.
Foregoing the knee-jerk reaction of deeming all inequality growth a bad thing per se, we need to be careful which particular distribution we are ranting about at any given time.
A wonderful post on an Economist blog - Free Exchange - helped me understand the importance of this distinction.
I'm not sure that I care at all about the size of the gap between the rich and poor, provided that the poor have all the ingredients of a decent life. I don't think that they do, yet, in America or much of anyplace else, but I think the solutions to most of their problems lie elsewhere than in redistribution. Of course, I care about other inequalities that can be conferred by high socioeconomic status, such as extreme differences in power or autonomy, but I am very sure that those disparities cannot be rectified simply by taking money from the richer and giving it to the poorer. So it's hard to get worked up simply because CEO's have gotten a pay rise.
What I do care about, once basic needs are taken care of, is how easy it is to change one's position on the ladder. Or rather, since earning money is never exactly easy, whether place in the income distribution is conferred by who one's parents were, or by one's own efforts. The evidence in America is that where you start out has a lot to do with where you end up. This bothers me a great deal. But there's less evidence that the problem of income immobility is growing.
Even if it isn't, of course, I would prefer to live in a world where the children of Bill Gates, and an average welfare mother, have the same opportunity to succeed. While I doubt that this dream will ever be fully realised, I still think America could go much farther in that direction than it has, for starters by doing something about the appalling inequities in its educational system. Unfortunately, altering the socio-political structures that reinforce accident of birth is so difficult that almost everyone prefers to focus on the (comparatively) trivially easy task of moving cash from one person to another. [More]
I find this point very persuasive. Better access to education could mitigate many of the income and asset distribution problems, I believe. In fact, in an upcoming (probably April) issue of Top Producer, I will try to incorporate this factor into my idea of what a good safety net for farmers could look like.
Two interesting developments in the area of environmental thought seem to be on a collision course. Green advocates have evolved their passion into something resembling a religion, and religion is taking another look at stewardship.
Just as the complexity of environmental issues is a barrier to hasty and uncritical statements by evangelical leaders, neither can this complexity be an excuse for Christians to remain silent about God's wonderful gift of creation. In this way, evangelical environmentalism can be a biblically-sound, politically-informed approach to the task of Christian stewardship. [More]
Of course it need not be a collision - it could be more of a meeting on common ground, where both sides speak with respect and listen to each ohter's point of view before judging.
See, the concept is this gizmo scoops up snow and makes these sorta "snowblocks" which are then used for "refrigeration". In what, I'm thinking? Iceboxes of the future?
I had posted before about the seemingly odd dialog between evangelicals and environmentalists. A reader asked about my definition of "evangelical". I do not purport to be the "decider" of the meaning, but will use what I believe to be the common understanding of the word.
Evangelical as it is commonly used today refers to a particular segment of Christians:
John C. Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, found in the 2004 American Religious Landscape Report [1] that despite many variations, evangelicals in the United States generally adhere to four core beliefs:
Salvation comes only through faith in Jesus and not good works. (in particular the belief in atonement[2] for sins at the cross and the resurrection[3] of Christ)
Individuals (above an age of accountability) must personally trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.
All Christians are commissioned to evangelize and should be publicly baptized[4] as a confession of faith.
In regard to "Biblical inerrancy", a notable American summit on Bible inerrancy was held in Chicago in 1978. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was signed by nearly 300 noted American evangelical scholars (see main article). There is no absolute consensus among evangelicals regarding Biblical inerrancy; however there is a general acceptance of Biblical authority. [More]
My personal beliefs are not far from the above with the exception of Biblical inerrancy. I respect and read the Bible. I choose not to worship it, considering such as a form of idolatry. [BTW - I have started listening to lectures from Great Courses during my 3 hour commute each week to South Bend to tape US Farm Report. I have just ordered "The Story of the Bible". I'll let you know what I think after I get into it.]
Evangelicals have become a political force, especially within the conservative wing of the Republican party. Indeed, what was formerly (pre-1980 or so) as religious classification of believers dedicated to evangelizing, that is converting non-believers, became a cohesive body whose major concern was to enforce the conduct of personal life in accordance with proscribed rules. The ability of Karl Rove to mobilize and motivate this group helped them become the most important electoral faction for the Republican party.
In fact, some critics charge, and I tend to agree, that the politics has become the core issue, not the religion. Andrew Sullivan coined the term "christianist" to indicate the politicization of belief. The evangelical movement is led by strong voices like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and to a decreasing extent, the slightly loopy Pat Robertson.
I am not attracted to nor convinced by their thundering broadsides of sanctimonious cant against abortion, homosexuality, or evolution. Evangelicals in turn tend to despise those of us who have doubts about our faith, but are struggling to apply it to our lives nonetheless.
In recent years, the evangelical movement has raised some more moderate voices, notably Pastor Rick Warren, the famed author of "The Purpose-Driven Life". I find this development and this new ministry approach encouraging. The biggest difference for me and self-described evangelicals seems to be I strongly support their right to disagree with me, and I am willing to entertain the thought that on some matters they may be right. Evangelicals for the most part cannot reciprocate that sentiment.
Which gets us finally to farm policy. While the Evangelical Lutheran Church (one example known to me) has long been involved in farm policy debate, the more political evangelicals have had little time for non-core issues. That may be changing, thanks to the linkage between environmentalism and farm policy.
The mellowing of evangelical Christianity may well be the big American religious story of this decade. The evolution of the evangelical movement should not be confused with the rise of a religious left. Although the margin of the Republican Party's advantage among white evangelicals is likely to decline from its exceptionally high level in the 2004 election, a substantial majority of white evangelicals will probably remain conservative and continue to vote Republican.
But the evangelical political agenda is broadening as new voices insist on the urgency of issues such as Third World poverty and the fights against AIDS and human trafficking. Among the most prominent advocates for a wider view of Christian obligation is Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and author of "The Purpose Driven Life."
In the meantime, Rich Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals (and a self-described "Ronald Reagan movement conservative"), has been a leader in urging evangelicals to make environmental stewardship a central element of their political mission. This has earned him attacks from such prominent leaders on the Christian right as James Dobson. [More]
Note also the issue of Third World poverty. Relief groups such as Oxfam have made strong cases that our farm subsidies contribute to poverty in poor countries. Now attach that concern to people who contribute time, money and prayer to mission work, and you have perhaps the seeds for change among those who formerly did not care much whether I got an LDP or not.
