How History Gets Distorted

The NYTimes in a roundup of interesting stuff mentioned the "EveryThreeMinutes" twitterbot which pumps out a tweet every 3 minutes describing a sale/purchase of a slave in the antebellum South.  This is from the site (not up on Twitter, so don't know the terminology).

Every Three Minutes
@Every3Minutes

[In the United States] a slave was sold on average every 3.6 minutes between 1820 and 1860 ~ Herbert Gutman

books.google.com/books?id=TUtFg…

Looking at the reference, it seems that the person/people between the twitterbot is stretching a bit: "Every Four Minutes" might be more appropriate if you follow normal rounding rules and don't want to go with "Every3.6Minutes".

When you read the reference, available at Google, it's: "Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross", by Herbert George Gutman

Time on the Cross was a 1974 book which changed the historiography of slavery, as noted in the wikipedia site.  Gutman's book and criticism of  TofC is briefly described there.

According to the page displayed by Google, Gutman reasons this way: He asserts that 2 million slaves were sold between 1820 and 1860, a statistic I've seen elsewhere. He goes on to say: " If we assume that slave sales did not occur on Sundays and holidays and that such selling went on for ten hours on working days, a slave was sold on average every 3.6 minutes between 1820 and 1860."  This is the source for Every3Minutes.

Note, however,  that the twitterbot seems to be running 24 hours a day, not 10 hours a day.  Gutman is saying 167 slaves are sold every work day( (10 hours * 60 minutes)/3.6), twitterbot is saying 400 slaves every calendar day.  How much difference does it make: it implies 5,840,000 sales over the 40 years, not 2,000,000.  That's a big difference.

In the twitterbots defense, it's an easy mistake to make. Ordinarily when we say something like: " X people are killed every day by Y", it's 365 days a year, not 200 workdays.  Gutman switched the usual basis in his calculations, presumably to make a more impressive case against Time on the Cross. 

(I could quibble about Gutman's calculations--using his figures I get 3.74 minutes, not 3.6.

40 years times 52 weeks times 6 days a week (= 12480), minus 10 days for holidays, times 10 hours times 60 minutes = 7,482,000 minutes divided by 2,000,000 = 3.741 minutes.  But since I'm going on only the page Google shows me, there may be something I'm missing.)

The bottom line is that twitter will spread the 3.6 minutes figure more widely, and it will become a concrete fact to be used in making history come alive, despite its inaccuracy.

Our Lying Founding Father

Ben Franklin is not trustworthy, as proven by this.

A diplomat is someone sent abroad to lie for her country.  It looks as if Ben was doing his own black propaganda.

What, to a Native American, Is the US Flag?

We're coming up on the 12th of July in Ulster, which marks part of "marching season", which refers to the times when the opposing Ulster parties (Protestant/Catholic) parade their flags and banners, sometimes through the opponent's backyard.  I just came back from a drive on Elden Street in Herndon, where a number of houses had the US flag displayed.  Some perhaps from the Fourth, others probably an everyday display.

A flag is a symbol which cuts two ways--it symbolizes the unity of the faithful and divides the faithful from the infidel.  The Ulster example is (or was in the recent past) the most extreme one possible without having an armed conflict; the Herndon example is the most relaxed one possible without having the symbol lose all meaning.

Life is complicated.  The Times today has a story on the reconciliation between Vietnam and the US.  Accompanying it is a photo showing the Vietnamese and US flags displayed side by side. ("Seventy eight percent of Vietnamese said they had a favorable opinion of the United States in a poll published this year by the Pew Research Center. Among those under 30 years old, it was 88 percent.")  Why can Vietnamese and Americans reconcile when Protestants and Catholics can't, or at least couldn't until the end of the 20th century?

And I wonder: to Native Americans, what is the meaning of the U.S. flag?  At least outside the thirteen original states, it flew over the military which sometimes defeated their ancestors.

The First Fourth of July Celebration

Boston1775  has John Adams' letter to his 12 year old daughter Abigail, the oldest child, recounting the way the Congress, military, and people of Philadelphia celebrated the first Fourth.

Greeks Work Harder Than Germans

The Wonkblog has 15 charts showing differences between Greece and Germany.  The fact in the title is the most surprising, closely followed by the fact they work much longer hours than Germans and the fact that Germans only work 26 hours a week

Differences in Democrats and Republicans: Elections

I seem to be focused on politics these days.  The other day there was a piece on differing attitudes towards electoral structures; specifically the construction of electoral districts.   Back in the day there was a concept called "the establishment", something intellectuals had picked up from the British. In the 60's it meant Galbraith's "bigs"--big government, big business, big labor. All three have suffered in the years since.  Reagan proclaimed the end of the "era of big government", and it's certainly dwindled as entitlements and contracting have expanded.  Big labor is small these days, except for public employee unions.  And big business: who would have believed Apple replaced GM and IBM?

