Maybe there are more of us...

Than I thought.  The idea of a different health care system is not all that unpalatable to many CEO's.

Plenty of CEOs continue to support the status quo, of course, despite the drawbacks. "A lot of businesses take the approach that 'this is a lousy system, but we're good at it,' " says Joseph J. Minarik, research director for the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington think tank. "I interpret this as, 'I've got the best stateroom on the Titanic, and I'm not moving.' "

Democratic senators are calling for a new, federally funded insurer that would expand coverage by competing with private health insurers. Although insurance companies hate the idea, opposition from other businesses has been muted, even though this "public option" is characterized by Republican lawmakers as the first step toward a government-run system. "CEOs are focused on the bottom line," says Len Nichols, director of health policy at the New America Foundation, another think tank. "They know high health-care costs put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage."

James Hagedorn, CEO of Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG), describes himself as a conservative. Nevertheless, he sees much to like in the national health systems of Europe. "If someone said to me, 'you can pay the same amount [for health care] and we will redeploy to a national system,' I'm fine," he says. "Why would I argue with that?" [More]

This attitude could gain even more momentum as health insurance premiums zoom upwards.  Have you gotten your bill this year? 

Ours was up 18%.

The sole of an artist...

Finally a pedestrian approach to classic art that I can embrace:

In this contest, you are asked to update an old painting, swapping in a cartoon character for the original subject. Use traditional, two-dimensional characters only: No Computer Generated Characters (Incredibles, Shrek, etc.) [More]

My favorites:

 

[N.B.  This website is great to visit to remind yourself why you can't believe your lyin' eyes anymore.]


[via sullivan]

Sometimes Advil's not enough...

As someone who has tried vigorously to make it all the way through "A Brief History of Time" on several occasions, and has little understanding to show for it, the new ideas floating around quantum physics don't seem to fit into my skull.

Quantum physics is the study of the very small -- atoms, photons and other particles. Unlike the cause-and-effect of our everyday physical world, subatomic particles defy common sense and behave in wacky ways. That includes the fact that a photon, which is a particle of light, exists in a haze of multiple behaviors. They spin in many ways, such as "up" or "down," at the same time. Even trickier, it's only when you take a peek -- by measuring it -- that the photon fixes into a particular state of spin.
Stranger still is entanglement. When two photons get "entangled" they behave like a joint entity. Even when they're miles apart, if the spin of one particle is changed, the spin of the other instantly changes, too. This direct influence of one object on another distant one is called non-locality.
...


Last year, Dr. Gisin and colleagues at Geneva University described how they had entangled a pair of photons in their lab. They then fired them, along fiber-optic cables of exactly equal length, to two Swiss villages some 11 miles apart.
During the journey, when one photon switched to a slightly higher energy level, its twin instantly switched to a slightly lower one. But the sum of the energies stayed constant, proving that the photons remained entangled.
More important, the team couldn't detect any time difference in the changes. "If there was any communication, it would have to have been at least 10,000 times the speed of light," says Dr. Gisin. "Because this is such an unlikely speed, the conclusion is there couldn't have been communication and so there is non-locality." [More]

Say what?

 Which leads me to situations like this:



Pass the medicinal gin, please.

Peddling socialism from the right...

The election of President Obama has triggered a standard response by opponents to practically every idea coming from the White House: Socialism!

I disagree with the overuse of this label, seeing our political situation as constantly moving between extremes that favor the individual and those that favor society.  We are constantly rebalancing the allocation of rights to wealth, income, personal actions, government protection and aid, etc.

But if we are sliding down a slippery slope to profound socialism (which I strongly dispute) we seem to be getting a few things done along the way.  

Consider the Eternal EU Beef Dispute.

The arrangement is designed to allow U.S. beef producers to benefit economically more directly than they would from tariffs on EU goods. Obama administration officials said they simply decided to table the long-running hormone dispute in exchange for an enlarged EU market for hormone-free U.S. beef. An official at the U.S. Trade Representative's office said it was too early to say if the administration would seek to revive the dispute later.
"We still believe that the EU's hormones ban is not scientifically justified," said USTR spokeswoman Nefeterius McPherson. "However, for the past 20 years, our beef industry has been virtually shut out of the European market. We therefore decided to set aside our differences, for the time being."
The deal must still be approved by officials from EU countries.
"This does not resolve the [World Trade Organization] case. It pushes it down the road for four years, with a sweetener for the U.S. beef industry," said Timothy Josling, professor emeritus at Stanford University's Food Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif.
"We call this a first step," said Gregg Doud, chief economist of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which wants the administration to keep pushing the EU to drop the ban on hormone-treated beef. [More]

While it's hard to see any hint of socialism in that plug-ugly compromise, I'm pretty sure someone will make a abstruse linkage, if only to an overall Master Plan. However, even critics must admit something got done (which is a startling change in itself).  I believe the American beef industry is marginally better off because of it. A baby step? Sure. But a step, nonetheless.

Moreover, the more overt threat of "socialized" medicine - which, as best I can tell, is what people who currently have good insurance coverage automatically call efforts to help everyone get coverage - is also causing some rethinking by the health insurance industry.

