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.  

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.

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 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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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 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.]

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.  

Chevalier--I Remember It Well

 The snowstorm of February 11, 1983, that is.  My fiance and I had a meeting with a priest to arrange for our wedding later in the year.  When we came out of St. Mathews it was impossible for us to get out to Reston, so I got a hotel room.  The next morning we got a cab out to Reston. It had to drop us off about a few hundred yards from the house, so we trudged through the snow, me in my loafers IIRC. 

The Politico story says that the snowstorm shut down DC, enabling Nancy Reagan to set up a family dinner with the Shultzes, over which the relatively new Secretary of State bonded with the president, and which led eventually to Reagan's opening to the Soviets.

That's what happens when the unexpected hits; the people who are confined together form bonds.  Notoriously, Clinton and Monica started their bonding during the government shutdown. 

The Joys (sic) of Manual Labor

 Ever since I left the farm, my experience of manual labor has been mostly at my discretion.  That's key.  Even when it isn't, as when we get a big snowstorm and I have to shovel out it's not too bad.  I can tell myself I'm fighting the elements, along with some (not many, the softies) of my neighbors.

Gardening is a hobby with a reward of vegetables, so the work involved is just a prerequisite to a payoff.

There have been times when I really got into using my hands.  The family farm was populated with my father's constructions and improvements: hen houses, brooder houses, range shelters, milk house, cow shed, equipment shed, 3 stall garage, etc. My attempts were more domestic, dining room table and chairs, light box, book shelves, etc.  That was all after I bought my house and before marriage.

This last week or so has brought me back to manual work, not building anything, but repairs around the house. It's been a change from my usual winter routine of reading and TV, but enough to remind me of the satisfaction that can come when you fix something, not as well or nearly as quickly as the expert who does the work for her living, but "good enough fo,r government work", as we used to say.

Merry Christmas

 Hope you get more than you deserve, as the theology of this day goes. 

Professor Evaluations

 I follow a fair number of professors on Twitter, mostly historians. I occasionally see tweets complaining about the student evaluations they receive. 

I don't have any sense at all of how student evaluations compare with other evaluation setups, like reviews of products on the Internet, or reviews on Yelp. You'd think it's likely that the evaluations would be somewhat similar--that is, my perception of product and service reviews is that they tend to be more favorable than my intuition is.  Certainly when I evaluate I tend to lend to the positive so I assume that's true of others.

Sometimes the evaluation reported in the tweet is critical, and often the reaction is dismissive.  I suppose that makes sense--if you get some criticism which is useful, it's not going to irritate you enough to tweet about.  But the dismissive bit strikes me as reflecting insecurity and aggravates me enough to blog about evaluations.

Anyhow, I remember an evaluation I got once from my presentation on some program; don't remember which one.  It was mixed, to the effect Bill knows his stuff, but he drones in a monotone. 

😀

It was, and is, true.  It was useful.  IIRC this was near the end of my career in making presentations, and likely accelerated it.  It was much easier to sit in the rear of the meeting room whild one of my employees made her presentation and pat myself on the back for putting her forward. 

Tesla Self-Driving Good Enough for Me

 I struggled to find the NYTimes article I want to comment from.  Turns out it 's over a month old, on-line, but just published in the print version today. It's a ride-along with the owner of a Tesla self-driving car, something of a beta test as they try to improve their software to be safe for wide release.  The owner has a specific location which apparently gives the current software fits, a left turn with 3 lanes of on-coming traffic into a specific lane of another 3-lane road.

My reaction to the description: it's good enough for me to buy.  I've leased my last two cars, on the mistaken assumption that I might not be driving in the future (the future keeps receding, but it's coming). Anyhow, that means I know I've driven about 5500 miles in 2 years.  Granted that part of the figure is the result of reduced activity from the pandemic, but as I age I drive less.

More importantly, the proportion of my driving which occurs on routes I've used before keeps increasing.  I don't know what it is, but likely 95 percent or more.  That means if I buy a self-driving car it can quickly become familiar with my routes, and familiarity means the software can handle more and more situations.  Also, as an older driver I'm more cautious than the average bear (much to the aggravation of some of my fellow drivers), so I'm both more likely to pay attention to the car's operation and less likely to be frustrated as the car responds to new situations by slowing and/or stopping--something which I've seen reported as a problem. 

So the bottom line, there's a niche out there to sell self-driving cars; it just needs to be identified.  Once such cars get into the niche, the process of expanding their capabilities to expand the niche can proceed much faster.

Why I Envy the Young

 I clicked on this discussion and demonstration of the physics of a ball on a turntable. Though my capacity to absorb the new is limited these days, it's still interesting, just a phenomon--forget the equations.

It's an example of why I envy the young.  There's so much material online to learn from these days.  In the '40's and '50's there were books.  Popular Mechanics might have been the magazine closest to some of the Youtube videos, but still miles and miles away. But with the visual examples and the ability to drill down into subjects, today's world is an autodidact's dream.

There might be tradeoffs--amid all the possibilities and attractions could an autodidact focus enough to contribute to knowledge, but still.. 

My Inner Puritan

 Why did we need to double the size of our houses in the last 50 years?

Why did we need to increase the proportion of SUV's and pickups we buy to 80 percent of new vehicles?

Why does the average American family spend $1700 on clothing in a year?

The Visual Revolution

 Discussing our childhoods with a cousin, we both had the experience of Life magazine. For me it was a new perspective on the world.  Before another cousin passed on a few old copies of Life in the late 40's, I hadn't seen many pictures.  Newspapers at that time didn't print many photographs, certainly nothing in color. What pictures I did see were mostly advertising illustrations. 

There were, of course, the newsreels at the movies, but we didn't go to them very often, usually just to Disney movies maybe four or five times a year.

The same cousin who provided the issues of Life also passed on a few National Geographics.  Both magazines were a revelation, in their different ways.  For one, my definition of decolletage is linked to Sophia Loren. 

Since the 1950's we've become a much more visual culture, between the internet, cellphones, and streaming video. I don't know what the change means for other aspects of society, though likely today's childen will never have the same feelings as I did in viewing Ms. Loren (whose wikipedia entry images doesn't include any low necklines.)