Zero-Sum-Game

Bruce Bussing is one of the finest supervisors I have ever been privileged to work with.

Bruce is fond of telling a story about the time a Committeeman (Union Steward) approached him late one afternoon and made an impassioned plea to expunge the record of an individual Bruce had fired. Expunging his record was the first step toward clearing the way to have the fired employee hired back into the firm.

Bruce said "Let's talk about it tomorrow morning." 

The next morning, Bruce told the Committeeman, "I don't like to make decisions in a hurry. Whaddya say we meet at Bob Evans for dinner on Saturday night, you, me and Smedley and we will discuss this like grown men."

That was far more than the Committeeman expected and he quickly agreed.

On the appointed day and time the Committeeman and Smedley found Bruce at the local Bob Evans restaurant. Bruce was accompanied by a  couple in their early twenties with a toddler. The Committeeman assumed Bruce brought his son for some sick, twisted reason.

After eating, the Committeeman launched into his pitch. Smedley had been on the wagon for six months and had a clean record where he had been working. Surely six months was long enough to establish Smedley had turned over a new leaf.

You see, the backstory was that Smedley had a mishap with a fork-truck in the plant and it was determined that he was drunk. There are not a lot of things that will get you summarily fired in a union environment, but driving power equipment while intoxicated was one of them. The union's dues-paying membership was dwindling and they didn't want drunks to hurry the decline.

Bruce listened impassively. The young couple seemed nervous. The woman was anxiously twisting her napkin the entire time the Committeeman was talking.

Then Bruce started talking.

"Apparently you didn't call the place where Smedley was employed. Or, more accurately, the place where he used to work. Smedley was fired last week."

The Committeeman shot Smedley a dirty look.

"Yup. I talked to a couple of his buddies and they told me where he was working. I called them to see how he was doing and the dock-master told me Smedley drove a 12,000 pound fork-truck off the end of the shipping dock."

"Before we go any farther, I want to introduce you to Roy Ingraham and his wife. They are fine people" Bruce said.

The Committeeman nodded. "I am sure they are."

"You probably don't recognize Roy. He works second shift."

Bruce's train-of-thought was opaque to the Committeeman. It seemed like a terrible breach of professionalism to bring an unrelated employee to a meeting where the discipline of another employee was being discussed.

"Roy is the model employee. He is never late. He leaves his work-cell spick-and-span. Never fights with the other employees."

"Of course you know Smedley because you are old friends. Seems like he needs your help every three months or so."

"So I can understand you not knowing Roy...seeing how he is on a different shift and never gets into trouble."

"So why is he HERE?" the Committeeman asked.

"Well, if I bring Smedley back, Roy is the guy with the least seniority in the plant. He is the guy I have to let go. Bringing Smedley back does not create another job" Bruce said.

"So I want you to look at Roy...who has been paying his Union dues for the last five months...look at his wife and his child and you tell them that Smedley is more deserving of Roy's job than he is. I want YOU to fire them."

The Committeeman slapped a $20 bill on the table to pay for his portion of the bill.

Smedley asked "Who is paying for mine?"

The Committeeman snarled "GFYS" at Smedley and stalked out.

Bruce looked over at Roy and his wife and said. "Thanks for coming. Looks like you still have your job."

Life-boats

If you have a set number of positions on your life-boat and have penciled in the names of the people who will fill them, then THEY will take out the trash after it is made clear that letting others in means that they gave away their seat.

The key to making this work is to get the designated passengers aboard as quickly as possible.

Zero-sum-game can be your friend.

Who do you let into the life-boat?

Glen Filthie recently posted that he was inclined to "hunker down" rather than go Mad-Max and head for the hills in the event of massive social breakdown.

His reasons and the readers who commented are worth reviewing.

I suspect that a goodly number of my readers already departed The Big City and are rearranging the doilies on the arms-lockers as we wait for events to unfold. 

Something worth considering is that many people in The Big City plan to evacuate and they plan on camping in your house. As Duncan Long wrote in his classic Backpack Fever:

A lot of people will be headed for the same spots. (Don't laugh that off, either. In my area, every eighth person has confided his secret retreat spot to me. And about half of them are all headed for the same spot: an old missile silo devoid of water and food. I suspect that the battle at the gates of the old missile base will rival the Little Big Horn.)