Here's what's putting the fear of God in them:

Senators are considering three different designs for a new government health-insurance plan that middle-income Americans could buy into for the first time, congressional officials said Friday.

Officials familiar with the proposals said senators plan to debate them in a closed meeting next week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the controversial plans have not been released.

Creating a public plan is one of the most contentious ideas in the debate over how to overhaul the nation's health-care system to cover the uninsured and try to restrain costs. [More]

And behold, the threat seems to be working:

In effect, insurers said they were willing to discard an element of their longstanding business model, under which insurance policies are priced, in part, on the basis of a person’s medical condition or history.
In the past, insurers have warned that if they could not consider a person’s health in setting premiums, the rates charged to young, healthy people would soar, making coverage unaffordable.
But Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a major trade group, told lawmakers on Tuesday that insurers were exploring ideas to prevent such increases by spreading the risks and costs across a larger population of both healthy and unhealthy people.

Insurers said that they could accept more aggressive regulation of not just their premiums but also their benefits, underwriting practices and other activities. Such strict regulation, they said, would make a new public program unnecessary. [More]

and this surprising offer as well:

The health insurance industry offered yesterday to end its practice of charging higher premiums to women if all Americans are required to get coverage, its latest concession as it tries to head off creation of a government insurance plan that would directly compete with private insurers.

Health insurers have offered to submit to a series of restrictions they contend would add up to a fairer marketplace and cut into the ranks of the 50 million uninsured. Last year, insurers offered to end the practice of denying coverage to sick people, and earlier this year they went still farther by offering to stop charging sick people more. [More]

Now humor me for a minute.  If we end up with some admittedly bastardized (which is what our political process specializes in) health insurance system which essentially gets some minimal health insurance coverage to all of us, and weakens the shackles between your job and your access to health care, would most Americans really care which political label it best fit under?

This risk inherent in labeling everything the Obama administration does as socialism is perhaps larger than critics think.  What if the efforts succeed - evenly partially?  It is not impossible that more Americans will look at such effective policies that are actually far more pragmatic (like the beef agreement) than socialist and say, "Whoa - if this is socialism, sign me up."

This would be an outcome I would find ominous.  By crying "socialist-wolf" every twenty minutes, the power of the word to instill fear is diluted, I think.  It is already about to jump the shark for younger folks.

 A somewhat surprising poll was just released showing that only 53% of Americans “believe capitalism is better than socialism.” Amongst the under-thirty set, the two enjoy almost equal support, 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided.

Despite this striking number, however, I’m disinclined to think that the Workers World Party will pick up any seats in Congress anytime soon.  Had the question been phrased “do you support nationalizing the means of production and requiring government to distribute the spoils of labor?” I doubt that actual socialism would have fared particularly well.

Rather, I see this poll as even more evidence of how widespread the American people’s rejection of conservative values has become.  Ever since Sarah Palin ceased to be an attractive-but-unknown face from Alaska, conservatives have railed against any attempt to use government spending to mitigate the present economic downturn, labeling it “Socialism!”  The alternative, they say, is to double-down on George W. Bush’s policies, cut taxes on the super-rich, and rely on the invisible hand of the market to make everything all better again.

In other words, the American people have been subjected to a months-long campaign which defines President Obama’s popular policies to improve the economy as “socialism,” and George W. Bush’s disastrous policies as “not socialism.”  Is it any shock, then, that many Americans no longer find the word “socialism” very scary? [More]

Why not judiciously save that warning accusation for programs and policies have demonstrably put the control of industries and individuals in the hands of government officials?

Like the farm program, for example.

So there I was...

Listening to choir music from a "sampler" CD sent me by the music publisher.  It was right before Christmas, so I was trying to select some Easter music.  (Being a choir director messes with your seasons)

Anyhoo, right in the middle of a beautiful Holy Week cantata, sung by a choir full of to-die-for voices you never actually find in a choir, one of the narrators told the story of the arrest of Jesus.

She got to the part (Matt 26:51) about one of the disciples cutting off the ear of a servant with a sword...and she very earnestly pronounced the "w".   I replayed it several times to make sure I heard it right. 

Somehow I could never listen to that passage of Scripture with a straight face again.  Your mind is weird that way.

Sword: weapon of offense and defense in personal combat, consisting of a blade with a sharp point and one or two cutting edges, set in a hilt with a handle protected by a metal case or cross guard. The sword may have developed from the dagger at the beginning of the Bronze Age. It was not, however, until the more durable iron sword was introduced in the early Iron Age that the sword became an effective weapon. Greek and Roman swords were very short, with pointed ends, and had two cutting edges. Medieval knights used two types of swords: a short sword with a pointed end that was used with one hand and a heavy two-handed sword with a rounded end. During the Middle Ages the best blades were those made by the Arabs in Damascus and Toledo. Swords were widely used in the Middle East and E Asia as well as in Europe. The scimitar, used by the Persians and Arabs, is a curved steel sword. One of the best known of the East Asian swords is the Japanese samurai sword, consisting of a curved single-edged tempered steel blade set in a long handle. As a highly personal weapon the sword attained symbolic importance; surrendering one's sword became a token of submission, and the custom of taking an officer's sword away from him and breaking the blade when he was dismissed from the service in disgrace arose because a sword is the mark of an officer and a gentleman. During the Crusades and later, the sword, because of its shape, frequently was used to symbolize the Cross. The sword is now obsolete as a weapon and is carried in some military units for decorative purposes in times of peace. Special types of swords are the rapier, the épée, and the saber.

