Not alone

From an essay by E.E. Doc Smith, found and posted by J.C. Wright

I have found motivation the hardest part of writing; and several good men have told me that I am not alone. It takes work—plenty of work—to arrange things so that even a really smart man will be forced by circumstances to get into situations that make stories possible. It takes time and thought; and many times it requires extra words and background material whose purpose is not immediately apparent. To refer to an example with which I am thoroughly familiar, what possible motive force would make Kimball Kinnison, an adult, brilliant, and highly valued officer of the Galactic Patrol, go willingly into a hyper-spatial tube which bore all the ear-marks of a trap set specifically for him? I could not throw this particular episode into the circular file, as I have done with so many easier ones, because it is the basis of the grand climax of the final Lensman story, “Children of the Lens.” Nor could I duck the issue or slide around it, since any weakness at that point would have made waste paper of the whole book. Kinnison had to go in. His going in had to be inevitable, with an inevitability apparent to his wife, his children, and—I hope and believe—even to the casual reader.

and

From the first quarter of the broad, general outline, only a few pages long, I made a more detailed outline of “Galactic Patrol;” laying out at the same time a graph of the structure, the progression of events, the alterations of characters, the peaks of emotional intensity and the valleys of characterization and background material. Each peak was a bit higher than the one before, as was each valley floor, until the climax was reached; after which the graph descended abruptly. My graphs are beautiful things. Unfortunately, however, while I can’t seem to work without something of the kind, I have never yet been able to follow one at all closely. My characters get away from me and do exactly as they damn please, which accounts for my laborious method of writing.

Poverty Point

Poverty Point was a bit too far out of the way for us last year, unfortunately. It's an ancient Indian earthwork site: built up between 1700 and 1100 BC. Much older than Cahokia, but younger than the pyramids of Egypt, and older than the MesoAmerican pyramids. One section dates back to 3900 to 3600 BC (beats the pyramids).

A TimeTeam video about a resistivity study came up in my wife's feed. There's speculation, and the study supplies some support for the idea, that the central plaza was built over a couple of (now extinct) mud volcanoes. Given the myths recorded later about people emerging from the earth--location, location, location: build something there.

One thing didn't make sense: a claim that the big mound (A) was built in 3 months. 238,000 cubic meters? I looked up the reference, and they concluded that the lack of obvious erosion or layering in the cores they took (in an area with plenty of rainfall), meant that "we cannot falsify the hypothesis the mound was built in less than three months."

Um. There seem to be other estimates. If you assume 50lb baskets, two per carrying pole (guessing that the locals invented them too), and that whether it was 1 digger and 1 porter or one doing both jobs and taking twice as long, that's about .05 m3 in maybe 40 minutes, and over 3 million man-trips. Give people a day off each week, and that's about 15,000 man-months. I've no intuition for how many people you could scrounge up to do that kind of work, but you'll need to feed them, so maybe double or triple the number to produce the food, and more to prepare it. Nominally this is before much agriculture (e.g. way before corn is found there), though I'll bet there was some, of quasi-wild varieties.

Not three months.

It looks like a very interesting site, and a long-lived one too. 2800 years of use. They estimate the last work was roughly about the same era is the famous collapses in the MidEast about 1200BC. China had some droughts about then, so maybe the Americas did too.

Streamlining

Years ago I got a computing magazine, and on each issue's last page they ran a short column on some amusing anecdote. One was a repairman's observation: a computer at the point of sale got shaken up each time the cash door slammed shut, so he helpfully moved it--and the computer started hanging. Apparently the disk's bearings were starting to go, and the little shake it got helped it unstick. Anecdotes like that.

One column was a story of an intern at BigExpensiveComputer Company, which had million-dollar support contracts on mainframes and software. As our hero learned the ropes of his small piece of a large project, he shared an office with a fellow who didn't do anything but read the sports sections and fiddle with things on his desk. Hero speculated on how the officemate kept his job with such a lousy work ethic. Hero came in one morning to find the officemate on the phone -- all day long -- stepping a customer with a crashed database through picking up all the scattered bits and putting the software back together.

