Vertical Farming Crash

 A long piece on the decline in vertical farming. I think my past posts reflect skepticism about it.  I don't think it will work until fusion is a viable source of energy.

What the Hell Is This?

 The fewer posts I put up, the more views I get.  

I will never understand humans. 

I'm Thin-Skinned

 "Thin skin" is a metaphor meaning sensitivity to critical comments/insults, etc.

I'd argue that with age I've become less sensitive to criticism than I used to be, although I'm far from insensitive to criticism.  (I always thought I was successful in not showing it, but now I doubt that.)

But the reality is my aged skin is much more susceptible to cuts and tears than it used to be. In my gardening I often become aware that I'm bleeding, bleeding without ever sensing what happened to break the skin.  

The Pilot Makes the Machine?

 I found this piece on an obscure and unsuccessful (for US)WWII fighter plane to be very interesting.  It seems that while it was a failure in the Pacific for us, it worked for the Finns.

Raises the question of how much was the machine, how much the pilot and their training, and how much the opposing airforce? And to what extent does this illustrate a more general proposition about man/machine/environment?

Watergare II--Disregard of Law

 Nearing the end of the Watergate book, which now recounts the briefing of the House Judiciary Committee by the special prosecutor and his staff, some 7500 pages of evidence.  

According to Graff, two things particularly struck the memebers:

• the misuse of national security to excuse and cover up misdeeds not related to national security (i.e., the attempts to have the CIA convince DOJ to limit its investigation, etc.)
• the lack of regard for the law and constitution.  Nixon never was concerned about what was legal, just what was practical and offered a way to get out of the mess.

I'm particularly struck by the second--it sounds exactly like TFG.  Or maybe not, in his egotism TFG claims superior knowledge of the constitution and the law, which Nixon didn't do. Afterwards Nixon would claim, IIRC, what TFG believes: "when the president does it it's legal".

I'm also struck by Chairman Rodino's concern for bipartisan votes in his committee, much more concern than the Democrats showed in their two impeachments.

October Is Coming: the 50th Anniversary

 The Watergate book I'm reading starts one chapter with the observation: "October 1973 would prove to be perhaps the most historic month in the history of the American presidency..."

A reminder--the month saw the resignation of the vice president minutes before he was charged with crimes, and agreed to one, the Yom Kippur war which included a confrontation with the Soviet Union, and the Saturday Night Massacre, with the resignation of the Attorney General and deputy AG after Nixon fired the special prosecutor for Watergate.

Watergate

 In the process of reading Garrett Graff's Watergate. It's a reminder of how we simplify our history--many reporters involved other than Woodward and Bernstein.

Why Do LIberal Reforms Hurt the Poor?

 Is this true?

Liberals propose and enact more laws, regulations, and programs than conservatives?  

The poorer the citizen the more difficulty they have in knowing, understanding, complying, and taking advantage of the laws, regulations, and programs.

The richer the citizen the more able they are to manipulate laws and regulations to their advantage and to exploit programs in ways not intended by the authors.

Farm Bill and Debt Limit

 The cynic in me applauds President Biden's tactic of inviting a bipartisan delegation to the White House to discuss the new farm bill.  Why am I cynical?  While negotiations over farm bill provisions got White House attention in the 1960's and 70's, they haven't gotten that much in recent decades.  

But this year the current farm bill is expiring just as the issue of raising the debt limit and cutting spending is at the forefront.  One of the things the House Republicans want to cut is food stamps (SNAP) which is a title in the farm bill.  IIRC if the bill the House passed were actually implemented, USDA would see its spending reduced to 83 percent of current. But farm state Republican senators, which likely includes them all, listen to their farmers so Biden is putting the squeeze on.  In effect he's saying two things: 

1. you need to help resolve the impasse over debt limit so we can move on to the farm bill, and
2. you need to oppose the provisions in the House bill to make cuts, particularly in SNAP, in order to get the Democratic votes you will need to pass the farm bill.

Well played, it seems, at least at this moment.

Apollo 11--Apogee of White America?

 Watched the documentary film Apollo 11 last night. Seeing it 54 years after the original offered a certain perspective, not to mention color and clarity.

Couldn't help noticing the almost 100 percent white male control room and the almost 100 percent white audience at Cape Canaveral viewing in person.  The film didn't make a point of either, though I'm sure it wasn't by chance the camera passed over one woman in the control room and a couple blacks watching. The film was shot in 1969 with the sensibilities of the time, so I'm guessing it didn't miss much. I'm sure there was a sizeable TV audience of blacks, but few would have had the time and money to travel to the Cape.  I can only guess the feelings of the black watchers; possibly discomfort at being one in a thousand, possibly participating in the sort of nationalistic pride most may have felt, or possibly just enjoying the spectacle.

Apollo 11 was a peculiarly white endeavor; IIRC many black leaders questioned spending the money on space rather than domestic needs. The black participants in the effort were hidden. See Hidden Figures.  So it seemed an white American success, perhaps with a little credit to the German scientists who immigrated to Alabama after WWII. 

In 1969 LBJ had been driven from office, so Tricky Dick got to call the astronauts after their recovery. We'd seen the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and the country was sharply divided.  The immigration laws had been reformed in 1965 but it was too early to see their effect.  We were still on the gold standard and inflation was starting to be a concern. 

I don't know how modern historians place the moonshot in the flow of American life.  I suspect many have considered it a sideshow, an assessment which may be changing as we try to get back to the moon and then to Mars. 

Aging: Learning, Forgetting, Mismatching

 Had to wait at the self-service checkout for the clerk to help another old man, who complained that he had so many cards--I guess he hadn't used the right number for his Safeway loyaltt account.  This ties in with something from the weekend. I can imagine a graphic--two dimensional, though it ought to many dimensions.  Stage one--birth: the baby icon is at one edge of a colored circle, the circle representing all the things about the world which the baby can learn and the color representing the status of the information--current, obsolete, new.  At stage one the whole circle is the same color, since with respect to the baby all the information is currrent.

Stage two--the baby icon has grown, representing the information which has been learned.  Meanwhile the circle has increased in size, with the increase representing new information while a little of the circle has changed color as information becomes obsolete.

Successive stages see a continuation of  these developments:  as time passes the amount of information which can be learned increases, the amount of information the person has learned increases, but as time goes by some of the learned information becomes obsolete.

Fast forward to my 80's: 

• my interest in learning new information and my ability to do so has declined, so the modern world is getting away from me (too many cards)
• the information I've learned is increasingly obsolete.  I know so many things which are of no use now. 
• bottomline--there's mismatch between me and the world, which is increasing.

The Ending of Government Mental Institutions

 Some discussion on twitter about the ending of government mental institutions, the deinstitutonalization movement.  Apparently some believe that President Reagan was responsible, only to be corrected that his actions were as CA governor. 

 I remember the State Hospital in Binghamton, NY, not from personal experience but as a reference point in discussions when growing up.  According to the website I linked to it dated to mid-19th century, was noted for its architecture, and treated alcoholism as a disease. 

I also remember my sister had a paperback of The Snake Pit, the novel on which the award winning film was based (1948).  I think I tried reading it when young; likely one of the books I never finished.

Anyhow, for me the reform movement started in the 40's, with the Snake Pit, then One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962 novel)  followed by the documentary Titicut Follies (1967). 

It seems to have been a case where liberal good intentions and fond hopes for drugs in place of institution were misplaced. Will it be 100 years before we get another effort for reform?

Will, Ford, and Pardons

 George Will's newest column is a review of a new biography of Gerald Ford.  I don't know what Will thought of Nixon and Ford in the 1970s, but today he likes Ford and likes his pardon of Nixon.

Comments on the column don't. IIRC when it happened, I understood the logic and was pleased that Ford's approval rating crashed--I wanted the Democrats to resume their rightful place in the presidency, not realizing Carter's one term would be followed by 3 Republican dinosaurs.

