Priorities, priorities, priorities.

 

Kudos to University of Michigan for doing "the right thing" even when it is painful and inconvenient.

The University of Michigan fired their head football coach after an internal investigation revealed that he was having "an inappropriate relationship" with a staff member. It comes at an inconvenient time as the team prepares for a highly anticipated bowl game. 

Having a sexual relationship with somebody underneath you in the organization chart is considered de facto sexual discrimination for two reasons.

Due to the imbalance of power, the partner who is lower on the org-chart is under some level of coercion to accept sexual advances.

The other reason is that all of the other people...the one's not in the relationship...are now at a disadvantage for any kind of promotion or when giving advice.

Football and basketball bring a lot of money into major universities and create a lot of awareness among potential students. Unfortunately, too many schools turned a blind-eye to behaviors by team members and coaching staff that would not be tolerated in others.

Assuming that the investigation was thorough and even-handed, good job U-of-Michigan! 

Side story

I worked in an auto factory where one of the other supervisors was a young man who was a "Hi-Po" or High Potential employee. His folder had been tagged. He was given choice "developmental" assignments. Even though he was only 25(ish) years old, management had already decided that he was going places.

He had a temporary employee who was making about half of what the regular employees were making. The Hi-Po supervisor over-rode her pay-code in the computer to give her the highest pay-rate he was authorized for. He bumped her pay up to Team Leader pay, a dollar-an-hour more than what most of the regular employees were paid.

HR investigated. It quickly came to light that they were having sex.

The Hi-Po supervisor was directed to break off the relationship and a letter was put in his file (typically to be purged after one year).

The next pay-cycle the Hi-Po supervisor over-rode her pay code again.

He was released, with-cause, the next business day.

Yes, he was that stupid and so sure of the protection being a Hi-Po. 

Don't assume that this was the U-of-M coach's first transgression. 

Just for fun

This is a short video of about 2-1/2 minutes. I did not expect the voices that came out of these singers, nor did I expect the joy in their facial expressions.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it. Turn up the speakers and watch their facial expressions.

Who is your customer?

I heard this story in (Juran) Quality Training in 1985. It was presented as a true story that happened in the 1948-1950 timeframe.

The setting was post-war Japan in a textile mill that spun yarn and thread and knit them into consumer products. The United States paid for automated equipment to lift Japan's economy out of the basement. The equipment was not placed in a purpose-built building but was shoe-horned into a multistory factory.

The problem was that every so often, a skein or spool would come into a station that fed into one of the automated looms and loom would lock-up into a giant rat's nest that took an hour to disassemble and clear out.

The problem was traced back to an operator on a lower floor who removed skeins from a winder and placed them on spindles on a roller-rack. When the rack was full she had a minute to stretch her back before the next rack replaced it.

She was not using the knot that she had been trained to use because she had found a quicker, "better" way to knot them. When the loom operator tied the tag-end of one of her skeins onto the tag of the skein that was almost used up, it did not untie the knot but, instead, resulted in the entire hank being gobbled up by the machine in one big chunk.

Rather than summarily firing the operator, the Quality Manager waited for the next train-wreck and then he directed the repairmen to not touch the machine until he returned.

He plucked the prideful worker out of her downstairs job and escorted her up to the behemoth (compared to the stature of a typical Japanese woman of the time) loom and then directed the repairmen to begin.

She knew that they knew that she was the cause of the problem. The entire factory ground to a halt as material backed up behind the loom. An hour later, they were able to restart the loom at low speed and it took another hour before the loom's timing was dialed in enough that they could run at full speed.

The woman burst into tears "I had no idea!" she gasped, sure that she was about to be fired.

The Quality Manager shook his head "No".

"Go back to your department and tell them that the roller-rack is not your customer. Everybody down-line of your station is. The rack, the shunter (who moved the racks from one floor to the next), the loom operator, the repairmen, the store that buys our sweaters and even the customer who ultimately purchases our products." 

"Tell them to follow their written instructions exactly they way they are trained...even if it seems stupid or like it is make-work."

"Gleece"

I was watching Townsend's Youtube channel and he was talking about "Hasty Puddings".

That brought back a memory that I thought was worth recording.

Background

My father's father's people were from just north of the Balkans and his mother's people were from just east of the Baltic. In spite of his origins, he tanned very, very quickly and was short and stocky.

His mother never heard a word of English until she went to school at the age of five in Allegan County, Michigan.

His mother was widowed when he was nine or ten and she was 33. That was in 1936. Times were tough. 

When Dad was 18, he went to Detroit to register for the draft. It was during WWII and gas and tires were scarce. He hitchhiked since nobody in the family had a car.

A young man stopped and gave him a ride. That man was also going to register for the draft. They were both deferred (my dad because he was the sole support of a widow and Adam because he was born in Canada).

They became friends. Adam had a business and hired Dad. In time, Adam offered Dad the chance to purchase some swampland in Michigan that had a 12'-by-20' shack on it.