One of those listening on Bono's speaking tour was Shayne Moore, a 35-year-old mother of three in Wheaton, Illinois. Ms. Moore, a graduate of WheatonCollege, an evangelical Christian school near Chicago, says she "couldn't figure out what my conservative alma mater was doing giving Bono a voice." But "that night changed my life. Bono said something like, 'Politicians get nervous when rock stars and soccer moms get involved.' Well, I thought, I'm a soccer mom."
She traveled to Honduras and Kenya at her own expense, and also to last summer's meeting in Scotland of the leaders of the countries known as the Group of Eight, a trip that was paid for by aid groups. Back home, she tells groups what she has seen. "The person picking cotton in rags is just as important as the person picking cotton in an awesome combine," she says in an interview. "I don't begrudge him the awesome combine, but not at the expense of the farmer in rags." [More]
While some see this newfound global concern as temporary - a distraction from the goal of returning America to godly living - others view it as a maturation of belief, or even a true effort to attend Scripture and apply it to our lives.
To be sure the environmental movement is morphing at the edges into something like a religion. The strange (to me) Gaia hypothesis is typical of a kind of nature reverence that is profoundly appealing in our technological world. I cannot see these two groups truly bonding, but I can see their individual influences complementing each other politically. They need not merge to be effective. My personal conjecture is that concern for the environment and other people could prove to be an entry to faith, rather than a distraction for believers. At any rate, it certainly should rank low as a threat to Christians.
The test will come when from rural pulpits convicted Christian leaders mention the farm bill the same way they do other matters of social justice. Regardless of which side of the farm bill debate you are on, it will introduce a new influence into the discussion.
For their enormously successful Material World, photojournalist Menzel and writer D'Aluisio traveled the world photographing average people's worldly possessions. In 2000, they began research for this book on the world's eating habits, visiting some 30 families in 24 countries. Each family was asked to purchase--at the authors' expense--a typical week's groceries, which were artfully arrayed--whether sacks of grain and potatoes and overripe bananas, or rows of packaged cereals, sodas and take-out pizzas--for a full-page family portrait. This is followed by a detailed listing of the goods, broken down by food groups and expenditures, then a more general discussion of how the food is raised and used, illustrated with a variety of photos and a family recipe. A sidebar of facts relevant to each country's eating habits (e.g., the cost of Big Macs, average cigarette use, obesity rates) invites armchair theorizing. While the photos are extraordinary--fine enough for a stand-alone volume--it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. After considering the Darfur mother with five children living on $1.44 a week in a refugee camp in Chad, then the German family of four spending $494.19, and a host of families in between, we may think about food in a whole new light. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume.
Archimedes - the inspiration of all the towns in the US named "Eureka" - was not just famous for thinking in the tub. He also did some contract work for the Syracuse Defense Department.
Archimedes became a very popular figure as a result of his involvement in the defense of Syracuse against the Romansiege in the Second Punic War. He is reputed to have held the Romans at bay with war machines of his own design, to have been able to move a full-size ship complete with crew and cargo by pulling a single rope[2], and to have discovered the principles of density and buoyancy, also known as Archimedes's principle, while taking a bath. The story goes that a new crown in the shape of a laurel wreath had been made for King Hiero, and Archimedes was asked to determine whether it was of solid gold, or whether other metals had been added by a dishonest goldsmith. Archimedes had to solve the problem without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down in order to measure its volume. While taking a bath, he noticed that the level of the water rose as he got in. He realised that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown, and therefore its density after weighing it. The density of the crown would be lower if cheaper and lighter metals had been added. He then took to the streets naked, being so elated with his discovery that he forgot to dress, crying "Eureka!" ("I have found it!"). [3][4] He has also been credited with the possible invention of the odometer during the First Punic War. One of his inventions used for military defense of Syracuse against the invading Romans was the claw of Archimedes. [More]
One of his most audacious ideas was a solar "death ray" to set fire to approaching ships. and before you scoff at the notion, see what happened when industrious students at MIT tried to replicate his work.
Global corn supply may be about to lose a contributor. As South Africa starts to seize and redistribute farms from whites to blacks (their terminology - not mine) it would be reasonable to anticipate a steep decline in SA output.
South Africa has seized its first farm - in the clearest indication yet that it is bowing to growing pressure to redistribute land to majority blacks.
Black pressure groups and trade unions have been threatening to begin invading farms unless the government moved quickly to redistribute land.
Among many of South Africa's 50,000-plus white commercial farmers, this first land expropriation by President Thabo Mbeki's government echoes Robert Mugabe's violent land seizures in neighbouring Zimbabwe where at least 4,000 farmers have been evicted from their land, leading to the collapse of that country's economy. [More]
While the Mugabe action in Zimbabwe was stunning in its economic stupidity, it set a pattern of revenge that will be hard to prevent being echoed in other countries.
Currently (as of July2006), Zimbabwe suffers from widespread food shortages, the world's highest inflation rate at over 1,100% (Year on Year Figures for June according to the CSO) and a bitter political struggle often turns violent between the ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change which has faced imprisonment and torture. Domestic and international critics lay much of the blame for the current chaos at the feet of the land reform program. Many Zimbabwean refugees have fled to South Africa or Mozambique. [More]
I also wonder where these suddenly-cashed-out Afrikaners will choose to invest. They are great farmers, and should they wind up in Hungary or Poland or Nebraska, they will be formidable competitors.
[Note: One great source for background on South Africa is reading "The Covenant" by John Mitchner. It's readable prose, but mostly it downloads an immense amount of concentrated history, geography, etc. to the reader in a palatable form.]
If you think about other countries where redistribution might occur, it is hard not to speculate on the leftward tilt of much of South America, and ponder the future of farms in Brazil.
Of course, my ox is relatively ungored...[Re-post from 2006]
Elitist whiners decrying "sprawl" have met their debating match in Robert Bruegmann, an art historian from the University of Chicago. Far from being the blight harrumphers continuously claim, sprawl is a rational response of people who finally get a chance to choose.
