Grab-bag

Running notes

4.18 miles in 60 minutes. I was shooting for 70 seconds at 6.0mph and then 110 seconds at 3.0mph for recovery. That pencils out to 2.33 miles at 6.0mph and 1.83 miles at 3.0mph. Bpm didn't hit 140 until 20 minutes into the session.

I was on my "favorite" treadmill. The only problems I experienced were right hamstring cramping between 10 minutes in and 20 minutes in. 

Livestock

ISA Brown and Barred Rock pullets

Rabbits, both female. Creatively named "Black" and "White". Unbred, female rabbits are the original "stock option". They are called "does" because one does not need to exercise the option.

 

The bunnies are already at Southern Belle's "farm". The chicks will be heading over there in short-order.

The Charlotte, Michigan Family-Farm-Home has $1 off on one-week old Cornish-Rock meat birds, if anybody is interested in them. They have at least 70 of them when I picked up Southern Belle's chicks.

Sore Throats

Kubota had "something" and the symptom that caused him the greatest discomfort was the sore throat. 

The key point is not the brand but the ingredients.

Several brands offer "max" versions that have 15mg of Benzocaine per lozenge.

Kubota was impressed by the pain relief.

A question for the folks who work in food pantries

I assume that there is some variation in the food preferences of various constituencies who rely on food-banks.

I remember working in a restaurant and one group ALWAYS selected "Orange Drink" over all other soft-drinks. Another example is that younger people almost always choose "American Processed Food-like" slices when ordering sandwiches at Subway, with the hip, 40 year-olds ordering Provolone or Pepper-Jack and the mature, senior citizens being more likely to order Cheddar.

The reason I am floating the question is that food-banks that receive Federally subsidized foods are prohibited from denying food to anybody, even if that person had already visited 8 other food-banks that week or was highly selective and only took the high-cost items. I assume that they are not forced to give food to people who are violently drunk or actively over-dosing.

Personally, one group who I have a great deal of empathy for are the older senior citizens whose purchasing power has been crushed by many years of inflation. Unlike younger people, getting a job (or a second job) is not an option.

The question on the table is "What food items are eagerly sought by older senior citizens but are not preferred by people who, conceivably, could be working?

My (limited) information is that list includes Campbell's condensed soups, canned beans and canned peas, boxed Jiffy muffin mixes, Hamburger-Helper type skillet boxed foods, Rice-A-Roni/Spanish Rice type foods, instant Oatmeal, boxed Jello, cottage cheese, creamy peanut butter.

These are foods that were very popular in the 1960s and 1970s. They require some preparation as they are not ready-to-eat. They are fairly dense in terms of nutrition and they are soft/easy to chew foods. On the downside, many of them are high to very-high in sodium

What are your boots-on-the-ground opinions?

I think more people would be willing to donate food to food-pantries if they had some kind of assurance that most of it would go to people who really needed it. Since the people working at the pantries cannot exercise that control, it must be done by the selection of what is donated.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Laszlo Neogrady born 1896 in Budapest, Hungry and died in 1962.

His only weakness as a painter is that this seems like an improbable location for a water fall.

 A tip of the old fedora to the tireless Lucas Machias for suggesting this artist.

Lent

Blogging will be light for the next 6 weeks or so.

Lent lasts for 40 days various commitments Mrs ERJ and I made will absorb our Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Spring planting season keeps whispering seductive promises in my ear.

Hiccups in the flow of government grants introduced air-bubbles into the flow of food and diapers to people in need. We feel called to help as we can. For instance, we will pull our annual giving forward into the next 60 days to breach-the-gap.

Unfortunately, we are now in a highly politicized and divisive environment and some readers will expect me to slam certain politicians.

I really don't want to go there, but is it really any different than a military force launching missiles from the grounds of a hospital or school and the opposing force flattening the launch site? Who owns the blame?

It has long been common legislative practice to "bundle" projects with dubious public support (like chemical castration and genital mutilation of minors) with apple-pie and motherhood projects like feeding the hungry and providing clothing for the poor. How is that NOT the budgetary equivalent of terrorists using school-children as human shields? How can that situation be painlessly unwound when the funding is so tightly coupled?

All of that is above my pay-grade. Mrs ERJ and I will do what we can to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted and give hospitality to the weary. We try to be flexible, and one of the things that has to "flex" is the amount of time I spend on the blog.

Karma and Long-Shadows

Late in 1981, I rode the escalator from the second floor to the main floor of the engineering building where I worked. The building was almost deserted as it was late in the afternoon.

At the bottom of the escalator, I hooked to the right to one of the east/west hallways of the building. I saw Art Weideman walking east and he was clearly unaware of my existence.

Art was a middle-managers and managed the "Transmission Engineers" for our product lines. In my mind he was at least seventy-years-old (although, in retrospect he might have only been in his fifties). He was about 5'-7" tall, bald with a few remaining wisps of gray hair, his face was lined with wrinkles and he was portly (by the standards of the day).

Art was wearing a dark-brown suit that looked like a "loaner" from a funeral parlor but had probably been chosen due to the color's ability to absorb random splashes of Dexon and 85-140W lubricating fluids and not show.

