The Enduring Greatness of Jim Brown

 When my family first got a TV, the NY Giants games were the ones mostly on TV, so I became a Giant fan. I remember the games with the Cleveland Browns and the greatest NFL back, Jim Brown (who once scored 6 touchdowns against my alma mater, setting a record that lasted for 40+ years, and he didn't just score TD's, he kicked the extra points as well).

When I got to college, I worked in a dorm kitchen along with a man from Long Island.  At that time lacrosse was very much a niche sport; I think it was popular on Long Island and upstate NY where Native Americans continued to play. As good as Jim Brown was at football, he was better at lacrosse, as John told me at the time and was ratified by the lacrosse people.  

Thanksgiving Memories

 On a farm, with animals, Thanksgiving Day is like any other.  The cows have to be fed and milked, the manure has to be moved to the spreader and spread, the hens have to be fed, the eggs have to be gathered.

Since we raised chickens, that, not turkey, was our Thanksgiving entree.  It was still special; you might expect we were eating chicken regularly but not so.  Chickens laid eggs, that was their role in our ecosystem.  As you only eat your seed corn in desperate times you don't eat your egg layers.

The usual menu IIRC was chicken, mashed potatoes (bought), and green beans (canned from the garden), with pie for desert. 

Typically it was just the four of us at the table, which might mean conflict.  Or not.

After the meal and some rest, the routines resumed.  More milking, more feeding, more egg gathering, cleaning and packing.

It's the Best of Times

Lyman Stone is an ex-USDA bureaucrat with an interesting take on many things (demography, religion being two of the big ones).  This morning he tweeted things weren't too bad.

the world is actually fairly okay. there is no compelling reason for anyone with a job in a rich country to be miserable and angry all the time. inequality mostly doesn't impact most peoples' daily lives. the best evidence we have suggests it's been falling for a few years now. https://t.co/yg3vZtJTLB

— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) October 27, 2022

That was in response to a tweet by Claudia Sahm, an economics professor with a dismal outlook, at least today.

Today the sun is out after a spell of cloudy days, so my mood is improved.  I'd claim now the world is in better shape than ever before.  People are living longer and better, with more access to more options and more information than ever before. That's especially true of what we used to call the Third World. 

 

The Problem of Too Many Choices

 Had to buy a clothes washer today.  Our old Magtag broke after 23 years so we were plunged into a world of many options; many new manufacturers (LG, Samsung, Medea) since the last time we bought, new alternatives (Consumer Reports seems to recommend front loaders now, not the top loading impeller used by our old machine, but there are pros and cons to all. Prices are higher now. IIRC the last time we bought the price range was $250 to $800, and ours was right in the middle. This time the range seemed to be $450 to $1.5K, and our purchase towards the low end.

Passed up one option because it had too many options, too complicated for two older people, even though the salesman recommended it as the best value ($400 off the list price--I wonder how many are really sold at the list prices.)

All the choices made for a stressful day, but the choice is made, the money is paid, and the machine comes tomorrow.

Upgrading to Windows 11

 I understand Microsoft is ending the free upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11 tomorrow. So I went through the process to upgrade the desktop my wife and I share. Eventually I got it done, but next time I think I'll just buy a new desktop for her. 

Me and Drezner

 I always found Dan Drezner interesting to follow, on twitter, blogging, and in the Post.  Now he's moved to Substack and is trying to drum up readership.

He offered three contrarian positions for consideration as possibly attracting interest.

Here's my comments:

Trump voters? May not be that interesting.  Remember the yellow dog Democrats? We have rattlesnake Republicans, people who've always voted Republican and will continue to do so.  I grew up in upstate NY where if you wanted a choice, you voted in the Republican primary.  It took Goldwater's candidacy to break the hold, at least for a while.

Globalization? I'm too old to change from being a free trader.  We don't yet know how to have a good safety net for those displaced by it, but I was one of the liberals in the 60's and 70's who opposed Ike's "trade, not aid" (IIRC).  Turns out he was righter than we thought. I can't get past the changes in what we called the Third World..  Anti-globalism is just an example of the thermostatic effect on a world scale.

Pandemic northingburger?  That's too obvious to be interesting, at least when confined to IR. Sociologically, a different story.

When Did Ass Become (Semi-)Proper?

 An article in the Harvard Magazine described the Harvard Law experience of a woman who preceded RBG (Orin Kerr linked to it in a tweet).  The author describes a class where women were grilled over past legal cases with language which would be embarassing.  Hers was a case involving a farmer's ass (donkey) who got out onto the road.  This happened in 1956, a year I remember well enough to know that "ass" was never mentioned in polite society; neither was "butt" for that matter, except in the context of cigarettes.  

I've been struck by changes in language usage over the years--"ass" being one.  These days it seems pretty common in the print media, much more so in entertainment.  So I decided to do an ngram search. In America its frequency of usage seems to take off in the mid '90's, reaching a peak in 2014 and declining slightly since.  (The British usage pattern differs.)

