First-World "root-causes" based Justice

Pawpaw recently posted an essay titled Root Causes.

We look at teen violence and try to ascribe root causes to try to rationalize behavior.  Most of that rationalization is bullshit. 

The sociologists try to put people in groups to explain societal problems and that is not always predictive.  There are always outliers.

The best thing that a society can do to establish tranquility it to set rules and enforce them. A rule that is not enforced is useless.

As a cop, I learned that the rules change from time to time. It was not my job to try to understand why someone would choose to break the law.  It was simply my job to enforce it. 

Sergio Yanes Preciado pictured above

An example of First-World "justice" involves Sergio Yanes Preciado who allegedly approached a family in a public park in Montreal’s Parc-Extension neighborhood and without provoction assaulted him by spraying the father with an unknown substance and then proceeded to batter him.

Now, a criminologist, who was not identified, has suggested the hot weather might have contributed to Preciado's actions that day. Temperatures reached a high of almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The criminologist had conducted a quick mental health evaluation ahead of Preciado's appearance before Quebec Court Judge Martin Chalifour inside Montreal courthouse Wednesday, according to The Montreal Gazette.

Are you following this line of reasoning? The father was assaulted because of Global Warming. Preciado was not responsible. The weather was.

The court ordered a 30 day psychiatric evaluation pending any legal action against Preciado. 

The flaw in this logic

There are approximately four-million people living in the Montreal metropolitan region. Approximately 1/3 of a million are men of Preciado's age +/- five years. If the weather is to blame, why didn't the other 333,332 men go nuts on that day?

To quote Pawpaw, "Most of that rationalization is bullshit." and it does a disservice to the people living in the communities where anti-social people are not held accountable.

The same flaw shows up in the "It's always the --gg--s!"

Granted, as a demographic they are disproportionately represented in crime statistics. But why is there a 4.5X difference in incarceration rates for Blacks (as a per-100k/per-100k white people) between New Jersey and Mississippi/Georgia/Alabama? What about all of the Black people who do NOT commit crimes but quietly go about their lives, work at their jobs, raise their children. If race is destiny, then how do you explain them?

Perhaps there is more of a culture of personal accountability in Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama. Maybe the courts don't make excuses (like "it's of climate change") for juveniles-of-color.

Rachel's Folly by Patrice Lewis (a book review)

Romance novels are not what I usually read although I will admit to having read one or two of them in my lifetime. So this review will seem odd to those who make a steady diet of them.

First, I want to lead off by saying that any book that is self-published is a masterpiece, just as any Whitetail Deer harvested with traditional archery equipment is a trophy. I am not going to point out tiny air-bubbles in the plot or events I might have written differently. Rather, I am going to point out what I think she did exceptionally well.

Homesteading is physically demanding

Mrs Lewis did not candy-coat the simple fact that homesteading requires an almost incomprehensible number of hours of physical labor every day. There are some upsides: You can eat phenomenally large amounts of food and still lose weight. You sleep like the dead. If you don't hurt yourself in the process, then you become physically much stronger.

The homesteader is at the mercy of the weather

As modern people, we benefit from a transportation system that smooths-out local variation in weather. You can live in Phoenix or Fairbanks and there are fresh fruits and vegetables in the grocery stores every week of the year.

Not so for the homesteader. Not only do they eat seasonally, but a severe weather event will impact their ability to feed themselves.

Mrs Lewis seamlessly worked those concepts into the story as part of the canvas that was the background for the couple's emerging relationship.

Recreation was productive

The couple went fishing: Even though it was "downtime", it was still an activity that had the potential to put protein into the diet.

They visited a neighbor: Even though it was "recreational", they still swapped things they had excesses of. The neighbor was good at sewing (for instance) while Sam did chores that were easier for a man to do.

Nothing was wasted

Right off the bat, Sam is singing the praises of pine-needles to Rachel. A bit of a rabbit-hole but that was probably Mrs Lewis's intention; to demonstrate that even commodities as common and boring as pine-needles or a match were not to be wasted.

Predators must be respected

Elk, deer, rabbits and mice want to eat the trees. Sam has a 10' tall fence around the garden.

