First fire of the season and a temporary MSP.

 

"Ash green or ash dry, is what the king shall warm his toes by"

The first fire of the season is going. It is 24F outside and warming up inside, even as we speak.

I had a few moments of panic when the fan did not kick-on. I checked it before laying the fire and the fan kicked on just fine.

Mrs ERJ is well calibrated to the finest nuances of my moods. "Modified Stationary Panic"-to-"Full-Bore-Turbo-Assisted-Panic"*, she has seen and endured them all. She handed me the flashlight and suggested that she could start wiggling wires. God bless that woman!!!

The fan is one of the things that keeps the fire-box from over-heating and tearing itself apart. Without the fan, we get very little heat out of the small (20k BTU/hr) unit. With it, we can heat 1/2 of our living-space to very-warm, have the bedrooms warm enough to sleep in and keep the basement warm enough such that the pipes would not freeze.

Operator error

I had bypassed the disc-thermostats and replaced them with a toggle switch. When pulling out the damper, I had bumped the toggle-switch to off.

Why did I bypass the thermostat? Because there was a long delay before it kicked on. The snap-disc had an airspace between the firebox and the fan unit, which slowed its response. Additionally, the snap-disc was located in the extreme lower, outboard corner of the fire-box. Heat goes up (in air) and clearly the top of the fire-box was much, much warmer than the bottom.

Maybe I am a closet control-freak. I "fixed" the problem by bypassing it and introduced at least one other failure mode.

Washing Machines

Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre put a bid on a house. SB is looking for a washing machine and other accessories women consider essential to "nest building".

I found this on Craigslist. Southern Belle was NOT amused.

Looking at prices, in most cases it is hard to justify spending 65%-of-new for a used appliance with unknown problems and no warranty. New 3.5 cubic-foot washing machines cost about $475-$500 locally and SB and HH may have to save up and purchase one of them.

*A tip of the fedora to Patrick McManus

2-1/2" 16 gauge loads from Hodgdon's Reloading

 

Hodgdon data

BPI data

Source of Cheddite 2.5" unloaded, 16 gauge hulls WITH Cheddite primers already installed.

Source of BP Sporting Sixteen "Short" wads used in the BPI recipes.

A search of the wads used in the Hodgdon data takes you HERE and they are currently out-of-stock.

One of the difficulties in reloading for 16 gauge is that some of the components are hard to come-by. The Hodgdon site says that Winchester 572 is "available" so you can either purchase it on-line or your local shop can order it for you.

Toe-nail Trimmings for Sale

 

OK, not quite toe-nails. But the color is about right

2-1/2" 12 gauge reloads. I need to get them to my buddy "Shotgun" to ensure that they cycle through his 1920s vintage shotgun.

Fiocchi hulls trimmed to 2.5", 7/8 oz #7 shot and an overshot card,  21 grains Hodgdon Universal powder. Roll-crimped to 2.25" total length.

Curated or Free-flow?

One side-conversation that has been going on in my life is the dynamic between "curated content" and "free-flow content".

I strongly lean toward "free-flow" and believe that each individual is responsible for sorting wheat-from-chaff. Further, I believe that a solid grounding in a religious tradition simplifies that sorting. We are not all gifted with the same mental processing capability and tradition is the original "crowd-sourcing". Even those of us who are proud of our "smart" are well advised to examine how our choices square with our religious self.

The "curated content" folks cough up a hair-ball at the potential chaos of the free-flow model. Chaos makes them uncomfortable.

At the risk of seeming to be calloused, chaos and risk are eternal. Even though we might crave some benevolent, omniscient being/organization to serve as curator, none exists. Or, even if it existed for an instant in time, the power of such a position would inevitably corrupt it.

Consider recent reports that internal, Democratic polls revealed that Harris NEVER led Trump during the campaign. And if internal polls indicated that, then external polls (which tend to have larger samples) probably indicated the same thing after adjusting for known sampling biases. And yet the mainstream media (the gold-standard for the curated-content advocates) universally presented the most favorably cooked polling data for the party-in-power. That is hardly the "speaking-truth-to-power" that the media trumpets.

