Pro Publica reports on the existence of organized fraud rings which submitted false claims for unemployment benefits/pandemic aid in multiple states. (https://www.propublica.org/article/how-unemployment-insurance-fraud-exploded-during-the-pandemic)
It's part of the price we pay for our individualism, freedom, and privacy, I guess.
Memory is fallible. Blog posts are reliable, at least recording the moment.
IIRC when GWB sent our forces into Afghanistan I was dubious, remembering the British and the Soviet failures. Had I been blogging then I might have recorded that opinion, which I could now point proudly to as proof of my prescience.
Of course, had I been blogging a few months later I might have posted my opinion that our easy success in Afghanistan showed we might have learned our lessons from the past and our new technology with precision bombs would enable us to oust Saddam. I think that's my memory, though I also think I was still queasy about invading Iraq.
We'll never know.
I've dipped my toe into reading about the current controversy on critical race theory, but haven't gotten into it in any depth.
One thing which did strike was a statement to the effect that "policy produced the 'hood'". To me that's a sequence like "Person A decided on policy B, policy B created C" with the implication that C was the intent of the person, the decider.
Compare that to a statement that "policy resulted in the 'hood'". To me that's a sequence like "Person A decided on policy B, a result of policy B was C" with the implication that C may or may not have been the intent of the decider.
As someone who likes Murphy's law the second version is more to my liking. I think there are a lot of cases where the decider focuses on the immediate situation and adopts a policy which she thinks will solve the problem, not realizing there are ramifications and unknown unknows also at play which will create unintended results.
The difference between intent and result.
I ran across this quotation from George Washington's first (state of the union) address to Congress. Apparently sometimes Second Amendment advocates have modified it to make it clearly support an individual right to bear arms.
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies."
I think I've done enough reading in the period to know what he was talking about. When he took command of the military forces besieging the British in Boston there was a desperate shortage of gunpowder and arms. The Continental Congress was desperately searching for supplies, within the colonies, elsewhere in the British empire, in the Americas and in Europe.
Throughout the Revolution Washington was forced to use colonial militia forces, called up for short periods of time, often poorly armed by the local governments and poorly trained during their periodic muster days. He did not like the militia.
So what he's calling for in this sentence is a well-armed and organized military force, equipped with American made weapons and supplied with American made gunpowder, clothing and other gear. In other words, the full meaning of the Second Amendment.
Interesting--in WWII the RAF bomber crews were self-selected with no divisions of rank or class--they stuck the men who had finished training as pilots, navigators, gunners, etc. in a big room and let them choose each other to form a bomber crew. Lots of diversity, at least by country (different parts of the British Empire, plus Poles, Free French, Americans, etc.)
In contrast America was very authoritarian, as the military tends to be, and strikingly was class-based. College men who were officers were the pilots and navigators; the rest of the crew were enlisted men. A new crew was formed by order from Washington; preferences had nothing to do with it.
Liberals seem often to express sympathy for those adversely affected by gentrification. Over the years I've seen articles in the Post covering protests by black inner-city residents of DC over the progress of gentrification.
I've tended to have ambivalent reactions. On the one hand, having lived in DC during some of its worst days, namely the 1970s, I want to applaud any signs of "progress", a growing population rather than shrinking, people with good incomes. On the other hand, you can't help but sympathize with the people who've lived in an area for all their life, who are in middle age or older, and who don't have jobs and income which would give them choice and power over where they live.
On the third hand, I remember the patterns of life in rural NY when I grew up, and I know those patterns were changing then and have changed even more in the 60 years since I left. The fact I left aggravates my ambivalence.
To be honest, I don't know that anyone has tried to use vertical farms to grow marijuana. They use similar technology though, and as it turns out a hell of a lot more electricity to grow green pot than to grow green lettuce. See this Politico piece.
The bottom line of the piece is: legalize marijuana at the federal level so it can be grown where it is most efficient to grow it.
"The Big Sort" is the idea that Americans are sorting themselves into two separate camps--based on politics, education, etc. factors., which can be seen geographically--the red and blue areas on the map.
