Launching the helicopters...

The phenomenon of "helicopter parents" has reached another milestone: the job search. Hovering parents are accompanying grown children and often doing most of the talking during post-college job searches.

Barbara Dwyer, a career coach in Sacramento, Calif., says she spoke at a Future Farmers of America meeting and met a mother whose son wanted to raise sheep for a living. The mom excitedly told Dwyer how she had done extensive research to find out what it would take for her son to get started in the business.

"I asked, 'Why did YOU do it?' And she looked shocked," Dwyer says. [More]

The next step is calling the bosses at work once the child gets a job.

There is no phase of our lives we Boomers can't overdo. And it's not just Americans.

This will seem funny until a note comes home from school...

If you have children in public school, there is a reasonable chance one will come home with head lice. That doesn't make you a bad parent or homemaker, just a typical one. Maybe there is some hope for battling this childhood menace.

Clayton and his colleagues tested a variety of hair dryers -- including handheld and "bonnet" models -- on 169 local children who were infested with lice. Their findings appear in the November issue of Pediatrics.

All the hair dryers killed at least 89 percent of lice eggs. But only one -- the specially designed "LouseBuster" -- managed to both kill eggs (98 percent) and wipe out high numbers of living lice (80 percent). The remaining living lice appeared unable to breed, perhaps due to stress or sterilization, the team said. [More]

My bet is Chinese manufacturers will develop $29.99 models and will be selling them in Walmart by 2007.

Actually, I am pretending to be alive...

This is just gross enough to interest a 5th grader (boy):

When a hognose snake that's facing a predator flips belly-up, its mouth opens and stays agape, sometimes oozing drops of blood. And the snake defecates or otherwise releases an unappetizing smell. "It's spectacular," says Gordon Burghardt of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. [More great stuff]

While I was closing up bins and cleaning up scattered tools, etc. our silly dog encountered a young possum, which promptly "died" and sure enough, the dog lost interest. I've always wondered how effective this strategy was.

Playing dead can be a clever ruse as well:

One break came after he'd floated for 15 minutes staring at a dead-looking Parachromis friedrichsthalii cichlid. Smaller fish gradually drew closer until some began nibbling the cichlid's tattered fins. In an instant, the seemingly dead fish reared off the bottom and attacked one of the scavengers.

Although this cichlid is a death feigner, it's not trying to avoid predators, Tobler said in the March 2005 Journal of Fish Biology. It is itself a predator, and feigning death is the way that it hunts.

Given the number of possums I see around here, feigning death must work.

Pretty darn well.

Maybe we can lose the flatulent cow jokes, at least...

Strangely, methane emissions and atmospheric levels are dropping even while other greenhouse gases escalate. We're not sure why. But most of us in agriculture have long since tired of newsreaders' staged amusement when reporting that ruminant animals are a major source of methane. (snicker)

The decline may be due to changes in rice farming:

M. Aslam Khalil, a physicist at Portland State University in Oregon, helped establish a sampling network for methane as long ago as 1979. He, like Dlugokencky, believes that the recent stasis in methane levels fundamentally represents the system coming to equilibrium. Khalil suspects that there have been no significant changes in the overall magnitude of emissions, but he does recognize that some of the individual sources must have become larger over the past few decades. The explanation for the enigmatic stabilization of methane levels, in his view, is that at least one of the other sources—rice agriculture in particular—has simultaneously become much smaller.

In a paper soon to be published in Greenhouse Gases and Animal Agriculture: An Update (Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Greenhouse Gases and Animal Agriculture), Khalil and his Portland State colleague Martha J. Shearer point out that China has produced much of the world's rice for many decades, yet for the past 30 years, the area devoted to rice agriculture in that country has fallen from about 37 million hectares to a little more than 27 million. Khalil and Shearer further note that in these rice paddies nitrogen-based fertilizer has to a large extent replaced animal manure or "night soil" (human wastes). This change in how rice is grown in China reduces the amount of methane given off. What is more, these rice farmers are using less water than they did before—another change in agricultural practice that has the unintended side benefit of reducing methane emissions. [More]

There are likely other reasons as well. Regardless, lower methane levels would contribute to mitigating global warming as well as air pollution.

