Simple science

Hypothesis 1: I can use containers baited with apple cider to catch yellow-jackets

Hypothesis 1.1: There are variables that I can manipulate to increase their effectiveness

***

Questions: 

Will containers with small openings be more effective than ones with large openings because it will be more difficult for the yellow-jackets to find their way out?

Will containers that are laid on their side, with their openings close to the ground be more effective than containers with their openings higher off of the ground.

2 X 2 experiment with single replication

Jar that held instant coffee. Label peeled off. Opening facing north. Partially-filled with cider and a tiny dab of dish detergent.

Six yellow-jackets.

Peanut butter jar with label removed. I did not use a PB jar for the horizontal test because they are straight-sided and would not hold liquids if laid on their sides.

Two yellow-jackets

Sport drink container laid on its side

One yellow-jacket

Sport drink container, vertical opening-up

No yellow-jackets but many, many fruit-flies.

Conclusion: A wide-mouthed jar, laid on its side and baited with apple cider is a good first-choice for yellow-jacket traps.

Goals, PT, fats-and-oils and emotional health

 Happy dance

Never having been to Physical Therapy I was caught flat-footed on my first visit back in July when they asked me to "list my goals".

I come from an environment where goals are supposed to be germane, measurable, objective and achievable. Examples:

"Good goals"

• Be able to walk 9 miles in 3 hours and 15 minutes
• Be able to run 5k in 31 minutes
• Dead-lift (10 repetitions) my body-weight
• Squat (10 reps) my body-weight

"Bad goals"

• Write world-class poetry
• End world hunger

Yesterday my PT took me into the weight-room and he base-lined me on dead-lifts and the squat. 

"Tell me again why you need to be able to pick-up-and-carry 200 pounds?" asked Jeremy, my Physical Therapist

 

Random fact: A tripod mounted M2 weighs 128 pounds.

After base-lining, my PT gave me "the talk" about realistic expectations. Specifically, PT might get me 80%, maybe 85% of the way to some goals because that last 20% can take a long time to squeeze out. That is, improvements in physical performance show diminishing returns as they approach physical and biological limits.

According to the Brianmac.uk website, my dead-lift goal looks achievable within a year and hitting 85% of the squat goal appears to be achievable in that same timeframe.

Bonus link: Brianmac.uk A-to-Z website (W for weight lifting)

Goals and motivation

The apple that makes you fall off the ladder is the one that exceeds your grasp by a whisker.

You will learn a few things if you study "Motivation".

We are most motivated by the item (or goal) that we do not have...yet.

We are not as motivated by things we have already achieved and cannot be taken from us.

We are not motivated by tasks or drills were we have zero success or 100% success. Example, when practicing shooting baskets we will stay on-task longest when 50% of our shots are successful.

Successful coaches produce good athletes by presenting a series of "drills" or skills the players will use in the game. The drills increase in difficulty and are presented so easy ones (near 100% certainty of success, like dribbling the length of the court) are used as warm-up, drills clustered around 50% success and small-sided games are the meat of the practice and "stretch" drills with low-probability-of-success are near the end of the practice so athletes are introduced to them. Then the 100% drill is used as a cool-down at the end of the practice so the young athletes can leave the practice field with a sense of accomplishment and success.

As the athletes grow in skills, the menu of drills change.

Maybe I am reading too much into this but I get a sense that I am getting prepped for PT graduation.

Chocolate chips

One of the chores that I had been assigned was to clean out the huge, chest freezer at Mom's. She is in a facility and it seems unlikely she will come back home.

That chore was paused while I recovered but now I am back in battery.

It had been Mrs ERJ's and my habit to swing by the house after visiting Mom and filling a milk crate with items we could chip out of the freezer.

My mom, God bless her, had 15 pounds of chocolate chips and five pounds of almonds in her freezer. That is a lot of cookies worth of chocolate chips!

One of the conditions of my "chore" is that I am allowed to dispose of the items at my discretion.

