Grab-bag

My annual physical was postponed.

I called the receptionist the day of the appointment and told her that I had a cold.

She said that I needed to take a Covid test before showing up.

I informed her that I did not have a Covid test available.

We rescheduled.

Hat-tip to Musings of a Stretcher Ape

In one of his posts from fly-over country he mentioned that EVERYBODY wants a Z-Pack when they have a sore throat.

As a medical practitioner, he does his due-diligence examination and usually finds that the raw throat is due to post-nasal drainage (aka, drip). Upon confirming this root-cause nearly all of the time (at certain times of the year) he recommends an over-the-counter steroid-based nasal spray and, invariably, the patient demands "the good stuff", the Z-Pack.

Let me tell you, the steroid-based nasal sprays ARE the good stuff. Generic https://www.drugs.com/mtm/triamcinolone-nasal.html sprays are inexpensive, fast acting, non-drowsy and last for 24 hours.

Thanks S.A.!!!

Racist/Rage White Rural Voters

I got several emails alerting me to MSOCTOPUS Media running a feature on the extreme danger posed by RACIST WHITE RURAL VOTERS.

Some of you may be aware that the ERJ family is multi-racial. I try to be sensitive and even-handed about these things. Sometimes I succeed. Often I fall short.

It is the human condition that we are more comfortable around those who we perceive as being "like us". Sometimes we make that judgment on visual, easy-to-perceive attributes that may or may-not be accurate proxies for what is important to us.

I don't see this as "racist". I see this as human nature. We measure what is easy to measure.

We choose to associate with people who wear our tribe's uniform or regalia. We are comfortable those who speak with our lexicon and cadence and pronunciations. We are most comfortable when we hang-out with people with whom we have shared experiences.

I don't see this as "racist". I see this as human nature. It is exhausting to always have to watch-your-six.

If a pundit were presented with the question "Would you assume a White sub-population was 'racist' if 95% of them voted for the White candidate in an otherwise close election?" we would not be surprised if all of them said "Yes. Absolutely!"

Then if they were asked if they would assume a Black sub-population was 'racist' if 95% of them voted for a Black candidate, as they did for Obama in 2008, they would probably say "No". And then they would offer some world-class verbal gymnastics as they tried to squirm off the hook.

They are likely to say "...people vote for candidates who they assume have common, shared experiences..."

Logically, you cannot have it both ways. It either applies to every sub-group or none of them.

Billy from the Hills

One of my commenters linked to this song in the comments to the most recent Cumberland Saga. The singer wrote this song for his father. I found the singer's comments before singing the song to be very entertaining.

"I like my dad, which is good because at a certain point in life you find out that you are going to be somewhat like your parents. To a certain extent, you just have to make your peace with that 'cause its going to happen."

Rich, I tell you. I am RICH!!!

I found 11 fence posts today that I did not remember I had.

I saw a blue-bird.

The sun was shining.

The slow-barrel finally chrono-ed a load with acceptable velocity (0.8gr over book-max of CFE-223).

Mrs ERJ finally finished sorted a big lot of brass by head-stamp. She apologizes for being slow so I try not to get impatient even when dinner is late.

God willing, I will plant some onion seeds in flats tomorrow.

Reloading gack

Data from HERE. Various brands/vintages of .223 Rem case weight (grains) by volume (grains H2O)

A reloader took several lots of .223 Remington brass from several manufactures and measured their weights and internal capacity. The data he reported was the average weight and average capacity for each lot.

If you calculate the correlation for all data then you see a correlation of approximately -0.7  That implies that at least half of the variation in internal capacity can be eliminated by sorting for weight.

I qualified the conclusion with "at least" because there might have been much stronger correlation if the researcher had not aggregated the data.

The "slope" of the data is about -0.9 grains of water for every 10 grains of brass.

Eliminating the extreme right-most point bumps up the correlation to 0.9. Eliminating the two extreme right-most points takes it back down to 0.7

If you are a duffer who is shooting targets larger than golf-balls at ranges of one-hundred yards or less, then you can get most of the gain (for your application) by scrapping every .223 Rem case over 97 grains and never looking back.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to hit the letter "T" in the word Titleist at ranges over 200 yards then tighten your sorting criteria.