Jury Duty and Historians

 I had jury duty for one month when I lived in DC. A big room of us gathered in the morning, waiting around for a panel to be called or for the manager to call it a day.  It was boring, but the juries were interesting. I think I was called for 4 cases, got on three juries.  The fourth was a marijuana case.  I took the position that I couldn't be objective and was excused by the judge. I look back on that now with some amazement--I think in the same situation today (though I'm too old for Fairfax juries) I probably wouldn't say a thing.  Did my opinion of pot change? Perhaps. But I don't remember ever believing in legalizing it; decriminalize it was, I think, my likely position in the early 1970's. These days I don't know; I've probably voted to legalize it but I don't know if it's the right answer.  It's the popular position these days, but I'm not totally convinced it's working out. 

Bottomline, I'm less confident now, because I'm older, have seen more, have changed my opinions more.

How does this tie to historians?  A juror is required to put aside one's personal feelings and convictions and become an objective trier of fact.  That's what I couldn't commit to back then. I'd argue a historian as a teacher is required to do the same; as a research scholar also. 

Weapons Maintenance

An ex-Marine writes here  about the difficulties in properly cleaning/maintaining weapons.  I wasn't a Marine, but the piece seems valid to me. 

It struck a chord because I remember the captured soldier in the early days of the Iraq war.  For a while she was made an icon of the fighting woman.  Eventually it turned out that her weapon jammed so she never fought.  I had sympathy for her.  I don't think I ever cleaned my weapon in Vietnam.  As a matter of fact, there was a screwup in getting my departure orders to me, so it was a mad dash to get to Camp LBJ and go through out-processing, one step of which was turning in my weapon. When I tried to, the guy (spec-4 maybe?) refused to take it until I cleaned it.  I tried to explain the situation, my flight was due out shortly, but he was adamant.  Finally I threw some money at him >$50<$100 and he agreed to take it.

I made my flight. 

(It seems possible that the Russian soldiers fighting in the Ukraine have been as lax in their maintenance as I was. )

I Had a Mickey Mantle Card Once

 A Mickey Mantle baseball card in great shape sold for some millions of dollars the other day. 

I remember my baseball card collection, based on buying bubble gum at the corner store. I don't remember whether there were three sheets of gum and one card or vice versa, or some other ratio. Anyhow I had a stack of cards maybe 3 inches high, many of which were Wayne Terwilligers (just because that's the way they did the cards--those for the best players were the rarest).

I did have a Mickey Mantle card. I think it must have either a 1952 or 1953 card because it included the fact that he had been sent down to the Royals, which was 1951.  I think my cards were Topps, which started its baseball cards in 1952. 

I was a Yankees fan (the local baseball team, the Triple Cities Triplets was a Class A farm club); more importantly my sister was a Dodgers fan so I could only be a Giants or Yankees fan.  I liked the card, but there was something different about it.  Perhaps it was a Bowman card rather than Topps.  I don't know.   I definitely didn't get it from a bubble gum package.

The other thing which sticks in memory is condition: if the $12 million card grades 9.5 out 10, mine would have graded .1 out of 10. I believe I was given it by my friend, Van M., perhaps because he had a better version. Mine was crinkled and folded, with ragged edges.  

At some point I outgrew the collection, which faded away like all such things.

Too Many Options for a Geezer

 Both software (i.e., Word) and devices (i.e., smart TV's) have too many options for an old man to understand. 

For example, we donate to WETA, meaning we can access PBS Passport streaming service.  I figured out how to do that on our PCs, though I never can remember how to get to it from the web site--the design sucks.  For 3 years we've had a Samsung smart TV.  But it's taken until today for me to figure out how to link up our weta account with the smart TV so we can see the old PBS shows on the TV.

Lesson:  don't grow old.

Feds Exchanging Data

 Matt Yglesias had a tweet:

A weird fact about the US government is the Department of Education isn’t allowed to just access the IRS data to determine which of its borrowers are eligible for forgiveness and then do the forgiveness.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 26, 2022

He got a lot of replies, including one from me. I'll embed it when it pops up in my profile. 

 

Forgiving Student Loans

 When I see the President's announcement, my Calvinism kicks in, and I'm reminded of a quote, possibly apocryphal, from Calvin Coolidge during a controversy about the repayment of our loans to the Allies in WWI which in turn was dependent on Germany's ability and willingess to pay war reparations: "they hired the money, didn't they"? 

The financing of my own college education was in a world long ago and far away, so it's irrelevant to today's issues. (Though it turns out the student loan program started in 1958 as part of our response to Sputnik.)

When I met my wife she was still burdened by her college loans, which she finally paid off.

As I tweeted, I'm in agreement with Kevin Drum's point of yesterday--what about the future: has the loan program been changed/reformed/revamped so that the moral basis for forgiving current loans won't apply in the future? As I said, my inner Calvinism is at play--we need to treat current students and future students equitably, or at least with our eyes wide open that we're being inequitable.

(The last point reminds of the lasting complaint which resulted from the mid-80's changes to Social Security--I forget the details but a small category felt they were treated unfairly.

