Contrails as a Metaphor for Covid-19

I like metaphors, using something concrete to grasp ideas. I was thinking about Covid-19 (surprisingly!) this morning, specifically the process by which the virus spreads. What gets complicated to think about is the elapse of time, particularly since I tend to resist binary choices--a person is infected or not.

So here's my metaphor:  think of an infected person as a jet plane flying in a clear sky, particularly a older one.  The plane leaves a contrail behind it, which over time loses its structure and dissolves into nothing.  The contrail represents the virus particles being

Nowfly another plane through the contrail, representing an uninfected person.  If the contrail is well structured the person is more likely to be infected than if time has passed or winds have dispersed it.

Covid-19 Makes Us All Poor

Don't normally listen to podcasts but I did this one at Slate with an ER doctor..

He points to the lack of control felt by him and the public. That's one of the things about being poor--the lack of control over your life, the need to live from crisis to crisis, without the resources to get ahead of things.  The lack of control means you lose the ability to scan the environment and to plan the future.

For me, these descriptions apply to my current state of mind--my mental horizon has contracted to the issues raised by the virus: buying food, the loss of outside entertainment possibilities, the uncertainty,.  In other words, I'm now pretty much stupid.

[Updated--I forgot the most important thing--obsessing about the possibility Starbucks will close. I can't live without my coffee.]

If Memory Serves--Cheney and Pence

If I remember correctly after 9/11 Vice President Cheney and President Bush were, for several weeks/months? kept separated, so a terrorist attack on one wouldn't take out the other.

Is it possibly time for President Trump and Vice President Pence to be separated?  Trump is in the population must vulnerable to the effects of Covid-19. The VP is getting there, but isn't nearly as vulnerable.  By separating them we'd help ensure that the virus couldn't take out both men at once, given that serious cases can result in lengthy hospitalizations.

The Flu and Social Forces

The Covid-19 virus has caused us (starting with President Trump) to become more aware of the toll of the annual  outbreak of influenza.  I was vaguely aware the death toll was significant, but not the full scope of the impact.

I'd compare the flu and some social forces such as segregation, prejudice, changes in social mores.  Like the flu, we're vaguely aware of such forces,  but we only sporadically become really conscious of them. Like the flu, forces operate mostly below our level of consciousness.  Like the flu, some social forces there's a range of variation in the instances: most being minor and temporary but some being very serious.

Slow Learners in Trump Administration

It seems as if it's the fourth or fifth time Rep. Katie Porter has questioned Trump administration officials with results that rate a tweet.

I did the math: a full battery of coronavirus testing costs at minimum $1,331.

I also did the legal research: the Administration has the authority to make testing free for every American TODAY.

I secured a commitment from a high-level Trump official that they’d actually do it. pic.twitter.com/RmolCtmNbG

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) March 12, 2020

If I were someone in the administration I'd use a sick leave day to avoid testifying.

Walter Raleigh

Walter Raleigh, Architect of Empire, was a Christmas present.  It's academic history, for which I've a smaller appetite these days.  I understand there are limited sources for his biography,which has to be considered. Anyhow, I just finished it:  Some things which struck me:

• a lot of parallels between the treatment of Ireland and America (i.e.,Virginia). In both cases England was dealing with natives and trying to "plant" colonists. In the case of Virginia there was much ignorance and little attention to logistics.
• the English thought of their efforts in America as different and more enlightened than those of the Spanish, partly because the Spanish were Catholic and England's adversary, partly from learning about the Spanish conquest and rule.
• while dealing with the monarch was much like dealing with our current President, requiring much flattery etc. Queen Elizabeth I and King James I had the Tower and eventually the executioner's axe.
• government was very fluid and not well defined; the most obvious example is the ease with which government resources were used for privacy.
• 
  

Linking "Vertical Farms" With Microgrids

If I understand this article, a microgrid is a set of power generators dedicated to supplying a set of power consumers.  When the generators are a combination of solar and natural gas and the consumers are "vertical farms" there might be a workable and economic combination.  Vertical farms use lots of energy (the old dream of using sunlight which I laughed at years ago seems now defunct).

The big advantage of a microgrid is that it can be installed along with the vertical farm, so you don't rely on the power company to have the capacity to support your farm.  The microgrid operator can guarantee a price, making it easier to figure out your business plan.

Seems to me in the long run the microgrid is not the best solution.  Vertical farms need a lot of energy and for many hours in the day (apparently if you blast a seeding with light for 18 hours a day instead of 6 you get more growth--that's my impression). But it strikes me that plants are relatively forgiving, which means if you're operating a smart transmission system, vertical farms could easily be cut off when the system gets overloaded for some reason.  See this.