Coyotes, wolves, bears, cougars, hawks, eagles and owls want to eat your livestock. This is not Disneyland. The livestock is shut in the barn every night. Any lapse in vigilance can be very costly.

Homesteaders think about time in a different way

Somebody who works in an office often works from a daily To-Do list. Somebody who works on "projects" often has a guide-book that outlines the specific order things must be done in.

Mrs Lewis doesn't preach about it, but she accurately describes how young fruit trees need time before they are productive. She describes how they must flower in the spring if they are to bear fruit in the autumn. Later in the book, she describes how a fallen tree must be cut and split and dried for a year before it will be dry enough to burn. 

She describes (in painfully funny detail) the steps that must happen to build a fire and cook eggs and bacon...it being clear that you cannot cook bacon if you cannot first build a fire.

These are all things that happen as cycles within cycles, like the drum cadence, melodies and themes that build and recur within a symphony. 

Diversity of tasks

A homestead is actually a conglomeration of a multitude of related enterprises. Keeping the cats marching in formation is a juggling act. Paradoxically, we fail at perfection but succeed at good-enough.

Every day is different. Even with in the day the tasks can bounce around from hour-to-hour.

Except for weeding the garden. That never goes away. 

Celibacy

Sam and Rachel did not become "physically intimate" during the four months they were together. Many readers will find that impossible to believe.

Mrs Lewis makes the point that physical intimacy early in a relationship stunts the incentive to get to know more about the other person. Not her words, but "Hey, I am getting my immediate needs met. There is no point in 'wasting' time getting to know more details about this person" 

Aging

Mrs Lewis makes the point that some power tools can make a huge difference in how long we can stay-in-the-game with a chainsaw being a prime example. As we get older we become more vulnerable to repetitive motion injuries and we take longer to heal. An hour with a chainsaw can do as much heavy cutting as one man can do in four days.

Summary

Mrs Lewis writes as somebody who has been-there-done-that. The plot (researching for a Reality TV show) carries exceptionally well. Some readers will zone-out during the information deep-dives, but that is OK. It is just like when I skim over gratuitous sex sequences in other books. Just because the words are there doesn't mean you have to read every one of them.

The background for Mrs Lewis's book presents "homesteading" with great fidelity as it carries the love story of two lonely (and wounded) people. 

Third-World behaviors on cruise ships

Unruly behaviors are destroying the appeal of cruises in the Caribbean. Most of the intolerable behaviors occur while the cruise is underway and are perpetrated by economy-class passengers.

I don't know much about maritime law, but I bet most of the passengers would prethink their choices if they knew that they would be handed over to "local" law enforcement authorities rather than simply banned from the cruise-line or, at worst, face US charges.

My gut-feel is that most of the countries in the Caribbean would be more than happy to house the miscreants and to set a very high bail to be able to exit the jail. They would probably not even have a "do not flee" order in place. 

If economy passengers insist on Third-World behaviors while on a cruise in non-US waters, I think they should enjoy non-US jail time.

Taking it easy

 

Solanum carolinensis a.k.a. Horse Nettle. All parts are toxic, especially its tomato-like berries. Be sure to visit our gift shop.

Solanum carolinensis flowers

Physalis virginiana, Virginia Ground Cherry. Many look-alike species. Berries, although small are edible (even delicious) when fully ripe. It is a perennial in my climate.

I visited the Upper Orchard today.

I took it easy. I only watered the twenty new apple trees. I walked slowly, wore work-boots and the compression-brace and avoided known woodchuck holes.

I probably could have watered more trees, but they are on the Hill Orchard and I didn't want to push my luck. 

Hello fodder, hello mudder

I write you here, from Camp Grenada...

I cut some weeds. Mostly Setaria faberi  and Ambrosia trifida.

The goats liked the Giant Foxtail (Sataria faberi). I don't know what they will think of the Giant Ragweed (Ambrosia trifida).

I get the weeds off my property before they drop their seeds. Southern Belle gets free fodder for her goats. Win-win.

The curse of being old and busy

I put my keys down somewhere and now I cannot find them. I have my vehicle keys on their own rings to keep them petite, but I cannot find the big ring of keys for all of the things that are locked up that I don't visit on a regular basis. 

St. Anthony of Padua is the patron saint of lost items. I suspect that as I get older that I will be having more conversations with him. 