I still don't know what to think now.  Would seeing Nixon on trial have been helpful to the nation? Or would it have further entrenched partisanship? I don't know.

I do know that while Ford seemed a good person, by 1974 I still harbored resentment over his role in getting Justice Fortas to resign.

How Soon I Forget--Debt Ceiling

 Discussing the debt ceiling issue this morning I had completely forgotten that prior negotiations had included a "temporary suspension" of the ceiling in order to have more time to negotiate.

Born Round

 Just read Frank Bruni's memoir on food and his other loves. 

One point of his interest--he goes to Italy as the NYTimes correspondent soon after reaching a turning point in his food obsession which he'd lived with and denied since he was small. So he's very sensitive to Italy and their food ways (his grandparents were from southern Italy).  

Based on his memoir, and partially his analysis, at least circa the late 1990s, Italians enjoyed their food, but eating was wrapped in manners and routines, the servings were smaller and the eating slower. In his American milieu, the cooking was competitive (among his grandmother, aunts, and mother) and the amounts signified prosperity and success. 

Tyler Vs Hennepin

 George Will wrote about this case, as did Somin in Powerline and Tottenburg at NPR.

If I understand Tyler owned a condo, she left for assisted living and apparently left the condo unoccupied. Years later the county took the condo for nonpayment of taxes, auctioned it off, and kept the proceeds.  It sounds like a case of injustice.

What the brief summary seems to miss is that Tyler not only didn't pay her taxes, she didn't pay her HOA dues nor her mortgage.  The Minnesota law says if the county takes the property for unpaid taxes, that action wipes out all mortgage and HOA fee debts.

To me it's hard to see how Tyler should get any money. If she'd declared bankruptcy, then the three creditors: county, mortgage holder, and HOA would presumably fight over the proceeds of the auction.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with invalidating the law. 

This is a tear-jerker case, which might lead to poor decisions.  we'll see.

Biden's In

 I'll vote for him.  What I really want, and won't get, is a victory wide and deep enough to include Democratic gains in the House, the Senate, and state legislatures.

Slavery Everywhere?

 Americans, some of us, know that slavery was part of our history from 1619 to the Civil War.  We're less knowledgable about the slavery in the Caribbean and South America.  I'd have to use Google to find out the extent of slavery in Canada or Chile, Bolivia or Mexico.  

I know, of course, that "slave" derived from "Slav" because Slavs were often enslaved sometime back in history. The TV series "Vikings" touched on slavery there. 

The Bible includes codes for treatment of slaves. 

My recent reading has included discussions of slavery among Native American tribes and enslavement and slave trading in Africa.

Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

 Those terms are the mantra for conservatives attacking the size of government, and those who believe it's possible to reduce the deficit without cutting programs.

As a liberal and retired bureaucrat I'm dubious of the idea.

One thing we don't do is focus on is private companies.  Mr. Zuckerberg has been presumably cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse" in his Meta company--40 percent cuts? And Mr. Musk is cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in his Twitter company. 

Surprising Defection from TFG on Right

 Given Powerline Blog's support of TFG over the years, even going so far to oust one of its bloggers for insufficient loyalty (Paul Mirengoff), I never expected to see this post from John Hinderaker, who I think has been the most consistently supportive of the remaining three bloggers: 

Knowledge problem

 See Farrell at Crooked Timber has a discussion of the "Knowledge Problem". If I understand, it's the argument that market prices encapsulate a lot of information and provide a key basis for a decision.  

Based on that understanding I can agree to support market capitalism, at least partially. The argument depends on the framework that someone is deciding what to buy and when to buy, and the price conveys information.

But as a failed historian I'm struck by the idea that humans make decisions based on history as well.  Some of our history-based decisions are also economic decisions; we know what prices were yesterday and have an expectation of what they'll be tomorrow.  Or we know how good or bad our last car has been and how good the service from the dealer has been, which has a big impact on which new car we buy and who we buy it from.

But we also have history-based noneconomic decisions with little or no price involvement.  We know, or think we know how good or bad a politician or political party has been; the knowledge guides our future.

Resistance to Remote Work

 The Times has a piece on remote work, describing some research and a categorization done by a social scientist.  Attitudes fall into four categories:

resistor--high level types who go their own way.

defector--who will quit

quiet quitters--who don't work hard when at the office

skeptics--(not clear how they differ from the quitters, except maybe they're more vocal and still work harder than the quitters).

The breakdown reminds me of the Hirschman analysis in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.

Note however that the Times expert is focused only on forms of resistance; he does not address the loyal employees who try to do the job both in the office and at home.

Thomas, Crow, and Heirs Property?

ProPublica reported this:

In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.

Lots of discussion about the propriety of the purchase, but I wonder about something else, given the last 5 words.  Apparently Thomas' mother lives in the home.  

Slate reports that:  "All three properties were co-owned by Thomas, Williams, and the family of Thomas’ late brother."   That sounds to me like confirmation of what I suspected when I started this post--the property was "heirs property", meaning the original owner died without a will. That's been a big issue for ASCS/FSA, since having clear title to the land you're farming used to be a requirement for obtaining some loans. Congress has recently provided money for FSA to dole out to NGO's who are supposed to help owners of heirs property. 

I've always mentally ascribed the prevalence of heirs property among blacks to the historical lack of lawyers in the community. But here we have one of the nine most powerful lawyers in the US involved with heirs property. The iriony.

On Distribution LIsts

 Kevin Drum and many others don't understand how a National Guard member could have access to the sort of information which was leaked.

I think part of it is the pathology of distribution lists.  One of my early jobs in ASCS was reviewing and updating the distribution lists we maintained for various types of directives. These were paper or telegraph messages, but similar logic would apply in the world of data.

I think there's severa; aspects of what I'm calling pathology:

• no one pays any attention to distribution lists.  Once they're set up they can go on forever, automatically.
• distribution lists can be based on an office, a position, or an individual. If you specify x number of paper copies for an office, it's then up to the office manager to see they get distributed.  In today's world, the email/is sent to the office url. If it's a position, then whoever occupies the position or acts for the occupant would have access.  If it's an individual, then an individual address. Each of these are vulnerable.
• The vulnerability is in part the fact that things change, but as I said, the distribution list is automatic.  Bureaucracies may have procedures for "out-processing" people, but that's not a priority (I remember my outprocessing from Nam).
• The other vulnerability is the gap in comprehension between the originator of the classified info and the actual recipient in the bureaucracy. 

I'll be interested to see how close my guesses come to the reality in the current case.

A Large Dairy, Poor Cows

 Big explosion at a dairy in Texas Monday, with estimates of the number of cows killed at 18,000!

Don't know the cause of the explosion--possibly methana from manure would be a guess.  

Can only feel sorry for the cows which died, which have to be killed because of injuries, and which survived but won't be milked on schedule, not to mention their likely PTSD. 

Artificial Versus Natural

 Virginia Postrel has a post discussing our current aversion to "artificial" by reexamining the story of 19th century resistance to "artificial" ice, which wasn't true.

She observes nature in the 19th century was something to be mastered. As in the movie African Queen, nature is something humans must rise above.

In the 20th century the interests behind the "natural" products: butter, milk, use that fact to fight against the innovations which threaten their markets: margarine, oat milk, etc.

Counter-factual--while fighting nature, conquering the continent has been a meme in American history, valuing nature over the artificial  also has a long history.  Look at Thoreau and his reaction to the railroad and telegraph.  

Morrill Land Grant Act and ROTC

It turns out the Morrill Land Grant Act, enacted in 1862 during the Civil War, included some vague language about military training.  It's language on the purpose of colleges with the money athorized reads:

the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life. [emphasis added]

The language is awkward, but the reasonable interpretation is the colleges is to focus on agriculture and mechanic arts but also including classics and science, including military. Apparently the phrase was added late, as earlier versions of the act preceded the Civil War.

The meaning of "industrial classes" is "working people", a little more expansive than "working class".  

