"Everyone's a rail fan. Some people are just quieter about it than others."

That's what a gentleman said to me when I asked him if he was a railfan. Diehards are easily recognized by their casual identification of a location that is to the casual observer, nowhere.

But I loved the truth in it. Trains are special. A road trip, the classic American vacation is fine, but the train version is far better. A dining car, the chance to walk around, no sleepy drivers, easy bathroom access - all of the inconveniences of car travel are gone. Even a familiar path is different from the tracks.

Okay, I know why. It's because when the Constitution was written, the only practical way to have votes was to have Congressmen show up in person and cast their votes. And so, in grand tradition, House and Senate rules maintain this practice.

But today, it's hardly necessary that a Senator actually be present in order to register a timely, secure vote. We could set up a teleconference, or any number of secured networks in order to ensure only the actual Congressional member voted.

I am pleased to remind everyone that Matt Groening's witty, erudite futuristic Futurama has a new DVD movie out, the first of four feature-length installments. Bender's Big Score has reunited the original team to bring this very fine series back from the dead.

Al Gore first appeared on Futurama in an episode that aired while the 2000 election results were in dispute. Leading the Vice Presidential Action Rangers, a crack team of top nerds including Stephen Hawking, Nichelle Nichols (Uhura from Star Trek), Gary Gygax (creator of Dungeons and Dragons), and intern Deep Blue (the chess playing computer), Gore has an exchange that I quote regularly:

Fry: "Who are you people?"
Al Gore: "I'm Al Gore. And these are my vice presidential action rangers, A group of top-nerds whose sole duty is to prevent disruptions in the space-time continuum."
Fry: "I thought your sole duty was to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate."
Al Gore: "That, and protect the space-time continuum. Read the Constitution!"

With the fires raging across Southern California, we get the usual disaster reactions: sympathy, help, admonitions that we shouldn't live there then, and handwringing about preparations.

California does do a lot of preparations at the state and local level that are invisible during the height of the crisis, especially to the non-local news media. And, of course, there is much that can be and is done by individual homeowners. Not everyone prepares as they should, but every bit of effort makes a difference when the winds rage full of sparks.

In this diary, I'm going to write about some of the preparation steps that I've learned about in my years in California. Not every location has the same rules or the same issues, but knowing the issues and regulations we work with may be helpful even to people elsewhere.

I was writing a comment, replying to someone complaining that Bush was right because families earning $80k a year shouldn't benefit from SCHIP, when I realized something really profound.

Thanks to tax policy, SCHIP costs the government less per child than private health insurance for high-tax bracket individuals.

If ever there was a vegetable, uh, fruit, of mass destruction, it is the blackberry. It has several modes of attack.

First, the canes. Himalayan Blackberries grow not only like weeds, but as weeds. They grow anywhere birds perch, and therefore, poop. They can grow from seeds, from runners, or from chopped up bits of previous blackberry. And they grow fast. There are certain places on our farm where if I haven't been there for a week or two during the summer, I'd better bring the clippers; otherwise, I'll find an impenetrable bramble. They are an invasive and non-native species.

Now that the growing season is back in swing, Ag Alert, the publication of the California Farm Bureau, is back in stride with some interesting articles. Ag Alert is sent to most farmers in the state has a definite political bent, and has stories that you won't find in the mainstream press.

There have been several diaries about the bee crisis on Daily Kos. Bees are essential to agriculture throughout the United States - without them, many important crops will fail completely. Because of Colony Collapse Disorder, the city yokels among us have gotten a crash education in the economics of bees and how valuable each colony is. This article, about  Queen Bees, tells the story of a Shasta County family that raises bees for beekeepers.

There were many really excellent comments on Bonddad's diary yesterday, about why the market, and the standard economist mantras, don't really apply well to health care, which is a public good rather than a private good.  I had some fresh insights yesterday, and I felt it was worth some time to consolodate them and to continue the discussion.

Healthcare is a public good
Once upon a time, in early Britain, if you wanted the fire department to protect your property, you had to privately enroll with them. Each fire insurance company had their own fire department. If your property was not enrolled, they might not put it out. Of course, there is a tiny problem, which is that if one building in a neighborhood starts to burn, it endangers not just that property but every other property in the vicinity.

So it is with healthcare. If my neighbor has tuberculosis, or fails to vaccinate his children, my family is at risk. If, His Noodly Appendage help us all, he has Ebola, I sure don't want him bleeding to death on the streets, with his bodily fluids being washed into the water supply.

Today I'm highlighting some health care stories that I've come across that you might have missed, covering the rise of walk-in clinics inside pharmacies and the like, insurers ideas for health reform, the use of use-it-or-lose it medical savings accounts, a report on the politics of healthcare reform, and a report on a program meant to divert people with chronic conditions from the ER to clinics.

It's that dreaded time of year again.

The time when I, a California small business employer group,  get the fat envelope from my health insurance company. The envelope full of cheerful reminders that it's time to review my health coverage, and oh, by the way, here are your new rates for next year. Happy, happy, joy, joy! Check out the joy! It's glossy paper, the stock photos are smiling!