[More stuff you may not have known about swords.]

Microsoft tries again...

And maybe misses again.

We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user. [More]

According to friends still using Vista, it is better than when I dropped out of the Window pain [heh].   But this is not promising for MS.

I can just see the commercials.

So few...

That's how many farms are at risk from the imagined horrors of estate taxation.  I have heard from several "death tax" opponents who allude to sorry tales and anecdotal data about farms being auctioned off to pay onerous estate taxes.

Some responses:

• Show me the numbers.

Here are mine:

 

[Click to enlarge]

This is IRS data courtesy of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Note that in 2009, some 2,500,000 Americans will die; about 16,000 will need to file estate tax returns, and a little over 6000 will pay some estate taxes.  Of them, farmers and small businessmen will number about 100.  

You read that right - we're screaming about fewer than several dozen estates.  One commenter pointed out that if farms were really big, they were lumped in with other "big businesses".  That is incorrect.  Farms file special estate tax return forms that identify farm assets.  So we know this:

• Farms are not going to auction to pay estate taxes.  Period.

There is no evidence that the tiny number of small farms and business estates that owe any estate tax face liquidity constraints.

Proponents of repealing or eviscerating the estate tax often claim that it causes small businesses and farms to be liquidated.  This claim is groundless.

• Opponents of the estate tax have not been able to produce a single case in which a family farm had to be sold to pay the tax.  In 2001, the American Farm Bureau Federation acknowledged to the New York Times that it could not cite a single example of a farm having to be sold to pay estate taxes, and this was before the estate tax exemption level was more than tripled and the top rate was reduced.[7]

• Furthermore, a Congressional Budget Office study of the estate tax exploded the myth that small businesses and farms have to be liquidated to pay the tax.  CBO found that of the very few farms estates that would owe any tax under the 2009 parameters, all but a handful would have sufficient liquid assets on hand (such as bank accounts, stocks, and bonds) to pay the tax without having to touch the farm or business.[8]

• CBO further noted that it may have overestimated the number of small businesses and farm estates with any seeming liquidity constraints, because CBO was unable to include certain assets held in trusts — such as life insurance trusts — in calculating the liquid assets available to estates to help pay the tax.[9]  And, those few small businesses and farm estates that might conceivably face a liquidity problem would have other options available to them — such as spreading their estate tax payments over a 14-year period — that would allow them to pay the tax without having to sell off any of the business or farm assets. (See box on page 4 below) [More]

To be fair, farmers are employing estate tax reduction strategies to make this number low.  Perhaps many farmers resent having to hire attorneys and accountants to transfer their wealth after they die. To begin with, maybe distributing much of it beforehand isn't a bad idea. I also think the value of the basis step-up more than compensates for this inconvenience, and the loss of $15B in tax revenue that farmers are not paying makes this a dead issue for me.

Our energy ignorance...

The more we know, the less we use.  I suppose it's like actually seeing sausage get made.  Anyhoo, efforts to provide real-time "scoreboarding" of home energy use are advancing rapidly and guess who is right in the middle of it?

The behavioral sociology of measuring energy usage is simple: the more you know about how much energy you’re using, the less you use. Just getting the information cuts most people’s energy usage by somewhere between 5% and 15%, while people with high electricity bills (like me) find it much easier to isolate exactly what is causing those bills and can then work out how best to reduce them through upgrading appliances or replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs or any number of other routes to energy efficiency.

The problem is in the measurement. There is a natty gadget known as the Wattson which measures home energy use, but it’s expensive, and almost impossible to find outside the UK, for some reason.

Enter Google, which has now announced plans to release free PowerMeter software which will map any individual’s energy use on their phone, home computer, or iGoogle homepage. The little gizmo which plugs in to your fusebox is going to be very cheap, and with any luck will somehow be available for free to anybody who might have difficulty paying for it. (This is part of Google’s philanthropic google.org arm, after all.) [More]

An example output is below.

I think this is the beginning of energy cost awareness and consumption pattern changes, especially for electricity.  This is because electricity is derived largely from coal, especially in the Corn Belt. The change will be triggered by emission regulation, about which the farm media had not been very illuminating, IMHO.

The popular assumption is farmers should push for cap-and-trade, and then lobby for exemptions, ending net winners.  In fact, the idea we will take a serious economic hit (unless we find ways to lower our own energy consumption) strikes many as too onerous, even as everyone else pays and cuts back more.  Remember, the object of all emissions controls is to lower the amount our emissions, right?  That won't happen without the type of pain $4+ gas exerted to change our gasoline consumption and car-buying habits.

