What's Watergate? Teapot Dome?

 I quote from a NYTimes piece on a focus group, asking Americans about various topics.

The first response when Nixon and Watergate is raised:

"I don’t think it gets taught enough. My high school students, when they think of Watergate, they think it’s a new shower head or something. It’s a time in our history that shows the demise of a leader who was taking advantage of the American people, as well as the government itself. I’ve never heard the kids coming home and saying, “Oh, we learned about Watergate.”

My wife and I roared with laughter.

Stanford Research on Farm Programs and Politics

 Here's a Stanford Phd candidate doing research on the relationship between participation in farm programs and political views.

How to Build Infrastructure and State Capacity

 Ezra Klein has an essay on building government infrastructure. Some thoughts on the topic, most unrealistic in today's polity:

• review and revise the statistical infrastructure. As I've written before, my guess is that the various statistical agencies of the government are operating in the context of yesterday's world. Because statistics is a boring subject, it doesn't attract much controversy or oversight.  
• there's lots of real-time data out there, as we're reminded regularly in articles voicing concerns about consumer privacy.  Can the government tap that?
• concerns about privacy mean that the census and other reports anonymized--is there a better approach to this?
• what gaps in statistical coverage have developed as the economy has changed over the last 40 years? 
• Jimmy Carter had a vision for changing the federal personnel system with the Senior Executive Service, making it more like the UK system.  IMO it's not worked as it was supposed to. 
• Slowly slowly the government is moving towards more standardization with gov.id and the US Digital Service. Maybe over many years the US will approach the UK in the degree of uniformity in govt sites.
• Probably should be more interaction between the various associatons of state and local government entities and the federal govt.  I'm just vaguely aware that such associations exist--like state legislature, county govts, sheriffs, etc. Possibly there is some formal interface which I don't know about
• Trying to encourage more standardization of state and local government operations would help, as shown by the problems with the unemployment insurance systems during the pandemic recession.
• Maybe giving each legal resident a no-charge banking account and govt email account  would be good.
• 
  

Assault Weapon Ban?

 Statistia has an article on an assault weapon ban, including links to studies, like this Stanford one on the effect of the Clinton 1994 ban, which expired after 10 years. 

The sunset provision was likely a compromise to get it passed.  I wonder if it would have worked to include a criteria in such legislation--i.e., specifying that if after 10 years there was a decline in fatalities the law would continue, if not, it would end?

Biden is speaking tonight, presumably to urge passage of something which will disappoint gun safety advocates and irk those in gun advocacy organizations. 

An interesting advance in 3-D printing described in the paper today--using a person's own cells to print an ear, inserted beneath the skin (person's one ear was small and misformed).  In terms of guns, it shows how 3-D printing is advancing, reminding me of the "ghost guns".  Technology may have already outstripped any law which can be passed, at least in my lifetime.

How To Coddle College Freshmen

 Whoever thought of "experience courses"?

Has anyone taught a freshman first year experience course before? Would you be willing to share your syllabi? What sort of things should one expect to teach in that course?

— John R. Legg (@thejohnlegg) May 31, 2022

From the responses I gather it is an orientation to college extending for some time, perhaps the full term?

It's another example of how today's students have it too damn easy.

Damn, wish I'd had such a course 63 years ago 

Gun Safes and Safety

 On a beautiful Sunday afternoon some speculation.  Read an article about "smart guns"--the idea being that the gun and the owner would be tied together by some means--biometric perhaps, i.e., fingerprint.  People are working on it, but it's difficult to make it relatively foolproof, particularly when the concept faces hurdles gaining acceptance in the market.

There are also some laws/proposals for requiring gun safes. It seems as if the people who would follow such a law are among the people least likely to need it, though keeping guns away from youngsters tempted to play with them while the parents are away is worthwhile.  Reduce gun deaths by preventing accidents, if not homicides.

How about using bluetooth and the internet?  Sell guns with an associated gun safe which can sense the presence or absence of the gun.  That should be easy enough. Then have the gun safe wifi-enabled with an app on the smartphone.  So one or more people could be sent alerts when the gun is removed from the safe. Such a notice would help in cases where a child/teen/burglar removes the gun.  

The idea wouldn't prevent many cases, but some.  Not sure if 2nd Amendment types would go along, but some might.

Blast from the Past

 Time for something completely different, Silky Sullivan. You have to be old, or a horse racing nut (I'm the former) to know the name, but the two racing performances I remember well are Secretariat in the Belmont and Silky Sullivan in his trademark races.

Uvalde Perspectives

 Megan McArdle tweeted this:

I can't say exactly what happened in Uvalde, but having written a book on failure, I'd bet investigation will not reveal one bad decision, but a string of overlapping failures, most of which occurred individually before with no real incident, but collectively became disastrous

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 27, 2022

Graham Factor had this.

I think both are good perspectives.  I remember Kitty Genovese from the 1960's, where the original story turned out wrong.  It's possible that multiple police forces on the scene and poor communication from the 911 system to the police were factors.  We don't know, and it's too early to say.

Fallows on Guns

This Fallows post expresses my thoughts on Buffalo and Uvalde. 

WEIRD

 

Not the best photo, but this is Joseph Henrich's flowchart summarizing his 450 pp book, starting with Christianity competing with other religions (the cutoff part at the top) leading to Western civilization, which is educated, individualistic, rich, and democratic.

More to come, maybe.