What about an anvil?...

I don't really get this but apparently there are people walking among us who like to pile stuff on cats.


Now stuff on my hamster would be funny!

Early to bed, early to rise - it's in the genes?...

There are people whose body clocks are stuck in another time zone seemingly. They are pooped at 7 pm. and wide awake at 4 am. While I'm learning to manage the wide-awake part (I think I'm sleeping faster), these folks are simply wired differently. By studying them, scientists hope to unravel secrets of our internal timers.

The result, published in Cell¹, should have implications for those trying to manipulate the body-clock system, perhaps even with a simple pill. Such treatments could be used for many disorders, from serious sleep problems to simple jetlag. [More]

This may seem like a minor problem to devote research on, but it indicates to me how rich is the stream genetic research results. Which in turn adds to my confidence that corn researchers can increase the slope of the yield curve.

We're gonna need bigger trucks and even more bins, I bet.

Here we go...

Farmers are bidding up inputs, exactly as predicted by Pasour and Rucker in their obscure economic tome "Plowshares and Pork Barrels". One of the first indications is also one of the purest sentinels - machinery auctions.

I think of an auctioneer friend of mine, Dean Eastman from northeast Iowa. Dean had a very nice farm auction last Saturday. I dropped him an email wondering how things sold. His response back really caught my attention.

"My phone has rung nonstop for two weeks asking about machinery. They called the morning of the sale, during the sale, and the day after the sale. I'm still getting calls wondering what stuff sold for from people that couldn't make it to the sale. I feel we had a very good sale on Saturday! I do a low-high price estimate on everything when I have a sale with this many dollars. Low being a train wreck bad day, and high being almost a pie in the sky high price. We overshot the high number by 18%." [More]

Vigorous bidding at auctions will support new machinery prices as well. Already pretty lean on inventory, dealers have strong hand.

While many will wring their hands and lament our lack of control when bidding for combines or acres, history shows this instinct is not unreasonable.

Waiting too long to compete is.

"Did you get that in Egypt?" "No, that's Barney"...

Good ideas never really disappear, they just wait for full funding. And one idea that won't die (snicker) is mummification.

Whether it be the practice of an ancient civilization or the subject of examination by a modern day culture, Mummification has always been held in the highest esteem by society. It was common among early cultures, most notably for religious reasons. With the onset of the Dark Ages and the plagues, the art of Mummification began to diminish until finally, this form of care ceased. Looking back in time, it was a practice that extended around the world.

Still, we find ourselves attracted to the role Mummification has played throughout history and the significance it has carried throughout time. It touches something deep within our esoteric being. History shows us what great concern Mummification expressed in the final care of one of nature's most beautiful creations: the human being. [More]

When you are making out your final plans, you have more options than you may think. And you may want to try a test run on your old family pet.


You might want to start saving now, because currently mummification runs about $70,000 not including casket, vault, shipping & handling, airport taxes, activation fee, etc. It is not a simple process.

Me - I'm considering plastination.

I'll just be sitting at my computer, surfing away forever...

Freehand Circle Drawing Champion

I had a Calc III professor - Dr. Peter Palmer - who could draw spherical sections with the same uncanny accuracy.

Still you gotta admire somebodt who tells his wife "Honey, I'm going to the World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship in Vegas, OK?" and lives to tell the story.

[via Mentalfloss]

I thought our weather has been screwy...


Lightning, sunset, rainbow - what more could you ask?

[via Neatorama]

Who worships where...

The revival of religion has surprised many jaded world observers. But often we are not sure who's on first. Behold this handy map:

(Click to enlarge)

The most fascinating aspect of this article could be the predictions for future church membership. I had no idea of the powerful results of Pentecostal missions in Africa, for instance.

This ascent of Africa is due primarily to Christian missionaries. Pentecostal Protestants, who place greater emphasis on revivalism and ecstatic religious experience - like speaking in tongues - than on theology, have proved particularly successful. In South Korea and Latin America, Pentecostal Protestants have lured many millions of worshippers away from the Catholic Church, especially in Brazil. [More]

Anyhoo, as we tend to forget here in the USA there are a lot of people out there who believe much differently but equally strongly on matters of faith as we do.

But what will I do with all the money left over?...