No matter how out-of-the-way their destination, most survivalists are kidding themselves if they think others won't be headed for their hideaway spot along with them.

Who do you let in?

Who do you send packing?

Are you ready to enforce your will? 

One thought is that your haven might be the ark that keeps the flame of Western Civilization alive and not just an overnight flop-house.

From that perspective, inviting intact families with married parents would receive very high priority from me, perhaps even more important that "skilz".

Skills can be learned. Loyalty, not so much.

Why?  Because loyalty and commitment have become rare commodities in this world. An intact family suggests that the two adults are not afraid of commitment and have a tangible track-record of being able to work with one other adult in close quarters.

A man who has a wife and children behind the walls will fight with great courage. Can the same be said of a "man" whose squeeze is a random hookup du jour? Which one is more likely to sell-out and lead them to the loot by the back gate?

While I would prefer people I am related to, I don't have very many family members who are in the 20-to-50 age range who are married and have children.

Women-and-children first

While the idea of taking in dozens of nubile, young women has a certain, passing attraction, qualifying as both women and children, there are some good reasons to NOT do that.

For one thing, young women tend to have daffy ideas. Ideas like "This is a Democracy and we should vote on every issue". Furthermore, an imbalance in the men/women can lead to some unhealthy competition when it is critical that energy should be focused on feeding, housing and protecting the lifeboat.

And, it is with dismay that I must report that many young women have issues with authority (especially when wielded by a man) perhaps because of daddy-abandonment issues. Many young women seem to feel totally justified in doing whatever their emotions direct them to do. Then, when there is an aweful outcome they rationalize it with "My heart was in the right place"

Another question is "How many"?

That number will vary. It will be more if they bring a trailer or are willing to live in an outbuilding or even in a tent.

It will be much higher if they are willing to use an outdoors pivy. If you will forgive the expression, the first thing on Hacienda ERJ that will crap-out as numbers climb will be the septic and drain field.

Hey, Cuomo...

An old man died. His dog laid down next to him and died also.

They were standing on a dusty road through the clouds when they awoke. They were standing near massive gates encrusted with gold and pearls and other precious gems.  A sign next to the gates read "Herein lies Heaven. Absolutely no dogs allowed."

Looking at the sign, the man shook his head in dismay. He didn't enter but started walking down the road with his dog. 

Rounding a corner they saw another set of gates. The posts were old and sun-rotted. The writing on the sign had faded to the point where it was unreadable. An old, bearded man in a cowboy hat was emptying a bucket into a water trough beside the gate. 

The man realized that he was extremely thirsty and his dog's tongue was dragging on the ground. 

"Excuse me,…" he said.

"Peter."

"Peter, what are these gates?"

"These lead to heaven."

"And what were those?" the man asked, pointing back up the road.

"Oh, those were to hell, we don't tolerate f____rs who abandon friends here"

 

Drat and dag-nabbit. Stung by another yellow-jacket

Yellow-jackets are social insects that mark threats with a scent-marker.

The marker is a smoke flare for other yellow-jackets to home in on and sting the snot out of.

Same orchard as last time.

Same row, same grapevine. Other leg, down by the ankle where my leg entered my shoe.

The upside is that it was the front of my leg so I could identify the culprit.

Tomorrow morning, shortly after sunrise, I intend to be sitting in a lawn chair some 40 feet west of the scene of the crime. I will be looking for where the yellow-jackets are coming out of the ground.

If my legendary good luck holds, it will be where it is grassy and easy to approach.

If it is beneath the grapevines, then additional planning will be required.

Popular blue masks only filter 10% of exhaled aerosol

 

None of the usual suspects in my corner of the blogosphere reported on this item, so I figured I would take a whack a the piñata.  SOURCE

Most blue surgical face masks used by many during the pandemic are not enough to avoid people from being infected with COVID-19, an alarming new study (from the University of Waterloo in Canada) has found. 

The blue, cloth surgical masks that have become popular during the pandemic were found be only 10 percent effective as it doe(s) not cover the face properly. 

Yarusevych and team said that many people wear masks that don't fit their faces properly, unlike the N95, which straps itself tightly around the wearer. 

This causes aerosol droplets to escape through multiple openings between a person's face and the cloth mask, which could spread COVID-19 in populous areas. 

