Persephone's Seeds

Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of production, of crops and harvest.  Persephone was beautiful (of course) and very desirable.

Hades, the God of Death, Destruction and Decay, kidnapped Persephone and took her to the underworld.  His intention was that she should be his bride.

Demeter went into mourning and all growing things withered.

Persephone was a child of the sun, breeze and flowery meadow.  She was in misery living in a dank, stinky cave filled with dead people.  In protest, she chose to give Hades the cold shoulder.  She refused to eat or drink anything.  Finally, weakened by fatigue and hunger, Persephone ate 5 pomegranate seeds.

The Gods negotiated.  Persephone was released.  Living things thrived.

But part of the settlement was that Persephone pay for the five pomegranate seeds she ate by spending five months of the year in hell as Hades' wife.  FOREVER.

Those five months of the year are the months we know as winter.

Ancient Myths

There were undoubtedly tens of thousands of myths in ancient Greece.  Each village had its own library of myths to explain various natural phenomena.  A very tiny handful of those myths survived.  They survived and have been retold countless times because they have deep, cultural, universally important messages embedded within them.

Today

Today Hades would be the corner loan shark, or the guy in the boiler room phone bank offering you an investment opportunity.

Or Hades could be a bureaucrat offering Government assistance.

Irrational?

Is it irrational to guide our actions by a 2500 year old myth that is clearly bad science?

Consider the West Bengali farmer who waits while the monsoons do not come.  His family is starving.  He could eat his cow and live a bit longer, a bit more comfortably.  But his knife is stayed by his "irrational" reverence for cows.

The rains come.  He can plow and plant his fields.  His neighbors, who ate their cows, must go to the city and slowly starve to death as they have no means for making a living.

As a thinking conservative, I strive to keep the pomegranate as far away from me as possible.  Forever is a long time.

Sausage Grinding Day

If all goes well, I will be making breakfast sausage today.

Nothing fancy:  20 pounds of venison scraps, 20 pounds of pork shoulder, 4oz non-iodized salt, 4oz ground black pepper, 3oz dried, ground sage, 1oz chipolte pepper.  All salt and spices by volume.

I expect it to take a while.

Weird stuff note

Lately, I have been experiencing the weirdest body twitches.  I have been about three times more physically active since retiring than I was before retiring.  I have sore, tired muscles so "when I sit, I sits loose" especially when I am in my beloved recliner.

These weird body twitches have both legs flying up like somebody put a firecracker under a ragdoll's legs.

I think I figured it out.  I am shivering.

I am sitting so loosely that my body heat drops.  I have been doing sit-ups as part of my physical fitness plan.  Those twitches are much more powerful than I ever experienced before.  So powerful that I did not recognize them.

Weird.

Unannounced

I enjoy reading blogs that have a balance of good-news stories and the occasional, that-stinks story.  A ratio of about three good-news to one that-stinks seems about right.

It gives me deep satisfaction to write today's post.  I see it as evidence that some of the people in charge are intelligent people, thinking about the important things.

Unannounced Lock-down

One of my that-stinks posts was about how one place I worked bungled evacuation drills.  Standard norms of behavior, many of them safety absolutes, were suspended during announced evacuation drills.

We will play on game day the way we practiced all week long.  The key to victory is to practice the way we want the team to play on game day.

The dysfunction of those evacuation drills was such that the population (including me) was being set-up for a gross failure.

So it gives me deep satisfaction to tell you that one of our local schools executed the first unannounced lock-down drill in Eaton County. 

My source informs me that the performance was good but not perfect....let's say they received a solid B.  Some rough edges were identified.  Those edges will be honed smooth in short order.  More importantly, all buildings in the district (and maybe the county) will be carpet bombed with the counter-measures.

Emotion vs Logic

Emotion wins because it is so much faster.  The emotional response system is parallel process and open loop.  The logical response system is sequential and closed loop.  We need both to survive as a species.

I am trapping mice in the pantry.  Emotions are mouse traps.  They trigger.  They go "BAM!"

I visit my "trap line" twice a day: That is logic.  I tabulate results.  I empty, rebait and reset traps that were effective.  I move traps that did not attract a mouse.  I tether traps that were too sensitive and caught an arm or a tail and got dragged off.

When the adrenaline dumps, "BAM!" is guaranteed to out-run and overwhelm ERJ's twice-a-day trap-line runs.

There is stunningly little cross-talk between "BAM!" and logic. Very little effective training of "BAM" happens with traditional, logic based training.

The key to A+ performance is to form deeply worn ruts (behaviors) in the "BAM!" portions of the brain.

