Seizing Straws

This from MSNBC's Bagdad diary--the major is mainly concerned with the importance of superstition, but includes this bit of news:

"Route Irish, according to this threat-briefing, which represents our best guess at the situation before we locked and loaded and headed down the trail, has not been seriously hit in weeks. That was news. Some rifle and light machine-gun fire, sure, but nothing heavy. No Rocket-Propelled Grenades, no VBIEDs, not even any IEDs…nothing, for weeks. Things have changed on that road. An Iraqi brigade is sitting there on both sides of the highway, and they have taken some hits, to be sure. But the Iraqis made the road safer than I have known it to be before."

Of course, my picking up on this is akin to the major's superstition--we both latch onto one bit of information and ride the hell out of it (his superstition was that no vehicle in which a particular piece of music was playing has ever (in his experience) been hit). That's a human habit that may have saved us from lions in the bushes but doesn't always serve us well, particularly now when there are so many pieces of information available.

Best of Bureaucrats

This apparently from a volunteer helping in Katrina:

"Apparently being a bureaucrat, like riding a bicycle, is something you don't forget. The initial uneasiness that I feel in any new situation vanished the moment I started filing. I became involved in the game. Could I file faster than the person next to me? Could I keep ahead of the in-box? Could I find the case that was misfiled under the girlfriend's last name? I'm always trying for my personal best. I can throw myself into the mundane with enthusiam that's not faked. In the larger scheme of things, maybe filing papers isn't that important. But to the people sitting in line hour after hour, anything that can shorten the time spent waiting helps."

Bureaucracy makes things into routines, which is bad and good. There's some good advice about working within a bureaucracy as well.

SSN on Medicare Cards

The LATimes had an article a couple days ago pointing out that while states and counties were removing Social security numbers from drivers licenses and similar documents, Medicare (and DOD) still uses it as the identifier on their cards:

"Spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said that Medicare officials were aware of the concerns involving use of the numbers and that alternatives had been discussed. But so far, he said, there were no plans to issue cards with different numbers, which would probably cost $100 million and require retooling the agency's computer systems.
"
IMHO, the number on the card serves these purposes in the medicare computer system:

• show to the clerk that the person already has a record in the system, as opposed to enrolling the person for the first time.
  
• provide a quick, fast way to access the record--typing in 9 digits is probably a bit faster than typing in "Harshaw", "William", and then deciding that the one living in Reston, not nearby Oakton, is the correct one. Of course, "bharshaw [at] hotmial.com" is quick and sure.
  

What's unfortunate is that neither the Medicare bureaucrat nor the LATimes writer is aware of the work being done on IDs in government. It's another example of the "silo" complex.

No, No, No to Carter-Baker Panel

Dan Balz has an article in the Post on the Jimmy Carter/James Baker panel recommending fixes to our electoral system. I've no problem with most of the items, but I continue to believe we should phase out the Social Security number.

"The panel recommended that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission oversee a system to allow easy sharing of state voter databases as well as requiring the use of a uniform identifier -- the voter's Social Security number -- to help eliminate duplicate registrations."

See the recent LATimes article on ID theft for the problems we run into when we use SSN. See this previous blog on the subject.

Managing Federal Credit Cards

The NYTimes has an article on the Federal credit cards, with a purchase limit that was raised in the context of Katrina.

"The thought of individual employees able to charge up to a quarter-million dollars per trip with only the plastic in their wallets, directly payable by Uncle Sam, has government watchdogs agog."

The cards were pushed in the Clinton administration, as part of Gore's "Reinventing Government" program. They're a good idea that was poorly implemented, IMHO. The cards were used both for travel and small purchases, but the management controls were lacking, as GAO discovered. I've a couple suggestions in the new context:

• the credit card companies have software that identifies breaks from a normal pattern of usage, hoping to find cases where a card has been stolen. The Feds should apply the same software among cards--the pattern of usage among employees with similar responsibilities should be similar (i.e., if they're only used for travel, or for small purchases).
• public servants have no privacy, so make the record of purchases for each employee available on the internet and authorize rewards for people discovering abuses.
• have the employee's supervisor log on to the account and approve it each month. (Sort of like the controls that parents can put on their children's cards.)

Green Foolishness?

Today's WPost has an article on how an environmentalist redid her kitchen in green, or should that be "greenly"? She says she turned down granite for her countertops in favor of recycled glass embedded in concrete because "granite is definitely not renewable -- once it's removed from the earth, it's gone forever."

I'm tempted to mock her--she fails to realize that concrete is made with cement, derived from limestone quarried from the earth, heated in a kiln fired most probably by fossil fuel, combined with sand which is also derived from the earth. (It's not clear to me which counter top would require more energy to make.) But seriously, it's an example of the limited vision we all have. We all argue based on a subset of data because you've got to close your mind somewhere. It's also an example of trends. To this old codger, the idea of a green kitchen seems a bit laughable, but it's taken seriously in the paper and may well be a coming thing. It's how social norms develop, just remember (as I do every time I watch an old movie) how norms on smoking have changed over the years.