Supposedly this is a new phenomenon. If so, I wonder why it started? It's easy enough to see why the sorting might continue, if people make decisions on where to live, where to buy, depending on economics and the importance of schools, etc. But why would it start?
It struck me yesterday that I should look at myself--why did I buy in Reston, in an area where today about 90 percent of my neighbors vote Democratic (per a NYTimes interactive feature)? The answer is relatively simple. When I decided to buy in the suburbs in late 1975 I focused on Reston. Why? Because Robert Simon, who initiated the project, sold it as an equal opportunity town back in 1964-5. That was when I first became aware of it, as I was stationed at Ft. Belvoir. I even visited during an early open house on a weekend.
Simon was in advance of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, LBJ/s final achievement, which mandated equal opportunity. I can't believe EEO was a big factor in decisions by many, but it might have been just enough for some to start the snowball rolling down the hill.
During much of my time at ASCS/FSA the agriculture policy community was pushing the idea of moving from disaster payment programs to crop insurance, an effort which culminated in the 1996 farm bill, along with Sen. Pat Roberts' "Freedom to Farm".
Back on July 28 House Ag passed another bill deviating from that path. As quoted by Illinois extension, Chris Clayton summarized:
"“The bill, passed unanimously by voice vote, will expand coverage of losses under USDA’s Wildfire Hurricane Indemnity Program-Plus (WHIP-Plus) and cover losses including those from wildfires last year in California as well as the derecho that hit Midwestern producers last summer. The aid will also cover producer losses this year from the polar vortex as well as farmers whose crops are in D-2 ‘severe’ drought conditions for at least eight consecutive weeks.”
My local Safeway is selling more and more produce in packages. Corn is no longer on the cob, so you don't have the job of husking it. Salad is shredded and mixed, just open the package into the bowl and put dressing on it.
What the Safeway buyer wants is convenience, saving time by having someone back in the chain do the work. It's all part of work shifting by the upper middle class--we have money but, unless retired, not the time so we pay others to do stuff.
This trend, which has been going on for decades (think TV dinners in the 1950's), poses a big problem for the advocates of organic farming, CSA's, and similar ideas. You can't ask the farmer to do the packaging, but your market share will be limited if you don't.
Finished Woodward's book, The Last Men of the President, which is mostly Alexander Butterfield's story.
A side note--Woodward reminds that Sen. Howard Baker, the ranking Republican on the Erwin committee was initially working with the White House to protect Nixon. What was new to me, was a tidbit which Woodward interprets that Baker was still providing information to the White House, but not in person, through an aide.
So politics isn't beanbag and there wasn't a golden age of bipartisanship now lost?
Just got on 19fortyfive.com--a national security site recommended by Prof. Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
They have a piece on the progress in the Navy towards electric power. Mostly it's over my head, but my impression is much of the innovation is more like the early Prius than a Tesla, but I didn't realize there was any change in propulsion since Adm. Rickover and nuclear power.
Many people find the easiest course of action is just to do what they did yesterday. Doing something different has downsides:
Been 25 years or more since FSA started pushing direct deposit (it was just starting back in the mid 90's before I retired) According to the notice about 82 percent are now direct deposit/ Since I retired they've come up with a waiver provision, presumably for hardship, but only 5 percent of the paper check people have a current waiver on file.
It seems that it's still the producer's option--she "invokes" the waiver for one of the three permissible reasons, there's no burden on the FSA to determine the validity. I'm curious whether compliance with the requirement is greater among the other agencies which issue payments to the public. Somehow I expect farmers to be more resistant to the change.
Might have helped to sell the idea to note that having direct deposit makes it easier and more foolproof to get benefits issued by IRS, as has happened now several times this century.
Of course the answer is for everyone to get a basic bank account with fees paid by the government, but that would be against the American individualistic ethic, so a nonstarter.