What's Long Range in Abortion Battles?

 Kevin Drum questions whether a national 15 week ban on abortion with exception for the woman's health would be acceptable to his audience. Many of the comments don't reply, instead insisting it will never happen.

I wonder what happens if and when liberals gain a majority on SCOTUS. I assume that will happen at some point in our history, and before anything medically has changed the landscape. So SCOTUS changes, and liberals bring a test case asking the court to reverse Dobbs. Seems as if they'd have some choices--push for the landscape after Casey using Casey's arguments, come up with different arguments (as RBG had thought), go for different rules (maybe a national position). But I wouldn't see any new arguments or positions as changing the logic of the pro-life camp.  

So if Dobbs is reversed then the pro-lifers revert to their simple position and we're fated to continue the argument and possible SCOTUS flip-flopping into the future?

Women's Economic Activity

 Reading "The Wife of Bath".  Stumbled on the first sentence of Chapter 3, where the author Marion Turner claims that "women have also always been economically active.."  She's focused on European women and the Middle Ages, but somehow the phrase caused me to think.  "Economically active" isn't defined here, but I'd expect it to mean earning and spending money, which would make it more limited than working, although there might be a Venn diagram there.

I think we can assume that almost all women everywhere have worked for much of their lives, if competent, just as almost all men have worked, if competent. I don't know that we'd usually consider spending money as working, at least in common parlance, but we would, I think, consider it as economic activity.

The formal definition of "work" seems to be the expending of effort or thought to accomplish something.

Somehow the subject is fascinating, even if I'm not going anywhere with it today.

How Did the Academy Become Liberal

 IIRC in my young the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association were generally quite conservative, perhaps with an exception for the ABA on civil rights (though ChatGpt says it was criticized for being too conservative).

At my college the most liberal professor was Douglas Dowd, an economist.  

My question: the right today claims that colleges are dominated by liberals/the left.  The right says that today liberals essentially veto the hiring of almost all conservatives in almost all fields, perhaps less so in engineering. Assuming that's right, how did we get to this point?  Certainly liberals didn't dominate the academy in in the 1950s and 60s, so what happened?

My guess is that it's the result of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.Some protests split the professors, certainly they did at my alma mater--my advisor moved to Yale,  But I think after the protests died down the academy found itself pretty much united in supporting civil rights for blacks, rights for women, and open to the other cultural movments--notably Hispanics and gays. 

The Historic Context of Gun Ownership

 Justice Thomas had a recent decision on the 2nd Amendment, focusing on the need to have a documented historical basis for any regulations of gun ownership.  This seems to be the latest version of "originalism" as a tool to interpret the Constitution.

I can understnad the perceived need for a standard of interpretation that seems to be objective, in the sense that it exists outside of the preferences of the justices. But as a failed historian I've reservations.  My perception of American society in the late 1700's is it was still structured with family, religion, and hierarchy, not individuals pursuing their own destinies.

I'm reminded of my grandfather's memoir of his father, a Presbyterian minister in Illinois durin the 1840's-70's. One thing he did was visit each family associated with his church and examine the children to be sure they were being properly brought up, knew their bible, and were on the way to being good citizens of the US. I'm also reminded of another grandfather, a great great one, who was part of the founding of a Presbyterian church in upstate New York, outside Geneva at the beginning of the 19th century. He was the recording clerk for the session.  The church was for many years the body which enforced the community's mores.

So I tend to believe that community norms and community pressure would have applied to gun ownership; those were impaired with mental problems, those who were irresponsible, those who weren't trusted with lethal weapons would have faced community sanctions.

What Will ChatGpt Do for History?

 Discussing with my cousin the pros and cons of a decision on what to write caused me to reflect on ChatGpt, and how it might change historiography.

Some thoughts:

1. these days everyone is writing something, whether it's on social media or memoirs published through Amazon's KDP or whatever. Some of the material represent a minute-by-minute record of events, both significant and insignificant 
2. the cost of storage keeps dropping.
3. gradually or rapidly everything written in the past which has survived is being digitized and stored on media
4. 1-3 mean that historians have much more material to work with and from, but the task of finding relevant source records and assimilating their content is becoming impossible.
5. the advent of ChatGpt will provide historians with an invaluable, if dangeroous, aid to find relevant records and the ability to get summaries of the results--a tireless research assistant.

1. To the extent that materials 
2. 
   

• 
  

Responsibility for Deficits

 Kevin Drum had a post the other day showing the percentage of the nation's GDP devoted to the federal government.  It's roughly 21 percent from 1980 to now. Kevin argues that shows the various tax cuts delivered by Republican presidents (Reagan, GWB, TFG) are responsible for our deficits: because spending has remained level(ish) the deficit must be on the tax side.

I don't find that argument conclusive. I think a more realistic picture is that spending and taxing both wiggle over the years: sometimes up and sometimes down, but consistently the public and its political leaders are comfortable with a regular deficit. 

Trigger Warnings--A Compromise?

 Saw a tweet by FIRE arguing against a call at my alma mater for mandatory trigger warnings.  Here's a piece in the college newspaper arguing against it.

I can sympathize with someone whose emotions are so easily triggered as the result of some trauma in the past, but as an old fart, my knee-jerk reaction is: tough it out, snow flake.

I seems to me there's a reasonable compromise: FIRE agrees a professor is perfectly free to give trigger warnings.  I'd suggest requiring every professor to have a policy on trigger warnings that's announced in the first class of the semester. That way students have fair warning of what the rules are.  If the professor is my age, and with my views, they can drop out of the class (though after it becomes a requirement, it will be easy enough to include the professor's policy in the write-up of the course). If the professor is a "woke" member of a younger generation and wants to commit to giving trigger warnings, fine.

The Lesser Importance of Libraries?

 Much concern these days over which books are in school libraries and which are not. It's warranted: the presence of a book in a school library signals something. 

But these days hasn't it a diminished importance?  When I went to school the library was my source for magazines to read and books to take out. I didn't have other sources, unless my family could subscribe to a magazine or buy the book.  My appetite for reading material far exceeded the available money my family could spend. 

Today's youth have access to cellphones and printed material on the internet. I realize the material differs from the books whose presence in school libraries is currently questioned, but still.

Back in the day the two sources of perversive material were the library and the mass of rumor and fact passed down from older kids to younger kids. Today it's just a click  away.  

The bottomline seems to me that those trying to ban books are wasting their energy on the lesser threat, not the major one, while those fighting bans often exagerate the significance of the ban. 

Government Budgeting

 Was alerted to this substack post going back in history to efforts in federal budgeting and spending.

As I commented, I didn't follow some of the argument, but it triggered memories.  Back in the old days ASCS could use CCC funds as a piggy bank and its status to bypass some restrictions.  For example, if we had a rush print job for program signup involving the notices of bases and yields and the signup form, the print branch could justify bypassing the Government Printing Office's rules by claiming the material was to implement CCC programs, enabling them to go directly to a printer. 

Details of interest only to oddball types like moi.

The Port Royal Experiment and Phonics

 Stumbled across an odd fact today.  I've been reading Roger Lowenstein's "Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War."  It's interesting.  A main character for most of the book is Sec. of Treasury Chase, who ends up designing the "National Bank System" and also had charge mostly for the Sea Island plantations after the Union Army took the islands.  This led to what is called the Port Royal Experiment, giving the government the problem of how to handle the freed slaves and the occupied plantations.  It was a forerunner of Reconsttuction's issues.

One problem was teaching adult blacks to read. A teacher was John Zachos, a Greek whose father was killed in the Greek rebellion in 1824, and was brought to the US by an American who supported the rebellion.  He wrote a book, the first book the blacks had, entitled: " The Phonic Primer and Reader, A National Method of teaching Reading by the Sounds of the Letters without altering the Orthography. Designed Chiefly for the Use of Night-Schools Where Adults are Taught, and for the Myriads of Freed Men and Women, Whose First Rush from the Prison-House of Slavery is to the Gates of the Temple of Knowledge?"