The value of fats in our diet

No matter how "hot" she looks, I guarantee there is at least one guy somewhere who is completely fed up with her bullshit.

So I knew this guy who had a girlfriend who he thought was quite the catch.

His girlfriend obviously didn't think the same about my friend since she saw him as a "project" in need of perfecting. For instance, she badgered him into having his teeth capped so he was worthy of being captured in her selfies.

One of her initiatives was to put him on a diet so he would have that lean, ripped appearance...again, so he would be worthy of being seen in public with her.

To that end, she put him on the Pritikin Diet which mandates less than 10% of dietary calories be from fats and oils.

My friend, a person with a sunny personality and filled with bonhomie plunged into the darkest of depression as suddenly as if he had stepped off of a cliff.

The return to his normal diet changed his disposition as suddenly as his plunge into despair.

Fried foods make us happy

 That was my introduction into the role that fats and oils have on mental function.

Lorenzo's Oil

Once I had some awareness, I noodled around and found a movie titled "Lorenzo's Oil". It is based on a true story of Lorenzo Odone who was diagnosed with Adrenoleukodystrophy (a neural disorder) as a child. The doctors of the day had no treatment.

Through shear grit and tenacity, Lorenzo's parents started experimenting and reaching out to researchers around the world. They eventually determined that his condition was vastly improved by a preparation made from olive oil and rapeseed oil.

Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors

More recently, I stumbled upon information that fish-oil (specifically the EPA component) inhibits the re-uptake of serotonin in the ganglia gap between nerve cells.

If you visualize a string of mouse-traps where each trap trips the next trap in-turn then you have a mental model of how impulses travel through brain cells. Part of understanding the process involves an appreciation that each mouse-trap must be reset before the next impulse can pass through.

To continue the analogy, foods and drugs that function as SSRIs stop the trap-bar of the mouse-trap after it triggered the next trap but before it has completed it arc, thus reducing the energy (and time) needed to reset the trap for the next impulse. That is, the ganglia still has residual serotonin after the impulse passes through so the ion's recharge more quickly.

Not only is EPA  in fish oil, but our bodies can synthesize it from alpha-linolenic acid which can be found in edible oils in various amounts.

That is just ONE way that the fats and oils in our diets influence our mental abilities and emotional health.

Plasticity

Our bodies have amazing plasticity but it is visco-plastic, it is rate sensitive.

It takes our bodies (and the little critters living in our guts) time to adapt to various stresses and changes in our lives. It takes time to build muscle. It takes time to adjust to changes in diet. Changes that are too fast break the system.

People who frequently eat at fast-food joints can have 45% of their calories coming from fats. A simple meal of 10 chicken nuggets and large fries has 48% of the calories coming from frier-grease absorbed when being cooked.

Those people will not respond well if suddenly switched to FEMA meals with 25% calories from fat. Don't be one of those people. Avoid those people.

Bonus quote

"Tenacity is 900% better than one-ass-city"

Fake News Friday: Conservatives Streaming Youtube channels

Elissa Slotkin, one of Pelosi's mindless minions. She is not very photogenic but that does not prevent her from saturation-bombing streaming services with ads.

.

Shocked at the deep pockets the Progressives in swing-districts have for targeted ads on the internet, conservatives are using strategies to deplete Progressive coffers.

Youtube presumably charges advertisers on a per-eyeball basis. Conservatives merely open up dozens of windows, all streaming Youtube. They mute each window and prop open their laptop so the camera can see the image shown at the top of the fold.

We wish them luck!

Presented without comment

Grab-bag

There but for the grace of God was ERJ

August 27, 2022 - Meridian Township police were called to the west end of Hamilton Road at Grand River Avenue, where Gonzales – who was on foot – had been hit twice while in the construction zone. The Lansing resident died at the scene from her injuries. Meridian Township police are asking that anyone who saw or heard anything contact them

Sonia Marina Gonzales was the mother of five children. Fortunately for me and my family I was only struck by one vehicle.

