The Joys (sic) of Manual Labor

 Ever since I left the farm, my experience of manual labor has been mostly at my discretion.  That's key.  Even when it isn't, as when we get a big snowstorm and I have to shovel out it's not too bad.  I can tell myself I'm fighting the elements, along with some (not many, the softies) of my neighbors.

Gardening is a hobby with a reward of vegetables, so the work involved is just a prerequisite to a payoff.

There have been times when I really got into using my hands.  The family farm was populated with my father's constructions and improvements: hen houses, brooder houses, range shelters, milk house, cow shed, equipment shed, 3 stall garage, etc. My attempts were more domestic, dining room table and chairs, light box, book shelves, etc.  That was all after I bought my house and before marriage.

This last week or so has brought me back to manual work, not building anything, but repairs around the house. It's been a change from my usual winter routine of reading and TV, but enough to remind me of the satisfaction that can come when you fix something, not as well or nearly as quickly as the expert who does the work for her living, but "good enough fo,r government work", as we used to say.

A Test for "Vertical Farming"

 Starting to see articles on problems that "vertical farming" enterprises are encountering.  Basically it's energy costs, which have gone up recently. Unfortunately energy costs can be quite variable, as anyone who lived through the 1970's can attest. I'd also expect a lot of variation as society digests the conversion to renewable energy sources.

(I was dubious of vertical farming from back when it just was pie in the sky, relying on the sun for energy.  In the very long range, if we get to cheap fusion energy, vertical farming may indeed become economically feasible. But that's a long way away.)

What Robots Learn From Us

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution wrote something, a mere sentence, which impressed me, impressed me so much I misremembered it as "what will robots learn from us?"  (Cowen wrote "A.I.s" but "robots" is the term I like, which I think can include all forms of artificial intelligence.)

It's a good question--mostly robots and other forms of artificial intelligence learn what humans have already learned, at least the humans living in the world of robots, etc.That means, by definition, that they will be biased. 

I wrote "mostly" because for example robots which learn to walk, learn what it means in terms of their motors, gears, and levers--their bodies--not what it means for humans to walk  So robots do experience the world somewhat differently than humans. Possibly robots won't learn some things from us; it's hard to say.

Merry Christmas

 Hope you get more than you deserve, as the theology of this day goes. 

Professor Evaluations

 I follow a fair number of professors on Twitter, mostly historians. I occasionally see tweets complaining about the student evaluations they receive. 

I don't have any sense at all of how student evaluations compare with other evaluation setups, like reviews of products on the Internet, or reviews on Yelp. You'd think it's likely that the evaluations would be somewhat similar--that is, my perception of product and service reviews is that they tend to be more favorable than my intuition is.  Certainly when I evaluate I tend to lend to the positive so I assume that's true of others.

Sometimes the evaluation reported in the tweet is critical, and often the reaction is dismissive.  I suppose that makes sense--if you get some criticism which is useful, it's not going to irritate you enough to tweet about.  But the dismissive bit strikes me as reflecting insecurity and aggravates me enough to blog about evaluations.

Anyhow, I remember an evaluation I got once from my presentation on some program; don't remember which one.  It was mixed, to the effect Bill knows his stuff, but he drones in a monotone. 

😀

It was, and is, true.  It was useful.  IIRC this was near the end of my career in making presentations, and likely accelerated it.  It was much easier to sit in the rear of the meeting room whild one of my employees made her presentation and pat myself on the back for putting her forward. 

Tesla Self-Driving Good Enough for Me

 I struggled to find the NYTimes article I want to comment from.  Turns out it 's over a month old, on-line, but just published in the print version today. It's a ride-along with the owner of a Tesla self-driving car, something of a beta test as they try to improve their software to be safe for wide release.  The owner has a specific location which apparently gives the current software fits, a left turn with 3 lanes of on-coming traffic into a specific lane of another 3-lane road.

My reaction to the description: it's good enough for me to buy.  I've leased my last two cars, on the mistaken assumption that I might not be driving in the future (the future keeps receding, but it's coming). Anyhow, that means I know I've driven about 5500 miles in 2 years.  Granted that part of the figure is the result of reduced activity from the pandemic, but as I age I drive less.