I assume it's also true that there are economies of scale in power generation.  Such economies should mean a power company could undercut a microgrid in many cases.

The article notes it's not clear what price for electricity would enable vertical farms to make a profit.

We'll see.

Telework--What Will USDA Do?

OPM is out with guidance to agencies encouraging telework due to Covid19. 

Earlier in the administration Sec. Perdue made drastic cutbacks in the USDA employees authorized to telework.

So far there's nothing on the USDA website about telework.

Caldwell's Age of Enlightenment

As a thinker, Christopher Caldwell is a good writer.  His words flow, and you ride with them, until suddenly there's a problem.

Bpttomline--I don't like his style--

I'll pick out one paragraph in his final chapter

"Those who lost most from the new rights-based politics were white men.  The laws of the 1960's may not have been designed explicity to harm them, but they were gradually altered to help evceryone but them, which is the same thing.  Whites suffered because they occupied this uniquely disadvantaged status under the civil rights laws, because their strongest asset in the constitutional system--their overwhelming preponderance in the electorate--was slowly shrinking, because their electoral victories could be overruled in courtrooms and by regulatory boards where necessary, and because the moral narratives of civil rights required that they be cast as the villains of their country's history. They fell asleep thinking of themselves as the people who had built this country and woke up to find themselves occupying the bottom rung of an official hierarchy of races."

page 276

Notice what he does there.  In the first sentence the losers are "white men".  By the end of the paragraph "they", who are the bottom rung, are "whites". To me that's sloppy thought. Somehow the advances women have made since the 1960's are ignored. To be consistent he'd have to discuss an ethnic/gender  hierarchy, but that would complicate his argument.  He'd have to recognize that white women have gained during the period.

He's also playing games with the causes.  Assume that white voters were the "overwhelming preponderance" of the electorate in the 1960' in part because of the denial of the right to vote in the South.  The civil rights laws were passed by that overwhelming preponderance (85 percent in 1960). Whites still maintain their preponderance and will for another 20 years or so. The Republicans have had a majority on the Supreme Court since Nixon.  Give Caldwell credit though--he doesn't name a villain to account for the changes other than the sleepiness of whites.

There's an interesting book to be written discussing the last 60 years, paying attention to what was lost and what was gained, but it isn't this book.

Every Cow Has "Her People"/

Vox has an interview with the director of "First Cow", who comments of the cow: "She had her people."

She also agrees with the interviewer: “Milk is so exciting.”

That Was the Week That Was

I'm showing my age in the title I chose--see this wikipedia explainer.

For Democrats, and political observers, it's been 7 days of twists and turns.  I'm amused to see Hugh Hewitt's Mar 1 oped: and the Michael Tomasky's piece in the New York Review of Books.

Both remind me of this

Why I Voted for Warren

I voted for Elizabeth Warren yesterday.  I've been a supporter of Klobuchar for as long as she was in the race and would have voted for her had she not withdrawn.  So my choices yesterday were Bloomberg, Biden, and Warren.  Sanders is both too old and too radical for me to consider, though I will vote for him if he becomes the Democratic nominee.

My bottomline was that anyone my age is too old for the job. I think I'm still pretty good mentally.  My memory fails occasionally, more than it used to, but I can analyze and write pretty well.  Assume that Bloomberg and Biden are equally capable.  But I find it hard to imagine that either man would, if elected, be able to credibly plan to run for reelection. That's just an age too far.  So they'd be a lame duck  immediately.  The record of our presidents during their second terms when they're lame ducks is not great.

The VP,  whoever it is, would naturally want to run for president in 2024, which would likely mean she'd need to establish some distance from the president just to have their own identity. Meanwhile other Democratic politicians would be maneuvering to run as well.  All that means big difficulties in getting the party to come together and support the President's proposals.

Applying the logic above leaves me with Warren as my choice.  I'm not fond of some of her plans, but I like her brains and her passion, so she was an acceptable choice. When I voted, I realized it was a symbolic vote, since she had no chance to win delegates in VA.  But that's life. 

When You Know You're Losing It

When you tweet about the silent generation finding "it's voice."

On the other hand, the title of this post isn't "When You Know Your Losing It"

If all this is too cryptic, congratulations--you're a millennial.