That is what Bill at e.IA.f.t. is trying to make happen here.  Muscle memory and ruts in the "BAM!" portions of the brain.

The unannounced lockdown drill started forming those ruts.

Setting mouse traps

The role of the logical mind is to be the coach that sets the stage so the initial ruts are in appropriate directions.  Then, to perform post-event analysis and make adjustments.

I first set the traps in likely places.  I monitor results.

I keep what is good.

Some actors will not 'get off the X'...like the trap that does not attract a mouse.  I take corrective actions. I might change the bait (stimuli). I might move them.  Sometimes I move them close to a trap that works very well.

Some actors over-react...like the trap that catches feet or tails.  I might reduce the amount of bait.  Sometimes trap triggers due to it having been placed in a mouse trail and the mouse walks or jumps over it.   I might move that too-sensitive trap to a place with less stimuli.  Or, if that is not an option, I tether it so I can recover trap and wiggly mouse.

The Super

Dr. Bill DeFrance is the Superintendent of Eaton Rapids Public Schools.  He would be gratified if you were to give him an atta-boy.  Or, if you have investment in school or institutional safety, you might drop him a line.  I think he is a sharp guy.

Email:  "Bill DeFrance" <wdefrance@erpsk12.org>
Phone:  (517) 663-8155

Be Generous. You might start something

We can all be the spark that starts something wonderful.  Be generous.

We can all be that little girl in the pink hoodie.

Deer season, 2013 Update ---gory pictures warning---

One of my younger brothers shot both a buck and a doe on the second day of Michigan's general firearm season.  He shoots Winchester Partition Golds out of a Remington 1187.  Two shots, two deer.  I offered to trade him a single shot for his semi-auto, straight up....but he declined.

We were all delighted at his good fortune.  That last year or two has not been kind to him.  You will never meet a nicer guy.  It was good to see his Karma kick in.

Kubota

Kubota shot a doe yesterday at 5:20 PM.  We waited 15 minutes and then started looking for hair.  No hair found.  The deer was at 80 yards and Kubota had a steady rest.  He can hit a beverage can 4 times out of 5 at that distance.  The deer was stationary and oblivious.  I was confident he hit it.

We tried to "cut the trail" at a paddock division fence it had jumped over.  No blood.

We tried to cut the trail at the perimeter fence.  No blood.

We scanned the tall grass outside the perimeter fence.  Often there will be blood on the tall grass that wipes the sides and bottom of the deer as it passes.  No blood.

Kubota was all done.  It was dark.  I sent him in.  I kept looking.

I slowly worked my way down a trail that seemed a likely exit for the deer.  I went slowly because there are many things that look red in the light of the headlamp.

Do you see the speck of red about 14 inches to the left of the gun's buttstock?

A sumac berry.

I heard an animal moving away from me.  That was encouraging.  It did not move away quickly.

I ran into first blood about 150 yards and one hour after Kubota dropped the hammer.  Based on the amount of blood, the deer had bedded down.

Blood to the left of the tissue.  More blood was off picture, slightly further down trail.

I dropped a tissue next to the first sign and went back to the house.  I let Kubota know that he had hit the deer.  I called one of my brothers and had a pow-wow with him.  He advised to wait until morning.  Sounded like good advice.

A mortally wounded animal can run a long way.  Or the hunter can be patient, let the animal bed down again and let it peacefully slip its mortal coil over night and collect it in the morning

I started looking in the morning while there was still frost.  The blood looked very dry and there was very, very little of it.

The blood was much more visible after the frost melted.  Also, those specks in the blood are rumen contents.  These are things I figured out after-the-fact.

It was a matter of following the deer trails off my property.  This is what I saw on the second trail I walked down.

She made it about 300 yards from point of impact.  That is, she went another 150 yards from where she bedded down the first time.

I flipped her over to get a better picture of where the bullet exited.

If you look closely, you can see the exit wound.  It is about 8 inches forward of the rear leg, near the bottom of the deer's body.  I believe that this deer stepped forward just as Kubota pulled the trigger.  The bullet hole is exactly 15 inches aft of the heart.  Stuff happens.

Mrs ERJ will be a little bit miffed that Kubota's new girl friend is parked in her half of the garage.

The Captain came over and assisted with the skinning.  THAT is a great neighbor!

We were very fortunate to be able to reduce this girl to possession.  The bullet hit her rumen and her abdomen walls and very little else.  Fortunately for us, her path looped around in a big " C", else she would have been off-property.

