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.

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?

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.

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.]

Hybrid Tanks

 Remember that TFG had big problems with the Ford aircraft carrier--the latest and best USN warship?  He told the Navy to go back to steam-powered catapualts instead of the electromagnetic ones they were pioneering.  Navy ignored him.

Just imagine what he'll think of the new Abrams tank the Army is getting.  It's a hybrid--I guess on the model of a prius though this doesn't give details. Presumably the diesel (rather than gas turbine) drives a generator to the battery which feeds electric motors.  Advantages in fuel consumption and a "silent" mode of operation.

Disadvantages, which the TFG will note:  it's new and therefore will having bugs.

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.

The Paperless Office

 I remember when Felix Foss came around to talk about the "paperless office" which implementing the System/36 would enable.

The other day I got on the Facebook group for current and retired FSA employees.  146 messages on the subject of what office equipment should be purchased for the coming year.  It seems that most of the messages concern equipment for handling paper and folders.https://www.facebook.com/groups/54686876198

Younger Generation Losing Skills?

 My title is a bit of a troll--the younger generation is always losing skills and learning new skills.

What triggered this post is my buying Starbucks coffee today.  I pay in cash, usually trying to pay provide $5.55 for a $3.55 coffee, meaning I can put $2 in the tip jar (a habit carried over from pandemic days).  The veteran baristas know my habit and handle it; today a newbie was thrown by it, gave me changes for $5 and my $.55 in change back.

I suppose like using the stick shift and the correction fluid, the art of making change is gradually losing ground as we all switch to digital payments. 

Coal for Heat and Hot Water

This Smithsonian piece on coal brought back memories. The theme is the process and the difficulties in getting American households to switch from wood to coal, from open burning to enclosed burning.

I grew up in a house with two coal burners--our kitchen stove was a coal burner, though we could burn wood as well.  In fact, in order to get a coal fire started first you burn some wood.  During the colder months we kept the coal fire going all the time, banking the fire during the night, bringing it alive during the day, after removing the previous day's accumulated ashes to the dump near the side door.  Midway during my years we added an electric stove, very handy for cooking, particularly during the hot days of the summer when you really didn't want a fire going.  (Before the electric stove there was a kerosene cook stove.)

The other coal burner was the furnace, providing hot air to heat the house.  The evidence of the past was visible in the shapes of the chimneys in the walls, two of them; one was still used for the cook stove and the "one-a-day" (a woodburner in the basement which heated water, mostly for weekly baths; the other was closed off.  The chimney for the furnace was outside the house.  I've a vague memory of its being built, or perhaps rebuilt with cinder blocks, so possibly it was originally connected to the second chimney.   It too was banked during the night, which was an acquired skill.

The coal was delivered yearly by dump truck, maybe a couple tons of anthracite of different sizes: smaller for the cook stove; larger for the furnace, into separate bins in the basement.

Progress in Medicine

 Reading a biography of Lady Bird Johnson.  LBJ had gall bladder surgery, meaning an "enormous scar" which he showed off to the media and almost 2 weeks in the hospital.

My wife had surgery maybe 15 years ago, laparoscopic, and three days in the hospital (one pre-op because it wasn't scheduled), and today apparently it can be out-patient.

Commercial Airlines Using Electric Planes in 2026?

 United has contracted for such planes for 2026. At 19 seats they aren't going to be flying between major cities, but rather out to small cities.  I find that I flew in a Beechcraft 1900D which has 19 seats when I flew into Goodland, KS in 1992 or 3.  Goodland has since lost air service. 

Where Have Friendships Gone?

 David Brooks has a column in the Times today discussing friendships, how many we can maintain at various levels of intimacy.  He ends by thinking our friendships have become fragile during the pandemic.

I'm certainly not an expert on friendships--I don't maintain the ones I once have, and since retirement I've not been creating new ones.  

I'm not sure Brooks is correct--I know my cousin's extended family has found new community bonds by having weekly zoom calls during the pandemic.  Before the pandemic, they were scattered across CA, CO, OH, PA, NH, MA, TX with much less regular contact.

I suspect the issue is what the psychologists call "availability"--we readily notice the  changes, the losses, which occur but we are less conscious of the new patterns we're establishing. 

Signs of the Times--Regeneron

 Back in my time it was the Westinghouse Science Search but now it's Regeneron (it's a biotech company which I had to look up).

Here's the press release of this year's winners, dominated by Asian-Americans.

Two signs of the times here--Westinghouse going bankrupt, ending its sponsorship of the talent search, and reinventing as nuclear energy company, and the domination of the search by people whose ancestry isn't western European.  

I sort of regret the first--I think nuclear should have a role in moving away from fossil fuels--and applaud the second--the more brains from more areas we have working the better off everyone will be. 

Moving to Subscriptions: Two Class Society

 There seems to be a lot of things moving to subscriptions--free broadcast service is losing out to them. That's true in the blogging universe as well as the entertainment world.

Seems to me that's going to have the effect of widening the gap between classes--those of us who can afford to will subscribe, those who can't will lose out. 

