Michael Collins, Revolutionary as Bureaucrat

Found this New Republic review of the new biography of Michael Collins, an IRA leader after WWI, interesting because of the use of "bureaucrat" throughout. (Free registration required.)

Who was the real Michael Collins?:

"Irish nationalism had always had a surplus of dreamers, poets, visionaries, rhetoricians, and idealists. What it lacked was bureaucrats. Collins became the indispensable man of the Irish revolution because he knew how to run things.

The guerrilla chief who demanded that his subordinates supply reports 'done in tabular form and furnished in duplicate' was simply a grown-up version of the boy in the Post Office Savings Bank, where hundreds of thousands of transactions had to be recorded accurately every day and clerical errors were not tolerated. The earnest, punctual Collins who earned a reputation as 'the speediest young clerk in the Savings Bank' was, in embryo, the leader whose favorite terms of castigation were 'lazy,' 'inefficient,' and 'unbusinesslike.' Obscured by the legend of the trickster-terrorist is the real Collins story: the literal treason of the clerk. "

Crap and Discrimination--A Moral

There's an interesting piece at Slate.com: The Crappiest Invention of All Time - Why the auto-flushing toilet must die. By Nick Schulz:

He includes this bit:

"Hands-free toilets and faucets are certainly smarter now than when they first came on the market. Pete DeMarco [an engineer and expert] told me that when automatic fixtures first got popular in the early 1990s, they had difficulty detecting dark colors, which tended to absorb the laser light instead of reflecting it back to the sensor. DeMarco remembers washing his hands in O'Hare Airport next to an African-American gentleman. DeMarco's faucet worked; the black man's didn't. The black guy then went to DeMarco's faucet, which he had just seen working seconds before; it didn't work. This time DeMarco spoke up, telling him to turn his hands palm side up. The faucet worked."

While Schulz tosses this off as human interest, it might really represent how some "discrimination" works. I suggest what happened is that the engineers who initially designed the faucet tested it out rather thoroughly. They probably used themselves as guinea pigs. And the faucet worked, so it was put on the market. But guess what, it just so happens that none of the engineers were dark skinned. Result: something that would appear to many like discrimination. And in a way it is. No one intended the result, but it was the by-product of the fact that blacks haven't been well represented in engineering. I'd suggest this sort of interrelationship is quite common, if you look hard.

Splitters and Lumpers/Bugs and Terrorists

The release of the names of the prisoners at Guantanamo (see Monday's papers and today's NYTimes editorial: They Came for the Chicken Farmer reminds us of the dangers of lumping--when DOD said the prisoners were "terrorists", we (i.e., any reasonable person) are led to visualize a bearded violent man (somewhat as the pirate Blackbeard was pictured in my youth). When you know the names and backgrounds you see a much more disparate group than you visualized, differences that inevitably increase the odds that mistakes were made in their capture and retention.

On the other hand the New York Review of Books has an article by Tim Flannery, reviewing 3 books on nature, including David Attenborough's latest venture on insects. He found spiders of the same species seeming to display personality differences, leading Flannery to this statement:
"The fact that invertebrates have characters seemingly similar in their fundamentals to those possessed by ourselves is a theme to which Attenborough returns repeatedly, and as he does so the gulf between the least and greatest of living things diminishes."

So it goes, the back and forth between lumping and splitting, on which see wikipedia.

Limits on Bureaucratic Rules--Basketball and Immigrants

Two articles over the weekend showed the limits on bureaucratic rules--they aren't self-enforcing:

• Basketball players need to receive valid high school diplomas and college educations? No. Players at major college programs attend paper high schools and have problems reading at the fourth grade level says this Washington Post article: A Player Rises Through the Cracks.
• You can't get a job unless you're in the country legally? Of course not. Employers don't try to enforce the rules, even when you give them access to a database to check says this NY Times article: The Search for Illegal Immigrants Stops at the Workplace.

The common thread is collusion--the wink, wink between college coaches and aspiring players (and their mentors, pushers, etc.) or between employers and employees. The bureaucracy that is supposed to police the rules (NCAA and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement respectively) are far away. There's little incentive for anyone to report violations. Even the media gains--they get the opportunity to win journalism prizes by doing the occasional piece on the issue.

