Cars and Pedestrians--a Metaphor-I

 When I cross Reston Parkway on the way to and from my garden, I now use the button for pedestrian crossing.  (I used to jaywalk because it was easy enough to see oncoming traffic, I was impatient, but no longer--the risk seems greater the older I get.) Particularly going to the garden there's often stopped cars in the 2 through lanes, so cars zooming up Reston and looking to make a right turn onto Glade can't see me starting to cross. They are used to not having to stop, despite the law. 

As I'm walking I silently dare the bastards to run into me.  

When I drive north on Reston Parkway to the library, Home Depot, or Trader Joes, I pass by Reston Town Center.  There's apartment buildings on the south side of the road, with the hotel, stores and office buildings of the center on the north side.  So there's a pedestrian crossing with a button. With a four-lane parkway, it takes forever for the damn pedestrians to amble across.  Or at least, the light is timed so as not to hurry an eighty-year old man with bad legs.

I sit in the car, steaming.  

I think this scenario can serve as a metaphor for racism. 

I'll try to expand on this in the future.

Fearing Climate Change--Don't Underestimate Resilience

 Virginia Postrel has an old article  on several things, but the hook is the difference between East and West Coasts, specifically Silicon Valley and Boston.  It leads up to this:

In his 1988 book, SEARCHING FOR SAFETY, the late UC-Berkeley political scientist Aaron Wildavsky laid out two alternatives for dealing with risk: anticipation, the static planning that aspires to perfect foresight, and resilience, the dynamic response that relies on having many margins of adjustment:

Anticipation is a mode of control by a central mind; efforts are made to predict and prevent potential dangers before damage is done. Forbidding the sale of certain medical drugs is an anticipatory measure. Resilience is the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back. An innovative biomedical industry that creates new drugs for new diseases is a resilient device. . . . Anticipation seeks to preserve stability: the less fluctuation, the better. Resilience accommodates variability; one may not do so well in good times but learn to persist in the bad.

 I want to apply the distinction to our approach to climate change. Most of the things we're doing are anticipatory, central, top-down.  That's good, but my general optimism is based on human resilience.  There are many things going on which will enable us to survive with a reasonable standard of living.  For example, in today's papers there was a brief mention of scientists working on wheat varieties which are more heat tolerant. 

Who, Me Worry? GOP Election Deniers

 Kevin Drum has a post on the election deniers who are seeking office. There's lots of concern over the idea that someone who thinks the 2020 election was fraudulent being in a position of authority over the 2024 election.

I'm not nearly as worried about it as others seem to be.

Why not?  Human nature.  Put briefly, I think once most of these people get into office (which I fervently hope does not happen), they'll try to run "fair" elections by their lights.  "Fair" may well include more restrictions on voting than I want, but I don't see many trying to stuff ballot boxes. 

Way too optimistic?  Maybe, but that's my prediction.

Sweden Lunches at Neighbors

 This thing about a neighbor's child not eating at a nearby home is oldish. I don't remember ever eating at a neighbor's house when I was young, or vice versa.  There weren't many children in my neighborhood in the first place.  In the second, I think the common expectation was that meals were at a set time and you were expected to go home to eat. 

Ken Feinberg

 Saw the movie "Worth", which is based on Kenneth Feinberg's work administering compensation for victims of 9/11, and his book.

They juiced the movie by focusing on people and incidents, as movies do, but both are good.

The book is interesting from a bureaucratic standpoint--though Feinberg doesn't say so, he goes through the classic steps of American bureaucracy (for a distribution program*), reading the law (very general), meeting management (Attorney General Ashcroft and DOJ), writing regulations, creating forms to gather data, then selling the program, accepting some as participants, disqualifying others, then dealing with the friction between the bureaucratic model and the real reality, and finally issuing checks.

Feinberg had some experience before 9/11 with mediating and doing compensation, but afterwards he handled many more such situations.  It's interesting, because he doesn't endorse the 9/11 process as an example, particularly the use of "economic value" of a life, an after-the-fact life insurance program.  

* My government professor, Theodore Lowi, had categorized government programs into: redistribution, regulation, and distribution.

Jan 6 Hearing Starts

 I don't have high expectations for the Jan 6 committee's work to change many minds. Those who oppose the former guy may watch; those who (incredibly) love him won't. 