The Problems of Change: No Plastic Grocery Bags

 Fairfax county has implemented a ban on plastic grocery bags, or maybe it's plastic bags from shops?   Anyway, we've invested in a nylon bag for me to use when I'm buying a few items, often during a walk, and a set of 3 foldable bags with cloth sides for the weekly Friday shopping.

But this change which seems so simple turns out to be a bit more complicated.  When I'm shopping, I use the self-checkout station.  It's designed so you identify/weigh each item you're buying, then place it into the plastic shopping bag above the scale.  That works well.  But when I try to replace the plastic bag with my nylon bag, the system detects the weight of the nylon bag and commands me to remove it. So instead of placing the id'ed items directly into the bag, it becomes two steps--one onto the scale, then after I've paid the bill, moving the items from the scale to the nylon bag. 

Using the foldable bags reveals a separate problem--they're designed to fit within the shopping cart, which is fine, but that means they're just a bit too big to fit onto the stand where the checker has her plastic shopping bags, meaning it's awkward for the checker to fill the bags.

My poin is this is symptomatic of many changes--because things are designed as a system, or they evolve into a system (which I think is the case with groceries) of interrelated parts. A change in one part of a system will require changes in other parts. 

Hand Milking

 A while back I ran across a reference to "hand milking", which turned out to what dad would have called "machine milking".  Now the distinction is whether it's a robot putting the teat cups onto the cows or whether it's a human.

I was reminded of this by a Newshour piece on the advance of robots in dairying. 

Buy Yourself a Hair Dryer? No--a Hay Dryer!

 As farmers in the Northeast were reminded this summer, lots of rain means poor or no hay.  It's difficult to make good hay, if you're dodging rain storms to cut the hay and then let it dry in the field (IIRC we'd usually mow one day, rake the next, and bale the third). I remember how dispiriting it was to spend a day cutting a good crop of hay, raking it into nice rows, and then see it rain for days, with dry spells just long enough to get your hopes up and turn the wet rows over to dry out, only to rain again.

Believe or not, and I'm not sure I do, they've invented and are selling a "hay dryer". The post says it's a staple in Europe, but dairymen in the US have only bought a few.  The Europeans argue that high quality hay reduces disease (i.e., listeria) and improves taste of cheese, and also feeds into the EU focus on natural food.  The EU subsidies for farmers may also help in financing. 

Zoom and HOAs

 The pandemic has been a shock to many systems, institutions, and habits; some good and some bad.  I think one good one is reducing the friction in social participation.

[For example, take a home owners association (HOA). After I moved to Reston I was automatically a member of the Pinecrest HOA.  As such for some years I participated in the annual meetings, but my enthusiasm waned as my guilt about letting others shoulder the responsibilities for the cluster increased.  So I don't think I've been in an annual meeting this century, much less the monthly board meetings.

But with the advent of covid the board meetings converted to Zoom.  That by itself wasn't sufficient to get me to log in, but a renovation of a sidewalk by our house raised an issue sufficient to get me over the hurdle, to learn Zoom well enough to [what's the term for attending a Zoom meeting?]. I noted this week there were 11 attending, 4 board members and 6 residents, plus the maintenance rep.  

I don't know that I will continue my attendance, but I think Zoom and the stimulus of the pandemic likely has permanently increased the interest and attendance at the meetings.  It makes sense: you no longer have to venture out of the house and join strangers, make small talk, etc.  Instead you just fire up the laptop or cellphone while sitting in your easy chair, and you have easy control over the degree to which you participate.  It's great for introverts, who must be a sizeable part of the population. 

An All Electric Navy?

 Just got on 19fortyfive.com--a national security site recommended by Prof. Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money. 

They have a piece on the progress in the Navy towards electric power. Mostly it's over my head, but my impression is much of the innovation is more like the early Prius than a Tesla, but I didn't realize there was any change in propulsion since Adm. Rickover and nuclear power.  

Decline of the Deliveryman

 Made a discovery this morning talking with my cousin, who mentioned the deliverymen/vendors in her neighborhood in Berwyn heights in the 1930.  The family had one car, so when her father was at work her mother was dependent on walking or public transportation.  The area was affluent enough (many UMd college professors and researchers at USDA Beltsville) so that it was worthwhile for trucks to sell meat and cheese, fruits and vegetables, and bakery (3 different trucks--she didn't mention milk which was even available in our more rural area in the 1940's but I assume they had it). I'm visualizing these as mobile farmers markets, though the milkman model would allow for advance orders, so maybe not.

I assume this was an evolution from the older horse-drawn vendors as the suburbs evolved from close in to car-mobile. And I'm guessing that as women went to work and had their own cars, the deliveryman/vendor model was no longer effective or economical.

Makes me muse on today's model--it's probably more efficient energy wise for groceries to deliver than for people to drive to the store.  But people like the  power to inspect and choose.  So will the effect of the pandemic be to somewhat increase the miles driven by grocery/vendor deliveries and decrease the miles driven by consumers to stores?  

[Update: found this link, not very descriptive though.]

[Update: a more informative link about horse-drawn wagons. Note: my cousin remembers the trucks as markets, not as delivery.  Unlike the milkman where you could leave an order in the empty milk bottle.]