Surprising Factoid of the Day

From a NY Times book review of a history of the battle of Cannae:

"The battle is unparalleled for its carnage, with more men from a single army killed on that one day, Aug. 2, 216 B.C., than on any other day on any other European battlefield: something like 50,000 Romans died, two and a half times the number of British soldiers who fell on the first day of the Somme."

 There's the observation that each of these man had to be stabbed, hacked or beaten to death.  Makes one think.

So Much for the Mediterranean Diet

Matt Yglesias provides an international comparison of BMI's (body-mass-index) figures.  Greece is right up there, if far from the U.S. measure of amplitude.  Last I looked Greece had a Mediterranean diet. And what's more, they're not on the list of countries with McDonalds

Klein: Better One or Better Two?

Ezra Klein has found a great metaphor for how we should think about politics: the eye exam. Anyone unfortunate enough to have to be fitted with glasses knows the routine: after trying to read the eye chart without glasses, and misreading the "E" as "P", the optometrist inserts a lens in front of your eye, has you read down some lines, then starts the comparison routine, quickly switching between two lenses and asking: "better one or better two?" [Note: Klein uses the ophthalmologist, but optometrist is easier to spell.]

That's mostly how we need to think about many political and social issues.  For example, evaluating teachers.  Is it better not to evaluate or to evaluate by having the principal monitor the class a couple times a year?  Is looking at class test scores better than principal monitoring, or worse?  Is a combo of test scores and monitoring better than either alone.  Is looking at "value-added" scores better than raw scores?  etc. etc.

True Ugliness

Via Marginal Revolutions, those carpets had better stay in Vegas.  I wouldn't be surprised if the poor workers who ran the looms to weave the carpets and the installers both didn't have to put in for workmen's compensation. 

Changing Literary Tastes

A relative mentioned she needed to decide what to do with the set of Harvard Classics her father had bought.  That led me to Google it, and also The Great Books of the Western World which I vaguely remember being advertised in the Saturday Review of Literature when I was growing up. (I wanted to assure her that everything would be available for free for download to her Kindle.)  If you skim over the listings, you find only one Twain short story in the Harvard Classics and no Melville at all.  James is represented by The Portrait of a Lady.  That fits my memory, which is Twain was regarded as a children's author.  The Great Books, which represent more of an 1950's establishment version, include Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick, showing the change in opinion in the first half of the century. 

Gingrich Agrees With Me

I suggested resolving the mosque controversy by eminent domain.  Newt proposes making the area a national battlefield memorial. :-)  I'm sure he's never heard of me and didn't know my tongue was in my cheek.  But what has the world come to when the leader of the revolution of 1994 opts for government solutions?

Parking Regulations

Some bogs (Yglesias, Klein, now Drum) are discussing  regulations requiring parking when a building is erected.  It's perceived as encouraging sprawl, locking society into dependence on the car, and adversely impacting the environment. 

It's not a topic I've thought much about, but in a way it could be seen as the feudalization of society.  In feudal society, each manor relied on its own forces for self-defense.  With parking requirements, community parking is de-emphasized, each building has its own.

Reactions to the MIDAS Project-I (Old History)

I've listened to the first hour or so of the first day's program introducing the MIDAS program for FSA.  I've some reactions to it, which may spread over multiple posts.

One of the speakers, either the Administrator or Mr. Hanley, said MIDAS is the first time FSA has looked in depth at its operations since 1985.  One of the problems with government bureaucracies is, because of the turnover of political appointees there's a loss of historical memory. ASCS/FSA has a long history of looking at itself, either singly or in conjunction with other agencies.  The successes are few and far between.  Let me reminisce:

The first project I ran into after joining ASCS was a data project, led by Alan Morrison.  Didn't go anywhere.

Then in 1970-71 we had the Management Analysis Project, which looked at all ASCS operations across the board.  I got roped in pushing papers around and managing the library of documentation.  I'm sure some changes were made in some processes because of the studies, but not much. It was notable for establishing task forces on various areas without any plan for how to handle their recommendations.

Next, a couple years later, came Bill Ruble's project to automate county offices by putting dumb terminals in county offices, hooked to the mainframes in Kansas City.  A county office in Mississippi got some terminals and started data loading before it blew up, partially because of cost, partially because people were concerned about privacy of data.  (The Privacy Act was passed in 1974, I think.) This was back in the day when the disk drives were the size of an air conditioning unit and held 7.5 megs.