Let no good deed go unpunished

An enterprising youth started a business.

The county zoning commission shut him down and threatens him with daily fines if he doesn't stop selling worms to fishermen.

The energy and industry of this 15-year-old kid is astounding. He is working three part-time jobs this summer and started this business.

What is notable is that the zoning commission does not demand that he remove this building. Typically, that is what "zoning" is about, improper structures that are dangerous or reduce the value of neighboring properties. They just told him he had to stop running a business.

It stinks of envy: Parasitic leaches who cannot stand to see somebody take a risk and succeed. They are another species of Gimmedats in polyester and Reeboks.

Source of image

At their core, businesses create value. In the case of a bait shop, the value comes from turning manure into worms and then supplying those worms to fishermen who are too time-stressed to dig their own. It also comes from buying warm soda-pop in 24 can cases at the local Wally-world, putting them into a cooler with ice and then transporting the cooler to a location where it is quick-and-convenient for fishermen to access.

So a couple hours of a 15-year-old kid and a few miles driven in a beater pickup saves multiples of those hours wasted by working adults with limited vacation hours.

For the record, Ron Haas, a very high-end GM executive, was very fond of taking his family fishing for walleyes in Wisconsin.  I assume that many of the kid's potential customers have similar demands on their time .AND. will be mighty pissed off at the Karens who carve into their precious vacation time because they are on a power-trip or simply to spite an enterprising, young farmer who makes them (and their slacker larva) look bad.

Hat-tip to CoyoteKen 

Goat Wrangling

 

"The best fences have the animals, food, water and salt all on the same side of them"  -Willard Fox

"No farmer should ever raise animals that are smarter than they are. That rules out Border Collies, goats, pigs and horses for most people"   -Willard Fox 

I got a call this morning. A Southern Belle's goats had gotten out.

This is what I saw when I arrived at 6:54am

 

I opened up a gap between two feedlot panels and bent them as shown to help funnel the animals back into the pen.

There is no profit in chasing goats.

I went to Southern Belle's barn and got a large "book" of alfalfa hay and carried to the corner of the pen. The friendliest goat came over to check me out and smelled the alfalfa and was very interested. I walked through the funnel and she followed me in. Goats are social animals. Three of the other four followed her in.

The fifth goat is lame and is the omega in the social caste. She decided that eating weeds and dogwood leaves suited her better than fighting her sisters for alfalfa hay.

I put some corn in a plastic bucket and carried into the pen and shook it. The four in the pen knew EXACTLY what that was and were suddenly my best friends. The lame goat ignored me.

So I walk in a round-about way to get her between me and the pen. Then I slowly, very slowly, started moving toward her. That is called "putting pressure on the animal". They will usually move in the direction they are pointed if you slowly approach them from their side.

She decided that her mean sisters were a better option than my getting closer and she scooted around the corner and joined her sisters.

I had the foresight to preposition some twine to refasten the feedlot panels together. Time elapsed: 7 minutes.

Way better than chasing goats, especially with a sore knee.

After securing the gap where I had let them back in, I walked around the pen to find where they had gotten out.

One of the feedlot panels had a bottom corner that had not been secured to the fence post. I fixed that while I was there.

Then I added a half-bale of hay and the rest of the five pounds of corn I brought.

After all, Willard Fox said "The best fences have the animals, food, water and salt all on the same side of them".

Knees and chickens

I took it slow today.

I paid attention to how I moved.

The only physical challenge was to cobble together a couple of light and install them in Southern Belle's Chicken Tractor. That involved working in a small space with awkward positions but wasn't particularly stressing of my knee.

This is a "used" chicken tractor that she picked up for $50. It has a footprint of 12' by 6' and has no accommodations for birds roosting or for people to enter-and-exit for maintenance. I cut a flap in the the netting to let myself in and stitched it shut after I was done.

The timer is set to turn the two, 800 lumen bulbs on at 4:00am and turn off at 9:00am. 

The next upgrade is to add four, 4' long roosting bars at 1', 2', 3' and 3'. Headroom is an issue.

After installing the lights, I drove to Meijer's, a local department store chain, and purchased a compression sleeve for my knee. It feels pretty good right now.