Normalizing Risks

It was everybody's expectation that when Anti-Skid Braking became standard equipment in virtually all US automobile production, that there would be a large drop in traffic accidents.

It did not happen.

Drivers normalized-the-risk in the sense that their driving habits changed such that the overall gain from ABS technology was absorbed by driving more quickly on slippery surfaces and leaving less space between the vehicle with ABS and the vehicle in front of it.

There was virtually no gain from going from zero air-bags to one-to-two to a half-dozen. The big gain was from mandatory seat-belt wearing and baby-seats.

Similar things happen with drugs. A person who is struggling to control their blood-sugar goes on metformin or some other drug...and some of them don't show the improvement that was expected. They "swooned" and said "Catch me, catch me..." and stopped watching their diets or exercising.

Ditto for statins.

The reason I bring this up

This is a giddy time for conservatives. It is pretty easy to just assume that things will turn out fine because we ended up with the more conservative of the two candidates.

But the cold reality is that a lot of can-kicking is running out of road in the next four years.

Eaton County Sheriff's department eliminated their midnight shift of parols a couple of years ago and is eliminating their second-shift in the November-December 2024 time-frame. They are staggering the start of their day-shift so they have twelve hours of coverage from 6:00AM-to-6:00PM. But if the SHTF after 6:01PM, we will have to wait until a State Trooper shows up.

The primary driver in this is the unfunded healthcare liabilities for early retirees. According to Unfunded Michigan Eaton County has $60.4M in projected healthcare benefits and $10.1M in assets to cover those benefits for a funding ratio of 16.7%.

Let me point out the obvious: Public sector employees retiring after 25 years can be "pulling" $23,000 in healthcare benefits a year from age 45-to-65 AND NOT WORKING.

Another point that should be obvious is that retirees are not dues-paying-members of the union and don't get to vote on the contract. The cost of those generous benefits are causing voting union members to be laid-off. That will create an interesting tension.

Another source of tension is that legal action must be initiated at the county level and the judges are employees of the county and get benefits from the county. They are very unlikely to recuse themselves due to conflict-of-interest. It seems improbable that judges close to retirement will support changes in contractual language that cuts benefits to retirees (even if they are renegotiated every contract cycle).

Pro-tip

In the summer, keep at least forty pounds of ice cubes in your freezer. That way you can keep the home intruders' remains from putrefying overnight while you wait for the cops to show up to collect evidence and take a report.

Houston, we might have a problem

Net Profit Margins in the Healthcare Sector

Drug Manufactures, General ==> 13.1%

Drug Manufactures, Specialty and Generic ==> -63.5%

Healthcare Plans ==> -16.2%

Health Information Services ==> -25.7%

Medical Care Facilities ==> -5.9%

Medical Devices ==> -46.6%

Medical Distribution ==> 3.6%

Medical Instruments and Supplies ==> -14.2%

Healthcare Plans

One challenge faced by Healthcare Plans involves growth in new services that government agencies insist MUST be covered. Trans-gender procedures, drugs and therapy come to mind.

Another challenge involves having to cover preexisting conditions like HIV.

It is possible that rates might be subsidized via government grants for lower income families after-the-fact. That is, the healthcare insurance provider runs a loss and then submits vouchers to get reimbursed.

Medical Care Facility challenges

Major hospitals face a couple major issues. One is that during the Covid shutdowns, many doctors figured out that they don't HAVE to send patients to the hospital for basic testing if they have their own equipment. It proved more profitable (and convenient) for the doctors to take their own X-Rays, for instance. That deprived hospitals of "procedures" that they relied on to spread the overhead.

Another challenge is that the recent surge in immigrants uses the Emergency Room as their primary interface to get medical care. E-Rooms are a very expensive way to deliver medical care...and the immigrants typically have no healthcare insurance nor other means of paying for the services.

Step-down Facilities are hammered with staffing issues. While hospitals have lots of nurses, doctors and technicians, step-down facilities have CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) and "aides" and "orderlies". Those jobs involve dealing with human feces, vomit, infections, disturbed (sometimes abusive) patients, hoisting bodies and making beds. Many of the CNAs were people working toward their RN or building up their resume after graduating from college...and paying off their student debt or recent immigrants happy to work menial jobs while developing other skills. Step-down facilities are revolving doors for employees and are struggling to find people who are willing to work for the wages set by heathcare reimbursements and legally mandated staffing levels.

Locally, we see continued "rationalizing" of the medical service providers as local less-efficient providers are absorbed by equally inefficient providers with deeper pockets.

This does not end well and the only thing you can do about it is to stay healthy and minimize interactions with the medical establishment.

The three laws of thermodynamics

You cannot win.

You cannot break even.

You have to play the game...but you can influence the AMOUNT you play the game.

A very humble example

I used to have a couple slices of peanut-butter toast in the morning. Peanut butter usually contains hydrogenated peanut oil and sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup. 

I switched to dry-roasted peanuts. No hydrogenated peanut oil. No sugar(s).

Even little changes make a difference.

Calcium Carbide

I attended Lansing Community College after graduating from high school.

My chemistry instructor was Tom Loomis. He had served with the Marines in the South Pacific in the later half of WWII.

