For Manhattan, a place where evening matters more than morning, that special day comes on May 30th this year, one of only two occasions when the Sun sets in exact alignment with the Manhattan grid, fully illuminating every single cross-street for the last fifteen minutes of daylight. The other day is July 13th. Had Manhattan's grid been perfectly aligned with the geographic north-south line, then our special days would be the Spring and Autumn equinoxes, the only two days on the calendar when the Sun rises due east and sets due west.

But Manhattan is rotated 30 degrees east from geographic north, shifting the days of alignment elsewhere into the calendar. Upon studying American culture, and what is important to it, future anthropologists might credit the Manhattan alignments to cosmic signs of Memorial Day and, of course, the All-Star break. War and Baseball. [More]

Labels: fun, science

Comments: Will Peterson confront the "magic beans" and "monopoly money" charges by detailing where the $17.5 billion to $18 billion from the so-called reserve funds will come from? He has failed to detail the offsets so far and most expect him to be silent again. If all this sounds bewildering, it is. It's no wonder the vast majority of voters are losing faith in their government. The House farm bill process is another sad example of how not to write a major bill.

The question Rep. Peterson should answer: How much funding has Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) agreed to, and where are the offsets coming from? Without answers to those questions, the farm bill process (or whatever you want to call it) is not transparent. Leadership on so many things in Washington is needed -- from both political parties.

Bottom line: If the split-personality farm bills go to the House floor, those seeking multibillion-dollar boosts in funding (food and nutrition, conservation, specialty crops) will likely cause a donnybrook. That is when we may finally get a true, open debate. We haven't had that in the House Ag Committee to date. And the Senate Ag Committee remains a work in non progress. [More - via a reasonable subscription]

How do people think the Democratic Congress is doing after six months? Lousy. But better than the alternative.

It's midyear, and the Democratic Congress is taking a break. Well-deserved? No, say Republicans.

"We are now halfway through the first year of the 110th Congress," Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, said. "And there is no question that the failure on the part of the Democrats in terms of their midterm exam is really a letdown to the expectations of the American people.''

Democratic leaders are inclined to agree. "I'm not happy with Congress, either," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said.

And the American people? Look at the grades. President Bush is doing terribly -- an average of 30 percent job approval in six recent polls. Congress is doing worse -- 25 percent on the average in five polls. (Poll: Support for Democrats wavering)

Why the low marks? Democrats point to one issue where not much seems to be getting done. "The war in Iraq is dragging down people's confidence in what's going on in this country," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. [More]

A major cause of the misperception, though, is President Bush's sagging popularity. It's clear that many people let their discontent with the president color their view of everything. If he is failing to win the war in Iraq or curb illegal immigration, we assume he must also be coming up short on the economy.

The polls suggest that some people won't acknowledge anything good here lest it suggest competence on the part of a president they can't stand. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 43 percent of Republicans say the economy is fair or poor, but 79 percent of Democrats take that view. "People are giving partisan responses," says public opinion expert Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. [More - great read]

I think that if people did not already have the sense that their country was in some sense slipping away from them -- if they felt secure enough about our country and its direction -- then they would be a lot less inclined to think that illegal immigrants were taking it away from them. But the reason they think their country is slipping away from them need have nothing to do with illegal immigration itself, as opposed to a more general sense that the rules are stacked against them, and no one obeys the laws, and decent people who work hard get screwed. [More]

Labels: farm bill, immigration, politics

Labels: culture, fun

The report takes particular aim at the (enormously regressive) payroll tax. Either payroll taxes should be integrated into the ordinary income tax system or the wage-cap on payroll taxes should be lifted. It brims with ideas for government tinkering: trade-adjustment assistance and unemployment assistance should be morphed into a single programme that offers wage insurance, portable health insurance and retraining. Communities should be able to federally insure their tax base against sudden economic dislocation (when, say, a factory moved to Mexico). [More]

Labels: economics, globalization

Labels: fun

The 2007 Farm Bill is critical to Australia's interests because US subsidies to wheat, cotton sugar and dairy farmers have the potential to distort prices of some of our major agricultural commodities.

The 2002 legislation, which is due to expire in September, has long been a source of concern to the Australian Government because it directly subsidies the incomes of American farmers, making it harder for countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Brazil to compete, despite being efficient low-cost producers. [More]

The White House and key members of Congress had been pushing for major reforms aimed at cutting overall subsidies, capping payouts to millionaire farmers and generally bringing the regime into line with international trade rules.

The agriculture committee chose to ignore all that.

If ever there was a sign that the United States isn't serious about reaching a global free-trade deal, there it was. Talk about backtracking and intransigence. [More]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging Congress not to forget their fruits and vegetables as they write a new federal Farm Bill.

Schwarzenegger and the governors of New York, Florida and Texas co-signed a letter sent Tuesday to the congressional Agriculture Committees that outlines what the four most populous states want out of the legislation.

