Whoever thought of "experience courses"?
Has anyone taught a freshman first year experience course before? Would you be willing to share your syllabi? What sort of things should one expect to teach in that course?
— John R. Legg (@thejohnlegg) May 31, 2022
From the responses I gather it is an orientation to college extending for some time, perhaps the full term?
It's another example of how today's students have it too damn easy.
Damn, wish I'd had such a course 63 years ago
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon some speculation. Read an article about "smart guns"--the idea being that the gun and the owner would be tied together by some means--biometric perhaps, i.e., fingerprint. People are working on it, but it's difficult to make it relatively foolproof, particularly when the concept faces hurdles gaining acceptance in the market.
There are also some laws/proposals for requiring gun safes. It seems as if the people who would follow such a law are among the people least likely to need it, though keeping guns away from youngsters tempted to play with them while the parents are away is worthwhile. Reduce gun deaths by preventing accidents, if not homicides.
How about using bluetooth and the internet? Sell guns with an associated gun safe which can sense the presence or absence of the gun. That should be easy enough. Then have the gun safe wifi-enabled with an app on the smartphone. So one or more people could be sent alerts when the gun is removed from the safe. Such a notice would help in cases where a child/teen/burglar removes the gun.
The idea wouldn't prevent many cases, but some. Not sure if 2nd Amendment types would go along, but some might.
Time for something completely different, Silky Sullivan. You have to be old, or a horse racing nut (I'm the former) to know the name, but the two racing performances I remember well are Secretariat in the Belmont and Silky Sullivan in his trademark races.
Megan McArdle tweeted this:
Graham Factor had this.I can't say exactly what happened in Uvalde, but having written a book on failure, I'd bet investigation will not reveal one bad decision, but a string of overlapping failures, most of which occurred individually before with no real incident, but collectively became disastrous
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 27, 2022
Reading "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight" which is good, better for anyone who didn't live through the Johnson administration and read her memoir.
Just reached June 4, 1968, when RFK was assassinated, following the killing of MLK in Memphis. The author quotes an excerpt from a speech by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the next day (who had campaigned for RFK) in which he said: "America is a land of violent people, with a violent history..." Seems to fit today.
I tweeted this today: "Is it strange that the NRA's good man with a gun guarding a school or church never requires an AR-15, but John Doe defending his home has an absolute right to an AR-15?"
Not sure that expresses my intent--in other words: shouldn't the good guys have weapons at least as good as possible assailants? It's obvious to me that an AR-15 or similar weapon is not for self-defense.
The "big sort" is the label applied to the increasing polarization between Democrats and Republicans, where the differences within the party have diminished over the last 50 years and the differences between the parties have increased.
I've read theories about the sort, most of which I've forgotten by now. I've likely posted before on it before. A couple speculations:
I'm not addicted to porn, not sexual porn. I'm trying to avoid being addicted to what I call "war porn", which I consider some of the reporting from war fronts to be. In some ways it's similar to sportscasters/writers who are "homers". It's seductive to go all in on supporting one party in a conflict, but too often when you look back on them they turn out to be mistakes.
Stumbled on a factoid in the footnotes to a book I'm reading: "The Weirdest People in the World"--about which more later. The footnote ties to a mention of what economists call "credence goods". Thoreau originated a famous quote, now used by lawyers: "a trout in the milk" which the piece at the link explains.
The context is that buffalo milk in markets in an Indian city was tested and found to be adulterated by the addition of varying amounts of water, from 3 percent to more than 40 percent. But consumers couldn't distinguish the adulteration by taste (hence a credence good).
In the US milk, at least cows milk, is tested for quality, such as fat content. Thoreau's observation--that finding a trout in the milk would be sure proof the milk had been watered--shows this wasn't always the case in the U.S.
As far as I can tell, based on an extensive 10 minutes of research, there are no standards for plant-based milk--all the attention seems to be devoted to the issue of whether calling it "milk" is misleading.
I'd guess that milk testing evolved well before the idea of requiring nutritional labels on food, and as long as plant-based milks have such labels it removes any impetus for a testing regime comparable to that for milk.
I've used this term before, writing about government. A slightly different focus this time: local government, schools, libraries, etc.
In theory these days there's lots more data available, in that data is mostly digital and most digital data can be accessed. In the case of Ipswich, MA the 21st century has seen a gap develop: in the 20th century the town published a "Town Report", a big volume containing a series of annual reports by each individual unit of town government, and there were a lot of them. In the 20th century there were local newspapers which would run stories on important local issues, interviews with candidates for local office, etc.