Could we see $20 oil in the future? As improbable as it seems, some are predicting it:

But what about $20 per barrel oil by 2011? Oil analyst Peter Beutel of the energy consultancy Cameron Hanover thinks it could happen. Beutel told MSNBC:

"I believe we have that a lot more oil on this planet than people believe. And we are going to find it over the next few years."

Beutel thinks oil prices could fall as low as $20 a barrel in the next 4 to 8 years before beginning to rise again.

And why not? All other things being equal, higher prices encourage more exploration and more technical improvements which leads to more production. If Beutel's right, New York Times reporter John Tierney's $5,000 bet with peak oil alarmist Matthew Simmons is looking pretty good.

In times of great flux, pundits gamble on your memory issues and make all kinds of wild prognostications they can later point back to as prescience.

Then there are the oil analysts. At the beginning of last year most were still expecting the oil price to fall back. It didn’t. By the end of 2006 they had more or less given up and started forecasting long-term oil prices in the region of $70 to $100 a barrel. It should come as no surprise, then, that the oil price spent much of last week in freefall and is now hovering at about $55 — its lowest level since mid-2005. The result? Many analysts have flip-flopped and now predict oil at below $50 by the end of the year. [More]

Meanwhile, I'm retracting my prediction about Rex Grossman...

Refuting the Gospel of Helplessness...

I use the label for the apocalyptic philosophies so prevalent today but so short on evidence. The Gospel of Helplessness is also the undergirding of our farm policy - farmers are incapable of coping with reality or creating their own future. That aspect of the Gospel has now become agri-dogma.

The GOH also extends to matters environmental. It is not useful to merely attack the adherents as wrong-headed, some alternative vision should be offered. Here is an excellent view on humans and the environment and how we are creating a future very different from the GOH:

The logic for Reversal and Restoration is obvious and deep. Intelligent humanity made revolutions in productivity sweep all industries in the 20^th century. We now stamp out cars like tin ducks and microchips too. Unnoticed by many, revolutions in productivity also penetrated forestry and farming. Combined with more efficient production chains and changes in consumer taste, rising yields began to allow us to meet demand for food, fiber, and fuel while using less land: the Great Reversal. The enlarging forests and abandoned farms in the US and in many other nations show it.

Because cities will take a few hundred million hectares more land for the 10 billion people of 2070, we need the Reversal to spread to more nations and for it to extend into a Great Restoration. In the US, foresters may offer 70 million hectares for nature and farmers that much or more. The net effect should be to allow a restoration of nature on land in the US exceeding the size of 100 Yellowstone National Parks or twice the area of Spain. Regional and national case studies could build a global picture. Reflecting the diffusion of productivity through industries around the world, the Great Reversal will surely happen at different times in different places and with different potential. Setting goals, such as a 300 million hectare or 10% expansion of the world's forest area by 2070, may help.

Accomplishing the Great Restoration is the work of the 21st century for foresters, farmers, scientists, engineers, and all the other participants in the wood and food businesses. While avoiding the dangers of intensive cultivation, wise humanity can lift average yields toward the present limits and lift the limits even more. By sparing cropland, we can also spare water and nitrogen.

Malthusians are simply wrong. And for all the hatred extended to it by its beneficiaries technology continues to solve problems, increase productivity and improve lives - even correcting its own errors along the way.

And if we don't, I think life on Earth will find a way to adjust to that failure as well.

If you want a more bucolic version of the ecological future, consult a paleontologist. The paleontologists look further into the future to a time when the great evolutionary opportunities are not agricultural habitats, but are, instead, vast forests—to a time when the seas are again filled with large species—to a time when new large vertebrates roam new kinds of plains. They look forward in time to a world more interesting to us than our present evolutionary future. The paleontologists can do all this because they begin their discussions of future evolution with the statement, "once humans go extinct." [More]

Is it me or does he remind you of Sulu?...

We Trekies have infiltrated the highest levels of government.

Bwaa-haa-haaa!

Who's laughing at the nerds now, huh?

Not unimportantly, it demonstrates Putnam's academic integrity...

I have been a big fan of Robert Putnam's bestselling book Bowling Alone. In it the Harvard sociologist painstakingly measures our social capital by tracking such things as voter registration, church attendance, and bowling leagues (hence the title), among other social institutions.