Famous Last Words--I'll Give It All Away

Steve Jobs' widow says:

"“I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t care about the accumulation of wealth,” she told the New York Times. “I’m not interested in legacy wealth buildings, and my children know that. If I live long enough, it ends with me.” [emphasis added]

IIRC Andrew Carnegie wanted to give away all his money.  He didn't accomplish that.  As the article at the link observes, there's still a Carnegie Foundation which gives away money each year.

Wjhy iis it hard for the rich to give away all their money (those who want to, like Carnegie and Jobs)?

• money has this way of earning more money, You have to run faster just to stay in one place, much less lower the stock of assets.
• those who manage the money as the donor grows old and after they die have a vested interest in keeping the flow of money going. 

Be Afraid--What Are the Odds

I think the odds for the Covid virus having major impact on American society are low.  I might be unduly affected by the experience of the Ebola panic, when a certain person was panicking (initials DJT).

On the other hand, I think the odds for a very screwed-up transition from the Trump administration to a Democratic president in 2021 are about 100-1 (assuming we do in fact defeat the man).  The Obama administration started the transition process back in the spring of 2016.  Of course they knew they were leaving, but Trump will have problems imagining that process so I don't expect him to approve any advance planning before Nov. 2020.  After election day, assuming again he's defeated which I'm not offering any prediction for, he will be in no mood to facilitate any planning, so the process will have to be carried out by career officials, otherwise known to Republican partisans as the swamp.

America Is Rich Country But Feels Like a Poor Country

I like the Kottke.org website. He recently spent some time in Vietnam and Singapore with some good pictures. (Saigon was home to lots of motorbikes when I was there 50+ years ago, but it's gotten more crowded since.) He has this observation:

" the main observation I came home with after this trip is this: America is a rich country that feels like a poor country. If you look at the investment in and the care put into infrastructure, common areas, and the experience of being in public in places like Singapore, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin and compare it to American cities, the difference is quite stark. Individual wealth in America is valued over collective wealth and it shows."

Bring on Self Driving Cars

Tesla says they average 1 fatality every 3 million miles.  The government says the US averages 1 fatality every 500,000 miles.  That tells me if we gave everyone a Tesla we could save 30,000 lives a year.

That's from this NYTimes article which should have been entitled: Teslas 6 times safer than driver-driven cars.

Disaster Coverage for Hemp

I'm still, I think the word is, bemused by the legalization of hemp.  The latest item is FSA issuing the rules for NAP coverage for 2020.  I don't know whether this is the first or second year for such coverage. 

I'm pleased to see the comparison of the provisions of the FSA NAP program and RMA's hemp insurance.  Almost all of the parameters are the same. Ever since the beginning of FCIC and AAA there have been complaints about the differences between the programs, most specifically the crop reporting dates.  Thousands of work hours and innumerable meetings have now been devoted to trying to resolve the differences, so it's good to see differences being resolved from the beginning.

Michael Milken--Angel or Devil?

Keith Williamson had a short post the other day: 

Reis Thebault, writing in the Washington Post, identifies Michael Milken as “the ‘junk bond king’ who was charged with insider trading…”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board says that Milken “was never charged with insider trading.”

I was curious so I checked wikipedia. 

In March 1989, a federal grand jury indicted Milken on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. The indictment accused Milken of a litany of misconduct, including insider trading, stock parking (concealing the real owner of a stock), tax evasion and numerous instances of repayment of illicit profits.

He pled guilty to six counts,  which likely were the least serious ones, securities and tax violations (i.e., not insider trading). So it sounds like a plea deal: the feds got jail time and a scalp on the wall; Milken avoided a long and expensive trial which might have resulted in much more serious penalties and which can be described as "technical", and therefore worthy of a pardon. 

The Return of the "Shorts"

Reading about Wall Street shenanigans in the 19th and 20th century often included discussions of "bears" and "shorts". It's easy to think those tactics are just a part of history, long since outmoded by federal regulation and modern finance.

Not so, according to this. Though to give the modern age it's due, it doesn't appear that there were underhanded things going on--just the ups and downs of a company pushing the envelopte.

Definitions of Farming: US Versus EU

Defining who is a "farmer" is complicated.  It's been 35 years since our legislation first tried to define "actively engaged in farming".

Yesterday I came across this piece, discussing EU's efforts first to define "active farmer" and now to define "genuine farmer".  The Irish are holding listening sessions with various farm groups (which are interesting in themselves, as different than US groups) which come up with various standards.

Hemp Insurance and Bureaucracy

Farmers.gov has a page on the announcement of hemp insurance and other aspects of growing hemp.

