Watch Out for Biplanes

 They killed the last two American troops who were attacked from the air (towards the end of the Korean war.)

That factoid from David Kilcullen's The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West. I'm about 100 pages in, finding it interesting and convincing.  So far he's using an ecological/evolutionary approach to the recent history (say from 1991 on) of war, and the changes in how the opposing parties have changed their tactics and strategies, mostly learning from defeats.

One observation is that NSA can gather much more data than they can analyze. Terrorist/insurgent organizations don't rely on privacy laws, but on hiding in the woods of all the other data. I think that also applies to the average citizen--we get lost in the mass of data, so we don't need to be paranoid. 

Future Job Losses--Data Entry, Secretaries

 Ran into a projection of occupantions predicted to lose jobs over the next 10 years. Don't have the link. As I recall, data entry types, secretaries, and (personal/executive) assistants were big losers.

My guess is that's continuing a trend as the impact of computing and the internet affects office work.  As we develop systems online more of the data entry is outsourced to the user, the customers.  Even IRS may be moving in that direction. And the secretary/assistant category likely reflects moving work from "auxiliaries" to their "principals", both a move from formal communications (letters with multiple copies) to informal (email and texts with electronic copies) and the increased capabilities of software.  Bottom line: people believe it's faster and more efficient to do their own email than to have an auxiliary do it; easier to arrange their own travel; easier to be available for texts and calls on cellphones with software tools for screening than to rely on human screeners.  

There might also be a decline in the value of "servants" (which after all is what secretaries and assistants are) in signalling status.  We don't notice it, but I think there may be a decline in the number of chauffeurs, butlers, chefs the rich have these days, at least compared to the very rich.   There may be an exception for entertainers, like athletes and movie stars.  The premium on the physical, both fitness and appearance, means it's worth paying for personal trainers, hairdressers, etc.  

Me and Drezner

 I always found Dan Drezner interesting to follow, on twitter, blogging, and in the Post.  Now he's moved to Substack and is trying to drum up readership.

He offered three contrarian positions for consideration as possibly attracting interest.

Here's my comments:

Trump voters? May not be that interesting.  Remember the yellow dog Democrats? We have rattlesnake Republicans, people who've always voted Republican and will continue to do so.  I grew up in upstate NY where if you wanted a choice, you voted in the Republican primary.  It took Goldwater's candidacy to break the hold, at least for a while.

Globalization? I'm too old to change from being a free trader.  We don't yet know how to have a good safety net for those displaced by it, but I was one of the liberals in the 60's and 70's who opposed Ike's "trade, not aid" (IIRC).  Turns out he was righter than we thought. I can't get past the changes in what we called the Third World..  Anti-globalism is just an example of the thermostatic effect on a world scale.

Pandemic northingburger?  That's too obvious to be interesting, at least when confined to IR. Sociologically, a different story.

Events Which Change Elections

NYTimes newsletter from Nate Cohn discussing election polls, also whether the Clinton indictment was a possible parallel to the impact of Dobbs on the campaign.

In comments there I suggested that Sputnik was in some ways comparable--a surprise event, raising the importance of a new issue, close enough to impact the 1958 elections in which Dems did very well --48 House and 15 Senate.

It helped that there was a recession in 58 and Ike was in his second term. It set the stage for JFK's pledge to get the nation moving and for the (false) concerns about "missile gap."

Plastic in the Ocean

 Fairfax has recently banned plastic shopping bags.  I've seen calculations of how many times you'd have to use a durable shopping bag of different types to balance the impact of plastic bags on the ecology.  What the calculations miss is the cost of collecting bags from the landscape, and the seascape. which must easily make the durable bags worthwhile. Bottom line: you have to calculate the cleanup costs to have an accurate picture.

When in Trouble...

 When in trouble or in doubt

Run in circles scream and shout.

Herman Wouk--Caine Mutiny  

(My memory is Wouk made it seem like a quotation, but it seems it was original with him.)

For Politicians:

When in trouble or in doubt

Spend money any amount.

Does Studying History Pay?

 Saw a chart of earnings by field of study in a newspaper today.  Interesting enough "history" earned more than computer programmer. (The thrust of the article was that students were being pushed towards STEM majors.)

Government Salaries

 Today in the NYTimes Magazine the ethics column written by Prof. Attiah has a letter from a young attorney-to-be, who will have $150K in student loans and dislikes the idea of working for a big firm where:

The salary would be enough for me to pay off my loans, help my family and establish a basic standard of living for myself — plus maybe own a house or even save for retirement, which would be impossible for me on a public-interest or government salary.

I'm not sure what the writer thinks a "basic standard of living" involves. FWIW new attorneys for the federal government start at about $56K (with locality adjustments). 

When Did Ass Become (Semi-)Proper?

 An article in the Harvard Magazine described the Harvard Law experience of a woman who preceded RBG (Orin Kerr linked to it in a tweet).  The author describes a class where women were grilled over past legal cases with language which would be embarassing.  Hers was a case involving a farmer's ass (donkey) who got out onto the road.  This happened in 1956, a year I remember well enough to know that "ass" was never mentioned in polite society; neither was "butt" for that matter, except in the context of cigarettes.  

I've been struck by changes in language usage over the years--"ass" being one.  These days it seems pretty common in the print media, much more so in entertainment.  So I decided to do an ngram search. In America its frequency of usage seems to take off in the mid '90's, reaching a peak in 2014 and declining slightly since.  (The British usage pattern differs.)

Unbelievable--So Much for White Superiority

The other day the Times had an article discussing the composition of the cabinet selected by PM Truss, which notably had no white males in the top four positions. Rather buried in the depths of the article was this fact: 

In part, the gains in government by people of color reflect social change and advances through education. On average, ethnic minority pupils have outperformed white Britons at school in recent years. In every year from 2007 to 2021, white pupils had the lowest entry rate into higher education.

I'm used to looking at the various breakdowns of statistics about our society and seeing what I might call the "usual suspects"--that is, Euro-Americans or Asian-Americans at the top, if the statistic relates to something good (wealth, income, etc.) and Afro-Americans and Hispanic-Americans at the bottom. The positions reversed if the statistic relates to crime, helath, life expectancy, etc.

We see that so often we, at least I,  start thinking it's the expected order, which is just a step away from being "natural". 

But this statistic from the UK upsets those expectations. And it raises the key question: what the hell is going on; why the difference in societies?