One of the stories he shared was that the Marines improvised a method of clearing caves of Japanese soldiers (who rarely surrendered).

An empty oil drum had a sharpened, steel stake welded to the top. A can of calcium carbide was placed at the bottom of the barrel and then the barrel was filled with water. Before the lid was secured (which pinned the can of carbide to the bottom of the barrel), a few lumps of Willie-Pete the armorer scavenged from ordinance were placed beneath the water.

The Marines "requisitioned" a depth-charge launcher from the Navy. They might have even had permission. Or maybe not. That was not part of the story.

The Marines pushed the loaded depth-charge launcher to the mouth of the cave and then lobbed the barrel as deeply inside of the cave as possible.

The sharpened stake ruptured the calcium carbide can and ruptured the barrel. There was enough water to react with the calcium carbide and create acetylene. Once enough water had drained away to expose the WP, it ignited the impromptu air-fuel bomb.

If it failed to detonate, they lobbed in another. Eventually, she-go-BOOM!

Eventually, Loomis got a Ph.D. in Chemistry. I don't know if the "magic" of the Rube Goldberg contraption inspired him or not.

For what it is worth, 2.5%-to-81% acetylene in air is considered explosive.

Fine Art Tuesday

Notice the city-scape in the background. Likely the marsh grass harvested as hay is destined to feed the horses that moved the city's commerce.

David Farquharson born in Perthshire, Scotland in 1839 and died in 1907.

He painted images from Scotland, Wales, England and Holland.

His work is still affordable in the $500-to-$2000 range. It lacks the photographic detail of the more celebrated artists of his time but I am fascinated by the images of people farming/gardening/gathering in resource-scarce environments.

Another hay harvest with city-scape in the background. This is probably harvesting a marshy island in the tidal-flats.

Gleaning something from the hedgerow beside the road. Maybe sloe or rose-hips.

Havesting. I assume they have potatoes in the bags.

A farmer harvesting cabbages, chatting with a passerby.

Gleaning something. Farmer in the background with a team of horses.

A stack of fallen-wood or cut brush on the left side of the road. For fires?

Snaking a cut timber out of a woods with a horse

Two boys beneath a sycamore. Maybe about to go fishing or to smoke their first pipe of tobacco?

Transporting a load of hay or straw. Note the thin line of trees on the top of the ridge.

Man with a hay-rake crossing bridge. Cultivated crops in upper-left. Hedgerow in background. Large leaved plants near bridge might be Coltsfoot (Simon, I could use a hand, here). Branched plant with flat umbels looks like Poison Hemlock.

Hat-tip to the indefatigable Lucas Machias.

Pruning notes and comments about Rodent Bait Placement

Today I took a census of the "Upper Orchard" at The Property. That was after culling the trees I judged to be too far gone to try and save. I left 32 trees and to date have pruned 10 of them so I am about 1/3 done pruning.

Originally, each of the four rows held 16 trees. Due to encroachment, I only plan to replant 14 of the 16 trees. That may change later as I beat back the encroaching trees. That remains to be seen.

When replanted to 14 trees-per-row, the refreshed Upper Orchard will hold 56 trees. Given the tree spacing and expected tree size, in a good year a harvest between 5000 and 10,000 pounds of apples is a reasonable possibility from 56 semi-dwarf apple trees planted on 15' by 25' centers.

I don't know what kind of crop I will get next year. I am taking "wood" out of the tops of the trees and leaving branches that are closer to the ground. That will pay big dividends in a couple of years, but the lower branches were in the shade and might not have a lot of fruiting buds next spring. Time will tell.

I have the option of being less aggressive in pruning one of the rows. The thinking in doing that is that I could ensure that at least one row would bear a full crop, barring frosts, droughts, hail, pestilence and bugs.

Context

Accelerating inflation is baked into the cake. The ratio of debt-to-Gross National Product almost guarantees it. The best we can hope for is that the productive economy will rebound from the loosening of all of the strictures imposed by the previous administration. One definition of "inflation" is "Too many dollars chasing too few products". Most economists focus on the "...too many dollars..." side of the definition. Very few are willing to get their hands dirty and talk about what it would take to fix "...too few products..."

Maybe things will be jolly and there will be no market for thousands of pounds of apples and pears. No worries. That is the best possible scenario. Frankly, I would breath a sigh of relief!

Maybe things will not be so jolly and there will be a local market for tons of apples and pears for cider (and faux-Calvados) and apple sauce and pies and dried slices. In that case, it will be better to have producing trees rather than just wishing I had producing trees.

Rodent Control

One year, I mulched my apple trees with carpet. I cut it into 6' squares and cut a 3' slit in it so I could position a square around each tree. The trees grew fantastically that year. The carpet did a great job suppressing the weeds and conserving moisture.

The next spring, I discovered that rodents (mice or voles) love over-wintering beneath the carpet. The carpet protected them from most avian and terrestrial predators and still provided a multitude of escape routes for weasels and shrews. Unknowingly, I had created a rodent paradise and they thanked me by eating the bark off of my baby apple trees.

Knowledge is neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is a tool that can be used for either.