I saw Art bend over and pick up a random bit of trash...maybe a gum wrapper or a paperclip...from the industrial-grade carpet. He put it in his pocket and kept walking.

He didn't do it because he thought anybody was watching.

He didn't do it because it was his job or because somebody told him to do it.

As near as I could tell, he did it because he was proud of where he worked and it hurt him to see the place be less that what it could be. The stray trash, even as small as it was, made it seem like people didn't care. Art cared. It was within his power to make it better and so he did.

Clearly, that casual (but not trivial) action by Mr Weideman made an impression on me that was out-of-proportion its physical dimensions.

Men like Art Weideman kept the lamp of Western Civilization lit, doing-the-right-thing without stopping to perform economic calculations.

What is in it for me?

I am old-fashioned. I find that term very offensive.

It reduces human interactions into a single dimension as if it were possible to roll all of the benefits into a single, quantifiable number.

How do you quantify Art's bending over to pick up the gum wrapper? Here it is, almost 45 years later and I still remember it. It still informs my actions.

There is also a laziness to the question "What is in it for me?". Isn't it the job of the person who is asking that question to answer it? How can I possibly know what your internal value system is? Maybe the benefit I consider to be the most trivial is actually the benefit that is the most important to you.

The question has the feel of a demand "You dance until I am happy" when the path to happiness is for the person making the demand to dance. It is not a task that lends itself to out-sourcing.

Hayek

Hayek and the economists of the Austrian School contend that Western Civilization is the distillation of "What is in it for me".

It is paralyzing to attempt to calculate all of the secondary and tertiary effects. They height the farmer mows his alfalfa field impacts the number of grasshoppers which impacts the number of Sandhill Cranes which impacts the avian fecal content of the hay which impacts the likelihood of a milch cow getting avian flu which impacts a community's likelihood of being exposed to a novel strain of the flu which impacts it resilience in the face of threats of invasion by outside forces which....

The wisdom gained through hundreds of billions of lived experiences is passed down to us through the miracle of Survivor Bias. That wisdom is captured like a spider captured in amber.

We implement the wisdom of Western Civilization when we do-the-right-thing, even when there is no visible payoff.

Running notes: Not So Hot

Unlike the typical social-media "influencer", I am going to share times when things did not turn out well.

Frankly, I learn more from my mistakes than from when things go perfectly. Not sharing my mistakes or embarrassments is both a lie-of-omission and it deprives all of my readers of a chance of an inexpensive (for you) lesson.

***

I went in for my treadmill session this morning fully expecting a GREAT "run". Today was the two-week mark and I fully expected to have nearly all of the restart issues worked out.

I was disappointed.

"My" treadmill at the gym already had somebody using it, so I had to use a different piece of equipment. And therein lies the story.

I picked a treadmill that was directly beneath a ceiling fan. Being a fat, old man of Central European and Irish extraction I sweat. Sometimes I sweat a lot! I thought some additional ventilation might be just-compensation for not getting my preferred treadmill.

As noted in an earlier blog-post, I was already feeling kind of beaten up. I have been doing a lot. Nevertheless, I had high hopes.

Right from the beginning I was struggling. My legs had no spring to them. My core had aches-and-pains. I was huffing-and-puffing I was really having to work right from the beginning.

My bpm zoomed up right at the first 6.0 mph interval (it usually takes 3-to-6).

I dropped the incline from 1.0% to 0.5% and I was still struggling.

I bagged it at 30 minutes/2.0 miles.

One the way back to the locker room, your humbled scribe stopped by the desk where the staff sits and I commented that the incline on machine I was using seemed significantly steeper than my normal machine. I asked how often they validate the leveling.

The man at the desk said they did it every night.

And then the woman at the desk added...."Some of our machines don't drop back to zero after a client finishes his session."

"SAY WHAT?" I replied.

"Yeah, I have to go up 5% and then manually run it back down to the percent I really want" she elaborated.

Sounds about like what you have to do with a lathe to deal with "slop" in the bed-screws.

I know it sounds like I am making excuses, but my dismal performance would be understandable if I had hopped on a machine that had been running at 2% grade and did not re-zero. Then I added another 1% and then dropped down 0.5% for a net 2.5% grade.

0.5% grade SHOULD be visibly imperceptible. It is a RCH less than a quarter-inch of vertical in 48" of horizontal (useful info if you are using a 48" long bubble-level). If you can see it then it is more than a 0.5% grade.

Tobacco

A useful exercise for refining one's priorities is to play "What if you only had one..."

• One Watt of power.
• One hank of baling twine.
• One bullet.
• One square-foot of growing space.

How would you use that extremely limited resource? In the case of power, you might decide that an smartphone that combines accurate time, communication, calculator functions and photos is the first, best-use of power. There are hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of people in India and Africa that would agree with that.

The twine might go to snares.

The bullet for self-defense

The square-foot of growing space would likely go to "medicinal" plants or to "flavoring".

Community Gardens

I started a community garden a couple of decades ago. As is my custom, I over-analyzed the issue.

