Chart of the Day: U.S. Land Use

Bloomberg, via Ritholtz:

End of Planting Links

We had a number of setbacks that ate up a few perfectly fine days, but the weather was extremely cooperative, and everything is in the ground.  While we were working on it, I came across some stories I thought were interesting:

Who is basketball's GOAT - Lebron James or Michael Jordan - Boston Globe and Cavaliers are surviving in the playoffs despite the dilemma of LeBron James' rest - ESPN.  I'm extremely biased, but I think Lebron would be the best teammate to play alongside.

The Big Ten’s Big Business - Slate.  "Amateur."  What a crock.

The Art of Icon Writing - Baltimore Sun

Why We've Been Fighting About Milk for 10,000 Years - Time

Maple Syrup Cartel Has a Plan to Cover Shortfall - Bloomberg.  I can't get enough of the maple syrup cartel and their strategic maple syrup reserve.

The Colonel In The Kitchen: A Surprising History Of Sous Vide - The Salt

Alan Turing’s chemistry hypothesis turned into a desalination filter - Ars Technica

How the 50-mm Lens Became ‘Normal’ - The Atlantic 

The water war that will decide the fate of 1 in 8 Americans – Grist.  People who move to the desert southwest are insane.

Tech Envisions the Ultimate Start-Up: An Entire City – The Upshot.  Umm, no thanks.  I'm not sure how Beta versions of cities would work.

Kansas' Medicaid Data Is So Bad, Analysts Can't Even Tell If It's Working - Governing.  Kansas is pretty much Republican "governance" in its purest form.

Nonprofit Liberty University's "lucrative enterprise" - Marketplace.  Gaming regulations targeting for-profit colleges.

Trump is no longer the worst person in government - George Will.  On Mike Pence. Let's not get crazy, George.  Both suck in tremendously different ways.

Donald Trump declares trade war on China - Financial Times.  This will probably hit farmers hard.

The Annual George Will Baseball Trivia Quiz

It's time for the annual re-post of a George Will column.  Don't worry, it is only baseball trivia:

"There'll be two buses leaving the hotel for the park tomorrow. The 2 o'clock bus will be for those of you who need a little extra work. The empty bus will leave at 5 o'clock." -- Dave Bristol, Milwaukee Brewers manager, 1972
WASHINGTON -- Everyone needs extra work to prepare for the season. So, name the player or players who:
1) Is the fourth (the others are Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays) with a career .300 average, 500 home runs and 100 stolen bases.
2) Played in the most wins.
3) Was the last to get 3,000 hits without winning a batting title.
4) Got 30 homers and 100 RBIs in a season for five different teams.
5) Struck out three times in a game just once in 13 seasons.
6) Hit .461 at home but .286 on the road.
7) Was the last person to enter September batting over .400.
8) Led his league in hits for three different teams.
9) Hit .408 in a season but lost the batting title.
10) Hit at least 40 doubles in 10 seasons.
11) Was the first 40-year-old with a 100-RBI season.
12) Is the most recent to win consecutive MVP awards.
13) Had the most career homers (399) without a 30-homer season.
14) Has the highest career batting average among players with at least 300 homers.
15) Is the only non-Yankee with 500 home runs and three championships.
16) Are the four right-handed hitters to lead the major leagues in hitting at least three times.

17) Are the two pitchers to have 300 more strikeouts than walks (not counting intentional walks) in a season.
18) Was the only batter to average 200 hits per season in his first 14 seasons.
19) Holds the career record for doubles.
20) Were the three pairs of rookies of the year who were later enshrined in Cooperstown.
21) Holds the record for most four-strikeout games.
22) Struck out in a record 37 consecutive games in a single season.
23) Was the first to win three MVP awards.
24) Are the two third basemen with 500 home runs.
25) Was the first to get 3,000 hits in the 20th century.
26) Had 999 walks with three starts to go in his career and did not reach 1,000.
27) Were the only two to bat cleanup in a World Series at age 20.
28) Led his league in RBIs in 2014 while batting second.
29) Although not in the Hall of Fame until 2017, reached base more than Jeff Bagwell, Roberto Clemente and Tony Gwynn and had five seasons with at least 30 doubles and 70 stolen bases (Ty Cobb had only three).
30) Was the only player with at least 100 triples, 150 homers and 600 stolen bases.
31) Was the only 300-game winner between the world wars.

32) Threw a no-hitter with no walks and 17 strikeouts.
33) Scored the most World Series runs.
34) Was the first White Sox player to be MVP.
35) Won 25 or more games three times in the 1960s but never won a Cy Young award.
36) Won the most ERA titles.
37) Is the only catcher to win three batting titles.
38) Led his league in batting average his first two seasons.
39) Had three seasons with 40 or more homers and fewer strikeouts than homers.
40) Was the Hall of Famer who hit into a record four triple plays.
Bonus question: What manager said, "Our phenoms aren't phenomenating."
Answers (after the jump):

The Papermaker

The Papermaker from Kings&Kongs on Vimeo.

