The Ultimate File Cabinet for Bureaucrats

Via Marginal Revolution, this piece on the biggest, baddest file cabinet you ever saw.

Farmers Don't Believe Trump's Trade Promises?

From Chris Clayton's report on the recent American Farm Bureau convention's policy recommendations:

"Still, Farm Bureau members voted to keep language in the policy book supportive of MFP payments even with President Donald Trump touting trade wins in China and the congressional approval of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). 

"Our members are basically saying 'Show us results'," said Scott VanderWal, a South Dakota farmer and AFBF's national vice president. "We're very, very happy the president has the China phase-one agreement in place, USMCA in place and will be signed very soon, but no products have moved, implementation hasn't happened yet, and it's kind of a 'prove it to me' thing. When we get down the road, there is nothing we would like better than to really see these agreements kick in and show us some expanded market opportunities, and hopefully the markets will come back with that to where we can go back to making all of our income off the market rather than having the government make up for those trade disputes and the damage to the market that has been done."

Then and Now--V: Before TV

We didn't get a TV set until 1956 or 7, as I remember it.  I can remember the advent of the TV was a big thing.  We visited my aunt and uncle to see it--the program was Friday Night Fights.  Boxing was really big back then.  The series of fights between Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Robinson (the original "sugar ray") was legendary. The succession of the heavyweight title from Marciano through Archie Moore to Floyd Patterson and then Ingmar Johannson I'm sure made the front pages of the local newspaper, maybe not the Times.

Until we got the TV radio and games were our evening entertainment.  For a few years my sister, dad and I would play cut-throat pinochle.  Or we'd play crokinole.  I don't know whether the nation was paying more attention to radio programs or TV programs.  We'd listen to the Shadow, the Goldburgs, Sergeant King of the Mounties, Lone Ranger in the afternoon, mom would listen to Queen for a Day, later we'd listen to One Man's Family, a long running soap..  Gunsmoke was one favorite and Our Miss  Brooks  another.  Amos 'n Andy was on Saturdays, IIRC and I remember it, but it wasn't a family regular--I'm not sure why, perhaps my parents or sister found it objectionable.  I'm not sure; perhaps I remember some strain surrounding it but it might be my imagination.

The Texaco Saturday opera broadcast from the Met was a standard for my sister, not for the rest of us.

[changed title to reflect content]

Innovation as an Invasive Species/Infectious Disease

There's a lot of concern over inequality, over polarization of American society, etc.

In part I think we're having trouble with the advent of the Internet and of social media. I'd observe that in the past human society has taken time to adjust to innovation.  When railroads came along people were thrown into close contact with strangers in a new situation for extended periods of time.  It took time to develop norms and habits to deal with this, not to mention the need to standardize time keeping.

I'd suggest a good metaphor for innovation is to consider it an invasive species or a new infectious disease.  Initially the species or disease makes rapid inroads because humans don't have any developed immunity or there are no natural enemies..  Over time these develop.

I think this is true for society, as well.  Humans learn, eventually.  And they adjust, eventually.

Thoughts on Movies and CGI

Wife and I watched the 1993 movie "Gettysburg".  It's not a movie which would be made today. It's not how we see the Civil War battles, indeed not how we see war today.

But regardless, I want to note a technical difference.  In Gettysburg the moviemakers were able to use the thousands of Civil War re-enactors to serve as extras in the movie, especially of course in the battle sequences.  The result, to someone who's used to the CGI-enhanced or based battles of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones., is very different.

How? 

• in some ways it's more realistic.  It's more "fractal" I 'll call it because less regular. When crowd scenes are composed by creating one segment--say 50 riders on horses, and duplicate it multiple times to give the appearance of 500 riders, I think we subconsciously are aware of the duplication.
• it shows the difference between bottom-up and top-down compositions. When you have 1,000 real people coming together to act as soldiers their behaviors and actions retain a lot of individuality.  You're only able to get a high degree of uniformity in places/situations like Korean military or dance displays where the people can be trained over months and years.  When someone at a computer generates 1,000 images of people, while her imagination may be great she cannot imagine 1,000 realities.
• in some ways it's less realistic, or at least less supportive of the story.  In the scenes showing masses of soldiers there's always the odd person running around or someone doing something which wouldn't be included, not even thought of by a CGI designer.  It can be distracting because you can't determine whether the action is part of the story, or just random noise.  (It's probably more realistic in a real battle scene that's what happens, but it's not what we've been trained to expect in a movie.  Chekhov's thing was if you show a gun on a mantel in Act 1, it had to go off by Act 3.  That's not life, but it's modern storytelling.) 