Buy One or Build One, On the Tick of Time

After some 7 or 8 years, I think it's time to get a new PC. The issue is how? Unlike previous acquisitions, I'm now retired so I could save a little money and gain some confidence by buying the components and building it myself. Building would give me a warm fuzzy feeling, whereas spending the money would trigger some guilt.

As far as capability goes, I've installed new cards and hard drives in past PC's, so I have some experience working inside the case. Harshaw's law, you never do things right the first time, might apply, but probably not. There would be a learning curve. It probably would take longer to build than buy. At my age, when one can count the years remaining, that's not a trivial consideration. Is building a PC what I want to do with my time? Tick, tock, not.

Fishing the Blogs

No one is more needy than a blogger in search of readers. Some shrewd people have figured that out and are out to exploit our neediness.

Background: In May I blogged on the flow of culture/information down the classes, using the example of DNA, and the flow up the classes, using rap.

Today I got an e-mail message from "Emily". My heart beat faster, I was happy, someone out there was reading me. This is what it said:

From : emily Sent : Wednesday, September 14, 2005 11:27 AM To : bharshaw@hotmail.com Subject : [Faceless Bureaucrat] 9/13/2005 03:20:48 PM

| | | Inbox

Your blog is great! It's hard to find blogs with good content and people talking about dna testing these days! I have a secret dna testing blog if you want to come check it out

--
Posted by emily to Faceless Bureaucrat at 9/13/2005 03:20:48 PM

Needless to say, the URL is for an advertisement in the form of a post to a blog. It was obviously machine generated, though I'm interested in DNA, the original post is not about DNA and no intelligent blogger about DNA would link to me on that basis. This is an example of the evolution of IT in a free market--whenever there's a sufficient concentration of energy/eyeballs/platforms, someone will figure out how to take advantage. The good old days of idealistic blogging are about to go the way of all utopian dreams. Someone needs to rewrite The Inferno to specify the ring of hell reserved for spammers and phishers.


UPDATE: The above is a bit harsh, being written in the throes of disappointment. The people behind the message are looking for eyeballs, not ID's, so it's sleazy but not illegal.

Updated Update: Got another comment this morning, same effect, but this one was advertising cheap gas. I think the effect might be to kill the goose--getting high from the compliment followed by the depression of finding it's fake nets out to a downer, tending to discourage one from blogging.

Intersections, Aging, and Plans

Was thinking about when I should give up my driving license. Supposedly the key is reflexes, we oldsters are a lot more careful than you whippersnappers, but our reflexes are slow. But is that true?

I've had three accidents so far: the first was unambigously the other driver's fault; the second was perhaps a little mine (pulled off the side of the road in very heavy fog and was rear-ended by someone a bit high; and the third was all mine. In that case (back in 1978), I came up to an intersection and made a left turn in front of oncoming traffic. I was thrown by two facts--it wasn't a 4-way intersection with right angles, but a 5-way with no right angles and it was the first time I had entered it. I was first distracted by the possible traffic on the road coming in on my left, then by figuring the angle to my left turn and I assumed (ass u me) that there was nothing coming from the opposite direction. Unfortunately, this was at the top of a grade, so the traffic on the oncoming street was somewhat hidden. At 37 my reflexes were still sharp, but not enough to avoid the accident.

So the bottom line is that the concept "intersection" in my head didn't match the reality on the ground. I suspect that's a major pitfall of driving while old, we've too many pictures in our head and we have neither the flexibility nor reflexes to adjust quickly when reality doesn't jibe with the pictures in our head. In that, we are a lot like the government in handling Katrina, the reality didn't match our stereotype of "hurricane".

Social Capital, Family Ties, and Corruption

Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone" has popularized the idea of "social capital", the sort of thing Tocqueville identified when he saw Americans forming multitudes of voluntary associations. Putnam argues these tie people into the larger society, give them practice in working together in a democratic institution and, at least pre-1960, cross-cut class and social lines.

I saw a brief reference a day or two ago that suggested Louisiana ranked very low (last?) on measures of social capital. I'm not sure that's tied into the idea that Louisiana is very high on family stability and solidarity, as I've blogged before, and Cmdrsue has affirmed in comments. It might also tie into the expectation of corruption, the subject of an article in the last couple days. Apparently Lousianians have low expectations of their government, remembering Huey Long and the plutocrats against whom he fought, so they figure that officials will be taking a cut out of the money destined for rebuilding.

It fits Putnam's original research, which I've not read but understand he compared the social capital in Sicily, with heavy Mafia/family influence, with northern Italy, which is very much a modern economy. It also fits the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft opposition which was a main theme of sociology back in my days as an undergrad. I wonder what's happened to that since 1960?