Now in the 21st century the Town Report is no more; there's a website. The newspapers are now online and much slimmed down. The town has a website and a Facebook page. Someone curious and adept can search out a lot of information, sometimes by links to reports by Massachusetts agencies, or from what seems to be a outfit providing business services. But for the average citizen it's all confusing: just a lot of web pages and reports.
In other words there's no human intermediary, no institution which has developed over the ages to interpret the work of government for the average citizen. Why is that:
Reading a biography of Lady Bird Johnson. LBJ had gall bladder surgery, meaning an "enormous scar" which he showed off to the media and almost 2 weeks in the hospital.
My wife had surgery maybe 15 years ago, laparoscopic, and three days in the hospital (one pre-op because it wasn't scheduled), and today apparently it can be out-patient.
I saw a reference to this issue last week in connection with moving military supplies into Ukraine. IIRC there might have been a military rationale for having different track gauges (distance between rails) between countries--making it impossible for an armored train or supply trains to cross borders as part of an invasion.
Here's a quote from a Politico piece on the nominee for NATO command:
He has also thrown himself into more intricate issues such as launching studies of railroad gauges and transportation infrastructure in Eastern Europe, which often still use Warsaw Pact standards, in an effort to smooth the movement of NATO troops and materiel.
Different gauges were a big problem in the early days of railroading, including during the Civil War.
Saw a tweet suggesting that people who are scared by the shortages in formula are stocking up whenever they can. That repeats an old pattern we saw in the 70's during the oil embargos where you'd try to fill your tank when it got down to half full; also the pattern during the early days of the pandemic where people stocked up on toilet paper. Such behavior in panics is selfish, and all too human. I challenge anyone to do differently.
Politico has a piece on USDA's challenges with rural development. Some excerpts:
“We were in the community earlier today of 130 people,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview last month as he toured the Delta region of Mississippi. “The mayor had zero full-time employees. There is no way that community could ever qualify or ever know how to qualify. Those are the communities we need to help.”
The Agriculture Department oversees the largest set of programs focused on rural communities — roughly 40 — but there are more than 400 programs operating across the federal government
The wide swath of programs and the influx of money from Congress is intensifying long-standing concerns about how well federal money to help rural communities is getting to its intended recipients. In response, the White House has tasked the Agriculture Department with coordinating a pilot program, the Rural Partners Network, to help ensure the funding reaches the poorest and most underserved communities in the country. It is launching in five states and with three Native American tribes this spring to start, with plans to expand to another five, as well as Native Alaskan communities, in August.
Rural Development staffing, specifically, has decreased by a third over the last decade, while their portfolio of responsibilities has increased by 80 percent, according to Justin Maxson, deputy undersecretary for rural development. In addition, 47 percent of Rural Development staff are eligible to retire.
This is Not Invented Here run rampant. Why do we have so many rural development programs--because everyone, in Congress and think tanks, everyone, thinks they have a better idea than what exists. So instead of modifying and improving an existing program, the incentive is to add a brand spanking new program you can boast to your constituents about, hopefully get reelected.
Ignore the fact that it will taken the bureaucracy time to get up to speed on the program, even with the dubious assumption that what you've written into law makes some sort of sense. So over decades of Congress doing their NIH thing, the poor bureaucrat has to try to understand 40 programs, most of which, like ships, have attracted barnacles of interpretation. And remember, the more time spent in trying to understand 40 programs means less time getting out and explaining them to the part-time unpaid mayor of a town with no stoplight, and helping her complete the forms and follow the process, much less implement a successful grant in the way Congress envisioned, long ago and far away.
So after years of this, and multiple attempts to reform and restructure the bureaucracy we come up with a new idea. We need a new bureaucracy--the old one is too old, tired, disillusioned, and waiting to retire. So instead of fixing those problems we'll create a new structure, where we can start from scratch and do it right. We'll call it a pilot program--if it works we can expand it. Will we, the sponsors be around years later to assess its results and kill it, fix it, or expand it?
ROTFLMAO
In the past I've commented on Prof. Kwame Appiah's book on Moral Revolutions, which includes a chapter on the end of footbinding in mainland China. He argued that footbinding was a status symbol (Veblen would agree) which became tarnished as "old-fashioned" and not modern in the early 20th century when modernization was very important in China. So women with bound feet lost their value in marriage, so binding ended quickly-a revolution in morals.
Made sense to me. Had some resonance because my aunt and uncle worked for the YMCA in China during that time. Among the things they brought back were pairs of sandals/shoes for bound feet.