Oddly too, natural gas production is a larger source of methane emissions than cows. But I have not heard much about restricting NG production like we have with livestock.

Maybe the jokes were just not as funny...

Why didn't I think of that?...


Michael Hughes evolved the gag of tickling the Statue of Liberty into some great photos of souvenirs and postcards juxtaposed with reality.

[via Neatorama]

Bam! Pow! Kablooey!...

People, people, people - you are soooo missing out if you are not following Jim Weisemeyer's extensive coverage of the presently subterranean farm policy debate.

I know, I know, you have to subscribe to Pro Farmer - but would that kill ya?

Anyhoo, on Oct. 6 Jim ran a column that quoted extensively from an unnamed policy analyst who (oversimplifying here) basically disputed USDA pronouncements about who receives farm program money. The anonymous author (which makes the piece problematic for me to begin with) did some pretty torturous reasoning IMHO to make his case that everbody in the farm world was getting plenty of goodies.

I went ballistic, fumed for while and then logically shot [via e-mail] the messenger - er, Jim. Not a hurtful wound, of course, just the kind of shoot-the-gun-out-of-the-hand shot made famous by the Lone Ranger. My bad.

Well, boys and girls, it turns out I was not the only reader somewhat upset.

A few weeks after the column appeared I was contacted by USDA and told it was a "direct and personal attack" on Ag Secretary Mike Johanns as to what he has stated in farm policy speeches-- even though it did not specifically mention his name on some of the quotes included in the dispatch. Johanns, his Chief Economist, Keith Collins, and Communications Director Terri Teuber would eventually meet me during a meeting on this topic. Johanns had a very busy schedule on the day I conferred with Collins, but the Ag Secretary stopped by for more than a few minutes to make some of his views known on this and some other important matters. [More by subscription]

Jim is still a little too subsidy-tolerant for my taste, but NOBODY is putting out the information like he is.

Even if only for the next year - get your subscription going just to watch the fireworks.

Creepiest scarecrows

The pictures are bad enough, but the music...

I am sooo depressed now...

Time for a Twinkie - Nature's perfect snack food.

Your paycheck and inflation...

I am beginning to lean toward the idea of a gathering inflation storm. Or at least increased upwards pressure on prices. While I have always been a hawk on inflation, the idea of keeping our money sound may not be the be-all-and-end-all for prosperity in the US, or the globe.

One apparent reason is laying the blame for inflation largely at the feet of labor costs. No component of the price indexes watched by the Fed is more closely monitored than labor costs. When they begin to rise, the Fed usually acts to slow the economy.

The trouble is real wage growth - getting a raise, for example - is described as an increased labor cost, not a worker income boost. The governments not-so-subtle point of view bias is in favor of business owners - not business workers. This is the unwritten message of the "ownership society". While it sounds admirable and works for me, the quiet truth is if allowed to come to full fruition, passive returns from owning "things" (houses are a good example) will be how most wealth is accumulated, not by working.

The result is for most Americans, our government is trying really hard to make sure you don't get ahead. To be sure, this is not done deliberately (I think) but dispassionately to protect the value of money.

To begin with, I'm not sure this emphasis on labor costs is warranted. I'm not alone.

No matter what standard econometric models might suggest, the empirical cyclical evidence indicates that labor cost inflation is not a consistent predictor of cyclical upturns in inflation. In fact, a fair amount of asymmetry exists in the cyclical behavior of the growth rates of the ECI, AHE, and ULC when compared with inflation cycles. All three series lead consumer price inflation at peaks, and lag it at troughs. [More]

One problem is when you have some factors you can measure easily and accurately, and some you can't (like the effect of immigrant labor) you zero in on those you can see.

One thing that is certain, is this focus on control of labor costs has coincided with stagnant wage growth for the vast majority of Americans.

Wages have been flat or declining on average for 5 years now. As the Financial Times story points out, we have had 5 years of economic growth, but the amount the median American worker earns every week has fallen by 3.2 per cent, adjusted for inflation, since the start of the recovery in November 2001. For the first time ever, the real wages of American workers have declined through more than four years of strong growth. Calculations by NDN show that the average American earned $480 a week when President Bush came to office. Controlling for rising prices, the average American still earns exactly $480 today. So while the American economy has been growing, the incomes of most Americans have been standing still. [More]

I think this is the reason that good unemployment numbers don't generate the political enthusiasm that Republicans especially expect. No matter what the economy's overall performance is like, life at the individual level for most has not been all that exciting.

