Consequence and Lab Girl

Was away on annual visit to Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck.  Two books to recommend, both as it happens by people raised in the Presbyterian church, which must be why I like both:

Consequence, by Eric Fair.  Memoir of someone who had tours with our military and our contractors, with the major focus on interrogations in Iraq and religion.

Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren.  Memoir of a woman growing from a high school science lab (great evocation of the sort of lab I remember) through a career as paleo/geo/botanist.

Divisions in the GOP

I've been dubious of discussions of current events which see today as unique, without precedent.  One of my touchstones in electoral matters is 1964, when the nomination of Barry Goldwater caused big divisions in the Republican Party.  I remember Rockefeller being booed off the stage by the victorious AUH20 delegates so naturally I believe that was worse than anything we see today.

But maybe not.  I happened to do a Google search ("google" is redundant, isn't it?) for Republicans who supported LBJ in 1964 and found this Stu Rothenburg piece..

It seems that almost all Republican big shots supported Goldwater, at least on paper. Nixon, unlike Romney, campaigned for Goldwater.  Eisenhower, unlike the Bushes, supported Goldwater.  John Lindsay was the big name Republican to go for LBJ.  Who was he?  The Representative of the "Silk Stocking" district in NYC, identified as an up and comer, but also very liberal.  The current day parallel might be Sen. Rubio, though a senator is a bigger name than a mere representative, even one for whom the NYTimes is the hometown paper.

So it seems to me, very tentatively, that the GOP is more divided at the top these days than it was in 1964.  And, perhaps, the GOP was more divided, or rather less partisan, at the grassroots than it is today.  If that's true, maybe it's the result of a more national media,

Predictions: Senate

The Senate may be controlled by the Democrats, but likely by a very slim margin.  Based on our history, a 50/50 split or 51/49 split is going to be unstable.  Among the events which can affect passage of a specific bill and/or control of the Senate (disregarding the likelihood of a filibuster and the need for 60 votes)

• any individual senator can hold out for his or her favorite project issue (we saw that in the ACA negotiations--the senators from LA, AR, and NE at different times held out for something special)
• a senator may switch parties
• special elections to fill vacancies (first of all--the VA seat Kaine now holds) from resignations or death. Note most governors are Republicans, in cases where they have authority.  Such elections will attract gobs of money.

Senior Moments, the Frequency of

Has anyone graphed the occurrence of "senior moments" during a life.  IMHO it probably follows a "power law", similar to this graph, where age is the horizontal axis and number of senior moments in a year the vertical axis. (Disregard the values on this graph--it's the best image I could find quickly.)

Life Lessons from Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum had earlier blogged about the idea his cancer wasn't a particularly educational illness; no big revelations about life had followed from the discovery or treatment .

In this piece he muses about the idea that sharing one's personal experience can help others, even if it is only to say people are not alone. There shouldn't be the expectation that illness is life-changing; sometimes it's just something to work through, or not.

Vote to Preserve the WH Garden?

If you don't like the Democratic ticket you can at least vote to preserve Michelle Obama's White House Garden.  PBS Newshour covers a ceremony this afternoon which tries to preserve it as a permanent feature of the grounds.  Not quite comparable to Jackie's Garden, but something.

I think I've noted earlier my skepticism that the Obama children ever did much in it, despite their mother's naive hopes when it was first announced.  That's just as well, because I suspect Barron Trump won't be living in the White House and the Clinton grandchildren are too young.  So the Park Service will continue to care for it.

Given what happened to Carter's solar roof, I'd expect Trump to do away with all Obama innovations.  Indeed, I wish someone would ask him in the debates whether he plans to redecorate the White House to suit his tastes, maybe a nice gold color with "Trump" in neon above the portico?

The Clintons likely will continue with the garden, but without the fanfare.

Technology as Empowering, Even Dairy Cows

In some ways automated milking systems/robot milkers are the epitome of industrialized agriculture. It's easy to create an over-simplified picture in your mind of what's involved.   I won't venture to compare these systems with our practices with 12 cows in a stanchion system, but much of this extension article surprised me.  Some excerpts:

• "cow’s attendance to the milking station is not only dependent on the PMR and pellets [feed] offered in the RMS [robotic milking system], but also on feeding management, cow comfort, cow health, and social interactions among cows."
• "If forage moisture changes and rations are not adjusted promptly, visits may drop. The drop in visits will result in a decrease in milk production and an increase in the number of fetch cows. The increase in fetch cows may disrupt other cow behaviors, resulting in even bigger decreases in visits and milk production, leading to a downward spiral that creates much frustration for the producer. It is crucial to have consistent feeding in order to maintain high production and minimize the number of fetch cows[i.e. cows someone has to fetch and herd into the RMS]"
• "Cows like consistency. This is even more important in a RMS herd."

The advice in this Progressive Dairy article by a "senior farm management support adviser." advoses letting cows do their thing.  (The "subtext" is the difficulty of changing one's behavior when new technology comes into the job site.)

Those Efficient Private Companies

MGM is building a casino in Prince Georges County, the National Harbor project.  Today's printed Post had an article on the opening plans.  What caught my eye was the subheading--a $500 million cost overrun--the whole project cost $1.4 billion, so that's probably a 33 percent overrun

This will go unnoticed, but similar inefficiency in government tends not to.

Japanese Self-Cleaning Ovens

From Andrew Gelman at Statistical Modeling we learn that the Japanese have no word for "self-cleaning oven".   That inspired me to search: inquiring minds wanted to know why?  Were all ovens self-cleaning, or what?  This led me to an interesting write-up on Japanese kitchen appliances.

It doesn't directly answer the question, but this is what I read between the lines:

• kitchens are small and appliances are small
• meals are physically small (no Thanksgiving turkey)
• ovens are small (microwaves now)
• ranges are gas (I presume given the size of Japan and population density fuel was never abundant, so no (i.e. "no" = "few') wood/coal stoves for cooking and no transition to electric stoves.

Book Recommendation: Rosa Brooks

The book is "How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon", the author is Rosa Brooks, the daughter of Barbara Ehrenreich, the leftish foodie and writer.  Interestingly, Brooks is now married to a colonel in the Special Forces, having spent time in the bureaucracies of the State Department (Bill Clinton admin) and Pentagon (Obama admin) as a human rights/law of war lawyer. 

The book is a little diffuse, but it gets blurbs from Gen. McChrystal and Anne-Marie Slaughter, former policy wonk in the State Department.  Brooks acknowledges her experiences have changed and undermined her inherited preconceptions, though you still get the idealism of the former human rights activist. To me, of course, the most interesting bits reflected the bureaucracies of DOD and State, and the tension between them, but Brooks' thesis is that the old paradigms of war and peace no longer work, we need to pay attention to the in-between, particularly as impacted by technology, and fashion new rules of law and social structures to deal with social conflict.   I was struck by her thoughts about the individualization of war--we can track and kill individuals now--what does that do to "war", which used to be anonymous mass versus anonymous mass?