Slatalla and IT Systems

The Times' Michelle Slatalla tried to implement an IT system in her family (3 daughters, husband). Her attempt was prompted by conflict over a scarce resource (a car). So she tried to use the Google calendar software to establish coordinated calendars for each family member, with a master calendar. It failed. Her story is a reminder that humans, not IT, are in the drivers seat. Or, to change the metaphor, you need to win the hearts and minds of the people.

On the other hand, if there were an interface between the Google calendar and the car's ignition, such that the car could only be started by the driver who had reserved the time on the calendar, your IT system would have the people by the short and curlies, as the Brits say.

Actually, her story may be a parable of the dangers of overreaching--she apparently has fallen back to a calendar for the car and a spreadsheet for gas, which may have worked.

Farmers and the Internet

A paper on farmers, PC's, and the Internet is here. Broadband is spreading but still has a ways to go.

I remember Sherman County, Kansas (Colorado border) where we were doing an "Info-Share" project in 1991-2. Some farmers had PC's, but it was easy to overestimate. So many farmers are so old, and it's well established that us oldtimers don't like change. Judging by the fuss over closing county offices, it's clear that the Internet has yet to replace the need for warm blooded help from your local friendly bureaucrat.

(Buried in the depths are figures on the extent to which farmers in various states use the Internet to do business with USDA, or other websites. Amazon is doing lots better than USDA.)

Bureaucrats Causing the Civil War

I'm reading a frustrating book by William Freehling, on the road to the Civil War. (It's frustrating because of his writing, not the content.) But he offers a theory on the causes of the war that's new to me: bureaucrats. He argues that Southern political leaders knew Lincoln might be elected, as he was. And if he was elected, he had extensive patronage powers (remember the "spoils" system?)--appointing postmasters and customs collectors, etc. And they knew that these bureaucratic posts would attract people willing to serve, even in the South. Thus Lincoln (who indeed spent much of his time after being elected and in the early months of his administration dealing with office seekers) could create a Southern Republican Party, through use of patronage. That would quickly erode the appearance of southern unity around slavery.

It's an interesting theory, as well as a reminder that Presidents used to have much more power over bureaucrats than they do today, even though our esteemed [sic] current President has been accused of politicizing his administration.

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.