Organizations that are supposedly self-policing have a mediocre-to-dismal record. They tend to evolve into organizations that close-ranks and protect "their own". Cops. Doctors. Academics. Government. No shortage of examples.

Nothing really changes. The first documented reference to "Caveat Emptor" dates back to 1603. I suspect its true origins were much earlier than that. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who shall watch the watchmen?) dates back to the first century and is attributed to Juvenal but it was likely an ancient aphorism even then.

Conversations on Thanksgiving

The young people were reminiscing about "the good old days" yesterday.

"Sims 3" and "I remember how excited I was when I got my first Switch" and nostalgia over "Harry Potter and Hogswart".

Then they started talking about some quiz that all the cool kids are taking. It tells them what "House" they would belong to if they went to Hogswart.

Then they started talking about VR and BONELAB and BONEWORKS and the need for peppy WIFI to make it work seamlessly.

There was absolutely nothing I could contribute to those conversations and that is fine.

Pelee talked up a storm. I don't think he has a lot of people who will LISTEN to him in his life. Belladonna and Pascal dropped in and stayed for a while.

I ate too much 3.14159... and turkey. It was grand to see the "kids" getting along so well.

Camino de Santiago

Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage to the (supposed) tomb of St James in northwestern Spain.

Some of the major Camino de Santiago routes and branches

What I did NOT know is that there are roughly twenty different routes, which kind of makes sense since people live all over Spain.

The picture that pops into most people's minds is the route that originates in France and parallel's Spain's northern coast but about 75 miles inland. 

Another route parallels the coast but is much closer. That route has a lot more vertical as the trail climbs elevations and drops down into valleys that are essentially at sea-level.

One of the least traveled routes starts in Seville and heads north approximately 40 miles east of the Spain-Portugal border. This route is almost 700 miles long and has at least one stretch that is 15 miles between public water sources. 

The first 300 miles is brutally hot in the summer months and most pilgrims start in late March or delay until late-September. Some pilgrims duck the heat problem but starting at an intermediate point like Aldeaneuva del Camino or Cáceres. Approximately 3% of the pilgrims take this route, which is about my speed.

An overhead shot of part of Casar de Cáceres. You can click on the image to embiggen it.

One of the things that struck me as odd was that the villages in western Spain are very densely packed, almost like walled cities. Virtually no gardens or fruit trees or green-spaces. The few orchards in evidence appear to be olives.

Canaveral, Spain

That strikes me as exceptionally odd because most European countries seem to be borderline-paranoid about food security.

That may be because wars have been fought less frequently within the borders of Spain than in most other European Country. The Spanish Civil War (mid-1930s) caused country-wide disruptions but nearly all of the prior two centuries of Spanish military adventures took place over-seas, were levies by Royal kin asking for fighters or were tempest-in-a-teapot mini-rebellions.

Or perhaps it is a legacy of Roman and Muslim settlement.

Or maybe it is some quirk of rainfall and soil and hydrology.

It is a puzzle.

My visions of going on the Camino de Santiago and plucking figs, plums and apricots from trees hanging over the walkway for my mid-day snack appear to be baseless fantasies.

Things I am Thankful For (list will be added to throughout the day)

God is still in charge.

My wife still loves me and even seems to like me.

None of my clan died in the past year.

We have plenty to eat and a warm place to live.

Local wars (middle-East and Ukraine-Russia) have not yet escalated into WW3.

A couple of family members who were triggered by my opinions reached out and relationships might be starting to thaw.

For now, my income is sufficient for my needs.

I am still healthy although my doctor frowns when he looks at my blood lipid numbers.

I get to play around outside and use man-toys like chainsaws, axes, knives, firearms, fire, fishing rods and such.

I still have my eyesight, my hearing, my sense of taste and smell.

My neighbors mind their own business.

My biggest assignment today was to get the turkey into the oven by 7:15 AM and I got that done.

I can dink-around on this blog. It is my therapy. 

No jack-booted thugs have come knocking on my door.

My needs are few. My desires are simple.