There is much more to this issue of course, and I will be trying to wrap my mind around it in the January issue of Top Producer, but for now contemplate this:

If rapid wage growth is inflationary, why isn't rapid profit growth? In other words, why is the return to capital a good thing and the return to labor a negative influence? Aren't more dollars chasing limited goods and services equal regardless of their source?

I'll be working on that one...

A metaphor for modern politics...

Poor quality, and it's a little sad the guy was all by himself when he finally executed his 6 minutes of work, but if you like domino chains, you'll love this...

[via Neatorama]

If red is Republican and blue is Democrat, what the heck is green?

Why, it's John Deere! And they are not amused with their products and logos appearing in political ads.

MOLINE, IL (November 03, 2006) — John Deere equipment and John Deere-branded clothing have been used in various political advertisements in the U.S. during recent campaigns advocating a candidate or issue. While John Deere is a strong advocate for free speech, use of the brand in political ads is not authorized by John Deere. Some members of the public have been led to believe that John Deere endorses a candidate or position because John Deere's brand or equipment appears in these advertisements. This is not the case. John Deere considers unauthorized use of its brand to be an infringement of the company's rights to protect its brand name.

Some of the possible suspects:

• Jeff Denham - California State Senator who demonstrates how to drive a tractor out of a barn.
• Sherrod Brown (OH - Sen) - endorsed by Luke Perry (like, dude, I have no idea who he is) in suspicious apparel

They laughed when Mr. Carville, a Democratic strategist who worked for President Clinton, said he enjoyed undergraduate studies so much “I was there for, like, 11 years.” They roared when he called Mr. DeWine “an affable puppet to power” in Washington.

Mr. Perry jogged in late, wearing work boots, blue jeans, a baseball cap, and a long-sleeved John Deere T-shirt. He lamented the cost of tuition, which he said kept him from attending college after graduating from high school in Fredericktown, Ohio, and he urged the audience not to vote “for fear.” [More, but why?]

• John Spratt (D-SC) - no, wait...he just took Deere's money:

Campaign filings show South Carolina residents accounted for about half of the money Norman's collected in the campaign, compared to 11 percent for Spratt. Another big chunk of Norman's money comes from political committees, the GOP party and other GOP candidates, as a string of national heavyweights have visited the state to raise money for Norman.

"We're proud to have a diverse basis of support, including hardworking South Carolinians, business defense funds and agricultural interests, including the John Deere company," said Spratt spokesman Adam Harris. [More]

Oh, puleeez... If my product/brand was so "apple pie" that aspiring politicos were drawn to it like pork barrel spending, I don't think I would be all that upset. In fact, I think I would try to call attention to it with disingenuous harrumphing.

Wait a minute...

[OK - I'm just sore about not being chosen for their shirtless commercials...]

The amazing pencil...

I have not been excited about electronic voting. It seems I am not alone:

On Nov. 7, more Americans will vote on electronic voting machines than ever before. No fewer than 39% of voters will cast their ballots electronically. Many of these votes will be cast on machines without any paper record. The votes will be fully electronic. As a computer science professor, and as someone who has been studying electronic voting for years, I am nervous. [More of really good article]

One crucial factor in the success of democracy is the confidence people have in the process. My guess is there is little to no public enthusiasm for the trustworthiness of voting machines. In fact, in places like Florida, Ohio, and Chicago the expectation could mostly be for the results to be inaccurate, if not outright rigged.

Voting machines are touted as cheaper than all those people needed to handle paper ballots. And , of course, faster. Lord save us from having to wait a half-day longer to find out the results.

If the results on Tuesday differ significantly from the vast number of polls, look for an uproar over electronic balloting.

The solution may be deciding to invest in democracy first and technology second.

Lurching to the finish line...

Jan and I are within sight of the end of harvest. Sometime next week, the blogging should become more vigorous with book reviews, gift ideas, puzzling about "labor inflation", and more than you want to know about resveratrol.