They note the need to report acreage to FSA, including their hemp grower registration number.  I searched on that and found this page for Virginia.  Virginia, of course, requires its own series of acreage reports

IMO this is a classic instance of how bureaucratic silos develop.  Something new comes up, and existing bureaucracies are assigned the job of implementing rules/laws. But since it's likely that the new responsibility doesn't fit neatly within the scope of one bureaucracy, we get duplication. 

I'd predict that 10 years from now the Virginia Hemp Growers Association will have formed and will be lobbying for a simplification and consolidation of paperwork requirements.

Presidential Health

As long as I'm discussing physical abilities today, I might as well offer my 2  cents worth on presidential health.

There's a current controversy over the release of medical records. I quickly agreed with Kevin Drum's post on medical and financial transparency.  Latter Twitter provided more information--Bloomberg is a qualified pilot, including helicopters, and passed an FAA medical exam last year; there's not that much difference among the types of medical information provided by current and past candidates--typically a physician's summary with some data but not really complete information.That includes Sanders.

Apparently Bloomberg had two stents inserted in the past, but not as aftermath to a heart attack.  Biden has survived brain surgery, which sounds scary but apparently doesn't have any meaning for the future.

Does the ADA Apply to Airlines?

I follow John Fea at the Way of Improvement.  Today he notes the controversy over reclining airplane seats.

He's 6' 8", so naturally he hates flying.

I wonder though--the Americans with Disability Act requires reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.  Couldn't height, in the context of airplanes, be considered a disability?

Answer: Based on a layman's skim of the ADA text it isn't.  The key thing seems to be this definition of disability:as a condition which  "...substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual".

Interest Rates and Savings Rates

Saw a chart showing the US savings rate over the years today.  It's interesting.  Here's the wikipedia page, which only goes to 2010. (Is wikipedia losing its oomph?)  It shows the savings rate dropping to about 4 percent in 1998 and 2 percent in 2005, recovering to about 7 percent in 2010. Since then the rate has been in the 7 percent neighborhood.

Some of the discussion, at least on one site, is how low the rate is, when considering how much people should be saving for their retirement.  But the article where I saw the graph was emphasizing the positive, the revival of the rate since the recession, noting how low the interest rates are currently.

That caught my attention.  I know just enough about economics to know that interest is the price of money.  So my (maive) assumption is that the higher the interest rate the higher the savings rate. But that doesn't appear to be the case.  I must be missing something.

(It is interesting the fluctuations of savings--in my young adulthood it was around 10 percent, from 1975 to 85 it declined to 7 percent before its most recent drops.

"Only" Versus "Nearly"

In a Times editorial today I saw a statement to the effect that "nearly one-third of Americans think same-sex marriage is wrong".  I don't know if the statistic is right, but it struck me that it should have read "only one-third....". 

In other words, what seems most important to me is how little opposition there now is to same-sex marriage, just about 25 years after President Clinton signed legislation "defending marriage". 

I never thought popular opinion could change that fast.  Indeed, when the subject was first raised, I didn't see it as a particularly serious or important initiative.  So frankly I wished it would go away, as making it an issue was a strategy Republicans/conservatives could use to defeat Democrats/liberals.

I was wrong then. 

The IRS Budget

Trump proposes to cut IRS employees by over 1,000.

Trump proposes an increase in IRS budget.

I saw both takes online, which was very confusing.

Here's a bit of explanation:

For the Internal Revenue Service, the plan proposes $12 billion, which is about a 4% increase from fiscal 2020, yet would decrease staff levels by 1,183 full-time employees. However, with $400 million in “cap adjustments,” there would be a net increase of 1,700 positions from fiscal 2020 levels. “Cap adjustments” are spending that is allowed above the limits in the 2019 budget agreement because of its potential to generate revenue.

There's much more at the link.

The Decline? of Dairy

Is dairy farming really going to hell in a handbasket? That's what I often see, with the trend to ever-larger farms and the decline of the dairy farms of the sort I knew in my youth.

But here's another take from a blogger I follow.  She notes the decline of "English" farms of 50 cows or so over the past 20 years, but notes their replacement by Amish farms.  I'm not sure where the Amish are marketing their milk.  Is it being sold as organic?  That would seem likely.  Anyhow the post is a reminder that change is complicated. 

The Importance of Hidden Improvements

Economic historians have an ongoing debate about the reasons for the Industrial Revolution and why it happened first in the UK and Netherlands.