A few pictures

 

I mowed the Eaton Rapids orchard yesterday. Short grass makes it easier for predators to hunt mice and voles.

All of the baits I placed out were eaten, so I do have lots of rodents. I need to replenish the sets.

The tall, pale-tan grass you see between the trees is primarily Giant Foxtail (Setaria faberi) which is grown as grain (millet) in some places. The birds love it but it is also quite a wind-fall for mice and voles.

A quince bush that has not dropped its leaves.

You can see that I have lots of fence posts in the orchard to help support the trees.

Gooseberry twigs

Ribes cynosbati, presumed to be very resistant to browsing by deer

Hybrid gooseberry, also resistant to deer. Whitetail Deer are like 9 month-old humans and puppies, they explore the world by putting things in their mouths.

Tixia, a "European" gooseberry. Resistance to deer browsing is unknown.

"Fatness, Blackness and their Intersections"

Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man has a post about University of Maryland's new class "Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness and their Intersections"

Unfortunately, the focus of the class will be "...examines fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability."

To me, that is a tragedy; an epic waste of an opportunity.

Historically, Black people have struggled with obesity and secondary syndromes like diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary disease, strokes, maternal mortality and so on. These are not trivial issues!

If University of Maryland had given me the task of developing the class, I would have discussed the climate in the parts of Africa where the progenitors of today's African-Americans came from, specifically southern Togo, Benin, Nigeria and western Cameroon. Very humid. Very hot. Grain rots or germinates in storage. Sweet potatoes have limited shelf-life. The only sure way to store calories was to save it as body-fat. It climates where famines are frequent, many people are genetically endowed with something call "the thrifty gene".

I would have discussed the food culture of America Blacks. What is soul-food? What are the least expensive sources of flavor (hint, fats, salt and spices)? What was the cuisine of poor, rural Whites in the south circa 1870?

What are the economics of present-day food distribution? What kinds of foods have the highest profit margins and how does retail theft impact an outlet's ability to deliver low-margin foods and foods with short shelf-life or require special on-shelf treatment or large "footprints"? What are those low-margin and special treatment foods?

I would discuss the exercise culture of second-generation immigrants. Typically, the primary breadwinner (first generation) worked a physically arduous job and collapse on the couch. There was a dearth of roll-models of Dad or Mom going out for a run or kayaking or playing pickle-ball after work. Sadly, Black Americans are trapped at the second generation stage.

I would survey the students in the class on what enablers would be required to make their neighborhoods safe to exercise in. Traffic? Crime? Lack of social support? No parks? Needles, broken glass and other Sharps? Then I would ask them to brainstorm solutions. If nobody has a bicycle, maybe bike-lanes should be rebranded as "running lanes".

I would also delve into the less-tangibles. Medea Benjamin, author of No Free Lunch wrote about the lingering legacy of slavery where Black Cubans found any social cue associated with slavery (imagined or real) to be repulsive. He stated that a Black Cuban would wait 20 minutes in the sun for a bus to show up rather than walk three blocks because "slaves" walked everywhere. Black Cubans would spend three times as much for rice as they would for corn grits because slaves ate corn. How much of Black Americans' aversion to sweating is related to associations of hoeing cotton in mid-summer?

There ARE positives that can be leveraged. Caribbean cultures make extensive use of vegetables in their cooking. Many cities with Black majorities are centers of fusion-cuisine where herbs and spices from many traditions are swirled together to produce novel flavors. There are many fantastic athletes from African countries and they are not all "power" athletes. The world's greatest marathon runners are from Ethiopia and Kenya.

The problem with viewing this issue through the lens of "victimology" is that it disempowers the people with the greatest incentive to make changes.

And that is a wasted opportunity.

Fine Art Tuesday

Hugo Mühlig born in 1854 in Dresden (Germany) and died in 1929.

Famous for painting rural scenes, especially of men hunting.

"Game" was a natural byproduct of small-holdings where nearly every home/garden/field had a rock-pile, a couple of fruit trees, 300 feet of hedgerow, a stock-pond, a shade tree and a coppice for small-wood. If "game" was not harvested, Peter Cottontail would devastate the garden. And you were wasteful if you did not consume him after you harvested him.