The next project I remember was Jim Dimwiddie's successful IBM System-36 project, which started putting computers in county offices in 1985, based on work done in 1984.  I was on one of the task forces.  You've got to give Jim a little credit for putting over the project; you've got to give county offices a lot of credit for surviving the hell we put them through.  (Lesson learned: never do a big automation project at the same time you're implementing a new farm bill, particularly when Gramm-Rudman-Hollings reductions come into play.)

Once we had System/36's in the offices, we almost immediately started running out of space. I think the first ones had a hard drive of around 200 megs for the smallest one.  Big concerns about our outgrowing the System/36 led to the Trail Boss effort of Chris Niedermayer.  ("Trail Boss" was a GSA concept, with OMB and GAO approval, for handling big automation projects.)  He started work around 1989 with a big team.  The methodology was "information engineering", as embodied by James Martin.  It was an elaborate, well planned effort, which took so long it produced little, because when the Dems came into office Chris had antagonized some, and his patron had antagonized most.  We did get some mailing software done, which was useful.  (Lesson: big projects tend to run out of impetus and support before they produce results.) (Chris bounced up to USDA It shop, and most recently is deputy CIO for HUD.)

Secretary Madigan in mid -1991 initiated the Department's Info-Share project.  Part of the effort was to consolidate county offices and co-locate the USDA offices in each county (SCS, ASCS, FmHA, Extension). The other parts of the effort were trying to share data among the agencies and to make them work together.  I was involved in pilots with county offices in Kansas and in Mississippi where the different agencies shared PC's hooked to a Sun server and provided on-line access to the handful of farmers with PC's. (Note that Madigan's effort was happening at the same time as the Niedermayer effort.  Madigan got the bee in his bonnet without knowing what was happening in ASCS, or in SCS for that matter.  Lesson: in a place as big as USDA it's hard to do change rationally.)

Info Share stumbled in the summer and fall of 1992, then went into limbo as the new administration took over. After a while it resumed for a while, but without much success.  By this time the new buzzword in IT systems was "business process reengineering".  Rather than looking at the data and getting it rationally organized, you looked at processes, figuring the data would handle itself. (Lesson: big IT projects tend to fall victim to the latest style being pushed by the private consultants hoping to make money off the government.  As ex-Sen Simpson might say: to suck the government tit.)

In 1994 Congress reorganized the agencies, changing SCS to NRCS, splitting FmHA between ASCS, now called FSA, and the new Rural Development, into which the Rural Electrification Administration was folded.

After Secretary Espy left and Glickman came in, Greg Carnill became leader of  what was now called the "service center" effort.  This evolved in part to an attempt was to combine the administrative support for NRCS, FSA, and RD into one organization. Unfortunately this was killed in Congress due to opposition from partisans of the different agencies. (Lesson: any attempt to rationalize USDA organization must win the support of the appropriate Congressional bigshots and the special interests who whisper in their ears.

Before I retired we  did get started on some changes to the FSA name and address system which were worthwhile.  (Lesson: if a bureaucrat leaves, the successors will have their own ideas.) And the people who worked on GIS for FSA/NRCS did implement the common land unit layer.  Whether what was accomplished actually helped the county offices and the farmers they serve is an open question.

How Blind I Was

When I left FSA, I thought Russia would really ramp up production since the Communists were gone and we'd be seeing surpluses again. Via Ezra Klein, this Economist article explains why it was Brazil which has become a powerhouse in recent years and how they did it.  (Short answer: brains/science.)  Recommended for anyone interested in agriculture.

New Orleans Factoids

From various news reports on the 5th anniversary of Katrina I assembled these factoids:

• there are 300 more restaurants than before, I'm not sure why.  There's more Hispanics in the area so presumably some new restaurants came about from that.  This also probably ties into the fact that entrepreneurship in the area is up.
• New Orleanians are now more likely to attend public meetings than other Americans.  Apparently because of the problems in getting aid, people have become skeptical of outside planners and therefore like to participate in meetings to give them a grilling.
• reconstruction in the lower Ninth ward has encountered problems because title to many homes are confused.  It seems the pattern was for someone to build or buy early in the 20th century, then to die intestate, thereby leaving the property to all the children.  Repeat this another time or too and titles become unclear.  It's the same sort of thing which has caused many Southern farmers, particularly blacks, to lose their land.
• there have been gains since Katrina, particularly in the public schools.

These fit some of my preconceptions: one of which is that the "cake of custom"  can become baked in place. Disasters, wars, epidemics can crumble the cake, creating new opportunities for some to change and grow.  Others, of course, are killed or harmed.