But what California wants may not matter when it comes time to write the bill, because the committees are stacked with Midwestern members. [More]

Labels: farm bill, farm program, international, trade

Labels: marketing, media

Labels: fun

This fits with my intuition: We face such a huge looming problem with fossil fuels exhaustion that we should be thinking about moving away from fossil fuels due to rising costs and lowered production rather than because we might melt the polar ice caps. We need to embrace solar, nuclear, and wind because we just do not have as much fossil fuels left as the climate doomsters think we do.

If the Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal folks are correct then why do the IPCC types spend so much time talking about climate catastrophe? My guess: Human-caused climate disaster makes for a far more dramatic moral story of human sin. Talk of using up all the coal and oil doesn't satisfy the need to see human action in such sinful terms. If we run out of oil then we suffer from the exhaustion of the oil but nature doesn't suffer as much as we do. We sin, but against ourselves. By contrast, if we heat up the planet the argument can be made for humans as massive sinners against nature. [More]

Labels: energy, global warming

Labels: farm program, politics

The senators voted, 64 to 35, to invoke cloture, or move to consideration of the bill itself. Since 60 votes are required for cloture, and only 45 voted for cloture two weeks ago, the measure’s supporters were heartened by today’s vote. Had the cloture vote failed today, the bill would have been dead for the foreseeable future.

The Senate’s next step is to consider a batch of amendments, some designed to be easier on illegal immigrants, some meant to be tougher. The amendments’ differing intentions underline the fragility of the coalition behind the bill.

Another make-or-break cloture vote could come before this weekend, and it is by no means certain that those who voted for cloture today will vote for the bill itself. [More]

Another problem, though, was that the Senate bill was worse than it needed to be. On the legal side of the immigration equation, there are easy trade-ups to be had. In fact, even a National Journal columnist with no apparent qualifications could write a better bill.

And what might that look like? Glad you asked.

* First, raise the number of legal immigrants by about 50 percent, to about 1.8 million a year. That meets the economy's demonstrated demand for workers.

* Second, provide pathways to permanence. Bring in these 1.8 million people on temporary visas, say for three to five years, with the promise of permanent legal residency (a green card) if they stay out of trouble, pose no security risk, and work or get a college degree.

* Third, don't micromanage who gets in. Allocate visas using a simple three-way formula that gives about equal weight to family, work, and education: 600,000 family visas for close relatives of citizens and green-card holders; 600,000 work visas for people who are sponsored by an employer and have less than a bachelor's degree; 600,000 education visas for people who hold a bachelor's degree or higher, with first call going to those who also have employer sponsorships or family ties. [More]

Labels: culture, immigration, politics

Unfortunately, U.S. corn land produces only 50 gallons worth of gasoline per acre per year—against an annual gasoline demand of 135 billion gallons. New U.S. ethanol plants coming on line could take 30 percent of next year’s U.S. corn for auto fuel—an unprecedented diversion of the world’s scarce cropland. Supplying the Bush goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol per year would currently force farmers to clear more than 200 million acres of Midwest forest to supply even 10 percent of our gasoline demand from corn ethanol. [More]

Archer Daniels Midland, the nation's largest producer of ethanol fuel from corn, is setting its sights on a move into Brazil's sugar cane-based ethanol business, according to a published report.

The Wall Street Journal says ADM (Charts, Fortune 500) is exploring a variety of strategies to enter Brazil's ethanol market, ranging from building sugar-cane mills and ethanol plants from the ground up to acquiring sugar-cane companies. [More]

Labels: ethanol

• ADM
• Monsanto
• Cargill
• Umm, I can't think of any more right now, but they could be hiding.
  

Labels: culture

Labels: photo

"It's a threat to rural America. It's a threat to every consumer - a threat to the nutrition of the whole, entire world," said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.

In case someone missed his point, he later added, "It is a threat to everyone, a real physical threat."

How so? Another committee member suggested that Kind's bill could triple the price of breakfast cereal. Another lawmaker predicted the legislation would lead to a "vastly consolidated world of agriculture production." [More]

Labels: farm program, policy, politics

Labels: blog

Labels: immigration, politics, technology

Labels: fun

The result has been a torrent of money into a finite pool of assets. There is no precedent for such fortunes suddenly to find their way into global financial markets, and they help explain the waterfall of liquidity that has driven up the value of risky (and less risky) assets of all descriptions around the world. The world's entire supply of shares is $55 trillion, and bonds account for a similar amount. Sovereign-wealth funds could soon become the most important buyers of such assets, and many others besides. If so, the world will witness the intriguing spectacle of its largest private companies being owned by governments whose belief in capitalism is often partial. [More]

The growing importance of SWFs and diversification into other markets is beginning to attract both worry and criticism.

First, there is the impact on U.S. Treasury bonds. The IMF estimates that central bank buying has depressed yields on long-term U.S. Treasury bonds by between 30 and 100 basis points. Sudden portfolio adjustments by, say, China's SWF, could lead to a collapse of U.S. bond prices, making it more expensive for the United States to finance its debt.

