And Now for Something Entirely Different: Nigeria

 Over at the Atlantic, an interview by Conor Friedersdorf  with a Nigerian writer.  From it I learned  learned about the Nigerian caliphate, and its involvement in slavery.  If you can trust wikipedia, it may have been the second largest slave society (after US) at any time, though I don't believe it.  Brazil likely is similar in size and the Roman empire may well have had more slaves than the US. Other empires likely also had numbers in the millions.  The problem though is we're likely comparing apples and oranges, since the rules about slavery were different in different societies.

Nevertheless, an interesting take.

Digitized Forms

I read the FCW piece on this report. I'd forgotten there was a law requiring agencies to digitize their forms and make them fully on-line, including e-signature, but there is.

The report shows agencies haven't met the legal deadline for many of their forms: USDA is one of the laggards. 

I remember back in the early 1990s working to use WordPerfect 5.0 to design forms, or rather to convert the form designed used the old tools to a digitized form.  WordPerfect had a table feature with which, using a lot of patience, you could create a pretty close version of the old printed forms.  The Forms shop in MSD took up the challenge and did a lot of the ASCS/CCC forms before I retired.

Of course there's a big difference between the forms we did and what the law requires--I gather the ideal now is a fillable pdf file with e-signature activated.  I don't know how far FSA has progressed in meeting that goal.

I'm cynical enough to believe that most forms which meet the law's requirements probably are still poorly designed for online operations.  I expect the same human factors are operating with forms as they were with cars--the early cars were designed as "horseless carriages". I wonder how many filing cabinets FSA offices have filled with paper copies. 

[Updated--I see that FSA's newest form, FSA-2637, is a fillable pdf which can be signed on-line. Good for the people who did this.]

Herbicide Resistant Weeds

 NY Times Mag has an article on "superweeds", weeds resistant to herbicides, specifically Palmer amaranth.

It's a reminder that as we change our environment, our environment changes as well. Natural selection rules.  The same process is going on with bacteria, as we get resistance to antibiotics. 

I don't know, and haven't noticed discussion, whether the use of Crispr and the sort of science which led to the fast development of covid vaccines has any implications for our fights against resistance.

The Former Guy and Competence

 Dana Milbank IIRC summarized the  Mueller Report as saying the former guy's campaign was too incompetent to execute collusion with the Russian government; they wanted to but couldn't.

That's funny, and sad.

I'll summarize the FBI's investigation of 1/6 by saying the former guy's team was too incompetent to put together a conspiracy.  

Illogic in Organic Farming?

Modern Farming runs a piece on organic farming.  I find it illogical: 

One issue is price. On average, organic food costs 20 percent more than conventionally produced food. Even hardcore organic shoppers like me sometimes bypass it due to cost.

That's one paragraph.  The author goes on to talk about the need for more and more organic farmers, and a larger acreage, ending in a push to dedicate a percentage of USDA farm programs to organic farms.

I think this is ignoring market signals.  The market is saying that organic food is more costly.  Is organic making inroads despite its higher cost?  Certainly it's increased since the 1990 farm bill which directed USDA to establish standards for "organic".  But that's 30 years ago.  I don't think the market is saying the advantages and virtues of organic are sufficient to drive a massive surge in organic production.  (IMO what will drive expansion is a continuing rise in American living standards and incomes--"organic" is a status symbol, a signifier of virtue, a feeder into one's ego and self-image.) 

Conceivably added subsidies for organic farming could boost the share of the market, but I think they would be expensive.

Champlain's Dream

 Reading David Hackett Fischers "Champlain's Dream"--

Some surprises: 

• Mohawk Indians wore armor to their first battle with Champlain--wood slats linked with cotton thread.  It reminds me of the armor Japanese warriors of the same period wore, though their slats were leather.. Fischer says it was effective against arrows with flint heads.
• They fought in closed ranks--in contrast to Champlain's handfull who fought from cover, a reversal of future patterns.
• The Mohawks had an impressive "castle", made of wood, but tall enough Champlain resorted to European siege tactics.  See this.
• Early French plantations failed--Harshaw's rule.  Scurvy was often a big problem, though winter hunting providing fresh meat during the winter would help.
• Fischer emphasizes the insecurity of the hunter-gatherer economy--tribes which lived by hunting lived well until the hunts failed, because of bad weather.  It seems a response to those who believe agriculture was humanity's biggest mistake.
• I'm always struck by the scant clothing of native Americans (even more so the Taino Columbus encountered). Makes a difference in domestic economy and in lifestyle.
• I'm surprised by the ease and frequency of Champlain's trips to and from the New World.  Ben Franklin and George Whitfield did a lot of crossings, but Champlain did 40+ trips, many quite fast.  I'm not sure whether it's the improvements in ships between 1492 and 1610 or the learning process, likely both.
• It took 30 years or so for the French to establish themselves securely at Quebec and Montreal, with permanent settlements with French women. 
• Fischer notes the early development of the voyageur culture, at least its earliest members among a group of young men who lived with various Indian nations/tribes for one or more winters, learning the language and the way of life, as well as other differences between the French and English patterns of dealing with native Americans.