His conclusions and predictions were well-thought out and match up with my real-world observations.

Thus is was with some shock I read about his latest research results concerning diversity:

In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us. [More of an important and well-written article]

Putnam has been widely cited by liberal critics of our social and economic institutions. His opinions on diversity will doubtless confuse and anger many, and affect the outcome of many debates, notably immigration.

Still his analysis may not be as damning as it first seems - it may simply frame the questions more clearly.

Even if there were a stark choice between diversity and social solidarity, it is not clear that the latter would be better. In 1856 Walter Bagehot, deprived of the diversity which the past century and a half has brought, railed against his tight-knit society, which he thought stifled excitement and innovative thinking. “You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius,” he wrote, “but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbour.” [More]

Regardless, as long as as much freedom as possible is reserved for individuals, I'm pretty sure we can make life work.

It is interesting to speculate how this reluctant conclusion by Putnam might have helped quell the outrage Tom Dorr's USDA nomination hearing. His infamous remarks:

"I know this is not at all the correct environment to say this, but I think you ought to perhaps go out and look at what you perceive [are] the three most successful rural economic environments in this state. ..... And you'll notice when you get to looking at them, that they're not particularly diverse, at least not ethnically diverse. They're very diverse in their economic growth, but they have been very focused, have been very non-diverse in their ethnic background and their religious background, and there's something there obviously that has enabled them to succeed and to succeed very well."

Of course, even setting aside his frank (and possibly now accurate) views on diversity, Dorr packed too much baggage for that trip.

(Crimony, Tom, you can't talk libertarian and game the FSA! Sheesh...)

Where little green men really came from...

A really disappointing explanation of how this phrase entered popular usage.

About an hour after Taylor reported his “flying saucer” sighting, a barking dog attracted him and “Lucky” Sutton outside. Spotting a creature, they darted into the house for a .22 rifle and shotgun, thus beginning a series of encounters that spanned the next three hours. Sometimes, the men fired at a scary face that appeared at a window; sometimes, they went outside, whereupon, on one occasion, Taylor’s hair was grabbed by a huge, clawlike hand. Once, the pair shot at a little creature that was on the roof and at another “in a nearby tree” that then “floated” to the ground. Either the creatures were impervious to gun blasts or the men’s aim was poor, since no creature was killed.

Luckily, aliens are apparently trying to land at O'Hare now.

Good luck with that! They may get in, but they'll never take off again.

Save your fingers...

Should have mentioned this on the earlier post about how I write this blog. Some of my abbreviations:

BTW - by the way
IMHO - in my humble opinion
LOL - laughing out loud
SWMBO - she who must be obeyed
OTOH -on the other hand
DAMHIKT -don't ask me how I know this

more here. Or search for acronyms/abbreviations here.

Pillar fight!...

I have long maintained - somewhat humorously, somewhat cynically - that the Four Pillars of American Farm Policy were:

1. The cotton program
2. The NE Dairy Compact
3. The Iowa caucuses
   
4. The Senate debate rules

My contention was that if these powerful institutions were to collapse, farm policy as we know it might finally change.

Well, let's do an update.

• The cotton program: Let's see, the WTO has ruled it unsportsmanlike conduct, the cost per farmer has raised all kinds of eyebrows, and cotton farmers are voting with their planters on their predictions for this venerable program. In addition, it doesn't have any conservation or energy glamor. Pillar Strength: 45% .
• The NE Dairy Compact: I have no idea what this was about. All I know is whole bunches of politicians of every political faction from very populous states supported it. It expired in 2001. Pillar Strength: 0%
• The Iowa primary: Iowa residents take very seriously the job of selecting the candidates for president by flocking to caucuses in January. Unfortunately, that is not their unique Constitutional duty. The "momentum" theory of the modern nomination process and examples like the "Dean Scream" exaggerated the importance both of Iowa voters and farm issues. The best explanation of this phenomenon in my opinion was a series of episodes on "West Wing" and dealt with how candidates are forced to take positions they would avoid otherwise to prevent being blown out in the IA voting. This emphasis is being challenged by candidates choosing to skip the caucuses and by other states moving their primaries earlier. Pillar Strength: 40% but dropping fast.
• Senate debate rules: These gentlemanly rules came close to being altered by the Republican majority during heated judicial appointment squabbles. Although they went to the brink, maybe Majority Leader Frist had a prophetic vision about losing the Senate last fall. Pillar Strength: 100%

Bottom line: Farm program structural integrity I measure at about 51.3% (margin of error +/- 82%). It could go either way, but we haven't seen conditions this conducive for change ever before.

