Presented without comment

Handicapper parking places

One of the benefits of being a blogger is that I can air my aggravations and be done with them.

For instance, one of our "sometimes" coffee drinkers is a man whose wife died over a year ago.  He saw no reason to turn in her "Handicapped Parking Placard".  This was not an oversight. He feels that he is entitled to keep it.

Honesty compels me to admit that this is rarely a problem in Eaton Rapids.  Land is cheap, parking lots are expansive and I rarely see all of the handicapped parking spaces filled.  It is more about the principle of the thing.

This is a problem in more congested areas.  My daughter in Miami tells me that every handicapped parking spot is always filled.  One must wonder how many of the placards/licenses are fraudulent or forgeries.

I suspect that there is no mechanism at the Secretary of State's office to identify holders of placards and handicapped license plates who no longer need them, i.e., died.

The State of Michigan makes a half-hearted stab at controlling the number of placards out there by issuing them for a four year period.  But then they allow them to be renewed an indefinite number of times, no pulse required, the only requirement being that the check not bounce.

"Permanent placards may be renewed up to 45 days before the placard's expiration date or up to six months early if the applicant will be out of state during the renewal period or has other good reason for renewing early. There is no renewal fee. A physician's statement is not required for renewals."  Source

This condition would be easy enough to fix if there was sufficient political will.  The placards could be issued annually when licenses are renewed.  A doctor's (or chiropractors, or physician's assistant or nurse practicioner's) signature could be required for renewal.  Further, the color could change every year to facilitate enforcement.

Those suggestions are very basic fraud control measures.

It really comes down to what best serves the disabled community.  Does the aggravation of not being able to use the parking slots at the drug store, and doctor's office and the courthouse outweigh the burden of getting your medical provider to do their job?

Immigration: Two articles

I received a couple of emails in response to my series on immigration.  One of the emails suggested several articles.  A couple of those articles stood out: 

More Thoughts About Immigration from Crisis Magazine. 

...I will concentrate on problems that seem important but are often ignored or denied.

The first problem immigration causes, then, is inequality. California, once the epitome of the Golden West and the postwar American Dream, is now the most diverse state, the most unequal state, and the state with the highest poverty rate.

Low-skilled workers suffer especially from liberal immigration policies.

The rich, on the other hand, do quite well. Increasing the supply of immigrant labor makes capital and forms of labor that can’t easily be imported (e.g., that provided by upper management and other experienced and well-connected people) proportionally scarcer.

...continuous large-scale immigration from all over the world...destroys common culture and thus ease of discussion and civic cooperation. It means fewer common habits, attitudes, loyalties, understandings, and assumed standards of behavior.

In the absence of a populace that trusts each other, and is similar enough in loyalties and assumptions to deliberate effectively, government will be carried on by a small minority with little effective public answerability. Worse, it will be easy for the ambitious to advance their careers by provoking fear and suspicion among groups...

 and Obama's Immigration Decree, also from Crisis Magazine.  This author has a way with simple, declarative sentences.

Persistent refusal to enforce clear statutes  that demanding deportation of those entering the country illegally...has been this president’s consistent policy. It is a policy in defiance of both law and common sense.

There is no more basic duty of a government than that of protecting its borders.

Our immigration policies are clearly broken, unfair, and harmful to the national interest. They are also harmful to the interests of those who are entering this country, for they promise them a life the laws and the realities of economic and social life will not allow.

Current policies...provide for deportation of immigrants only if they cause too much trouble and leave determination of who is “too much trouble” to powerful economic actors and an overburdened criminal justice system. They foster contempt for law among many immigrants, fear of the law among most immigrants, and a callous misuse of the law by all too many employers who claim to be supporting American values.

This point merits expansion:  Populations that have both contempt for the law and fear of the law are both breeding grounds of the highly criminal and are systemically vulnerable to victimization by all criminals.  This is not a Christian condition.

The next two paragraphs do not excerpt well.  The author is disgusted with both sides of the aisle.  Both parties want to have their cake and eat it too.  It can only be done by having the citizens pay for one cake and the immigrants for the other.  These paragraphs are notable for coining the term: gray-market immigration.

