Full Snow Moon Links

I'm not going to use the title supermoon, because that is a bunch of media hype, but here are some super links:

What happens to Loogootee water tower when Jack Butcher's wins record falls? and Doyel: State's winningest coach had no intentions of leaving home and J.R. Holmes will soon become second boys basketball coach in state to reach 800 wins – Indy Star.  80% of the decent stories I get from the Star are about high school basketball.  The rest are about stupid Indiana laws.

Should a Catholic priest be fighting in a boxing tournament? – America.  As a Bengal Bouts alum, I say hell yes.  (Career record 0-4. 0-5 counting the novice matches in the fall of freshman year)

‘It Will Cause a Scandal.’ The Pope and a Trusted U.S. Cardinal Clash Over Sex-Abuse Crisis – Wall Street Journal 

Massive Loss Of Thousands Of Hives Afflicts Orchard Growers And Beekeepers - The Salt

‘Food and the Wisconsin Idea’ talk discusses Wisconsin farming, solutions to dairy crisis – The Badger Herald  and Food Banks Are Overflowing With Milk - Weekend Edition Sunday

Private Mossad for Hire – The New Yorker  

In Need of Workers, the Midwest Recruits From Puerto Rico - Wall Street Journal (h/t cmoore)

Alabama newspaper editor calls for Klan return to 'clean out D.C.' - Montgomery Advertiser

Bolsonaro’s Brazil - London Review of Books

How the US has hidden its empire - The Guardian

Research, Extension, and Related Matters: Title VII - USDA ERS

Super Bowl Sunday Links

Stories from the last week for your reading pleasure:

Rural Communities Struggle to Adapt to Life Without Football - The Atlantic  

Tom Brady's roots run deep into 19th century Boston - Boston Globe

How an Olympic Hopeful Robbed 26 Banks on His Bike - Chicago Magazine (h/t my former boss).  For what it is worth, a guy robbed a bank in Piqua, Ohio and rode away on a bike, and I don't think he was ever caught.

US academics feel the invisible hand of politicians and big agriculture - The Guardian

Inside the Apollo Guidance Computer's core memory - Ken Shirriff's blog

St. Brigid and the Coming of Spring - RTE 

Sears Once Sold Heroin - The Atlantic  

Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere Into the Center of the World Economy? – New York Times (also from my boss)

Coal Country Is Dying. All Trump Has Are Lies. – Washington Monthly

Snake-Oil Economics – Greg Mankiw

EPA’s chemical decision worries Republicans – Politico and Republicans Are Loud on Water, Silent on Climate – The Atlantic  

Gone in a generation - Washington Post

Digging Up a Nuclear Bomb

More about the Goldsboro Incident here.

Mid-January Links

Interesting stories from the last week or two:

Mike Trout is the God of WAR - FiveThirtyEight. Video. 

Female Ranchers Are Reclaiming the American West – New York Times 

Court Strikes Down Iowa's 'Ag-Gag' Law That Blocked Undercover Investigations - NPR

Meet The Granary Weevil, The Pantry Monster Of Our Own Creation - The Salt (via my old boss)

Fire, Floods and Famine: The Pessimist's Guide to 2019 - Bloomberg.  Even I hope this is too far-fetched.

Small Weasel-Like Animals Are Taking Down Big Cats – National Geographic  

Norway Embarks On Its Most Ambitious Transport Project Yet – NPR.  Floating bridges and tunnels?  I'll let somebody else design those.

This GIF shows how far the 100th Meridian has shifted since 1980 – Grist

This is how Canada’s housing correction begins – McLean’s     

Meet The Woman Turning The Payday Loan Industry On Its Head – Forbes.   Trying to work up a low-interest payday loan replacement was one of my not-for-profit goals.

