4000th Post

Yap Yap Yap.

Coming up on my 6th anniversary blogging here. It has been interesting to see the ebb and flow of my interest in doing this thing. I have written some longish pieces and lots of "heh, indeed" kind of things. My most popular single post so far was my 3000th and I once managed to get nearly 1000 hits in about an hour.

All told. I still write this for me so that i don't end up yelling at clouds.

Something useful in my area?

Since the loons that wanted to build a radiation weapon were arrested in my area I thought I would post this about a  Raspberry Pi based Geiger Counter as a public service

via Make

On Farm Drones

Pretty neat idea.

But a drone outfitted with an infrared camera that spots the chlorophyll signature of plants (sick plants have less chlorophyll) can fly over a field and pinpoint what areas need chemical inputs, allowing farmers to apply fertilizers and pesticides with greater precision. Better yet, Chris says, drones can spot plant disease before it starts so fungicides and herbicides don’t have be used at all.

Ezra Klein is Suprised

I don't understand his confusion 

I’m surprised that someone of Mankiw’s accomplishment and empirical skill would retreat to anecdata when pertinent data are so widely available. One study examined intergenerational mobility between 1979 and 2000. A child in the top socioeconomic quintile had a 55 percent chance of remaining in the top 20 percent, and only an 11 percent chance of falling into the bottom 40 percent. The comparable mobility figures for children in the middle quintile were 13 percent and 31 percent. More recent data on the top 1 percent surely telegraph more extreme differences in life chances.

Greg Mankiw is very smart and accomplished and believes that if only everyone worked as hard as he did then they would be where he is. Reality rarely intrudes on conservatives. Ezra should really understand that by now.

Your WTF Moment - Farm Bill Edition

Eric Cantor seems to think it is the minority party (the Democrats) that are to blame for the Farm Bill not passing. Seems to me that there is something wrong with this analysis don't you?

"I'm extremely disappointed that Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leadership have at the last minute chosen to derail years of bipartisan work on the Farm Bill and related reforms. This bill was far from perfect, but the only way to achieve meaningful reform, such as Congressman Southerland's amendment reforming the food stamp program, was in conference.

Oh right, I know what it is. If the GOP could have actually got all of their members to vote for the fucking bill they wouldn't have needed even a single Democrat. 62 Republicans voted against the bill. That is just over 1/4 of them.

Anyone still think there is a chance of meaningful Immigration reform?

On Green Cards - Step 1 - engage A lawyer

We have officially engaged (meaning paid the $3000 retainer) a law firm specializing in immigration matters to represent us as we trundle down this street.

Step 1 complete.

And The Winner Is NewsBlur

So with the demise of Google Reader imminent I have gone to NewsBlur for my new RSS aggregator.

I quite like it.

One thing to bear in mind is that if you follow more than 64 feeds (like I do) you will have to pony up for the paid version (24 bucks a year) or you won't be able to see all of your feeds at once. Still, pretty inexpensive, has a functional android app and I could easily import all of my Google Reader stuff.