Second Thoughts

My opinion as expressed in my post on Afghanistan is different than Kevin Drum's as expressed here and here.  And perhaps deviates from Tom Friedman, who in the Times writes of the "morning after the morning after".

That's bothersome, as I respect Drum's opinions on almost everything.

So time for second thoughts:

• Trump's Doha deal with the Taliban promised we'd be out by May. Pence has criticized Biden for not respecting that.  I think Biden was right to take some time, 4 months as it turned out, to figure out whether he wanted to go with his gut or follow the recommendations of the military.  He would have been severely criticized if he pulled out in May.  It's debatable whether he could reasonably taken the whole summer to consider, so the departure would have happened after the end of the "fighting season".
• There's lots of finger pointing over the intelligence, did the CIA predict it or blow it?  We'll get lots ore on this.  My guess is the CIA was pessimistic, the military optimistic, but nobody saw the quick collapse (which seems to be Gen Milley's position).
• The planning and scheduling of the departure.  Military says they planned and did exercises.  I'll be watching to see if there was State/military planning, and joint exercises--such coordination has always been problematic, and in the absence of lots of high ranking Biden appointees and the transition coordination might well have been an early casualty.
• Based on how things have gone so far, it looks as if we would have done better by bringing the 6,000 troops much earlier--let them live in field for a couple months while the troops which have been serving there departed.  The new troops would be charged with maintaining order during the departure.
• A key element of the planning should have been developing a database of Americans who might need to depart, including both government employees and civilian contractors; a database of NATO personnel so we're clear whether we need to help other nations evacuate their nationals; and a database of Afghanis who have been on our payrolls in the last 20 years, plus their families.

One point the administration has made which I hadn't considered--early steps to evacuate were opposed by the Ghani administration and could/would be demoralizing to them.   I don't know how you handle that--if we're talking 20-100,000 people there's no way to keep arrangements secret. But that demoralization seems to be the main cause of the rapid collapse of Ghani government anyway.  

Maybe in an ideal world Biden and Blinken would have gone back to the Taliban and pitched a deal--a more planned departure. (Or departures, different arrangements depending on how events transpired.)  Problem is that Trump had bargained away US leverage, so anything we could have offered would have relied on Ghani's cooperation in facilitating a transfer of power.  

It's possible that Kevin is right--if things go relatively smoothly from here on out, what seemed to be disastrous two days ago will fade into the past.  I hope so.

Government Forms Design

 Remember the "butterfly ballot"?  The covid vaccination form joins it as an example of inept forms design, or at least of limited imagination on the part of its designers. See this GovExec piece.

Organized Fraud in Unemployment Claims

Pro Publica reports on the existence of organized fraud rings which submitted false claims for unemployment benefits/pandemic aid in multiple states.                 (https://www.propublica.org/article/how-unemployment-insurance-fraud-exploded-during-the-pandemic)

It's part of the price we pay for our individualism, freedom, and privacy, I guess.

Buck Stops With Biden

I remember Harry S, and his buck stops.  I think that is right.  I don't know that Biden did anything which led to today in Kabul, but it's his responsibility. Presidents can take credit for things which happen during their term, even though they didn't cause them; so too should we hold them responsible for the bad things which happen.  

In my mind this parallels Obama and the healthcare.gov problems.  In both cases the leader may have done all the usual "due diligence", but in both cases there was* no appreciation for Murphy's law, for the black swan event.  And in both cases the bad happened, and it was bad.   

In an ideal world the leader would do a stress test on his bureaucracy, worrying about contingency plans.  You recall Eisenhower had at least a contingency message prepared in case D-Day was a fiasco and the troops had to be evacuated.  

* I write this knowing there's been no real reporting on the decision process in either case, at least no tick-tock book which I've read.

I'd also note that Trump's agreement with the Taliban put Biden in a tough position. My knee-jerk reaction is that he perhaps should have kept the troops and support going until the last minute while paring down the civilian contingent and especially getting all the interpreters and otherwise vulnerable people on the way  out of the country.