Second, there is the issue of transparency. Few SWFs give details of their operations. If monitoring the currency and asset compositions of official reserves is difficult, tracking the investments of SWFs is nearly impossible. Only Norway provides anything close to transparency. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) seems to be the model for most SWFs. ADIA has a reputation as a highly professional organization with a diversified portfolio and a cadre of talented managers. Yet despite managing $875 billion, there are next to no public details on AIDA's operations. It makes the most secretive hedge funds look like an open book. [More]

All of that borrowed money had to come from somewhere, and most of it came from Asia. When China stopped turning up at bond auctions in 2007 and started investing directly in companies instead, alarm bells should have rung. They didn't....

...Lots of the banks had sold insurance on those IOUs and on a bunch of other stuff that they bundled together into derivatives called collateralized debt obligations. When those investments started to blow up, we all realized that nobody knew who owed what to whom. And banks and hedge funds had become such a big part of the global economy that they dragged everything else down with them. [More]

Labels: economics, finance, international, policy

There are places in Manhattan where they’re constantly fighting rising underground rivers that are corroding the tracks. You stand in these pump rooms, and you see an enormous amount of water gushing in. And down there in a little box are these pumps, pumping it away. So, say human beings disappeared tomorrow. One of the first things that would happen is that the power would go off. A lot of our power comes out of nuclear or coal-fired plants that have automatic fail-safe switches to make sure that they don’t go out of control if no humans are monitoring their systems. Once the power goes off, the pumps stop working. Once the pumps stop working, the subways start filling with water. Within 48 hours you’re going to have a lot of flooding in New York City. Some of this would be visible on the surface. You might have some sewers overflowing. Those sewers would very quickly become clogged with debris—in the beginning the innumerable plastic bags that are blowing around the city and later, if nobody is trimming the hedges in the parks, you’re going to have leaf litter clogging up the sewers.

“But what would be happening underground? Corrosion. Just think of the subway lines below Lexington Avenue. You stand there waiting for the train, and there are all these steel columns that are holding up the roof, which is really the street. These things would start to corrode and, eventually, to collapse. After a while the streets would begin cratering, which could happen within just a couple of decades. And pretty soon, some of the streets would revert to the surface rivers that we used to have in Manhattan before we built all of this stuff. [More] [Update - Sorry, the link wasn't working. All better now.]

Labels: science

For instance, the study compared the first-page searches from major engines and found that on average:

* 69.6% of Google’s [first page results] were unique to Google.
* 79.4% of Yahoo’s were unique to Yahoo.
* 80.1% of Live’s were unique to Live.
* 75.0% Ask’s were unique to Ask.


All in all, according to the survey, only 1% of results appeared on the front page of all four search engines. [More]

Labels: computer, culture, technology

The background: We're in the midst of a merger mania, and the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department's antitrust division—the agencies tasked with assuring that mergers don't harm consumers by reducing competition—have approved almost every deal. If the nation's largest hog producer buys the second-largest hog producer? OK. Telecommunications giants SBC and AT&T want to merge? No problem. Giant supermarket company Albertson's and giant supermarket company SuperValu get together? You got it.

But when Whole Foods, the extremely successful, bobo-friendly, high-end, blue-state organic grocery chain and Wild Oats, the less successful, bobo-friendly, high-end, blue-state organic grocery chain, say they want to merge, the answer is no. This week, the FTC sued to stop this puny ($670 million) merger, saying the planned deal would "eliminate[e] the substantial competition between these two uniquely close competitors in numerous markets nationwide in the operation of premium natural and organic supermarkets" and result in higher prices and less consumer choice. [More]

Currently, organic apples that go into storage are refrigerated at 0 °C (32 °F) under low oxygen conditions. The reduced oxygen content is maintained by a constant flow of low-grade nitrogen, the researchers explained in the paper. (The use of nitrogen and the manipulation of oxygen levels are not considered violations of organic growing principles because the storage environment, rather than the produce itself, is affected.) The refrigeration process is so expensive to maintain that most organic orchards have their fruit turned into apple butter, juice, and sauce rather than put into cold storage. As a result, few organic apples are available past the harvest months, driving up the price of the fruit. [More]

Labels: food, organic, technology

Labels: photo

A SWEET whiff of burning flesh hangs over India’s open-air cremation grounds. The reason is that the traditional funeral pyres preferred by Hindus are extremely inefficient. On a windless day disposing of the remains of a fully-grown Hindu can take six hours and 500kg of wood.

With around 8.5m Hindus expiring each year in India, these pyres exact a huge environmental toll. By one estimate, they consume around 50m trees a year, producing 500,000 tonnes of ash and 8m tonnes of carbon dioxide. [More]

Think the residential real estate market is tough? Try finding a buyer for your unwanted graves.

Never an easy sell, disposing of extra burial plots has become more difficult. The latest tactic is to offer them online, via at least a half-dozen sites that some marketers tout as a "multiple listing service" for cemetery lots. And, yes, you can even sell them on eBay.

Just don't expect it to happen overnight -- if at all. [More]

Labels: culture

The panel, a subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee, brought each of several proposals for change to the farm bill to a vote before rejecting them, sending a strong message to those pushing for major changes to farm legislation. They include the Bush administration and a bipartisan coalition led by Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin.