One thing which occurs to me is the importance of hidden inventions: the sort of things which are important but haven't gotten attention, things like:

• the invention of eyeglasses
• the improvement of lighting--when did the whaling industry develop, was it to provide whale oil to light the lamps of the UK and US? 
• the development of quarantine as a means to counter infectious diseases
• the accumulation of people--the greater density of population leading to more interchange of ideas
• the spread of literacy meaning easier communication of ideas among people and over time.

We Should Calm Down II

See this wikipedia piece on party divisions.  Despite the Democrats moaning about the advantages which gerrymandering and the structure of the Senate give to the Republicans, during my lifetime I've lived through several Congresses in which the Democrats had at least a 3/5 margin in the Senate (albeit with 2 independents) and a couple recent Congresses in which they had a bigger margin in the House than the Republicans ever have. 

The key for us is continuing our 2018 progress at the state level in 2020.

We Should Calm Down

John Fea at the Way of Improvement blog sponsors this post on divisions within America. Zack Beauchamp at Vox has this post on the ills of our democracy.

Personally I don't buy the crisis talk.  I remember the divisions in the country in the 1950's and the 1960's and the 1970's and....  Notably in the late 60's and early 70's we had riots and terrorist bombings, not to mention our strongest third party movement in a long time.   We survived, and I'm sure we will continue to survive.  Trump will leave office on or before Jan 20, 2025.  I hope we elect a Democrat in 2020 who will lower the tensions and revive many of the norms which he has broken.  But if we have to live through another 4+ years, we'll survive.

The Importance of Heritage: Klobuchar

IIRC Hubert  Humphrey was called a "happy warrior" which turns out to be a poem by Wordsworth

The label has been applied to others, notably Al Smith by FDR, but Googling "happy warrior" and "Humbert Humphrey" has 285,000 hits.

Because the voting age was 21, I couldn't vote in 1960, but Humphrey was my candidate.  He made perhaps the most important political speech ever in the 1948 Democratic convention, one on behalf of civil rights and one which meant the exodus from the convention of the Dixiecrats who ended with Strom Thurmond as their candidate.

Once elected senator he was a stalwart for liberal causes through the 1950's, serving as a bridge between LBJ and the liberals, being active in many causes.

After Humphrey Walter Mondale and then Paul Wellstone continued the heritage of Minnesota liberalism in the Senate.

Klobuchar worked as an intern for Mondale, who has been a mentor to her since.  And Wellstone encouraged her first run for office.

The Marvels of Modern Medicine

I've some loss of hearing, so have been using hearing aids for about a year.  I don't wear them all the time, mostly when going out or watching movies. By themselves they are a marvel, small enough to fit inside the ear. The inside the ear bit is complicated--a tube, a little jobbie which fits into the tube but can be replaced when it gets clogged with earwax, and a rubber/plastic shield which fits over the jobbie which seems also to protect against earwas.

Anyhow I've used the aids often enough that I've had to replace the shield and the jobbie a couple times.  But two weeks ago a confluence of errors,including failing to test that the shield was securely attached, meant that the shield came off and was stuck way inside my ear.  Uncomfortable.

Anyhow after some days in denial, I went to the doctors.  My internist wasn't able to reach it, so I got a referral to an EMT specialist.  He had this machine connected to a TV screen so when he inserted his implement into my ear both he and eye could see the shield inside the ear canal. No sooner had I realized what I was seeing than he'd grabbed the shield with the implement and removed it.  Total elapsed time < 1 minute.

I don't know how economists account for such improvements in productivity.

Another View of Automated Indoor Growing

For some reason I feel more kindly to the operation in this article than I do the one in my previous post.

Why?

For one reason, the farm described is in a warehouse, one story, not multiple stories.  My guess is then that the cost for the building/real estate is lower per plant.  Might not be true but that's my take.

Another reason, the operation is described as experimenting, learning from failure.

A third reason, admission of problems, such as using cameras to monitor the health of plants is not always a replacement for eyeballs on the plants.

A fourth reason, the writer notes the cost differential and ask why people should pay the difference.  That's key to me.  I'm not convinced that simply better taste and fresher produce is going to be enough.  Maybe it will be; after all the Fuji apple has gained market share replacing the Red Delicious  as a standard apple.

Another Vertical Farm Dream

A dream by Framlab described in this piece promising to turn Brooklyn into an agricultural community.

My problem with the outline: it completely omits any discussion of people, at least the people who are supposed to do the work of tending the farm.  Apparently AI is supposed to do it all.  Not going to happen, they'll need a minimum crew.  And there's no discussion of marketing the produce (greens)--maybe it's supposed to be a grow your own operation.  Again, I don't think it's going to happen.