If history is any guide, the current revolt of the "sensitive minority" against sprawl will soon seem a quaint product of a bygone era. Highbrow critics loudly castigated the landscape created by "vulgar masses" fed by "greedy speculators" in cookie-cutter postwar American suburbs like Daly City, California. But now that their landscapes have matured and their original plastic-shaded floor lamps have become collectible, many of these vintage neighborhoods have become trendy. In like manner, as hard as it is to imagine today, by the time the landscape around the now-treeless subdivisions of look-alike stucco boxes at the edge of suburban Las Vegas fully matures, these subdivisions will likely be candidates for historic landmark designation. Most urban change, no matter how wrenching for one generation, tends to be the accepted norm of the next, and the cherished heritage of the one after that. [emphasis mine]
Bruegmann's excellent book "Sprawl "will be reviewed in an upcoming Top Producer, but this essay from The American Enterprise magazine encapsulates many of his key arguments, such as:
Another misunderstanding grows out of the provincialism of critics living in fast-growing urban areas. Many such people have the impression that the entire country is fast being paved over. But in truth, cities and suburbs occupy only a small percentage of our country's land. The entire urban and suburban population of the United States could fit comfortably into Wisconsin at suburban densities. Moreover, the amount of land set aside permanently for parks and wildlife areas has grown faster than urban land. [emphasis mine - I love to emphasize]
One key for me in this never-ending debate is that despite near-universal agreement on the disagreeable nature of urban expansion, it continues unabated. Which usually means people are saying one thing and doing another.
Update: TP dropped the "Required Reading" page, so the full review is posted here on JWorld - On the Coffee Table.
Spiders coping with dangerous drugs, like oh, caffeine...
The spider on marijuana drifted off before finishing the job. The spider on benzedrine, an upper, worked energetically but without much planning. The spider dosed with chloral hydrate, a sedative, soon fell asleep.
To the surprise of Dr. Noever et al, caffeine did the most damage of all the substances tested. The spider dosed with it proved incapable of creating even a single organized cell, and its web showed no sign of the “hub and spokes” pattern fundamental to conventional web design.
What does the web of a caffeinated spider (which can hardly be accustomed to the jolt of a morning latte) have to do with human behavior? Unlikely as it sounds, it may be the most vivid illustration of caffeine’s disorienting effect on caffeine-sensitive people, many of whom may be misdiagnosed as mentally ill.
I am not a car person. No thrill attends their purchase or use. In fact, my current ride - a Pontiac Vibe - pretty well describes the driver, I think. Utilitarian, mildly efficient, totally not "hot".
I appreciate the engineering and design of vehicles which make driving a less challenging task, such as the automatic transmission. In fact, after buying one IH 1800 Tandem grain truck with an Allison, I refit my next grain truck with one. I know my mileage is less (albeit hard to tell in a grain truck), and braking must be done more thoughtfully without the ability to downshift, but the clutch doesn't wear out, anybody can learn to drive it in a day, and the transmissions have been bulletproof.
Driving manual transmissions is reliable humor premise here in the US - and a point of mild derision overseas. Still there are many whose X [correction I mean "Y"] -chromosome contains a gene for stick shifts.
It is unclear, at this point, which if any of these alternative technologies will gain more than a foothold in the market, and what their overall effect will be on the way Americans drive. One can imagine technologies such as the continuously variable transmission accelerating the eclipse of the stick shift, by maximizing driver ease while allowing greater efficiency than traditional automatics. Or, perhaps technologies like the dual-clutch transmission will spark new awareness of the benefits of active driver involvement in the subtleties of the car's performance. While I personally hope for the latter, I recognize that no one-size-fits-all solution is appropriate for the diverse situations and skill sets of American drivers.
Moreover, there is a broader question that the evolution of automobile transmissions raises about technology. Much science fiction and social commentary has evoked the idea that technology will make people passive and dependent, for example in a Star Trek episode where aliens have ceased to control or understand the machines their ancestors built. But the real history of technology shows a countervailing trend; people often prefer a hands-on approach, in areas ranging from blogging to amateur astronomy to home improvement. For some people, control and performance will remain priorities in choosing their cars, and for this reason I suspect the stick shift is not going to disappear anytime soon. [More]
It may be that the type of skill represented by the eye-hand-foot coordination required to drive a stick shift with panache is fading from our world to be replaced with eye-brain-finger coordination needed to build websites effortlessly, or program an RTK guidance machine, or set an insulin pump.
Different ages demand different skills. Few need to be able to drive a four-in-hand hitch anymore, for example. Which skills become the most admired and associated with coolness has always been a mystery, but one thing does seem clear.
The ability to find people as fascinated as you in some narrow field of expertise, to build a community, and to propagate the skill or art involved has never been as available as it is right now.
Who knows what stupendous things people will accomplish as more of us have a chance to find and exploit our intrinsic talents? Even if it's simply driving a stick.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can be freed from tasks we find awkward to pursue those arcane activities or studies. This is the gift of technology: time.
For cryin' out loud, don't give it away to the TV.
A mysterious disease is killing off U.S. honeybees, threatening to disrupt pollination of a range of crops and costing beekeepers hundreds of thousands of dollars, industry experts said on Monday. Beekeepers in 22 states have reported losses of up to 80 percent of their colonies in recent weeks, leaving many unable to rent the bees to farmers of crops such as almonds and, later in the year, apples and blueberries. [More]
This situation is bad news for beekeepers, of course, but in the absence of a defined cause, speculation runs rampant. It can be discouraging to read serious suggestions that one cause is "chemtrails". [see comments attached to this post]
Maybe I have been oblivious to current conspiracy theories, but this one was new to me. It seems the condensation vapors behind high flying jets have spooked some observers.
The chemtrail theory is a group of conspiracy theories regarding allegedly unnatural vapor trails purporting to hold 'chemicals.' They are said to be found behind certain aircraft (in certain places and at certain times), leaving behind the distinct trails thought to be laden with so-called 'chemicals.' Conversely, contrails are formed by condensation of water vapor in the aircraft's exhausts. Proponents of the theories maintain that some trails have an appearance and quality different from those of normal water-based contrails, i.e. that chemtrails are not consistent with the known properties of contrails. The general unifying factor is the generally conspiratorial belief that some kind of chemical or biological agent is being secretly released. The term "chemtrail" should not be confused with other forms of aerial dumping (e.g. crop dusting, cloud seeding or aerial firefighting). It specifically refers to systematic, high-altitude dumping of unknown substances for some undisclosed purpose resulting in the appearance of these supposed chemtrails. [More]
A significant portion of our populace is alienated by the very technology that makes our lives relatively indolent by historical standards. This is their right -albeit a singularly ungrateful response, IMHO.
Still, our deployment of scientific knowledge has been less than inspiring. I'm not sure it could be otherwise. Knowledge tends to outrun our judgment. The older I get, the more latitude I allow to those for whom comprehension of modern technology is both taxing and unrewarding.
Still, it is sobering to be reminded how far we have not traveled from superstition.
Back in the day, you knew who was on what side. Conservatives - especially evangelicals - were over here, and Birkenstock-wearing eco-loonies were over there. Not any more.