 

And another tip of the hat to Lucas Machias

---Added after some thought---

There are other things that drive diversity that shows up in these images. The hay-stacks are magnets for mice which in turn will feed fox, hawks, owls and feral cats. Large animals produce manure which is a prime driver of flies which feed pheasant, partridge and quail as well as song-birds.

One way that Organized Labor slows technical innovation

I used to work in a plant that stamped parts out of sheet-metal.

The plant had a large crew of tool-and-die skilled tradesmen.

Every six months or year (I forget the frequency) management compiled a plan to "right-size" the manpower balance with respect to work coming in and Corporate edicts. Even though the amount of work went up when sister-plants were closed and down as the Corporation was staggering toward bankruptcy, the number of tool-and-die makers never dropped at our plant.

Curiosity got the better of me and I looked into it. (Note, all numbers are pulled out of my nethermost orifice).

There were always 83 tool-and-die guys even when a rational assessment might suggest we only needed 53 or 43 or 37.

To cut to the chase, a small corner of the plant was dedicated to Electro-Discharge Machining which was a high-tech method of removing metal and is "computer intensive". That is, an operator sits at a terminal and manipulates "data" to ensure robot-heads don't try to drive through 4000 pound blocks of hardened, D-2 tool-steel.

The  Toolmaker who had been trained in EDM was 83th in seniority for the plant. The only way the plant could execute EDM files was to keep 83 Tool-and-Die tradesmen.

I asked why Toolmakers with greater seniority had not been offered training and I was looked at as if I were a moron.

"You don't think we offered?" they responded. "As soon as a higher seniority Diesinker was trained in EDM they know we would lay-off dozens of skilled-trades. Not only would the lower seniority people make that Diesinker's life a living hell, so would the union management!"

But that is not all

Overtime was offered by equalization-of-overtime. The person in the trade who had the least overtime in the plant was the first person offered the work with seniority being a tie-breaker. Then the next. Then the next...

Since there was only one person who could do the work, and since there was enough work for two people, #83 "had" to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep up. That mean that every T&D tradesman was offered the same, even if there was no work for them to do. If they accepted, they clocked in at the start of their shift and clocked out 12.5 hours later and got paid for 8 + 1.5*4 for the weekdays, 1.5*12 for Saturday and 2.0*12 for Sunday. Not a bad pay-rate for reading the paper.

And this was in a plant that was considered to have good Union-Management relations.

Pruning of the orchard is DONE!!!

Looking north out of a deer blind

Looking east

I finished pruning the Upper Orchard today except for one or two trees that I am treading-water on. I will deal with them when I make a decision.

I got the last chestnut tree planted. The chestnuts are in a short row on the steepest part of the hill, five trees on 16' centers. "Why 16 feet?" Because a standard stick of lumber is 8' and I used baling twine as a marker and I wrapped it end-to-end and tied a loop-knot for markers. Even multiples of 8' are very easy to generate.

While pruning the orchard, the different "vigor" between apple varieties can be striking. Hazen is a very compact variety. Keepsake (one of the parents of Honeycrisp) is also low-vigor. Yellow Delicious is fairly low vigor. Most of the "McIntosh" types are vigorous. The heavier bearing types like Liberty are vigorous before they come into bearing but slow down when they start producing fruit. Others...well, not so much. Nearly all cultivars that are triploids are vigorous and relatively disease resistant. GoldRush is to Yellow Delicious what Liberty is to McIntosh. You need to control fruiting to get tree-size on GoldRush or it will runt-out.

The Upper Orchard and the Hill Orchard combined are about one acre in size. A mediocre commercial fruit grower will get 40,000 pounds of apples per acre and a good grower will get 50k to 60k pounds of apples. They are also sinking about $25k per acre into trees (1000-to-1500 trees @ $15k), trellis, irrigation and so-on. Some of them have wind-machines to reduce risk of frosts. They are into full production three-to-four years from the starting gun. They can change the apples they are ship as market as demand changes in a very short time.

