Inverted Social Norms

Back the day rural areas were viewed positively, with high morality, great character, all the virtues (at least so my mother thought). Meanwhile urban areas were viewed negatively, with dubious morality, poor character, divorce, gambling, drugs,  many dangers. By the 1970's it was clear where the balance of goodness was.

These days it seems that rural areas are the ones with problems, higher death rates, drugs, broken marriages, etc.   Meanwhile the gentrified urban areas and suburbs are seeing a new social conservatism--less sex outside of partnerships or marriage, indeed less divorce, less smoking, etc. 

Bar/CR Codes for Classified Documents?

 I had very limited exposure to the classification system for government documents during my time in ASCS/FSA.  IIRC ASCS did get some classified documents as part of the distribution system for the agricultural attaches stationed in some embassies.  I'm not sure why some, a few I think, were classified; perhaps the attaches had a report on the status of a nation's crops which were obtained by befriending a statistician--I don't know.  Anyhow, a management analyst in Records Management had a clearance and handled them.  I suspect the whole setup was a carryover from New Deal days, before USDA silos were built up, possibly before Foreign Agricultural Service was formed.

Anyhow, I'm not surprised by problems in handling and tracking classified documents.  You might be able to have secure handling if you used a dedicated database with no ability to copy, download, or print.  That way you could track the user ids anytime a document was read.  But, with the possible exception of the most highly classified, that's not practical.  (It does seem that when documents are viewed in a SCIF that while they could be printed, nothing could be taken out of the facility. 

For the more ordinary classified documents, I wonder if they have a system of bar coding or CR coding for them. The problem of course would still be the copying, printing, downloading--how do you assign a unique identifier to the copy, printout, or downloaded document?  If election officials and USPS can assign a unique code to a ballot so it can be tracked, but they don't deal with  duplication.

Rear Ends and Third Parties

 I've been rear-ended twice in about 3 years, both times in leased vehicles. No major damage or injuries in either.  Both times I'd argue a third party caused it.  Both times on Reston Parkway.  In the first a car very quickly moved from the lane on my rear into my lane and over to the lane on my left. I had to brake sharply, and the man behind me was unable to stop in time.  In the second, I was stopped at a light.  When it changed I anticipated the vehicle ahead moving out, but the driver opened his door and tossed the remains of his coffee out before starting off.  Took a couple seconds, but in the time I took my foot off my brake and then put it back on when he didn't move.  While the driver who rear ended me said she was at fault, looking at a broken fingernail, I think what may have happed is: she looked up, saw my brake light go off, looked down and missed my brake light going back on.  

A Ponzi Scheme? No, a Howe Scheme

 While I'm sure she didn't invent the idea, Sarah Howe did precede Mr. Ponzi in bilking people out of their money by promising unrealistically high returns and paying them off with the deposits from later suckers.  That's from this Jstor piece on women's banking.

(I didn't realize the Homestead Act gave women the right to homestead as well as men.)

Price of Using the Internet Is Eternal Vigilance?

 Someone said "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance". 

Maybe we should update it.  Just got a message supposedly from Paypal asking for money. It's a scam, but one I've not seen before. 

Maybe I Should See "Hamilton"?

 I know the musical is good but today I wrote a letter to the editor of the Post, in the course of which I looked up the lyrics of one of the songs--The Room Where It Happens.   Makes me think I should see it.  Is it available on Netflix? 

"Aging Software"?--Tufekci Is Wrong?

NYTimes columnist Tufekci had a piece  discussing Southwest Airlines problems in managing their airplanes and personnel.  I just looked it up online on Thursday evening, finding to my surprise the Times has a featire in their comment system called NYTimes replies where she responded to some of the comment.

She puts the blame on "aging software" used to schedule pilots and crew.  I'm not sure why I immediately objected to the term, but here's my thoughts:

"Aging", which I am, means to me a deterioration of abilities, your body goes, your mind goes, you go. But software, once written (and debugged) remains the same, essentially forever. It's a set of ideas, of data, of information, which may be lost or destroyed, but will always do what it was capable of doing at its origin. 

Tufekci also uses the metaphor of building a structure, but using shortcuts, skimping on the foundation, etc.  Saving money now but setting the stage for problems later.  That's also wrong.   She mentions "technical debt", which is an interesting concept, but seems to me to conflate problems. 

I'd suggest the Southwest problem is a problem of "aging", but not in the sense I outlined above--deterioriation.  Consider the mature individual, the completed building, the proven software--each fits its environment, fulfills its function. There's a match of thing and context. Obviously the match isn't perfect; it may be flawed, corners were cut on the building or the software, the individual ends in the wrong occupation, with the wrong spouse, etc.)  As time passes, the building and the individual will deteriorate, they'll require maintenance to stay functional. But not the software, except as bugs appear. 

So the term "aging" has two sides: change for the worse in the entity discussed and change in the environment in which the entity operates, impairing the match between entity and environment.

For Southwest I suspect their software dates to the airline's early days, when it was doing point-to-point flights, basically within California.  It's expanded vastly over the years, getting lots of plaudits from customers.  The consensus seems to be they failed to spend enough on upgrading their software.  News media doesn't die into details, so we don't know whether the software ran into capacity limits, whether the system was never changed to use new technology (like generating text messages to personnel), whether the fundamental data model was flawed in light of the new environment and the impact of very bad weather, or whether all of the these factors were at work.

At the end there's a mismatch of capacity and environment. For humans the capacity declines and the environment changes. For software the capacity stays the same while the environment changes. 

New House Rules for Farm Bill

 Under the new House rules, each bill must have a single subject. I'm wondering how they'll describe the farm bill.

Chevalier--I Remember It Well

 The snowstorm of February 11, 1983, that is.  My fiance and I had a meeting with a priest to arrange for our wedding later in the year.  When we came out of St. Mathews it was impossible for us to get out to Reston, so I got a hotel room.  The next morning we got a cab out to Reston. It had to drop us off about a few hundred yards from the house, so we trudged through the snow, me in my loafers IIRC. 

The Politico story says that the snowstorm shut down DC, enabling Nancy Reagan to set up a family dinner with the Shultzes, over which the relatively new Secretary of State bonded with the president, and which led eventually to Reagan's opening to the Soviets.

That's what happens when the unexpected hits; the people who are confined together form bonds.  Notoriously, Clinton and Monica started their bonding during the government shutdown. 

Loft Living and Office Conversions?

 Some discussion in media about conversions of office towers into residential space. 

Back in the day, 1960s or so, converting warehouse loft space into residences for the arty crowd was a thing.

Before that converting urban houses to commercial uses was a thing.  I remember in Greene NY in the 1940s we patronized 2 groceries, 1 hardware store, and a movie theater all converted from houses.