DALLAS — Texas' largest Baptist group is taking a rare step into environmental advocacy, working to block Gov. Rick Perry's plan to speed the approval process for 18 new coal-fired power plants.
The Christian Life Commission, the public policy arm of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, is mobilizing Baptists against the coal-fired plants and urging the convention's 2.3 million members to voice their opposition to state lawmakers.
"A lot of people felt like our industries, our policy leaders, are going to take care of these big issues like air quality, (and) it's not going to be something our local people are going to have to get up every day and worry about," said Suzii Paynter, director of the commission. "It can't be left to big interests to make these decisions in our behalf."
The Baptists stress that they are not jumping into full-blown activism, but even a small move toward environmentalism is significant. [More]
Nor is this an isolated example. Neither should we find it particularly surprising.
Indeed, the surprise isn’t that environmentalists and evangelicals might find common ground. It’s that we haven’t noticed how much common ground they’ve long shared. Evangelicalism and environmentalism are global movements of activists concerned about the salvation of the world through both social action and individual conversion. They also share that peculiar mix of cynicism about current social practices and optimism about transforming those practices through faith, reason and hard work that is found in all idealists.
The question both groups must take up is whether idealism is adequate to the task of addressing the problems of global warming, environmental degradation and species extinction. After all, whether any of us would use either label to describe ourselves, the vast majority of us think recycling is generally a good idea—though we’re still likely to throw that empty soda can into the trash. Our problem isn’t that we disagree with the goals of environmental health; it’s that our actions don’t necessarily lead toward achieving them. So if environmentalists and evangelicals really want to do something together, they might think less about convincing us about what we ought to do and more about motivating us to do it. [More]
Voting groups rarely stay put for any length of time. The collective action of millions of people is observed like poeple watching water vapor molecules in the sky. Look, we say, it's a pony. But minutes later it's a map of Florida.
Many who were firmly on the right are re-examining their beliefs. And many of us are shifting our vote on what is really, really important. This fluidity is what excites the media because if few ever changed their minds, what would be the point in persuasive prose?
The success of evangelical churches leads them to similar but not identical paths as older faith bodies. The issues of the world eventually have to be addressed - even those fraught with controversy. When pastors like Rick Warren lead believers to discuss our response as Christians to creation, he fulfilling the duties of all leaders: to confront the challenges they feel are most important to their followers.
This will not occur without cost. Already the evangelical movement is struggling with the politics of environmentalism. My guess is several leaders like James Dobson would just as soon take pass on global warming and concentrate on issues like gay marriage.
It will be interesting to watch which shepherds the flock follows.
It's been a few minutes since we discussed Baby Boomers, and so many us are feeling anxious. As the most over-studied and under-ignored cohort in history starts it shuffle off this mortal coil, we want attention to be paid. And we want to discuss amongst ourselves constantly as well.
We'll probably get it, because we've got most of the loot. One the top advertising firms in the US - JWT - has sliced and diced Boomers into handy categories to predict how they are going to spend their share of the wealth. If you like those colorized personality tests, you're gonna love this one. The categories:
Low energy loners
Status seekers
Woeful worriers
Modern moralists
Intense individualists
Educated aficionados
Happy helpers
Aloof affluents
Anxious achievers
None sound all that attractive - save one: Happy Helpers.
The steady application of genetic modification to organisms continues - to the horror of some and the benefit of others. Well, this idea is now blooming in the garden.
Flaming tulips. Blue roses. What Dutch growers of old and Dr Tanaka's employers both grasped is that rarity, and hence economic value, can be created by genetic manipulation.
The stripes of the Semper Augustus were caused by the genes of a virus. Not knowing that an infection was involved, the Dutch growers were puzzled why the Semper Augustus would not breed true. The genetics of blue roses, too, have turned out to be more complicated than expected. The relevant genes cannot easily be pasted into rose DNA because the metabolic pathway for creating blue pigment in a rose consists of more chemical steps than it does in other types of flower. (Florigene has sold bluish genetically modified carnations since 1998.) Success, then, has been a matter of pinning down the genes that allow those extra steps to happen, and then transplanting them to their new host.
With a nose both for understanding the molecular origins of floral scents and for engineering what could be blockbuster flower varieties, researchers have been teasing out the complex biochemical orchestration underlying one of life's simplest pleasures. They've been uncovering fragrance-related genes, the enzymes encoded by those genes, the in-cell reactions that these enzymes catalyze, and the fragrant performance of all this molecular biology—a vast aromatic harmony of alcohols, aldehydes, fatty acids, terpenoids, benzenoids, and other volatile, and therefore sniffable, chemicals.
I have no death wish and offer no urging to gardeners who find these developments unnatural and unneeded. Gardeners make our world significantly better for all of us.
I will hazard a prediction. As biotech churns out more numerous and spectacular results, resistance to GM flora could fade slowly. Reluctance to adopt this technology is crucial to refine both safety and goals.But this scientific cat is out of the bag.
Wind farms, that is. They are starting a huge one just north of me around Bloomington, IL. But you don't have to travel far to see giant wind turbines.
Wind power capacity in the United States grew 27 percent last year and is projected to increase another 26 percent in 2007, according to a report released today by the trade group the American Wind Energy Association. The U.S. now has enough installed wind power capacity - 11,603 megawatts - to power between 3 million and 3.5 million homes, which reduces annual greenhouse gas emissions by 23 million tons of carbon dioxide. The number of homes relying on electricity produced by wind energy will rise to nearly 4.5 million by year's end if the AWEA's forecast is accurate. [More]
Wind farms are the darlings of alternate energy enthusiasts and global warming crusaders. And it is hard to criticize something so obviously win-win-win-etc. Only....
Wind farm stories always include a "X million homes served" figure to impress how much energy they generate. These numbers are the equivalent of a "every US farmer feeding X people" - namely a useless average without any context. For a better idea of how much windpower contributes see this graph. Also keep in mind that there are about 130 million homes in the US and that residential energy demand is about half of total electricity consumption.
Wind farms require backup "spinning reserve" to take up load when the wind fails. This continues to make wind power relatively expensive compared to other sources, especially coal. Unless a carbon tax priced in the environmental externalities of fossil fuels. (Gosh - where did I just see that?)
Wind turbines are expensive and with demand growing, the prices have no reason to ease.
You gotta have some way to hook all these generators to the electricity grid. And our grid is having trouble keeping up.
All of these "buts" are problems for engineers to overcome and opportunities for entrepreneurs to invest and profit from. Given the chance our system will work our a solution. But we need to be prepared to see wild profits initially to attract money, and shakeout losses halfway to maturity.