Still, much of farm country is in for a rude shock, as we expect to be held harmless and able to keep on keepin' on. One hint of this is the closing line in Dan Looker's column in the latest SF [sorry - not online yet].  He quotes former NCGA president Fred Yoder as saying, "We really need an opportunity to be compensated for reducing our carbon footprint."

Umm, good luck with that idea, Fred.  Considering the rest of the country will be essentially taxed or "quota-bound" to force emissions reductions, the idea farmers should get paid when everyone else is paying through the nose is an astonishing assertion of privilege.  It also ignores the considerable amount of GHG's agriculture contributes.

Agricultural lands occupy 37% of the Earth’s land surface. Agriculture accounts for 52% and 84% of global anthropogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Agricultural soils may also act as a sink or source for carbon dioxide (CO₂), but the net flux is small. Many agricultural practices can potentially mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the most prominent of which are improved cropland and grazing land management and restoration of degraded lands and cultivated organic soils. Lower, but still significant mitigation potential is provided by water and rice management, set-aside, land use change and agroforestry, livestock management and manure management. [More]

I think this attitude arises from serious skepticism about global warming, and hence we seem to have staked out a position of "We don't believe in this nonsense, but we're willing to humor you if you pay us, fools."

Ag's understanding of the two mechanisms is also to blame. A carbon tax we can grasp, and like most legislators we promptly drop the idea.  Cap-and-trade seems pretty harmless in comparison.  Until the effects become apparent, which won't take long.  Most economists see the actual everyday results looking remarkably similar, only with an enormous and inefficient bureaucracy in the case of C & T.  In other words, all the pleasure of an energy tax with huge transaction costs and opportunities for corruption to boot.

Under a cap-and-trade program, the government will set the overall emissions cap and issue allowances or credits to businesses to pollute at a set amount. A company that reduces its emissions quickly and cheaply can auction their extra credits to another that, because of the nature of its business or available technology, may find it more difficult to comply with the caps.

This market-based approach helps ensure that overall caps are met at the lowest possible cost. Cap-and-trade has been modeled after the U.S. effort to control acid rain pollution, which saw greater reductions at lower costs than originally anticipated.

Under a carbon tax, such as that proposed by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), emitters are required to pay a tax for every ton of pollution they produce. Carbon taxes lend predictability to energy prices, according to supporters, who claim that cap-and-trade systems will simply aggravate price volatility and adversely affect consistent investments in less carbon-intensive electricity generation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

But, argue cap-and-trade supporters, such a system also provides certainty: it fixes the ceiling on emissions (stepping it down over time) and lets the price vary with demand.

Despite rhetoric on both sides, neither system is really more complex than the other, as each requires often difficult monitoring and enforcement.  [More]

Bear in mind the big argument in Washington is what to do with the billions in revenue.  Take a hint - this won't be painless.

Feel free to make long term plans based on your idea of the outcome, but I think a  safer one will be to assume electricity at about 20¢/kwh, diesel at $4-5, and propane over $3.  Fertilizer will be through the roof, especially N sources, due to production energy consumption, transportation, and the penalties for NO compounds being released.

And keep in kind, that stalling legislation is Congress simply lobs the issue into the EPA's jurisdiction.  Stonewalling is not the answer.

I am not absolutely, totally discounting the ability of the farm lobby to get me excused from this effort to reduce GHG's, but on the odd chance we don't get everything we want, I better have a plan B.

[I'll try to post more about what various legislative efforts could look like on your bottom line as soon as the fog lifts (and I get some planting done).]

I think I still believe...

In the dreams of these space colonies.

 

  

  

[More]

Two things of note in these idealizations.

1. The belief in the rightness of going into space was commonly held.  While there were skeptics, the idea of colonizing in space was not yet seen as ridiculously beyond our capacity.
2. The Apollonian view of agriculture (orderly, disciplined) is apparent.  The scenes look like northern Europe or Yorkshire, not Nebraska or Indonesia.  This powerful vision of what the "country" should look like remains in most minds today, I believe.

Truly, I was motivated by images like these to study engineering.  Engineers were the guys who supplied the technology to put dreams into reality.  

Even now, as I view these fantasies, I have no regrets in aiming for a future suggested in these visions.

Score another one for the Internet...

E-bay and free markets have reduced trafficking in ancient artifacts looted from illegal digs.

Back in the pre-eBay days, the cost of acquiring and selling an antiquity was high. The actual looter was usually paid little, but various middlemen down the line added huge costs. During my 25 years of working in the Andes, I have often seen this dynamic at work. In years past, transporting an object was a big expense, even for portable artifacts, and the potential for arrest added to the total cost of doing business. In addition, the expense of authentication, conservation, and occasional restoration of the pieces, made buying and selling quality antiquities a wealthy person's vice.

Our greatest fear was that the Internet would democratize antiquities trafficking and lead to widespread looting. This seemed a logical outcome of a system in which anyone could open up an eBay site and sell artifacts dug up by locals anywhere in the world. We feared that an unorganized but massive looting campaign was about to begin, with everything from potsherds to pieces of the Great Wall on the auction block for a few dollars. But a very curious thing has happened. It appears that electronic buying and selling has actually hurt the antiquities trade.

