The Persistence of Error

Mark Twain had lots of things to say about lies, including a line about a lie getting being half-way round the world while truth was still getting its boots on.

A corollary to that is that error lasts and lasts, while corrections don't.  Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum note an instance:  Netflix House of Cards believes the retirement age for social security is 65.

Bad Mistake: Gates and SOFAs

Reading Mr. Gates' memoir, Duty.  He talks about negotiating a status of forces agreement with Iraq and making a very bad mistake:  tell the Iraqis to go talk to the other nations with which the US has status of force agreements. 

What could go wrong with that?  Surely everyone is happy to have US soldiers on their land, aren't they?

No--everyone the Iraqis talked with complained about the behavior of US troops and the aggravations of their sofas  SOFAs.

Just a reminder of how a smart man, surrounded by smart people, who spent his career trying to understand other nations, could lapse into self-satisfied smugness about American virtue.

Pigford Is Over?

That's the message, without the question mark, of this FSA notice.  

I await a scholarly study of the episode.

Paperless Government

The Post has an article describing the efforts of the paper industry to lobby against "paperless government", like the requirement that every recipient of government money go to direct deposit.  Apparently paper companies are feeling the impact of IT on their bottom line and so argue that every citizen should have the right to get paper instead of electrons.

I've written before I think that part of the sales pitch for the IBM System/36 was the "paperless office".  That didn't happen.  But a lesson for us:  change can come slower than its enthusiasts promise, but it can come. 

LBJ and Vietnam

The NYTimes had an article on LBJ's legacy.  The premise of the article is the legacy has been overwhelmed by Vietnam and his other achievements diminished.  No doubt that is true.  At the risk of being a contrarian, I'd like to argue that his legacy is secure, at least in the long term after I'm dead.

Why?  Because I think Vietnam, while destructive of millions of lives and causing much agony, will ultimately appear to be a dead end, while civil rights will never appear so.  Already I think I see a general downgrading of the Cold War.   I think it's true that most of the US population wasn't born when the Cold War ended, and the number of people for whom it was a live issue (say those born before 1970) is diminishing. 

So if the Cold War is fading, so too must Vietnam, which was seen as a battle in the Cold War.  As it turned out, I think the current conventional wisdom is there was no convincing rationale for LBJ to expand our involvement.  So it's a mistake for LBJ, but we don't mostly remember our presidents for their mistakes, but their accomplishments. And there I think LBJ's will only grow.

Incredible Cows

From Wonkblog something I find incredible:

"There doesn't appear to be a cap yet on the projections," says Nigel Cook, a dairy expert at the University of Wisconsin's School of Veterinary Medicine. Even though cows are producing 23,000 pounds per year on average, some herds produce more than 30,000 per head -- and he's found exceptional animals that can produce between 45,000 and 50,000. If more cows can be brought up to that level, the line could keep moving upward for a good while yet. Unlike poultry, for example, the state of dairy science isn't anywhere near maturity.

 We were doing well to produce more than 10,000 lbs per year.  

Cooper Retires

I mentioned Willie Cooper, FSA state executive director for Louisiana, previously.

The USDA blog reports his retirement dinner was yesterday.  What it doesn't say is, assuming he stayed in the old Civil Service retirement system, for the last 16 or so years he's been working without increasing his retirement annuity (since an employee maxed out retirement benefits at about 40 years of service).

Downton Abbey Economics

For those who watch Downton Abbey, the Post had a piece on its economics yesterday.

It's all good, but I've a couple concerns.  Apparently the estate includes several thousand acres of land which are farmed either by tenants or by the estate.  This season a long-time tenant died and Mary and Tom were going to take over the farm, since the tenant was in arrears on his rent.  The Earl responded to the tenant's son's appeal that the son take over the farm, and loaned him money to pay the arrears.

From this episode, one assumes that when the estate farms the land, it has either sharecroppers or wage laborers doing the work.  Not sure that's right though.  I'm mentally comparing the picture with the post-bellum South, with its mixture of cash tenants, share tenants, and day laborers.  Not sure how it corresponds or if it does.  To the extent the estate wants to take over the land, it's assuming a bigger risk from weather and market factors.  Weather in England may be less extreme than in the US, and I don't know what the market for wheat is doing post-war.

Continuing on farming, back during WWI Lady Sybil learned to drive a tractor being used on one of the farms.  I'm not sure the context: whether it was the tractor of an independent farmer, one owned by a tenant, or one owned by the estate.  At any rate, expenditures for capital investment like tractors were a big hurdle for tenants, so I wonder about the financing of the tractor.  (I suspect Fellowes threw in the tractor just for dramatic purposes, without intending any economic analysis.  But then, that may be true of the whole series.)

The Olympics, Past and Present

A relative is into the Olympics, describing his family's trips to see them on his blog, although this year they're staying at home and he's watching 94 hours of Olympic coverage every day. (My relatives are gifted.) Their trips begin with the Nagano games of 1998, through Torino of 2006, Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010, and London 2012.  The earliest descriptions are in the form of a diary, in a Word doc, but which now are available through his blog. He's a good photographer, so includes nice photos.  He also collects Olympic pins, which forms a theme throughout the series.

End of an Era

This notice announces the replacement of FSA fax machines by an Internet based fax solution.

When I joined ASCS there were two methods of getting instructions to the field fast: the printed notice, which typically would take 2-3 days to get printed, put in the pouch mail for the state office, and be received by the state office.  The state office could modify the notice, print copies for the counties, and mail them out.  So we probably figured on 3-5 business days for material to hit the county office, and that was with everything working smoothly.

The other method was the "wire notice", ideally a page or two, because it would be taken to the Department's teletype office  and typed on the teletype for wiring to the state offices.  This cut the time to 2-4 hours, but the state office still had to retype the incoming copy, print, and mail to county offices. (The text was in all caps, which has left me with a confirmed prejudice against all caps in any form.)

So in the early 70's the Records and Communications Branch of the Administrative Services Division got into facsimile machines.  Rather quickly as I remember it they got the money to install fax machines in each state office and we moved the "wire notices" over to the fax machines. It took a long while for the Department's teletype center to be closed down: AMS did their market news through there, they put new releases "out on the wire" (and those were still the days when a news release could move commodity prices), and selected people with homeland security responsibilities (as we'd call them today, then they were "defense" responsibilities) got copies of State Department cables, both the FAS stuff and other traffic.

So the fax machine has had its run of about 30 years, being replaced by a software package.  RIP fax machines.