I'm in the Elite

No, not that I have all but one of my teeth at age 66, though that's good. (Just got back from the dentist.)

No, I just found this factoid: "Well, Google Maps has 10396, not "millions of users" as you seem to
think." on the Google Maps troubleshooting group. I'm amazed it's so small though I suspect the true statement is something like: "of all the people who use Google Maps, only 10,396 have so far set up personal maps." I wonder how many users Google Earth has. What I've used Google Maps for is to track the places my ancestors lived. It seems a neat little application.

Maintenance

From a Post article today:

In 2003, the FBI used a $25 million grant to give bomb squads across the nation state-of-the-art computer kits, enabling them to instantly share information about suspected explosives, including weapons of mass destruction.

Four years later, half of the Washington area's squads can't communicate via the $12,000 kits, meant to be taken to the scene of potential catastrophes, because they didn't pick up the monthly wireless bills and maintenance costs initially paid by the FBI. Other squads across the country also have given up using them.

Given my tendency to generalize, I'd say there's a general rule at work here--called NIH, or "not invented here". This sounds as if it was a great idea, at least in 2003. But you give a kit to someone, it may not be used. That's particularly true if suspected WMD's don't show up very often. (I'd guess there's a strong correlation between the number of suspicious packages discovered in an area and whether the jurisdiction paid the maintenance/upgrade costs.) It's one reason for cost-sharing as a governmental/bureaucratic strategy--if someone gets excited enough about an idea to kick in some of their own money, they may stay excited enough to maintain the idea over the long run.

NIH is a problem with foreign aid, domestic aid, and probably children ("probably" since I don't have any). I remember playing more with stuff that I could create games (mostly war games) with than with the fancier toys I got. I wonder whether NIH is also more of a male thing?

Bias

Shankar Vedantam reports in the Post:

A new study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and other institutions affiliated with Harvard University provides empirical evidence for the first time that when it comes to heart disease, bias is the central problem -- bias so deeply internalized that people are sincerely unaware that they hold it.

Physicians who were more racially biased were less likely to prescribe aggressive heart-attack treatment for black patients than for whites. The study was recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The research finding cannot be automatically extrapolated to the NBA or other domains, but it does suggest a mechanism by which disparities emerge. No conscious bias was apparently present -- there was no connection between the explicit racial views of physicians and disparities in their diagnoses. It was only when researchers studied physicians' implicit attitudes -- by measuring how quickly they made positive or negative mental associations with blacks and whites -- that they found a mechanism to explain differences in medical judgment.

Since the Pigford/USDA bias issue last week, I seem to be running into bias and race. I think this is about right. In our rational calculating side, most people aren't biased on most things. But it's the snap stuff that trips us up. (Going back to the article, I think Jerome Groopman in his recent book reported on a study that showed that physicians typically interrupted their patients with x seconds--they were leaping to conclusions, most of the time correctly, but not always.)

"I Kicked Him in a Very Bad Place"

That's a line from an interview used in a Post obit of Irene M. Kirkaldy. That kick was part of a sequence leading to a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on interstate transportation in 1947. (Think Rosa Parks, but more northern and earlier, and a different constitutional provision.)

Is Government Necessary?

Via Greg Mankiw, there's trouble, trouble brewing in River City, whoops, Second Life (online game with an economy) Seems people are people, even when they're only avatars. And as the founding fathers said, if people were angels government is unneeded.

Kevin Drum and Steven Levitt Agree on Anti-Terrorism Logic

The Levitt/Dubner Freakonomics blog has just moved to the NYTimes server. Levitt's first post discussed ways possible terrorists could attack the U.S. cheaply. (First one, have 20 teams of snipers emulate the DC two, but truly at random.) He caught a lot of heat (surprise!). In his
response today he outlines two alternative interpretations, this is the second:

The alternative interpretation is that the terror risk just isn’t that high and we are greatly overspending on fighting it, or at least appearing to fight it. For most government officials, there is much more pressure to look like you are trying to stop terrorism than there is to actually stop it. The head of the TSA can’t be blamed if a plane gets shot down by a shoulder-launched missile, but he is in serious trouble if a tube of explosive toothpaste takes down a plane. Consequently, we put much more effort into the toothpaste even though it is probably a much less important threat.

Kevin Drum says the same, in the context of the Democrats and the bill on FISA:

Note the way the incentives work here. If you pass the bill, the results are ambiguous. Sure, a lot of people will be angry, but they'll probably get over it eventually (or so the thinking goes). But if you stall the bill and a terrorist strikes, you are firmly and completely screwed. Goodbye political career. So which choice do you think a risk-averse politicians is likely to make?

This same dynamic was at work before the war, too. If you favored the war and things went south, the resulting mess would be long-term and ambiguous. There would almost certainly be a way to weasel your way out of any trouble and stay in office. But if you opposed the war and then, after the invasion went ahead over your objections, the Army discovered a serious nuclear arms program or an advanced bioweapons lab — both considered distinct possibilities at the time — you'd be out of office at the next midterm. For risk-averse politicians, the choice was obvious.