Turned out said officemate was the only one left who understood a ancient computer/software combination that BEC Co had sold, and still earned seven figures on the maintenance of. BEC Co was happy to pay the man big bucks to sit around and figure betting odds on horses, just so he'd be there on that one day every few years when something really bad happened. Insurance.

How many places in government are like that, where most years you don't need an expert on shield volcanos, but this month something started steaming in Lake Erie and people want answers now?

The military is one role where efficiency isn't top priority, of course -- coverage and robustness compete with it.

For what it's worth in medical care

I've noticed that getting a doctor's apointment is taking longer, both in call-back and scheduling. The ER doc yesterday said they'd seen a massive uptick in visitors, which he attributed to fewer medical professionals. The closest Walgreens pharmacy has apparently had to close some afternoons because of staffing issues.

The 10,000

I like reading original sources when I can, and Grim reminded me of a very old one, written about 400 BC. I'd read a condensed version (for children) of Xenophon's story back in 4'th grade or thereabouts, but not the original. Thanks for the suggestion, Grim! He already has much more extensive (and apropos, since he was there) comments than I.

Some things stood out for me. One is how important sacrifices and studying omens was in their activity. At one point they delay action for an almost disastrously long time because the omens weren't favorable. The recorded speeches emphasize how important it is to be honest, because the gods hated evil oathbreakers. I don't know how much to rely on that professed attitude, since it is all filtered through Xenophon--and also because one of the recurring themes of the book is betrayal. Nobody trusts the Hellenes--and not altogether without reason. They don't entirely trust each other either.

Of course the biggest problem they face is food(*), and having 10,000 hungry soldiers and associated slaves and whatnot show up in your valley is a disaster for the locals. The soldiers won't be happy paying the higher prices that supply and demand considerations require, so either you get shafted financially or physically as they just take the goods. Either way, your valley goes hungry.

And, the Hellenes are mercenaries. Except for a few of the leaders, who hope for a bit of glory or power, they're in it for money, and sooner or later there'd better be some. Or portable valuables, or slaves.

As they get closer to home, the prospect of stopping to found a city gets more attractive to those without a family at home. How would they acquire the women? Slaves, or by having enough money for local doweries?

When such a large army shows up, local militia don't quite suffice, though they have some use in slowing or discouraging too-distant foraging.

They adjust their fighting configuration as they go--Grim explains that well. Major decisions have to be voted on by the soldiers, not just the generals--who can be similarly gotten rid of. I don't mean to disparage Xenophon, but that brought to mind the not entirely dissimilar democracy on pirate ships. (I don't know if privateers, who'd be more like mercenaries, were run along lines similar to pirates.)

Another theme that jumps out at you is just how different the attitudes were compared to modern Western military ideals. If you weren't defending your home turf directly, you wanted loot. I'm not claiming that modern army rules inherit much from the Templar oaths, or their rules (some of those look like what you'd expect if you wanted to maintain discipline in a standing army), but there seem to be similarities.

Read it yourself, and follow along with Grim.

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(*) If not for the lack of food along the way, they could have just retraced their steps and avoided almost all the fighting they had to do on the way back.

Renaming

Renaming things is pretty easy in google maps--just change a name or two in a database--but there are so many things to rewrite...

If only

I really want this to be true: it has been interpreted as suggesting that ice cream is good for type 2 diabetes and some heart issues (or at least for not getting them).

I've read before that dark chocolate is good for blood pressure. Never mind the nuance right now: since it has milk, milk chocolate should be even better, right?

I'm just waiting to hear that sourdough baguettes are good for weight loss.

Unfortunately, where they're true (and other studies disagree), it's only with caveats and that critical word "moderation." Are you telling me 1/2 kilo isn't a single serving bread size?

Cuts

"Elon Musk’s DOGE Axes $17M USAID Project In Liberia"

It sounds dramatic.

cancellation of a $17 million USAID-sponsored project for Liberia—a project originally intended to provide tax policy advice to the Liberian government.

Oh.

