NBC Miami’s Brian Hamacher with the second-best lede I’ve read this week: “Floridians are going to have to start pulling up their pants and stop having sex with animals soon. ”
Florida’s state legislature passed an odd pair of bills on Wednesday. One would make bestiality a first-degree misdemeanor. The other would ban students from wearing their pants lower than legislators would like.
The bestiality bill, SB 344, is rather, ahem, detailed. I will spare you those details, and only point out that the bill would make it illegal to “[k]nowingly engage in any sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal.” That means if someone unknowingly engages in the same (how?), they have not committed a crime. One wonders if any offenders will try to use that defense.
The baggy pants bill, SB 228, requires all Florida public school districts to add a droopy pants ban to their dress codes. The bill also prescribes punishments. First-time offenders get a verbal warning. A second offense means a suspension from extracurricular activities for up to five days. Every offense after that means up to three days of in-school suspension and no extracurriculars for up to 30 days. The student’s parents also get a note from the school.
Tech:
Red Hat CEO hates patent trolls, but says sometimes you just have to pay up:
“With Red Hat on the verge of becoming the first billion-dollar company focused exclusively on open source software, it has attracted quite a bit of attention — from lawyers waving patents.”
New FCC seal gets wires crossed:
“A recent update to the Federal Communications Commission seal has resulted in a somewhat embarrassing problem for an organization staffed with technology experts and engineers.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
GE’s Immelt wishes he had soft-pedaled green talk:
“The head of the largest U.S. conglomerate, who in January was named a top adviser on job creation to U.S. President Barack Obama, said on Tuesday that GE’s focus on the environmentally friendly aspects of its wind turbines and high-efficiency appliances might have led his critics to believe he was more interested in saving the planet than growing the company.”
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Have a listen here.
A new study says that high-salt diets may not be as harmful as once thought. Research Associate Daniel Compton takes a look. He also points out that, even if salt is a health hazard, regulating salt intake probably won’t work as planned.
HRH the Prince of Wales delivered the keynote address at The Washington Post‘s “Future of Food” conference yesterday at Georgetown University. Tim Carman, from the Post’s Lifestyle section, offers some brief thoughts on the Post blog here. Carman calls the speech “inspiring”, quotes an organic advocate who was “really impressed” with it, and links to the prepared text, which you can find here. I thought it was a load of organic fertilizer, personally, so I submitted a lengthy comment, which I reproduce in full:
It’s not surprising that Samuel Fromartz, an organic farming advocate, would praise Prince Charles for a speech that advocates organic farming. But, while he’s condemning conventional agriculture for its use of “chemical pesticides” and “artificial fertilizers”, HRH might also want to acknowledge that organic farming has its own limitations.
Organic farmers also use plenty of chemicals — just ones that are lightly processed minerals such as copper sulfate, or ones derived from plants such as pyrethrum from chrysanthemum flowers. But, ounce for ounce, organic pesticides are just as toxic as modern synthetic pesticides. And in some cases, such as the organic fungicide copper sulfate, they are far more harmful to the environment. With only a few exceptions, organic pesticides control insects and plant diseases far less effectively than synthetic chemicals, so they must be used in much larger doses.
Furthermore, while organic farmers eschew synthesized fertilizers in favor of animal manure and so-called “green manures” — nitrogen-fixing legume crops like clover and alfalfa — plowing legume crops and animal wastes into the soil leads to nitrate leaching into groundwater and streams at rates similar to conventional agricultural practices. The chemical properties of soluble mineral fertilizers that are prohibited in organic farming are identical to those of that are released in uncontrolled quantities by the mineralization of organic matter.
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A new bill in the Wisconsin legislature would make the cream puff the state’s official dessert. An influential lobbying group consisting of fourth-graders from Mukwonago used Facebook and other media to pressure Sen. Mary Lazich into introducing the bill.
Despite support from the powerful Wisconsin Bakers Association, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel points that the cream puff bill’s success is not guaranteed. Previous attempts “to make Harley-Davidson the official state motorcycle and to recognize the microbe that turns milk into cheese failed to pass.”
CEI will be paying very close attention to the heated legislative battle in Madison to give the delicious cream puff its due. After all, the time that legislators spend on this bill is time they aren’t spending passing more harmful legislation.