The Great 20th Century

 It seems we often look at some statistics the wrong way.  For example, it's common among the optimists among us to brag about the improvement in living standards by citing the reduction in the percentage of people in poverty.  But I think it would be more impressive to look at it the other way.

So I  asked ChatGpt to compare the number of humans above the poverty line in 1900 with the number in 2020. I can't guarantee the accuracy of the numbers but what it gave me (using World Book numbers of "extreme poverty") was 150 million in 1900 and 7.1 billion in 2020.

That's a whole lot of people who might be happy.

ChatGpt's Errors

 My cousin and I were discussing the early textile mills in New England.  I thought I remembered Europeans visiting the mills, particularly Lowell, and writing about them.  So I asked ChatGpt.  I can't copy the response, which is curious since I've done it before, but it listed Harriet Martineau, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur as a French writer, Isaac Weld, and William Strickland.

The Strickland reference is definitely wrong; he didn't write the book listed.  Both Weld and Strickland are cited as visiting New England in the 1790s, which seems too early for the mills.  Martineau seems dubious based on the description in Wikipedia, as does Crevecoeur. 

It looks to me that ChatGpt confused opinions on slavery which all four people expressed with visits to mills,

Why Working for FSA Is Worse These Days

 Sec. Vilsack testifying, link was posted to the Facebook FSA group. At the start he observes that it's no longer true that the county executive director of the FSA office is among the best paid in the county and that serving the public by working for the government has lost some cachet.

Iraq in Retrospective

 This is a comment I posted on Kevin Drum's post looking back at Iraq, which you should read:

"Wish I was blogging then so I'd have a good record of what I was thinking. As best I can remember I was dubious of Afghanistan, given the Soviets failure there, our failure in Vietnam, etc. But it went surprisingly well, and the aftermath seemed to be working well with Karzai getting support.

So with Iraq I was torn. The Post had a reporter who was filing good stories challenging the official line. I still had some skepticism about war. But on the other hand Bush did have Blair on board, and Blair seemed capable and had worked well with Clinton. So I think my attitude when the bombs began to fall was to the effect: I don't think I'd do this if I had the power, but I don't so I hope you're right and can do as well in Iraq as you seem to have done in Afghanistan.?

Why Grist Mills?

  Roots of Progress is an interesting effort I follow.  This particular post  roused my usual contrarian reaction, but also triggered a question, specifically this:

" you should take into account that some types of labor were automated very early on, via wind and water mills"

My question is why?  And who?

ChatGpt says, when asked how different civilizations ground their grain:

Ancient Egyptians: The ancient Egyptians used a hand-powered quern to grind their grains. The quern consisted of two flat stones, one placed on top of the other. The top stone was rotated back and forth to grind the grain into flour.

Ancient Greeks and Romans: The ancient Greeks and Romans used a rotary mill to grind their grains. The mill consisted of a circular stone wheel with a handle on one side. The grain was poured into a hole in the center of the wheel and was ground between the wheel and a stationary stone.

Native Americans: Native Americans used a mortar and pestle to grind their grains. The mortar was a bowl-shaped stone, and the pestle was a long, cylindrical stone used to crush the grain.

Chinese: The Chinese used a stone mill to grind their grains. The mill consisted of two horizontal stones with a vertical stone in the center. The grain was poured into a hole in the center stone and was ground between the stones.

Mesoamericans: The Mesoamericans used a metate to grind their grains. The metate was a flat stone slab, and the grain was ground using a handheld grinding stone called a mano.

Overall, each civilization developed methods that were suited to their particular needs and resources.

Based on skimpy research by google, it seems there's a transition from rubbing two stones together, to a rotary grinder hand powered and then to the water/wind driven grist mills. 

Did women initiate these inventions?

Me and Chocolate Milk

 This piece about the controversy over including chocolate milk in the school lunch program reminded me of something.

Growing up, dad would bring up some milk from the morning milking which went into the refrigerator.  As it was raw milk, the cream rose to the top.  Mom would skim the cream off for use in tea, coffee, cereal.  We'd drink the milk remaining, the skim milk. So I was accustomed to the taste and texture of skim milk.

When dad drove the truck to Greene, our market town for feed from the Grange-League-Federation (co-op) store and bigger grocery stores than our local one, we'd often go in the morning and get lunch at a diner.  My order was always the same, tuna fish sandwich and chocolate milk.  I disliked the taste and texture of the homogenized milk, so chocolate milk was the only thing I'd drive.

The Decline of Flexibility

 Paul Krugman has a piece on the declining flexibility, looking at the supply of artillery shells for Ukraine and shipping containers during the pandemic. Economic theory says that capital should move quickly to solve shortages,  but Krugman says it's not happening now.

I don't think he says explicitly but I think part of the problem is the increasing complexity of manufactured products. The modern PC is much more complicated than the hand crank adding machine I used in an early job.  A modern artillery shell is much more complicated than the comparable shell in the Civil War or even WWII. 

The more complex the product, the more steps in the manufacturing process, the more suppliers in the network, the more opportunity for Moore's law to work. 

Depositors Are Not Stockholders

 I think it's true in 2008 many stockholders were wiped out.  I know we owned GM stock and lost it. The same thing applied to some of the financial institutions--like Lehman.  I think some banks did not go bankrupt; they were for pennies on the dollar by another bank. That means where an investor might have had Bank X stock worth $50 in 2007, when it was bought out the investor may have gotten $2.

How Life Improves

 Kottke has this video showing a 2009 car colliding with a 1959 car.  

Chatgpt claims: According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the United States has decreased from 5.39 in 1960 to 1.11 in 2019.

Cultural Appropriation

 It's bad if an acting role which is specific to an ethnicity, culture, or gender identity is filled by a straight white person?  But it's good if the musical 1776 or Hamilton is performed by a diverse group of actors?

In the ideal world we shouldn't bar anyone from auditioning for a performance of any role in a standard* play or film.  And we should allow a director to intentionally cast against type if she wants a nonstandard* play or film.

But our world isn't ideal, so how do we deal with that?  We know the available roles aren't representative of the world: too many sexy blondes under 30; too few women over 80, etc. We also know roles vary greatly in the degree to which they're specific to a particularl identity.  So I think the reality is we work towards the ideal, knowing we'll never get there.  You tilt the playing field a bit, or like a guerilla, advance here and withdraw there, testing the limits of what's possible, which means what people will support with money and time.  

* "standard" means a play or film whose casting would be described by a critic without attention to the identity characteristics of the actor.  So a director who wants to try a Shakespearean play with all male actors (as it would have been in his time) is doing a nonstandard version.

Standard Time on the Moon

 The NYTimes has an article on a proposal for establishing a time standard for the moon.  With the number of different nations doing activity there (South Korea?), presumably applying their local time to their work there seems to be a need.

It's further complicated because, as the article notes in passing, clocks run faster on the moon!

I had to ask Chatgpt for an explantion, which is:

"Clocks do not actually run faster on the Moon. However, they do appear to run faster when measured from Earth due to the effects of general relativity. 

According to general relativity, time appears to move slower in the presence of a strong gravitational field. The strength of Earth's gravitational field is greater than that of the Moon's, so time moves more slowly on Earth than on the Moon.

This means that if you were to compare the ticking of two identical clocks, one on Earth and one on the Moon, the clock on the Moon would actually tick slightly slower than the clock on Earth. However, because the Moon is much less massive than Earth, the difference in the strength of the gravitational field between the two is relatively small.

The net effect is that when we measure the ticking of a clock on the Moon from Earth, we observe that it ticks slightly faster than an identical clock on Earth due to the time dilation effects of general relativity. This effect is small, however, and only becomes noticeable with extremely precise measurements."

Myth America III

 Next two chapters in Myth America are on Native Americans, by Ari Kelman, and Emigration, by Erika Lee.