I'm not an expert on tax policy, though I do know the first rule is to actually collect them. Figuring out how other countries have fared with different policies would take me a bit of research, and maybe some translation services. I think I'd have the basic grasp of it after a few months, and a few more for details (devil is in the details). Call it a year, just for round numbers, and maybe assume salary and services costs of $300K. OK, now I'm an expert, or probably no worse than the ones out there, and I write my report. Step 1: weed out as much corruption in the revenue department as you can, etc.

I'd bet my report wouldn't differ too much from what they already know to do; maybe a little futzing with the tax rates, but their economy can only stand so much. The US was going to spend over 50 times my estimate.

I can't tell why: "The details of the $17 million project had been sparse", so it could be just about anything.

Overhead

CharityWatch keeps track of the relative overhead of charities: how much of the money they get goes into salaries and advertising and whatnot. Low fractions are good, high fractions warn of scams. Something like UMCOR had 3%, while BLM Global Network had 53% overhead (and poor governance and transparency).

They don't rate USAID. I wonder how much money turns into actual assistance.

To be fair, it's not clear that was ever exactly USAID's purpose. Before the current revelations I assumed that part of its grants went into direct aid programs, and part to development infrastructure (physical and legal) schemes, from which the local elite skimmed what they pleased--an unofficial bribery. (Oh, and apparently trying to overthrow the occasional government. I'm not saying that is never in the US interest.) Evidently the administrators thought that the USA also needed aid in developing in their favorite directions. I suspect that the net overhead--combining that at USAID and at the NGOs they funded--was extremely high, but I haven't yet seen numbers.

Relatedly, I read a claim that north of 90% of money for aiding Haiti stayed in the USA. I don't know where they got that number, nor exactly what it means: Did it include buying products here and shipping them there? Just sending money to Haiti--you might as well make the process efficient and put it in Swiss bank accounts directly.

Even when the parties are honest and dedicated, the overhead involved in keeping track of how a grant's money is used and the associated paperwork for grants can be noticeable -- so there's going to be some waste. The more diverse the programs which the entity funds, the greater the waste must be, since you need administrators knowledgeable about and able to detect shenanigans with reports about a variety of different things: not just orphanages and well projects.

Pennies

Goodby to the penny? FWIW, the argument that it costs more to make it than it is denominated at isn't quite as compelling as it seems--the question isn't how much it is denominated at but how much value it provides to the people who use it. Is is worth more than 3 cents to be able to break prices down to the penny over the lifetime of the coin? If almost everything is going debit or credit, maybe not. OTOH there are good reasons for not wanting every transaction to be electronic: fragility and the risk of 3rd party control of transactions.

Althouse cited a NYT article that noted that although the Treasury is mandated by law to produce coins, the number is at the discretion of the Treasury Secretary, and the number could be 0.

How the mighty are fallen. A penny used to be about a day's wages. But 1600 years of Royal coining dropped the value by orders of magnitude.

I hadn't known that Isaac Newton floated the idea of copper pennies.

gluschdich

"which means 'I am not hungry but I feel like eating!'"

I should make a magnet of that word, maybe illustrated, for the fridge door.

Vitreous detachments

are annoying. That flicker at the periphery isn't real, and the cloud of tiny floaters isn't warning of a gnat attack.

Jazzing up the description

Use literary or allusive references to describe chess. Queen's Knight could be Lancelot (Mallory be the pawn?), Becket could be the King's Bishop (Eliot be the pawn?). Windsor could be the Queen's rook (Howard?). Ranks could be partridge, dove, hen -- or maybe that's not elegant enough.

I need to think about move descriptions; "Howard showed Mallory eternity?"

Slickensided kettlebottoms

are a coal mine hazard. Coal mining is more complicated than it looks. Floors can heave too, though this is slower than having the cast of a carboniferous tree fall on you.

I love the word slickensided, and can't remember where I heard of it before. I didn't know what it meant then.

Interceeding

Watching a young mother corralling an energetic toddler at service this morning brought Romans 8:26 to mind: "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; ... the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words". Who can concentrate on worship when "Mommy, mommy!"? but we have an intercessor.