I was hit on Grand River Avenue in a construction zone a mile east of where Gonzales was hit.

A picture of my dirty shorts

Well, one of my shorts

 

Fixed! NEC strongly suggests that I trim the tag ends of the zip-ties. You can see the traces (rusty marks to the right of the wire) where the fence arced when it was carrying a full charge.

After action report, Yellow Jacket nest

The yellow-jackets were exiting where the end of the hose is, to the left of the trellis post. After flooding, it was dug up by skunks. The main body of the nest was to the right of the post.

I lashed the hose to a pole, in this case one that is 10' long. I keep the pole near ground level and the yellow-jackets seem to ignore it. The pole allows me to make adjustments and precision-locate the end of the hose without approaching the nest too closely.

Mrs ERJ and I moved firewood and picked tomatoes yesterday.

Mrs ERJ gets a special mention for volunteering to pick the tiny cherry tomatoes. She has amazing, nimble fingers and picks rapidly.

My original plan was to carry them in the bed of the truck but at 150 pounds each (8" diameter) they are a little more than I want to be manhandling on rough ground. I am looking forward to my bone-doc giving me the go-ahead for "impacts" so I can get back to doing stupid stuff. 

As a side-note, I am not superman. One end of a 150 pound pole weighs 75 pounds and an adult man with a good back can flip them end-over-end to move them around.

When I built this buck, I made the horizontals an inch higher than the weight-free height of the box so I could back the truck underneath the cap to re-install the cap. It makes a handy place to store poles out of the rain.

I found I can skid 8', black-locust poles behind the truck with a tow strap if I really choke up the strap (i.e. very short length). Leaving them in 8' lengths gives me the flexibility of splitting them and using them for fence posts. I can always cut them into stove-wood but I cannot make them longer after cutting.

I think I need to pull the trigger and buy a log skidding cone.

I watered the garden overnight, probably for the last time this season. The days are getting shorter and the sun is lower in the sky so the ground stays moist longer. That, and I have tomatoes ripening and I don't want to lose too many to rot.

A few years ago I grew an heirloom variety that was extremely vulnerable to rot. It may have been a combination of very thin, tender skin and chemistry (perhaps a lack of tannins). I swear that fruit two feet above the ground would start rotting after a mosquito landed on the fruit.

Other varieties seem to be able to heal even if the skin splits or ripen while in contact with moist soil without rotting. Obviously, rot-resistant varieties are preferred if you actually want to harvest significant amounts of fruit.

From the Comments section of "Improvement...dehydrating setup"

I decided to put some of the comments into their own post because they were top-notch comments and should not be buried.

Anon contributed "Foil/metal reflectors around the pipe could also boost pretemp passively, and if designed proper be adjusted for movement of the sun for optimal capture."

ERJ responds: Yes, you are absolutely right. But I know my limitations. I can get sucked into pursuing "optimum" and risk never getting started. I banged together a system with materials on-hand. Incidentally, materials that are commonly available in most places, hence of interest to others.

Jonathan H. asked "What are your procedures for making sure your product is dried enough and packed properly to make sure it lasts?"

ERJ responds: I am still feeling my way along. I don't have a good answer. Maybe one of the other readers can give guidance or point to some websites or articles or videos they found useful.

 Anon (2) wrote "If possible, consider raising your inlet 6 - 8 ft off the ground in an open sunny area to reduce inlet humidity. When I've visited humid places, the moisture content seems much higher down low, and in shady areas.

PS - Arizona is horrible - everyone should stay away."

ERJ responds: Fabulous idea. I raided my stash of empty dog-food bags to isolate from the sod and propped the inlet on a chair. Incidentally, this drain pipe has the slits so it sucks in air along its entire length which made the portion resting on the grass a problem. Cool and humid.

Regarding Arizona, I liked the town of St Johns. It resonated with me. Otherwise I have to defer to your expertise.

Scrivener asked "Bug / dust filter on the open end of the pipe?"

