Great Advances in Medicine

Saw the doctor today at Kaiser.  (It'd been a couple years so I was overdue.)  Many changes since my last visit

• checking in by entering data at a kiosk, rather than a reception clerk at the waiting area.
• changing the format of the printout summarizing the visit.
• eliminating the weigh-in station--they upgraded the examining table/recliner with one which can register your weight.  It also raises and lowers, so your feet can be on the floor instead of dangling in the air.

I'm sort of mocking the healthcare industry here, but it's worth noting that there's a record decrease in the death rate from cancer.

"Peak Document"

That's a term used in the title of the presidential address at the American Historical Association meeting. What McNeill is talking about is the surge of information coming not from documents but from science--especially genetics.

It's a valid subject, of course, but I admit when I first saw it my thoughts went in another direction; the change in sources in the current and coming eras because of digital media.  An example, when I was hired by ASCS people had improved the document management systems involved. The Commodity Credit Corporation board had a permanent secretary and an assistant, the board made decisions based on "dockets" which were systematically filed.  Most decisions within ASCS generated paper documents, memos and letters, all routed through clearance channels and eventually filed in the Secretary's Records or administrator's.   

As a failed historian I was intrigued by the processes.  The paper files didn't capture everything--there was a lot going on in the agency which wasn't fully  documented (particularly the political maneuvers) where the documents were like an iceberg, only a small part visible

By the time I left FSA, this picture was changing.  Partially it was the result of personnel changeover--the institutional memory of the reasons behind practices had been or was being lost.  Partly it was a change of norms--new people and new problems had new ways of doing things, often resulting in faster action but a diminished historical record.  Much of it had to do with automation, both the problems and processes of implementing policy with compers in the county offices and the new powers of communication conferred by new technology.

One example was the "wire notice".  Urgent messages to field offices would be sent by telegraph, which meant going through the telegraph office, therefore required official authorization, and permitted central filing of the message.  Once email arrived, it was possible for anyone to email anything to anyone with no central file. (Of course, this didn't happen immediately.) And for a number of years there was really no system for recording and filing such messages.  Supposedly after 30 years NARS has enforced systems in the agencies, but I'm dubious. 

The bottom line--in the 1970's a historan could look at the official files in the National Archives and do a reasonable history.  I doubt that's feasible for th 2000-2010 perioc

Poor Elsie, Borden in Bankruptcy

Borden has filed for bankruptcy protection--the second big dairy company after Dean Foods to go bust.

Why "Elsie"--see this .

Iraq and Suleimani

Some thoughts on Suleimani's death 

• last week at this time an optimist like me could look at the Middle East and seen some good signs.

• in Iran there had been recent demonstrations against the government

• in Iraq there were protests against the influence of Iran on Iraqi affairs.

• today there seems to be unity both in Iraq and Iran against the US.  We'll have to see how long it lasts, but it will be a while
• I'd like to think the decision memo presented to our President would have predicted these consequences and he would have weighed them in making his decision, but I doubt it.

Lesson: In Washington Read the Footnotes

Notoriously, the request for the FISA court to approve surveillance of Page etc. included a footnote describing the Steele dossier.  The conservatives and liberals disputed whether a footnote was sufficient notice to the court of the possible bias of the dossier.

Now Just Security has a long description of the to and fro between DOD and OMB on President Trump's withholding aid to Ukraine, which was implemented by footnotes.  It seems that here DOD did read the footnotes, but it's not clear why footnotes were the appropriate vehicle for the notice from OMB to DOD--perhaps because other readers might be expected to ignore them?

I wonder: these days are budding scholars told how to use footnotes and trained to read them?

Slavery in Canada and "Turn"

We've been watching "Turn" on Netflix, which is a 4 season series dealing mainly with Washington's spies, but which touches on, or forces connections to, episodes in the Revolution which are more commonly known. (I think it makes very generous use of "dramatic license".)

Anyhow, in the episode ending season 2, the African-American who was freed by Capt. Simcoe and enlisted in his Queen's Rangers takes the son of the enslaved maid to Major Andre from Setauket into York City to rejoin his mother. (The maid's been doing a little spying for the rebels on the side.) Needless to say, the British soldier loves the maid and urges her to flee with him to Canada so they can both be free.

I wondered about the accuracy of that so I did a little researching on the internet.

Sure enough, slavery in Canada lasted until 1834, when it was abolished throughout the empire.

But wait, it's not that simple.  "Lower Canada" was originally Quebec, founded by the French until the Brits won it by conquest in the French and Indian War. "Upper Canada" became today's Ontario and was mostly settled by the English.

Reading between the lines it seems likely the Brits just kept the old French laws, including those pertaining to slavery at the start.  And in "Lower Canada" they might have kept the laws until 1834. But by 1790's slavery in Upper Canada was being questioned, and a courageous troublemaker  named Chloe Cooley resisted being sold as a slave into New York.  That resulted in an act restricting the importation of slaves and promising freedom to children born after 1793. But the act only applied to Upper Canada.

Based on skimming the second article I linked to, slaves in the thirteen colonies should not have seen Canada as the promised land of freedom before 1793.

The Validity of DNA Testing

Just received the "health" side of an ancestry.com DNA test.

Uniformly bland results, finding nothing which increases risk of anything (which is good, but they didn't cover the most significant area for me--Alzheimers--oh well).

The one correlation they did find is: increased likelihood of drinking coffee.

I'm rolling on the floor, laughing, since I've always drunk a lot of coffee.  These days I'm down to about 5 cups a day, about 2 of which are leaded.  I suspect if I had an obituary drafted by the group of people who have known me over the years, the lead sentence would be:  "Bill drank a lot of coffee..."

(On a more serious note, I'd be curious to see some statistics on the percentage of tests for different things actually show a result exceeding the average.  I suspect it's low, quite low, but because it's us and we worry about the bad stuff, a DNA test is an easy sell.)

Healthcare and Education Costs

Both healthcare costs and costs of higher education have soared over the past 20 years, as shown in this tweet.

One explanation often offered for the costs of healthcare is that providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.) are highly paid.  It makes sense to me--the comparisons of doctors salaries here and abroad which I've seen show our doctors to be much more highly paid.  If that explanation is right, then is it also the case that our education providers, professors and colleges, get more money than educators overseas?  That seems counter-intuitive somehow, but that may just be my erroneous impressions.

[update: saw a reference to the fact that average college debt for doctors is $200,000, so it's possible that the high cost of college plays some role in creating the high cost of health care??]

In the Eye of the Beholder

From the Lawfare Blog

One of the striking features of the public reaction to Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation is just how many people of just how divergent points of view are claiming vindication for whatever positions they held prior to the document’s release.

Race Makes Me Crazy

The NYTimes had an article on LA and homelessness and blacks today.  It had a graphic with a heading that caught my eye.  The closest I can find in the online version is this sentence: "These maps show the loss of majority-black neighborhoods in Los Angeles County over the last 50 years."

Why did it make me crazy, at least most discombobulated than usual?

In the past the Times has run articles discussing the integration/segregation of our cities.

As a good liberal, I know integration is good and segregation is bad.

But I also take from the Times piece today that the "loss of majority-black neighborhoods" is bad.

So I'm left with two competing ideas.

To use a metaphor, it's like cooking, or baking.  Do you want a real smooth batter with no lumps of flour or do you want a fruit cake composed entirely of lumps?  I don't know, and that's why I'm crazy today.

Any how:  Merry Christmas.