The Bush proposal received one vote. The Kind proposal was defeated unanimously, as was an unusual proposal from Citigroup that suggested a voluntary buyout to farmers receiving subsidies. Even modest reforms introduced by committee leaders were rejected. [More]

Labels: farm bill, farm program, policy, politics

I hear what you're saying but, with all due respect, it's not exactly rocket science. Basically, at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is you have got to be able to tick all the boxes. It's not the end of the world, but, to be perfectly honest with you, when push comes to shove, you don't want to be literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. Going forward we need to be singing from the same songsheet but you can't see the wood from the trees. Naturally hindsight is 20/20 vision and you have to take the rough with the smooth before proceeding onwards and upwards. The bottom line is you wear your heart on your sleeve and, when all is said and done, this is all part and parcel of the ongoing bigger picture. C'est la vie (if you know what I mean). [More]

Labels: fun

Labels: politics

Such frustration has now boiled over into the threats of violence by the Crav, made in a video message sent to France's new President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

In the video - shot in a secret location late at night - seven wine-makers, their faces hidden by black balaclavas, read out the spine-chilling warning that "blood will flow" if Nicolas Sarkozy does not act fast to raise the price of wine. [More]

Labels: globalization, international

Labels: immigration

Some may say that a food that is organic and a food that is carbon neutral are two different things. For some, to eat organic is a diet choice, and not necessarily a consideration of whether a food has been flown from Turkey or Thailand. [More]

Local food must be more environmentally friendly, they say – the distance it travels from farm to fork is shorter so its carbon footprint is smaller. Right? Wrong. Local food, per se, is not necessarily more environmentally friendly than that produced overseas. There is no reason, per se, that food produced in Kent has a lower environmental footprint than food produced in Kenya.

The concept of food miles remains easy for consumers to grasp but, in practice, it is too simplistic and we lose sight of a raft of wider sustainability issues. How does, for instance, the issue of Fair Trade fit into a concept of food miles?

And how can the food industry effectively communicate those issues on sustainability to consumers in a way they are willing and able to understand? [More]

Labels: culture, food

Global-warming activists would like this. But so would skeptics, because they believe the models are exaggerating the warming forecasts. After all, the averaged UAH/ RSS tropical troposphere series went up only about 0.08C over the past decade, and has been going down since 2002. Some solar scientists even expect pronounced cooling to begin in a decade. If they are right, the T3 tax will fall below zero within two decades, turning into a subsidy for carbon emissions.

At this point the global-warming alarmists would leap up to slam the proposal. But not so fast, Mr. Gore: The tax would only become a carbon subsidy if all the climate models are wrong, if greenhouse gases are not warming the atmosphere, and if the sun actually controls the climate. Alarmists sneeringly denounce such claims as "denialism," so they can hardly reject the policy on the belief that they are true.

Under the T3 tax, the regulator gets to call everyone's bluff at once, without gambling in advance on who is right. If the tax goes up, it ought to have. If it doesn't go up, it shouldn't have. Either way we get a sensible outcome. [More of a really interesting proposal]

Regardless, I appreciate suggestions for solutions in addition to proof of one position or other.

Labels: global warming, policy

The economy is recovering, but it's clear that most Argentines don't have much faith that it will last. Many feel that the government is being dishonest about its economic data—or just making it up. One Argentine woman told me that though the government insists there's no inflation, the same pay that bought a cartful of groceries two months ago now buys just two bags.

Durable goods and long-term purchases usually are made with U.S. dollars, not Argentine pesos, a good indicator that Argentines aren't ready to trust their own currency. Most retail and service business will also give you a discount if you pay in cash instead of credit.

Yet for all the abuse they've endured at the hands of government, Argentines still are reflexively pro-government. Socialism and Peronism (now run by political and cultural elites who win votes by denouncing elitism) still rule Argentine politics. Market liberals are few and far between. [More]

Labels: history, politics

Labels: fun

Labels: culture, history, rural life

If Hirst designed a vegetable display, it would look like the shop window at the just-opened Whole Foods Market Inc. branch in Kensington, one of London's ritziest shopping areas. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. calculate that Kensington could contribute as much as 1.8 percent of the food retailer's total sales. Whole Foods said last month that second-quarter revenue was $1.46 billion.

It's a food-porn cathedral dedicated to organic this, natural that and locally produced the other. On a Monday afternoon, the place was packed with gym-buffed yummy mummies driving designer pushchairs and doing battle in the produce- crammed aisles with trolley-dragging wealthy retirees.

The zeitgeist-defining product among the free-range bananas, organic spring water and corn-fed soup is a 60-year-old Vecchia Dispensa balsamic vinegar, costing almost $200 for a triangular 100 milliliter bottle stoppered with red wax seals.

You know there's a bubble when an overgrown U.S. chain store can sell antique vinegar to Britons at 32 times the price of Nicolas Feuillatte champagne. [More - check out how kids are getting to summer camp these days]

Labels: culture, wealth

Labels: fun

Except - there is no ethanol "market." The ethanol business is driven by government planners, not freely acting buyers and sellers.

