You Are There

Something reminded me of the old radio program "You Are There" (late 40's).  It featured recreations of famous events in history, narrated by an announcer.  The one I particularly remember was the signing of the Magna Charta, with the announcer talking about the angry barons and building the tension over whether King John would sign or fight.

Anyway, turns out the tapes of that program are available online (why am I surprised). The list of all the programs is revealing: almost nothing after 1900, a couple on women's rights, almost nothing on civil rights, and some oddities, at least by today's standards:  The Trial of Samuel Chase? (A justice impeached but acquitted in 1804/5)

I guess it was radio's equivalent of today's History Channel.

You Never Do It Right the First Time: ORCA

That's my motto, and it seems the Romney campaign didn't heed it.  By keeping their ORCA centralized data system under wraps until late, and not giving it a test run, it collapsed and burned on election day.

Not covered in the story: I'm intrigued by their decision to do a centralized effort, as opposed to a 50-state effort.  Seems like the sort of thing Republicans accused us bureaucrats of, believing in the wisdom of the central government.  In this case, at least, the community organizer outdid the business executive.

[Update: Fairfax county school system installed a new math system this fall, with online books, which is causing problems.  Apparently they decided not to do a pilot, based on past successes with other subjects.]

Call Me Stick-in-the-Mud

I have to admit a shameful fact: I don't own a mobile device, no iPhone or iPad or Android or anything.When you stay as close to home as I do, there's not that much point.  In other words, if you're not mobile, you don't need a mobile device.

Margaret Chase Smith Is Happy

20 women senators in the new Congress, she was the only one when I became conscious of politics.

Thank Goodness Washington's Not Battleground

I see the great bureaucrats in Washington state have now succeeded in counting 58 percent of their ballots. 

My Own Prediction

Nate Silver's book will hit the NYTimes best seller list.  (I'm about a third through and it's very good.)

Voting

Voted about 1:45.  Took about 30 minutes.  The line was wrong [sic], but I can't say it was the longest ever, but possibly it was.  Memory fades.  They used both touch screen and paper ballots. Unfortunately people irrationally choose the touch screen so there was a 10 minute wait for those, while if you were smart enough, I wasn't, to vote paper there was no wait after your eligibility had been confirmed.

[Updated to note my freudian slip.]

The Value of Female Leaders?

Apparently Bangladesh has been doing quite well over the last 20 years, during which they've had mostly female prime ministers.

The Distraction of Politics

Election day tomorrow.  I'm voting for Obama, Kaine (Senate) and Connelly (House).  Does it make a difference?  From the perspective of 71 years, and probably 64 or so following politics (don't ask why the early interest) I'd say it does and it doesn't. The bottom line is that the country is like a big ocean liner with lots of momentum and we tend to overestimate the influence of our elected officials.  It's rather like ASCS/FSA, very hard to make significant changes in the culture and organization.  

Many Varieties of Federal Employees

Sarah Kliff at the Post reminds of the varieties of Federal employees.

"FEMA has 9,106 disaster assistance employees. Only 770 get federal health insurance."

The point is that FEMA uses "reservists" who are temporary employees and not eligible for FEHBP for most of its disaster response.  It's rather like the Forest Service which has a similar deal for its firefighters.  And FSA/ASCS which used to have a big slug of temporary field employees for summer compliance work.  And the other variety is, of course, the county office employees who aren't technically Federal for some purposes, meaning they're usually excluded in counts of federal employees.