Fast-forward 25 years...

The shack was expanded as finances allowed. Cabinets and indoor plumbing was installed. It graduated from a "shack" to a "cottage".

Early one spring, I (and a spare brother or two) assisted Dad in opening up the "cottage" for the season. Time got away from us and there was nothing to eat. Dad solved the problem by dredging up memories of when he was a kid and the cupboard was bare. He made us something he called "Gleece".

An image from the internet.

He mixed flour and eggs and maybe some water together to the consistency of pancake batter. Then he loaded up a large spoon with the batter and holding the bowl of the spoon just above the boiling water, he dribbled-and-drooled a stream of it into a pan of boiling water.

Half-hearted attempts to find a recipe met a stone-wall. I assumed it was just something he made up on-the-spot or it was something that only his family did.

God Bless the Internet

Guess what, "Gleece" is real. 

Gleece/Glace

Ingredients for One Generous Serving

1 egg beaten
1/2 cup all purpose flour (not self rising)
1/4 cup (scant) water

Start with boiling salted water in a pot. Beat together ingredients and drop by small spoonfuls into the boiling salted water. Gleece are done when they rise to the top of the water. They do expand in size. Let them boil for an additional minute or two and then drain off the water.

Gleece can be used in chicken broth or green bean soup. They can also be fried with sliced potatoes (or boil your potatoes ahead of time and fry the boiled potato slices with the gleece). Season to your taste. They can be added to mashed potatoes and a little butter or put sour cream, butter and onion slivers on the boiled gleece.

Dad's versions were more icicle/round-noodle shaped than than dumpling-like. But the name is identical and the provenance matches.

Cheap. Quick. Simple. Easy. Very filling. Cheap.

Presented without comment

 

Link

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Hasui Kawase

Today you get a grab-bag of artists. All suggested by the indefatigable Lucas Machias. "Trees" are the theme.

 

Antonio Fabrés

Berndt Lindholm

Oscar Törnå

Hippolyte Boulenger

Ivan Shiskin

Follow-up on Hungry Times post

Based on the volume of comments, the post on "The Hungry Times" struck a nerve.

From the comments:

Anon 7:55 PM wrote "...it appears having a large pond or small river nearby will be able to provide some extra food or attractant options for foragers."

Anon 11:10 PM responded "A 30’ gill or trammel net suitable for suckers, carp catfish etc might be a lifesaver."

...then...

Anon 10:16 PM independently stated "I wonder how the Indians did so well. Granted, they ...had fewer people per acre." 

How did the Native Americans survive the winters?

Population density was a big part of it. Population estimates for pre-Columbus continental United States and Canada vary by a a factor of ten but anumber of four-million is commonly used.

The current population of that same area is almost one-hundred times greater.

As can be expected over such six-million square-miles, strategies differed.

The Native-American Mound Culture cities were almost all near rivers. The largest NAMC city is called Cahokia and it is very close to East Saint Louis, Illinois. 

Link to maps

Along the Eastern seaboard, tribes were often migratory and followed the resources. Estuaries...that is bays that are flushed by the tides, are enormously productive since multiple ecosystems converge and the flushing of the tides creates a mixing effect that combines oxygen and nutrients.

In both locations...rivers and estuaries...clams/mussels/oysters were easy pickings.

The West-coast tribes had a cultural innovation called "Potlatch" which functioned as a form of welfare.

Individual clans gained status by throwing parties and giving gifts of preserved foods (nearly always dried salmon). Due to the vagary of the salmon runs on the hundreds of streams that drain into the Pacific any one family could be randomly left without enough food to make it until the next salmon run. 

Potlatch allowed that family to survive at a cost of loss of status. However, that status could be repurchased by hosting several, very generous Potlatch parties in the future.

Native-Americans in California's Central Valley were blessed by thousands of square miles of oak-orchards. Acorns (and pine nuts) which could be harvested with brooms were easily dried and cached in simple structures and stayed edible for years.

White settlers had a very dim view of those Native-Americans because they assumed that they had not even progressed to the level of simple agriculture. That assessment may have been a bit harsh. Those Native-Americans did not engage in any kind of agriculture that the plow-field-annual-grains based Europeans recognized.

Random factoids

The mesh size is critical for gill-nets and varies by the target fish. The issue is muddied-up because some people specify by "stretched-mesh" size and others specify by distance between knots "square-mesh" size.

Depending on the primary species of sucker that you are targeting, a square-mesh size in the 1-1/2" to 2" range is probably about right.

Common carp are highly variable in size. The younger ones that are more desirable for food according to my Polish neighbor are best caught with a 4" square-mesh while the most mass is caught with a 5" square-mesh. As a side-note, if you are going for mass, then a trammel net is the best choice because a heavy load of fish can trash a simple gill-net.

Bonus Link1 Academic paper discussing net selection that targets common carp

Bonus Link2 Youtube video of a trammel net set catching carp. Long video.