Economists love blogs and more than a few of them have been opining about inequality in the US and the globe. When Pres. Bush surprisingly mentioned it(where has this part of his personality been for 6 years?) along with admonishing Wall Street on CEO salaries, he poured gasoline on the debate.
But there is a linkage I believe between inequality of income/assets and the administration ideas for means testing "middle-class" benefits.
The budget represents a challenge to parts of the system of entitlements enacted as part of the Great Society agenda of the 1960s, with plans to cut Medicare spending, the main publicly funded health insurance programme for those over 65, by raising premiums for wealthier recipients.
That could save $66bn over five years, according to budget estimates, and up to $9,000bn during the next 75 years, according to some analysts.
Michael Franc, vice-president for government relations at the Heritage Foundation, said Mr Bush had considered means-testing as part of Social Security reform. “Now there is a shift to applying it across the board for all entitlements. The big change concerns the wealthy. Democrats want to tax them more. Republicans say they want to make them pay more for their middle-class benefits and shoulder more of the burden.” [More]
While normally associated with Medicare, the practice is exactly what prompted the "AGI Test" in the farm bill proposal.
"Going from a $2.5 million AGI to $200,000 AGI is huge," she said.
The AGI is a limit for farmers who wish to receive farm program payments. The lower AGI limit means a producer with more than a $200,000 AGI would not be eligible for commodity payments. The Internal Revenue Service data for 2004 indicated that 97.7 percent of tax filers have an AGI under $200,000. [More]
After lying moribund for a year, my"side-blog" of book reviews, On the Coffee Table, finally has a new post.
Check it out.
If you have read a good one lately tell me about it and I'll share it here. It doesn't have to be a deep review, just find something you did or did not like about it. I'm trying for one review per week.
The nascent science of happiness has attracted all sorts of researchers. And produced plenty in strange results.
Some results are predictable enough: Work is miserable, and commuting is worse. Others are not so obvious. For instance, praying is fun, but looking after the kids is not. Spending time with your friends is one of the most enjoyable things you can do, but spending time with your spouse is merely OK. In fact, parents or other relatives turn out to make more enjoyable company than the supposed love of your life.
What is perfectly clear, though, is that socializing with anyone except your boss makes you feel good. Sex is best of all. This is handy advice at last. But what if you are having sex with your boss? Whereof economists cannot speak, we must remain silent. [More]
Another example, the Danes have always scored high on national happiness comparisons. It turns out one reason may be low expectations.
Our analysis points to two explanatory factors. The Danish football triumph of 1992 has had a lasting impact. This victory arguably provided the biggest boost to the Danish psyche since the protracted history of Danish setbacks began with defeat in England in 1066, followed by the loss of Sweden, Norway, Northern Germany, the Danish West Indies, and Iceland. The satisfaction of the Danes, however, began well before 1992, albeit at a more moderate level. The key factor that explains this and that differentiates Danes from Swedes and Finns seems to be that Danes have consistently low (and indubitably realistic) expectations for the year to come. Year after year they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark.
This finding is supported by Danish news coverage of the 2005 pronouncement by Ruut Veenhoven, Dutch Professor of Social Conditions for Happiness and head of the World Database of Happiness, that Danes are the world’s happiest people. The headlines in Denmark ran: We’re the happiest “lige nu.” The phrase “lige nu,” which can be translated literally as “just now,” is a quintessentially Danish expression redolent, indeed reeking, of the sentiment “for the time being, but probably not for long and don’t have any expectations it will last.” [More]
I wonder if this means all of us corn farmers are in for some grumpy years, because my read on expectations in corn country is pretty dang high.
Any real, lasting solutions will have to be extremely simple, and—because of the high cost implicit in reducing the use and emissions of fossil fuels—will also have to benefit those countries that impose them in other ways. Fortunately, there is such a solution, one that is grippingly unoriginal, requires no special knowledge of economics, and is extremely easy for any country to apply. It's called a carbon tax, and it should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system. Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations designed to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve. More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things. Anyone for balancing the budget? Fixing Social Security for future generations? Cutting income tax dramatically? As a little foreign-policy side benefit, users of the tax would suddenly find themselves less dependent on Gulf oil or Russian gas. [More]
This idea has been popping up in strange places, and I would not be surprised to see one or two of the dozens of presidential candidates adopt it like Gore did the Internet.
Economist Greg Mankiw makes the most coherent case for this idea:
With the midterm election around the corner, here's a wacky idea you won't often hear from our elected leaders: We should raise the tax on gasoline. Not quickly, but substantially. I would like to see Congress increase the gas tax by $1 per gallon, phased in gradually by 10 cents per year over the next decade. Campaign consultants aren't fond of this kind of proposal, but policy wonks keep pushing for it. [More of a must-read article]
Down here on the farm, I see a lot to love about this idea. Oh sure, the initial reaction will be to lobby for an exemption, like we always do, and a refund of what we pay, but I think this idea has some legs.
First, the extra income sure would be handy to pay my Social Security. And yours, I guess. It could pay for more troops if you want. The point is a carbon tax would be a considerable source of revenue and we are a profession that consumes tax dollars. We want plenty of federal income, right?
Second, a carbon tax could slow the rush to live in the country. The commuting circles around major employment areas would likely shrink or at least slow their expansion rate. With all the farmer complaints about sprawl - while hard to justify - this is one defense.
The first answer is that as we extend our time horizon, gasoline's price-elasticity, or price sensitivity to break free of the jargon, gets larger -- a lot larger. Going out several years or more, individuals have greater scope to take actions that economize on gasoline. They can junk the gas-guzzler, or at least not replace it with another one when the old one gives out. They might calculate the dollar tradeoffs between density (high rents but less need to drive) and sprawl (the reverse) and pick up stakes for a less car-dependent area. They may gravitate toward job opportunities closer to home. And they can make more durable commitments to behavioral changes that reduce the need to drive, like forming a carpool or buying a roadworthy bicycle or selling the far-away vacation home. [More]
Finally, a carbon tax would reward renewable energy sources making ethanol more competitive. The carbon in corn comes from the air, and hence would likely be treated differently than fossil fuels. And don't talk to me about our fuel costs being onerous. Outside irrigation, most of us have much bigger costs to tackle.
In short, I think agriculture could look past their knee-jerk tax reaction to see the power of assessing the externalities of fossil fuel consumption. Producers in the EU have managed. We can too.
I use lots of GM seed. Look at my seed bill. But I still till the ground. And I suspect in a few years I won't be alone. Four years of corn residue can be a challenge.