I didn't consider opportunities to portray ethanol distilleries as weapons in the global war on terror. I forgot about the 2008 presidential election, in which farm-state pandering will be crucial. In short, I forgot about the politicians, who show every sign of expanding the boondoggle to legendary dimensions and ensuring that investors pile into corn likker for years.

Things look bullish for ethanol projects whether or not they make economic sense. [More]

It's true that the ethanol stocks I wrote about last summer have declined on fears of a glut. Under current law, most gas can't contain more than 10 percent ethanol, and at some point all the gas will be blended. Most cars aren't supposed to use richer blends. A fall in gas prices would also hurt ethanol producers.

But have faith in the politicians, who still haven't found a limit on how often they can play the al-Qaida card. Ethanol investments are indeed a bubble, but with government's aid there's no guessing how big it'll get.

Labels: ethanol, future, politics

The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map – misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that’s slightly higher than Israel’s – but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million. [More]

Labels: economics

Labels: fun

Labels: culture

Labels: farm bill, farm program, policy

It's not just wealthy individuals who get farm subsidies - state governments are reaping the benefits too. In Arkansas, for example, EWG ranks the state's Department of Correction as the top subsidy beneficiary, pulling in nearly $2.3 million from 2003-2005. The University of Illinois is first in Illinois, with nearly $1.3 million in payments for the three-year period. [More] [Emphasis added]

Labels: farm bill, policy, politics

Rudy Giuliani: Six visits to the state show that Giuliani at least knows where Iowa is. But as a national figure who polls remarkably well, "America's Mayor" has made no secret of his emphasis on Florida and other "Super-Duper Tuesday" states over the traditional first three; strategists in rival campaigns simply note that garnering the nomination this way would upset the calendar once and for all. To the extent he does decide to take on the state, Giuliani's chances in Iowa are hampered by a slight tin ear for the rhythms of the heartland: it's not just his support of abortion rights and his colorful personal life, but missteps like his advance staff reneging on an event with an Iowa farmer who turned out not to be rich enough to help illustrate Giuliani's stance in support of abolishing the estate tax. [More]

Labels: politics

Labels: fun

In a review to be published in the May 18 issue of the journal Science, Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, discusses a new consensus scientists are reaching on the origins and mechanisms of morality. Haidt shows how evolutionary, neurological and social-psychological insights are being synthesized in support of three principles:

1) Intuitive primacy, which says that human emotions and gut feelings generally drive our moral judgments;

2) Moral thinking if for social doing, which says that we engage in moral reasoning not to figure out the truth, but to persuade other people of our virtue or to influence them to support us; and

3) Morality binds and builds, which says that morality and gossip were crucial for the evolution of human ultrasociality, which allows humans - but no other primates - to live in large and highly cooperative groups.

"Putting these three principles together forces us to re-evaluate many of our most cherished notions about ourselves," says Haidt, whose own research demonstrates that people generally follow their gut feelings and make up moral reasons afterwards. "Since the time of the Enlightenment," Haidt says, "many philosophers have celebrated the power and virtue of cool, dispassionate reasoning. Unfortunately, few people other than philosophers can engage in such cool, honest reasoning when moral issues are at stake. The rest of us behave more like lawyers, using any arguments we can find to make our case, rather than like judges or scientists searching for the truth. This doesn't mean we are doomed to be immoral; it just means that we should look for the roots of our considerable virtue elsewhere - in the emotions and intuitions that make us so generally decent and cooperative, yet also sometimes willing to hurt or kill in defense of a principle, a person or a place." [More]

When offspring genetic engineering becomes possible I expect parental choices to produce bigger differences in how people morally reason. Conservative-leaning people will make their children morally reason even more strongly in the conservative style. The liberals will do likewise. So the size of the center will shrink. This will lead to deeper political divisions and perhaps civil war in some countries and wars between countries.

I also expect offspring genetic engineering to produce more other styles of moral reasoning including ones that are rare today and others that do not exist at all today. Who knows, maybe genetic engineering will move libertarianism up in the ranks of moral reasoning styles. [More]

Labels: culture, population, science

Labels: fun, science

Ultimately, I think we are headed for a collision of cultural values. We prefer insulation to real insurance. We expect services to be readily available, without the supply limitations or waiting lists that exist in countries where government is responsible for more health care funding. And yet we are growing increasingly concerned over the expansion of health care spending that takes place in a system that lacks constraints on either supply or demand.

Real health insurance may not be popular now. But when Americans see that the providers of insulation, including Medicare, have to turn to the rationing of health care services in order to meet budgetary constraints, real health insurance may start to look like a good alternative. [More]

Labels: economics, health, policy

Perhaps not surprisingly, the press release associated with this work focused on those compounds, including herbicides, that are most resistant to biodegradation, but fails to mention the even larger group of compounds that are intrinsically biodegradable. The usual news write ups about toxic chemicals and the environment 9999 times out of 10000 will inevitably highlight those that are the nastiest.