"Vertical farming" or at least hydroponics paired with AI can accomplish a lot, but not what's described here.

Was President Wilson Really Bad?

Since my college days the reputation of President Wilson has collapsed, mostly because his racism has gained attention.

But I'm puzzled by a note in the papers this morning--the 1917 Immigration Act, very exclusionist, was passed today over Wilson's veto.  I wonder why he vetoed it.
[Update below]
Through the magic of the Internet:

"In two particulars of vital consequence this bill embodies a radical departure from the traditional and long-established policy of this country, a policy in which our people have conceived the very character of their Government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of the Nation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the world outside their borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylum which have always been open to those who could find nowhere else the right and opportunity of constitutional agitation for what they conceived to be the natural and inalienable rights of men; and it excludes those to whom the opportunities of elementary education have been denied, without regard to their character, their purposes, or their natural capacity."

From wikipedia:

" This act added to and consolidated the list of undesirables banned from entering the country, including: alcoholics, anarchists, contract laborers, criminals, convicts, epileptics, "feebleminded persons," "idiots," "illiterates," "imbeciles," "insane persons," "paupers," "persons afflicted with contagious disease," "persons being mentally or physically defective," "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority," "political radicals," polygamists, prostitutes, and vagrants.[17]

To contain the so-called "Yellow Peril," the Immigration Act of 1917 established the "Asiatic barred zone" (shown in green), from which the U.S. admitted no immigrants.

Map showing Asiatic zone prescribed in section three of Immigration Act, the natives of which are excluded from the United State, with certain exceptions

For the first time, an immigration law of the U.S. affected European immigration, with the provision barring all immigrants over the age of sixteen who were illiterate. Literacy was defined as the ability to read 30–40 words of their own language from an ordinary text.[3] The act reaffirmed the ban on contracted labor, but made a provision for temporary labor. This allowed laborers to obtain temporary permits because they were inadmissible as immigrants. The waiver program allowed continued recruitment of Mexican agricultural and railroad workers.[18] Legal interpretation on the terms "mentally defective" and "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority" effectively included a ban on homosexual immigrants who admitted their sexual orientation.[19]

One section of the law designated an "Asiatic barred zone" from which people could not immigrate, including much of Asia and the Pacific Islands

(Wall) Maintenance Is Never Sexy

That goes for Trump's wall, as well. Among the items mentioned in the article are:

• Painting (Trump wants it black, not rust).
• Repairing sabotage--quite expensive because you need a crew and access to reweld.
• Maintaining roads for access and electronics. It's not clear to me what sort of electronics are involved and how durable they might be.
• Storm gates to allow storm water to flood arroyos. The gates have to be raised during storm season and monitored for people going underneath them.
• Undermined foundations.  Downpours can work to erode dirt from around the foundations,  leading to collapse.

The article says DHS isn't providing estimates on the maintenance costs.  It has a quote predicting in 20 years or so it will be a rusting relict in the desert. 

I can readily believe if and when we get immigration legislation and the situation in the Northern Triangle of Central America settles down Congress won't be eager to appropriate money for maintenance.  That fits with one lesson I learned in government--maintenance isn't sexy--it doesn't get management attention, you don't get medals for it, you don't get money or people to do it.  

Bloomberg's Helping Trump

News today that Bloomberg is increasing his campaign staff to 2,000 people.  Does he realize that the money he's spending on his campaign is simply helping Trump to boast of the state of the economy?

Adjusting to Innovation--Dentists

When I grew up I only saw the dentist as couple times.  Then a dentist in the Army filled a small cavity, and I went years/decades before I started seeing a dentist regularly.  Then he retired and I finally made connections with a Reston dentist.  After a few years she sold her practice to a new dentist.

Anyhow, for the first 70 years of my life, I was used being given a paper cup of water to sip and then spit out as the session went on.  When I started with the Reston dentist she had a setup with a flow of water in one tube and a suction tube to drain it out.  That's new and difficult for me to adjust to.  The new dentist tells me to close my lips periodically, which I don't remember his predecessor doing.  Somehow I get the feeling that a kid in the dentist's office for the first time would have a structured explanation of what's going on.  But because I'm old and perhaps because the dentist is assuming that I've had previous experience/training they skip that step with me.

The other new thing is flat screen TV to watch.  Not that I can take advantage--my eyesight isn't that good, the dentist is often obscuring my sight, and I've no idea of what I might want.  I wonder how many of the patients really get any benefit from it, versus it's being a signal of quality?