The French Burglar Who Pulled Off His Generation’s Biggest Art Heist – The New Yorker

Taleb the Philosopher – First Things

The Grand Illusion – Lapham’s Quarterly

After the Storm – The Baffler

Learn about the Iowa district that re-elects Steve King year after year - Des Moines Register

Here's an update of what was called last year as "One of the most important charts about the economy this century.” Price Changes of selected consumer goods and services over the last ~20 years. It made the rounds at the Fed last year. @ritholtz @slangwise @AEI @MichaelRStrain pic.twitter.com/pt8UEJSIL5

— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) January 11, 2019

Deep Tunnel, Deep Trouble?

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credit: Lisa Larson-Walker

Slate has a nice piece which takes a look at the Chicago Deep Tunnel sewer project (formerly the TARP), and the challenges it faces keeping up with the greater intensity rains which appear to be a part of climate change.  The project scale is massive:

Altogether, 109 miles of subway-size tunnel lie beneath Chicago and its suburbs, covering more miles than the L, culminating in three suburban reservoirs (not the kind you drink from)...

Fitzpatrick drives me to McCook Reservoir, the mammoth holding pen, opened in late 2017, for the tunnels that run beneath the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers. We stand on the edge of a pit that can hold 3.5 billion gallons of wastewater, enough to fill the Empire State Building and then some. It doesn’t smell terrible, thanks to floating aerators and because the pool has dwindled to 30 feet deep—Friday’s leftovers from a half-inch of rain on Tuesday. At the far end we can see the circular tunnel mouth leading downtown. The city’s wastewater netherworld has its own Chicago-centric measurement system. Lake Michigan is elevation 0. The pumping-station control room, on a little hillock, is +25, or 25 feet above the lake. The roaring motors that empty McCook after the rain sit at -297, 30 stories below ground.

Behind us, the second section of McCook—which will more than double the holding capacity of the Mainstream Tunnel—is being excavated by gigantic mining trucks. Vulcan Materials, the country’s largest vendor of crushed rock, is digging millions of cubic yards of limestone out of the ground.

The gist of the project is that many of Chicago's sewers handle both sewage and stormwater.  When the city would get almost any rain, the sewers would be overwhelmed, basements would be flooded with sewage, and untreated waste would be dumped in the rivers.  So the city came up with this crazy project to build giant tunnels a couple hundred feet underground to divert the excess flow to giant reservoirs to hold it until it could be pumped through the treatment plant, where it would be treated and released. Obviously, the cost of such a program is astronomical.  On top of the cost, the changing climate has been a game-changer:

“The large and costly deep tunnel-reservoir system in Chicago is not adequate” to handle 50-year storms, Changnon wrote of the impacts from a September 2008 storm that caused the evacuation of more than 10,000 homes in the region. The Chicago Tribune reported that in the four years after the tunnels were completed in 2006, the MWRD released nearly 19 billion gallons of stormwater into Lake Michigan compared to 12 billion gallons in the preceding 22 years. Similarly, there have been 24 incidents of sewer overflow in the lake since the first tunnel came online in 1985, compared to about 21 in the previous 40 years. Then, in February 2018, after McCook had opened, tripling the capacity of the main tunnel, a big rainstorm filled the new 3.5 billion-gallon reservoir and sent another 3.8 billion gallons of sewage into local waterways....By the time I visited in November, McCook Reservoir had filled to capacity five separate times. Chicago’s multibillion-dollar anti-flooding system is already struggling to keep up with the region’s larger and more frequent storms.

As the article notes, the change in storm intensity over the 50-year construction timeframe exceeded the designers' imaginations. The scary part is that the combined sewers were also a result of lack of foresight by their designers.  They were glad at that time to get the sewage out of the gutters and away from the city.  Later, they had to re-engineer the Chicago River so that the sewage wouldn't foul the water intakes and cause disease outbreaks.  Then, development caused massive flooding because the sewers weren't able to handle the increases in runoff from all of the pavement laid over the formerly pervious soil.  Now that they have designed a system to handle the overflows, climate change is causing more intense rainstorms with longer durations.  None of our storm infrastructure is built for it.  I've been out of the civil field for almost 10 years, so I'm not even sure if the powers-that-be have even tried to grapple with what our design standards should be under the new climate regime.  That should terrify people.  It sure does me.