ERJ responds: Not yet. Maybe never. Most bugs follow scents that flow with the wind so they are more likely to enter via the outlets on the dehydrator. It is not very dusty where I live. We had the foresight to purchase a property that was on the up-wind side of the gravel road.

Fido also voted for raising the pipe off of the grass "That culvert should at least be insulated from the lawn. Maybe just a few 2x4s."

ERJ responds: You bet. I have lots of empty dog-food bags so that is what I used.

Old NFO wrote "Interesting fix, and makes sense!"

ERJ responds: If I have one skill it is being able to see ways to repurpose common items to fill a need. Thanks for the comment.

Thanks for all of the great comments. I apologize for not always being good at recognizing them.

Pearson's square, hard-times and lysine

Pearson's square is a simple way to calculate the relative ratios of two components to hit a target for a single nutrient.

For example, suppose you want to blend feed for laying hens with 18% protein and you are mixing cracked corn with 8% protein and soy-grits with 35% protein

Pearson's square is a calculation aid. One puts the percentage of desired component of one ingredient on the left side of the square at one of the corners...and label that corner. Then to put the percentage of the other component at the other left side corner.

Then the target percentage, which must be between the that of the two ingredients, is placed in the center of the square.

The feed blender works on the diagonal. Whichever is lower, target or component is subtracted from the higher and place at the opposite corner of the square.

This is done with both components individually.

The result of the subtraction (the number in the opposite corner) is the relative amount of the OTHER component.

Hard times

It is difficult to over-emphasize the importance of stating one's assumptions when looking into the future. That is because, should somebody want to bend the answer to a desired result, it can most easily be done by "adjusting" the assumptions*.

1. Hard times are recurring events in human history and cannot be avoided.
2. It is impossible to predict the future but it is possible to visualize potential outcomes as a probability cloud.
3. One trace in that cloud is a famine in the United States where the government takes over the distribution of food or people must rely on foods they stored or can forage.
   
4. Grain are generally the cheapest, most transportable, easiest to store source of calories and become the foundation of diets during hard times.
5. Meat and animal products, currently our major source of protein, will become scarce and expensive.
   
6. Grain does not have sufficient Lysine, an essential amino acid to support human life.
7. Thriving in hard times will hinge on getting enough Lysine. Take care of Lysine and most other nutrients will take care of themselves.
8. Nearly everybody will be physically active and will lose weight. Calorie bogey is 17 Calories per pound of body weight. I will assume that body-weights will drift to a BMI of 25 over time.
   
9. 30% of your calories will come from fats and oils. Fats and oils have zero Lysine.
   
10. My readers are over 18 and not pregnant and consequently your daily Lysine requirement will be 14mg/lb lean body mass/day**

Let's put those assumptions together and see where they lead us.

 

This is an appropriate time to use rounding-up. 4 parts rice or corn or wheat and 1 part beans or lentils or split peas, by weight will get it done.

What about meat?

Suppose you can get grain but not beans/lentils/peas; how much meat would a person need?

Assuming that a total break-down in society meant that you can only find whole grains (actually to your benefit because the germ is rich in Lysine) a typical adult will need about three ounces of meat a day (when added to the Lysine in the grain) meet their daily need for Lysine.

That is one chipmunk or two starlings or four sparrows; gutted with the heart, kidneys and liver tossed back into the stew-pot. Birds plucked and chipmunk skinned. Bones strained out and everything else eaten.

Bonus Links:

Lysine content of various foods

Lysine requirements for humans

Calorie requirements for humans

BMI Tables  

Pearson Square

 
*Expect authorities to change definitions as they lose control of events. We already saw this with the definition of "Recession". Expect them to dramatically revise downward recommended Calorie intake, protein allowance and other key metrics.

That is why it is important to write things down on paper. They cannot revise a page sitting in your three-ring binder.

**I am living in Mathematical sin by combining English and Metric units. I accept that I am a flawed human. I used the units I thought are most familiar to my readers.