How is it possible? The short answer is that many of the primary "producers" of the objects have shifted from looting sites to faking antiquities. I've been tracking eBay antiquities for years now, and from what I can tell, this shift began around 2000, about five years after eBay was established. It is true that fakes have been around for centuries. In 1886, the celebrated Smithsonian archaeologist W. H. Holmes described countless bogus antiquities in Mexico. A few decades later, Egyptologist T. G. Wakeling noted that many ancient Egyptian artifacts were, in fact, fakes. In the 19th century, American and European museums purchased large numbers of "Etruscan" ceramic vessels and sarcophagi that came straight from the kilns of rural Italian farmers. But these were usually the really good fakes, labor-intensive pieces that required lots of work and skill. Today, every grade and kind of antiquity is being mass-produced and sold in quantities too large to imagine.

In the pre-Internet days, no one thought that so many people would be willing to put down good money for a low-end piece of tourist art. People who used to make a few dollars selling a looted artifact to a middleman in their village can now produce their own "almost-as-good-as-old" objects and go directly to a person in a nearby town who has an eBay vendor account. They will receive the same amount or even more than they could have received for actual antiquities. I have visited a number of these workshops in Peru and Bolivia. Using local materials and drawing on their cultural knowledge, small manufacturers can produce pieces that are, in some cases, remarkably accurate reproductions of actual artifacts. The really smart ones do not reproduce pieces at all but create an ever-so-slightly modified version of real artifacts that have the look and feel of an authentic ancient object. Perhaps the ultimate achievement is the work of the famous Brigido Lara, who created tens of thousands of fakes in the 1950s and '60s, practically creating his own "ancient" culture in Veracruz, Mexico, in the process.

The economics of these transactions are quite simple. Because the eBay phenomenon has substantially reduced total costs by eliminating middlemen, brick-and-mortar stores, high-priced dealers, and other marginal expenses, the local eBayers and craftsmen can make more money cranking out cheap fakes than they can by spending days or weeks digging around looking for the real thing. It is true that many former and potential looters lack the skills to make their own artifacts. But the value of their illicit digging decreases every time someone buys a "genuine" Moche pot for $35, plus shipping and handling. In other words, because the low-end antiquities market has been flooded with fakes that people buy for a fraction of what a genuine object would cost, the value of the real artifacts has gone down as well, making old-fashioned looting less lucrative. The value of real antiquities is also impacted by the increased risk that the object for sale is a fake. The likelihood of reselling an authentic artifact for more money is diminished each year as more fakes are produced.

Another economic factor--risk of arrest--is also removed by eBay fakes, since you can't be arrested for importing forgeries. Should you import what you think is an illegal antiquity but it turns out to be a fake, you run little risk of prosecution. The risk from lawsuits or criminal charges is effectively removed from the sale of antiquities when they are not really antiquities, a fact that reduces the cost and risk to both buyer and seller. [More]

So the next time you get a chance to bid on the Ark of the Covenant, think twice.

Seriously, suddenly skilled artisans in far-flung villages have a market as big as the world, and fewer shady middlemen to siphon off the proceeds.  It also reasserts the value of beauty and craftsmanship over simple scarcity.

Maybe if we didn't eat in our cars...

While correlation is not cause, it's hard not to draw some implications from this:

Yesterday, in posting some of the data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Society at a Glance report, I noted that the French spent the most time per day eating, but had one of the lowest obesity rates among developed nations.
Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.
Here I’ve plotted out the relationship between time the average person in a given country spends eating and that country’s obesity rate (as measured by the percentage of the national population with a body mass index higher than 30). [More]

Chew your food.  Wait to be excused.

You look human to me...

But how can I really tell?  Well, the squiggly letters on the comment box are how we currently do it.  Its called CAPTCHA.

But the challenge is increasing.

Herein lies the key to leaving squiggly letters behind. As Alan Turing laid out in the 1950 paper that postulated his test, the goal is to determine whether a computer can behave like a human, not perform tasks that a human can. The reason CAPTCHAs have a term limit is that they measure ability, not behavior. The history of computing shows us that machines will eventually learn how to perform all manner of tasks—like identifying words, for instance—that we currently assume only humans can solve.
How might it be possible to measure behavior rather than ability? The other day, I was writing a note to company using the online form they provided for media requests, doing the usual amount of typing, backspacing, and retyping as I tried to phrase my note in a way that would make them respond quickly. It occurred to me that the random, circuitous way that people interact with Web pages—the scrolling and highlighting and typing and retyping—would be very difficult for a bot to mimic. A system that could capture the way humans interact with forms algorithmically could eventually relieve humans of the need to prove anything altogether.

Any solution that could replace CAPTCHAs en masse would have to be free, work across a wide variety of platforms, and be easy for the average blogger or Web admin to install. One of the reasons that CAPTCHAs have spread like kudzu, I suspect, is that they're so easy to implement—in some cases, as simple as checking a box on a site that helps you set up an input form. The more a bot-fighting algorithm can insinuate itself behind the scenes, the better. In the meantime, we'll all have to keep debating the eternal question: Is that a W, or is it a V and an I attached at the hip? [More]

Of course, we may discover with more sophisticated "humanity" tests there really are aliens among us.