I assume there will never be another Gettysburg, at least not shot on American soil.

Rising Insurance Rates: Car Not Health

Via Marginal Revolution a Wired post discusses the increasing costs of car insurance. It's up 30 percent in a decade.  It's interesting--who knew Houston lost 1 million cars?  But one thing it doesn't cover is whether there's any parallel between auto insurance and health insurance.

Then and Now--IV Housing

One of the big differences between the 1950's and now is housing:  Here's an Atlantic article
on the issue:

"The typical new single-family house in the U.S. is twice the size of the average urban or suburban dwelling in the European Union—more than 2,000 square feet versus approximately 1,000 square feet. ... In the past half century, the number of bathrooms per person in America has doubled. “We went from two people per bathroom to one person per bathroom in the last 50 years,” says Jeff Tucker, an economist at Zillow."

Everyone has their own room and their own bathroom.

Some Thoughts on the 1619 Project

One of the major items is the idea that the preservation of slavery played a big part in the American Revolution;  The best evidence appears to be

•  the southern reaction to Gov. Dunmore's offer of freedom to slaves who would fight for/work for the British.  
• fears that the Somerset decision, outlawing slavery in the UK, was a harbinger of changes in the colonies.

I'm a failed historian and I'm a WASP so my judgments are suspect, but here goes:

• the Dunmore issue is valid, but the timing makes it less relevant. As I learned in school, the run-up to the revolution took years, going back to the Stamp Act protests.  It comes in November 1775, after  the April Concord/Lexington fighting and months after the siege of Boston began.  It might have swayed Southern planters who were on the fence to decide to support independence.
• because slavery in the  British colonies in Canada and the Caribbean continued for years after the Revolution, people should not have had major concerns over the effect of Somerset.  But humans are able to worry about things without having a solid basis for it.  I'd like to see an analysis of discussion of Somerset in America between 1772 and 1776.

Polarization--A Speculation on Rural Rootedness

Ezra Klein has a new book out on our polarized nation.  Bob Somerby sees polarization as the biggest issue we have. There's different views on causes, but it seems true that some of the polarization is rural versus urban.

I've a speculation to offer: Is it true that rural residents are less mobile than suburban and urban ones?  My mental image is of counties which were settled in the 19th century, like Perry County, IL where my great grandparents settled.  Since the initial settling, sons and daughters have moved away, leaving a relatively static population of the oldest son (who got the farm) and his wife.  His children would repeat the cycle.  All that should mean that current rural dwellers have a long family history with the area which would contrast to the mobility seen in urban and suburban areas.

I don't know whether that image is true. It might not be. 

Then and Now--III

Determinants of Identity

In the 1950's in rural upstate New York:

• the most important identities were ethnic--Italian, Polish, etc. and religious: Catholic, Jew, Protestant.  There were the slang terms for each.  Catholicism was important, as my mother in particular had an inherited (Lutheran) suspicion of the church.  They gambled (bingo nights), they wanted their own schools, they were under control of the Pope, etc.  Mom may have been in the minority with these views, but they were strong, at least in the abstract if not when dealing face to face. One of my best friends was of East European extraction, his parents were immigrants, his father dying young, and Catholic.  Mom had no problems with that.
• I knew two Jews growing up (perhaps three, a son of a local family surnamed "Benjamin" was a playmate for a few early summers).  One was our family doctor, who I believe had emigrated from Germany before WWII; the other was the dealer who bought our hens and pullets, presumably for chicken soup in New York City.
• as for African-Americans, which we were careful to call "Negroes", not colored and not "n****r, because we were more enlightened than others, I'm sure I saw a handful on the streets of Binghamton (pop 80,000) but we had no interaction.  No blacks in the school, though I've a memory, possibly false or a dream, of someone enrolling for a few days when I was in high school. Don't know if that happened.  
• homosexuality was a subject not discussed, even more of a taboo than cancer was. It's possible some of my class (of about 40) were gay, but I never knew it then and haven't confirmed it now.  
• I think the bottomline is how high the wall of separation between me, a WASP, and these others was.  That lack of knowledge could create 

Now things are different--issues of religion and ethnicity seems antiquated. While I'm not good at making/keeping friendships, I've encountered enough people during my life to feel I know them, and could take my cue from Terence:  "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."^[

•