The first seems loosely focused around that idea that Native Americans aren't "vanishing", as Dee Brown and the recently retired ad would say.  The second is mostly about the nativism with which those who lived in the US greeted arriving immigrants, sometimes barring entry to groups or limiting numbers. 

I have a problem with this sentence: "The United States has been a particularly powerful actor shaping the movement of peoples by causing human displacement through war and foreign and economic policies.." The author does not support this assertion; indeed she doesn't discuss it at all that I see.  The problem is it's not true for most of our history, at least as far as war goes.  Immigrants have come from Germany, Italy, Philippines, Korea, Japan, China, and Vietnam--all countries where we've fought wars. But in all the cases the immigration was either the movement of the losers to their supporter (i.e, Vietnamese, Hmong, Chinese) or movement because the war and subsequent occupation troops established pathways for the movement. 

Coincidentally the NYTimes has an article today discussing another immigration myth, that immigrants come and stay.  In fact through much of our history many immigrants have left. That continues today.  The pattern described in the article seems to be: come to US and work for the money; return to the homeland for family and retirement. Prof. Lee does not mention this, though the fact of immigrants leaving undermine the myth that America is so  great no one would leave once here; 

Fading Families

 Don't remember what I've written here about genealogical research.  My sister did a lot during a year when she was no longer teaching school.  That was back in 1978, long before the internet and the extensive digitization of sources.

A digression: genealogical research appeals to the sort of mind who reads detective stories.  Back in the day there was great satisfaction in figuring out connections, assessing what the probabilities were when faced with incomplete evidence, etc. Unless you participated in a group devoted to genealogy, you didn't know whether you were the first to find your great great grandmother, or had some cousins preceded you.  All that is, I think, rapidly vanishing.  With ancestry.com and family search, once a connection is made it's visible to anyone in the world who wants to look. And with digitized sources, rapidly expanding to all the printed matter which still exists, and searching, no longer do you have to hit the libraries and local historical societies as did my sister; just click the mouse and pay the subscription fees.

Back tot he title.  One set of clues to ancestry was generational naming patterns. These days the Social Security administration releases statistics on naming patterns, tracing the popularity of names.  (I suspect there's been a recent drop in babies named Karen.) In the old days when family was more important, babies were often named according to a pattern.  For example, my great grandfather named his first son Andrew after his father, and his daughter Sarah after his mother.  In Scots Irish families the next set of children would likely be named after their mother's parents, and so on. The pattern was strong enough  you could use it to deduce genealogy, at least in the 19th century   (By the end of the century it was fading; while my father was named after his mother's father, and my uncle had his paternal grandmother's maiden name for his middle name, my uncle's first name and my aunt's name have no identifiable history in the family

We don't have such large families these days, and the pattern of naming has gone. Does that mean that family feeling is less, or just that a custom has faded away?  

Ask Not

Much discussion on social media about declining mental health, particularly among the young. I'd venture to suggest that the distance our society has traveled is measured by JFK"s words: "Ask not what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country"

Two points about the sentence:

1. the emphasis on "doing'
2. seeing the individual as being involved with/part of a greater entity--the country.

I don't have a quote to point to for today's society, but I think:

1. the emphasis has shifted more to "being" (authentic) 
2. the individual is now more separated from larger entities, whether country, occupation, or religion.

I'd guess the evolution is inevitable, caused by changes in the economy, in technology, in beliefs, but it will take society a good while to adjust to the changes.

Was Vertical Farming a Bubble?

 That seems to be the argument of this piece.

While I've been skeptical of it, I think it's premature.  Lots of innovations have had their ups and downs before becoming stabilized.  Humans react with enthusiasm to new ideas and overpromise.  I've seen that in the 1950's with atomic energy, off and on with computers, with the internet, self-driving cars.

I suspect when the technology winnows out the impractical and too costly ideas to arrive at an industry standard it will reduce the capital costs.  Experience will also teach the best locations for vertical farming operations--how cheap the land must be, how close to population centers.  Genetics may tweak the plants for best production under lights.  And the switch away from fossel fuels may reduce energy prices.

All that said, based on an impulse to be fair, I'm still feeling some Schadenfreude.

I Love Armies

 The first two paragraphs of a NYTimes article on getting Leopard tanks for Ukraine:

" Nearly a month after Berlin gave European allies permission to send German-made tanks to Ukraine, the flow of tanks so many leaders vowed would follow seems more like a trickle.

Some nations have discovered that the tanks in their armory don’t actually work or lack spare parts. Political leaders have encountered unanticipated resistance within their own coalitions, and even from their defense ministries. And some armies had to pull trainers out of retirement to teach Ukrainian soldiers how to use old-model tanks."

I particularly laughed at the second sentence: maintenance is always problematic, particularly in armies which haven't fought wars.  

Slippery Slope/Tit for Tat

 One of the arguments of "Hive" is that research shows that in a prisoner's dilemna game which extends over multiple sessions, the best strategy is "tit for tat" but not always.  Straight "tit for tat" can lock the players into a vicious cycle of retaliation, often familiar from Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, etc., while the occasional deviation can transform the game into one of cooperation, which is win-win for both parties.  The book arguments that people with higher IQ's take a longer perspective, so are thus more likely to initiate cooperation, leading to group evolution.

It strikes me that "slippery slope" arguments are related to "tit for tat".  Consider SCOTUS nominations--the Republicans start with Bork, the Democrats with Thomas but either way we've evolved away from the Senate confirmations of the Eisenhower/JFK/LBJ era (though from an old Democrat's viewpoint the real starting point was Gerald Ford's crusade against Abe Fortas.  😉

Myrh America II

 Akhil Reed Amar writes in Myth America about the founding fathers.  He emphasizes Washington's importance to the Constitutional Convention and downplays Madison's contribution, sees little difference between "republican" and "democratic", emphasizes the "union" side of the founding, doesn't accept Charles Beard's interpretation, and accepts the Constitution as helping slavery. 

All in all it seems well-argued.  I was surprised by his singling out Beard; by 1960 he seemed no longer prominent.

Myth America

 Started reading this collection of essays, subtitled: "Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past" David Bell leads off with "exceptionalism".  He mentions the Winthrop sermon, but not the Biblical verse to which he referred. (Mathew 5:14 "You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.") 

I didn't know of the connection to Marxism, though Seymour Martin Lipsetl's use of the concept to explain why the US didn't have socialism was big in the early 60's when I was studying history.

Bell notes Reagan's use of "shining city on a hill" and Gingrich's pushing of the concept as a political weapon against the left, and Obama's formulation that all nations are exceptional. And he notes Daniel Bell's 1975 essay "End of Exceptionalism".

Personally I'm not ready to concede the term to the right.  America is exceptionally  important; on that all sides can agree. Whether we point to a glorious ascension or a past stained by misdeeds, America can't be ignored. The vehemence of the arguments over our past and future testify to exceptional importance.

Ukraine

 Lots of media coverage of the 1-year anniversary of the Russia invasion into Ukraine.

In general I've been in favor of the Biden policy, supporting Ukraine against Russia but avoiding committing US troops. I still am.  But I remember in the early days after 9/11, I had some doubts,never expressed, about the Bush policy. He seemed to have called it right for some time, but now the conventional wisdom says it was a mistake.

In the case of the Ukraine, we forget Russia invaded in 2014, took Crimea and a good portion of eastern Ukraine. Why the new invasion--was it because EU/NATO/US didn't support Ukraine that much in 2014?

My bottom line--it's complicated and I don't see an easy ending.  Biden's making his calls; they seem reasonable today, they may or may not be the right ones when looking back at it from 20 years on.

A Shepherd Is Angry

 

This ELMs scheme is SO POOR… where are the options for regenerative grazing, for long recovery periods, for trampling carbon, for hyper diverse permanent pasture, for agro-ecological transition, and for actually earning the real cost of public benefits? https://t.co/G0rawZT5xA

— James Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) January 31, 2023

Good Old Days of Democratic Dominance

 James Fallows had a tribute to Jimmy Carter today, mentioning in passing that the Democratic margin in the House was 150!! I checked, it actually was 149 in 1977 and 122 in 1979.