Modern Farmer has a post on the new loan program intended to help in establishing title to heir property. It has some problems, and I feel nitpicky today so I've bolded the errors I find:
"For instance, if a land owner died without a will, that land would be divided up among the owner’s heirs. Once they passed on, the land would be further divided among their heirs. While property might be in a single family’s control for generations, they don’t have legal title or claim to the land. That means they cannot easily sell the land or consolidate fractured acreages...." [My comment: usually it's the father dying intestate, with the children inheriting the land in common, not divided. When a child dies, her ownership share is inherited by her children, and so on. One of the owners can appeal to the court to force a sale of the land and divide the proceeds among the heirs. That is a way whites have used to buy land cheaply: forced sales. Even when there's no forced sale, the person farming on the land doesn't have clear title, a prerequisite to mortgaging the land.]
"After the Civil War, the federal Homestead Act gave Black families land, mainly across the South, and many of them became land holders for the first time.... [The Homestead Act and the Southern Homestead Act weren't effective in getting black farmers land. "Gave" is wrong--the charge was $50 for 40 acres, which was a significant sum in 1866 (perhaps $700 to 12,000 in todays money). I know of no statistics or study showing the relative importance of the different ways in which blacks accumulated land, but my impression is that hard work, scrimping, and good relations with selected white owners were key.]
"That became a bigger problem after President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Services came into effect. At the time, the USDA established a loan program to help farmers..." [ASCS had nothing to do with the loan program, which had originated in the New Deal, and was by 1961 administered by the Farmers Home Administration. The current day Farm Service Agency is the successor to ASCS and to the farmer loan programs of FmHA.]
I don't trust the rest of the writer's facts, based on her errors in these portions.
Anne Applebaum has a piece on Mr. Lindell at the Atlantic, which happens to tie in with my reading of Vedantam's Useful Illusions.
Vedantam analyzes the possible usefulness of illusions using evolutionary arguments. Because you can find illusions throughout human history, there must be a evolutionary reason humans are prone to such illusions. He argues it's useful to form social links, whether in religion or nationalism, whether in fraternities or tribal conflicts, etc.
So why "Trump as Hero"? Possibly part of the illusion surrounding the Trump phenomena is heroism. Trump is, or presents himself, as the embattled warrior, fighting against all odds, against the media, the Democrats, the bad people in the world such as immigrants or China, sometimes victorious, sometimes just surviving to fight another day, surrounded by dragons but always stalwart, wielding his magic sword of bluster and venom. And his supporters, what of them? They're critical to his battle, whether through their cheers or donations, a part of the grand effort. By identifying with his fight and following his efforts they participate in a narrative of our time, one which rises above the humdrum.
James Rebanks is a skilled writer whose book I enjoyed. He's got a new book for sale, already released in the UK and now in the US on August 3.
I haven't read the new book, but anticipate I will, likely from the library. Civil Eats has an excerpt from it, describing his visit to Wendell Berry in Kentucky and to Iowa.
While he calls Iowa farmers the "best farmers that ever lived", he doesn't like our production agriculture, mourning the transition we've made over the last 60 years or so.
I agree with him there have been big tradeoffs, but I'm not as negative as he is about current agriculture. I don't know how well his sheep farm could support his family without, I'm guessing, significant support from his writing.
But he's worth reading.
Thomas Schelling was a great economist, who won the Nobel. One book had this: In 1969 and 1971, Schelling published widely cited articles dealing with racial dynamics and what he termed "a general theory of tipping."[21] In these papers he showed that a preference that one's neighbors be of the same color, or even a preference for a mixture "up to some limit," could lead to total segregation,
I think generally it was taken as explaining why "block-busting" in the 60's led to a change from lily-white ownership to all-black ownership--whites had a preference for living among whites. But when you look at what he said, at least as summarized in Wikipedia, it's race-blind. In other words, blacks could have a preference for living among blacks, which could also affect housing patterns. That point was, I think, missed because we didn't have a real world example.
One factor in the discussion is the starting point. In the 1960's you had areas which were inhabited by one race. Another factor is whether you think it's a "preference", or whether it's an emergent property from network effects: you buy where a friend has bought first, "Networks" has become a new buzzword for analysis. And these days we're more familiar with "chain" immigration, where a neighborhood in the US is peopled mostly by immigrants from one town in Mexico, or wherever. .