THE LAST STORM

THE LAST STORM from Liam Saint-Pierre on Vimeo.

Mid-June Links, Part II

More stories for you, as I avoid working in the heat:

This ex-Detroit football player is vowing to become a nun - Detroit Free Press

Ashes of an industry: A Pennsylvania tradition is dying, one baseball bat at a time - Philadelphia Inquirer

No more cathode ray tubes from China, says Trump Administration - Asia Times

Philadelphia Shipyard Struggles to Survive on Order Drought - Wall Street Journal.  Calling Donald Trump....

Billions in U.S. solar projects shelved after Trump panel tariff - Reuters.  I guess if your goal is to bail out coal, this is a win.  If your goal is to have a sane energy policy, this is idiotic.

When North Dakota Farmers Blew up Partisan Politics - Zocalo Public Square.  Nonpartisan League.  I knew North Dakota has a State Bank.  I didn't realize they have an elevator and flour mill.

The Failed State of Franklin - ThoughtCo

The bishop and the brothels – Wellcome Collection

Farm Bill Targets Food Stamps -- But Not Handouts to Well-Off Farmers – Governing.  For Republicans, that is a feature, not a bug.

Lone Star Rising - Fortune.  Fracking in the Permian Basin.  The avoidance of Peak Oil means we will probably drill until the climate is completely wrecked.  It might be a good think I don't have kids.

T. Boone Pickens on Selling the Ranch - Texas Monthly

The preventable tragedy of D’ashon Morris – Dallas Morning News.  Think of this when you hear Republicans say they are pro-life.

How Anna Delvey Tricked New York's Party People - The Cut

These Harvard Kids Got The Lesson of Their Lives in the Heartland - New York Post.  A noble effort, but I don't know how much can be gleaned by these junkets.

The Strange Case of the Missing Joyce Scholar – New York Times.  The line between genius and madness is often blurry.

America’s Largest Private Company Reboots a 153-Year-Old Strategy – Bloomberg

Mid-May Late Week Links

More good reads for you:

Gov. John Kasich wants to crack down on phosphorus runoff that feeds Lake Erie algal blooms – Cleveland Plain Dealer.  This isn't going to magically go away.

Warming Planet Could Mean Bigger Corn Crops for American Farmers – Bloomberg.  Just what we need-more corn.

California is turning farms into carbon-sucking factories – Grist.  Farmers might be in for fighting climate change if it means more sweet, sweet government handouts.

Warming Waters Push Fish To Cooler Climes, Out Of Some Fishermen's Reach – The Salt

NASA Satellites Reveal Major Shifts in Global Freshwater – NASA.gov

Louisiana Wants To Use The Muddy Mississippi To Build Up Its Coast – NPR

The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy - The Atlantic. 

The Untold Story of Robert Mueller's Time in Combat - Wired.  Who would you rather your children turn out like: Robert Mueller or Donald Trump?  If you said Trump, I sure hope you don't have kids.

Sulfur Dioxide Damages Lungs, and Scott Pruitt Is Letting More of It in Our Air – Mother Jones  It is ridiculous that existing plants sometimes never have had to meet most environmental regulations.

Too Big To Fine, Too Small To Fight Back – Texas Observer.  Sometimes it seems when Republicans are in charge they really work to make government the enemy.

Which Poor People Shouldn’t Have to Work for Aid? – The Upshot.  I'll give you one guess.  More on Michigan's plan for letting rural poor folks stay on Medicaid without meeting work requirements. 

‘Blue Wave’ Has Been a Trickle Outside Largest Cities - The Daily Yonder.  Yes, rural areas are responsible for Trump.

Trump vs. “The Deep State” – The New Yorker.  More like Trump vs. competent governance.

A Wildfire Likely Spawned a Severe Thunderstorm in Texas – DAMWeather

End of April Weekend Links

I was finally ready to start planting this afternoon, and wouldn't you know it, we had a technology malfunction and I didn't get a single seed in the ground.  I did find these stories over the last few days, though:

The history of the song "Louie Louie" - Marketplace.  An important FBI investigation.