Driverless Cars for the Disabled

An article today in the papers on someone working on driverless cars for the disabled.  It seems to me quite possible such cars will fill niche spots, long belong they become widely usable.

The Ultimate File Cabinet for Bureaucrats

Via Marginal Revolution, this piece on the biggest, baddest file cabinet you ever saw.

Farmers Don't Believe Trump's Trade Promises?

From Chris Clayton's report on the recent American Farm Bureau convention's policy recommendations:

"Still, Farm Bureau members voted to keep language in the policy book supportive of MFP payments even with President Donald Trump touting trade wins in China and the congressional approval of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). 

"Our members are basically saying 'Show us results'," said Scott VanderWal, a South Dakota farmer and AFBF's national vice president. "We're very, very happy the president has the China phase-one agreement in place, USMCA in place and will be signed very soon, but no products have moved, implementation hasn't happened yet, and it's kind of a 'prove it to me' thing. When we get down the road, there is nothing we would like better than to really see these agreements kick in and show us some expanded market opportunities, and hopefully the markets will come back with that to where we can go back to making all of our income off the market rather than having the government make up for those trade disputes and the damage to the market that has been done."

Then and Now--V: Before TV

We didn't get a TV set until 1956 or 7, as I remember it.  I can remember the advent of the TV was a big thing.  We visited my aunt and uncle to see it--the program was Friday Night Fights.  Boxing was really big back then.  The series of fights between Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Robinson (the original "sugar ray") was legendary. The succession of the heavyweight title from Marciano through Archie Moore to Floyd Patterson and then Ingmar Johannson I'm sure made the front pages of the local newspaper, maybe not the Times.

Until we got the TV radio and games were our evening entertainment.  For a few years my sister, dad and I would play cut-throat pinochle.  Or we'd play crokinole.  I don't know whether the nation was paying more attention to radio programs or TV programs.  We'd listen to the Shadow, the Goldburgs, Sergeant King of the Mounties, Lone Ranger in the afternoon, mom would listen to Queen for a Day, later we'd listen to One Man's Family, a long running soap..  Gunsmoke was one favorite and Our Miss  Brooks  another.  Amos 'n Andy was on Saturdays, IIRC and I remember it, but it wasn't a family regular--I'm not sure why, perhaps my parents or sister found it objectionable.  I'm not sure; perhaps I remember some strain surrounding it but it might be my imagination.

The Texaco Saturday opera broadcast from the Met was a standard for my sister, not for the rest of us.

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Innovation as an Invasive Species/Infectious Disease

There's a lot of concern over inequality, over polarization of American society, etc.

In part I think we're having trouble with the advent of the Internet and of social media. I'd observe that in the past human society has taken time to adjust to innovation.  When railroads came along people were thrown into close contact with strangers in a new situation for extended periods of time.  It took time to develop norms and habits to deal with this, not to mention the need to standardize time keeping.

I'd suggest a good metaphor for innovation is to consider it an invasive species or a new infectious disease.  Initially the species or disease makes rapid inroads because humans don't have any developed immunity or there are no natural enemies..  Over time these develop.

I think this is true for society, as well.  Humans learn, eventually.  And they adjust, eventually.

Thoughts on Movies and CGI

Wife and I watched the 1993 movie "Gettysburg".  It's not a movie which would be made today. It's not how we see the Civil War battles, indeed not how we see war today.

But regardless, I want to note a technical difference.  In Gettysburg the moviemakers were able to use the thousands of Civil War re-enactors to serve as extras in the movie, especially of course in the battle sequences.  The result, to someone who's used to the CGI-enhanced or based battles of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones., is very different.

How? 

• in some ways it's more realistic.  It's more "fractal" I 'll call it because less regular. When crowd scenes are composed by creating one segment--say 50 riders on horses, and duplicate it multiple times to give the appearance of 500 riders, I think we subconsciously are aware of the duplication.
• it shows the difference between bottom-up and top-down compositions. When you have 1,000 real people coming together to act as soldiers their behaviors and actions retain a lot of individuality.  You're only able to get a high degree of uniformity in places/situations like Korean military or dance displays where the people can be trained over months and years.  When someone at a computer generates 1,000 images of people, while her imagination may be great she cannot imagine 1,000 realities.
• in some ways it's less realistic, or at least less supportive of the story.  In the scenes showing masses of soldiers there's always the odd person running around or someone doing something which wouldn't be included, not even thought of by a CGI designer.  It can be distracting because you can't determine whether the action is part of the story, or just random noise.  (It's probably more realistic in a real battle scene that's what happens, but it's not what we've been trained to expect in a movie.  Chekhov's thing was if you show a gun on a mantel in Act 1, it had to go off by Act 3.  That's not life, but it's modern storytelling.) 

