Rural Areas the New Blacks?

Back in the day, in Vietnam, black Americans were disproportionately 11B's (the MOS for rifleman) and suffered casualties in excess of their proportion of the population.  Today it seems men and women from rural areas, especially upper Midwest and Great Plains, are suffering casualties in excess of their proportion of the population.

"The study does not look into reasons why soldiers from rural areas have experienced a higher death rate in the Iraq War"

My memory is the 1960's military, at least the Army, was draft-based.  People with the poorest scores on the test tended to end up as 11B's.  Blacks were drafted relatively equally with whites but had the poorer education and poorer scores, so ended up in the most dangerous positions.

When Nixon took us off the draft, blacks would enlist for the opportunity.I remember reading somewhere blacks now are more heavily concentrated in the Army's "tail"--the administrative support services.  As a result, although the current wars are dangerous for truck drivers, the casualty rate for blacks is probably less than their proportion, certainly less than for rural areas.  (Given the loss of black farms over 40 years, I assume without checking that the black population is disproportionately urban and suburban.)

I'm a bit amused by the quote. The illustrious Senator from Virginia, Jim Webb, has a book arguing that the South, particularly the Appalachians, is home to natural-born fighters, based on their Scots-Irish heritage.  Maybe the area has lost its edge, in favor of the German-Scandinavian Lutherans of the upper Midwest/Plains.  

I'd think in reality the key question is economic opportunity.  In the past blacks and the upcountry whites Webb writes about have had little opportunity, so ended up as fighters.  In the present the northern rural areas have little opportunity, so end up as fighters.  (In the remote past, Scots and Irish had little opportunity, so ended up as fighters.) And immigrants end up as fighters.

There's a more troubling possibility however. Blacks are disproportionately imprisoned. And, for those who watched The Wire, the prisoners include some of the most talented leaders.  I think that's a big change since the 1960's, so it's possible if academicians are using as their baseline the number of people 18 and over they're getting a different result than if they used the number of people not institutionalized and with no criminal record 18 and over.

Wine at the Pump

The French may be very regimented, but getting wine at the pump (a la gas pump) is something only they could dream of.

An Administrative Disaster Program?

That's what Sen. Lincoln claims the White House has offered, $1.5 billion of disaster aid done administratively, to get past the roadblocks to the legislative package for small business.  See this Farm Policy report. 

Having been in USDA in 1983 when Reagan's people pulled a land retirement program out of their hat without Congressional authority, I wouldn't bet against it.  On the other, damned if I can imagine how they'll do it.  The effect is psychological--it looks very doubtful Lincoln can win reelection, so the White House is showing they'll run risks to help their supporters.

Speaking of Optimism--Fred Brooks

My previous post was on optimism--Fred Brooks wrote a great book in this area 35 years ago: The Mythical Man-Month.  He has another out, which should be good. The Design of Design.  It's on my Christmas wish list.

Overconfidence Among the Professionals

This post reports on a study showing lawyers are overconfident in predicting the outcome of their cases.  I believe the recent Atul Gawande article in the New Yorker said that doctors are overly optimistic in predicting how long their patients will live.  IT professionals routinely promise to complete projects faster and cheaper than they can (see this on the FBI's Sentinel program).  Military professionals often are overly optimistic in predicting the outcome of military operations. Politicians over promise the results of their votes. Economists, except for Tyler Cowen, are overly sure of the outcome of their proposed policies.

Think there's a pattern here?

[Updated: A day late and a dollar short, Professor Robin Hanson comes to the same conclusion.]

The Final Word for Today

From Tyler Cowen:

We still don't know what we are doing.

I respond to honesty.

The Dark Secret of Ossining Was Not Mad Men

If Matt Weiner's Mad Men keeps rolling along, he may get to the time when Ossining's schools were desegregated.

I was trolling through a site listing the reports of the Civil Rights Commission and stumbled across this report, on the desegregation of Ossining's schools over the period  1969-74.  There was what we used to call de facto segregation, because Ossining had a significant black population (working at Sing Sing, I assume. So back in that idealistic time the effort was to realign elementary school boundaries to provide a more integrated environment.

I Thought Republicans Disliked the Nanny State?

This bit from Farm Policy about a House Ag hearing on nutrition was amusing:0

Subcommittee Ranking Member Jeff Fortenberry, R-Nebraska, expressed concern about health and obesity rates, and noted that data from the Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) would not be available for another two years. He went on to ask the second panel of witnesses yesterday an interesting theoretical question about a potential “new paradigm” in linking SNAP benefits to improved choice. He offered a hypothetical example: “Instead of a SNAP card having $100 on it, a SNAP card would have 100 ‘nutritional points,’ and that would also be measured as you buy certain foods and therefore the market would then respond to develop food products that would fit easily into the nutritional categorizations.” To listen to this interesting discussion on linking SNAP benefits to nutritional health, click here (MP3- 8:12).

As technology progesses more and more can be done. I don't know whether the old slogans about "nanny state" work in the new environment.
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China

 From a Grist post on energy efficiency, talking about China:

For every 100 urban households there are 138 color TV sets, 97 washing machines, and 88 room air conditioners. Even in rural areas there are 95 color TVs and 46 washing machines for every 100 households.

I suppose I should be used to this by now, but somehow I'm often revert to the images of the 1950's and 60's, from the Korean War and the Great Leap Forward. Who whaddya thunk it?

And a Tear Flows Down a Face: Oldest Farm Gone

Sometime in the 70's I think it was there was a famous picture of an Indian, sorry--Native American, with a tear running down his cheek.  If I remember it was tied into the environmental movement.

Don't know why I thought of that when I saw this article on a farm in NH which dates back to 1632, owned by members of the same family, which is now up for sale.