Domiciles for Solitary Bees

This is a follow-up to a much earlier post.

This is a dormitory for solitary bees.  It is a bundle of woody sticks chosen for their varying "pith" diameter.  The stems are about 12" (300mm) long.  One quickly runs into diminishing returns as the bees will only tunnel a limited distance into the twigs.  The length is determined more by the ease of handling from the human end than by what is optimal for the bees.

The sticks with the large, dark piths are Staghorn Sumac.  The sidewalls of these twigs are so fragile that it is necessary to use a VERY sharp set of pruning shears.  The stems with the lighter piths are Box Elder.  Not pictured are stems of hybrid poplar.  I doubt that the species selected are critical as long as the property owner offers a range of pith diameters for the bees to sort through.  Cutting natural stems provides this variation as a free benefit.

Some people create "Solitary Bee Hotels" by drilling holes into chunks of wood.  The most popular Solitary Bees seem to favor holes with a diameter of about 5/16" (about 8mm).  Picture from HERE

One of the potential advantages to bundles of sticks is that some of the commercially available SB nests (picture above) are too friendly to parasites.  Mites have been observed around the holes where they hitch rides on the hatching bees.  The bundles of sticks are more exposed to the weather (which knocks the snot out of the mites) and the mites cannot sense the hatching bee's vibrations and home in on the hole that the new bee will exit from.

Some species of bees (and there are hundreds, if not thousands) will not nest in a used stem.  She will only lay eggs in those stems that she personally mines the pith out of. 

It is doubtful that I really need to put these nests out.  I have many, many broken, exposed stems on the property.  That is what happens when your management plan favors bunny rabbits.

Still, it was easy.  It took no more than a couple of minutes to cut the stems and make each bundle.  And I had a bit of fun outside.

I intend to report if there is any evidence that Solitary Bees (and/or wasps) made use of these bundles for laying eggs.

---To Be Continued---

The Maple Sap will be Running

The maple sap will be running this week.  Big temperature swings.  Below freezing at night.  Above freezing for a substantial portion of the day.

Those buckets will fill up quickly.

25 cycles per minute

I am married to the greatest woman on earth.  How many other men have wives who will cheerfully video their husband messing around with his new stripper?

The sounds on this video will bring back memories if you ever worked in a factory.  It will either drive you nuts or lull you.

The stripper is on the right side of the press.

Pay no attention to the clutter behind the press.   It is really wallpaper ;-)

Internet running like poop

The internet has been running like poop here in mid-Michigan.  I emailed A Really Smart Guy and he said that there were rumors of issues on one of the Tier One backbones.

The non-performance started about three days ago.  Sites under the Google nameplate seem to run well enough to connect.  Sites not affliated with Google time-out before connecting.

The system is a little better this morning.  Wikipedia connects.

Net Neutrality

Coyote Blog  points out that "Net Neutrality" is the cynical use of Executive Orders to tilt the competitive environment in favor of a small group of "content owners" at the expense of  players who "deliver content".

Capital chases perceived, potential profit.  Investors will invest in the distribution system as long as they see a favorable risk/reward environment.  Few things pollute the risk/reward environment more than arbitrary, unilateral interventions by "activist" politicians and governmental regulators.

We are looking at the future:  A future where there is no profit in maintaining the infrastructure of the internet.  Unable to attract investment,  the hardware will degrade and replacement/upgrades will be intalled on the most begrudging of terms.  Bandwidth demands of applications will skyrocket, capacity will decay.  Performance will go into the toilet.

Obama's pen and phone are trumped by Billy-Bob's hacksaw and the laws of thermodynamics.

What content?

Carriers already make decisions about the content to prioritize.  Suppose there are 99 users attempting to connect to Wikipedia articles and one user attempting to download an "adult" movie from Netflix.  The bandwidth demanded by the single user downloading the movie dwarfs the combined demand of the other 99 users.

A provider will rationally first serve the 99 customers their itty-bitty spoonfuls of data at the expense of some brief, buffering pauses in the movie.   That leaves the provider with 99 satisfied customers and one customer who has the equivalent of commercial-breaks randomly scattered through his viewing.