In inner-cities, a common community garden plot was about 30 square-feet. In cities (but not the most congested regions) it would be three times that size. In the suburbs, maybe 400 square-feet. In places where subsistence gardening is a way of life and not just a passing fad, 2000-to-4000 square-feet.

The 30 square-feet gardens tended to be very heavy on green, leafy flavoring herbs, hot peppers, garlic and green-onions. Likely, there would also be a cherry-tomato plant planted on the north side where it would not shade the shorter plants. Lots of bang-for-the-buck, or vitamins-per-square-foot in this case.

How does tobacco align with "medical" and "flavoring"?

Medicinal

Let us suppose that approximately 10% of the US population is under supervised, medical care for mental/emotional health issues at any given time. Furthermore, let us suppose that 30% of the population has been under supervised, medical care for mental/emotional health issues at some point in their lives.

What happens if the lights go out?

What happens if Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdone, Paxil, Lexipro and Adderal et al become unobtainium?

Tobacco is not a very "good" drug. It has side effects. It is addictive. It has carcinogenic chemicals in it. 

On the plus side, if you can grow tomato plants you can grow tobacco. Patients are very good about "taking it". And it does help people "regulate" and to deal with stress and it is an appetite suppressant.

Little known factoid, "smoking" is a significant "self-medicating" symptom mental health professionals consider when diagnosing. People who are struggling are drawn to tobacco use because it is a comfort.

Insecticide

Nicotine is an insecticide with acceptable mammalian toxicity. If the lights went off, any loss of food production will really hurt. Even if you had the foresight to stockpile Carbaryl, Bifren and Permethrin, you will eventually run out, especially if you share it with your family, friends and neighbors...

How are you going to control head-lice* after you run out? How about potato beetles? Wireworms? 

Tobacco to the rescue! Two tobacco plants can produce more seeds in one season than you and one-hundred of your closest friends will use in a lifetime. But first you have to have the seeds.

There is an astronomical amount of "leverage" in growing a small patch of tobacco.

Snoose

Rustica Limonka is a Nicotiana rustica strain that was bred/selected in Eastern Europe.

Kubota enjoys using "Smokeless tobacco'.

He has given me permission to try to replicate his favorite brand of commercial "dip". 1.2 ounces of "Snoose" costs him $6.

Generic, moist dippin' tobacco has the following ingredients (by weight)

• Water
• Tobacco (not even the first ingredient so less than 50% by weight!!!)
• Salt (hygroscopic, flavor)
• Natural and Artificial Flavors (Peppermint Schnapps, for instance)
  
• Ethyl Alcohol (Peppermint Schnaps)
• Propylene Glycol (slows drying, increases shelf-life. Typically 2%)
• Sodium Carbonate (pH buffer to slow nicotine solubility. Baking soda is an acceptable substitute)

Given a price of $20/pound for cured, Burley tobacco and 27 "cans" of finished snoose per pound, that works out to a retail value of $160 for an 700% mark-up.

If I GREW the tobacco, then it is almost free. Nicotiana rustica tends to run higher in nicotine than  N. tobaccum species and does not require a long growing season. So, N. rustica it is. And if I let the two best growing individual plants go to seed, then I will have plenty to share.

"No Deal" is better than a "Bad Deal"

Zelensky went "weasel" in front of TV cameras while negotiating with Trump. It did not end well for Zelensky.

From Zelensky's standpoint, he is running out of road to kick the can down. He is running out of Ukrainian cannon-fodder (to be expanded upon later) to feed the Russian killing machine. He is living hand-to-mouth on war-time consumables.

The US green-lighted the Russian invasion when Biden told the Russians the US would tolerate minor incursions by Russians on Ukrainian soil. The Russians did not need any encouragement. Then the US media and politicians acted all surprised and horrified as it happened.

Zelensky knows that he will likely have a short lifespan after he gives up the reins-of-power and have his Trotsky moment. At this point, he is a one-trick pony. He bet all of his poker chips on the war and he has to keep the war going. 

Both he and Trump know that if American combat boots hit Ukrainian soil and one soldier or Marine dies, then it will be almost impossible for the US to gracefully extricate itself from the war on the Asian land-mass. That would be very much in Zelensky's favor. It would suck for all Americans.

Committing US troops is a "sticky decision". Once made it is very complicated to reverse.

So, at the last seconds in the Rare-Earths-for-Munitions deal, Zelensky DEMANDED American combat troops.

I am not sure Zelensky had any other viable options. The "demand" was probably floated early in the negotiations for the deal and instantly shot-down. Zelensky NEEDS those troops, so he thought he could bull-through at the last moment, figuring that Trump would cave to save the deal (and face). Zelensky rolled the dice and didn't get lucky, this time.

Regarding running out of cannon-fodder. I was surprised to learn that the Ukrainian military draft applies to men 25 years of age (and older). The idea of lowering the age to fill the manpower gap has been floated but not acted upon. So Zelensky is unwilling to commit HIS country's 18-through-24 year-olds but he has no qualms about demanding that the United States sacrifice OUR 18-through-24 year-olds to save his skin. Pretty bad optics there, Volodymyr.

One a more cheerful note

Nicotiana rustica "Limonka"