The Lesser Importance of Libraries?

 Much concern these days over which books are in school libraries and which are not. It's warranted: the presence of a book in a school library signals something. 

But these days hasn't it a diminished importance?  When I went to school the library was my source for magazines to read and books to take out. I didn't have other sources, unless my family could subscribe to a magazine or buy the book.  My appetite for reading material far exceeded the available money my family could spend. 

Today's youth have access to cellphones and printed material on the internet. I realize the material differs from the books whose presence in school libraries is currently questioned, but still.

Back in the day the two sources of perversive material were the library and the mass of rumor and fact passed down from older kids to younger kids. Today it's just a click  away.  

The bottomline seems to me that those trying to ban books are wasting their energy on the lesser threat, not the major one, while those fighting bans often exagerate the significance of the ban. 

Government Budgeting

 Was alerted to this substack post going back in history to efforts in federal budgeting and spending.

As I commented, I didn't follow some of the argument, but it triggered memories.  Back in the old days ASCS could use CCC funds as a piggy bank and its status to bypass some restrictions.  For example, if we had a rush print job for program signup involving the notices of bases and yields and the signup form, the print branch could justify bypassing the Government Printing Office's rules by claiming the material was to implement CCC programs, enabling them to go directly to a printer. 

Details of interest only to oddball types like moi.

The Port Royal Experiment and Phonics

 Stumbled across an odd fact today.  I've been reading Roger Lowenstein's "Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War."  It's interesting.  A main character for most of the book is Sec. of Treasury Chase, who ends up designing the "National Bank System" and also had charge mostly for the Sea Island plantations after the Union Army took the islands.  This led to what is called the Port Royal Experiment, giving the government the problem of how to handle the freed slaves and the occupied plantations.  It was a forerunner of Reconsttuction's issues.

One problem was teaching adult blacks to read. A teacher was John Zachos, a Greek whose father was killed in the Greek rebellion in 1824, and was brought to the US by an American who supported the rebellion.  He wrote a book, the first book the blacks had, entitled: " The Phonic Primer and Reader, A National Method of teaching Reading by the Sounds of the Letters without altering the Orthography. Designed Chiefly for the Use of Night-Schools Where Adults are Taught, and for the Myriads of Freed Men and Women, Whose First Rush from the Prison-House of Slavery is to the Gates of the Temple of Knowledge?"

The Great 20th Century

 It seems we often look at some statistics the wrong way.  For example, it's common among the optimists among us to brag about the improvement in living standards by citing the reduction in the percentage of people in poverty.  But I think it would be more impressive to look at it the other way.

So I  asked ChatGpt to compare the number of humans above the poverty line in 1900 with the number in 2020. I can't guarantee the accuracy of the numbers but what it gave me (using World Book numbers of "extreme poverty") was 150 million in 1900 and 7.1 billion in 2020.

That's a whole lot of people who might be happy.

ChatGpt's Errors

 My cousin and I were discussing the early textile mills in New England.  I thought I remembered Europeans visiting the mills, particularly Lowell, and writing about them.  So I asked ChatGpt.  I can't copy the response, which is curious since I've done it before, but it listed Harriet Martineau, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur as a French writer, Isaac Weld, and William Strickland.

The Strickland reference is definitely wrong; he didn't write the book listed.  Both Weld and Strickland are cited as visiting New England in the 1790s, which seems too early for the mills.  Martineau seems dubious based on the description in Wikipedia, as does Crevecoeur. 

It looks to me that ChatGpt confused opinions on slavery which all four people expressed with visits to mills,

Why Working for FSA Is Worse These Days

 Sec. Vilsack testifying, link was posted to the Facebook FSA group. At the start he observes that it's no longer true that the county executive director of the FSA office is among the best paid in the county and that serving the public by working for the government has lost some cachet.

Iraq in Retrospective

 This is a comment I posted on Kevin Drum's post looking back at Iraq, which you should read:

"Wish I was blogging then so I'd have a good record of what I was thinking. As best I can remember I was dubious of Afghanistan, given the Soviets failure there, our failure in Vietnam, etc. But it went surprisingly well, and the aftermath seemed to be working well with Karzai getting support.

So with Iraq I was torn. The Post had a reporter who was filing good stories challenging the official line. I still had some skepticism about war. But on the other hand Bush did have Blair on board, and Blair seemed capable and had worked well with Clinton. So I think my attitude when the bombs began to fall was to the effect: I don't think I'd do this if I had the power, but I don't so I hope you're right and can do as well in Iraq as you seem to have done in Afghanistan.?

Why Grist Mills?

  Roots of Progress is an interesting effort I follow.  This particular post  roused my usual contrarian reaction, but also triggered a question, specifically this:

" you should take into account that some types of labor were automated very early on, via wind and water mills"

My question is why?  And who?

ChatGpt says, when asked how different civilizations ground their grain:

Ancient Egyptians: The ancient Egyptians used a hand-powered quern to grind their grains. The quern consisted of two flat stones, one placed on top of the other. The top stone was rotated back and forth to grind the grain into flour.

Ancient Greeks and Romans: The ancient Greeks and Romans used a rotary mill to grind their grains. The mill consisted of a circular stone wheel with a handle on one side. The grain was poured into a hole in the center of the wheel and was ground between the wheel and a stationary stone.

Native Americans: Native Americans used a mortar and pestle to grind their grains. The mortar was a bowl-shaped stone, and the pestle was a long, cylindrical stone used to crush the grain.

Chinese: The Chinese used a stone mill to grind their grains. The mill consisted of two horizontal stones with a vertical stone in the center. The grain was poured into a hole in the center stone and was ground between the stones.

Mesoamericans: The Mesoamericans used a metate to grind their grains. The metate was a flat stone slab, and the grain was ground using a handheld grinding stone called a mano.

Overall, each civilization developed methods that were suited to their particular needs and resources.

Based on skimpy research by google, it seems there's a transition from rubbing two stones together, to a rotary grinder hand powered and then to the water/wind driven grist mills. 

Did women initiate these inventions?

Me and Chocolate Milk

 This piece about the controversy over including chocolate milk in the school lunch program reminded me of something.

Growing up, dad would bring up some milk from the morning milking which went into the refrigerator.  As it was raw milk, the cream rose to the top.  Mom would skim the cream off for use in tea, coffee, cereal.  We'd drink the milk remaining, the skim milk. So I was accustomed to the taste and texture of skim milk.

When dad drove the truck to Greene, our market town for feed from the Grange-League-Federation (co-op) store and bigger grocery stores than our local one, we'd often go in the morning and get lunch at a diner.  My order was always the same, tuna fish sandwich and chocolate milk.  I disliked the taste and texture of the homogenized milk, so chocolate milk was the only thing I'd drive.

The Decline of Flexibility

 Paul Krugman has a piece on the declining flexibility, looking at the supply of artillery shells for Ukraine and shipping containers during the pandemic. Economic theory says that capital should move quickly to solve shortages,  but Krugman says it's not happening now.

I don't think he says explicitly but I think part of the problem is the increasing complexity of manufactured products. The modern PC is much more complicated than the hand crank adding machine I used in an early job.  A modern artillery shell is much more complicated than the comparable shell in the Civil War or even WWII. 

The more complex the product, the more steps in the manufacturing process, the more suppliers in the network, the more opportunity for Moore's law to work.