Soccer Throw-ins

I had a call from a new soccer coach asking for my opinion on throw-ins.  Here are my thoughts

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Two-thirds of all points in soccer are scored from play restarts: Corner kicks, penalty kicks and throw-ins.

Throw-ins occur about ten times more often than either corner kicks or penalty kicks. 

A team that is organized and practices "throw-in" plays has a huge advantage over teams that have not.

Fractals and Julian Sets

One of the fascinating things about fractals is how a very simple rule set can generate extremely intricate and complicated outputs.

The throw-in play described below is fairly simple but looks very complicated to the other team.

Set up

Mid-fielder throws in.  Holds ball in hands in low position.  They shout out either the name of a random food or a color.  This serves two purposes, it starts the play and is a distraction to the other team....there is only one play.

Two strikers (forwards) are up-field from the throw-in.  They should be positioned about 5 yards farther away from the mid-fielder than he/she can throw and spread out by 20 or 30 feet cross field.  At the sound of "SPAGHETTI!" or "RED!" they start walking toward the mid-fielder.  They should be hollering "I'm open.  Throw it to me!"  The strikers should be synchronizing their speed so they stay even with each other as they move toward the mid-fielder.  Ideally, the defenders will follow the strikers. 

One eludes defenders with changes of speed and/or changes of direction.  This play requires that the strikers do both.

The mid-fielder is running this play.  He/she "turns" them when they lift the ball.  The mid-fielder should not turn them until they are within spitting distance.  The strikers then spin 180 and sprint toward the goal or up the sideline.

At the same time, a stopper will accelerate up the sideline from behind the mid-fielder.

The mid-fielder must be able to throw the ball in front of one of the strikers.  There is no off-sides penalty on a throw-in.

If that does not work out, the mid-fielder can drop the ball in front of the stopper.  The stopper can either cross the field (where a mid-fielder is waiting), loft it between the opposing keeper and the strikers or dribble the ball up the side of the field.  These options are listed in order of preference.

Key points:

1. The mid-fielder runs the play.  They start it.  They control when the strikers pivot and accelerate.
2. The mid-fielder must know how far they can throw the ball.  Practice, practice, practice.  Better too soon than too late.
3. The strikers must coordinate and distract
4. The stopper must be positioned, and ready to clean up any messes
5. On field mid-fielders must be ready to receive a cross from the stopper.

This play is all about timing.  If the timing falls apart, you are really no worse off than if you did not have a play.  If it works, the other team will be caught flat footed and will waste a lot of time trying to decode the "plays".

Good luck.

Prostitution and Artwork

A hat tip to Remus over at Woodpile Report for this item:

None Dare Call it Prostitution (Takimagazine.com)

Indeed, there is an intellectual debate over the moral status of prostitution. In Germany there has been an attempt officially to treat it as just one way of earning a living like any other, but this has rather odd consequences, at least in a welfare state where people receive state benefits when they are unemployed. For if we really believed that prostitution were the same as hospital cleaning or serving in a shop, those who were unemployed could justifiably be forced into prostitution if an opening for a prostitute became available. There was allegedly such a case not long ago in which the social-security system demanded that an unemployed woman take up prostitution, and even if it turned out to be an urban myth the case pointed to the logical consequences of the belief that no moral reprobation attaches to prostitution: not to the prostitutes themselves, not to their customers, and not to the pimps who help bring supplier and customer together.

I read this aloud to Belladonna and her reaction was:  "The underlying implication is that my body belongs to the State if the State can force me into prostitution.  I guess that is another vote for prostitution being 'anti-woman'".

Artwork

The stock market shows many signs of being a bubble.  The "smart" money is becoming desperate to diversify their portfolios in case/when the market pukes. Other money is simply spilling over into alternative markets.

The stock market is popular for several reasons.

1. The S.E.C. provides some degree of oversight and uniformity in reporting/documentation
2. The market is liquid.  If you want to sell your assets today, they will get sold today with little or no haircut.  You cannot say that about your house.
3. The market is HUGE.  In ordinary times, individual buyers cannot drive the market up with buying or cause it to tank when they sell.

One of the assets that is benefiting from money's flight from traditional assets is artwork.  The art market has none of the advantages listed above.

Prices bid for artwork (some of dubious merit) have become astronomical.

My belief is that people who always fight human nature end up getting punched in the nose.  Therefore, I am going to flow with this trend.

Therefore, I am granting my readership first-bid on some primitive folk art:  A banner that functions as a road sign to compel drivers to "slow down".

Three minutes of work, a paper lunch bag, two round dots of reflex tape and 24 inches of baling twine.  It ought to be worth $12,500 in today's market.