Drone Registration and Obama's Immigration Actions and Guns

Today's papers (I think, but I'm playing catchup with my reading after a short trip) say that the FAA is planning to implement a registration system for drones by the end of the year.   There's also a piece about the court battle over Obama's immigration actions.  Why do I link the two?

Because I think both cases involve a bureaucrat's favorite piece of legislation--the Administrative Procedure Act.

As I understand it, Obama is being sued by Texas because he didn't follow the public rulemaking provisions of the Act.  Texas argues that the state is harmed by Obama's actions, meaning that he (ICE actually) should have gone through proposed rulemaking, allowing the public to comment on the actions.  There's a prediction the court fight may drag out through the rest of Obama's term in office.  (If they had gone with proposed rulemaking, the administration's lawyers probably figured it would have taken a couple years to complete anyway.)

If the FAA actually gets their registration system, both software and system design and requirements, up and running by Christmas, in time to catch all the drones being given for Christmas, they will have done well.  But why aren't they required to go proposed rulemaking under APA?

My guess is the FAA's argument in fact, if not formally, is that no one will have the balls nor the legal basis for suing over APA procedure.  They might say that the registration system will be so easy and not burdensome that there's no adverse burden to the public.  What I suspect they'll really mean is that the drone industry wants certainty so they can forge ahead, so no company will sue.  The industry will do better by having known standards than a 2-year court fight over process.


Now from the private citizen's standpoint, I could argue that my freedom is impaired by any federal regulation of guns drones. I could even argue owning and operating a drone is vital to the citizen's oversight of the federal government and my rights will be violated by this hasty rush to regulation.

I could argue that, but I don't.  I wish the FAA good luck with their software project.

You Never Do It Right the First Time

There's a corollary to this,  the hiding hand principle.Which says the actual outcome of a project is often very different from the projected outcome.  The original essay by Albert O. Hirschman looks at unexpectedly good results, the more recent study linked to here says they occur only in a minority of cases, mostly it's poorer results.

How To Change Peoples' Minds: Tax or Nag

Always interested in how people change their minds, if they do.  Two bits of evidence:

1. Taxes work.  From NYTimes, Mexico levied a tax assessed on bottlers of soft drinks. The higher price reduced consumption.
2. Nagging works. NY Times article on  how Californians nag each other about water consumption.

Are Children More Civilized Than Adults?

The question of how social norms change has always fascinated me.  I've previously mentioned a book by Prof. Appiah on the subject: how duels in the West or foot-binding in China became unapproved.  He doesn't discuss, nor had I thought of this factor: children.

Children can point out hypocrisy, and lots of our norms are hypocritical.

This is triggered by a brief post on Kottke.org, where Jason writes, in partial explanation of a decrease in soda consumption in the US:

I've been a dedicated soda drinker¹ since at least high school. But this summer, I started cutting back. The big reason is that my kids are getting old enough to read labels and wonder why I'm consuming so much sugar, the little blighters. "All that sugar is not good for you, right Daddy?" they would say. And they're completely right of course and I couldn't argue with them on that point, so I've been drinking a lot less of the stuff. I haven't cut it completely out of my diet but I treat it more or less like every other food or beverage I consume: everything in moderation.

Rolling in His Grave: Mao Tse-tung

That's the only conclusion I can draw from this New Yorker piece, on a butler training school in Red China, of all places.

An excerpt:

Among China’s burgeoning population of new millionaires (their ranks have tripled since 2012, to more than 3.6 million) there is a peculiar appetite for the fusty trappings of European nobility. Chinese real-estate developments with names like Majesty Manor and Top Aristocrat package themselves as enclaves of Old World opulence, their properties complete with moats, replicas of Buckingham Palace gates, and mansions modelled after Versailles. Rolls Royce has begun offering Chinese customers chauffeur training with purchases from its seven-figure Phantom line, and Christie’s has opened a specialized agency to help Chinese buyers purchase wine estates abroad. For Chinese élites who are eager to adopt lifestyles commensurate with their massive wealth, such status symbols lend a recognizable veneer of Western-style aristocracy. (Many in the industry attribute the trend to the immense popularity of “Downton Abbey,” which has given millions of Chinese viewers a window into Edwardian upstairs-downstairs living.)

Who knew they liked Downton Abbey?

Farm Kids Learn to Work Young

I couldn't resist stealing this photo from Northview Dairy.






One of the things we lose with our modern economy is the ability for kids to imitate the work of their parents. That's one way to learn, and a good one.

I'll stop now before I get all sentimental about days gone by.  Just a reminder, that little girl doesn't have to fear polio as she grows. 

The Loss of Quality

One of the things which has happened over my lifetime is a loss of quality:

1. in music.  Used to be we had audiophiles who spent thousands on their amplifiers and tuners, their speakers and turntables.
2. in photography.  Used to be we had photo buffs who spend thousands on their camera, and meters and lenses, and filters.  Then we had digitial photography, with the arms race in the sensors.

Now we have smart phones which take good-enough pictures and which produce good enough sound.

Jail Breaks and Inertia

Two notable jail breaks recently--the Mexican drug lord and the two cons in Dannemora prison.  In both cases the escape route was a set of passages connecting the jail cell to the outside world.  I don't know how often there are these sorts of escapes, but they've been happening at least since Dumas wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo".

It's bureaucratic inertia at work.  The easy way to screw up such plans is simply to move prisoners around to different cells at unpredictable intervals.  Someone can invest the time and energy and willpower to create a passage from a cell to the world only if reasonably assured that they will benefit by it--remove the assurance and they won't invest the effort.  But given that prisons are bureaucracies devoted to maintaining control and order, the idea of creating uncertainty is unthinkable.  (To be fair, such transfers would likely disrupt established social routines within the prison, so might well be more undesirable than an escape every x years.)