As Fallows noted, the big fights were intra-party.

Fear the Future--Bot and Sock Puppets

 A comment the other day about communications from fake social media sites--sock puppets.  The writer observed it was sometimes hard to identify messages from bots.

My fear--you ain't seen nothing yet.  Someone is already linking Chatgpt to their fake media sites, so they can push out messages which seem very real with little effort. 

HIve Mind and the Mathew Effect

 Reading Hive Mind by Garret Jones. Finding it good through the first chapters, until he got to the "Ingredients for Good Politics" and the Coase Theorem.  A fast summary: if a state has people focused on the long term, and willing to accept the results of elections, there can be effective bipartisan deals to handle externalities (like pollution) using Coase.  Coase says that if you have good negotiators they can find a win-win solution without the need for regulation. 

Then I started thinking about the Matthew Effect.

An assumption in the discussion is that high IQ people are more future-oriented and more able to do tit for tat bargaining, without holding grudges which lead to mutual destruction. The problem when you apply the idea to politics is that those with the gold/assets are able to hire those with IQ (lobbyists and lawyers) to rig the bargain.

How To Avoid Taxes

 Reading a book by Scott Galloway: Adrift, America in 100 Charts.

He has a chart showing the increase in the amount of corporate earning which are booked in tax havens.  It's gone from 0% in the 1960's to 50% in 2016.  

I wonder what it means.  If we see a figure that corporations pay x% of their income as taxes, is their real tax rate considering total income x/2 %

And the audit rate has declined from the good old days of 1960 of 3 percent to less than .5%.

On Vice and the Prohibition Thereof

 I seldom agree with Prof. Blackman, but I envy him his office setup. (Seven monitors, it's incredible.  I tweeted a snarky comment about the relationship to high tuition rates, but his output is so voluminous that he might be producing seven times that of the average law professor.)

I might agree with his negative assessment of the SCOTUS decision on sports betting.

It seems to me humans are prone to being addicted, sometimes to good things, sometimes bad.  I'm not libertarian enough to say  everyone can choose her own addiction.  I'd rather see the government intervene, possibly with "nudges" rather than flat prohibitions.  Taxing vices like cigarettes and alcohol is good, taxing gambling 

Programming? Chat Bots

 ". It's just programmed to seem human." That's a sentence from Ann Althouse, in a post reacting to the frontpage article in the NYTimes recounting an exchange with Microsoft's trial version of a chat bot. 

I'm jumping in where I have no knowledge, but that's not the way I understand chat bots like ChatGPT, etc.  Aren't they "learning models"?  To me that means the programmer is responsible for the IQ of the model, of the bot, but not the content of the responses. So it seems that ChatGPT et.al. will be showing us an average person, "average" based on the context the bot is learning from, which seems to be the usual suspects--white, european, educated etc. 

I suppose by controlling the content from which the bot learns the developers can create different personas--say develop a basic personality, then give it a collection of the 500 greatest books in some category with instructions to give the words in them triple the weight. 

Brain Tests

 I've participated in some research on the aging brain, partly because my mother started showing signs of what we assumed was Alzheimers at about my current age, partly out of do-gooder syndrome. 

Two of the projects had me run various computer-based exercises.  The most recent one is being run by a Phd with Georgetown University, possibly with the hospital; I'm not clear.   His exercises spanned a wider variety of challenges than I'd run into before: for example seeing a long sequece pairing seldom seen names (because rare in English or originating in a foreign language) with pictures of the objects  or a sequence of pairs of objects with no obvious connection (i.e., a brick and a coffin). 

Before I got old, I'd almost always do well on tests, tests requiring language knowledge and identifying shapes.  As I've reached my 80's I'm doing less well on the familiar tests, and absolutely lousy on some of the Georgetown tests.  While some of my problems likely are changes in my brain, I think I never would have done well on some of them. 

The ways I and my spouse process ideas and experience are often very different, which was observed years ago when we both took the same tests.  She hasn't taken the Georgetown tests, but I expect she would do much better  than I did on some of the tests.  

In a perfect world, knowing what I do now, I'd wish I had taken these tests back in my teens.  It would have expanded my view of how brains work, and made me better.

Suoer Bowl Ads

Watched the first half of the Super Bowl last night.  Turned it off when Mahomes was injured, knowing the Chiefs were done for.  Besides, I tuned out of all the ads because mostly they included people I didn't recognize.  I realize I'm almost totally disconnected from popular entertainment and celebrity culture. 

Proper Representation II

 When I was young "representation" wasn't an issue. Instead you had "mobility", the idea that immigrants climbed the ladder from poverty to middle class with some striking it rich.  Actually there were different ladders--Jews were noted boxers and basketball players before they became doctors and lawyers. Mobility was often about "firsts". We noted the "firsts"--the first Jewish SCOTUS justice, the first Polish cabinet secretary, even the first black cabinet secretary.

Emphasizing the firsts obscured our view of the many, or perhaps was just a way to avoid looking at the many.   But "firsts" are still important; they show what is possible, what isn't prohibited.  Similarly the extreme cases, like Muggsy Bogues, may be outliers but they too show what's possible.

Somehow this discussion ties into "intersectionality" to me.  But that's for another day.

AFIDA and Congress

 CRS has a paper on the issue of foreign ownership of agricultural land in preparation for the upcoming farm bill.  Two items of note--about half the acreage included in FSA's AFIDA data is forest land (apparently a lot of which is in Maine) and China doesn't show up in the discussion of the owners of the most land.

They mention possible problems in FSA's data, including a request to GAO to look at it.  I am sure there are problems. 

What Is Proper Representation?

The conventional wisdom now seems to be that groups, whether ethnic, racial, gender, ideological, deserve to have representation in every walk of life that matches their presence in society.  

For example, I've noted articles on the dwindling presence of American blacks in major league baseball; the absence of blacks in management positions in the NFL, the lack of conservative professors in higher education, etc

My first reaction is to go slowly--the first consideration is whether there are legal barriers to such representation. Those I presume are almost always wrong. 

A second consideration is that under-representation of one group necessarily means over-representation of other group(s).  For example, the over-representation of Asian students in top educational institutions (i.e., Harvard, Thomas Jefferson High School) is the other side of the under-representation of other minorities. 

A third consideration is the under-representation  of a group in one area means the over-representation in other area(s).  For example, the over-representation of blacks in pro football and basketball seems to be the counterpart to their under-representation in pro baseball.

A fourth consideration is trajectory through history.  For example, blacks seem to have created and still dominate areas of music (about which I know nothing), like hip hop and rap.  Jews seem to be prominent in Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

A final consideration (some would put it first) is whether the differential representation indicates a barrier to advancement of some kind. One rule of advancement is usually--it depends on who you know--meaning the greater the representation the easier it is to advance.

The Hole In FSA Management?

 FSA has something called Box Onespan, which appears to be an on-line signature manager. I'm guessing from messages on the FSA Employee group on Facebook that FSA continues to have a hole in its management. 

What hole?  Someone who worries about the day-to-day operation of the county office; someone who is the authority on the common tools used in the office, who worries about training and answering questions.  Instead there's an ad hoc network of county personnel sharing information and tips.

The hole existed, I think, when I worked there and likely still exists. The problem is management in DC is specialized so no one has a unified picture of how things come together in the county office.  

IIRC there were occasional efforts in ASCS/FSA to come up with such a picture: training classes for counter clerks, manuals for district directors, and sometime the area/regional directors in DC would have a take. 

[Updated to eliminate double negative in title]

ChatGPT and Congress

 Yesterday there was a report, which I may be garbling, that Google had given ChatGPT the same test questions they give to engineering job applicants, and the AI qualified as a level 3, apparently an entry level.  The starting salary for level 3 was given as about $180K, more than the starting salary for a new member of Congress, not to mention a member of considerable seniority. 

