Flawed natality data

Number of births in 2023 and 2024 siloed by highest educational attainment of the mother

Annual birthrate per 100 mothers based on US Census data for number of women in each educational silo. The birthrate for women with Ph.D.s appears to be a flier.

Birth numbers from CDC Natality site. You need to drill through several layers to get to the request form. Only number of births available for Educational Attainment silo.

Number of women by highest educational attainment from US Census Bureau.

Flawed number. "...for women 25 years old and older..." so the denominator is too low (except for the Ph.Ds and maybe the Master's). The discrepancy is in the denominator so I would expect the "some college" denominator of "Bachelors to decrease for births to 20 and 21 year-olds and for Master's to decrease for births to 20-to-24 year-olds thereby shortening the "some college" column and raising the Bachelor's and Master's columns slightly.

Number of births siloed by age of mothers. The blue columns are 2016 data and the red columns are 2024 data.

 

In 2016 the population was estimated to be 329million and in 2024 the population was estimated to be 345 million.

The graph appears to show women choosing to delay their child-bearing until "later". 

A delivery of pewter for my manufacturing hobby

 

"Holy macaroni! What is in this package?" the lady at the post office asked.

"Gold Krugerrands" I replied.

With cities yanking out lead service pipes, this is a good time to stock up on heavy metals. In ten years it might be hard to find castable pewter-like metals on the open market. 

Super Bowl Halftime Shows

Marketing missteps create opportunities for competitors

I don't see the latest Super Bowl Halftime Show as a political play. I see it as a gross misread of "the market" by marketers.

Marketing is tricky business. Most customers are not able to use words to describe what they desire. In many cases, we don't have a firm picture of what we desire. Rather, we have experiences with products and services that left us dissatisfied, so we can tell you what we DON'T want.

Another major issue that marketing teams have to deal with is that prospective customers unconsciously tell marketers what the customer thinks the marketer wants to hear. That is why marketing clinics are run by third parties and have an equal number of samples from the proposed entry's main rivals in the market segment.

The Ford Edsel is a prime example of poorly designed market-surveys  telling the marketing team what they wanted to hear.

This gets tricky because marketing teams have to guess what the customers will want in two-to-five years due to tooling and regulatory lead-times. The "really smart people" look at various bleeding-edge pundits and trend-setters and place their bets. They see the growth rates in numbers of transgenders (Bud Light) and Hispanics (Super Bowl) and throw the dice.

The Fly in the Ointment

The cost of this strategy is that loyal users of your "product" might feel abandoned while the target of the marketing campaign might totally dismiss your offering.

One place I think this is happening is when the Church Elders (often in their 70s) hire a trendy, "young", forty-year-old, with tie-died hair and wears Wiccan charm bracelets "to attract younger people to the congregation".

That fails spectacularly. Nobody under the age of 35 thinks a 40 year-old is young. They look at a 40 year-old preacher trying to look "trendy" the same way 50 year-old me looked at 60 year-olds with mullets and tie-died, "Give Peace a Chance" tee-shirts. My first reaction is "Grow up!". My second reaction is "Let go of your childhood".

Fashion trends age like un-refrigerated milk. The value of Christianity is that it is changeless. Chasing "trends" is wasted effort and results in people taking their eye off the ball. Man's nature and the war between good-and-evil does not change. God's message has not changed.

Opportunities for competitors

I think the NFL and the broadcasters screwed-the-pooch because there is now a precedent for "alternative halftime shows". How much will advertisers be willing to pay when the first, shambolic alternative halftime show siphoned off 10% of the TV viewers and pulled in 20% more via on-line viewers?

The major broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN and FOX) who are in rotation to broadcast the Super Bowl collude to NOT compete with the official halftime show because they have a piece of the action.

The dike has been breached. Viewers will be able to click-over to their favorite Country Music or Polka Music or Gospel Music cable channel and watch their alternative with 1/4 the advertising and then click-back to the game when it restarts.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Tad Retz was born in 1996 and currently resides in Syracuse, New York.

He started his professional career immediately after graduating from high school in 2015.

I reached out to him and asked permission to post his art. He agreed.

When I told him that many of my readers are apt to be curious about his (obviously) intense love of the outdoors, he responded:

I think just being raised with some property and the ability to go do things out on the property like hike, bike, ski. Growing up doing these things then making friends that do the same things has made me really feel enjoyment, peace, excitement when I'm out in nature. I think this is why I like painting it. I am pretty much either painting in the outdoors, exploring in some way the outdoors, or painting from inspiration of my experiences outdoors while in my studio. 

Retz also noted that the act of painting and creating energizes him.

Then I asked him a question about his technical expertise, "Have you spent more than 10,000 hours painting? And if yes, when did you hit that number?" As many of you may realize, 10k hours is frequently mentioned as a benchmark required to attain mastery of a skill like playing a musical instrument and, I assume, painting.

I think it takes a very specific kind of personality and work ethic to work through the ups and downs to become a good artist in reasonable time. You also need the right home/work environment with people on your side but also pushing you to get better fast. I was/am fortunate to have an older brother in the art industry who pointed me in the right direction after high school and have since had great mentors who have done the same. I must have hit the 10,000 hr mark around 2020.  

I must second his comments about work ethic and personality. When I go to the gym I see that most people are working pretty hard on the cardio machine but only about 20% are really "working" on the weights. Most of the people are taking selfies with the equipment as background and flirting with patrons of the other sex.  Very few people are hitting the free-weights...maybe because they are not photogenic.