More importantly, the proportion of my driving which occurs on routes I've used before keeps increasing.  I don't know what it is, but likely 95 percent or more.  That means if I buy a self-driving car it can quickly become familiar with my routes, and familiarity means the software can handle more and more situations.  Also, as an older driver I'm more cautious than the average bear (much to the aggravation of some of my fellow drivers), so I'm both more likely to pay attention to the car's operation and less likely to be frustrated as the car responds to new situations by slowing and/or stopping--something which I've seen reported as a problem. 

So the bottom line, there's a niche out there to sell self-driving cars; it just needs to be identified.  Once such cars get into the niche, the process of expanding their capabilities to expand the niche can proceed much faster.

Tax Returns Public?

 I feel conflicted about the possible release of Trump's tax returns.  It's a slippery slope; release his and pretty soon you're releasing returns of all candidates, even for dog catcher.  The system BT (before Trump) was pretty good; candidates released tax information but they could fudge a bit around the edges. As long as they paid obeisance to the idea of public knowledge, they could get away with the fudges. (No, I don't have cases to cite, but just a vague memory of some candidates in primaries doing so.)

On the other hand, my great grandfather's taxable income was released back in Civil War days and published in the local paper, along with everyone else's. Why should we be different.

[Had an interruption to blogging because of house problems.]

Fifth Act--Relying on Connections

I blogged earlier about  Eliot Ackerman's Fifth Act,  Thinking about it some more--one thing stands out is the reliance on personal connections. In the chaos of our exit from Afghanistan, personal connections were everywhere.  Initially it was the personal connection of American soldiers, diplomats, and contractors with those who had worked with them.  The Afghani asked their friends to help. As the days passed and the panic spread, Afghanis who had no such history contacted Afghanis who had the connection: a friend of a friend, a cousin, a neighbor.

Once contacted the Americans, like Ackerman, relied on their own connections. An ex-soldier contacted an old comrade still in Afghanistan.  As the days passed, the calls for help spread, asking any acquaintance who might have any pull over the Marines at the Kabul airport for help.  Sometimes the calls go to the chain of command but those at the gates have more power; the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is eventually at the mercy of and relying upon the grunt, the lieutenant at the gate.

In the situation, the bureaucratic rules get bent and broken, which I imagine is common in extreme cases.

I also see the whole process is dependent on the internet--the appeals for help may be phoned, but the logistics needed to coordinate the arrival of a group at the appropriate airport gate at the time when the right American is there; they all rely on forms of internet communication: email, Twitter, Slack, 

I assume our exit from Saigon back in the day was somewhat similar, but without the internet the connections were much more limited.

The Doomed Quest for Clarity in Government

 The Senate has passed a bill to: "expand and update an existing law on plain language requirements for agencies" which is to apply to all writing which the public might read, i.e., contracts, applications, etc. etc.

Why do I say it's doomed?  We've had almost 55 years worth of campaigning on the subject with no claims of victory.

I remember Jimmy Carter, who had a drive for "Plain English". See this website.  At that time we had to include in the clearance package for regulations a certification that the regulation had been reviewed for plain English. It turned into a rubber stamp exercise.  That's the way it goes in the bureaucracy.  The bureaucrat is most concerned that the document be acceptable to those who clear it, to her bosses whether in the chain of command or with veto power (often the lawyers). Those people are years removed from a personal concern with the clarity of government forms. 

Looking Ahead to 2024

 Sen Sinema's switch to being an independent is viewed as a way to avoid a Democratic primary which she would likely lose.  So if she runs as an independent in 2024 it may be a 3-way contest, possibly splitting the Democratic and independent vote and permitting the Republican to win.  There's lots of possibilities--if it appears Sinema will run, does that mean the Democratic and Republican primaries will be more favorable to the more radical candidates?  

I've also seen discussion over the adverse Senate map for 2024--Tester, Manchin, Brown, Rosen, and AZ are all chancy or adverse.   A Democratic who has rose-colored glasses might predict that by Nov. 2024 the economy will have picked up, having dodged a recession next year, and we can compare the country to 1984.  And Biden will have become popular, and the Republicans will have been flailing in Congress to do anything.  And if the Republican presidential candidate is Trump, or someone equally as unpopular and incompetent (hard to imagine, but don't underestimate Republicans), we could be looking at a landslide.

I estimate the probability of that outcome as <1 percent.