Not sure what that says about AI, Google, Congress, or the US. 

New EWG Report on Distribution of Farm Payments

 Various newspapers picked up the EWG report.

The lede for one: "The top 10% of recipients of federal farm payments raked in more than 79% of total subsidies over the last 25 years ",  

Here's the EWG report.

Elsewhere they note that the Trump administration changed the reporting of payments--I think FSA must be reporting payments to assignees, so likely using the payee data, not the payable. 

[Update: they note the change in reporting reveals which financial institutions get the most payments: " Surprisingly, the financial institution that received the most farm subsidies was the USDA. The USDA’s Farm Service Agency, or FSA, alone got almost $350 million in farm subsidies between 2019 and 2021, more than any other financial organization." Not a surprise to anyone who understands how the payments word.]]

The Importance of Making/Fixing Things

 A recent hole in the roof meant I had to move away from my keyboard and actually do some work, physical work repairing the damage to drywall.  

Since gardening has been inactive this winter, I've not been doing such work. I found it good to be active, to try to do something, and actually succeed, not perfectly but good enough for government work.  (Note the source says it used to mean quality work. In some ways government specifications still are more particular, and certainly more expensive, than "off the shelf" civilian products. (Note the origin of this expression, not at all related to its current use, meaning standard items, not bespoke.

That's a digression--my point is doing the work was rewarding.

Police Killed in Line of Duty

 Turns out there's a wikipedia page for US police killed in line of duty. Quite a contrast with a page for UK police killed.

For anyone too lazy to click, US killings of police run about 50 or above, the UK runs about 1 a year.

The context is the culture: US view police as maintaining order against crime in the midst of an armed populace, meaning a focus on conflict and violence, while the UK has a different history. In short, there's not an arms race in the UK, there is in US.

Failure To Commit, To Decide

 Ran across this tweet, which sounds interesting. 

Excited to share this new work with @beckyj1 in @ASR_Journal! We examine how local organizations sort people to ration scarce social benefits. We analyze the case of prioritization in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program (1/12)https://t.co/AAlR8Z8AdN

— Simone Zhang (@simonezhang) January 30, 2023

 

Drawing on >1000 local waitlist prioritization policies and interviews with local housing officials, we find many local housing agencies don’t set explicit priorities to determine who accesses a voucher sooner. This is especially true in rural, conservative communities. (4/12)

— Simone Zhang (@simonezhang) January 30, 2023

 My guess is part of this is the costs of deciding priorities.  It requires a conscious decision, which many people find difficult. Being in a rural area raises the odds that the potential decider knows some of the people who will be affected by her decision, and the people affected know who made the decision so there's the risk of emotional confrontations. 

It's also possible that there's no one decider, which raises the possibility of conflict among the deciders.  The outcome can be similar to Congress; which Congress can dodge the decision by kicking the issue to the bureaucracy, local deciders can dodge the decision by leaving it up to first-come, first served. Both tactics give the advantage to those who have the ability and expertise to navigate the bureaucracy.

Me and the Deficit--Raise Taxes!

 NYTimes has an article on how social issues and the deficit play with Republican voters. The point is the Tea Party was very concerned about spending; now voters are less concerned.  (I'd quibble a bit with Cohn's analysis: I think a lot of the Tea Party emotion was over the idea of socialism, specifically pushed by a black president, not so much a concern for fiscal conservatism.)

Anyhow, I find myself not in the mainstream of Democrats--I'm much more concerned about deficits and the rising cost of interest on the debt than the average elephant, and much more in favor of raising taxes as a way of handling it than most anyone.  I wholeheartedly support boosting the IRS budget to collect taxes, but I'd also raise taxes on those above $100K. 

Does ChatGpt Mean End of Wikipedia

 Some see ChatGPT as a threat to Google.  Might well be, but won't it be equally a threat to Wikipedia? Humans, being lazy, don't really care about accuracy and objectivity; give them a story whichs seem coherent and it will be good enough.

The Crystal Meth of Purpose

 Elliott Ackerman in his book Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning, uses the phrase:

"the crystal meth of purpose".

The book is a group of essays on his trips to Iraq, Turkey, Syria, getting close to the ongoing fighting among Syrian rebels, ISIS, Kurds, Iraq forces, and remembering his days as a Marine in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 

His point is that combat with your unit provides a purpose which, at least in his experience, is both addictive and not to be found in civilian life.

I never was in combat. Over my life I've known times where I did have a purpose, one which was at least somewhat addictive.  I suspect I'm easily addicted,

The Former Guy Gave to Growers

 Via John Phipps, who retweeted it.  I was trying to find his skeptical piece on vertical farming, but found this worth reading.

My new report for @ewg just released today: Under Trump, Farm Subsidies Soared and the Rich Got Richer https://t.co/oL6xw2OTAS

— Anne Schechinger (@Anne_Weir1) February 24, 2021

Over the years different administrations have stretched the authorities granted under the CCC act and Section 32.   

[Update: One chart from the piece:

What Was I Thinking?

 Damned if I know.  As I age, my short term memory is going. It could be upsetting--you have something in your mind, and a couple seconds later it's gone. So far it's not happened often enough to be really upsetting, so I'm using my time-tested super-power of denial to carry on. 

Self-Driving Cars and Ecology, or "Where's the Running Board?"

 NYTimes had an article on Tesla in its Sunday magazine. Its emphasis was on the problems in the self-driving software.  

Tesla claims that based on accidents per miles their cars are much safer than those driven by people.  That may well be true, but I'd love to see a test where the drivers and conditions are randomly assigned.

I think one problem is the lack of sound data--apparently each company which is trying to implement such software maintains its own data, presumably for competitive reasons. But even if the data were public, there doesn't seem to be a basis for comparison.  The testing being done uses drivers who aren't at all reflective of the overall population and is done on roads and in conditions which aren't representative of normal driving. 

As it stands the testing being done is also unfair to Tesla and the others.  What do I mean?  The current ecology of drivers, roads, and conditions has evolved over a long history. An experienced driver has expectations based on her experience, and operates on their basis. I imagine it could be modeled as a circle in a Venn diagram. Imagine 60 years from now when almost all cars are self-driving.  That ecology will have "drivers" with somewhat different expectations, cars different than todays--notably quicker to to react, and roads which will have been modified for better self-driving. In our Venn diagram, the circle for the current ecology and the circle for the self-driving ecology will not be identical; they'll overlap in some areas.

Today when we judge self-driving software we're judging it by the current ecology, not the ecology of 60 years from now.  It's like cow-catchers on locomotives or running boards on cars--both were things needed by the early rail and automotive systems, but not by the current ones (though it turns out our trucks and SUV's still need them).  It will take time for the ecology to evolve; for drivers to gain experience with the cars, for the cars and software to improve, for the roads to be modified, for the insurance industry to adapt and the laws to change. It will be evolutionary.

The Honor System for Records Management

 A recent newspaper article (Times or Post?) noted that enforcement of the Federal Records Act is entrusted to the honor system. What does that mean?

 When I joined ASCS it had a Records Management Branch in its Administrative Services Division. It had been strengthened as a result of Congressional scrutiny of the Billie Sol Estes scandal.  (The investigators found that ASCS didn't have a good system for filing correspondence and policy papers.) 

The focus of the branch's work was establishing and maintaining a system for filing correspondence, and prescribing a filing system for offices originating policy decisions. Once established the routine was almost self-executing.  New secretaries would be shown what to do: original and carbons, yellow is official record, green is addressee folder, etc.  In my view there wasn't any explanation of the rationale for the way it was designed.

The records management people in the agency were effectively outsiders, people who might show up occasionally, but without any day-to-day contact with the workers   If that was true for fellow employees of ASCS, it was doubly true for the people involved with records management at the departmental level, and quadruply true for the employees of the National Archives and Records Adminstration.