EU agrees total ban on bee-harming pesticides - Guardian

Rural Lands At Risk As Ranchers Prepare For Retirement - The Salt

Rural Kansas is dying. I drove 1,800 miles to find out why - The New Food Economy.  It goes a little over the top, but brings up some brutal statistics.

Rural Teachers Working Second Jobs, Struggling To Make Ends Meet – CBS Denver

The last man who knew everything – The Week

A High Schooler Has Upended a Fundamental Chemistry Theory - Inverse

Did Math Kill God? – The New Republic 

There Are Holes In Elon Musk's Plans To Tunnel Through L.A. With Boring Co. - Forbes

The Myth That Markets Get Prices Right Won’t Die – Bloomberg.  Goddamn vampire theory. Pound a wooden stake in its heart.

Life on the Oil Frontier - Longreads

Annual Figures Show Slight Rise in Rural Jobs, But Gap With Metro Widens – Daily Yonder

Early April Weekend Links

Here are a few stories from the last few days:

Playing for Pop - San Antonio Express-News

The Broncos’ Futures program saved football in Denver Public Schools. But an even bigger impact of the feeder teams might still be seen- Denver Post

“The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades – Vanity Fair.  I highly recommend this article.

So 2 Goats Were Stuck On A Beam Under A Bridge ... - Goats and Soda

Iowa producers say ethanol limits would be 'war' on rural U.S. - Des Moines Register 

The Great Lakes Are Filling Up With Giant Green Blobs - Mother Jones  

AP sources: EPA chief spent millions on security and travel - Associated Press.  Scott Pruitt is an asshat.

Humankind’s Most Important Material - The Atlantic 

How Congress Used the Post Office to Unite the Nation – Bloomberg 

The Future of America's Economy Looks a Lot Like Elkhart, Indiana - Wall Street Journal.  People are crazy, and this boom will end in tears.

Have we reached peak English in the world? - The Guardian and Brits are in denial about their diminishing importance – Handelsblatt

A Betrayal - ProPublica.  This is an awful mess.

There's no good reason to stop felons from voting - George Will (?!)

How One Man Got Rich Selling Machine Guns – Bloomberg.  Another terrible investment idea.

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.

U.S. Wins Curling Gold

I would say this may be one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history:

About a week ago U.S. men's curling team was dead on the ice sheet. A 5-8 loss to Norway in round robin play left the USA with a 2-4 record and three basically must-win matches to go. U.S. skip John Shuster, thinking he had authored yet another Olympic implosion, walked with his family through the Olympic Park while his wife tried to convince him not to give up.
Eventually he sat down in the grass, looked around him and thought, "This is silly. This is the Olympics. I feel like I'm getting my heart broken by this sport and it's just silly." He says he went to bed that night and woke up the next morning and saw the story of U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen, who endured years of shock defeats in the Olympics only to win the final Olympic race of his career.
From then on, Shuster and his team ("Team Reject" as Shuster jokingly called them, referencing their exclusion from USA Curling's High Performance Program after a disappointing showing at Sochi) of Tyler George, Matt Hamilton and John Landsteiner won five straight, culminating in today's shock victory over top-ranked Sweden to give the USA its second ever medal in curling, its first since earning bronze at the 2006 Turin games, and its first ever gold medal in the sport.
A large and loud U.S. contingent gave the arena a home game feel.

So the U.S. won gold in womens hockey and mens curling, and the Canadians didn't.  That has to to be a bitter pill to swallow north of the 49th parallel.

Chart of the Day: Employment by Industry

For the 1st time in US history, the lines crossed in 2017.#Healthcare became our largest source of jobs, exceeding retail.
Data from @BLS_gov pic.twitter.com/bWtp8VtNm6

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 7, 2018

A lot of interesting stuff in that chart. Click on this one for a bigger version: 

Chart of the Day - Largest Employer Edition

Visual Capitalist, via Ritholtz:

Anything that links Ohio to nearly the entire South is troubling for me.  In the state's defense, our state university system would most likely be a larger combined employer than Walmart but for the system's setup as a number of individual universities, but that is almost certainly the same case in the other states as well (such as Texas or Florida).