That other war isn't going well either...

The incredibly expensive and questionably effective "War On Drugs" hasn't offered much good press lately. Now we find out one of the casualties is US asparagus:

The [U.S. asparagus] industry has been decimated by a U.S. drug policy designed to encourage Peruvian coca-leaf growers to switch to asparagus. Passed in 1990 and since renewed, the Andean Trade Preferences and Drugs Eradication Act permits certain products from Peru and Colombia, including asparagus, to be imported to the United States tariff-free....

Meanwhile, the Washington [state] industry is a shadow of its former self. Acreage has been cut by 71 percent to just 9,000 acres. [More]

Hey - this could become a trade negotiating tactic for poor countries. Start growing coca (or pot, hash, opium, etc.) and then negotiate to stop in exchange for open trade for stuff you are very competitive with. I could see it happening with cotton, for example. I think the horror of drugs would outweigh the love of farmers in a heartbeat. Who needs a WTO? This outcome also illustrates the peril of basing your business plan on government manipulation of the market.

Of course, on the bright side of the war failure, the most valuable US crop is now marijuana. Unfortunately, this growing agricultural success cannot be taxed or generate jobs legally, thus allowing the wealth to flow underground to support the wrong people.

Jon Gettman, the report's author, is a public policy consultant and leading proponent of the push to drop marijuana from the federal list of hard-core Schedule 1 drugs — which are deemed to have no medicinal value and a high likelihood of abuse — such as heroin and LSD.

He argues that the data support his push to begin treating cannabis like tobacco and alcohol by legalizing and reaping a tax windfall from it, while controlling production and distribution to better restrict use by teenagers.

"Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they're not getting rid of it," Gettman said. "Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement."

I know, I know - to solve this problem we should spend even more billions and send in more enforcers.

Wait, I've heard that somewhere else...

Works for me...

I've killed time in enough airports to consider using a micro-hotel like this:



These are similar to "capsule hotels" in Japan - which cross the line of claustrophobia for many, but just being able to have some privacy on a long trip would be great. Having them in the terminals is the best part, IMHO.

Beef - it's what's in the cross hairs...

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry. For example, consider this headline from Green Business News:

Miliband muses on farm farts ban

and this excerpt:

While it is unlikely that this will result in a "fart-tax" with civil servants chasing cows round with breathalyzer style methane measurers, Miliband did argue that farmers should act to reduce methane emissions by feeding cattle different food, breeding them to live longer, altering the handling of manure and getting farms to generate "biogas" or "biofertiliser" from animal waste.

Extending the polluter pays principle to farming would likely lead to higher food prices, but Miliband insisted that climate change could provide an opportunity for farmers, as it has done in other sectors. [More]

[My emphasis]

No, this is not some sophomoric humor rag, but a serious report on a speech in the UK. After we pause for rude jokes, I'll point out what did trigger some speculation on my part.

The "polluter pays" principle is popping up more often in environmental discussions. I'm not sure I disagree. It is a straightforward way to get the cost of externalities included in the price of consumer goods.

Oddly, the polluter-pays principle is accepted by both sides of the environmental issue. The right seeks to define it in terms of private property:

A correct interpretation of the polluter pays principle would detine pollution as any byproduct of a
production or consumption process that harms or otherwise violates the property rights of others. The
polluter would be the person, company, or other organization whose activities are generating that byproduct. And finally, payment should equal the damage and be made to the person or persons being
harmed.
Inanimate objects and the environment do not incur costs, people: do. It is not merely the physical
property that is being damaged, but the interests of the owner. However, most advocates of PPP rarely
talk about harm to people. Instead, they misappropriate the economic theory by redetining the concepts
of cost and damage to apply to things rather than to people. The statement above is typical. Polluters
are said to be those who “damage” or impose “costs” on the environment. [More]

The more familiar version of this axiom accords more rights to the the physical world itself. That is where it gets tricky. As long as my actions on my property do no measurable harm to anyone else, am I polluting? Can I cut down all the trees and re-shape the land to suit?