Selection Sunday Links

Here are the best stories I saw in the last part of the week: 

Suicides, Drug Addiction and High School Football - New York Times.  Madison, Indiana

America's Basketball Heaven - ESPN 

Country Star - Washington Post

Steve Francis: I Got a Story to Tell - The Players' Tribune 

Nun Involved In Katy Perry Convent Lawsuit Collapses And Dies In Court - NPR

Deep gas bands, shapely cyclones — NASA's Juno reveals more of Jupiter's secrets – LA Times 

What scientists found trapped in a diamond: a type of ice not known on Earth - LA Times

Salk, Sabin and the Race Against Polio - Smithsonian.  An old story, but one I was wondering about recently.  

Why Are New Hampshire's Tax-Free Liquor Stores Selling So Much Hennessy? - The Salt

For many factory towns, white collar job loss hurts the most – AP News

Magnesium May Save the Town of Asbestos – Bloomberg 

This Is What Happens When Bitcoin Miners Take Over Your Town – Politico 

A New Documentary Honors the Work and Life of Photojournalist Chris Hondros - The Atlantic.  I didn't know it until after he died, but he started his photojournalism career at the local small-town paper.

China's Staggering Demand for Commodities  - Visual Capitalist 

The Sprinter Factory

The Sprinter Factory from Guardian News & Media Ltd on Vimeo.

Chart of the Day: Guinness and Brexit

Bloomberg:

The sensible thing would be to have a united Ireland, but the Scots-Irish aren't known for their sense.

Western Subcontractors Help Chinese Plane Business

Bloomberg:

China is making its boldest attempt yet to break the stranglehold that Airbus SE and Boeing Co. have on the market for big commercial airliners. After years of delays, the nation’s first modern large jet is expected to make its maiden flight....
The 158-174 seat C919 is made by state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd. and follows Comac’s development of a smaller, regional jet, the ARJ21, that was flown by a Chinese airline for the first time last year. The C919 brings Comac to the table in one of the most lucrative sectors of commercial aviation, competing head-to-head with Boeing’s ubiquitous 737 and Airbus’s A320....
The Chinese jet demonstrates the extent globalization has taken over the manufacture of major engineering products. Just as the jet relies on systems from firms based around the world, many of those systems are built with components that originated in China.
The C919’s engines for example are made by CFM. CFM’s parents, GE and French manufacturer Safran Aircraft Engines, in turn buy more than $500 million of Chinese-made parts a year for the company’s single-aisle jet engine series, the company said.

Hmmm....looks like a who's who of my stock portfolio.  I wonder how long it will be before all that technology is pirated by mainland companies.  I'm guessing not very long.

Chart of the Day: Corn Products

From Brian C. Colwell:

Lots of interesting historical corn facts there, too.  Here are a few:

• 1847: Robert Reid, by accident, created Reid’s Yellow Dent.
• The western corn rootworm was first collected in 1867 while surveying for a railroad extension from Kansas to Fort Craig.
• From 1865 to 1935, average corn yield in the United States was essentially unchanged.
• Corn cob pipes were first manufactured in the United States in 1869.
• By 1878, Iowa led the US in corn production, followed by Illinois and Missouri.
• In the late 19th century, pellagra reached epidemic proportions in parts of the southern US.
• Dr. W.J. Beal conducted experiments with corn hybrids at Michigan State in 1878. He called his hybrid mule corn since the corn was the result of a cross, just as are mules.
• In 1892, the Corn Palace was built in Mitchell, South Dakota, with corn murals as a way to prove to the world that South Dakota had a healthy agricultural climate.
• James Reid, son of Robert Reid, won a blue ribbon with his Yellow Dent at the Illinois state fair in 1891 and then a gold medal at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
• 1893: George Morrow proposed new corn production methods, which were similar to those used today.

Blood Money

If you don't read anything else today, I recommend reading this.

The 2017 George Will Opening Day Baseball Quiz

George Will:

Sportswriter: "You hit only two home runs all last year and already you've hit seven this year [1969]. What's the difference?"
Reds outfielder Alex Johnson: "Five."
WASHINGTON -- See? Baseball numbers aren't difficult. But be precise: As players say after a close play, "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." And don't be discouraged if some questions stump you. As Phillies manager Danny Ozark said in 1976, "Even Napoleon had his Watergate." And as Brewers manager Harvey Kuenn said after losing the 1982 World Series to the Cardinals, "We're going to hang our heads high." Now, name the player or players who:

