Some Progress in Thirty Years--FSA/NRCS

 I don't know how to link over to a Facebook post with its comments, but here's the url of this post: 

There are a lot of comments on it. Some point to closer cooperation between the two agencies and possibly some sofware support for such cooperation.

In the fall of 1991 there was the Infoshare project, trying to accomplish the same general objective.  As things turned out, it failed, I failed.  The history of the last 30 years suggests maybe I shouldn't feel too bad about failure because getting the two agencies together was more difficult than we realized then.

Maintenance Is Not Sexy--Methane

I've blogged before about the plight of maintenance.  I learned with ASCS automation that building new systems means increasing the burden of maintenance and decreasing the time and people available to do more good things.  I've applied that learning to other things.  

One is infrastructure--we don't maintain our roads and bridges as we should. Another is pipelines, as described here.

People like new ideas, new things.  Someone has a bright idea and others join in the applause. This often results in new legislation or whatever.  The people who originated the idea/legislation/proposal move on and eventually die.  Their replacements, even those with nominal responsibility for maintenance, have no pride of authorship, no emotional commitment to the project, so devote their attention and time to other efforts.

For proof of my thesis, compare the state of the pots and pans in your kitchen after years of use with what they looked like on the day of your wedding, when you received them.

What Happened to Civil Service?

 I'm not referring narrowly to the federal civil service but to the idea of serving the society, often through working for the government as a teacher or bureaucrat.

From a Jay Mathews column on education this morning--discussing a book on how to get into the top colleges, describing the audience for the book: "college applicants who yearn for admission to undergraduate institutions that will make them attractive, when they graduate, to recruiters from private equity, artificial intelligence, management consulting, investment banking and other top-paying professions"

Amish Versus Satmars

 New Yorker has a review of a book on the Satmar, the Hasidic sect with its own town in NY. It starts with this joke, which led me to think about the distinction between the two.  

In an old joke, a secular Jew sits down on a park bench next to a man with a large black hat and a long black coat. The secular Jew turns to the darkly garbed man and says, “What’s the matter with you Hasids? This isn’t the Old Country—it’s the modern world. You people are an embarrassment to the rest of us.” The man turns around and says, “Hasid? I’m Amish.” The secular Jew immediately replies, “It’s so wonderful the way you’ve held on to your traditions!”

For some reason I have warmer feelings about the Amish than the Satmar--why?

• Amish are/were dairy farmers, therefore closer to my heart
• More generally Amish do physical work, while my understanding of the Satmar is that the culture is focused on religious study. 
• Amish have been in US as long or longer than most of my ancestors while Satmar are 20th century.
• Amish are familiar, Satmar are strange.
• Amish seem to have been more withdrawn than the Satmar--to the best of my knowledge the Amish haven't used the power of numbers to seek political power, while the Satmar got their own town/city--we don't have the draft anymore so I don't know whether they'd be conscientious objectors to military service--I think the Amish were CO's. )
• I'm human, and susceptible to tribalism/othering.

Some perspectives from others and here.

 

Trump, the Last Gasp of the Patriarchy?

 There was a sudden burst of women running and winning as Republicans in 2020. Some of them were and are supporters of the former president, but I've the optimistic suggestion: future Republican presidents will appoint significantly more women judges and women administrators--indeed I predict the pattern will be much closer to that of President Obama, if not President Biden.

Changing Rural Population

 Interesting post on Rural Blog about the changing demographics of rural areas.  Briefly, for the first time ever total US population in all rural areas fell but the proportion of Hispanics/people of color increased from 17% to 20.8%.  The county where I grew up, Broome County, NY, saw its white population fall by 7 percent while the nonwhite/Hispanic increased by 60 percent (resulting in a 1 percent net increase).

Looking at the maps, it looks as if the Delta and the black belt saw drops in population, as did WV and KY and counties on the Great Plains. Looking at Fresno, CA, Sherman, KS, and Leflore, MS, counties I visited 30+ years ago, all saw a decrease in white population, Fresno a big increase in Hispanic, Sherman a smaller increase in Hispanic, and Leflore a small decrease.

An Ombudsman for EULAs?

 Marginal Revolution has a post which refers to EULA (end user legal jargon). Seems to me we consumers need an ombudsman with authority over all EULA's--someone who will read them on our behalf, because you know the corporate lawyers who draft them aren't concerned with the consumer at all.

Ideally the ombudsman would be able to do a version of the nutrition facts label on food--something which would summarize the critical facts for consumer.

No Fax Macine

Politico has an interview with Judge Luttig, a former circuit court judge appointed by a Republican, about his involvement in reinforcing VP Pence's position on 1/6. He was resisting an appeal from a friend to do something to help Pence, saying he had no platform from which to speak, and quotes himself as saying:

Oh my gosh, Richard, I don't even have a job, much less an official one. I have no platform from which to speak.” I'm out here in Colorado at 6 in the morning. I don't even have a fax machine.

As it turned out, he did get something out, by learning how to tweet a statement in 18 tweets (he'd just gotten a twitter account a couple weeks before), a statement which the media picked up on.

An Archive of Their Own

 As the early adapters among the silent and boomer generations go to the grave what happens to their digital archives?

As a failed historian I lean towards preserving every record, just because scholars have been able to wring meaning from the documentary evidence of the past, even when it's scant.  

As an active user of a Pc for close to 30 years, I know there's an infinitesimal chance that anything in my digital files would be of value to a future historian.  That's true in abstract, even more true given the lack of organization of the files.

A third factor is the ever-declining cost of storage, which leads to the logic of why not preserve it, because we don't know what future historians will be able to do using AI.

I suspect there's a niche for an archive service for personal digital files. That would differ from the services which archive what's on the internet.

Return to the Movies

 After roughly two years my wife and I returned to the movies today--Belfast.

We enjoyed it: some laughs, a moist eye or two, and an education in Van Morrison.

Judging by the audience covid took out a lot more old men than old women.

I can't say whether it deserves "Best Picture", but it deserves the nomination.