I've come to expect 10%. This year I sucked in my breath to see 15.4%. I also note that I have people who are about to run over into the dreaded fortysomething age bracket... that will be a 31% increase ON TOP of the annual change when that happens.

Continuing my series on agriculture news and politics in California, let's review Ag Alert for the past two weeks.

Mom's Apple Pie
How Farm Friendly is Your Legislator?
Bin Bandits
Saving Fire-scarred Lambs in Yolo County
Spinach Growers Ponder Crops for Next Year
PG & E Watershed Lands

Today I continue my diary series about farming issues, the California Farm Bureau, and its weekly newspaper, Ag Alert, and how the newspaper is used to push Republican talking points on rural Californians. This week, I'll stray away from the newspaper (hasn't come yet, oddly) and discuss NAIS, the National Animal Identification System.

Now, NAIS is not a creation of Congress. It's been created completely at the USDA on their own initiative, claiming that it is authorized by the Patriot Act. Thus, there are no rules set in stone, and those that have been developed have been changing in the last few months due to increasingly angry public response.

Ag Alert on NAIS, from July 2006.

Most people haven't heard of NAIS, though it's starting to get big on the various animal-related BBS on the internet. In short, it's an attempt to give USDA a means to track every farm animal, or animal of farm heritage, and every property that houses same, in the United States. Covered by the regulation would be: aquaculture, camelids (llamas and alpacas), cattle/bison, deer/elk, horses, goats, poultry, sheep, and pigs.

Yesterday I wrote a diary about two of the articles on improving American hospitals in Newsweek magazine - Innovative Hospitals: Face Mistakes; Feed Real Food. Today I want to focus on the other story that really caught my eye, about improving conditions for nurses and how it saved money and improved patient outcomes.

To me, it is a no-brainer that nurses are a crtical element in good hospital care - perhaps THE most critical element. They are the ones who spend most of the time with a patient, and they are the ones who will notice (or not) if a patient begins to decline. Still, having numbers and data is a big help to convincing skeptics.

So here it is: Improving working conditions for nurses saves money and saves lives.

This week's Newsweek has a really outstanding report on "Fixing America's Hospitals" that profiles several hospitals with innovative programs that are getting patients better care.

Join me below the fold to explore their articles covering such diverse topics as:

Facing up to Mistakes: disclosing errors and problems immediately leads to better patient outcomes, less stress for families and physicians, and fewer malpractice suits. And using the information openly to prevent future mistakes is a pretty nice benefit, too.

Real Food: Kaiser Permanente in Oakland added a farmer's market in the parking lot and is serving local produce to patients

Valuing Nurses: improving working conditions for nurses reduces staff turnover and saves lives. (Quel surprise!)

This week I'm continuing my diary series about the California Farm Bureau, and its weekly newspaper, Ag Alert, and how the newspaper is used to push Republican talking points on rural Californians. Here's what's in the news for October 4.

Ag Alert continues its series on the election, this week focusing on candidates. They don't endorse for every race, and I was surprised to note, while most candidates are Republicans, they do choose a few Democrats. Most notably, they endorse Senator Feinstein, who clearly has someone in her office who is very effective at communicating with the Farm Bureau. Other Democratic candidates may be able to learn something from her success at that. (Of course, the state Republican party is in enough disarray here that I don't even know who is running against her for that seat.)

They save a big, juicy yellow box to highlight the importance of reelecting Richard Pombo, our favorite.

Last week I wrote a diary about the California Farm Bureau, and its weekly newspaper, Ag Alert, and how the newspaper is used to push Republican talking points on rural Californians. This week I'll continue writing on that theme, exposing some of the propaganda, praising them when they get it right, and bringing some of the farm news out to those of you outside of farming, that may help urban Democrats understand a little more about modern California farmers and farming.

In July, an unapporoved GMO rice variety was found in rice bins in Arkansas and Missouri.  LLRICE601, a BayerCropScience GMO strain, has apparently slipped the chains of the research fields and made its way into the main Arkansas crop, leading Japan to ban all imports of American long-grain rice and causing the EU to threaten the same. Rice in Arkansas is worth $1.55 billion dollars to its economy.

Bayer has said it has no plans to market LLRICE 601, which is engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Liberty Link. It was experimentally grown in the US from 1998 to 2001. However, it will now seek approval for this rice since it has been found in the food supply. Until this was found, there was no GMO rice being grown commercially in the US.

I live on a farm.

I am not a farmer. Maybe I will be some day. I have animals, a garden, an orchard, and I grow plants, but I do not have the expertise (or the mortgage) to do so profitably. I have a lot to learn - it is amazing to me to see what my neighbors just know and the breadth of knowledge that they have about plants, animals, machines, weather, you name it. They are smart and resourceful - and they have to be, to be able to make a living in an industry where a heavy rain on the wrong day can wipe out a whole year's worth of hard work.