I have noticed the yields are much better where there are actual corn plants.

I'm making some notes so I'll remember...

The engineering and military view of the War in Iraq...

Debate can and will rage about how things are going in Iraq and what the future might contain. Certainly the issue has enough political spin to make any observer dizzy. However, these two items I found particularly disheartening:

• Bechtel, the giant international construction firm is pulling out. Not only is it too unsafe for their workers, much of the work is simply allowed to fall apart again. Even with the billion of dollars at stake in Iraq, Bechtel is "cutting and running". Or being logical.
  

Bechtel's contracts were part of an enormous U.S. effort to put Iraq back on its feet after decades of wars and sanctions. That rebuilding campaign, once touted as the Marshall Plan of modern times, was supposed to win the hearts of skeptical Iraqis by giving them clean water, dependable power, telephones that worked and modern sanitation. President Bush said he wanted the country's infrastructure to be the very best in the Middle East.

But Bechtel -- which charged into Iraq with American "can-do" fervor -- found it tough to keep its engineers and workers alive, much less make progress in piecing Iraq back together.

"Did Iraq come out the way you hoped it would?" asked Cliff Mumm, Bechtel's president for infrastructure work. "I would say, emphatically, no. And it's heartbreaking." [More]

• A joint editorial by the Army, Navy, and Air Force Times will call for the firing of Sec.Rumsfeld. This is more than unusual.

  Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

When added to the change of heart by war architect Richard Perle, either the rats are fleeing the ship, or the captain is headed for the the shoals. We can entertain differences on how Iraq is going, but our inability to adapt could prove disastrous.

But then, if the Democrats win Congress and force a pullout, Republicans can blame the end all on them ("if only we had stayed the course").

Maybe Rove does know what he's doing, and is simply throwing guys like Santorum under the bus.

[via Metafilter]

Do me a favor...

Count the number of times you listen to "Little Drummer Boy" this Christmas season. I'll think of some fantastic prize for legitimate answers. (My personal best was 47 times - 2005)

What - you didn't realize it was the Christmas season???

This should convince you.

Remember - it's not Thanksgiving. It's the Two-Minute Warning for shopping season.

Gee, thanks, Mr. President...

The USFR producer sent me a link to a story that seemed appropriate for John's World:

Channel 4 is to unveil a shocking menagerie of genetically modified animals in a new show revealing the frightening leaps technology has taken.

Among the bizarre engineered creatures from around the world is a giant cow, three times the size of ordinary cattle, reared without fat to produce gallons of milk. [More]

Hmmm... Aside from the overwrought prose, this whole article sounds like a PR plant. Let's parse this sucker out for any inadvertent truth.

• "...giant cow, three times the size of an ordinary cow..." The bovine in question is a Belgian Blue. While they are a large breed (cows at maturity average 1100 lbs.) they are not 3x. The average mature Holstein weighs in at about 1500 lbs, for example.

• "...reared without fat...." Well, duh. How much cholesterol in grass?
• "...produce gallons of milk..." This one made me blink. Why would a British paper talk in gallons instead of liters? Anyhoo, the average dairy cow in the US produces about 1600 lbs /month or a little over 50 lbs/day which means about 6 gallons using round numbers.
  

So to sum up, you oughta see this swell TV show in order to view a sorta large cow which eats grass and produces the usual amount of milk.

How did I find out all this stuff?

I used the Google on the Internets.

Farming is not so great in Britain, I guess...

Subsidy fans often cast envious eyes on the Common Agicultural Policy in the EU as the ultimate support mechanism for farmers.

Maybe not, at least for the subjects of this current British TV show: The Family Farm.

The end of IP?...

If the ethanol pot o' gold materializes (and Jerry Gulke's next TP column promises it) I wonder how specialty identity-preserved (IP) programs will fare.

F'rinstance, a 15¢ premium on $2.10 is noticeable. But if corn goes to $3.50 (almost there), why bother? Beans may not be all that different, either.

In fact, for profitablility the more crucial decision is - according to Ken Ferrie - hybrid selection.