But it is still fun to watch GM seed companies (via mouthpiece organizations) throw out numbers which assume every GM seed falls into untilled earth.
If 4 million cars were taken off the road in a single year, stopping 9 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide being discharged, most environmentalists would whoop with joy. But what if the same saving came from planting genetically modified crops?
This is the claim of an annual audit of GM crops by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), which is funded largely by the GM industry.
The audit, published on 18 January, bases its estimate on GM planting in 2005 in the US, Canada and Argentina. Graham Brookes of PG Economics in Dorchester, UK, who supplied the data, says 85 per cent of the savings come from the fact that farmers growing weedkiller-resistant GM crops don't have to plough their fields to get rid of weeds, so organic matter in the soil is not exposed to the atmosphere. This, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, prevents the release of 300 kilograms of CO2 per year per hectare. The rest of the figure is from fuel savings (Agbioforum, vol 9, p 139).
Gundula Azeez of the Soil Association, which represents UK organic farmers, says the ISAAA is only interested in promoting GM crops. [whole article alas, is subscription blocked]
Look, GM crops are slowly overcoming consumer reservations because they are just as safe and nutritionally identical to conventionally bred crops. While I understand the instinct to spin their attributes - I mean, PR workers need to something accomplished at the end of the day - don't expect this producer to back up their exaggerated extrapolations.
GM crops make good sense. They are not the magic bullet for every problem.
My travails with a new computer are not unique. I have also noticed that in the three days I have run Gilgamesh, it has downloaded and installed over 10 updates.
While Vista is an excellent upgrade to Windows XP, one that is long overdue, in its first week since the launch, it is still suffering from driver-itis… a just-made-up medical term for a lack of drivers. Sadly, this is what happens every time a new version of Windows is released. Unfortunately, Bill Gates didn’t say anything at all about this, nor was he asked. It’s a pity, because it’s the one most annoying thing about a new operating system – where the ecosystem of drivers has not yet caught up with the mothership.
Instead of getting annoyed by Apple’s ads, it’d be much better if Bill Gates could apply as much pressure on software and hardware partners as possible. For me, knowing that the bits of hardware that don’t work properly on my Tablet PC start working because drivers have suddenly become available and have automatically updated themselves through Microsoft’s ‘Windows Update’ service would really have me saying ‘the wow starts now’.
Unfortunately, we’re all still waiting. Yes, it’s only been a week. But when it comes to compatibility with standard hardware that has been available for years, lack of drivers is not good enough. Bill Gates, it’s great to see you on TV spots and interviewed here and there. But what we really all need is our computers working properly. Until the driver issues are solved, for most people, the wow can wait. [More]
Then I read this quiet notice:
Microsoft's per-incident customer support prices were quietly bumped last week as the company rolled out the newest version of its operating system, Windows Vista. Prices for both Windows Vista and XP support were raised, from $39 to $59 per incident while support prices for Office XP and Office 2007 went from $35 to $49 per incident. General support inquiries as well as inquiries for less prominent software, such as Microsoft Money, remain at $35 per incident. [More]
This makes the guys at Google look better and better.
Had I but known - as the famous phrase goes - how challenging a NEW computer with Vista would be, I would have waited longer. That said, my old one needed a complete overhaul and it is always tricky to accomplish that.
Still, given the number of backward-compatibility software problems with Vista, I strongly suggest you wait six months or so. Even then brace yourself for some weird issues like Excel taking 30 seconds to load. (What is that about?)
Andrew Sullivan has sobering and perhaps prophetic words about what is happening to public communication.
Citizen journalism is one thing. Citizen television is another. It brings the revolutionary potential of the blogosphere to the explosive power of the visual image. One day we will become accustomed to it, able to discount the inevitable distortions it will bring. But not yet — and one can safely predict that at some point in the wide-open race for the American presidency in 2008 at least one candidate will be destroyed by video-blogs and one may be handed a victory. Every gaffe will matter much more; and every triumph can echo for much longer.
With all of 18 months in the television industry, and only a little less as a blogger, I can sense the communication sea change only faintly. I can still hide back here on the farm when the tsunami rolls in.
For all of my friends who are involved in either TV or politics, this must be unnerving.
Good authors can persuade beyond the power of their ideas. Michael Pollan is one of them. In his previous books, notably The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma, he attracts readers with simplicity and a slathering of good old common sense. He is especially suspicious of anything that hints at "science".
His latest polemic against what passes for nutritional science advances his earlier misgivings to full-blown food-Darwinism:
Note that these ecological relationships are between eaters and whole foods, not nutrients. Even though the foods in question eventually get broken down in our bodies into simple nutrients, as corn is reduced to simple sugars, the qualities of the whole food are not unimportant — they govern such things as the speed at which the sugars will be released and absorbed, which we’re coming to see as critical to insulin metabolism. Put another way, our bodies have a longstanding and sustainable relationship to corn that we do not have to high-fructose corn syrup. Such a relationship with corn syrup might develop someday (as people evolve superhuman insulin systems to cope with regular floods of fructose and glucose), but for now the relationship leads to ill health because our bodies don’t know how to handle these biological novelties. In much the same way, human bodies that can cope with chewing coca leaves — a longstanding relationship between native people and the coca plant in South America — cannot cope with cocaine or crack, even though the same “active ingredients” are present in all three. Reductionism as a way of understanding food or drugs may be harmless, even necessary, but reductionism in practice can lead to problems. [More]
Pollan is a leading voice in the "we used to eat better" school of nutrition. Over the years he has graduated from mere wariness of the food industry to sincere opposition. It all seems so logical in his witty prose.
Not all of us are buying his extrapolated conclusions.
But Pollan's nutritional Darwinism only makes sense if the selection pressures of the distant past were in perfect alignment with the health concerns of today. In other words, our food culture would have evolved to protect us from cancer, heart disease, and obesity only if those maladies had been a primary threat to reproduction in the ancient world. It's hard to imagine that the risks posed by these so-called "diseases of affluence"—which often strike late in life, after we've had babies—would have been as significant to our fast-living, sickly forebears as the dangers of, say, bacterial infections or the occasional drought. Indeed, for much of human history, natural selection might well have traded off the dangers of morbid obesity to mitigate the risk of starvation. There's just no way to know how the ancient culinary traditions will fare in the modern world until we try them. [More]
It astounds me that with every leap of technological empowerment, the effort to redraw the past springs up anew. "Our food was better when we killed the chickens in our own backyards." old-foodies wail. That subjective judgment is hard to counter, but we do know it was more dangerous. That small problem food science did handle well.