1) Had 297 three-hit games and only one three-strike-out game.
2) Struck out only 23 times in 474 at bats against Hall of Fame pitchers.
3) Batted .415 in 94 at bats against Greg Maddux.
4) Had at least 100 hits from both sides of the plate in a season.
5) Has the lowest career batting average among players with 3,000 hits.
6) Are the three players who each had an OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) above 1.000 in their final season.
7) Are the four pitchers with more than three Cy Young awards.
8) Are the seven starting pitchers with two seasons with a sub-0.9 WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched).
9) Are the three hitters to have at least 40 home runs and 100 walks in a season before turning 23.
10) Have the three best OPS seasons at age 20 playing at least 100 games.
11) Are the four hitters with more than 500 home runs and 600 doubles.
12) Has the best stolen-base percentage with at least 500 steals.
13) Was the Hall of Famer who won three MVPs and finished second four times.
14) Was the youngest 20-game winner.
15) Set the rookie record for strikeouts.
16) Holds the record for most extra-base hits by a third baseman in a single season.

17) Among pitchers in the live ball era (post-1920) with at least 900 innings, had the lowest opponents' batting average and most strikeouts per nine innings.
18) Is the only player in the top 10 all time in runs, hits, home runs, RBI, total bases and extra-base hits.
19) Is the pitcher with the most strikeouts in his first 100 major league games.
20) Is the only first baseman to have 40 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a season (he did it twice).
21) Are the three pitchers with six seasons with at least 200 strikeouts and no more than 175 hits.
22) Had the longest hitting streak by a catcher.
23) In 1930, hit .386, had 250 hits, hit 40 home runs and drove in 170 but led the league in none of these four categories.
24) Had a higher batting average than Joe DiMaggio's .408 during DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941.
25) Was the MVP in two consecutive All-Star games.
26) Were the two to win rookie of the year, MVP and Cy Young awards (not all in the same season).
27) Lost no-hitters with two outs in the ninth inning in consecutive games.
28) Is the only player to finish first or second in MVP voting in his first five full seasons.
29) Are the five centerfielders elected to Cooperstown in their first year of eligibility.
30) Has the most World Series hits.
Bonus question: Which broadcaster said, "Ozzie Smith just made another play that I've never seen anyone else make before, and I've seen him make it more than anyone else ever has"? Hint: He also said, "There's a fly ball to deep center field. Winfield is going back, back. He hits his head against the wall. It's rolling toward second base."

Answers after the jump

Which Girl Scout Cookies Are You Getting?

The LA Times fills you in:

When you bite into a Thin Mint, you probably aren't wondering where it comes from. (The Girl Scouts, of course.) But wait, there are two bakers. And they make two very different Thin Mints: One is crunchier, more minty. The other is richer with a smooth chocolate coating.
Where you buy determines which ones you get. Orange County gets the crunchier Thin Mints, while Los Angeles gets the smoother ones. Dallas gets Samoas, but Fort Worth gets Caramel deLites. Most of Florida eats Tagalongs, but Orlando gets Peanut Butter Patties.
The new S'mores cookies are also different between bakers. One's covered in chocolate; the other sandwiches fudge and frosting between two cookies.

I'm getting the Thin Mints with the smooth chocolate coating.

The Big Cloth

The Big Cloth from Dog Leap on Vimeo.

NASA Photo of the Day

November 13:

Super Moon vs. Micro Moon
Image Credit & Copyright: Catalin Paduraru Explanation: What is so super about tomorrow's supermoon? Tomorrow, a full moon will occur that appears slightly larger and brighter than usual. The reason is that the Moon's fully illuminated phase occurs within a short time from perigee - when the Moon is its closest to the Earth in its elliptical orbit. Although the precise conditions that define a supermoon vary, tomorrow's supermoon will undoubtedly qualify because it will be the closest, largest, and brightest full moon in over 65 years. One reason supermoons are popular is because they are so easy to see -- just go outside at sunset and watch an impressive full moon rise! Since perigee actually occurs tomorrow morning, tonight's full moon, visible starting at sunset, should also be impressive. Pictured here, a supermoon from 2012 is compared to a micromoon -- when a full Moon occurs near the furthest part of the Moon's orbit -- so that it appears smaller and dimmer than usual. Given many definitions, at least one supermoon occurs each year, with another one coming next month (moon-th). However, a full moon will not come this close to Earth again until 2034.

Is it just me, or has this Super Moon hype seemingly come out of nowhere in the last few years.  I don't remember hearing about this phenomena in the past.  I remember recent hype about eclipses, planetary alignments and meteor showers being similar to past buzz, but I just don't remember the Super Moon hype before about 3 or 4 years ago.  Oh, wait, here is some data:



So the first real mention of a super moon took place approximately 2 months after this blog started.  How did we get by without hyping the size of the full moon prior to 2011?