The huge benefits of the thousands of organic compounds used in the pharma, biotech, plastics, and other industries as well as medicine and agriculture will simply be ignored whether or not those compounds accumulate in the environment or not. Biodegradation is only one route by which thousands of compounds are destroyed naturally in the environment (heat, light and interaction with other non-living materials, are others). The predictive system will be useful, certainly, but its wider applicability should consider these other routes and the risk factors and toxicity associated with any particular chemical, rather than tarnishing all entries in the database simply on the basis of whether or not a microbial enzyme exists to digest it. [More]

Labels: future, science, technology

The draft also reauthorizes the peanut program, including an extension of the 2002 Farm Bill's direct and counter-cyclical payment and loan provisions for peanut farmers. The loan rate would be increased from $355 per ton to $375 per ton and payments acres would be lowered from 85% of base acres to 74%.

The Subcommittee voted to extend the current sugar program until 2012, requiring the USDA Secretary to continue to operate the program at no cost to the federal government by avoiding forfeitures of sugar. [More]

Labels: farm bill, farm program, policy, politics

The basic problem is that the High-Cost Fund subsidizes small rural local exchange carriers (RLECs) on the basis of their reported costs of providing service. This cost-plus system provides no incentive to reduce costs or to provide service using the most efficient technology. On the contrary, it rewards inefficiency. As a result, according to a recent study by George Mason University economist Thomas Hazlett, subsidies can be as much as $13,000 per year per line. Hazlett estimates that yearly savings of $1 billion are easily achievable using standard mobile and satellite phone subscriptions to provide service to people in sparsely populated areas. [More]

Recently, the USF has gained new attention as several Iowa-based companies have used USF subsidies to provide free, international calling.^[1] This practice, which began in late 2006, represents an unintended consequence of the USF. [More]

Another recommendation is the use of "reverse auctions" to assign universal service obligations, a plan endorsed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Phone carriers would compete to become the "provider of last resort" in areas where regulators deem local services insufficient, bidding a price, to be paid by the government, to supply such services. The lowest-cost bidder wins. [More]

Labels: communications, rural life, technology

At a Brazilian ethanol conference June 4-5, Brazilian government-funded researchers said they have perfected a method of producing cellulosic ethanol that drastically reduces the cost of processing. At this point, the assertion -- and many other similarly optimistic claims made at the conference -- is unconfirmed. But should it prove true, the world could well be peeking over the horizon at a massive geopolitical, not to mention economic, shift. [More]

More tricky is the problem of the ethanol production itself. Cellulosic biomass is bulky and materially complex, unfit for the same methods of ethanol extraction used with corn. In order to even get the stuff into manageable form, processors must soak it in a pre-treatment bath, followed by an acidic or enzymatic digestion that splits it into simple sugars. [More]

Labels: biofuel, energy, ethanol, technology

Labels: policy, politics

Labels: fun

Labels: biofuel, economics, ethanol, policy

Your reporter remains skeptical about USDA’s refusal to allow voluntary BSE testing. As has been argued before, it’s not that voluntary testing is needed or the expense justified.

That’s not the question.

It’s a matter of the proper role of government and the fact that, from a public relations angle, this looks awful. [More]

Labels: beef, food, milk, policy, regulation

“So this is a huge deal. If Pelosi blocks amendments on the bill, it is very possible that reforms suppported by the majority of the House will not be in the House version of the farm bill because votes will never be allowed. This would be a subversion of democracy- one committee being allowed to write an enormously important piece of legislation without regard to the desires of the rest of the House. In effect, this means that the citizens represented by Ag Committee members will get to write the farm bill- and to hell with everyone else.

“Let me go further. If Pelosi blocks amendments on the 2007 farm bill that are supported by a majority of the House, that would be a clear message that the change in leadership in the House means nothing at all; that the Democratic leadership intends to run the House in the same top-down corporate fashion as its predecessors.” [More good political analysis]

Labels: farm bill, farm program, policy, politics

AUGUST 5TH.-- Another most terrific thunder-storm broke, last night, peal after peal, over head in deafening, crushing sauna; and the lightning's glare seemed burning the heavens from pole to pole! the torrents of rain came right through the warped "shakes" on the roof; the wind was blowing--the mud, from the logs, and water, were flying in every direction through our cabin. I made every effort to keep my sick ones dry, but my husband, children, and myself, being in the loft, got completely drenched and my husband and children had their chills in the midst of the storm. We kept our beds until a late hour this morning, as wet as they were, they being the most comfortable place, while the sun was drying up the water around.

Mr. Broadbent came this forenoon, went to the spring over the river again for water, making a walk of four miles from his tent to get two pails of water for us.

I bring water from the creek, where it stands just in the deep places, and they have to be dug out for that. This water will do to cook with and for washing.

The Indians pass every day in long files, on ponies and on foot, going to Cofuchigue "to swap," as they say, their dried buffalo meat, tallow and robes, for coffee, sugar, tobacco and whisky. Their ponies of burden are so heavily loaded that the juveniles who ride them have their limbs horizontally extended, instead of hanging down. Their many long-eared, grizzly-gray, gaunt-looking dogs, bring up the rear. How they can keep alive such a drove of dogs after their hunt is over, and keep them in going order, is truly a problem not for me to solve. They look like so many hungry hyenas; I should think they would swallow both horse and rider, and "lick their chops for more." Their buffalo meat is relished by some. It seems to be clean, and sweet; it is cured without salt, by being cut into strips, braided, the braids woven into a web, with strings of bark, and dried in smoke; can be bought by the yard, half or fourth, just as one desires or their appetite craves.

