Selma

Finally got around to watching the movie Selma Friday night. It was well done. It's been criticized for the portrayal of the LBJ-MLK relationship as more confrontational and less collaborative than it was.  

The DVD included two newsreel clips from the time of the marches.  There was an interesting contrast between what the movie showed and what the newsreels provided.  

• In the first newsreel, the focus was on the death of Rev. James Reeb, a white minister, was beaten and died after participating in the first march.  He became a martyr and triggered an  influx of whites to participate in the second march.  The movie shows him, his beating, and the results very quickly; understandably because the focus is on MLK. The newsreel people likely didn't have access to the internal deliberations of the marchers so they went with the most drama.
• The second newsreel shows the second march.  Where the movie portrays the marchers approaching the line of troopers, the withdrawing of the troopers, and MLK's prayerful decision to turn around very dramatically, the newsreel says there was a consultation between MLK and the major commanding the troopers and a previous agreement that the march would not proceed.  In this case the movie went with the drama, possibly or likely distorting the true history.

Women Wore Hats Too

 I think I've blogged about the photos showing men in the 1920's-1950s wearing hats.  It seemed to be universal, not an indicator of class.

In an attempt to be fair, I want to link to this tweet, with a photo showing 1920's women wore hats as well. Apparently the  gender difference was that women wore hats everywhere, but men only outdoors?

 

Aug 7, 1920 - William Hays, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and a delegation of Connecticut suffragists at Republican National Headquarters in New York City #100yearsago pic.twitter.com/FTAoinFuKY

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) August 8, 2020

 

National Black Growers Council

 Hadn't heard of this group before.  There seem to be several groups of black farmers, with John Boyd's getting the most publicity (or maybe I say that just because I set up a Google alert for him).

This one is supposed to be for row crop growers.

Immigration and Rationing by Friction

I'm reading "The Strange Death of Europe" by Douglas Murray.  As you can  guess from the title it's anti-immigration but its European focus provides a bit of perspective on the US problem with immigration.

Some bits which have struck me so far:

• he asserts something about people never assimilating, totally ignoring the American (Canadian, Australian, etc. ) experience which shows me that some groups do assimilate.  Not all.
• when people are divided on the policy, as in Europe between human sympathy with boat people fleeing from the "Arabian spring" of 2011 and fear for the impact of the influx on their nation, it makes it impossible for government to do a job.  The result is decision making by friction, by the accumulation of individual choices.
• from a 30,000 foot perspective, as long as there are differences in wealth, opportunity, and particularly stability among nations, there will be migration. 

Vertical Farming of Wheat

This was a tweet which attracted attention.

Vertical farming is my favorite solarpunk invention.

Imagine humanity using less and less of the land, allowing it to revert to nature as we stack our farms to the sky. All powered by solar energy, of course. https://t.co/ZZEIQ0oYFJ

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) August 3, 2020

The link is to a study of really intensive wheat farming under lights.  It got very high productivity.   From the study summary:

Here we show that wheat grown on a single hectare of land in a 10-layer indoor vertical facility could produce from 700 ± 40 t/ha (measured) to a maximum of 1,940 ± 230 t/ha (estimated) of grain annually under optimized temperature, intensive artificial light, high CO2 levels, and a maximum attainable harvest index. Such yields would be 220 to 600 times the current world average annual wheat yield of 3.2 t/ha.

The writers admit it's not economically feasible now or in "near future".  Since they're talking 20+ hours of lighting and boosting CO2 levels and temperature-controlled (i.e., air conditioning) IMHO it's not likely to be feasible until we get electricity from fusion.  I'd assume inventing the equipment to plant and harvest the wheat would be relatively easy, but their 10-layer farm assumes 1 meter separation between layers and super dwarf wheat, so rather cramped quarters.

The study turns out to be a computer modelling exercise, based on extrapolating from one real-life experiment in growing wheat and estimating theoretical maximums. 

 

FSA Sees the Light of Feminism?