I bought in Reston in the mid-70's, partly because it was founded from the beginning as equal opportunity housing. I was part of an outflow of people from DC moving out to the suburbs. As it turned out, despite Reston's open appeal, it didn't attract a lot of blacks--I don't think it's ever gotten much over 10 percent blacks--; most blacks moving from the District went to Prince George County, which is now majority black. These patterns fit Schelling's analysis, but how much of the underlying cause is preference, and how much is network effects is still unknown.
To me the argument for using seat belts in an air bag equipped car is the same as for using a face mask when vacinated.
A number of articles on the issue of carbon credits--Politico, Civil Eats Modern Farmer, and others. Apparently the Biden administration is moving towards a system of establishing credits for farmers to capture carbon in the soil as part of the effort to minimize climate change. There's questions about definitions, about recognizing existing practices which capture carbon, etc. etc.
What strikes me is the likely impact on the USDA bureaucracy. I assume NRCS will be the lead agency in determining whether a given practice captures carbon, etc. and that data relating to credits will be tied into the GIS system.
I've not studied the issue, but I'm assuming the credits will have monetary value, small at first but increasing. I assume there might be a tie to existing farm programs. Consider the sod/swamp provisions which initiated in the 1985 farm bill with some programs over the years requiring compliance with the provisions as a condition of eligibility for payments. It's easy enough to imagine a requirement for some minimum of carbon capture being added to sod/swamp. I'm not sure these days how the FSA-NRCS collaboration on sod/swamp is working, but carbon capture might put new strains on the relationship, as well as the joint management of GIS data.
During my time NRCS had programs with their responsibilities under sod/swamp because they weren't used to being the "bad guy", making decisions which hurt farmers. The agency's culture was always being the good guy, teaching and helping farmers to do better. Will NRCS be up for carbon capture decisions?
A final concern is fraud. We like to believe producers are honest, and most are. But some aren't, and it's easy enough to imagine a fraudulent collaboration between a farmer and a USDA employee.
[Updated to add a link.]
Sec. Vilsack is announcing additional programs to aid producers impacted by the pandemic.
My impression of the various programs which have authorized spending in response to the pandemic and its effect is that several of them have had big problems in getting the money out the door. Some of the programs have struggled to get the money out; others have perhaps been vulnerable to fraud.
Those are impressions only. Meanwhile I'm following the FSA employee group on Facebook. I likely suffer from the old-timer's presumption that the newcomers have it easier, but I try to resist that snap judgment. On the one hand, I'm very impressed by the variety of programs, some directed to people FSA has long served, some directed to new groups, which the counties have had to deal with. On the other hand I remember PIK in 1983 and particulary the disaster program in 1986 (IIRC) which hit in the midst of the System/36 automation.
I hope someday somebody, GAO or Congress, does a high level review of the government's operations, their speed, efficiency, and weaknesses. My expectation and hope is that FSA would do well in such a review, largely because of a long history in dealing with crash programs and, most importantly, the county offices deal directly with the people, a big contrast with most of the rest of government which has to try to operate through state and county government agencies, and/or NGOs.
Civil Eats has this piece on Jesse Frost, who operates a .75 acre no-till farm in Kentucky.
It all sounds good, except when he says his operation grosses $70K, and apparently uses 2+ person-years of labor--i.e., one paid employee and Jesse full time, and some contribution from his wife.
I can accept that his out-of-pocket expenses, assuming he owns the land outright with no mortgage, are low. But $70K divided by 2 is $35K each, which isn't much over the minimum wage progressives would like to see. I can also accept that food costs for his wife and him would be relatively low, especially if they freeze and/or can a lot. But I'm not convinced that the cash returns are sufficient for a lifetime supporting a family through all the ups and downs. It may well be enough with the wife's outside income, likely providing health insurance and covering SS.
David Brooks has an column in today's NYTimes on the question: "How racist is America?" His answer seems to be--getting less so, when you look at long range changes. I recommend it.