Tech:
On The Money: Internet Police:
“With California deep in debt, a controversial plan has emerged that calls for private vendors to monitor what you buy on the Internet.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
All Eyes on the Mississippi River:
“The Mississippi River continues to rise, so much so that its tributaries are starting to flow backwards. At Tom Lee Park, preps for Memphis in May continue knowing that the worst is still yet to come.”
Workers enter Japan nuclear reactor building:
“Workers entered one of the damaged reactor buildings at Japan’s stricken nuclear power plant Thursday for the first time since it was rocked by an explosion in the days after a devastating earthquake, the country’s nuclear safety agency said.”
Obama floats plan to tax cares by the mile:
“The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.”
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Looks like there could finally be some progress on long-pending free trade agreements (FTAs). Yesterday U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said that the administration will ask Congress to consider the three trade agreements that have been languishing for several years. In an announcement, Kirk said the administration will begin technical discussions today with key Congressional staff on draft legislation to implement the three pending trade pacts — with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Under trade laws, the president has to submit implementing legislation to Congress for their approval.
While some unions have been opposing all agreements, the Colombia FTA has been the main focus of U.S. trade unions’ opposition on grounds that the government hasn’t done enough to curb violence against union leaders, despite that country’s strong progress in addressing overall violence and corruption and providing protection for union leaders.
Kirk also announced that he had sent a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees “indicating that Colombia has taken the necessary steps, consistent with the April 22 milestones outlined in the Action Plan, to move to the next stage in the process.” That Action Plan includes stringent labor requirements that some have called interference in Colombia’s domestic labor market and a blow to that country’s sovereignty. (See CEI’s post on this issue.) Kirk’s letter said, however, that Colombia still had to meet other objectives in that plan before the President sends the trade agreement to Congress.
At the same time, the administration will also be preparing a beefed-up Trade Adjustment Assistance bill to give workers whose jobs were affected by trade training and other special assistance programs. That may not placate some long-time opponents of the Colombia trade agreement — who cater to the unions — such as House Democrats Sander Levin and Jim McDermott.
I recently blogged at the Examiner on the frustrating saga of the Savory Collection, a collection of rare jazz recordings from the late 1930s and early 40s which are now in copyright limbo. The collection was the subject of an excellent in-depth article in the May issue of The American Bar Association Journal.
William Savory was an audio engineer who developed an innovative way of recording live performances in the 1930s. He went to nightclubs and captured the great artists of the Swing Age improvising and experimenting with the classics they would later become known for. Savory kept the recordings to himself while he was alive; but after his death, his son sold the whole lot to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
Unfortunately, you probably won’t be able to hear the songs anytime soon. The recordings are considered “orphan works”—in other words, their copyright owners are unknown. The National Jazz Museum has said they’d like to share the collection online for the public to enjoy; but they can’t until Congress passes legislation to facilitate the publication of orphan works. For the time being, the only way anyone will hear William Savory’s recordings is by making an appointment at the museum.
Read my whole post here.
Trade is going to be a hot issue this summer. Pending agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea might finally pass. Opponents of liberalization are already on the attack.
My colleague Jacque Otto already covered the creative destruction defense of trade today. Over at the Daily Caller, I look at employment data and find out that the labor force has grown by 23 million people since NAFTA passed. Doesn’t sound like a job-killer, does it?
Just as trade doesn’t kill jobs on net, neither does it create them on net. The real advantage of trade is that it allows people to specialize and become more productive. That is how economic growth happens:
When governments lower trade barriers, they allow more people to exchange and to work together. In economics jargon, the size of the relevant market gets bigger. And the bigger the relevant market, the more people can specialize.
Readers familiar with Adam Smith will recognize this as his division of labor. Everyone knows that specialized workers are more productive than jacks of all trades. That’s why Henry Ford’s assembly lines were so much more productive than his competitors’. The same number of people could suddenly produce more cars in less time, because they had a more specialized division of labor.
Workers didn’t have to waste time switching from one task to another. They got very good at their tasks. And because they knew their jobs so well, they were better able to come up with new, better ways of doing them. Rising productivity is how an economy grows. Prosperity doesn’t depend on the number of jobs. It depends on how much stuff workers can create.
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