"Net Neutrality" makes it illegal for the internet service providers to activate algorithms to optimize customer satisfaction.  It is the full equivalent of a Tammany Hall politician walking up to the sled heading to Nome, Alaska in 1925 and, at gun point, forcing them to add a pallet of anvils to the manifest.

Parents of children attempting to finish their homework in B. F. mid-Michigan seldom host $5000-a-plate fund raisers where politicians can rub elbows with the glitterari and the famed illiterarary.

Anti content?

At this point you might ask, "ERJ, are you anti content?"

Heck no!  Every blogger is a creator of "content".  That is, un-paid creators of content.   The percentage of bloggers who make a significant amount of money off their created content is approximately 0.0%.  I am pro-content.  But I am also aware that there are many barriers that make it impossible for me to every get paid a penny on my efforts.  Primarily the piglets already sucking on the sow's teats.

I am not against content.  I am against the use of law to create fortresses to protect non-competitive kingdoms.

Briefly consider prostitution.  The introduction of oral contraceptives and the looser moral standards that "the pill" enabled were heralded as the death knell of prostitution.  The thinking was that the market for paid providers would evaporate in the face of the huge influx of enthusiastic pro bono, amateur providers.

In fact, the prostitution industry did take a huge hit.  It is not extinct but it survives only because it runs a much lower overhead business model that strip-mines the assets of vulnerable (mentally ill, run aways, drug addicted) workers.

The entertainment industry sees the open internet as a threat similar to "the pill".  It is buying legal fortresses via the Executive branch to fend off every Studio 143 graduate who dreams of hitting the big time.  After all, that lower overhead business model cannot support $5000-a-plate fundraising events, posh mansions in Palm Springs nor a jet-set lifestyle.

Glock girl rocks

The distaff side of the ERJ family went out for a "girl's night out."  They went to a chick-flick titled The Dropbox.  The boys were not invited.

So Kubota, Pelé and I had a "boy's night out."

 We went to Dicker and Deal pawn shop on South Cedar street in Lansing. We ate too much at Spud's restaurant on Waverly Road.  We checked out Disk Trader where we saw a magnificent pothole.

Our last stop of the day was at a book store.

A young lady walked up to the magazine rack where I was drooling over some magazines.  She asked if I could scoot over a bit.  She wanted to buy a particular magazine.  This is what she picked up.

Absolutely nothing dowdy or plain about this girl!  I could not tell she was carrying.  Beneath the coat she was wearing a voluminous blouse of densely woven, limp cotton material in Robin Hood green (think "drapes") and lots of jingly-jangly jewelry.  She also had low boots with beau coup straps and "charms" adorning them.

This young lady is thinking about expanding her family.  She has a 9mm Glock that she shoots every week with her brother at Total Firearms in Holt, Michigan.  The weekly date is a sibling bonding tradition in her family.

She loves her Glock.  It is a very shootable gun and it has become a natural extension of her.

But now she wants a baby.  That is, a gun that does not print through her clothing.  Sometimes a girl, a pretty girl, wants to WOW! people with just how pretty she is.  Is hard to hide a brick beneath a knit, sheath dress.

She is leaning toward a Smith and Wesson Shield but is not quite ready to pull the trigger.  She knows that she will want the extended magazines.  She does not like to have extra fingers dangling down.

Total Firearms has a policy of encouraging shooters to test out guns they are thinking of buying.  I think it is possible to make arrangements so the rental fees are deducted from the transaction price of the gun.  That is a brilliant policy on the part of Total Firearms.  I am pretty sure that she has been checking out all of the likely candidates, sending rounds downrange.

Growing the family is an enormous responsibility...the new mouth needs to be fed, and clothed and a place needs to be found for it to sleep. One advantage to the Shield is that it comes in 9mm and it will be a snap to keep it fed.

She showed me a purchase she had just made to scratch the S&W itch.  It is a coffee mug.  I wonder what the folks at work will be thinking when the see it.

I am tickled that she was comfortable sharing her passion for firearms.  She willingly agreed to pose for the photos.  I think that she wants her "sisters" to see her as a role model.  Some people want to dismiss women with mature attitudes about personal responsibility, women who seize the empowerment embodied by a firearm as "bull dykes" or "male wannabes".  Let me tell you.  This lady is a very feminine, very personable and very attractive girly-girl.

And she carries a Glock.