Yes, I've Been Terrible At This Lately

Sure, I haven't posted anything in over a month, but I have composed parts of a number of posts in my head.  Usually, it is after some terrible Trump action, and after a little while I get the feeling that if I posted every time he pisses me off, it is really going to be a long three and a half years.  I must say, though, that the Democrats have also been fairly frustrating this summer.  They appear to be trying to position themselves to lose to Lord Combover the Fuckup.  All is not lost,though.  Bannon (although I did find myself agreeing with him somewhat on taxes, Afghanistan and North Korea) and Gorka (ding dong the Douche is gone) are out of the White House, and not a moment too soon.  Anyway, I figured I would throw up a post to prove I'm not dead, and to share a few of the interesting stories I've seen recently.  Here you go:

Robert E. Lee at West Point - Andrew Bacevich.  Bacevich does a good job laying out the case for dealing with Lee's name at the service academy.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is no conservative and no hero, no matter what President Trump says - USA Today.  He is, however, a sadist and a total asshole.

These Sugar Barons Built an $8 Billion Fortune With Washington’s Help - Bloomberg.  Corporate welfare at its finest.

A Big Tobacco Moment for the Sugar Industry-The New Yorker.

A flood of problems - Washington Post.  On the danger posed by Peru's melting glaciers.

Climate change will likely wreck their livelihoods – but they still don't buy the science- The Guardian

Hell and High Water - Texas Tribune and ProPublica.  An investigative series from last year on Houston's lack of preparation for a direct hit from a hurricane.

The Moneyman Behind the Alt-Right - Buzzfeed.  Could be titled, "Reason #1 for an estate tax and higher income taxes."

The Critic Who Refuted Trump's World View - In 1916 - The New Yorker

How Moldy Hay And Sick Cows Led To A Lifesaving Drug - Joe Palca

The Qatar Airlift

This probably isn't the best idea for a desert country with no rain-fed agriculture, but it is notable:

The showdown between Qatar and its neighbors has disrupted trade, split families and threatened to alter long-standing geopolitical alliances. It’s also prompted one Qatari businessman to fly 4,000 cows to the Gulf desert in an act of resistance and opportunity to fill the void left by a collapse in the supply of fresh milk.
It will take as many as 60 flights for Qatar Airways to deliver the 590-kilogram beasts that Moutaz Al Khayyat, chairman of Power International Holding, bought in Australia and the U.S. “This is the time to work for Qatar,” he said....
Most of the fresh milk and dairy products for Doha’s more than 1 million population came from Saudi Arabia up until a week ago. That milk is getting scarce after the kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and two allies cut transport links with a country that spends $500 million a week to prepare stadiums and a metro before the soccer World Cup in 2022.
Al Khayyat, whose main business is a construction firm that built Qatar’s biggest mall, had been expanding the company's agricultural business at a farm 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Doha. Food security is part of Qatar’s government strategy to steer the economy away from petrodollars, known, like in Saudi Arabia, as “Vision 2030.”
On a site covering the equivalent of almost 70 soccer fields, new grey sheds line two strips of verdant grass in the desert with a road running through the middle up to a small mosque. It produces sheep milk and meat and there were already plans to import the cows by sea. Then Qatar was ostracized, so the project was expedited.

I would say that trying to produce cow milk isn't the best investment of resources in the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia's investment in a war on Shiite Islam and anyone who supports the Shiites is even worse.  I don't understand how Obama supported the Saudis' war on Yemen, and it is scary as hell that Trump feels the need to encourage the ultimate terror sponsors to start even more shit.  Hopefully we manage to avoid the idiotic war with Iran so many morons in this country want us to pursue (such as the commander-in-chief).  I'll be rooting for Qatar in the current fight.

Your U.S. Open Host Origin Story

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a really interesting story of how this year's host course Erin Hills was built, and how it came to host the U.S. Open.  It is hard to believe.

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.

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.