(A nod to Professor Robin Williams, who long ago pointed out this sort of process at work in his American sociology class.)

Signs and Signifiers--Restroom Signs

Eszter Hargittai has an interesting discussion of signs on restroom doors at Crooked Timber � � Dress optional,
which leads to interesting commentary. I'm vaguely aware of post-modernism (don't understand it but I've heard of it) and a couple of the comments veer into that, or parodies of that, I can't tell which. Anyhow it's a fun Saturday morning read.

Bush and Competent Executives

The new videotape of President Bush meeting by teleconference with emergency officials before Katrina struck has drawn lots of comment.

Eugene Robinson at the Post: This Is 'Fully Prepared'?:

"At least now I know why the White House is so obsessively secretive about its decision-making process. The leaked videotapes and transcripts of pre-Katrina briefings that were obtained this week by the Associated Press leave in tatters the defining myth of the Bush administration -- an undeserved aura of cool, unflinching competence and steely resolve. Instead, the tapes show bureaucratic inertia and a president for whom delegation seems to mean detachment."

John Dickerson at Slate:

"It's [the video] a blow to a key Bush myth. The Bush management philosophy relies on him as an interrogator. He delegates, but that's OK because he knows how to question those he empowers to make sure they're focused. Question-asking is also a central public tool in the "trust me" presidency. We aren't supposed to worry that the NSA wiretapping program goes too far because the president has asked all the questions. When the president was wrong about the level of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the strength of the insurgency, it wasn't because he didn't ask enough questions, we have been told, it was because he was given the wrong answers."

But maybe Steven Pearlstein inadvertently had the best take in his discussion of the Rudman report: Fannie Mae Report Is Long, but It's Not the Whole Story:

"As I was reading through that and other chapters of the Rudman report, I had a nagging feeling that I had read the story before. And then I realized where: in a management book about blowups of other once-successful corporations, written by Sydney Finkelstein, a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business.

Finkelstein's insight is that big corporate mistakes aren't caused by stupidity, or venality, or by an unexpected bit of bad luck. Nor are they the result of flawed strategy or inability to execute, although those may sometimes appear to be the cause.

Rather, Finkelstein says, the most spectacular corporate failures occur in companies that are so blinded by their own competence and past success that they instinctively tune out legitimate outside criticism. Inside, a positive can-do culture tends to snuff out criticism, dissent or negative feedback. Executives at these companies tend to be obsessed with the company's image, underestimate major obstacles, assume they have all the answers and stubbornly rely on what worked for them before. [emphasis added]

The reasons behind most corporate collapses, according to Finkelstein, entail the deep-seated psychological need people have at all levels of a company to belong and get along, to rationalize what has already been done or decided, and to put off loss or failure."

You don't need to ask questions if you assume your team has all the answers.

My New Car

I discussed buying a new car here but didn't say what I got. It was a Toyota Corolla. (Bought a VW Beetle in 1966, and Corollas in 78, 91, and 2006.) Each time I've bought I'm struck by the improvement in the cars. Cars don't improve on the same time scale as PC's, but they do improve. Of course, not everything is an improvement, just like with PC's and software. The manual is bigger for my new car and I feel more need to study it. There are "features" that I doubt I'll use (like the I-pod connection socket), which is certainly true of software.

I recommend Henry Petroski's books--he teaches engineering history at Duke, writes on the history of technology, like pencils, paper clips, bridges, and a very nice memoir on growing up as a paper boy on Long Island. One of his themes is the need for tradeoffs, which I do see in the new car. For example, the back seats now have the head/neck rests, a safety measure. However they reduce the visibility for someone who learned to drive by craning his neck instead of checking the nonexistent right side mirrors. Another of his themes is that we learn from failure, which I firmly believe.

Some Days I Feel Like Preaching

There's several Presbyterian ministers in my ancestry, which may explain why today I had a moralistic reaction to the conjunction of these two items in the NY Times:

[With regard to the US/India deal on nuclear power] Dissenting on Atomic Deal

"The Defense Department issued an unusually explicit statement hailing the deal for opening a path for more American-Indian military cooperation.