Why I Don't Believe in Great (White) Replacement Theory

 It's true that the current white majority of Americans will diminish as we accept more immigrants from areas other than Europe, and as new immigrants tend to have a higher birth rate than non-immigrants.

I expect "whites" to continue to be a plurality of the country for the foreseeable future because:

• immigration will ease somewhat as the non-European world becomes richer
• immigrant birth rates will converge to the rates of non-immigrants
• the definition of "whites" will change and expand as it has in the past.  Acculturation (loss of accents, etc.) and intermarriage will see to that.  

I expect the culture to continue to be "white", although with changes as the world changes. I think you can still see the imprint of the early white settlers, especially in New England but also in the South, for good and bad on the culture and beliefs of America.  I think that will continue. 

I might have a different opinion if the "replacements' represented one culture, but they don't.  Wherever you look there's variety among the immigrants: Asians from many different countries; Latinos from many different countries; Africans and Afro-Caribbeans from different countries. As they arrive, we lump them together, and they in part accept the lumping. But the differences continue for decades.  It's taken more than my lifetime for the differences betwee the WASPs and Eastern/Southern European immigrants after the Civil War to lose their power. 

It's not like Eire and Northern Ireland or Israel, where you have two groups, one majority that's shrinking, the other a minority that's growing.  That's a much dicier situation, harder to keep calm and more likely, I think, to see a "replacement" occur (though I suspect the cultural differences between Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Arabs are less than those among our immigrants.

See this Post article

All the Little Silos

 The Times has an article on the high-tech weaponry reaching Ukraine and the problems associated with it. Some of the technology is striking, particularly the laser range finder, which works at night, uses GPS and provides targeting coordinates. 

 Mostly it's lack of trained personnel, but in the case of the range finder it's also the lack of a tripod and monitor, the auxiliary tools to make it work smoothly.

But what I found blog-worthy were the incidental mentions of the various silos which humans have erected. 

For example, the long range howitzers the US just provided are built according to US measuring systems (our "imperial" system, aka inch/foot), not the metric system Ukraine and the rest of the world uses (every country except Liberia and Myamar), That means to perform maintenance and/or repair them the mechanic needs US tools, wrenches, not Ukrainian. 

The range finder uses NATO grid coordinates, not the Soviet system Ukraine has, so a conversion is necessary. 

Of course the howitzers and other technology come complete with manuals--the military is great on manuals.  And everyone knows English, of course. (Apparently Google Translate has been helpful to break through this silo wall.)

Elsewhere in the media there's been another mention of the problem of different railroad gauges complicating the export of grain by rail through Poland.

What Did Historians Make of Muskie's (Supposed) Tears?

 Bob Somerby doesn't have a high opinion of the media, or of liberal thinkers, usually.  Sometimes his posts are tedious, but sometimes not.

Because he's close to my age, Harvard-educated, and former Baltimore schoolteacher, I read him.

Today's post discusses the episode of Muskie's tears, back when he was the leading contender for the 1972 Democratic nomination, having done a good job as Humphrey's VP partner in 1968.  Part of the Watergate investigation revealed/highlighted  Nixon's dirty tricks campaign against Muskie.  Woodward and Bernstein discussed it in yesterday's Post as part of their 50th anniversary piece on Watergate.

I remember both the report of Muskie's "tears" when he spoke defending his wife, and the dirty tricks campaign, as well as the Waldman piece in the Post this century which Bob covers. 

I've wondered over the years what today's historians have made of the story. By today's standards Muskie's defense of his wife is goodish, his vulnerability if he actually cried should not have been disqualifying, the question of whether he actually cried and whether the reporters/media types handled it correctly makes it too complicated to cover briefly.  That's assuming they understand the story. But when I'm cynical I'm guessing it's the sort of factoid which isn't closely examined; it just gets added to the text to provide color, etc. 

Is my cynicism correct?

What's Watergate? Teapot Dome?

 I quote from a NYTimes piece on a focus group, asking Americans about various topics.

The first response when Nixon and Watergate is raised:

"I don’t think it gets taught enough. My high school students, when they think of Watergate, they think it’s a new shower head or something. It’s a time in our history that shows the demise of a leader who was taking advantage of the American people, as well as the government itself. I’ve never heard the kids coming home and saying, “Oh, we learned about Watergate.”

My wife and I roared with laughter.