Centralize Data--Yes or No

 President Biden, through the press secretary, says no centralized database for vaccinations. 

The General Accounting Office says we need centralized data for the virus.

I can see Biden's thinking--the right has this paranoid fear of centralized databases and of vaccination passports, so why give them an opening to attack you in one of the areas in which you are strongest? 

But as a ex-bureaucrat and nerd I think GAO is likely right. 

Remembering or Failing To

 New Yorker has an article on memory, partially geared to the idea that forgetting is part of having a healthy memory. 

I think I have had a good memory, certainly one for facts, because I like to be the "know-it-all".  There's discussion in the article of people who remember lots of events in their lives (supposedly the average person can list only 10 events per year). If I dug and worked at it, I could perhaps get up to the 10 per year for my early years.  Many of my memories are detached from years, and have sort of melted into an amorphous mess.

For example, I remember one year of lots of snow, people who lived on some of the back roads were cut off for days. I think it was the first year, maybe the only year, when snowplows used snow blowers as well because they simply could shove the snow far enough off the back roads with high banks.  But I've no idea of when that was.

Recently my memory is getting faulty--perhaps just old age.  I'm starting to rely on Google Assistant to prompt me on things. Now the question:  will I forget how to use Google assistant?

Free Trade and Religion

 Noah Smith has a Substack thing, and in this post argues that experts, like public health people vis a vis masks and economists on free trade, have lied.  Masks do help and free trade hurts some people and some countries (when a multi-country trade agreement is implemented).

There's a lot of comments, too much for me to engage so I'll comment here.

Smith says, I think, that the lying is understandable but doesn't like it because it's elites deciding what's good to tell people. 

In some ways I'd argue that the economists' perspective is a Christian one--an expansion of the Golden Rule. The economists are saying that overall the benefits of free trade are greater than the losses.  The Golden Rule is usually stated as a one-on-one rule, but a reasonable expansion would be to say: act so that the world is a better place for its inhabitants, then free trade fits. 

Trying to Define Hemp

 It seems there's another problem in defining hemp--we know it can't have a lot of THC, but now there's a "isomer" called Delta 8-THC. Is it natural or not?  Apparently it makes a difference in legality.  See this piece for more detail and more accuracy than those sentences.

Pandemic Data Problems

 I've posted a time or two on the need for the federal government to improve its statistical/data collection processes.  

Here's a long discussion of the problems with the covid-19 data collection.

Spring Is Here

Got into the low 80's in Reston today, with lots of wind.  But the daffodils are blooming, some trees are blossoming, the cherry blossoms will be out next week, the peas, lettuce, spinach, and radishes are sprouted and above ground.  

It's good to be still alive today.  

Republicans--Original Practitioners of Identity Politics?

 Current reading in David Reynolds' "Abe" showed me this cartoon attacking Lincoln and the Republican party.  If the captions are too small to read, below is the Library of Congress summary: 

Abraham Lincoln's supporters are portrayed as radicals and eccentrics of various stripes. The satire is loosely based on an anti-Fremont cartoon from the previous presidential race, "The Great Republican Reform Party" (no. 1856-22), also issued by Nathaniel Currier. Here Lincoln, sitting astride a wooden rail borne by Horace Greeley, leads his followers toward a lunatic asylum. Greeley instructs him, "Hold on to me Abe, and we'll go in here by the unanimous consent of the people." Lincoln exhorts his followers, "Now my friends I'm almost in, and the millennium is going to begin, so ask what you will and it shall be granted."

•  At the head of the group is a bearded man, arm-in-arm with a woman and a Mormon. He claims to "represent the free love element, and expect to have free license to carry out its principles." The woman looks at Lincoln, saying "Oh! what a beautiful man he is, I feel a 'passional attraction' every time I see his lovely face." The Mormon adds, "I want religion abolished and the book of Mormon made the standard of morality."
•  They are followed by a dandified free black, who announces, "'De white man hab no rights dat cullud pussons am bound to spect' I want dat understood."
•  Behind him an aging suffragette says, "I want womans rights enforced, and man reduced in subjection to her authority."
•  Next a ragged socialist or Fourierist, holding a liquor bottle, asserts, "I want everybody to have a share of everybody elses property."
•  At the end of the group are three hooligans:
•  one demanding "a hotel established by government, where people that aint inclined to work, can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco." 
• The second, a thief, wants "the right to examine every other citizen's pockets without interruption by Policemen."
•  The last, an Irish street tough, says, "I want all the stations houses burned up, and the M.P.s killed, so that the bohoys can run with the machine and have a muss when they please." Source: Reilly.

More USDA Programs

Secretary Vilsack announced new programs and more money for existing ones. 

I didn't see any more money for FSA administration but I just skimmed.  

Lincoln's Shoemaker Was Lynched

  Reading David Reynolds' "Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times".

Some Springfield, IL blacks did well, including Lincoln's barber and shoemaker. But in the 20th century the shoemaker was lynched. William Donnegan, page 410.

Court Decision on Organic/Hydroponics

 Judge has ruled USDA can include hydroponics in the "organic" category.

Followers of Rodale, like my late mother, will not be happy.