Limiting your choices could cost a lot more than a 5% price boost. For me the hassle factor is the problem. Unless you have time to devote to the meticulous records, separate storage, scheduled deliveries, etc. the premium can't cover the effort. Being able to harvest rapidly, store anything in any bin, move it when I want to, and sell to multiple bidders add up to a significant opportunity cost to be weighed against simple premiums.

My guess is IP programs need to suck it up to compete with commodity growing - which just entered a whole new era. That means significantly higher premiums.

A blogger's dream...

A topic that is evergreen. In this case: global warming. A late comment yesterday on an older post about anthropogenic global warming just happened to coincide with more evidence which makes me glad I flip-flopped - er, rethought - my position.

"The Stern report exposes the bankruptcy of the arguments of President Bush and some in Congress and industry that taking action on global warming will hurt the economy," said Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. "In fact, just the opposite is true -- it's the refusal to take serious action that poses the true risk to our future economic prosperity." [More]

This is no lightweight piece of thinking here.

The debate over global warming has proceeded through predictable stages to date:

1. Arguing over whether global warming is happening - then,
2. Arguing over whether people contribute/cause it - then
3. Arguing over whether it's a bad thing or not - then
4. Arguing over whether fixing it is worth the cost

The pattern seems to be continual ground-giving by the skeptics - even if they are right.

OK, let's assume it is all a grand conspiracy by the Masons or the Opus Dei or pro wrestling (you did know that was fake, didn't you?). These evildoers are piggy-backing on a natural phenomenon or statistical blip to advance their loathesome agenda, like:

• even more research (which of course they will have to jigger for the right answer)
  
• energy conservation
• water conservation
• resource management
• population control (not crazy about this one)
  

My point is the aims of the enviro-radicals scare me less than the far right, whose goals seem to include (without options) institutionalizing war as a way of life ("as long as it takes"), acclimatizing citizens to the idea of torture as an effective way to get info, eroding personal lberties, ignoring the accumulation of wealth into a tiny number of hands, and suing over enviro-messes instead of avoiding them.

Even if the dwindling number of skeptics are right (and I dispute that) they broadcast self-righteously such an unattractive, mean-spirited and self-centered philosophy that they hold no appeal to this engineer.

Besides my bet is all farmers are going to become supporters if they are not already. After all, one big reason to mandate ethanol and another $150/A gross income for the Midwest is to combat global warming by using renewable fuels. And we are about to develop another lucrative side benefit: carbon sequestration credits.

Landowners who agree to maintain tracts of woodlands and grasslands are assigned "carbon credits" by the exchange based on plants' ability through photosynthesis to pull carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it in their tissue.

Those credits earn farmers income once exchange member corporations purchase them to offset their carbon dioxide emissions to meet voluntary reduction targets. [More]

The commenter said to "follow the money". It could also be that money is following the truth.

Update: Global warming could be caused by fat people.

Star Wars Lego Symphony

We need some deeply artsy stuff to class up this blog...

Ag on the ballot...

We won't just be selecting the lesser of two evils for a representative or (in the case of IL) governor, many of us will be voting on initiatives that will impact agriculture come next Tuesday.

Proposition 204 asks voters to consider whether it is acceptable to use a 2- by 7-foot stall to house a 400-pound pregnant pig that is, eventually, headed for slaughter. And to decide whether that practice should be banned in Arizona, as it has been in Florida, Britain and the rest of the European Union in recent years.

Beyond that, it asks consumers to look within an industry that both sides of the campaign say has changed so dramatically in recent decades it is almost unrecognizable from the nostalgic image of the family farm. [More]

Ah - the old "family farm". We'll be hearing more about that utopian paradigm soon, I think.

There are also some flamboyantly opportunistic property rights ballot measures.

There is a law on the ballot in four states that says if I want to open a hog farm or a chemical plant next door to your house and you don't want me to do that, then YOU have to PAY ME not to -- you have to pay me ALL THE MONEY I MIGHT HAVE MADE. [More]

The interesting point of this account is how the hog farm is the epitome of bad news - the worst thing that could happen. If "hog farm" has been elevated (or lowered) to the same status as "chemical plant" the future for modern hog production could be rocky. At the very least, some changes will be made in methodology, I bet.