In the Old Days Legislators Were Good

Think so?  Then hie thyselves over to Boston 1775 and read the story of Champagne Charlie Townshend.

SOL Results for Fairfax County--Disturbing

Via the Reston Patch, here's the full release of results on the state Standards of Learning test for Fairfax county.  The test changed this year so the release notes one can't directly compare these results with those for prior years. 

That's fine, but.  And it's a big but.  What's noticeable to me is that the current year scores are down more for blacks, Hispanics, students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged, and limited English proficient than they are for whites and Asians.  That pattern is disturbing because just a simple change of standards, making the test harder, shouldn't show it.  Something else is going on.

English Reading Performance
Student  Group	Virginia			FCPS
	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13
All Students	88	89	75	93	94	82
Black	80	80	59	87	88	68
Hispanic	84	84	65	86	87	66
Asian	94	95	87	96	96	88
Economically Disadvantaged	80	81	59	85	86	63
Limited English Proficient	79	80	54	85	86	59
Students with Disabilities	67	66	43	85	84	56
White	92	93	82	97	97	90

The drop for whites is 7 points, for Asians 8, but 20 points for blacks, 21 for Hispanics and so on.

Why You Can't Do FSA Programs on the Internet

I'm sure few farmers would like to be compared the patrons of a check-cashing service, but when I read this piece from a professor who studies such services by working at one, that's what I thought.  Takes me back to the days of Sec. Glickman, and the effort led by someone whose name I forget, to follow through on reengineering business processes.  A small part of the effort was doing customer satisfaction surveys, which was a brand new concept to us FSA types.  After all, we were handing out money, so how could farmers not be satisfied with us?  </end sarcasm>

Actually the surveys as I remember did find that farmers were quite satisfied with their local offices (perhaps excluding the farm loan applicants, I'm not sure).  And the reason was simple--the <s>clerks</s>  <s>  program assistants</s> program technicians knew the farmers and could tailor their approach to the personality and needs of the individual.  That fact was then a big hurdle to the idea of moving FSA programs on-line to the extent that people could work from home.

Republican Farm Policy

Kevin Drum, probably the blogger whose views most coincide with mine, or rather vice versa, says that Republican farm policy makes perfect sense.

[edited to add]

I follow the Volokh Conspiracy, which just posted on the farm bill: crop insurance versus SNAP cuts issue.  I sometimes comment there, but I'm abstaining this time.  There's too much wrong and incomplete information there, probably because it's mostly a bunch of "city folk", as my mother would say.

Shame on Starbucks

Yes, I'm talking about the ad the founder of Starbucks ran in today's Post and NYTimes in which he asks his customers to leave their guns at home, son, don't take your guns to Starbucks.  (Sorry, briefly channeled Mr. Cash.)

No, I'm not upset by his position.  The company can do anything they want, within the law.  Personally although there's been some open-carry demonstrators around in VA, I've not seen anyone with a weapon except police.  I don't think I particularly care one way or another--I don't go in bars which in my mind is where people, arms, and alcohol are a combustible mixture.  Starbucks usually not so much, though I did see one very heated exchange between a customer and a clerk in my local Starbucks a year or so ago.

So if I don't care about guns, why do I call "shame"? 

Because the letter is printed in monospaced type, probably elite.  And I've a personal peeve against such type: it's less legible than a good variable spaced typeface and with modern technology there's not a reason in the world to stick with elite, or pica.

Walt Jeffries and IT Development

Sugar Mountain Farm is a blog I follow.  Not sure why, maybe the combo of intimidating expertise, different lifestyle, humor, ....  and just enough commonality (that's not the right word, but it's close enough) with my rearing to be able to enjoy it vicariously.  (Come to think of it, I wonder if Walt ever read "Swiss Family Robinson", one of my favorite books when growing up.)

Anyhow, that's not the point.  Let me quote from most of a recent post:

Will [a son] is working on learning to weld stainless steel in preparation for making some of the parts we need for the butcher shop. Tractor ears was his first sheet metal project in stainless steel. By doing small useful tests we explore techniques and develop the necessary skills for design and production. This is a way. Chez Tao.

To build the butcher shop we developed techniques by building our cottage, a much smaller version using many of the same methods. Prior to the cottage we built the dog house. Before that a ferro cement and brick pig hut. Even earlier, table top models. With each progressively larger version we developed technique and honed skills.

To me that sounds much like the "code a little, test a little" process of software development and very different from the  big project "waterfall" model which used to reign supreme in the 1980's, and which seems to retain a hold even today.  It's a model which often leads to disaster, and waste of money--witness the failed project to create a common health record between DOD and VA.

There's not much point to this observation, except as it confirms the saying: "too soon old, too late smart".   There's much in my career I'd redo if I could.  And much of what I regret in my work life traces back to hubris. 

The Greeks were right.

Return to Punched Card Storage

Via Brad Delong at Grasping Reality, here's a post converting Google's data storage into punched card equivalent.  Bottom line: it would cover New England with 4.5 kilometers of punched cards.

(Given my training on using punched cards to run COBOL programs, I'm intrigued by the conversion.)

Murphy's Law in New Zealand

"“If you land in someone’s paddock [when flying using a jetpack], you will always land on their prime sheep,” Mr. Kenny says, stressing that liability insurance for pilots is a must."

As quoted at Marginal Revolution

Rep. Issa Praises Obama Administration!!

The nether reaches of hell must be starting to freeze.

This FCW article reports this comment by Rep. Issa:

"The whole Recovery.gov effort has been a great success. I’m taking no positive shots at how they spent their money, because I don't think it created jobs. But it accounted for funding in a more transparent way than ever before, and did so on a small budget," Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said at an event hosted by the Data Transparency Coalition on Sept. 10.

I have to admit I was skeptical of it, I haven't revisited the site since its early days, and I still suspect a subject-matter expert could punch holes in the data for her subject area.  But the fact remains, even if its reputation is a tad higher than it deserves, it does set an example for the future and there weren't many scandals related to the Recovery Act spending, once we got past the early glitches about the quality of data.    So at least one gold star for the Obama administration.

(Hmm, since I'm feeling devilish today, what's the odds of having a similar database for Pigford payments?)

South Versus Midwest

Politico has an article on the farm bill, summarizing the current status but with some discussion of the sectional differences Midwest versus South.  It argues that current plantings have increased in the Midwest, not so in the South.  (I've a reservation, TX and OK are down in current plantings, presumably partially because of drought. )

The issue of basing payments on planted acres versus base acres is always interesting: do we want the safety net for current and future farmers or for past farmers?  The issue of yields gets less attention--I've lost track of whether there's been any updating of yields in past farm bills.  A fine kettle of questions for some philosopher/economist to figure out.