Earl Butz Was Wrong (on Cover)

 When my first boss in ASCS sent me to NC for a month to get a taste what state and county offices did, and farmer fieldmen (as district directors were called then), I spent a week in Halifax county IIRC.  The CED was sharp. It was fall so operations were slower. One day he took me out into the field, perhaps doing a spot check, don't remember.  But we stopped at a sawmill.  It had a machine, a lathe perhaps, for shaving a thin layer of wood from a rotating log. Fascinating, as I'd never seen it before.  I think the wood shavings were cut into strips which were then woven into wooden baskets.

We weren't there to look at the operation, but to get one of the workers to sign up for cost-sharing under the then Agricultural Conservation Program.  What was the practice?  A cover crop.   (Cover crops were, I think, particularly popular in the South, where there had been a lot of erosion of worn-out cotton land.)

ACP was established in the New Deal, but by 1969 it was under attack.  Republicans, led by Secretary of Agriculture Butz, argued that some, or perhaps all of the practices, increased the productivity of farms, and, therefore the farmers could and should find the practices worthwhile enough to finance and install on their own, without the carrot of a government cost-share. They also argued that items such as liming were the result of lobbying by the industry. 

There was a lot of back and forth over the fate of ACP between the Nixon administration and Congress, where the House was controlled by Democrats throughout. In the end the program was cut back, both by reducing appropriations and by inflation, and the cover crop practice and liming were eliminated. 

IMO the Butz expectation that rational self-interest would be sufficient to perpetuate widespread cover crops was disproved by the results. 

Ancestry Confirms the Obvious

 Ancestry.com analyzes saliva samples from their customers to provide information back to them.  In my case they've been reasonably accurate on ancestry (German and Scots-Irish, mostly) with no particular results of interest on potential health concerns. Today they added an assessment of risk-taking.  I'm shocked, shocked to learn than I'm more risk-adverse than 60 percent of the population.  

Personally, I'd rate myself as more adverse than 90 percent.

Three Bucks

 I may have mentioned the growing presence of deer around our townhouse.  Over the years it's changed from a single deer occasionally, to a single deer more often, to the occasional pair or a doe with fawns, to once a group of five.

But the other day was the first day I can remember for sure of seeing a buck, actually three bucks.  All three had good sets of antlers.  Couldn't count the points but maybe 10+ on one and close to that on the other two. I guess it's not mating season yet, so they seemed content in each other's company. 

Small Farms, Big Farms, Haiti and Dominican Republic

 Here's a long discussion of why Haiti and the Dominican Republic have diverged so drastically, GDP per capita is 5 times greater in the DR, although they share the same island.

Several topics are discussed, but he leads off with the small farm/large farm contrast. There are several reasons Haiti now has small farms, compared to other Caribbean/Spanish American countries. The revolution, the prohibition on foreigners owning land, etc.  

One thing struck me--in the context of the US, we've lost millions of small farms over the years not only because of the economic advantages of consolidation, which is the usual explanation, but because of the opportunities in the cities for better jobs in industry, commerce and finance.  The "Great Migration" of African Americans from the rural South to jobs in cities all over the country is the prime example, but the reality is that there was a bigger migration of whites from Southern farms and of whites from farms in the rest of the country.  

Appearances and Reality--When Are We Back to Normal?

 I think part of the gloom about the country must be perception--we don't see the country as having rebounded back to normal.  One indicator:  rush-hour traffic.  I don't know what it's like elsewhere in the country, but in Reston the parkway used to often have some backups aroun 9:15, when I was crossing on my way to the garden or out for my walk.  Even when there weren't backups the traffic was pretty heavy, especially for someone who remembers the time when it was a two-lane road, not a four-land divided highway.

But not these days.  During the height of the pandemic there was little traffic. Now the traffic is heavier, but I've not seen any backups since April 2020.  My ingrained definition of "normal" is heavy traffic and backups; by that definition we aren't back to normal yet. 

Modern Sculpture--Oldenburg

 Claes Oldenburg recently died. He was, I guess, a modern sculptor.

I don't have much experience with modern sculpture.  "The Song of the Vowels" which was installed on my college's campus about the same time I arrived didn't do much for me, but apparently it's still considered good.

The National Gallery of Art has a sculpture garden which I've toured, with several of Oldenburg's sculptures.  I do get a kick out of The Typewriter Erasor--Scale X. I remember using the real life erasor before the days of correction fluid.  I'm sure these days few people could identify it. 

Making Decisions--Roberts

 I believe Russ Roberts was an economist before he became head of a college.  Anyway, he's got a piece in the NYTimes on decision making in which he describes the process Darwin went through before marrying. When I read about it in a recent bio I didn't pick up everything he did.

Back when I joined ASCS I was sent to a Kepner-Tregoe training class.  One of the things taught was the same sort of calculus Darwin went through--figuring out pros and cons of a decision, assigning weights to each, and deciding according to the balance.

I tried that approach in choosing the house I was going to buy in Reston.  It was useful, but then, like Roberts, I threw away the calculations and went with my gut feeling--the house I chose didn't come out as the best choice.  The process can only go so far, and whenever there are imponderables and unknowns, as in deciding whether to marry, it's limited.