I do not argue our food and nutrition are as good as they can be. In fact, thanks to critics like Pollan, pressure is mounting for our food industry (of which agriculture is a small part, not the other way round, incidentally) to turn its efforts to applying the results pouring out of research institutions. Our foods must address what we now know to be true about both our bodies and our diet.
There is room in America especially to allow wide experimentation to find the answer to this question. But my money is on technology.
Things are improving, boys and girls. (See previous posts here and here)The speed difference is distinctly noticeable and the new monitor is breath-taking. Videos look great.
Assorted notes:
While it may seem a hassle to reset stuff like toolbars the way you are used to, reloading software like MS Office, for example gives you the choice of a clean start. It reminds me of the first week of every quarter of college - when your grade point was unblemished by actual results. Sometimes a clean start is just what you need.
Because the new monitor is 16 x 9 aspect - like new TV's you have room at the edges for stuff on the desktop. I think we are just beginning to see freebie "Gadgets" to load into those spots. I'm using the clock, calendar, notepad, and calculator on my Sidebar. Pretty handy.
After the first few start-ups, the UAP (previous post) becomes slightly less annoying. I may still shut it down. I use Live One Care for security - it works well and I can load it on three computers for one price.
The speakers I chose (Dell 525 30 watt 2.1 with subwoofer) sound good but they are hard-wired into components so I can't fish the wires through a raceway I built behind my desktop to hide clutter. Also the volume control is a thumbwheel (like in the center of newer mice) that is less handy than my old set.
Wait - I just talked myself into keeping my old speakers. The computer doesn't care what is plugged into the orange jack.
Be sure and check the websites of your old software to see if there are reports of Vista incompatibility. This is especially true of software that "calls home" for upgrades automatically. You may want to shut that feature off and just do it manually from time to time. (Adobe Acrobat is a prime example)
The hard drive and vent fan on this computer (Dell XPS 210) are very quiet. In fact, I sometimes think nothing is happening and end up double-loading a program because I can't hear the hard drive working.
Wired keyboards/mice are sooo yesterday. I just moved my old wireless set to Gilgamesh (my new computer's name) and it picked added them without a hitch.
My wireless network took zero configuring. I just plugged into the router.
I'm gradually reducing the number of separate programs I use, so each new installation is a chance to lose something. I am dropping my Palm Pilot and moving everything to Outlook and my phone, for example.
Having trouble getting my weather station to find the old file I copied across.
The Windows Media Center is, at first glance, totally lame. It's like picking up a first grade book. I use Musicmatch Jukebox to manage all my music, especially all the choir demo tracks I burn for my choir. WMC looks like it was designed to be used on an iPod with no keyboard. Nearly useless, IMHO. MMJ is working fine though, and the tracks transferred OK.
I haven't tried WMC with my pictures - I will continue with Picasa. It's free, bulletproof and superbly easy to use. In fact, it may be the best piece of software I've ever used.
I will doubtless come across more hiccups, but I think we're going to live.
Whaddaya mean you don't know who Gilgamesh is? I suppose you name your computers after flowers or old girlfriends?
Google intends to scan every book ever published, and to make the full texts searchable, in the same way that Web sites can be searched on the company’s engine at google.com. At the books site, which is up and running in a beta (or testing) version, at books.google.com, you can enter a word or phrase—say, Ahab and whale—and the search returns a list of works in which the terms appear, in this case nearly eight hundred titles, including numerous editions of Herman Melville’s novel. Clicking on “Moby-Dick, or The Whale” calls up Chapter 28, in which Ahab is introduced. You can scroll through the chapter, search for other terms that appear in the book, and compare it with other editions. Google won’t say how many books are in its database, but the site’s value as a research tool is apparent; on it you can find a history of Urdu newspapers, an 1892 edition of Jane Austen’s letters, several guides to writing haiku, and a Harvard alumni directory from 1919.
No one really knows how many books there are. The most volumes listed in any catalogue is thirty-two million, the number in WorldCat, a database of titles from more than twenty-five thousand libraries around the world. Google aims to scan at least that many. “We think that we can do it all inside of ten years,” Marissa Mayer, a vice-president at Google who is in charge of the books project, said recently, at the company’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California. “It’s mind-boggling to me, how close it is. I think of Google Books as our moon shot.”
I think that analogy is wonderfully apt. Going to the moon had enormous unpredicted benefits, and the Google library will do the same. What might this mean?
A decrease in duplicative work, as well as plagiarism. Like grad students looking for a topic for their research thesis, authors will be challenged come up with something that has not been done to death already.
Periodic revivals in the popularity of old authors. When long-out-of print volumes are not hard to access, everyone can rediscover great writing from the past.
More difficulty in public lying. As candidates are now aware, every utterance can be recorded, and researched for the slightest variance from the truth, opening them to vitriolic attacks from opponents.
A new appreciation for true creativity. Innovative thinking will be provable, not just apparent, since a search for the same concept can be done rapidly.
I actually think this could revive the mordant publishing industry. Either that, or finish it off, as people finally start reading everything via some electronic media.
As for me I better get my brilliant new novel into a publisher before somebody else can think of the same thing.
It's about this young farmer who finds a "Ring of Power" and takes it with him to a magical agronomy school, where he discovers an ongoing struggle between good and subsidies. He and his valiant companions have fantastic adventures aboard the spaceship "Entrepreneur" until unraveling a sinister plot involving the painting "American Gothic" which when seen in a certain light reveals most Iowans are really descended from aliens. [Hint, look a the guy and then check out the Roswell dudes].
Then things get complicated...
It will have lots of computer violence and just the right amount of naughtiness, but no strong language.
I'm thinking 14 volumes or so. These ideas just come to me. It's a gift.
But here's where it gets weird. In theory, the fortunes of all the components of the Transport Index, which include shippers, truckers, railroads, and airlines, should move somewhat in tandem. Most goods that are sent by ship, rail, and air have to go on a truck at some point. It would be strange for one link in the freight chain to be doing well while others are dragging.
And yet that's precisely what seems to be happening. Truckers, who carry 70 percent of all domestic freight, are doing poorly. The American Trucking Associations' Truck Tonnage Index fell through 2006. And in the fourth quarter of 2006, the index was down noticeably from the fourth quarter of 2005, even after accounting for the temporary post-Katrina spike.
The reasons are weird as well:
A second rapidly growing energy source also helps rail companies while doing nothing for truckers: ethanol. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, ethanol can't be pumped through existing oil pipelines. And it makes far more sense to ship the fuel in 30,000-gallon tank cars than in tanker trucks. Ethanol shipments tripled between 2001 and 2006 and are expected to rise 33 percent in 2007, the Journal reported.