'Where only a few years ago, no one would have talked about the prospects for a major U.S.-India defense deal, today the prospects are promising, whether in the realm of combat aircraft, helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft or naval vessels,' the Defense Department statement said."

Report Warns Malnutrition Begins in Cradle

"Some of the facts about malnutrition, familiar to experts but not widely understood, seem counterintuitive. For example, rates of malnutrition in South Asia, including India, Bangladesh and Nepal, are nearly double those in sub-Saharan Africa, which is much poorer.

India's programs to feed children in school have multiplied in recent years, but its nutrition program for preschool children mainly assists those between the ages of 3 to 6 — too late to prevent the stunting and damage to intellect that occur by age 2, bank nutritionists and other experts say.

A spokesman for the Indian Embassy in Washington said yesterday that he had not yet read the report and could not comment on it.

The problem of malnutrition in India, known for its well-educated, high-tech workers, is striking. Almost half the children are stunted by malnutrition, but the problem is not limited to the poor. A quarter of the children under age 5 in the richest fifth of the population are also underweight and nearly two-thirds are anemic, the report says."

So we'll sell arms to India to offset the arms we sell to Pakistan to get their aid against Al Qaeda while half their children are malnurished? [From the article, the malnutrition isn't from lack of food, it's from lack of knowledge.]

Modernity Means Loss of Privacy?

I often read pieces which seem to imply there's a tradeoff between modern life/globalization/the new and privacy. That we lose privacy whenever we use credit cards, surf the Internet, talk on cell phones, use Onstar-type navigation systems, and so forth. There might be a little truth to this--certainly lots of data on us is recorded on various hard drives. But there's a big difference between having data stored away and being observed by living people. (Grow up in the country and you'd know what I mean.) An example was buried in a recent NYTimes article on those Indians who are returning to India to enjoy and exploit the new opportunities there.

A Reversal of the Tide in India:

"The cultural impact on their nation is visible and visceral. The New Delhi suburb of Noida boasts a collection of luxury homes known as an 'NRI Colony.' Meanwhile, returning stay-at-home spouses confess they miss the freedom and distance of America, far from the prying eyes of in-laws and nosy neighbors."

The writer observes someone who in the U.S. enjoyed driving herself now has a chauffeur to drive her. Nations with a servant class have a whole etiquette governing how they should act and be treated. If I can trust British movies and tv shows it boils down to the idea that servants are invisible--see Gosford Park.

Buying a Car, Now and Then

Bought a new car yesterday (the reason I didn't post Monday or Tuesday). It's the first one since October, 1990. As I waited for the paperwork yesterday I thought about the differences. (My memory of 1990 may not be totally reliable.)

• Dealership--it changed ownership and is in a new building. It now claims to be the biggest Toyota dealer in a wide area.
  
• In 1990 the showroom had 3-4 cars on display, yesterday none. Does that mean the sales experience is less about flash and glitter?
• In 1990 the showroom had 4-5 white salesmen standing around, yesterday maybe 10 salespersons, mostly male, mostly, maybe even entirely minority, sitting at desks in the "showroom". (At the other dealership I went to in my shopping, the two salesmen (used and new cars) were both minority.) The minorities represented all the continents, except Antarctica. Management may not have been as integrated as the sales/finance staff. I wonder whether such sales jobs aren't particularly attractive to people who are aggressive, work long hours, have people skills. As such, they may be one of the ways for the upwardly mobile to bypass the need for credentials (i.e., college degrees).
  
• In 1990 my purchase started by walking in the door, in 2006 it started with an Internet search and query.
  
• In 1990, my salesman stumbled in using the computer terminal, yesterday every salesperson had a PC and seemed reasonably proficient (though I did see one guy about 50 typing with 2 fingers).
• In 1990 I consulted Consumer Reports and still felt at a loss. In 2006 a salesperson printed out data from Edmunds to compare the Honda and Toyota I was considering. He was open about the change in the power balance between salesman and buyer because buyers have access to lots more information now.
• In 2006 there was more paperwork, including more concern for identification and consumer rights and information.
  

Of course, the biggest difference was in the car I was buying.