But he had an observation about how immigrants are doing better than you might expect, particularly if you focus on prejudice against foreigners. He noted that immigrants move to places of opportunity. The implication is it gives them an advantage over native-born, who tend to live where they grew up, or at least some natives are less mobile. You can pick holes in such a generalization: for example the Amish are notably mobile, and people flocked to North Dakota during the oil boom.
But I buy it. By moving from one country to another you break a lot of the habits and constraints you'd have if you remained. That's true for the vast majority of movers. But the majority of Americans aren't moving, even within the country.
I think it's true that our mobility has decreased over the years. I think a minor factor is the end of the draft, which broke some of the ties men had. (Though as a creature of habit myself I may be overestimating their role in life.)
I posted earlier on nuclear reactions as a metaphor possibly explaining the rise in murders recently. The key point is the reactivity--when the population becomes younger for whatever reason (baby boom, oldsters observing lockdowns, oldsters dying from covid) the interactions among people change a bit without the cushioning effect of the older. A similar logic could apply to the pandemic--as more people are vaccinated, the reactivity goes down.
I came across a new metaphor today in a discussion of the effects of the vaccine. The metaphor is wood, as in forest fires. If the wood is very dry it catches fire easily, if there's been rain it doesn't. From that perspective the vaccine has the effect of dampening the wood.
A separate metaphor was poison--in a Post story explaining vaccination, the point is that the vaccine isn't binary, like shutting the door on the virus. It's more like a poison. So when the body is infected, the virus attacks and is multiplying, but then it starts to encounter the poison (as the immune system ramps up). The virus starts to be poisoned, reducing its reproduction rate. So testing may give a positive test during the time the virus is in its struggle with the immune system, as hopefully it's in its death throes.
Once again people are getting upset by the idea of citizens of a rising Asian power buying American farmland. See this and this.
As I blogged previously, this is an old story. Back in the 1970's Congress passed AFIDA, but back then it wasn't China which was the perceived threat. China was a poor backwards country struggling under communism. Instead it was Japan, which was selling us cars, not electronics, and using a few of the dollars they got to buy real estate, some agricultural land, some urban properties including Rockefeller Center.
In the long run who owns what is determined by economics. Japan's star has faded, China's risen. In the next 30 years it may be India or Nigeria which has the money to buy some land.
Reading "The Fourth Star" by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, which deals with the interwining careers of Generals Casey, Abizaid, Chiarelli, and Petraeus, who all were associated with the Iraq war. So far I'm up to roughly 2004, when Petraeus has left the 101st Airborne for the States, then returned to Iraq to train the new Iraqi army. During the division's occupation of Mosul in the north of Iraq Petraeus was a forceful presence in nation-building, or at least patching together a semi-operational local government.
We all know the results of our involvement there.
I got to thinking about leaders who were successful in nation-building: Napoleon's imprint on France is present today, as is Ataturk's on Turkey. Kagame's rule of Rwanda has now lasted longer than either of the foregoing and looks to be as impactful.
As best I can tell, Petraeus has a comparable big personality and intelligence as the other three, so what accounts for his failure and the success of the other three?
The obvious thing is longevity, which points to a big weakness in American nation-building efforts: rotation. As a democracy we don't feel able to tell our generals and our troops you're in for the duration. We rotate them out after a year or so. I wonder what would have happened if the troops who had 3 to 5 tours of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq had instead spent 3 years (with R&R) in the same area. Perhaps more importantly, if our generals had spent that time.
I'm reminded of a lesson Bob Reynolds, who was then the deputy director of the Administrative Services Division, ASCS gave me when I screwed up. It was to the effect that people, employees, cared more about consistency than charm; you can figure out how to deal with someone who's the same asshole every day, but dealing with someone who's different every day is much more difficult.
I think that's true with nation building. Petraeus may not have had the right ideas, but he was forceful. Reminds me of old corncob pipe Dougie, our near-fascist general, Douglas MacArthur, who lasted 6 years in a nation building exercise which was very successful, much as I hate to admit it.