The best way to keep an eye on what Mr Retz has for sale is to frequent his website. He is exceptionally productive and new art shows up on a regular basis. Also, his prices are very reasonable. 

 

Grab-bag

I am getting a rhythm cutting and moving the wood.

With good snow, I can cut and move +400 pounds (dry equivalent) 330 yards. 300 yards dragging in a sled by hand and 30 yards by carrying and tossing over the fence. That takes between two and three hours of steady work. 

Since I figure I would be burning 4 pounds of wood an hour over 10 hours a day in a "doomer" scenario, that means that I can put up 10 day's worth of wood in one, 3 hour work-day with the only fossil fuel being what I need to run the chain-saw. That might be 300ml of mixed gas and some oil to lube the chain.

Disclosure: Turning the 48" bolts into 16" rounds will take a bit more gasoline but I hand-split so at least that part of the process will be gas-free. 

Realistically, 400 pounds/day means I will need 18 work-days "...with good snow..." to put up 180 day's worth of wood. That ends up meaning every good day over a two month span in mid-winter.  

That 40 pounds of wood per day will not keep it balmy in the house but it is enough to keep the pipes in the basement from freezing and to get half of the living-space up to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit by evening.

On the brighter side of things, I am running this experiment cutting from the farthest, back-corner of my property. The next patch I cut will be closer to the house so the time required to transport the wood will be less than what I have to invest for this experiment. 

The work of a living artist is scheduled for tomorrow

I really like his work and I reached out to him. My batting-average is about 50%. Half of the artists (or their agents) do not return the emails. Half of those who do respond choose to not let me show their work.

Remus told me to focus on dead artists whose work were in the public domain. It was his belief that chasing after "permission" to display intellectual property was wasted effort. I usually follow that advise but I am running out of dead artists. 

My overall impression of this artist's work is that it is very "clean" and "not-fussy". It is easy to look at. 

It turned out that this artist is quite young. I will really appreciate it if you provide feedback in the comments. I think he gets a fair amount of "professional" feedback but that has its own drawbacks. "Professionals" give us freaks for dog breeds, undrinkable wines and hot-sauces that will melt your face off. Creators need real-people to weigh-in to offset the judges who hand out blue-ribbons to creators who push the envelope until it falls off a cliff.

Roasting chickens

I roasted a 5 pound chicken Sunday, two weeks ago. We finished it today. We turned into soup for the second week. We got a lot of meals out of that bird.

Some of it is that neither Mrs ERJ or I are eating all that much as we recovered from the Blue Goofus virus.

Lovage

I plan to plant some this year. It is a perennial herb with a strong celery-like fragrance and taste. Does anybody have any opinions about this herb?

There are not a lot of classic, perennial herbs that survive our winters. Mint, catnip, oregano, thyme, garlic, multiplier onions. After that, the list gets weird. Is Ground Ivy really an herb?

I can do a lot with stews and soups if I have a little bit of salt, garlic, onion, pepper(s) and celery-flavor. Throw in 'taters, carrots, turnips-if-you-like and meat-if-you-have-it.

Baby-bust in rural areas world-wide

It was notable as I looked through various "Village life" type videos on Youtube that rural areas are aging. It is difficult to find videos of young families working in agriculture. Nepal may be an exception.

Picture by Steven Hanks

Young people move to cities. Young people are the ones who make the babies.

At least two more children off-screen. One is an infant and other is an older daughter "watching" the infant. Carpathian mountains, planting potatoes.

The four steps to "crashing" the population is to first introduce the young woman to refrigeration so she does not need to go shopping every day.

The second step is to provide contraception services/sterilization. 

The third step is to provide her with a TV or smartphone so she become envious and to desire "things".

The last step is to get the young women deeply into debt so they have no choice but to go to work. "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go". They are trapped economically. They cannot afford daycare. They cannot afford to lose the paycheck.

Another painting by Hanks

There is a lot to chew on. Women captured the education industry with most guidance counselors expected to have advanced degrees. Many teachers chose career over kids. It is human nature to present our own, personal choices as optimal and other choices as "inferior". Kids are impressionable.

Half of the US population lives in the red counties

Cities originated due to geographic advantage. It could be a harbor or the confluence of several rivers. It could be a navigable river next to a broad, fertile prairie or an oasis in a desert.

Then, cities were the logical place to put factories because that is where the labor was and where non-native resources funneled through.

In the post-industrial age, are there any compelling geographical reasons for Detroit existing at its current location? How much economic support does a tunnel and a bridge to Canada provide? Detroit is a legacy city that COULD support 40k people (about the size of Jackson, Michigan)  based on the current economy as it interacts with geography.

Turkey. Cultivating sweet potatoes. The youngest "kid" is at least 40.

Some pictures

 

Our last jar of 2024 apple sauce

If you think ahead you can lay down some supports to keep the log off the ground. That makes it easier to buck-up into more manageable lengths.

48" lengths

Looking up the log from the butt-end. Please don't tell Mrs ERJ that I am posting pictures of butts on the internet.

Diameter at the 8' mark

Diameter at the 16' mark

Diameter at the 24' mark. A major side-branch left the main stem shortly below this point.

Diameter at the 32' mark.

Three dead, standing trees circled in red. They will have to wait.