Back in the day, when I moved from Directives to the program side, roughly 1978, there were three broad classification groupings: clerical, technical, professional, with the "program specialists" being in the last group.  In the division of maybe 50 people, IIRC we had two women professionals, both of whom worked in the branch which did policy analysis and statistics. The old allotment programs for wheat, feed grains, and cotton had been suspended in recent years, although they were still on the books.  Developing the allotments and quotas had been the original raison d'etre for the branch, meaning they were heavily into statistics and this, if I understood correctly, was the way the women had climbed the ladder to the professional tier.

As the years passed, one woman retired and one died of cancer so it was 1983 or 4 before I remember new  female professionals joining the division. As time passed there was more and more difficulty in recruiting county executive directors to come to DC because of the growing difference in livestyle/cost of living between a rural county and a DC suburb. So recruitment turned to the clerks in county offices, then called "program assistants" and now "program technicians". CED's had been predominantly male, PA's were predominantly  female.  So when FSA was hiring in the mid-80s in connection with installation of IBM System/36's most of the new hires were women.

By the late 80's we had the first woman branch chief: Sandra Nelson Penn, By the time I retired Diane Sharpe was my division director.

Today I see a notice of the current (I don't know if any or all are new) division directors in the Farm Programs area:  DAFP Announces Division Directors and Deputy Directors.  As far as I can tell all four are women.

Congratulations 

Google Translate or Wikipedia and German Junk Mail?

The other day I was researching Gen. Hans Leyers, because my cousin and I were reading the novel "Beneath the Scarlet Sky" in which he is a main character.  There's little in English not related to the novel, so I went to the German version of wikpedia. I used Google Translate to convert the info there to English.  

Suddenly my junk mail folder has a lot of email from German sources--apparently junk emailers have some kind of link to wikipedia.de or Google Translate.

Cultural Differences

A couple differences in culture notice in recent days:

1. Eli Saslow has been doing a series of portraits in the Post of people as they endure the pandemic.  He writes them as a monologue, using short sentences which gives a sense of the tension the person is feeling.  These days I sometimes pass on long pieces in the Post or Times, but Saslow's I read.  Today the subject was an educator--superintendent and principal--in an Arizona district dealing with the governnor's mandate to open school in person by the end of the month.  His wife is a teacher--young kids--and is quoted as saying the kids hug her several times each day. That seems strange to me: I can't remember ever having hugged a teacher, or been hugged, or even seeing a teacher hug a student. I'm not sure whether it's the difference between 1940's and 2020 or between Latinos in Arizona and WASP's in New York.
2. Back when toilet paper was vanishing off the store's shelves Safeway must have made a deal for toilet paper originally made for Latin American countries.  Now it's on sale.  Being cheap, we bought a couple of package.  It's good TP, not premium, but good.  The interesting thing is the perforations are a bit closer together than in US paper. I don't see that's a problem; over time the small difference would make a big difference in the volume used. 

My Election Nightmare

We have record-breaking participation in the 2020 election.  Democrats, being more reluctant to expose themselves to the virus, choose overwhelmingly to use the mail to cast their ballots.  Democrats, being unfamiliar with the process and not particularly good at reading instructions, make errors in completing the ballots.

On election day, the interim count shows Trump and his fellow Republicans running ahead in most states, including the battleground states.  But most states will take days to process and count the mail ballots. As the count proceeds there is a very high rate of ballot rejections, and Democrats become more and more concerned.  

When the dust settles, Trump is reelected based on accepted ballots.  Post-election analysis shows that 7 million ballots from registered Democratic and independent voters have been rejected.  Trump's margin of victory is -2.8 million votes, better than his 2016 margin, but the improvement is entirely attributable to mistakes in the mail ballot process.

Oh, in my really bad nightmare, in several key states there's a Florida-2000 style recount, reviewing the rejected balllots. 

On Changing the Political Rules

I'm reluctant to see political rules changed.

• when you change them for political advantage, you give your opponents a rationale to do the same.  It's called a "race to the bottom".
• often you can't predict the result.

I gather the Democrats will likely do away with the filibuster in the Senate if they gain a solid majority.  I'm not clear that the conservative Dem senators would go along if the votes of Manchin and Sinema were needed.

They may try to do something with the structure of the judiciary, given the games McConnell et. al. have played over the last 5 years.

I'd rather see the Dems work harder, donate more, and win longer and bigger than take the political risks of changing rules.   

But then, I'm a rather conservative liberal Democrat I suppose.