That is a very high-input system. Like a plane flying very fast at very low altitude, small hiccups have expensive consequences.

The upper-orchard has a nominal tree density of 115 trees per acre instead of the 1000-to-1500 trees per acre that a high-input orchard will have. Each tree has roughly ten times as much surface area and a larger volume of soil to draw moisture from. Larger trees tend to have deeper roots which means they are not totally reliant on irrigation but can draw on moisture banked in the subsoil.

The price of designing an orchard that can survive lapses in operator attention are that they will produce fewer pounds of apples, will have obsolete-and-unmarketable varieties*, will have higher labor to pick (unless you shake the trees) and will have a higher percentage of Grade B and Grade C apples. In Eaton County, Michigan a low-input grower might get 14,000 pounds of apples per acre (120 pounds per tree) or about 1/3 of what a mediocre commercial fruit grower would get. That would be a reasonable expectation MOST years.

*One of my tasks next fall is to start keying out which trees are what varieties. I have a partial list of what was planted in the orchard:

• Liberty (McIntosh types)
  
• Melrose
• Cortland
• Empire (lots of Empire!!!)
• Macoun 
• Jerseymac
  
• Starkspur Golden Delicious (Golden Delicious types)
  
• Gala
  
• Ozark Gold
  
• Spur-type Red Delicious (Red Delicious types)
  
• Hazen
• Gloster 69
• Idared (Jonathan types)
  
• Jonafree
• Melrose
• Northern Spy
• Spigold
• Keepsake
  

 

A serious proposal. Really.

The factory that makes Dunlop and Falken tires in Buffalo was shut down (Source).

Politicians are wailing that they were not consulted. They say that the loss of 1550 union jobs with excellent pay will be devastating to the economy and the tax base.

Sumitomo Rubber USA, the owner of the plant attempted to divest it but there were no serious offers to buy it.

As serious as a heart-attack

I have a proposal: The City of Buffalo, New York should buy the plant and run it. As simple as that. Sumitomo was looking for a buyer. How hard can it be? Is it any harder than running a water-treatment plant or keeping the streets clear of snow in the winter?

Buffalo takes on the contracts, pensions, healthcare benefits and payroll for the plant. I suspect that the City can find a few managers with a little bit of spare time on their hands.

A signal to the legacy media

Donald Trump refused to participate in any debates on the "mainstream media" after he was corn-holed by the "moderators" in the first one.

I thought that was a horrible idea and would be a disaster. That would have been true in the 1990s but mainstream media "news" now has all of the impact of a televised, LPGA tournament with a $1.5M purse.

It made ZERO difference in the outcome.

What's App, Doc?

It seems like a week doesn't go by when somebody doesn't pressure me to install some kind of app on one of my devices.

Why am I so resistant?

There was a young man in a nearby community who was interested in a certain young lady. As happens in many cases, the young lady was a couple of grades behind him in high school.

They flirted via texts and the young man was pressuring her to show him some of her "assets". It is very likely that the young man's buddies were coaching him.

Eventually, the young lady sent the young man a selfie after he promised to NEVER share it with anybody else. It was a frontal nude from her naval up. Her face was clearly visible (which she considered her best asset).

What are the odds that the young man did not share that picture with at least one of his friends?

If you guessed "Zero" you would be correct.

The young man's dad was a coach and word floated back to him about his son's adventure(s). He told his son to delete the image but didn't report to "upper management" and suspend his son from the team.

Word continued to spread. The coach's actions were not 100% in compliance with the league and the school district's policies on images involving minors. In due time, word eventually made its way to the highest levels. He was terminated from his coaching duties and any future employment in the school district.

(Note: some minor details were omitted or modified in this story)

Who knows what evils lurk within the hearts of men?

That 17 year-old-boy is inside of every human. In my simple-minded world-view, the installation of every additional App is the equivalent of that 14 year-old girl texting her frontal-nude to her boyfriend with the reminder "Don't share it with anybody else". 

Those Apps always ask if they can access information in your smartphone and/or computer and to interface with other devices sharing the WIFI. Not giving them permission is the same as the boy promising to never share the picture. Yeah, right. How does that STOP them?