Some of the squaws have been here to-day; wanted to "swap" some of their dried buffalo meat for some pumpkins we had in our cabin. I gave them the pumpkins, and they handed back some dried meat. Father and the children relish it. Willie says, "please mamma, give Willie some dried buffalo meat." We have so little change in our diet, that almost anything is relished. We have plenty of green corn and squashes, but I am afraid to let the sick satisfy their appetites, which have become craving, as they always do, after having the chills for a while. I can persuade my little children to lay the cob by for a little, with the corn half eaten off, but it is a difficult matter to persuade children whose heads are gray with age, for "they know, they guess, when they have eaten enough, and when they are hungry." [More]

Labels: culture, history

Labels: fun

While questions continue to arise about the alleged plot to blow up a fuel pipeline beneath JFK Airport and surrounding neighborhoods, some are questioning why New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn't had a louder voice since the plot was foiled on Saturday.

On Monday, Bloomberg finally weighed in, but his response was not what some would have expected.

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life," he said. [More]

Labels: politics

Labels: technology

It has taken me years to make tentative peace with my stops and starts during work. Every morning I vow to become a morning person, starting full speed out of the gate. And every morning I daydream, shuffle papers, read e-mail messages and visit blogs, and somehow it is time for lunch. Then, at about 2 p.m., a sense of urgency kicks in, and I write steadily, until about 5 or 6, when I revert to the little-of-this, some-of-that style of the morning.

Over the years I have come to see that the hours away from the writing are the time when the real work gets done. When a paragraph turns itself this way and that in a corner of my brain even while my fingers are buying books on Amazon.com. What appears to be wasted time is really jell time. This redefinition only makes me feel a little less guilty.

Mr. Kustka assures me that the problem is not the three to four hours of concentrated work I do each day, but rather the outmoded paradigm against which I measure that work. Productivity was directly related to time back when Mr. Gilbreth was measuring things, he said, but the connection is less direct today.

“We are in a knowledge-worker world,” he says. “If you were building me a building, I could measure the number of bricks. If you were loading a truck, I could measure the number of boxes. But I can’t simply count your words. That doesn’t measure quality.” [More of an oddly comforting article]

A few companies are taking the concept of “watch what I produce, not how I produce it” even further. At the headquarters of Best Buy in Minneapolis, for instance, the hot policy of the moment is called ROWE, short for Results Only Work Environment.

There workers can come in at four or leave at noon, or head for the movies in the middle of the day, or not even show up at all. It’s the work that matters, not the method. And, not incidentally, both output and job satisfaction have jumped wherever ROWE is tried.

Labels: blog, culture, psychology

Refiners would be forced to triple their use of fuel ethanol over the next decade, under legislation expected to start moving through the Senate this spring.

The legislation, outlined Tuesday by leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would require use of 18 billion gallons of biofuels by 2016 and 36 billion gallons by 2022.

All but 15 billion gallons of that biofuel each year would have to come from sources other than corn, such as crop residue, switchgrass and forestry waste. [More]

Labels: economics, ethanol, politics

When President Vladimir Putin delivered a stinging critique of US foreign policy at a security conference in Munich in February, stunned politicians in the audience described it as the most anti-Western speech made by a Russian leader since the Cold War.

But Mr Putin was only just getting started.

In the past five months his fury over American plans to erect a missile defence shield in eastern Europe has become increasingly evident. [More]

Other dangers remain: corruption, the inefficiency of the state apparatus, high levels of social inequity. But generally Russia is in better shape today than seven years ago, when Putin assumed power. Russia now needs more than anything to strengthen law and order and to restore the institutional capacity of the state. Democracy is also needed, but only later, when the rule of law has been established. There is, of course, a danger that the leadership will use political centralization to line everyone up along the ‘vertical of power’ and eliminate opposition in order to live in serene comfort at the citizens’ expense—and perhaps also to embark on the occasional escapade. This has happened in Russia before. But one must choose the lesser of two evils. Strengthening law and order is only possible under a centralized system. Without centralization, there is no chance at all of it happening; unbounded chaos and lawlessness would rule. This seems to be the choice facing Russia today. [More]

But there's one place -- Russia -- where reserve estimates just seem to go up and up. In its annual statistical survey of world energy, BP PLC (BP ) has recently revised its estimates of Russia's total proven oil reserves to 69.1 billion barrels, 6% of the world's total, up from 45 billion bbl. in 2001. But according to auditors with a worm's-eye view of what's actually going on in the depths of Siberia, such estimates may just scratch the surface of Russia's real potential. According to a recent study by Dallas-based energy reserve auditors DeGolyer & MacNaughton, whose clients include leading Russian energy companies such as Gazprom and Yukos, Russia's true recoverable reserves are between 150 billion bbl. and 200 billion bbl. That's up from industry estimates of 100 billion bbl. a few years ago.