The De-Skilling of the Workforce: Taxi Drivers

NY Times reports that the exam for aspiring NY taxi drivers has been changed to deemphasize the importance of knowing the city's geography, recognizing that with GPS such knowledge in wetware is no longer that important.  It's just one more instance of humans outsourcing skills to machines, devaluing the worth of the old time-tested knowledge and the importance of the people who know it. 

In other words, it's part of the march of progress, of being better today than we were yesterday, of freeing humans from mindless routine in order to be better people.


Do you think I'm ambivalent on the subject? :-)

The Rise of the Pods

A post here on America's coffee habits.

When I was a child, I could get a little tea in my glass of milk, but couldn't have coffee, as it was bad for kids.  Of course that made me more determined to drink coffee, which I've indulged ever since I grew of age (maybe 15 or so?). Back then instant coffee was new, and the family gradually switched from the percolator pot to instant.  During my working life I usually had a coffee cup on my desk, filled from the big coffee maker (12 cup maybe?).  Who would refill the coffee pot and buy the 3 lb cans of coffee were often big issues among the office staff.

Now I'm addicted to Starbucks, using it as my big incentive to get out of the house and take some exercise.  I've discovered to my surprise that the jars of instant coffee are no longer stocked at the local Safeway; they have the envelopes of instant instead, but mostly the "pods" for something called a Keurig.  Which brings me to the post I started with.  Apparently using a spoonful of instant coffee and boiling the water were too burdensome for modern Americans; instead we have the self-contained appliance.

Changing Norms

I follow the Powerline blog, even though it's conservative and I'm liberal. Sometimes they, particularly Paul Mirengoff, surprise me but mostly not.

Today Steven Hayward writes on manners and norms in the classroom.  His takeoff point is a university banning the use of titles in favor of using the students' full names when a professor calls on a student--i.e., "Mr. Harshaw", etc.  He pats himself on the back for using "Mr and Ms" when calling on his students.

Call me old, call my memory defective, but I believe I remember back in the late 60's when all good true conservatives would never let "Ms" cross their lips. So things change.

Thailand Has Satellites?

The most surprising factoid from all the coverage of the MH370 plane disaster is that Thailand has satellites.  Turns out they've had at least one for over 20 years!!

The world is moving much too fast for this geezer.

The Things We Lose Without Knowing--the Milky Way

From Kottke -- most American kids will never see the Milky Way (from their home, I suppose).  Some, maybe even most, change is good, but some isn't.  (Though I suppose the people in this world who can see the Milky Way are often in what we used to call the Third World.  There's always tradeoffs--did Robert Heinlein write that?)

Have I Recently Said Change Is Bad?

This week facing an "upgrade" from Windows 7 to 8 because of a need to replace my main PC (don't ask why, but a hint--if you start messing around with the innards of  a computer, refresh your memory of the owner's manual before you start)  This for someone who used to be an early adopter, but now is far behind the tech curve, not even a smartphone to my name. Also facing the impending loss of Google Reader. 

Pinball Bans

Conor Friedersdorf has a post on the history of banning pinball games.  He finds it incredible.  I don't--because I grew up in a time and place where pinball machines were morally suspect. 

I'm not sure why--poker games used to be banned.  There was a suspicion of games of chance, perhaps on the belief that it was infringing on God somehow.  I note the Amish use chance to choose their bishops--I understand it's because they believe the hand of God governs the choice, or maybe it's just a good way to avoid divisive campaigns for the post.  

The Pace of Change

Does anyone remember electronic calculators and digital watches?  Both used to be big, big in popularity and big in price, if not in size.  I used to do office work on my summer job using an old hand crank calculator, so electronic models seemed a great advance.  Over time the price came down and the capabilities went up, and then the pocket calculator was really subsumed by other electronics.

I try to keep that lesson in mind: electronics changes faster than you expect.  Here's another example: a NM super computer which the latest thing in 2008 is now outmoded and uneconomical in 20013.

The Decline of Cursive

Saw an article on the decline of cursive writing, the sort my aunt, who was also my 2nd grade teacher, tried to teach me. Apparently since people are typing, not writing handwritten letters, we've all forgotten how to do cursive.

That's confirmed today by my personal Christmas card from the Obamas.  Barack and Michelle sign in cursive; Malia and Sasha print their names.

Just another example of change, if not of declining standards

Call Me Stick-in-the-Mud

I have to admit a shameful fact: I don't own a mobile device, no iPhone or iPad or Android or anything.When you stay as close to home as I do, there's not that much point.  In other words, if you're not mobile, you don't need a mobile device.

The 8 Inch Floppy

Govloop has this post, with a very young Bill Gates balancing a floppy disk on his finger.  When I first saw it, I thought it was an 8 incher, but it's more likely a 5 1/4 one.  As an 8 incher, it brought back memories of the IBM System/36, the minicomputer which ASCS used to automate its operations. 

(Going even further back, in the early 70's there was a pilot project to put remote terminals in county offices.  The storage at that time was an IBM 7.5 meg disk drive.)

The Death of Newsprint: Waiting for Car Service

I take my car to the dealer for service, and always wait for it.  Over the years the waiting room has changed, gotten fancier and fancier.  The last cycle boasts fancy leather chairs with arms for your computer; the previous cycle had just four  seats against the wall for PC users.  Of course, I'm not sure the chairs work so well for people using smartphones and iPads, but that's another story.

Anyhow, back in the day half the people waiting would be reading the newspaper, the other half zoned out watching CNN on the TV.  Today there was one person reading the paper, me, and the rest were on their laptops or phones.  The TV was going, but no one was watching.

The other change in 30 years has been from a mostly white clientele, through a mixed white and Latino clientele, to a Heinz 57 varieties from every continent.