Nobody wants to risk being proved wrong in a way that's so crystal clear there's simply no chance of talking your way out of it. It's this fear that gives national security hawks the upper hand in any terror-related debate. Still.

I have to agree--as far as I can see, the "terrorist cells" that have been captured weren't very scary. If you assume that our security can catch 90 percent of the threats, that means the threats generally aren't potent. If you assume a lower level of averted threats, where's the attacks?

NY Times Is Wrong on Farm History

I quarrel with this from the NYTimes editorial page:

For the past 75 years, America’s system of farm subsidies has unfortunately driven farming toward such concentration, and there’s no sign that the next farm bill will change that. The difference this time is that American farming is poised on the brink of true industrialization, creating a landscape driven by energy production and what is now called “biorefining.” What we may be witnessing is the beginning of the tragic moment in which the ownership of America’s farmland passes from the farmer to the industrial giants of energy and agricultural production.

This is like saying that government policy has created industrial dining, with nationwide chains like McDonalds, etc. Wrong! Economic forces, notably returns to scale and the importance of capital to farming, and the basic thrust of modern life have caused the growth of large-scale agriculture. Research has helped, but the farm bills have basically slowed and tempered the evolution. If the AAA had never been enacted, we would not today be a nation of Amish farmers.

One Nation under God

Some of my ancestors refused to swear an oath to the United States because its Constitution did not recognize God, and therefore swearing would be sinful. Hence I'm a bit bemused at the utter conviction with which some believe that the U.S. is truly a Christian nation, as here:

Last month, the U.S. Senate was opened for the first time ever with a Hindu prayer. Although the event generated little outrage on Capitol Hill, Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) is one member of Congress who believes the prayer should have never been allowed.

"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers," asserts Sali.

Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture. He also says the only way the United States has been allowed to exist in a world that is so hostile to Christian principles is through "the protective hand of God."

"You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike," says the Idaho Republican.

According to Congressman Sali, the only way the U.S. can continue to survive is under that protective hand of God. He states when a Hindu prayer is offered, "that's a different god" and that it "creates problems for the longevity of this country."

More on Pigford--Use of Government Equipment

This article in Government Executive and this AP article give the current state of play on the issue I referred to yesterday.

Sidestepping the policy issues, the question of proper use of government equipment is interesting. When I was hired, you weren't supposed to use your telephone for personal calls. On your lunch hour you called from the pay phone. Over time that policy was relaxed--you could make and receive personal calls, provided you didn't abuse the privilege.

I'd guess that a similar evolution might have occurred with employees, their PC's and their Internet connection. Limited personal use may or may not be technically legal, but only abuse (like looking at porn) is going to attract punishment.

But the issue being cited here is the possible violation of laws against using appropriated funds to lobby Congress. The USDA has an explanation of what's allowed or not allowed here. Basically, big shots can lobby Congress, small shots can't.

However, I'm reminded of a similar flap early in my USDA career. Might have been the end of LBJ or the beginning of Nixon. The issue there was someone, perhaps the head of a state office, talked to Congress without talking to DC first. The flap resulted in a directive to everyone in the agency saying: you can't talk to Congress unless it's cleared by the office of congressional relations. A few days later they came back and said: of course, everyone has a first Amendment right to petition Congress and we didn't mean to infringe that. You just have to do it on your own time. (It's similar, in some respects, to Karl Rove having to have a separate RNC email account and Congress people having to leave their offices to solicit contributions.)

Without being a lawyer, that seems to be the key issue here. Was the email being written and distributed using government time and government money? Or not?

Tragic Teenager--What's the Meaning of This?

Courtland Milloy writes about a DC teenager:

Any kid from a crime-ridden neighborhood would deserve such a break, but Danny especially so. In 2003, at age 12, he and then-D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey were featured in an anti-violence public service video. Five of Danny's relatives had been shot and killed.

"Enough is enough," was the rallying cry. Flash-forward to April. Danny had teamed up with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to announce the kickoff of yet another violence-awareness program, this one featuring anti-gun posters on the sides of buses. By then, however, Danny had lost six more relatives to gun violence, a total of 11: his father, a grandfather, two uncles, two nieces and five cousins.

I suspect everyone will read into this what they wish. The futility of public outcry, the depravity of the area in which he lives, the low value put on life, the free access to guns even though they're outlawed in DC, perhaps even a question of how many people Danny's relatives have killed over the years. Regardless of all that, Danny himself deserves better, everyone deserves better.

But what strikes me, with an admittedly aging and quirky mind, is his connectedness. It seems that all these relatives live in DC (that's my assumption anyway). That seems odd to me, but yet it fits with other articles and books I've read about the inner city: people seem often to have loads of relatives and friends. It's almost tribal society, as in parts of Iraq or Afghanistan--you know a lot of people and it's important to know them--who does what, what will p**s someone off, who can help, who will hurt. It seems a far cry from some areas of suburbia, where people don't know their neighbor. Is this connectedness a part of the pathology?