Data Modeling

One of the things I learned to do while working at USDA was data modeling: specifically to figure out how different data items should relate.  In the old old days of 80-character punch cards, we knew each farmer/producer had a social security number, a name, and an address, with the latter fields restricted in length.  By the 1990's we knew a customer could have multiple ID numbers at different times and multiple addresses. 

Today I had my nose rubbed in the fact private corporations still have difficulty with data modeling.  Because there some security breach somewhere in their system, my credit card issuer sent replacement cards, with new numbers.  So I faced the problem of going through all the people with whom I do business online and updating my credit card number. So I had to go through 20 or so accounts, trying to change my credit card number.

Some companies, like Amazon, set up an account which can contain one or more credit cards.  Their modeling allows you to go in, delete the old card and add the new card.  I suspect this makes it easier for them to maintain their historical data.  Others allow you to change the card number,which works fine for the user, maybe not so much for data integrity.

The most aggravating companies are those, such as magazine publishers and my alma mater, which tie the credit card data to the end of the transaction for renewing a subscription.  Presumably they programmed a quick and dirty way: when you login to renew the subscription, the old record is copied to the new record and displayed.  What that means is I can't update the number today.  When it comes time to renew I'll either have to remember to change it then (not likely, not at my age) or rely on the company's validation process for credit card numbers.

Vilsack Blows My Mind?

The Post carried an email, supposedly from Secretary Vilsack to all employees in USDA, discussing the Sherrod episode.

What stuns me is the idea that Vilsack is able to email all employees in USDA, at least directly.  I personally doubt the IT folks have gotten that far.  It's also amazing that, while he suggests that employees read the blog post he wrote, he apparently doesn't provide the link or the URL.

How to Curb Surpluses: Declare Marital Law

News from 1930 has its RSS feed back.  One of the big problems of the depression, perhaps its definition, was there was more production than demand.  Innovative states came up with a solution to the surplus of oil, which hopefully OPEC won't emulate. From August 19,(the item leads with concerns about the high cost of medical care):

Crude oil production has been reduced about 1M barrels/day thanks to martial law-enforced shutdowns in Oklahoma and East Texas; refiners in those two regions face oil shortage. Violaters in East Texas ordered jailed until martial law is lifted; no evidence of resistance reported. Texas Gov. Sterling says intends to maintain martial law at least 30 days. East Texas proclamation of martial law and complete oil well shutdown was much more drastic than the expected action of cutting production to the allowed quota there (270,000 barrels/day). Gasoline in the Oklahoma wholesale market is up 1 1/4 cents to 5 cents/gallon in the week ending Aug. 17, but at least two major crude oil buyers feel the situation is still too unstable to raise buying prices. E. Reeser, Amer. Petroleum Inst. pres., praises Texas Gov. Sterling's "courageous action ... in placing East Texas oil field under martial law"; scores of congratulatory telegrams received from oil operators across the country.

The Truthers, via Stanley Fish

David Brooks just lectured us about the beam and the mote (my words, or rather the old Bible's, not his). In his Tuesday column he sounds a good Calvinist note, urging examination of our own intellectual faults. Somewhat in that spirit, here's a report by Stanley Fish on the "truthers", the left wingnuts who believe Bush knew about 9/11 before hand and the towers didn't fall due to fire. My point is I recognize that people on the left often fall for the same sort of myths as those on the right, and even people in the center fall for myths.

But, not to be too virtuous, here's a haphazardly chosen poll, which seems to show the Reps are justly slightly crazier than the Dems.

FSIS Is Slow To Move to Web 2.0

Here's their post of their updated small slaughter facility and small cattle farm maps. As best I can tell:

• there's no way to contact the writer of the post 
• there's no way to comment on the content of the post
• FSIS has not considered the idea of at least cloning the map to Google Maps and then allowing the public to update the map and comment on the facilities.

In sum, FSIS is still in the old: Washington collects and publishes the data, which is a top down paradigm better suited to the last century than this.  But at least they're changing, if slowly.

Blame It on the Hog Farmers

I was Googling to see if Sec. 32 had been amended recently and came across this 1999 Congressional Research Service report.  In that year the hog farmers got $145 million through a directive in a supplemental appropriation, perhaps being one of the early precedents for the proposed Lincoln/Emanuel disaster program this year.

The Post had an editorial today dissing the whole proposal.

Note: I still don't understand Sec. 32's relationship to the appropriation process so my prior comments may be wrong.

Customers and Clients

Long piece in the Post today tracing the evolution of the Mineral Management Service's relationship with industry. There's a brief mention of "customers" and "clients" and the Clinton/Gore reengineering of government, which pushed that perspective and partnering with "stakeholders".  That whole ethos doesn't look quite so good today.

It appears to me the problem for MMS (and the SEC, etc.) is one of expertise: the industry has the expertise, so how do you establish an independence that can challenge bad practices? 

The Virtues of Slowness

A quote from Interfluidity on a meeting with Treasury and bloggers (via Marginal Revolution):

The conversation next turned to housing and HAMP. On HAMP, officials were surprisingly candid. The program has gotten a lot of bad press in terms of its Kafka-esque qualification process and its limited success in generating mortgage modifications under which families become able and willing to pay their debt. Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least. There were murmurs among the bloggers of “extend and pretend”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. This was extend-and-don’t-even-bother-to-pretend. The program was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a. the banks. Policymakers openly judged HAMP to be a qualified success because it helped banks muddle through what might have been a fatal shock. I believe these policymakers conflate, in full sincerity, incumbent financial institutions with “the system”, “the economy”, and “ordinary Americans”. Treasury officials are not cruel people. I’m sure they would have preferred if the program had worked out better for homeowners as well. But they have larger concerns, and from their perspective, HAMP has helped to address those.

Sometimes the best thing is to kick the problem down the road, or to slow the inevitable.  In a way that's been the hidden purpose of farm programs from the beginning, not to preserve the small farmer, but to slow the inevitable decline in numbers and to cushion the adverse impact on rural areas.

Military Bands and the Persistence of Institutions

Walter Pincus has a story in the Post today exploring the number of military bands.  The hook is a statement there are more people in military bands than in the Foreign Service, which seems to be true.  It's also true a member of a military band may get paid more than an entry level Foreign Service officer.  (The Foreign Service used to have the reputation of being the toughest government career to get into.)  I wonder whether the Reps who have been pushing the idea government workers are overpaid would agree that band members are probably overpaid.  After all, how many paid bands exist in the private sector?

I think military bands evolved from the ancient need to coordinate actions of many men on the battlefield.  Before electronics, the methods used were couriers/staff officers/runners (Hitler was a runner), flags and ensigns, and music.  The trumpet called "charge" and "retreat"; the drummer kept the rhythm for the marchers. I'd love a book on how the colonial drum and fife corps evolved into the modern military band of today.

Fighting the Last War

That's what bureaucracies do, whether it's the Army or the Coast Guard and Interior.  There's a good interview with Adm. Thad Allen at Government Executive, which explains the Gulf spew.  Part of the explanation: the system was dominated by the lessons of the Exxon Valdez spill.