But our political attitudes still carry over.  The way I see it, Democrats distrust "the establishment" still, and prefer nonpartisan expertise, presumably drawn from the universities, the new "big education".  They want panels of experts to draw Congressional district lines. Republicans trust the establishment still, and believe it can be trusted to establish lines which work for the society.

Two-Faced Political Evaluations

This post is inspired by a conservative post over at Powerline, in which the writer predicts that Democrats will be apathetic in 2016 because Obama's administration has failed at so much.

One thing which struck me about the post was that the same writer has, in the past, voiced an entirely different appraisal of Obama--that is, Obama has succeeded in his ill-advised ambitions, socializing the country, expanding executive power, etc. etc.

Now I disagree with both, but I think it's an example of something common in political commentary, on both the right and the left: a two-faced evaluation.  Either our political opponents are powerful adversaries whose exploits are threatening to overrun the last redoubt of virtue and proper thought or they are pathetic losers whose pitiable writings at best conceal a total absence of reason and reality. [/end exaggeration for effect].

I remember during the rise of Reagan to be the nominee and then during his Presidency I had the same sort of evaluations of him that Obama's opponents voice today.  There seems to be something about political conflict which often brings out the worst in people.

Programming Languages and System Development

It's almost 40 years since my first programming courses.  I never got paid for programming, but I did find ways, by stretching my job responsibilities, to do some programming during work hours, or after.  My first language was, of course, COBOL.  I also did a very little Powerbuilder, some Javascript, and a lot of Wordperfect macros.  But that ended almost 20 years ago, so there's been a lot of changes since.  I read stuff, and see references to Python, and PHP, and Github, and wonder what the hell?

So I really enjoyed this very very very long post. It told me just enough about current times, even though I had to split my reading over 3 days.  A whole lot has changed, no mention of "waterfall development", no mention of James Martin, etc. etc. but some things haven't, as witness this quote.

"Most of your programming life will be spent trying to figure out what broke, and if the computer helps you, maybe you can watch your kids play soccer."

Republican Dominance of the Supreme Court

In the wake of this week's Supreme Court decisions, some Republicans/conservatives are bemoaning the Court and its membership. 

I had an idea, but I was surprised to find these facts, from wikipedia:

Years since Democratic appointees were last a majority on the court: 43  (Nixon in 1972 )

Years there were at least 7 Republican appointees on the court: 1976-2012

How Government Really Works-Part LXXIV

The VA is having a bad time.  The auditors just found they had parked money with the Government Printing Office, $43 million in fact.  See Lisa Rein's piece in the Post.

My narrative from the story: Gen. Shinseki gets appointed head of VA by Obama, as a reward for being "right" on Iraq, or at least disputing the number of troops required.  Like most political, and even nonpolitical, heads of agencies, he has some pet ideas.  One such, is that every veteran needs a handbook to explain to him or her what VA benefits are available, how to get, them.  Such a handbook must run to many pages, and the number of veterans is many millions, so the cost of printing the handbooks is also in the millions.  The GPO handles government printing, and charges the agency the cost plus a service fee.

Now since the handbook is the pet idea of the boss, the VA bureaucracy naturally turn to to implement it. So they find the money to print the handbook, and since the contents may change, they plan to redo the process every couple years.  To finance the printing, they transfer money into their account with GPO, to be available when needed.  However, apparently (Rein's not quite clear or maybe the auditors weren't) the bureaucrats forgot about the money, or maybe (more likely IMHO) the people changed and the new people didn't know. 

The points I read into the narrative: the bigshot's pet idea, the eagerness of the bureaucrats to satisfy him. 

I'm a veteran.  I'm also a former bureaucrat.  I'm reasonably comfortable reading prose. I'm likely more able to parse VA text than 95 percent of my fellow veterans. There's no way I'd read a handbook from the VA, at least not since the Internet.  So I think Shinseki's idea, though well-intentioned, was a waste of money in the first place. 

I can imagine the VA bureaucrats being delighted to do it--unlike ideas Shinseki may or may not have had to change VA operations, a handbook is easy to do.  All it requires is money. You please the boss, and look good yourself without the pains of upsetting the boat.

Unfortunately, as a pet idea there's no ongoing organization behind it, so the dollars at GPO get a little lost.