The N95 was conversely able to filter over 50% of aerosol droplets while the other half is dispersed above the wearer's head.  

... we have provided solid numbers and rigorous analysis...

 

And the "money quote"

Yarusevych team added that ventilation tests revealed even modest ventilation rates provide about the same level of protection as the highest quality masks. 

I want to remind readers that legacy cities like New York and Detroit saw horrendous rates of transmission early in the Covid-19 event.

Many of the structures in those legacy cities were built before forced-air heating was common. They relied on steam heat/radiators and in-room gas combustion. The air was not pulled to a common furnace, run through a filter and then dispersed back to the various rooms.

Additionally, most of the shopping spaces were not "big box", well ventilated spaces. They were convenience stores and hole-in-the-wall bogedas.

Updates to the HVAC systems took the path of least resistance. They did not blast holes through walls and run duct work. Nope. They went to electric baseboard heating or ventless gas heaters.

Coincidence is not proof, but it does shade our understanding.

So what can WE do?

Most of us live and work outside of legacy cities.

Most of the buildings we live in or work in have central heating.

Most HVAC systems have gobs of over-capacity. The heating system in most houses are capable of heating it even when the outside temp is 20F lower than the typical January low and cooling it when subjected to record, July highs.

That means that the fan is loitering much of the time, especially when the weather is clement. 

The easy fix is to "force" the fan to run full time and/or to open windows and place fans in them.

At the risk of belaboring the point

How many times have you walked into the store and watched the clerk discretely pull their mask up over their nose?

The fact that they have the mask over their nose NOW does nothing to address the fact that they were aerosoling dropets the last fifteen minutes. In the absence of effective ventilation, most of those droplets are still suspended in the air. The rest plated out on surfaces you are likely to touch.

Masks are a very flawed countermeasure because they depend on constant policing of the wearers to ensure they are properly fitted at all times. Very few people enjoy policing others. It is not in our nature.

Surveys suggest that one-person-in-forty is motivated (energized) by achieving results through others. Perhaps another 5%-to-10% are control freaks. That leaves 85% of us who are disinclined to police others.

Running the fan 24/7 is easy-peasy. In many cases, it is a simple flip of a switch and then it is done and stays done. Monitoring is simple. The fan is either running or something is wrong.

"South Dakota" plums

 

"South Dakota" plum was released in Minnesota. A graduate student brought the variety from South Dakota. Some people think it is pure P. americana. Others think there is some Japanese plum in its pedigree. It is considered a very good pollinator for other, diploid plums.

See the suture line?

South Dakota is a freestone. That means the stone lifts right out of the ripe, cut halves.

I was harvesting the seeds for planting but could not bring myself to eat four pounds of plums in one sitting nor to throw them away.

Cold-pack pints are 25 minutes of boiling. Then I took the jars and the kettle outside to cool off. Our A/C does not need the extra load.

Bonus factoid

Sphere packing is not very efficient. Shot in shotshells and fruit in jars will run about 60%-to-65% efficient.

Why might that be useful?

Suppose you were reloading 20 gauge hulls that somebody had given you as a gift. Also suppose that your standard "load" is just a bit too bulky.

You cut off the petals of the wad and weigh them and learn they are 9 grains.

How many #8 pellets does that equate to?

Since the wad is made of low-density polyethylene with a density of approximately 1.0 grams per cc and lead has a density of approximately 11 grams per cc, if spheres packed perfectly efficiently then the petals would be the equivalent of 11 * 9 grains or 99 grains of pellets. At 1.1 grains per pellet of #8 shot, that would be 90 pellets.

But since we know spheres are not very efficient at packing, we have to multiply that 90 pellets (100% efficiency) by something between 60% and 65%.

If we use 60% we get 54 additional pellets. If we use 65% the math predicts 58 pellets. Flipping the computations around, cutting off the petals of the wad are the equivalent of shaking out 54-to-58 pellets of #8 shot.

Another use involves calculating how much syrup you will need to make when canning near-spherical fruit. Plan on 12 to 13 ounces of syrup and you will be close. If the fruit is soft, you can squish them a little bit to get better packing efficiency.

Images I enjoyed

Unifying theme: Woodwork and Russia

From the ornate

To the less flammable

People included for scale

I am not calling this Fine Art Tuesday because...well, it isn't "Fine Art".