Another large, but seemingly irrelevant, economic trend appears to be hurting truckers: gift cards. American Trucking Associations Chief Economist Bob Costello noted that "the fall freight season is changing." With the proliferation of gift cards, the holiday shopping season is spilling over into January. So, retailers aren't moving as much merchandise to stores in October and November as they have in the past. [More]
I've also been wondering about those farmers who have launched successful trucking companies as a sideline only to be knee-capped by the proposed AGI limits.
To receive commodity payments, producers must also meet a limit on Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), which includes wages and other income minus farm expenses and depreciation. This plan reduces the AGI limit of $2.5 million to a new limit of $200,000. If a producer has an annual adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more, that individual would no longer be eligible for commodity payments. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data for 2004 indicate that 97.7 percent of all American tax filers have an AGI under $200,000. [More]
I have noticed a common theme in recent critiques of the ethanol explosion that have deluged the media is recent days: few of them seem to think the push can be derailed.
Not that any of these facts are likely to make much difference in the current Washington debate. The corn and sugar lobbies have their roots deep in both parties, and now they have the mantra of "energy independence" to invoke, however illusory it is. If anything, Congress may add to Mr. Bush's ethanol mandate requests.
So here comes Big Corn. Make that Very, Very Big Corn. Sooner or later, our experience with this huge public gamble may make us yearn for the efficiency, capacity, lower cost and--yes--superior environmental record of "Big Oil." [More]
While this tone usually implies intellectual condescension, another way to read it is there isn't much in the way of corn growers getting what they think they want - enormous, persistent demand for corn, forcing higher prices despite market forces to the contrary.
"Ethanol was always seen as an 8-year-old kid that needed to be taken care of, but now it's a 27-year-old graduate student with a Ph.D from Harvard that wants to live at home with mom and dad," said Michael Swanson, vice president and agricultural economist at Wells Fargo. [More]
Well, shoot - we can handle complainers. Just ignore 'em.
Still, in our hearts, we corn growers know we better get all we can while we can.
Moving to a new computer is always interesting, but my latest migration had much more at risk. First off, my accumulated files of music and photos made the move much larger than ever before. Second, Windows Vista is another breed of cat altogether.
The good news:
The "Transfer Files and Settings" program included with the startup screen worked (sorta). I used my network to hook up the two machines, and after about 2 hours, the old one showed the transfer worked, the new one was unsure.
To the best of my knowledge, I haven't lost anything valuable.
My software seems to be reloading OK.
The Internet hooked itself up simply by plugging into my router.
It is somewhat cuter, and the sidebar is interesting.
The new wide screen monitor is a huge improvement.
The not so good news:
MS Outlook does everything it can to make migration impossible. First you have to find the darned .pst file with all your messages, contacts, dates, etc. on it. Not easy. The transfer programs did zip for this data, so I had to do it by brute force. Not pretty.
QuickBooks 2006 may or may not run OK on it. My re-installation will not download updates. Only QB 2007 is guaranteed to work. Thanks a lot, Intuit! [Kiss $200 good-bye]
The User Account Protection feature is horrible. You are constantly interrupted with warning messages and it takes multiple clicks to get going again.
The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness. [More]
The file transfer program added some weird driver from my old computer that won't work, so I get a warning messages every time I boot up. I'm working on this one.
I backed everything up completely before starting, but that is a cold comfort.
Wait, speaking of cold comfort, is it thirsty in here or is it me?...
My new computer arrived [ordered early 1/29 - arrived afternoon 1/31!!], and I'm going to devote myself to getting up and running. It's always nerve-racking until the old files are transferred, the Internet is locked in and the heritage software is re-installed, so deal me out for a while, please.
I'll let you know about the experience on the other side.
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton? Is it me or are we starting to look like a monarchy? And if so, is it a bad thing? Michael Barone (US News and World Report) considers the idea:
Not that anyone assumes that family members are all alike. It would not do for candidate Bush in 2000 and for candidate Clinton today to claim to be clones of his father and her husband. Rather, candidate Bush made comments about his mother's fearsomeness, and candidate Clinton's "let's chat" suggests that she is more of a listener and less of a nonstop talker than her husband. So the trend to royalism may not be all bad. It does give some candidates an unfair advantage over others. But let's face it: Only four of the 300 million living Americans has been president and probably only 10 or 12 more ever will be. We need as much knowledge of our presidential candidates as we can get and, if we get some of it by knowing their families as closely as we know the families of recent occupants of the White House, so be it. As Bagehot put it, "The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other."
In any case, it's no sure thing that a Clinton will follow a Bush who followed a Clinton who followed a Bush. But keep the following in the back of your mind. George P. Bush will be eligible to run for president in 2012. Chelsea Clinton will be eligible to run for president in 2016. So will Jenna and Barbara Bush, who will turn 35 several days after the election. And Jeb Bush, who had a fine record in eight years as governor of Florida, will be younger in 2024 than John McCain will be in 2008 or Ronald Reagan was in 1984. Royalism may be here to stay.
I appreciate the thoughtful and civil comments regarding the "1031 recommendation" in the Bush farm bill proposals. I thought, "What would Milton Friedman do?" and came to these suggestions.
My favorite: Don't give subsidies to 1031 exchanged ground. Don't give them to any other ground either. It is simple, fair and saves taxpayer money. But as many of you have pointed out, the only farmers who think subsidies are the problem, not the solution are me and Bob and Gene and this guy I met in Nebraska a while back. So I'll give that idea a rest.
Lower the capital gains rate to 8%. Lowering the capital gains tax rate has been shown to increase capital gains tax revenues. You read that right. Of course, lowering it to zero (which some recommend) would generate zero tax revenue, so somewhere between the current rate (15%) and zero there could be a peak. My guess is around 8%. Interestingly, I once asked a 1031 exchange expert what rate would make the expense and hassle of such exchanges more trouble than just paying the tax. His answer was "about 8%". So lower the rate to 8%, get more tax revenue, and slow drastically like-kind exchanges by encouraging investors to just take the cash instead.
US Farm Report host John Phipps surfs the Web so you don't have to...
About Me
Name: John Phipps
Location: Chrisman, Illinois, United States
Jan and I farm 1700 acres near Chrisman, IL. I have also written humor and commentary for Farm Journal and Top Producer for 13 years.
Please visit my website (www.johnwphipps.com) to learn about my speaking services for your group's next meeting.
