What the Hell Is This?

 The fewer posts I put up, the more views I get.  

I will never understand humans. 

I'm Thin-Skinned

 "Thin skin" is a metaphor meaning sensitivity to critical comments/insults, etc.

I'd argue that with age I've become less sensitive to criticism than I used to be, although I'm far from insensitive to criticism.  (I always thought I was successful in not showing it, but now I doubt that.)

But the reality is my aged skin is much more susceptible to cuts and tears than it used to be. In my gardening I often become aware that I'm bleeding, bleeding without ever sensing what happened to break the skin.  

The Pilot Makes the Machine?

 I found this piece on an obscure and unsuccessful (for US)WWII fighter plane to be very interesting.  It seems that while it was a failure in the Pacific for us, it worked for the Finns.

Raises the question of how much was the machine, how much the pilot and their training, and how much the opposing airforce? And to what extent does this illustrate a more general proposition about man/machine/environment?

Watergare II--Disregard of Law

 Nearing the end of the Watergate book, which now recounts the briefing of the House Judiciary Committee by the special prosecutor and his staff, some 7500 pages of evidence.  

According to Graff, two things particularly struck the memebers:

• the misuse of national security to excuse and cover up misdeeds not related to national security (i.e., the attempts to have the CIA convince DOJ to limit its investigation, etc.)
• the lack of regard for the law and constitution.  Nixon never was concerned about what was legal, just what was practical and offered a way to get out of the mess.

I'm particularly struck by the second--it sounds exactly like TFG.  Or maybe not, in his egotism TFG claims superior knowledge of the constitution and the law, which Nixon didn't do. Afterwards Nixon would claim, IIRC, what TFG believes: "when the president does it it's legal".

I'm also struck by Chairman Rodino's concern for bipartisan votes in his committee, much more concern than the Democrats showed in their two impeachments.

October Is Coming: the 50th Anniversary

 The Watergate book I'm reading starts one chapter with the observation: "October 1973 would prove to be perhaps the most historic month in the history of the American presidency..."

A reminder--the month saw the resignation of the vice president minutes before he was charged with crimes, and agreed to one, the Yom Kippur war which included a confrontation with the Soviet Union, and the Saturday Night Massacre, with the resignation of the Attorney General and deputy AG after Nixon fired the special prosecutor for Watergate.

Watergate

 In the process of reading Garrett Graff's Watergate. It's a reminder of how we simplify our history--many reporters involved other than Woodward and Bernstein.

Why Do LIberal Reforms Hurt the Poor?

 Is this true?

Liberals propose and enact more laws, regulations, and programs than conservatives?  

The poorer the citizen the more difficulty they have in knowing, understanding, complying, and taking advantage of the laws, regulations, and programs.

The richer the citizen the more able they are to manipulate laws and regulations to their advantage and to exploit programs in ways not intended by the authors.

Farm Bill and Debt Limit

 The cynic in me applauds President Biden's tactic of inviting a bipartisan delegation to the White House to discuss the new farm bill.  Why am I cynical?  While negotiations over farm bill provisions got White House attention in the 1960's and 70's, they haven't gotten that much in recent decades.  

But this year the current farm bill is expiring just as the issue of raising the debt limit and cutting spending is at the forefront.  One of the things the House Republicans want to cut is food stamps (SNAP) which is a title in the farm bill.  IIRC if the bill the House passed were actually implemented, USDA would see its spending reduced to 83 percent of current. But farm state Republican senators, which likely includes them all, listen to their farmers so Biden is putting the squeeze on.  In effect he's saying two things: 

1. you need to help resolve the impasse over debt limit so we can move on to the farm bill, and
2. you need to oppose the provisions in the House bill to make cuts, particularly in SNAP, in order to get the Democratic votes you will need to pass the farm bill.

Well played, it seems, at least at this moment.

Apollo 11--Apogee of White America?

 Watched the documentary film Apollo 11 last night. Seeing it 54 years after the original offered a certain perspective, not to mention color and clarity.

Couldn't help noticing the almost 100 percent white male control room and the almost 100 percent white audience at Cape Canaveral viewing in person.  The film didn't make a point of either, though I'm sure it wasn't by chance the camera passed over one woman in the control room and a couple blacks watching. The film was shot in 1969 with the sensibilities of the time, so I'm guessing it didn't miss much. I'm sure there was a sizeable TV audience of blacks, but few would have had the time and money to travel to the Cape.  I can only guess the feelings of the black watchers; possibly discomfort at being one in a thousand, possibly participating in the sort of nationalistic pride most may have felt, or possibly just enjoying the spectacle.

Apollo 11 was a peculiarly white endeavor; IIRC many black leaders questioned spending the money on space rather than domestic needs. The black participants in the effort were hidden. See Hidden Figures.  So it seemed an white American success, perhaps with a little credit to the German scientists who immigrated to Alabama after WWII. 

In 1969 LBJ had been driven from office, so Tricky Dick got to call the astronauts after their recovery. We'd seen the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and the country was sharply divided.  The immigration laws had been reformed in 1965 but it was too early to see their effect.  We were still on the gold standard and inflation was starting to be a concern. 

I don't know how modern historians place the moonshot in the flow of American life.  I suspect many have considered it a sideshow, an assessment which may be changing as we try to get back to the moon and then to Mars. 

Aging: Learning, Forgetting, Mismatching

 Had to wait at the self-service checkout for the clerk to help another old man, who complained that he had so many cards--I guess he hadn't used the right number for his Safeway loyaltt account.  This ties in with something from the weekend. I can imagine a graphic--two dimensional, though it ought to many dimensions.  Stage one--birth: the baby icon is at one edge of a colored circle, the circle representing all the things about the world which the baby can learn and the color representing the status of the information--current, obsolete, new.  At stage one the whole circle is the same color, since with respect to the baby all the information is currrent.

Stage two--the baby icon has grown, representing the information which has been learned.  Meanwhile the circle has increased in size, with the increase representing new information while a little of the circle has changed color as information becomes obsolete.

Successive stages see a continuation of  these developments:  as time passes the amount of information which can be learned increases, the amount of information the person has learned increases, but as time goes by some of the learned information becomes obsolete.

Fast forward to my 80's: 

• my interest in learning new information and my ability to do so has declined, so the modern world is getting away from me (too many cards)
• the information I've learned is increasingly obsolete.  I know so many things which are of no use now. 
• bottomline--there's mismatch between me and the world, which is increasing.