Speaking of which, have you noticed now everyone is carrying a cell phone that takes pictures the number of UFO reports has plummeted?

Buying the cow...

While I agree the outlook for ag exports looks good into the future, we need to remember our customers have their own agendae. After our biofuel enhanced price jump in 2007-8, those with the cash have decided to skip the middleman.

That would be me. [I know, I know. I just cannot bring myself to use "I" in that sentence]

In Africa they are calling it the land grab, or the new colonialism. Countries hungry to secure their food supplies—including Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, South Korea (the world's third biggest importer of corn) China, India, Libya and Egypt—are at the forefront of a frantic rush to gobble up farmland all around the world, but mainly cash-starved Africa.

Over the past few months, Saudi Arabian investors have paid $100m for an Ethiopian farm where they hope to grow wheat and barley, adding to the millions of acres they already own in the war-ravaged country, as well as in neighbouring Sudan. The Saudis also have land in Indonesia and Thailand for growing rice. China owns vast tracts of overseas land, mainly in Algeria and Zimbabwe, and one estimate suggests that more than a million ethnic Chinese farm workers will be living on the continent this year. Kenya and Tanzania have leased land while the Ugandans have been big sellers, allocating two million acres of land to Egypt for wheat and corn. [More]

One fascinating aspect of this forward-thinking strategy is the idea of ethnic Chinese becoming farmers all over the world. Or maybe the farm managers.  It reminds me of Dutch dairy farmers.

Yet for nearly every critique of “outsourcing ag,” there is an equally compelling argument in favor. Experts point out that most land contracts will result in the employment of indigenous labor: Even as China flies in thousands of its own farmers and scientists to begin production on its African farms, those workers are training locals to grow rice “the Chinese way.” Many of the Arab states, upholding Islamic traditions of helping the poor, have promised a share of the food crop to local markets. And countries like Pakistan and Sudan currently lack the resources to make their own farms productive; by improving infrastructure, foreign investment could boost the overall economy of the host nation. Josh Ruxin — director of the Millennium Villages Program in Rwanda, co-founder of Rwanda Works, a new organization that invests in Rwandan agribusiness ventures, and an assistant professor of public health at Columbia University — acknowledges the potential for colonial-like exploitation, but believes that renewed international interest in African land could also be a powerful springboard for smart development. “Show us how you’re going to do it in a way that’s environmentally sustainable and that provides opportunities for local talent,” he says. Land-hungry nations could be leveraged for investments in African health and education, to ensure, he says, that “ultimately the cycle of poverty is broken.” [More]

This is a free-market solution that also allows for many good things to be possuble for the participants. It is also a rational response for nations still smarting from our diversion of grain to mandated markets. Still, I think our faux-capitalistic farm establishment will point to sovereign farmland acquisition and see a reason for another subsidy.  In the process of legislating good deals and risk shifting for ourselves we create more and stronger competition.

Make mine Alpo...

Ever had pâté? What did you think when you first saw it?

In a double-blind test, subjects were presented with five unlabeled blended meat
products, one of which was the prepared dog food. After ranking the samples on the basis
of taste, subjects were challenged to identify which of the five was dog food. Although
72% of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste
(Newell and MacFarlane multiple comparison, P<0.05), subjects were not better than
random at correctly identifying the dog food. [More]

If we were supposed to eat it, it wouldn't have funny letters in the name, I say.

Belief and right action...

While we often stumble across reports of the power of faith in God to make us happier and even healthier, we are now discovering the opposite could also be true.

As sociologists, psychologists, and physicians turn their attention to measuring the effects of religion, often fueled by grant money from private foundations, the results have percolated swiftly through weekend sermons and the popular media. Being nonreligious, one might conclude, looks more and more like a danger to your health.

But as the academic interest in religion has mounted, some scholars have begun to call this picture into question. What's missing, they believe, is a comparable examination into the lives of nonreligious people and even the potential benefits of nonbelief. Galvanized by a desire to even the scales, these researchers have been organizing academic centers to study the irreligious, conducting major surveys, and comparing their findings. They've already found that convinced atheists appear just as well equipped to cope with hardship as convinced believers, and that some of the world's healthiest societies have the lowest levels of piety. [More]

There have been remarkably moral and happy societies that were not religious in the way we think today. Indeed, Americans would have a hard time making the argument that our religious fervor makes our country run better.  I'm thinking here about the acrimonious, scorched-earth debates over everything from abortion to torture.  Indeed, in the latter case, I am hard-pressed to account for the following study.*

According to a new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, those who attend church at least weekly are more prone to say that torture is justifiable. Suffice it to say that, in the eyes of those who support the use of torture, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

A combined 54 percent of at-least-weekly church-goers say torture is either often or sometimes justifiable; for those who attend monthly or a few times a year, that figure is 51 percent; for those who do not attend, it is 42 percent.

Evangelicals, according to the survey, are more prone to saying torture is justifiable than members of the nation's other two main Christian groups: so-called "mainline" Protestants and white, non-Hispanic Catholics. Unaffiliateds--a conglomerated group of atheists, agnostics, and those who say their religion is "nothing in particular--support torture the least: 40 percent say it's justifiable often or sometimes.

