Cynical Take on Federal Records Act

 Commentary on the missing Secret Service cellphone records has invoked the spector of the Federal Records Act, violation of which can lead to jail time.

We don't know what happened in the case, but I start with some cynicism.  I don't think most bureaucrats in most agencies know much or care much about the FRA. The leader of all Federal bureaucrats for 4 years, the former guy, showed exactly what he thought of it when he tore up documents he'd read.

The Act lacks an enforcement mechanism; NARA has no real power.  

I suspect, and predict, that the Secret Service has never taken the FRA seriously.  This might mean they simply ignored the preservation of records in past years, and continued that mind set in dealing with Jan. 6 and the upgrading of their cellphones.

We may find out if I'm right. 

Modern Sculpture--Oldenburg

 Claes Oldenburg recently died. He was, I guess, a modern sculptor.

I don't have much experience with modern sculpture.  "The Song of the Vowels" which was installed on my college's campus about the same time I arrived didn't do much for me, but apparently it's still considered good.

The National Gallery of Art has a sculpture garden which I've toured, with several of Oldenburg's sculptures.  I do get a kick out of The Typewriter Erasor--Scale X. I remember using the real life erasor before the days of correction fluid.  I'm sure these days few people could identify it. 

Making Decisions--Roberts

 I believe Russ Roberts was an economist before he became head of a college.  Anyway, he's got a piece in the NYTimes on decision making in which he describes the process Darwin went through before marrying. When I read about it in a recent bio I didn't pick up everything he did.

Back when I joined ASCS I was sent to a Kepner-Tregoe training class.  One of the things taught was the same sort of calculus Darwin went through--figuring out pros and cons of a decision, assigning weights to each, and deciding according to the balance.

I tried that approach in choosing the house I was going to buy in Reston.  It was useful, but then, like Roberts, I threw away the calculations and went with my gut feeling--the house I chose didn't come out as the best choice.  The process can only go so far, and whenever there are imponderables and unknowns, as in deciding whether to marry, it's limited. 

Our American Dentistry System

 I've commented before on the advantages of the Kaiser Permanente system, as opposed to the system of independent doctors, specialists, and testing labs found elsewhere.

Currently I'm gaining some (vicarious) experience with dentistry.  While Kaiser includes some dental coverage, it's not in-house but run through a separate organization.  It includes a directory of participating dentists, endodontists, and oral surgeons which are in-network. For a variety of reasons (not rational ones, but human ones), we're getting the work done outside the plan.

One difference between the medical side of our health system and the dental side is technology.  The various dentist/specialists have a lot more technology in their office. Where doctors had to send you out for blood tests, dentists have x-rays in their office, while the endodontists and surgeons have even more equipment. 

One similarity betwen the system is the referrals from dentist to endodontist and surgeons. It seems to an outsider there's likely an informal network in existence; whether the network is more than just mutual trust I don't know.  

From the patient's standpoint there's still the frustration of repetitive forms: health histories and legal documents. Within the Kaiser organization, that's avoided for medical issues.  

For any complex issue, there's a coordination issue.  That's likely true within Kaiser for medical issues, especially when you involve a hospital. 

Younger Generation Losing Skills?

 My title is a bit of a troll--the younger generation is always losing skills and learning new skills.

What triggered this post is my buying Starbucks coffee today.  I pay in cash, usually trying to pay provide $5.55 for a $3.55 coffee, meaning I can put $2 in the tip jar (a habit carried over from pandemic days).  The veteran baristas know my habit and handle it; today a newbie was thrown by it, gave me changes for $5 and my $.55 in change back.

I suppose like using the stick shift and the correction fluid, the art of making change is gradually losing ground as we all switch to digital payments. 

Fixing ECA

Before we fix SCOTUS we should fix the Electoral Count Act. 

Fixing SCOTUS

 I tend to the position that any "fix" to SCOTUS is likely going to be worse than the current situation.  Vox has 10 possibilities discussed here.

I heard of an intriguing suggestion, can't remember where now: each president gets to appoint two justices to the court.  The court is composed of the 9 most recent living appointees. Any others still living who wish can take senior status (as Justice Souter has).  Except for the possibility of the Senate refusing to confirm an appointee, which I've seen handled in another proposal, it seems a reasonable suggestion.  

Clearance Rates on Homicides

 This piece describes six reasons that the clearance rate for homicides has declined. 

None of them mention my guess at a possible reason: a higher proportion of gang/drug-related murders. There were gangs in the 60's; the Mafia was active. But it seems to me there's more conflict among gangs now, fights over territory for selling drugs, etc.  Gangs have and enforce the code of silence, and they have more power to intimidate possible witnesses.  

On the Margins--a Metaphor

 Behind our townhouse there's a strip of lawn at the foot of a sloping bank up to a strip of the woods which remain from the original landscape before the townhouse cluster was developed.  Originally when I bought the townhouse from the developer the bank was planted to grass.  When the maintenance company's crew mowed the lawn it also mowed the grass on the bank.  For a few years.

Unfortunately the bank was good Virginia red clay, so the grass never thrived. It was invaded by weeds, which soon the mowing crew decided not to cut. Over the years some woody brush has filled in behind the weeds, which have advanced down the bank and into the strip of lawn. Just the other day I noticed how narrow the strip of lawn had gotten, as each year the crew abandoned more land to the weeds.

The situation reminds me of the borders of our fields, back on the farm I grew up on.  Something similar happened there.  First you have a fence, and a few weeds grow up around it.  The fence posts prevent you from mowing under the fence, so you mow within a foot or two of it.  But areas which aren't mowed become a niche for brush to grow up, which shades the adjacent area, where the weeds invade next. 

When mowing hay, you don't really want to cut brush which might get baled, or which might clog the cutter bar of the mowing machine.  So each year you mow just a tad further away from the original fence, and so the brush becomes a hedgerow, and the hedgerow grows and grows.

Which is sort of like my sideburns.  Particularly since covid, I go a long time between haircuts. When I shave each morning, somehow my sideburns become a little longer, meaning when I do get a haircut the barber needs to shave them back to their original place.

Bottom line: I think hedgerows and sideburns become good metaphors for what happens on the margins of states, the Roman empire, and organizations. Often the returns from maintaining them don't really justify the investment needed to sustain the difficult maintenance. 

Coal for Heat and Hot Water

This Smithsonian piece on coal brought back memories. The theme is the process and the difficulties in getting American households to switch from wood to coal, from open burning to enclosed burning.

I grew up in a house with two coal burners--our kitchen stove was a coal burner, though we could burn wood as well.  In fact, in order to get a coal fire started first you burn some wood.  During the colder months we kept the coal fire going all the time, banking the fire during the night, bringing it alive during the day, after removing the previous day's accumulated ashes to the dump near the side door.  Midway during my years we added an electric stove, very handy for cooking, particularly during the hot days of the summer when you really didn't want a fire going.  (Before the electric stove there was a kerosene cook stove.)

The other coal burner was the furnace, providing hot air to heat the house.  The evidence of the past was visible in the shapes of the chimneys in the walls, two of them; one was still used for the cook stove and the "one-a-day" (a woodburner in the basement which heated water, mostly for weekly baths; the other was closed off.  The chimney for the furnace was outside the house.  I've a vague memory of its being built, or perhaps rebuilt with cinder blocks, so possibly it was originally connected to the second chimney.   It too was banked during the night, which was an acquired skill.

The coal was delivered yearly by dump truck, maybe a couple tons of anthracite of different sizes: smaller for the cook stove; larger for the furnace, into separate bins in the basement.