After sharing this story, you might look at this discarded plastic lid next to the fruit tree and anticipate a sad story.

But what if a bar of rodent-poison was beneath the lid? What if the rodent-poison was in a sandwich bag to protect it from moist soil? Do you suppose a mouse or vole might eat the bait before they chewed all of the bark off of the tree?

Option 2. Discarded water bottles are easy to come by and it is easy to cut the top off of them with a scissors.

Intelligent placement of baits goes a long way toward making the bait inaccessible to non-target species while still being VERY attractive to the target species. There is still a slight risk of raptors or predators eating a poisoned rodent and inadvertently being poisoned.

I crunched some numbers

I crunched the numbers on the six-month delay in product introduction from an earlier post and can now quantify the impact.

The base premise was that this industry had a 40:20:40 cost structure for Fixed costs:Controllable Variable costs (direct production labor):Purchased Inputs

Six month delay (12.5% of anticipated production/sales time horizon) ===> 1.4% net profit margin instead of 10%

25% increase in the cost of labor ===> 5.5% net profit margin instead of 10%

10% increase in the cost of parts ===> 6.5% net profit margin instead of 10%

Net Profit Margins by Selected Industries  (source, copyright 2024)

Auto Manufacturer 3.8%

Beverage Manufacturer, non-alcoholic 15.3%

Broadcasting -2.6%

Chemicals 5.1%

Credit Services 19.4%

Department Stores 2.9%

Drug Manufacturers, General 13.1%

Footwear and Accessories 6.8%

Grocery Stores 2.4%

Lodging 7.2%

Medical Care Facilities -5.9%

Mortgage Finance 8.4%

Gas and Oil Refining and Distribution 0.7%

Packaged foods 4.9%

Pharmaceutical Retailers -13.4%

Rental and Leasing Services 8.5%

Restaurants 4.6%

Solar -6.9%

Specialty Retail 1.9%

Trucking 3.9%

Notes

This is what we call in the deer-hunting trade "A Stevie Wonder Blood Trail"

"Hello. My name is Joe. I rob gut-piles"

This year, the running-average is 5.5 pints of "Zeus Gravy" per robbed gut-pile. That includes the heart and liver. If times were tough, I would include lungs, kidneys and washed rumens (a.k.a. tripe, smelly business, that).

Quicksilver thinks she is getting away with something when she steals a spoonful of "Zeus Gravy" from the jar while Mrs ERJ is feeding our dog. Mrs ERJ pretends to not see Quicksilver in the act.

Pruning

Yes, thank-you to all the readers who recommended getting a pole-saw. It is a great tool. And even if I use a standard chainsaw to cut the central leader, I can remove branches to get the direction it wants it to fall in harmony with the easiest directions to make the cuts.

I know that you guys and gals probably get really tired of hearing this, but you were ABSOLUTELY right and I am very glad that I listened to your advice and followed it.

2025 Orchard Plan continues to evolve

The current plan is to graft all pears planted on the side of the hill to Harrow Sweet, except the two at the very bottom. They will be grafted to Kieffer.

The rootstock will be Pyrus betulifolia and they should be happy on the Malcolm Loam, even if the topsoil is eroded and not very deep. I expect that I will be grafting this-and-that into the pear trees for pollinators...not that they seem to need them.

The MM-106 on that same hill will all be grafted to Liberty. Then, next year they will be grafted to a short length of dwarfing root-stock (4"-to-6") at about 5' (called an "interstem") and the fruiting variety that strikes my fancy on top of the interstem. I am forced to have my first branching that high due to the extreme pressure from browsing Whitetail Deer.

MM-106 is just a little too vigorous for 10' tree spacing. Adding the interstem reduces the vigor at the expense of more suckers. The high interstem is similar to an obsolete dwarfing method called Clark Dwarf IIRC. B-9 would be an acceptable interstem although many of the patented Geneva rootstocks would be superior...G.214 and G.210 for instance. One advantage of grafting the interstem so high is that the bending moment from wind is less due to the shorter lever-arm and that minimizes weak graft union issues.

Clark dwarf did not become obsolete because they did not work. They became obsolete due to the high labor to produce them. I work for free...at least when I am working for me.

Securing buildings

The pole-barn at The Property needs attention. Specifically, the door.

Count them, NINE screw-holes. And #9, 3" deck screws fit.

I installed a new, duplex door lock striker plate and now the door actually latches.

Next, I need to get a dead-bolt re-keyed to match the door knob. The dead-bolt is currently "ornamental" and not functional due to the key being MIA.

Another item on the agenda is to insert barrel nuts to run the hinge-screws into. The hinge screws were too short and several of them "wallowed out" and were then driven in at an angle to get them into solid wood. That is a temporary fix at best. If all goes well, I expect to write a post on the barrel nuts because I think spending $10 and making an existing installation functional is better than spending $200 and creating an interval when there is no functional door installed.

Getting outside and getting sunshine

I was dragon-asp this morning. I just wanted to take a nap.

I forced myself to get outside and start puttering around.

What a difference! I had more energy after puttering around outside for 90 minutes than when I started.

Somehow, I can forget that fact in less than 24 hours.