How could this be? What happened to forgiveness and the other cheek? The Lamb of God's teachings stop at the walls of Guantanamo?

Let us not forget that the main storyline of the New Testament is one of torture: Jesus comes into the world and dies an excruciating death to redeem the sins of man. Perhaps those closest to the story are most comfortable with suffering when there's a purpose behind it--here, that purpose would be to obtain information. The eschatological bent of some Evangelicals might account for some Revelation-style views on punishment, too. [More]

 My own views on faith have been the product of a long journey studded with doubt which is far from reaching a destination, I might add. But laying aside arguments about effectiveness and legality, these results offer a darker picture of the power of religious faith or more to the point, religious leaders, to allow otherwise compassionate people to permit, even encourage, actions that earlier generations would have been repulsed by.

As our nation arguably becomes more secular-leaning, or at least less orthodox in its religious categorization, it could be the cause lies partly with the practice and example of people of faith compared to the values espoused in the tradition of Western religion.  But it could also be living a moral and fulfilled life is not the exclusive province of organized religion.

[*Update: another possible explanation here]

I really hate it ...

When reality steps all over a beautiful theory.  Just when I was smugly comfortable I knew what the world population trends were and what the possible implications for life in the future were, those stooopid humans change their behaviors.

 Just a few things that I thought I knew and now I don't:

• White folk were unpopulating themselves from the future.

The falling fertility rates in large segments of the Islamic world have been matched by another significant shift: Across northern and western Europe, women have suddenly started having more babies. Germany’s minister for the family, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in February that the country had recorded its second straight year of increased births. Sweden’s fertility rate jumped eight percent in 2004 and stayed put. Both Britain and France now project that their populations will rise from the current 60 million each to more than 75 million by ­mid­century. Germany, despite its recent uptick in births, still seems likely to drop to 70 million or less by 2050 and lose its status as Europe’s most populous country.

In Britain, the number of births rose in 2007 for the sixth year in a row. Britain’s fertility rate has increased from 1.6 to 1.9 in just six years, with a striking contribution from women in their thirties and ­forties—­just the kind of hard-to-predict behavioral change that drives demographers wild. The fertility rate is at its highest level since 1980. The National Health Service has started an emergency recruitment drive to hire more midwives, tempting early retirees from the profession back to work with a bonus of up to $6,000. In Scotland, where births have been increasing by five percent a year, Glasgow’s Herald has reported “a mini baby boom.”

Immigrant mothers account for part of the fertility increase throughout Europe, but only part. And, significantly, many of the immigrants are arrivals from elsewhere in Europe, especially the eastern European countries admitted to the European Union in recent years. Children born to eastern European immigrants accounted for a third of Scotland’s ­“mini ­baby boom,” for ­example.

In 2007, France’s national statistical authority announced that the country had overtaken Ireland to boast the highest birthrate in Europe. In France, the fertility rate has risen from 1.7 in 1993 to 2.1 in 2007, its highest level since before 1980, despite a steady fall in birthrates among women not born in France. France’s National Institute of Demographic Studies reports that the immigrant population is responsible for only five percent of the rise in the ­birthrate. 

• Asians will overrun the world with staggering population growth.
  

The various demographic changes I have described arrived with remarkable speed. At the turn of this century, the conventional wisdom among demographers was that the population of Europe was in precipitous decline, the Islamic world was in the grip of a population explosion, and Africa’s population faced devastation by HIV/AIDS. Only a handful of scholars questioned the idea that the Chinese would outnumber all other groups for decades or even centuries to come. In fact, however, the latest UN projections suggest that China’s population, now 1.3 billion, will increase slowly through 2030 but may then be reduced to half that number by the end of the ­century.

Because there are so many assumptions embedded in it, this forecast of the Chinese future could well be wrong. There is one area, however, in which demography relies on hard census data rather than assumptions about the future, and that is in mapping the youth cohort. All of the teenagers who will be alive in 2020 have already been born. So a strong indication of the eventual end of China’s dominance of world population statistics is apparent in the fact that there are now 372 million Indians under the age of 15, but only 270 million Chinese. This gap will grow. India seems very likely to become the world’s most populous country by 2030 or thereabouts, but only if nothing ­changes—­China maintains its ­one-­child policy and India does not launch the kind of crash program of birth control that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi so controversially attempted in the ­1970s.

There is another development that could affect future Indian and Chinese birthrates: the use of sonograms to ascertain the sex of a fetus. Wider availability of this technology has permitted an increase in ­gender-­specific abortions. The official Chinese figures suggest that 118 boys are now being born in China for every 100 girls. As a result, millions of Chinese males may never find a mate with whom to raise a conventional family. The Chinese call such lonely males “bare branches.” The social and political implications of having such a large population of unattached men are unclear, but they are not likely to be ­happy. 

•  Social Security and its foreign counterparts are doomed by too many old guys.
  

But these sorts of projections don’t capture the full picture. There are at least three mitigating factors to be considered, which suggest that the German welfare state and others in Europe might not have to be dismantled ­wholesale.

