Kevin Williamson Is Wrong: Foreseeing the Future

I'm nitpicking here. He writes at the National Review:

"No one in 1985 knew, or really could have known, what computers would be like ten years down the road, or twenty."

(It's in the context of mocking a NYTimes columnist in 1985 who wrote that laptops were a bad idea, and moving from that  to the idea we can't foresee the future so the market beats government.)

Now I remember old laptops. We had a Zenith laptop at work which we took to a training session.  Actually, it wasn't a computer to put on your lap--it was a portable computer, a luggable.   I also remember something else, something called an electronic calculator.  When I worked at my summer job in the summer of 1959 and later, I used an old handcrank manual adding machine. By the end of the 60's electronic calculators had arrived on the scene, and by the end of the 70's we had programmable calculators.  Innovators in county ASCS offices had started to buy the calculators and program them to compute program payments and loan amounts.  I remember a GAO report urging the agency to establish centralized control over them.

Anyway, no more memories.  My point is that by 1985 we had seen the effects of Moore's law; the capabilities of calculators had exploded and their prices had imploded.  We also had seen the progression from mainframes to minis to micro/PCs.  So anyone with any sense of the history of the past 20 years would have known that computers were going to get smaller and more capable.

And someone, like Al Gore, was on the verge of inventing the Internet, or at least see that an obscure military/academic tool needed to be opened to the public.

Wow--US and Vietnam Have Come a Ways

Given my age and history, this almost brings tears to my eyes:

"Consider that, as Trong [General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communits Party, visiting US] pointed out, the United States — not China — is Vietnam’s largest trading partner. In 2014, that trade amounted to $36 billion. In this context, prospective American foreign military sales (FMS) to Vietnam are merely an expansion of the two countries’ existing trade relationship."

Agriculture in Space

Government Executive reports that the first vegetables grown in space are now being harvested and eaten.  (Some lettuce grown under LED's.)

In the past I've criticized some vertical farming schemes which claimed to rely on sunlight to grow their vegetables.  In the case of the space station, it would seem they'd have 12 hours of sunlight and 12 of darkness, so they shouldn't need LED's.  On the other hand, the sunlight lasts only 90 minutes or so at a time, so maybe they can't rely on the sun.

Some Forecasts Are Accurate: EPA in 1989

Chris Clayton at DTN goes back to  a 1989 EPA "report  to Congress, "The Potential Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States,"... a three-year study looking at impacts of climate change 30 to 50 years out", noting several of the accurate forecasts: northern crop shifts, higher soybean yields, algae blooms in the Great Lakes, and adverse impacts on California water.

Early 20th Century North Fenton

Something completely different. The photo is of the Page Brook valley, with the farm on which I grew up in the foreground. It's taken from Richards road, which runs along the side of the hill. As farming in the area has declined (there are no longer cows nor chickens on the farm) and no longer cows on the farm across the valley from us) the trees and brush have come back. The fields all were fenced, though the lines don't stand out in this photo. In my youth the fence lines had mostly grown up with weeds and brush, silently stealing away a bit of cropland over the years.

"Stylized Facts" and Not

Daniel Drezner offers five charts which provide an alternative view of stylized facts:

• the Obama administration has seen ever-increasing government expenditures.
• our manufacturing output continues to decline under Obama 
• Mexican immigration far outstrips immigration from other countries, like China or India
• we're losing our dominant position in the world militarily
• global warming has paused.

It's Who You Know in Politics

Politico has a piece on how to get a job on Capitol Hill.  It begins:

"Start with whomever you know in D.C. If you think hard enough, you probably know someone who lives in D.C. or is connected to it. It could be a former Hill staffer, a lobbyist or a distant relative. No matter who it is, just go see them. Ask them whom they know — you never know who somebody’s next door neighbor is (like a chief of staff on the Hill looking to hire a new staff assistant). In Washington, personal networking, whether a handshake or lunch, still trumps social networking on Facebook and LinkedIn. Follow up on every lead."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/12-steps-to-a-capitol-hill-job-121012.html#ixzz3hyaN7kbj

It's probably all good advice, but I'm bothered by the implications.  The emphasis on networking means the system is biased in favor of the already connected.  Them that has, gets.

The Iranian RINOs

The Republicans have their RINOs (Republicans in name only).  Today's Post made it seem that Iran also has RINOs (Revolutionaries in name only).


Also see this piece on Iranian views of the agreement

The Silent Generation's Luck--I Thought It Was Me

Wonkblog has a post discussing wealth and income over a lifetime, using generational cohorts.  The money quote for me:

 The winners of this historical jackpot appear to be those who were born between 1930 and 1945 and came of age after World War II, who are sometimes called The Silent Generation....

Also

...the Silent Generation appears to get an additional boost because they were born during the Great Depression, a time when people had fewer babies overall. Their lower population meant that they had less competition overall for jobs, housing, investments and other opportunities. Sociologist Elwood Carlson called the generation “the lucky few” because they were smaller than the generation that came before. African-Americans and women born in those years had far more opportunity, and the generation also benefited from the expansion of the American safety net, including Social Security and Medicare, during their lives.

The Silent Generation is me.  Actually, I'm not surprised by this article.  When I joined ASCS in 1968 there were still a handful of employees around from the New Deal days, though most I think had joined the agency after WWII.  We had a week of orientation for new employees. During one session the director of the Personnel Management Division described the number of employees who were near or at retirement age.  What it meant for my own career was I moved up the ladder quickly simply because people were retiring, so I didn't have much competition (except in one instance).  Of course, most days I believe my promotions were a tribute to my hard work and smarts, not the luck of being born at the right time.

Later, say by the late 80's, I was a branch chief and we'd hired a bunch of baby boomers, many former clerks from county office, as part of the effort to support the new IT system. But looking at my office, I knew there was a logjam.   Many, most, of my employees then had the potential to be inmanagement, at least given the prevailing theory that an excellent specialist makes a good manager.  (That theory isn't necessarily true, but it was the assumption in ASCS.) But I expected at least some of them would have to compete against each other if and when I moved out of my job.  With that in mind, I encouraged good employees to move to other units. While some  of my boomers did, in the end two of them did compete for my job.

I wonder how much such hidden factors impact our social issues.  For example, how much is the trend to adjunct professors in college necessitated because we removed mandatory retirement and the boomers are hanging on?

Good Data Modeling Is Important--MP3s

I was usually ambivalent about the IT contractors working for ASCS/FSA. On the one hand I always thought I we could do the job better and faster ourselves, if management would only give us the dollars/people.  On the other hand I have to admit I did learn a lot, even if all the contractors didn't accomplish much (at least in my fallible memory).

One of the things I did learn was data modeling, normalizing data structures and the importance of having it right.  For example, the System/36 just used flat files, with multiple indexes to them.  While the IT people in IRMD and KCMO did a pretty good job in capturing the data needed for some of our activities, one big thing was missed: time, most notably time as reflected in crop/fiscal/program years, and the idea that we could be operating programs for different years at the same time. 

Of course you never get the thing totally right.  For example, our "name" structure assumed the standard WASP structure: first name, middle name, last name, and failed to allow for the naming structures present in other parts of the world or other cultures.

Mistakes in data modeling can have big consequences, as seen in the case of the metadata scheme for MP3 files, as discussed in this piece at The Atlantic.  Classical music is particularly affected.