Strong property rights advocates have held this position for some time, but technology is catching up with them. Just as with the "cow-emissions" stories, we are now able to measure many more forms of "pollution" than before. And doubtless, attorneys are working to use those measurements to demonstrate downstream "harm" that would make recovery of damages legitimate - and the effort billable.

So like many private property defenders, I'm thinking this is a good time to begin negotiations before all the effects of my activities can be traced clearly back to me. (At a visit Tuesday at the EPA, I learned of efforts to use bacteria-tracing to see whose animal doodoo is in the creek). For environmentalists, accommodation is not such a bad idea either, as we have now had enough examples of polluters simply committing corporate suicide (bankruptcy) when challenged adversarially.

But back to the cows. As global warming unmistakably gathers momentum, I expect some of these now-silly ideas to be translated into costs for cattlemen. Either manure digesters or feedlot size limits or feed restrictions - the possibilities are significant.

Now add in feed cost increases due to an escalating market demand for corn. (We are finding out DDG's are not the simple substitute for corn, BTW). Corn farmers could be the unwitting tools of animal activists who want to decrease meat consumption. Some health advocates would likely be smiling as beef prices especially escalate beyond frequent consumption range from most budgets.

So do I think the beef industry is doomed? Oddly, I believe, not here in the US. Beef prices (retail) will rise, and consumption may stagnate, but our beef industry could still emerge strong if it is the best global competitor for the beef consumer dollar. Other producers/packers will have to battle our scale, efficiency and brand power to maintain market share.

Still corn producer's fickle abandonment of their long-time #1 customer - the cow - is short-sighted. The problem is serious for poultry and hogs, but the feed-conversion ratios suggest that beef could be the hardest hit.

On top of all that, factor the loss of grazing ground from conversion of CRP acres. Although that risk may be overstated.

It may not be Marlboros that kill the cowboy - it could be corn farmers.

Monty Python sufaces in Iraq...

From the Aussies - insurgents get attitude.

[via Neatorama]

That was fast...

Moments after we have laid socialism-slayer Milton Friedman to rest, this durable old economic philosophy popped up twice in a weird coincidence.

1. Hugo Chavez, the wildly popular leader of Venezuela, executed an even harder left turn and started nationalizing key sectors of his economy. His example is rippling across South America as a repudiation of capitalists' naive presumption that showing poor people data tables and charts about how they are better off than they would be even with a tiny few becoming obscenely rich. Look, I agree the arithmetic is correct, but the marketing is not working. A vastly scaled down version of this revolt on inequality could be building here.
2. Even weirder, while in Washington DC yesterday I was walking by Union Station about 5:30 PM. when I heard a choir of really good voices singing in a plaza. This choir director could not resist and I stood transfixed for several minutes as a group of about 25 young people made some gorgeous music in open air - always a tough venue. The punch line: They were part of the Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement. [I thought that dude was in jail, actually] An earnest young disciple approached me with the inevitable literature, and "engaged me in dialogue" I listened patiently - I had accepted the free concert - and tried to leave by telling him I was simply a choir director who loved good choral music, and I complimented (sincerely) the singers. He began to walk with me explaining how a choir was a good way to show the power of their socialist ideas. I stopped and looked him in the eye and said, "Look - a good socialist choir is a wonderful thing. The real trick is to form good libertarian choir." He turned and left me.

If socialism is making a modest comeback, one reason could be the immodesty of those who have lifted the world economy to unparalleled prosperity. There is considerable debate today about whether income inequality is increasing, but general agreement that it exists and is widely publicized to promote consumer spending (Here's what rich people buy!). There may be nothing academically wrong with wild disparity of incomes and assets, but jeez - it sure irritates the have-nots.

Wait - don't we count Venezuela as a "safe" place to source oil?

Draw your own conclusion...

Make note of your reaction to this clip of Honda's Asimo robot "running". Also notice (and if you desire, add to) the comments section on YouTube. I found the demonstration fascinating and mildly unsettling. We are farther along this path that I ever imagined.