A Scary Lack of Genetic Diversity

The Atlantic:

It started with a bull named Pawnee Farm Arlinda Chief, who had a whopping 16,000 daughters. And 500,000 granddaughters and more than 2 million great-granddaughters. Today, in fact, his genes account for 14 percent of all DNA in Holstein cows, the most popular breed in the dairy industry.
Chief—let’s call him Chief for brevity’s sake—was so popular because his daughters were fantastic milk producers. He had great genes for milk. But, geneticists now know, he also had a single copy of a deadly mutation that spread undetected through the Holstein cow population. The mutation caused some unborn calves to die in the womb. According to a recent estimate, this single mutation ended up causing more than 500,000 spontaneous abortions and costing the dairy industry $420 million in losses....

Amidst this progress, the USDA scientists also noticed something odd. To understand how odd, you just need to know that animals have two copies of every gene, one from each parent. As Chief’s genes took over the Holstein population, farmers would sometimes end up mating a bull and cow both originally descended from Chief. So a resulting calf could sometimes end up with two identical copies of a Chief gene, one inherited via its mother (perhaps a great-granddaughter of Chief) and one via its father (perhaps a great-grandson).

But there was one particular gene from Chief that never, ever showed up twice in any of his descendants. Plenty of cows had one copy of this Chief gene; others none; but never two. This defied probability. All the USDA team knew about this gene is that it corresponded to a series of genetic markers on chromosome 5, which could be traced back to Chief.

The logical conclusion to draw, if you’re a geneticist, is that these genetic markers corresponded to a vital gene that had become garbled. Cow embryos with one faulty copy of the gene and one working copy grew up just fine, but those with two faulty copies died in the womb. They were just never born, which is why the team could never find any. (Chief himself had one copy, which why he was a fine healthy, bull.)...Lewin and his post doc Heather Adams got to work. “Within 48 hours, we had a candidate,” he says. The stretch of DNA in question corresponded to the gene Apaf1, which had been well studied in mice. Brain cells in mice embryos with a faulty Apaf1 would grow out of control, until the embryo eventually died. “The reason we had a candidate so quickly was because of the tremendous investment in mouse genetics,” says Lewin. The scientists trudging through the mouse genome could probably have never known an obscure gene they isolated had such a huge effect on the dairy industry.

Luckily, genetic testing has allowed the dairy industry to get around this problem.  But the fact that so much of the Holstein herd is so closely related is rather scary.  But, in the end, dairy faces many other major issues.

Atlantium: The Smallest Country in Australia

Atlantium: The Smallest Country in Australia from Craig Rasmus on Vimeo.

Nobel Prizes

From Compound Interest:

NASA Photo of the Day

September 11:

All the Water on Planet Earth
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Jack Cook, Adam Nieman, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Howard Perlman, USGS Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The featured illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. How even this much water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth's surface remain topics of research.

And, what, 3% of that is freshwater?  If my maths are working, that would be a sphere with a radius slightly under 218 km.

Not Your Average Price-Fixing Scheme

Bloomberg:

The “herd retirement program,” as it was called, was led by Cooperatives Working Together, run by the lobbying group National Milk Producers Federation, and supported by farms producing almost 70 percent of America’s milk. Individual cooperatives sued included Dairy Farmers of America Inc., Land O’Lakes, Dairylea Cooperative Inc., and Agri-Mark Inc.
The consumers claimed that between 2003 and 2010 the cooperatives paid above-market prices for dairy cows owned by member farmers, and sent them to be slaughtered before they would have otherwise. Cut the supply, the price will rise, right? But things get weird when you look at the industry’s performance. Since 1975, the U.S. government says overall American dairy consumption has gone from 539 pounds per person per year in 1975, to 627 pounds in 2015 (though fluid milk sales have dropped precipitously). So why does anyone need to boost prices when people can’t seem to get enough non-fat Greek yogurt?
Those defendant cooperatives, as we mentioned, are made up of dairy farmers both large and small. The farmers sell their milk through the cooperatives to huge dairy processors (the folks who make your favorite yogurt), who then sell to retailers (your local supermarket). Gary Genske, treasurer of the National Dairy Producers Organization, says the processors often demand more milk from the cooperatives than is actually needed, creating a glut and driving the overall price of dairy down (which of course benefits the processors and hurts the farmers). “We have far too much product for what the market wants,” Genske said.
So—according to the complaint filed five years ago in San Francisco federal court—the cooperatives came up with a way to fight the glut and boost prices. Kill hundreds of thousands of cows.

I'm not sure I buy into this claim, but I also don't buy into the claims of the class-action lawyers in the Syngenta case, either, and God knows thousands of lawyers are looking to get rich on that bullshit.  As it is, it is pretty clear that there are way too many cows producing way too much milk right now.  The world is drowning in milk and cheese.

Gotta Groove Records

Gotta Groove Records from Nick Cavalier on Vimeo.