The girl was naive and didn't know any better. I don't have that excuse.

Some more pictures

There were a few questions about Black Walnuts

What do you mean by "girdling"?

Girdled by cutting about an inch inward and then angling down so the bark cannot grow back together. My hope is that the herbicide will suppress latent buds in the root-collar from breaking dormancy and forming shoots.

Girdling by itself will kill most trees but some varieties (Box Elder, Black Walnut, many kinds of Oaks) will push shoots from their root-collar. Others (Black Locust, Poplar, Sassafrass, Sumac, Plums) will push shoots from their roots.

Why don't you have them milled into lumber?

Images can be clicked to embiggen.

Not much straight on most of them. And they are young with very little heartwood. Maybe they could be used for stocks for NY compliant ARs 8-)

What does the orchard look like?

The big sling-shot in the center of the frame is a pear tree that I left some "whiskers" on to graft to a more productive variety. The picture was taken from the bottom of the slope.

It is a hot-mess.

I knocked out another eight trees today and averaged about 20 minutes per tree.

A few pictures

Range report

20 gauge DGS slugs, Cheddite hulls and primers. 23.5 grains Hodgdon Longshot. Roll crimp. 20 yards, open sights. The flier is exactly 2" high. The black dot is 19mm in diameter (the size of a penny). Nice round holes means that the slugs were well stabilized!

What the sights look like. I pulled the choke tube and dry-fired the shotgun three times. Then fired three-for-effect.

The first shot was high. Then next two clipped the dot. Not spectacular accuracy but plenty good enough for 40 yards and minute-of-felon work.

No velocities were recorded. At 40 yards it really doesn't matter if the slug was launched at 1100fps or 1400fps. It will blow through a deer side-to-side regardless. And out to 40 yards, the trajectories will not be all that different.

Scouting out fishing spots

Seventy years old, maybe? Riveted conduit.

Looking downstream, a pool. Just the place to fish for suckers when they are running.

Looking up-stream.

Due to non-existent shoulders on the road, I will have to dump my fishing gear and then park a half-mile away. Then ride a bike back to where I will be fishing. At the end of the day, I will do it in reverse, hopefully with the addition of fish to bring back home.

New door-knob and deadbolt

The property owner of The Property authorized the expenditure for a new door-knob and deadbolt. The owner had handed out keys over the prior decades and who knows how many copies were made.

Somebody can always back their truck through the sliding door to gain entry, but at least we will know somebody was there.

One of my brothers suggested that I take video footage of the contents of the pole-barn at least once a year. Just slowly pan low, pan medium, pan high, each wall. He had his garage broken into and didn't realize that the bikes had been stolen until mid-May when he and his girls wanted to go for a ride and the bikes were not in the garage. Being able to compare the video to the actual contents would have A.) Told them to claim the loss and B.) Been evidence that they were not padding the claim.

Rodent bait

A big advantage of putting the bait in a clear container is that I can see if they have been hitting the bait.

Not yet!

Miscellaneous chores

Several more Black Walnut trees cut and the freshly cut stumps sprayed with herbicide. These walnuts were NOT encroaching on the orchard...yet.

Two large Black Walnuts girdled and the exposed wood and inner-bark sprayed with herbicide. These walnuts were encroaching on the Upper Orchard.

One very large and exceptionally ugly Black Walnut tree bore-cut from two sides and the cuts filled with herbicide solution. This very large walnut was also encroaching on the Upper Orchard.

One Wild Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) cut and the stump was sprayed with herbicide.

We keep agonizing over invasive aliens from Europe and Asia taking over our landscape but some North American species are doing very well in Europe. Apparently, Prunus serotina and Common Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) are considered aggressive, invasive alien species in the lower Danube river basin and around the Black Sea.

Fertilizer

I threw some 12-12-12 fertilizer where I intend to plant pears and chestnuts next spring. The numbers represent the percents of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potash.

The Potash is a chloride which can burn tender, growing roots so the smart money spread the fertilizer in the fall so the autumn rains and spring snow-melt can wash the chloride away or spread it through the soil so it is not as concentrated.