The proper response is simple, but unfortunately not easy given current political alliances. The answer is to stop giving amnesties, to stop allowing people to enter the country illegally and stay, and most important to stop allowing employers, and agribusiness in particular, to get away with knowingly using illegal immigrants as little more than slave laborers. Real, meaningful fines combined with real protection of our borders would allow for development of a real immigration program that would, in fact, call for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to enter our country legally to provide labor and services in an open, free economy without fear of legal reprisals and looking forward to the real chance of gaining citizenship.

College is not for everybody

Lewis Cass Intermediate School District published this graphic showing the admissions selectivity of various colleges and universities in Michigan.  The ACT is a common college readiness test.

The leftmost column is a list of schools, nearly all community colleges, that have open admissions.  All you need is a pulse and a check book. The bins become increasingly selective as one moves from left to right.

One thing that becomes notable when researching universities is that the more selective universities have significantly higher four year graduation rates.  The less selective universities claim that less prepared students must take remedial classes that do not count toward graduation.  In effect, their four hundred meter race begins one hundred meters behind the starting line.  This argument is a bit thin because there is no huge jump in graduation rates when looking at five or six year time horizons.

Picking one data point from each "bin" of the graphic and plotting 25th% Composite ACT score on the horizontal axis and 4 year graduation rate on the vertical axis.  This chart suggests that "college readiness" is an ACT composite score somewhere close to 23.

I chose the public university that is closest to Eaton Rapids from each bin.  US News and World Reports was the source of four year graduation rates.

Lansing Community College is the closest community college and has a graduation rate of 8% and a transfer rate of 27%.  LCC does not publish ACT scores for its population so it is not plotted in my graphic.

Image from HERE

Clearly, the cheapest course is to take as many credits at the local community college that will transfer to a four year public university.  Since universities are reluctant to accept outside credit for "remedial" classes, there is a darn good chance you can finish the last half of your degree in 2 years...even less if you attend summers.

It would be interesting to retest community college students after two years of college.  In theory, there should be huge growth in "college readiness" because they will be transferring in as Juniors.  In practice, "college readiness" is probably a combination of lack-of-preparation and habits that make some students resistant to learning.  Community college can ameliorate the lack of preparation but is not the best tool for fixing ineffective habits.

Being able to finish one's college education quickly is important because of the time value of money.  $40,000 earned this year is worth far more than $25,000 spent this year and $40,000 earned next year. And even though times are tough and most people are not thinking about pay raises, it is important to remember that time-in-grade plays a part in promotions and raises.  It is also sometimes used as a tie-breaker in lay-offs.

This line shows the percentage of students who did not graduate in four years (or less).  This is the same chart of 25% ACT scores shown above...but flipped upside-down.

Perhaps the focus should be on the universities admitting large numbers of full time students who do not graduate in four years.  Did those universities fail those students?  Were they admitted so their ability to take out student loans could be strip-mined by the institution?

Not everybody is college material.

Cheesecake Update

Cheesecake recipes are simple.  They become complex only because people struggle to equate simplicity with greatness.  Belladonna deviated from the recipe by adding a bit more vanilla than the recipe called for.

The recipe is simple but that makes the use of quality ingredients doubly important.  Our graham crackers smelled a little bit "off" after we crushed them.  So we tossed those crackers and restarted with a fresher box.  Using high quality toppings is also called for.

Our oven wanted a bit longer and a bit warmer to get the cheese cakes to "set"

We did not follow the recipe exactly.  We did not have enough cream cheese so we substituted a bit of sour cream.  Bella added a bit more vanilla than called for.  The recipe called for one, deep dish pan.  We used two, shallow 9" pie pans because that is what we had.

A final note of caution:  Don't cut the cheesecake until after it is chilled.  The cream cheese and sour cream have a very high fat content.  Cutting while warm will cause the slices to collapse in a heap of crumbs and the knife will drag when cutting.

10mm Auto vs. 40 S&W

Jeff and I worked together for the first fifteen years of my career.  We still keep in touch.

"In Michigan, female bear range from 100-250 pounds, while adult males weigh between 150-400 pounds."  Source.

Jeff plans to retire and to move up to the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Jeff likes walking in the woods with Buddy, his geriatric, yellow lab.  Jeff decided that he needed to research handguns for personal protection.