That's a line in this post, What Is a Woman? at Statistical Modeling. A lot of what they post is over my head, but enough isn't to make for rewarding reading. The phrase captures a belief I've had. It goes along with believing that most generalizations could be rephrased statistically, as in "Americans believe..." There's a statistical phrasing for "Americans"--is it "the average American", "the young American", "white Americans", "living Americans" etc. etc. And what they believe can also be rephrased.
About a third of the way into Michael Lewis's "The Premonition", which so far describes the development of the pandemic plan in the Bush administration, through the linking of people from different government agencies and a high schooler's science project.
On page 78 he writes:
"Inside the United States government were all these little boxes. The boxes had been created to address specific problems as they arose. 'How to ensure our food is safe to eat,' for instance, or how to avoid a run on banks'..." He goes on to describe the people inside the boxes as knowledgeable and talented, developing a culture around the box, but frozen inside the box with little interest in other boxes.
For me the "box" is a "silo", which includes the "stakeholders" in Congress and NGO's as well as the civil servatns, but the description otherwise rings true.
As I've mentioned, my paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister. Recently I've been doing a little research using the newspapers.com archive of old newspapers. Before that I'd done a handful of searches in the NYTimes archive.
There's a big contrast of course between newspapers in the 1890's through 1920's and now. One hundred years makes a big difference. In terms of religion, the daily newspapers in Wilkes Barre and West Pittston paid a lot more attention to religious events than they do today. As you might expect the Times paid less attention than the smaller cities, but still there was considerable coverage, particularly on a controversy within the Presbyterian church over whether a minister was too liberal. There was also coverage in the PA cities of significant events: the dedicating of a church after its debt was paid off, an address by a minister returned from a visit to the "Holy Land", the departure of a minister for a church in Minneapolis.
These days I can't think of much in religious affairs which is covered in the media, except for religious leaders joining one side or another in political controversies, or splits over issues like the place of homosexuality in the church or the role of women priests.
Times have changed.
Below is the text of a recent tweet. I found the data in the table surprising, since I had the impression that professors were generally disdainful of the possible influence of genes. I didn't dig into the details of the poll, so the sample might have been small and/or skewed, or maybe sociologists differ from professors in other fields.
I mean you can do the obvious, boring thing and check polls.
— Siberian Fox📎 (@SilverVVulpes) July 14, 2021
For example, this one from 2014, with 81.2% of sociologists granting some heritability to intellectual potentialhttps://t.co/kz0ESPest0 https://t.co/2NJQ7noBFV pic.twitter.com/xc2ahfvHWD
In a NYTimes story on the use of a brain implant to convert thoughts into speech.
Before his stroke, Pancho [who lost his speech because of a stroke after an accident] had attended school only up to sixth grade in his native Mexico. With remarkable determination, he has since earned a high school diploma, taken college classes, received a web developer certificate and begun studying French.
“I think the car wreck got me to be a better person, and smarter too,” he emailed.
Sometimes it seems we have too much choice, too many abilities, and being forced to concentrate can help. Or maybe that's my Pollyanna streak.
It turns out a researcher at Illinois State University did a survey in 2019 of Illinois FSA personnel (CED's, DD's, etc.) which concluded:
The USDA Farm Service Agency replaced paper mailings with GovDelivery electronic communication in order to increase efficiency and reduce costs. This case study presents evidence from one state indicating a perception among local FSA officials that GovDelivery does not allow them to effectively serve their constituents. A gap in reliable rural Internet service and low usage of smartphones in place of rural broadband may contribute to the extremely low open rates for GovDelivery email notifications. Findings suggest that electronic-only communication does not allow the agency to effectively engage with farm owners, operators, and managers.Boerngen, Maria A. “Efficiencyfectiveness of Paperless Communication from the USDA Farm Service Agency.” Journal of ASFMRA, 2019, pp. 27–32. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26872597. Accessed 13 July 2021.
Noah Smith discusses the "War on Poverty"
It's obvious to me that LBJ was the greatest domestic president of my lifetime, excluding FDR since I wasn't aware of him.
I suspect future historians will decrease the weight they give to Vietnam so he'll rise in their assessment.