Pruning

I got three more apple trees in the Upper Orchard pruned before I had an equipment malfunction. That is another 10% (now at 40% total).

When I say that I pruned the trees, I meant that I removed the branches from the trees but still have to remove the wood from the orchard floor.

Truck Tires

Handsome Hombre got a pretty good deal on tires from Walmart. They can deliver them to your door...or in HH's case, to the neighbor across the street.

Hey, it is all good. We got a phone call and we are good-to-go.

Still marveling and learning

Every once in a while I stub my toe on a piece of information that challenges my understanding of how the world works.

The first time that happened was when I read an academic article written by somebody who took a leaf from a Russet Burbank potato, used enzymes to dissolve the bonds holding the cells together and then cultured a brazillian plants, each from an individual cell.

My understanding, which was wrong, was that every plant would be identical or nearly identical. In fact, there was a radical amount of scatter. Some plants were short-and-squatty. Others were tall-and-lanky. Some were horrifically vulnerable to certain diseases. Others showed unexpected resistance.

The backstory is that the original seed that evolved into the Russet Burbank potato was planted in 1873. By the time of the experiment, more than 100 years of mutations had accumulated within the tissues of what we know as "Russet Burbank Potato". It is a chimera. An agglomeration of random mutations (the worst of which had been rogued out by the seed-potato producers), that in aggregate and from a distance seemed like a homogeneous and stable organism.

Consider an University of Alabama or Ohio State University home football game. From 5000 feet elevation, the crowd seems to be a homogeneous, reddish tinted mass. Only by zooming into a much more granular level do you see the random UK or Purdue fan muddying up the sea of scarlet or crimson. The macroscopic and the microscopic samples are very, very different.

The most recent case of stubbing my toe

Most recently, a paper on Fire Blight in apples and pears came across one of my feeds.

Pear cultivars had very high numbers of E. amylovora in the inoculated shoots as well as in non-inoculated shoots and stems (Fig. 7a and b). Fewer bacteria, but still up to 4.5*10^5 units per plant section, were found in the rootstocks.

My prior understanding was that if a susceptible variety was exposed to ANY Fire Blight, it would rage like wild-fire and kill the tree.

Since many of these trees were grafted on very susceptible root-stock, my prior belief was that resistant varieties would "cork off" or somehow encapsulate or compartmentalize the disease, much like humans wall off tuberculosis.

Resistant pear varieties do cork off the contagion but it is a very leaky dam. It appears that symptoms (and the cascading avalanche of pathogenic organism populations) of Fire Blight do not occur until after some threshold of contagion is exceeded, even in the roots of nominally "very susceptible" individuals.

There were rumblings and rumors of such with Covid-19 in humans. Severity of symptoms seemed to vary with the initial intensity of exposure. That makes a lot more sense in humans with active immune systems. A lower initial exposure gives our immune system time to drag templates back to our lymph nodes to use as patterns for antibodies. Our body tools-up antibody production while virus populations grow. A higher initial exposure gives the virus an almost unbeatable head-start.

But plants don't have adaptive immune systems like animals so there must be other mechanisms in-play. This may be over-thinking the problem. Choose scion varieties and root-stocks with some Fire Blight resistance and follow best-practices with regard to fertilizing and pruning. Don't go nuts with planting density. Life is complicated. There are many different strains of Fire Blight with varying degrees of virulence. A pear or apple variety might be immune to one strain of FB and susceptible to another while a different pear or apple variety might be exactly the opposite.

Little fiddly chores

Gooseberry cuttings

Drizzly, scattered snow-showers...a good day to do little fiddly chores.

I squished some persimmons for seeds and ended up with 194 grams. I am soaking some seed-nuts preparing to stratify them. I cut and stuck some gooseberry cuttings. I will put them in a place where the run-off from a roof hits the pot and leave them alone until mid-spring.

I spent an hour chamfering the insides of small, brass cylinders and refilling them.

The weather tomorrow is expected to be better.

Nouveau Canada

 

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.