The Economics of Shopping Locally

"Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack."  - Winston Churchill on persuasive argument

Consider a home owner who makes $10/hour and lives 17 miles from the closest big-box hardware store.

Something happens.  It could be the plumbing downstream of the sump pump gave up the ghost after forty years of service.  Or it could be that the hot water heater died.  Or perhaps it could be a roof leak.

The first trip to the big-box store results in a $70 dollar bill.  The homeowner purchases six black iron nipple (two diameters, three different lengths), hose, a cheap, promotional pair of channel locks, a can of WD40, a roll of duct tape and a headlamp flashlight.

The second trip to the BB store results in a $50 bill.  He buys hose clamps, a good pair of channel locks, batteries for the headlamp, bandages, antibiotic an a twelve pack of anesthesia.

The third trip to the BB store resulted in a $10 ding to the wallet.  I bought Teflon pipe tape and ear plugs.

Let's add up the costs.

Wages

I never met anybody who earned $10/hour who vigorously argued that they were overpaid.  

In general, their employer is required to pay them $15/hour after a forty hour work week.  Therefore, their time will be valued at $15/hour.

Three trips, one hour driving and a half hour in the store = 4.5hr*$15/hr = $67.50 

It is worth noting that the cost of wages does not include the time actually working on the project.  A little bit of expert guidance reduces the number of false starts and wasted effort.  One-and-done also saves "wages" at the job site but that will not be accounted for in this analysis.

Driving

According to the AAA, it cost about 60 cents a mile to drive a vehicle in 2014. 

Three trips at 34 miles per round trip adds up to $61.20

Wasted purchases

Between one-quarter and one-third of the purchases were unnecessary.  The buyer was distressed and was overbuying.  One-quarter of $130 is $32.50

The total cost

The total money wasted by shopping at that "cheap" store down the road was $131.20 ($67.50 wages, $61.20 driving costs, $32.50 unnecessary purchases).  That is a very stiff toll for somebody making $10/hour.

Where did the perception of "cheap" originate?

It came from that cheap, promotional pair of channel locks.

That beautiful, chrome plated pair of channel locks warped the first time you put some weight on them.  They cost $12.95 while the channel locks at the local hardware store cost $17.95.

So, guess how much the second pair of channel locks from the BB store cost?  Yup.  $17.95.

So make a habit of shopping your local stores first, not last!

HPV vaccine update

My frustration with healthcare continues.

Belladonna is done with basketball and track does not start until later this week.  I have a tiny window of time to move her around and bring her up-to-date on her vaccinations.

Retail, list price for HPV (Human papillomavirus) vaccinations are $500 for the series of three.  As a retired person I had the time to call around.  I learned that our local health department had a grant and they were available to walk-ins for $23 a shot.

I would not have had time, back when I was a working stiff, to have called around and found this discount outlet.  I would have paid full retail.

Capitalism is not perfect but it is notable for its "allocative efficiency".  One enabler for that efficiency is transparency and ready access to "prices".  The current healthcare system for the United States is opaque with regard to costs.

How very bizarre. I can buy rooted cuttings of Cannabis on Craigslist for $10 (guaranteed) a stem.  You can verify this by going to your local Craigslist and typing in "clone" or "overage".

I can buy JWH Cannabinoids that are five times more aggressive than THC.  I can purchase them from eBay by the kilogram and tell you, to the penny, what that kg will cost delivered-to-my-door.

I can buy Peruvian guano, Swiss chocolate, and Fly Agaric mushrooms and know exactly what the price will be before I consummate the transaction.

But the medical establishment cannot tell me, before the fact, how much I will pay for a vaccine that the CDC recommends, nor is there any mechanism to direct me to outlets that might offer a discount.

That. Is. Screwed. Up. 

The standard question one asks when confronted with a situation that does not make sense is "Cui bono?"  Who benefits?

The opaqueness of the medical system and its pricing is certainly not to the benefit of the working stiff.  For all practical purposes, it is a declaration of war on the productive elements in our society.

Epilog

Belladonna got her shot.  Then we hit a couple of jewelry stores.  She wanted a small cross/crucifix to hang from the mirror of the car she is driving.

She is good-to-go until June, thoroughly vaccinated against moral and epidemiological harm.