The first is that the traditional retirement age of 60 in Italy, France, and Germany is very early indeed, especially considering that life expectancy is approaching 80 and that modern diets and medicine allow many elderly people to continue working well into their seventies. An increase of the retirement age to 65, which is being slowly introduced in France and Germany, would sharply reduce the number of ­non­workers who depend on the employed for support, as would more employment for people below the age of 20. A retirement age of 70 in Germany would virtually end the problem, at least until life expectancy rose as high as 90 ­years.

Second, the work force participation rate in Germany (and much of continental Europe) is relatively low. Not only do Germans retire on the early side, but the generous social welfare system allows others to withdraw from work earlier in life. An increase in employment would boost the revenues flowing into the social security system. For example, only 67 percent of women in Germany were in the work force in 2005, compared with 76 percent in Denmark and 78 percent in Switzerland. (The average rate for the 15 “core” EU states is 64 percent; for the United States, 70 percent.)

David Coleman, a demographer at Oxford University, has suggested that the EU’s work force could be increased by nearly a third if both sexes were to match Denmark’s participation rates. The EU itself has set a target participation rate of 70 percent for both sex­es. Reaching this goal would significantly alleviate the fiscal challenge of maintaining Europe’s welfare system, which has been aptly described as “more of a labor-market challenge than a demographic crisis.”

The third mitigating factor is that the total depen­d­ency ratios of the 21st century are going to look remarkably similar to those of the 1960s. In the United States, the most onerous year for dependency was 1965, when there were 95 dependents for every 100 adults between the ages of 20 and 64. That occurred be­cause “dependents” includes people both younger and older than working age. By 2002, there were only 49 dependents for every 100 ­working-­age Americans. By 2025 there are projected to be 80, still well below the peak of 1965. The difference is that while most dependents in the 1960s were young, with their working and saving and contributing lives ahead of them, most of the dependents of 2009 are older, with more dependency still to come. But the point is clear: There is nothing outlandish about having almost as many dependents as working ­adults. 

[More of the brilliant article I liberally excerpted]

Shoot.  I honestly thought I had a handle on the apocalyptic population problem.  It turns out too many people around the world can figure stuff out for themselves and make rational decisions as well.

This will not improve my chances of becoming a full-fledged "pundit".

 

Also my best guess...

As I track the fate of the American newspaper industry, I have been pretty negative on their business model.  But maybe it could work for a handful of national papers.  Yglesias frames it well, speaking of Warren Buffet's response to a question about investing in a newspaper.

“Most” newspapers he wouldn’t buy at any price. But which newspapers would he buy? My guess is that the vast majority of newspapers currently operating in the United States will go out of business. But one or two will survive and become more profitable than ever as truly global digital media companies. Currently, The New York Times is burdened with a lot of debt and (of course) is losing money. But it seems to me that if it was owned by a firm with deep pockets, that was willing to keep losing money on putting out a quality product for long enough to ride out the recession and the collapse of most other big city dailies, would have an enormously valuable company in five or ten years. [More]

It sounds possible at least.  And the end product would look remarkably different.  At the same time, supposing we have only a handful of major news organs, how much more power would their editorial slant bring to bear on popular issues?

And where the sugar is...

How much sugar in your favorite food?  Sit down and have a peek.  The equivalent amount of sugar cubes in stuff you eat:

 

[More unsettling examples]

So - how's your Sunday going now?

[via neatorama]

Where evil is...

Finally, researchers have brought GPS to morality.  Behold, the Seven Deadly Sins all mapped out for easy locating.

The darker a county, the more evil it is.
Greed was calculated by comparing average incomes with the total number of inhabitants living beneath the poverty line. On this map, done in yellow, Clark County is bile (see map on Page 2).
Envy was calculated using the total number of thefts — robbery, burglary, larceny and stolen cars. Rendered in green, of course, Clark County is emerald.
Wrath was calculated by comparing the total number of violent crimes — murder, assault and rape — reported to the FBI per capita. Vought and his colleagues used the color red to illustrate wrath, so Clark County looks like a fresh welt. Washoe is slightly statistically duller. Everywhere else is a friendly pork pink.
Lust was calculated by compiling the number of sexually transmitted diseases — HIV, AIDS, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea — reported per capita. Here again, Clark and Washoe counties are worst. Carson City County is a close third.
Gluttony was calculated by counting the number of fast food restaurants per capita, and this is one category where Clark County is bested. First in deep fry goes to Carson City.
Sloth was calculated by comparing expenditures on arts, entertainment and recreation with the rate of employment. Here again Clark County is beat, scoring only average on the scale of sloth.
And pride, lastly, is most important. The root of all sins, in this study, is the aggregate of all data. Vought and his Kansas colleagues combined all data from the six other sins and averaged it into an overview of all evil. [More]

(Save this for your vacation planning.)

How to best see where naughtiness resides:

1. Click [More] link above
2. Click the symbol in the lower right hand corner of the "Nationwide" Map
3. Use the FWD/BACK arrows to navigate, ESC to exit.
   

[via neatorama]

They are doing some stuff right...


Another reason I (and other observers) mention Denmark frequently.