The Times had a graphic 3 years ago showing the results of analyzing the earnings of black and white men and women. The top graphic compared the results for lifetime earnings of men who grew up in the top 20 percent considering parental wealth and neighborhoods. It showed that such black men were about half as likely to maintain their status.
"Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children."
What's strangely interesting is that black women maintain their status, doing as well as white women. That simple fact undermines explanations on both the left and right:
Long discussion in Post of the possible causes for increase in murders this year in America (not occurring elsewhere if article is right).
Thinking of a metaphor for human society--as a nuclear reactor, with police as the control rods absorbing or not the excess neutrons, thereby damping or permitting greater interactions.
One might expand the applicability of the metaphor to the pandemic, with the control rods being the vaccines, masks, lockdowns, etc.
You'd have to expand the discussion to include the rates of the radioactivity of the alternative materials which could be used for a reactor. (I'd assume that radium, for example, could explode given the right setup.)
Back to homicide--it seems to me one effect of the pandemic likely has been to change the characteristics of the public, those who are active in exchanges with others. During the past year the "public" has become younger and poorer as the old and the better-off have been much better able to reduce their time in public. That might well mean that the remaining "public" is more reactive, somewhat as if the uranium was more highly enriched.
I just posted on the similarity I saw between the revivalist/evangelical spirit of the Great Awakenings and the "wokeism" of the current day.
I ran across this statement in an interview with a black evangelical minister:
Green: One of the things that has really struck me in recent national conversations about race is that a lot of people—especially secular white people—seem to be struggling with something that I can’t help but identify as sin: this recognition that we live in a broken world, and that all of us, by nature, hurt others and do things that are wrong. This seems to be what all of the people who joined anti-racism book clubs are struggling with—the realization of their own sinfulness when it comes to race.
Now I'm struggling a bit: I can buy that people naturally do wrong, sin. I can buy that the "woke" movement is adopting the strategy of the great awakening: convicting people of their sinful nature and asking for reformation. But I'm not convinced it's an effective strategy for changing society or an accurate description of how things go wrong. Need more thinking on it.
I designed and redesigned a fair number of forms during my career. We had a Forms Management Branch in ASCS when I started. The program specialist would take his problem to them and together they'd work together to get a master for the printer.
Overtime I started to design forms in Wordperfect tables. Got quite good at it, if I do say so. I think Forms eventually got most forms converted to Wordperfect. I haven't checked the online forms in years so I don't know whether they've now converted to PDF fill-ins or to HTML.
Anyway, the UK also has forms. This post says they're doing 6 percent a year (I hope that's not true, though if they have the sort of expansion of programs we've had in agriculture in recent years they might be expanding the number that fast). They would like to have all HTML forms. It's interesting to see how differently their government works than ours, as I believe I've noted before.
"Great Awakenings" in American history are periods of religious revivals. Wikipedia says: "The Awakenings all resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt, their sin, and the need of salvation by Christ."
There are some parallels between such awakenings and the current enthusiasm for woke.
This was stimulated by Ross Douthat in the NYTimes who wrote:
What's really inflaming today's fights, though, is that the structural-racist diagnosis isn't being offered on its own. Instead it's yoked to two sweeping theories about how to fight the problem it describes.
First, there is a novel theory of moral education, according to which the best way to deal with systemic inequality is to confront its white beneficiaries with their privileges and encourage them to wrestle with their sins.
That's a similar strategy to the revivalist appeals prominent in the Great Awakenings--you convince the sinner of his depravity and the essential need for repentance as a prerequisite to God's grace. A further step is to examine your actions every day to determine if you are following a righteous path--for predestinarians that's the way to feel some confidence that you're one of the "elect", that you're saved from hell.
Politico has a long piece on FSA loans to black farmers. It's not full of praise, to say the least. Not sure whether I'll come back to it, but it does end with this nice bit
What helped Cleaver was a woman in the FSA office who took the time to explain the processes.
“She was like an angel. I had been going through the loan officers and the HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] that was here and they couldn't get anything done,” he said. “[She] held my hand and she told me everything step by step. She was patient, she was polite.”