But I ran across this paper, with this abstract:
We analyze the economic motives for the sudden demise in foot-binding, a self-harming custom widely practiced by Chinese females for centuries. We use newly-discovered Taiwanese data to estimate the extent to which females unbound their feet in response to the rapid growth in sugarcane cultivation in the early 20th century, growth which significantly boosted the demand for female labor. We find that cane cultivation significantly induced unbinding, with the IV estimations utilizing cane railroads – lines built exclusively for cane transportation – support a causal interpretation of the estimated effect. This finding implies that increased female employment opportunities can help eliminate norms that are harmful for females. Further analysis suggests that the need for human capital improvement was more likely to have driven the effects of cane cultivation, rather than the increased intra-household bargaining power for females.
Sounds as if the economists have an entirely different perspective. Since the paper text isn't freely available, I can't evaluate it. But intuitively it makes sense that upper class/leisure class women would have their feet bound.
Modern Farmer has an upbeat review of an early farmland preservation initiative on Long Island, dating to 1974. Farmers sell off the development rights to their land, getting lower assessment and lower taxes.
It sounds good, but I wonder about the economics. There's reference to a 23 acre farm. It may have been growing potatoes in the 1970's; Long Island's glacial soil was great for potatoes. But with changing farming economics and inflation, I'm guessing today's farmer needs to switch to vegetables and specialty crops to make things work. Perhaps tomorrow the land will grow greenhouse or vertical farming. How long can the deal last?
ASCS/FSA has had a history of trying to identify its producers as to their race and/or ethnicity. It seems to me the problem is you can't require citizens to say what they are or consider themselves to be; you can't except for the Census Bureau.
According to this FEMA may be required to collect such data, if the new law passes. As there's more and more written about the disparate impacts of various programs agencies face that problem more. IMO simply asking, whether orally or by form, is offputting--most Americans I suspect would react: what the hell business is it of yours? So you end up with correct information grudgingly given and an annoyed citizen, or incorrect information, or blank, which puts you into the position of eyeballing.
Check out Noel and Kate operating our newish packing machine. After 16 years of packing by hand we invested in a more efficient way to pack leaving more time to concentrate on bird welfare and farm managementper. @butlersorganics #LEAN #farmlife #eggs #organic #shopready pic.twitter.com/m5HN3bprMn
— IrelandsFarmers (@IrelandsFarmers) May 7, 2022
Virginia Postrel has a substack article, touching on changes in cotton production from 1920s (her grandfather was in the trade) to now.
I commented on a couple aspects.
Just a gripe here. If I understand "originalism" as a way to interpret the Constitution, it says that the Founding Fathers agreed on a document which had one meaning. (No doubt that exaggerates and distorts but it's close enough for my purposes.)
Now I've been in a lot of meetings over the years, some of which involve a group of people coming to an agreement, others involving people trying to understand the meaning of one or more speakers. I think it's fair to say that in most cases the people who were trying to agree or who were being talked to came away from the event with somewhat different understandings. In most cases the context was such that the differences made no long-term differences, but the principle is the same. No group of 39 to 55 people would agree on how to apply the document resulting from their meeting.
Original intent is a myth, an "ideal type" as some used to say, which doesn't exist in real life.
Says Justice Alito (who apparently loves Fiddler on the Roof)
I write that after reading this New Yorker interview with Neal Katyal, who describes Alito's draft decision as rooting our rights in tradition.
A separate point--lots of speculation about who leaked the opinion and why. It seems to me everyone is making up a story to fit their preconceptions--like Ginni Thomas being the leaker, because she's the woman we liberals love to hate.
I blogged before about the difficulty of finding a way to a ceasefire in Ukraine. Since then I think I see signs of mission creep.
Ukraine seems to be doing much better in resisting Russia than we anticipated. Ukraine is the underdog being bullied. We're seeing unusual unanimity in Europe about the war. All these factors can feed into a certain euphoria/animal enthusiasm about the war.
But I still don't see an obvious middle ground. Ukraine and its supporters obviously want to repel Russia troops and oust them from their 2022 conquests; ideally they'd like to reverse the Russian gains of 2014. Ukraine also wants compensation for the damage Russia has been inflicting on civilians, housing, infrastructure as well as justice for the war crimes they allege. Finally they want to remove Russia's ability to invade in the future.
IMHO the chance Putin would agree to that agenda is nil. So for Ukraine to achieve its war aims they need a palace revolution in Russia. Unlikely. Think of Germany at the end of WWI and the "stab in the back".
