Scholarships for Black Ag

Apparently the National Black Farmers Association linked up with Chrysler to sponsor scholarships for students in agriculture.

Geezer Meets the Smart Phone

I've been easing myself into the world of smartphones.  Started cheap, with a Lumia 435, relying mostly on my WiFi network but no carrier so no real GPS.  When that phone failed, I jumped on an offer for Google FI, using a Nexus 5X (an offer I wouldn't have taken had I fully understood the terms--did I mention I tend to be cheap). That means I can use its GPS capabilities.  That's become handy in the last few days.

My sister's death meant I inherited a number of paintings and photographs passed on from my aunt and uncle, who worked for the YMCA in China in the 1920's, and who also had inherited tintypes from my grandparents.  Recently I've been contacting people to work on these objects, conservators to restore the paintings and digitally restore the tintypes.  That's led me into the maze of streets in suburban Washington.  Rather than the nice gridwork of DC the inner suburbs inside the Beltway are very confusing, a bunch of cul-de-sacs, really unfamiliar to me, just the sort of situation in which a GPS becomes very valuable.

Naturally at first I didn't try it, it was new, and I had spent years being able to read maps, so who needed it. Being old has impaired my judgment though.  The other day was telling. I thought I knew to take the first turn from I-66 after getting on in Fairfax City.  I did, and found I was totally confused, because the intersections I saw didn't match what was on Google.  (I should have waited and taken the second turn.) In desperation I turned to the GPS function.  Over the next few minutes I learned to accept the GPS voice enough to accept her directions to get back on I-66, and then to get off at the right exit.  Live and learn.

Politicians Pander

Fallows has a long piece on the candidates and the upcoming debates.

Politicians pander. That's what you do.

I've done just enough public speaking (definitely not my forte--I drone) to occasionally experience the thrill of reading your audience and responding to their response.  It's like making love.  And that's what politicians, the ones who have thrived enough to have a national presence, do.  Throughout Fallow's piece you can see the techniques analyzed.

In this episode the Kentucky governor gets carried away by pander. 

Should I Leave Wells Fargo?

Consider the title of this post : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2016/09/13/wells-fargo-fired-5300-workers-for-illegal-sales-push-executive-in-charge-retiring-with-125-million/

Remember this when people complain about waste and fraud in government. 

Privatizing Pensions--Chile

I'm old enough to remember when the right was pushing the idea of privatizing pensions, pointing to the success of Chile's system.  (They'd been advised by Chicago-school economists, 
and see this.)

But the NYTimes today reports that the system is under fire, because the benefits received under the system don't replace more than 36 or so percent of wages and for other reasons.

We liberals will doubtless say "we told you so", which is always fun.  But the better lesson might be to always be careful of reforms sold as panaceas, from whatever side.  Humans tend to run from one side of the boat to the other, whether under the grip of enthusiasm or despair.

(I wonder how New Zealand's economic reforms, particularly of the agricultural economy, are faring these days?)

Different Platforms

From a piece at  Monkey Cag:

The [Democratic] platform mentions whites only in the context of their greater wealth, lower arrest rates and lower job losses.
In contrast, the Republican platform never refers explicitly to Latinos or people of color, and refers to African Americans or Hispanics only once and then in the context of seeking to reduce federal expenditures on primary and secondary education. It refers to women only in the contexts of the military and the pro-life position on abortion. In short, the Democratic platform takes an implicitly negative position on the relative economic fortunes of white males, while the Republican platform takes a neutral one.

Terrorism, What I Wrote 10 Years Ago

vIt's not quite 10 years since I (very tentatively) ventured a prediction on terrorism.  My complete post of Sept 30, 2006:

Saturday, September 30, 2006

What Does The Future Hold?

The Times has an analysis of the new legislation on terrorism which includes these thoughts:

How the measure will look decades hence may depend not just on how it is used but on how the terrorist threat evolves. If a major terrorist plot in the United States is uncovered — and surely if one succeeds — it may vindicate the Congressional decision to give the government more leeway to seize and question those who might know about the next attack.
If the attacks of 2001 recede as a devastating but unique tragedy, the decision to create a new legal framework may seem like overkill. “If there is never another terrorist attack and we never obtain actionable intelligence, this will look like a huge overreaction,” said Gary J. Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton.

The last paragraph is what I'm inclined to think.

Obviously we've had terrorist attacks since.  I think, however, if you'd told the US in 2006 that deaths in the US from terrorism would be low, we'd have been very happy.  (Can't find a handy up-to-date source for these deaths, but I'm going to say 2006 through 2015 saw fewer than 30 such deaths per year, at least for deaths from terrorists with some affiliation to Islam.)

Number of Nuclear Test: the Country Which Is Sixth

North Korea, according to this Vox piece.

When Republicans Hated Lincoln

Lincoln is our secular saint, but there was a time when Republicans hated him.

Terminology: Clinton Versus Hillary

It seems to me when this presidential campaign began, the customary reference was to "Hillary" or "Hillary Clinton" and usually a reference to "Clinton" meant her husband.  These days though I think I see a presumption that "Clinton" will refer to Hillary; that's the default these days.  Maybe it's like "mail"--it's almost like you should use "snail mail" if you mean USPS.