I'm sorry Politico doesn't provide email addresses for its reporters so I could compliment Ximena Bustillo for including this. I think in years of following reporting on FSA and race it's the first time I've seen a compliment published.
Above and beyond any individual reporting practice, we believe that it was the lack of explanations from state governments and, most crucially, the CDC that led to misuse of data and wounded public trust. We tried our best to provide explanations where possible, and we saw transformation when we were able to get the message across to the public. Data users who were frustrated or even doubtful came to trust the numbers. Journalists reported more accurately. Hospitals could better anticipate surges.
If we could make just one change to the way state and federal COVID-19 data were reported, it would be to make an open acknowledgment of the limitations of public-health-data infrastructure whenever the data is presented. And if we could make one plea for what comes next, it’s that these systems receive the investment they deserve.
[Updated: Technology Review describes a consortium to collect and standardize covid data into one database for research purposes. It sounds a bit klugey but that's the penalty for prioritizing privacy and silos over a rationalized centralized system. The question is whether we'll wake up and fund continuing efforts of this sort.}
I see a lot of posts on various sites about critical race theory (CRT). I'd like to see someone first define it, then do a translation of the theory into "critical gender theory"; "critical class theory"; "critical caste theory"; "critical religion theory"; "critical color theory"; etc. etc. My point here being I suspect when you try to apply CRT to many societies/cultures you'd find a lot of parallels: think India for caste, Northern Ireland and Israel for religion; many cultures for color, etc. etc.
Myself, I think I'm a power guy, by which I believe Lord Acton's observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is key. I'm not denying the power of the factors I've listed above, nor that of other factors I'm forgetting or don't know, but in life I think the key is who has the power and who doesn't. "White privilege" is a way of saying whites have power even when they don't realize it, perhaps especially when we don't realize it. But the same applies (sometimes, in some situations, but not all) to men, to the rich, to members of a majority religion, to members of a majority, period.
That's what I believe, at least today.
[Among other factors, colorism, ageism, handedness, height, disability/ability, looks...]
[[Add colorism--see https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/john-m-chu-and-in-the-heights-cast-address-casting-colorism.html]]
[[[Add--lookism--see ]]]
[[[[Add "heightism" ]]]]
[[[[[Add "ableism" ]]]]]
One of the complaints the right has against liberals and progressive is that we make them feel responsible for America's past. Since they weren't living then they had no participation in the misdeeds. When the subject of reparations is raised, many point out their ancestors came to the country after the abolition of slavery.
Two thoughts:
My knee-jerk reaction to the condo collapse in Florida was to think of my experience with my homeowners association, where this is also true.
As nearly everyone who has ever owned an apartment in a large building knows, however, rare is the condo owner who’s attuned to this duty, and rarer still is the one who attends association meetings, let alone serves on the board of directors.
And I linked it to Putnam's "Bowling Alone" book, arguing for the decline of voluntary associations and the development of social capital. But the Atlantic article piece from which the quote comes argues that states, particularly Florida, have been effective in regulating the operation of condominiums.
So I don't know what's true. Are homeowners associations and condo boards modern examples of building social capital, or are they due to have problems because modern America lacks social capital?
I may have blogged this before, particularly in connection with maintenance of computer software, but it applies broadly, as witness the collapse of the Florida condominium. It's a lot easier to get humans, particularly American humans, excited about doing something new, creating something, than in keeping things operating.
The Post's Made by History series included this piece. Before the Revolution the anniversary of the discovery of the Guy Fawkes conspiracy as Pope's Day--many Protestants feared Catholicism and the Pope as tyranny. (Those who remember Rev. Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland know the modern day relics.) The prejudice was rooted in the religious wars of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It was, according to the piece, one thing which crossed colonial lines and united Americans.
But come the American Revolution, with the new common foe of Britain and the need to enlist American Catholics and try to appeal to the French Canadians to join the cause, George Washington banned the celebrations. (It didn't eliminate anti-Catholic feeling; my mother was still very suspicious of the church.)