The Eastern UP is known to have large black bears that are not very afraid of humans and a few mountain lions.  The video shown above gives a good feel for what woods are like in the Upper Peninsula.

This bear weighed over 500 pounds.  Source.

My friend's house is next to the house of member of his county's sheriff's department and that fine officer took Jeff firmly in hand.

They went out to the range last Tuesday and Jeff got to shoot about 12 different handguns.  Offerings included 45 ACP, 40 S&W, 9mm, .357 Magnum.

He shot the big guns well.  He really struggled with the most concealable handguns.  He said, "Joey, some of those guns I had two fingers wiggling around in the air.  The handles are just too short for me to hold."

He shot the semi-autos just as well as the .357 revolver.  The officer had him do several rapid fire and reload drills and Jeff became convinced of the merits of the semi-auto.  Writers far better than me have observed, we don't choose our guns so much as they choose us.

Extended capacity magazines offer additional capacity.  That might be awkward while driving but almost transparent while walking in the woods.

He now plans to buy a Glock 20 in 10mm.  He also plans to buy a 40 S&W replacement barrel so he can switch between the two based on ammo cost and availability.

I don't see the utility of the 10mm over the 40 S&W.  According to Hodgdon's reloading data a reloader can wring 1160fps out of 180 grain bullets with the 40.  Stepping up to the 10mm increases that to 1290fps.  For what it is worth, most 10mm "factory" ammo with the 180 grain bullet only advertise 1150fps.

Hitting even the largest of bears with the 40 S&W factory offerings in 180 grains at 1000fps will tend to re-order nearly any bear's priorities.

The officer also showed Jeff several different holsters.  A firearm does you little good if you lose it while canoeing, or after you slip off a beaver dam or during a scuffle.  Many holsters offer secondary retention features.  Jeff seemed to gravitate toward the Blackhawk Serpa design.  I shared Old NFO's observation that this kind of retention mechanism is vulnerable to being locked up by sand.  Jeffy is going to give that some serious thought.

Is the 10mm worth the hassle over-and-above a vanilla 40 S&W?  Clearly it is to Jeff.

Bragging about my daughter

I picked up Belladonna at Grand Valley State University today.  It is the start of spring break.  She was in a very fine mood.

As reported earlier, she has fallen in with a bunch of students who are working hard to stay physically fit and to stay healthy.  Like all communities, the group dynamics cause a wide range of personalities to express themselves.  Belladonna is a freshman and has been working out how she fits into that community.

Today they were bench pressing free weights.  One thing you need to know about free weights is that the lifter must not only lift the weight, they must control the weight.  Many athletes who think they are hot poop on a paper plate after lifting on "machines" have been humiliated on free weights.  Free weights not only challenge the gross motor muscles, they challenge the myriad of "stabilizer' muscles.

Belladonna "PRed" (Personal Record) what she can bench press today.  If you tortured me I would tell you that she bench pressed 235 pounds of free weights.  That is the combined weight of Donald Trump and a large Brittany Spaniel.  Belladonna informed me that 235 pounds is a little bit more than the average 18 year old woman can bench press.  I am taking her word on that.

Mother Hen

Our family doctor, The Old Curmudgeon, tagged Belladonna's personality early on.  He labeled her as "an Encourager".  Later events proved that he hit the nail on the head.

It is a bit cliche, but there is a place for an "Encourager" or a "Good Cop" in every group.  Weight rooms tend to be testosterone laden and can tip toward the negative and hypercompetitive.  We are doing what we can to support Bella be her truest, best self.  She needs to remain true to her personality and I cannot imagine a better counterbalance to negative energy.

I plan to send her back to school well practiced in making cheese cakes.  Cheese cakes are verboten for mere mortals...but 350 pound, muscular young men can eat things that are now forbidden to me. 

No, this is not a picture of me.  This is Scott and he just finished chainsawing five face cords of fire wood by 10 AM.  He is celebrating with a Gurkha Beast.

I also plan to send her back with five Gurkha Beast cigars.  A few of her weight room buddies enjoy the most manly of vices; cigars.  What better way to celebrate a Personal Record than with a big cigar.  Note to Nik if you read this...I need recommendations on celebratory cigars.

I think she is going to fit in just fine.  And it does not hurt that she can lift Donald Trump and 20% of Bernie Sanders at the same time.