The Re-emergence of "Traditional Values"

One day we're told that college-educated get married and stay married, and marriage makes you happy.

Another day we see reports on the importance of self-control, the famous marshmallow experiment predicts success in life (4 year olds told if they don't eat a marshmallow now, they'll get 2 later).

A third day we read about how London taxi drivers, who have to memorize all the streets before they can drive for hire, are shown to have much larger areas of the brain associated with memory.

[Just saw a piece on the importance of family dinners.]

 I can remember when the family was considered oppressive, something to be freed from, and divorce was a step on the road to liberation.

I can remember when going with the flow was the watchword.

I can remember when practice and memorization were tied to the past, to the unenlightened past.


I grew up in a time and place where family was the norm, self-control was expected, and strengthening one's mind was the result of habits.


What lesson do I take from all these: in part there are intellectual fads, in part we humans ride a pendulum of theories, never coming to rest on the truth.

French Dairy Mating

Modern Farmer posts on a French site on mating dairy cows and bulls:

"A consortium of French breeding associations launched the site in October after a farming summit. Breeders write up their cows’ online profiles, recording age and race (eye color is assumed to be brown), followed by their ideal traits in a mate. Milking prowess in its female progeny, perhaps? Muscular fitness? Or perhaps an unfettered ability to knock up his mate on the first go-around?"

 I'm curious, since my impression is that in America the data on the bulls and their progeny are posted/public, not the data on the dams.  Not sure if that's a true difference, and if it is, why it might exist.  Certainly the universe of bulls is much smaller than the universe of cows, which might be one factor.

The Decline of the Mainline Church

The statistical summary for the Presbyterian Church is out.  Not good news for anyone tied to the church, either willfully or by ancestry (me).  Between 2010 and 2013, the active church membership declined by 12.6 percent. 

[Updated: added "active"]

Who Knew Wikipedia Had Bureaucrats?

It does.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats

Now that the found of all knowledge has succumbed to bureaucracy, it's only a matter of time before we bureaucrats take over the world.

Snow Day

Welcome to Washington all you newly-elected senators and representatives, welcome to the snow.

We had about 4 inches in Reston, enough to cause big problems because the forecast was for 1-2 inches and OPM and schools didn't close.   I wonder if Congress gave the Weather Service enough money to upgrade their model to surpass the Europeans whether they could have gotten a better forecast.

Of course people in the Syracuse area would sneer at us Virginians for not being able to drive in snow.

[Updated:  but Bao Bao, the giant panda cub, enjoyed it. ]

Persistence of Culture: Navaho Farming

Vox has an interesting post on where "lady farmers" are. (Note: the writer used the much better term "female farmers" when she actually wrote the piece, but I assume I can blame her for the URL.)

There's an interesting geographic pattern.  The counties with the highest percentage of femal operators seem to be either Native American (the Four Corners of the SW = Navaho) or exurban counties, presumably women who find fulfillment in farming, using the earnings from their first career as capital.

Laugh of the Day

An interesting article in the NY Times magazine on Shell Oil's Arctic oil effort and its mishaps (many).   At one point the Coast Guardsmen on a rescue helicopter run into an unpleasant surprise: the smallest of the 18 crew members who must be airlifted to safety weighs 235 pounds.

Victory Lap: Ebola

Buried somewhere in the comments on Ann Althouse's blog is a bet/promise I made.  It was to the effect that if there were more people dying in the US from Ebola than the number of victories the Washington Skins won in the 2014 season, I'd do my shopping on Amazon through Ann's blog.

At that time the numbers stood at: Americans dead of Ebola--zero, others dead of Ebola dying in the US--one, Skins victories--three.  The final score for 2014 was 0, 1, 4.

I have to admit I didn't have the courage of my convictions or I would have offered a straight bet to all comers, but I can at least claim I was right and all the people who panicked were wrong.

Try These Resolutions

I've decided not to do New Years resolutions any more--the usual reason--they don't work.

But for those who do want to make resolutions, consider the resolutions (not New Years) of Rev. Jonathan Edwards.

No End to the HR Courses--Five Generations at Work

FSA just posted a notice on "Diversity and Inclusion Training on Generational Differences for
Supervisors and Managers".

It seems there are five! different generations at work these days, and they work differently, so managers must know how to handle them.

With tongue in cheek, I list the generations:

• old farts (my generation) who hang on and bore everyone with their talk of the good old days
• boomers who bore everyone with their talk of the day they'll retire
• gen X who bore everyone with their self-pity over all the boomers who don't have the sense to retire and make way for new blood
• gen Y (millennials) who are busily searching for a new job away from all the bores.
• post millennials, who are practicing up to be boring bureaucrats as soon as they get out of diapers

Although I mock, it's serious business, even having the imprimatur of a Harvard Business Review article. 

Next subject on the horizon: the different cultures of America, how to deal with the cultural differences between New Jerseyans and Texans, Oregonians and Floridians.  That should be good for a couple days training and a 5-digit fee to the consultant doing the training. 

(I need to create a label for this: should I use "boondoggle" or "human relations".)