Why such a big gap in the estimates? Because it's one thing to be sitting on oil reserves, another to be able to exploit them commercially. In Russia's main oil-producing region in western Siberia, proven reserves represent just 18% to 24% of all oil in the ground, in contrast to about 45% in Western oil-producing regions such as Alaska and the North Sea. But as Russian oil companies adopt technologies, such as horizontal wells and computerized reservoir management systems, the estimated recovery rates are being revised. Thanks to new techniques, which make it possible to obtain oil even from apparently depleted fields, Russian oil companies already have managed to boost their output by 50% since 1998. "The biggest thing is the [new] technology being deployed in western Siberia. The results are beginning to show," says Martin Wiewiorowski, senior vice-president of DeGolyer & MacNaughton in Moscow. [More]

Labels: economics, energy, international, trade

One problem with the farm bill has been its historical lack of balance. For example, only 39 percent of all U.S. farmers and ranchers received crop subsidies in 2005. These farm-bill subsidies support the growing of commodities such as corn and soybeans, but have little support for fruits and vegetables.

These imbalances have consequences for eaters. Between 1985 and 2000, the real price of fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent, while the price of soft drinks and other sugary and high-fat foods declined by as much as 20 percent. If our farm bills had been healthy-food bills, we could have distributed government support more equitably to make nutritious food more affordable. In part because of this imbalance, we are paying more than $100 billion a year in obesity-related medical costs. [More] [My emphasis]

There's growing demand to change how the subsidies are allocated. Some say it's unfair that commodity growers receive nearly all the money. And there's a push to spend more money helping farmers solve environmental problems and less on direct payments to individuals. [More]

Labels: farm bill, farm program, politics

Labels: fun

What's more, the good and peaceful leaders of Sudan were prepared to retaliate massively: They would cut off shipments of the emulsifier gum arabic, thereby depriving the world of cola.

"I want you to know that the gum arabic which runs all the soft drinks all over the world, including the United States, mainly 80 percent is imported from my country," the ambassador said after raising a bottle of Coca-Cola. [More]

The administration's list of targeted firms is noteworthy for what it left out.

For one, the China National Petroleum, which operates in Sudan, was not included. Likewise, Sudan's government-dominated Gum Arabic will not be subjected to sanctions. The company is one of the world's largest exporters of a sticky tree resin used in hundreds of consumer products, including soft drinks and makeup. It was exempted from previous U.S. sanctions after American manufacturers said they needed Gum Arabic to continue making their products. [More]

Labels: food, international

The four governments are trying to conclude a framework this month so all 150 WTO members can work out a draft by the end of July. The Bush administration wants to use progress on the global talks to persuade Congress to renew the president's trade negotiating authority, said John Weekes, a trade adviser with Sidley Austin in Geneva.

The U.S. said in talks this week that it no longer expects the highest farm tariffs to be slashed by 85 percent, said the WTO's farm-talks facilitator, Crawford Falconer of New Zealand. The U.S. has agreed to scale back that demand to ``a more realistic zone,'' he said May 29.

European politics also favor a deal, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel try to pull together an agreement before their mandates expire. Blair, who has championed the Doha Round, plans to hand power to Gordon Brown on June 27, and Germany holds the presidency of the EU until the end of June. [More]

US farm groups have warned the Bush administration against compromising on farmers' interests as trade negotiators push intensely to broker a new world trade deal under the Doha Round.

The warning came even as the European Union and the United States tried to pave the way for a breakthrough in global trade talks nearing a potentially make-or-break phase. [More]

Labels: politics, trade

The pun-laden signs you see outside churches have always intrigued me. "Seven days without prayer makes one weak." "Forbidden fruit creates many jams." "We have a prophet-sharing plan." They're funny and a little bit alien, if you're not a regular churchgoer. And it's hard to tell whether they're intended primarily to amuse regular congregants, or to attract soul-searching passers-by. Whatever the intent, such signs have certainly gained the notice of the secular world at large. There are Web sites devoted to the phenomenon—including one where you can generate your own church sign and another that envisions an amusing "church sign smackdown." And in March, Overlook Press published a book called Church Signs Across America that's being sold in, among other places, the housewares department of hipster-pop emporium Urban Outfitters. The book, by photographers Pam and Steve Paulson, features images from nearly 50 states and shows just how ubiquitous these signs have become. But where did they get their start? [More]

Labels: fun, religion

Labels: economy, finance, policy, retirement

Labels: fun, science

Most of the houses have obviously been newly rebuilt, with brick walls and higher roofs. (Feng Shui and the cost of land may explain why houses stay on the same plots.) This is entirely typical for the area. It's dangerous to generalise about a huge country from anecdotal evidence; still, it is evidence that at least one substantial group of Chinese peasants are doing absolutely better than before, whether or not they are falling relatively behind the city-dwellers. [More and great photos of stuff other than tourist sites]

Labels: culture, economy, globalization, population