How might this translate to the Executive Office of the President? On the one hand there must be a greater consciousness of the importance of records, given the constant scrutiny by journalists and investigators and the looming historians.  On the other hand the office has a lot more going on than any agency.  On the third hand, at the end of an administration I imagine it's like when you decide to retire, you zero in on the future and care much less about the wrapping up. Finally, your boss couldn't care less about records. 

[Update: given the discovery of more documents in Biden's places and today's discovery of documents in Pence's place, I think my "third hand" is well supported. I suspect you'd find a few classified documents in possession of a lot of high, and not so high, officials.]

Silos, Innovation, and the Internet

 I remember the burst of enthusiasm surrounding the discovery that the Internet/WWW could be used for business.  Soon it became mandatory for every business to have its own website. Expertise in doing sites was short, so some found a profitable business in creating websites.  I still hear their advertisements from time to time.

Normally I prefer to do business in writing rather than talking, so that meant I was happy with this innovation.  And more and more I found the businesses with whom I wanted to deal had websites.

In the past few years, though, I've tried to deal with businesses who have websites but who don't respond when I send them an email or fill out the contact form on the site.  Sometimes I've reverted to calling them, but usually they lose my business.

What's going on?  I've no proof, not even any data, but my suspicion is it's part of a general parttern:  when an organization has something new to do they:

• may contract it out, or set up a new group to do it.
• they rarely look at how it could impact or improve their existing operations--it's easier to keep doing what is familiar and comfortably within their knowledge and capabilities.
• once the new function (in this case a website) is set up, the initial enthusiasm which evoked the decision, money, and time needed to creat it tends to ebb, especially if the website doesn't show immediate payoffs.
• the end result is the website becomes a dusty relic of some bigshot's pet project  

You perhaps can guess that I think some of this applies to past initiatives by ASCS/FSA/USDA to change the way they operate. 

Indeed, I think it's part of the way our government works.  Part of the life cycle of government initiatives.

[In summary: often the way organizations innovate is by addition, not substitution, which leads to silos.]

Contrarians--Genetic?

 I've long experience with contrarians--my sister was one.  I lean that way myself.

I wonder whether it's genetic or cultural?  Do "tight" societies , presumably ones less welcoming of contrarians, have fewer, or any at all?  I'd assume there might be an evolutionary basis--seems as if the species could benefit by having a few around, just as it presumably benefits by having a few left handers around.  On the other hand, while I'm a confirmed right handers, I was able to train myself to use the mouse left-handed when I was getting carpal tunnel pains.

Inverted Social Norms

Back the day rural areas were viewed positively, with high morality, great character, all the virtues (at least so my mother thought). Meanwhile urban areas were viewed negatively, with dubious morality, poor character, divorce, gambling, drugs,  many dangers. By the 1970's it was clear where the balance of goodness was.

These days it seems that rural areas are the ones with problems, higher death rates, drugs, broken marriages, etc.   Meanwhile the gentrified urban areas and suburbs are seeing a new social conservatism--less sex outside of partnerships or marriage, indeed less divorce, less smoking, etc. 

Bar/CR Codes for Classified Documents?

 I had very limited exposure to the classification system for government documents during my time in ASCS/FSA.  IIRC ASCS did get some classified documents as part of the distribution system for the agricultural attaches stationed in some embassies.  I'm not sure why some, a few I think, were classified; perhaps the attaches had a report on the status of a nation's crops which were obtained by befriending a statistician--I don't know.  Anyhow, a management analyst in Records Management had a clearance and handled them.  I suspect the whole setup was a carryover from New Deal days, before USDA silos were built up, possibly before Foreign Agricultural Service was formed.

Anyhow, I'm not surprised by problems in handling and tracking classified documents.  You might be able to have secure handling if you used a dedicated database with no ability to copy, download, or print.  That way you could track the user ids anytime a document was read.  But, with the possible exception of the most highly classified, that's not practical.  (It does seem that when documents are viewed in a SCIF that while they could be printed, nothing could be taken out of the facility. 

For the more ordinary classified documents, I wonder if they have a system of bar coding or CR coding for them. The problem of course would still be the copying, printing, downloading--how do you assign a unique identifier to the copy, printout, or downloaded document?  If election officials and USPS can assign a unique code to a ballot so it can be tracked, but they don't deal with  duplication.

Rear Ends and Third Parties

 I've been rear-ended twice in about 3 years, both times in leased vehicles. No major damage or injuries in either.  Both times I'd argue a third party caused it.  Both times on Reston Parkway.  In the first a car very quickly moved from the lane on my rear into my lane and over to the lane on my left. I had to brake sharply, and the man behind me was unable to stop in time.  In the second, I was stopped at a light.  When it changed I anticipated the vehicle ahead moving out, but the driver opened his door and tossed the remains of his coffee out before starting off.  Took a couple seconds, but in the time I took my foot off my brake and then put it back on when he didn't move.  While the driver who rear ended me said she was at fault, looking at a broken fingernail, I think what may have happed is: she looked up, saw my brake light go off, looked down and missed my brake light going back on.  

A Ponzi Scheme? No, a Howe Scheme

 While I'm sure she didn't invent the idea, Sarah Howe did precede Mr. Ponzi in bilking people out of their money by promising unrealistically high returns and paying them off with the deposits from later suckers.  That's from this Jstor piece on women's banking.

(I didn't realize the Homestead Act gave women the right to homestead as well as men.)

Price of Using the Internet Is Eternal Vigilance?

 Someone said "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance". 

Maybe we should update it.  Just got a message supposedly from Paypal asking for money. It's a scam, but one I've not seen before. 

Maybe I Should See "Hamilton"?

 I know the musical is good but today I wrote a letter to the editor of the Post, in the course of which I looked up the lyrics of one of the songs--The Room Where It Happens.   Makes me think I should see it.  Is it available on Netflix? 

"Aging Software"?--Tufekci Is Wrong?

NYTimes columnist Tufekci had a piece  discussing Southwest Airlines problems in managing their airplanes and personnel.  I just looked it up online on Thursday evening, finding to my surprise the Times has a featire in their comment system called NYTimes replies where she responded to some of the comment.

She puts the blame on "aging software" used to schedule pilots and crew.  I'm not sure why I immediately objected to the term, but here's my thoughts:

"Aging", which I am, means to me a deterioration of abilities, your body goes, your mind goes, you go. But software, once written (and debugged) remains the same, essentially forever. It's a set of ideas, of data, of information, which may be lost or destroyed, but will always do what it was capable of doing at its origin. 

Tufekci also uses the metaphor of building a structure, but using shortcuts, skimping on the foundation, etc.  Saving money now but setting the stage for problems later.  That's also wrong.   She mentions "technical debt", which is an interesting concept, but seems to me to conflate problems. 

I'd suggest the Southwest problem is a problem of "aging", but not in the sense I outlined above--deterioriation.  Consider the mature individual, the completed building, the proven software--each fits its environment, fulfills its function. There's a match of thing and context. Obviously the match isn't perfect; it may be flawed, corners were cut on the building or the software, the individual ends in the wrong occupation, with the wrong spouse, etc.)  As time passes, the building and the individual will deteriorate, they'll require maintenance to stay functional. But not the software, except as bugs appear. 

So the term "aging" has two sides: change for the worse in the entity discussed and change in the environment in which the entity operates, impairing the match between entity and environment.

For Southwest I suspect their software dates to the airline's early days, when it was doing point-to-point flights, basically within California.  It's expanded vastly over the years, getting lots of plaudits from customers.  The consensus seems to be they failed to spend enough on upgrading their software.  News media doesn't die into details, so we don't know whether the software ran into capacity limits, whether the system was never changed to use new technology (like generating text messages to personnel), whether the fundamental data model was flawed in light of the new environment and the impact of very bad weather, or whether all of the these factors were at work.

At the end there's a mismatch of capacity and environment. For humans the capacity declines and the environment changes. For software the capacity stays the same while the environment changes.