I assume there will never be another Gettysburg, at least not shot on American soil.

Rising Insurance Rates: Car Not Health

Via Marginal Revolution a Wired post discusses the increasing costs of car insurance. It's up 30 percent in a decade.  It's interesting--who knew Houston lost 1 million cars?  But one thing it doesn't cover is whether there's any parallel between auto insurance and health insurance.

Then and Now--IV Housing

One of the big differences between the 1950's and now is housing:  Here's an Atlantic article
on the issue:

"The typical new single-family house in the U.S. is twice the size of the average urban or suburban dwelling in the European Union—more than 2,000 square feet versus approximately 1,000 square feet. ... In the past half century, the number of bathrooms per person in America has doubled. “We went from two people per bathroom to one person per bathroom in the last 50 years,” says Jeff Tucker, an economist at Zillow."

Everyone has their own room and their own bathroom.

Some Thoughts on the 1619 Project

One of the major items is the idea that the preservation of slavery played a big part in the American Revolution;  The best evidence appears to be

•  the southern reaction to Gov. Dunmore's offer of freedom to slaves who would fight for/work for the British.  
• fears that the Somerset decision, outlawing slavery in the UK, was a harbinger of changes in the colonies.

I'm a failed historian and I'm a WASP so my judgments are suspect, but here goes:

• the Dunmore issue is valid, but the timing makes it less relevant. As I learned in school, the run-up to the revolution took years, going back to the Stamp Act protests.  It comes in November 1775, after  the April Concord/Lexington fighting and months after the siege of Boston began.  It might have swayed Southern planters who were on the fence to decide to support independence.
• because slavery in the  British colonies in Canada and the Caribbean continued for years after the Revolution, people should not have had major concerns over the effect of Somerset.  But humans are able to worry about things without having a solid basis for it.  I'd like to see an analysis of discussion of Somerset in America between 1772 and 1776.

Polarization--A Speculation on Rural Rootedness

Ezra Klein has a new book out on our polarized nation.  Bob Somerby sees polarization as the biggest issue we have. There's different views on causes, but it seems true that some of the polarization is rural versus urban.

I've a speculation to offer: Is it true that rural residents are less mobile than suburban and urban ones?  My mental image is of counties which were settled in the 19th century, like Perry County, IL where my great grandparents settled.  Since the initial settling, sons and daughters have moved away, leaving a relatively static population of the oldest son (who got the farm) and his wife.  His children would repeat the cycle.  All that should mean that current rural dwellers have a long family history with the area which would contrast to the mobility seen in urban and suburban areas.

I don't know whether that image is true. It might not be. 

Then and Now--III

Determinants of Identity

In the 1950's in rural upstate New York:

• the most important identities were ethnic--Italian, Polish, etc. and religious: Catholic, Jew, Protestant.  There were the slang terms for each.  Catholicism was important, as my mother in particular had an inherited (Lutheran) suspicion of the church.  They gambled (bingo nights), they wanted their own schools, they were under control of the Pope, etc.  Mom may have been in the minority with these views, but they were strong, at least in the abstract if not when dealing face to face. One of my best friends was of East European extraction, his parents were immigrants, his father dying young, and Catholic.  Mom had no problems with that.
• I knew two Jews growing up (perhaps three, a son of a local family surnamed "Benjamin" was a playmate for a few early summers).  One was our family doctor, who I believe had emigrated from Germany before WWII; the other was the dealer who bought our hens and pullets, presumably for chicken soup in New York City.
• as for African-Americans, which we were careful to call "Negroes", not colored and not "n****r, because we were more enlightened than others, I'm sure I saw a handful on the streets of Binghamton (pop 80,000) but we had no interaction.  No blacks in the school, though I've a memory, possibly false or a dream, of someone enrolling for a few days when I was in high school. Don't know if that happened.  
• homosexuality was a subject not discussed, even more of a taboo than cancer was. It's possible some of my class (of about 40) were gay, but I never knew it then and haven't confirmed it now.  
• I think the bottomline is how high the wall of separation between me, a WASP, and these others was.  That lack of knowledge could create 

Now things are different--issues of religion and ethnicity seems antiquated. While I'm not good at making/keeping friendships, I've encountered enough people during my life to feel I know them, and could take my cue from Terence:  "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."^[

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