Chojuro and Niitaka as parents in Asian Pear breeding

 

Red are named pears out of Japanese breeding programs with Chojuro as one parent. Blue are pears with Chojuro as one grandparent. Green are pears with Chojuro as one great-grandparent. Cyan are pears with Chojuro as a great-great grandparent. Aqua is a pear with Chojuro as a great^3 parent.

Pears bred in Korea

Source of graphic

Niitaka shows up as parent in 7-of-9 pears released by breeding programs in Korea. That contradicts the parents of record in five-of-six cases.

Niitaka has Chojuro as one of its parents.

Prepotent breeders are a two-edged sword. The breeder produces high percentages of seedlings with desirable characteristics but over multiple generations there is the risk of an ever-narrowing genetic base for the crop.

Comprehensive Employee Manual (Short Fiction)

I stood in front of the Manager’s office in a modified Parade-Rest posture. It was a fine place to keep a finger on the pulse of the Muy Verde Grocery store. It was right beside the Convenience Center where customers could make last minute impulse purchases of booze, lottery tickets and tobacco. 

The Convenience Center was a drop-in-the-bucket in terms of square-footage but it generated as much profit for the store as the entire line of cashier stations that processed general groceries.

Immediately to my left was the rotating rack that held the individual servings of vodka, gin and rum, known as "minis" in the trade. That four-square-feet had by far the highest profit/square-foot in the entire store. It was also had the highest shrinkage rate.

Muy Verde was very progressive and was right on top of all of the scientific management practices.

The bright-white terrazo floor had a subtle "X" worked into the seemingly random pattern of aggregate. That "X" indicated where the manager should be standing when not otherwise occupied.

I was standing on the "X".

Unfortunately, one of other progressive practices that Muy Verde was proud of included the idea of The Working Manager.

It was right at the beginning of my regular working shift. My dark gray cargo slacks were still crisply creased and my button-down oxford was immaculate. Shoes shined and my belt had the ideal two-holes showing. With all due modesty, I looked like I had stepped off of a recruiting poster. More accurately, I was almost an exact replica of the illustration on the inside cover of the Company's Comprehensive Employee Manual.

Standing there, I could not help but notice the angry customer prancing toward me. Eyes blazing, he stopped three feet in front of me and demanded “Are you the manager?”

“How may I help you today?” I asked. One of the leading-edge practices that Muy Verde was proudest of was their egalitarian, universal “Associate’s Manual” that was given to every employee from CEO to the lowliest, part-time associate in Produce. “How may I help you today?” had been scientifically proven to be the least offensive and most profitable way to greet customers in every situation (Page 14, second paragraph). I lived and breathed the manual.

“My pronouns are Shey/Shem/Xir” the customer led off.

“Your cashier misgendered me and then your cashier made it worse by mocking me by using a non-preferred pronoun. I am so mad that I cannot even remember WHICH pronoun he used”  the customer hyper-ventilated.

“Oh dear!” I emoted empathy. The manual advised that we emote empathy and sympathize with our customers at all times.

“Either one of those transgressions is an offense that will result in the associate being fired. It says so in our employee manual and every employee, from top-to-bottom receives 80 hours of mandatory training every year on the contents of our employee manual and we are tested afterward so there is no excuse for misgendering” I informed the customer.

“First, I need a couple of details. What is your name?” I asked. On page 53 the company manual informed us that asking for the customer's name creates a bond and fosters trust.

“Now we are getting somewhere!” the customer crowed. “My name is Kevin McCandels.”

“Thank-you Kevin. And which of our cashiers misgendered you and then failed to use your preferred pronouns?” I asked.

The customer pointed at Josh, a flamboyantly gay man in his mid-twenties. Josh shrugged at me with a “shit happens” turn of his hands.

“OK, Karen, let me get this straight. You came in here to buy some groceries and now your day will not be complete until you get Josh fired. Do I have that straight?” I asked with a neutral, information seeking tone.

The customer’s name snapped backwards. “What did you just call me? Did you call me KAREN!!!???”

“I don’t have the time or energy to keep your silly, made-up pronouns straight and I will be fired if I get them wrong. So I just go with proper names now” I informed him.

“You called me Karen!!!” he huffed.

I rolled my eyes. Page 54 of the manual informs us that mirroring body language deepens emotional trust bonds. I was a bit proud that I was dialing into the customer's middle-school level body-language so quickly.

"Mirroring body-language" did not seem to work in this case.

“I am sorry if using your first name was too familiar, Candlestick” I apologized. I pulled a stick of Wrigley’s Doublemint out of my shirt pocket unwrapped it and pushed it into my mouth. This was shaping up to be an entertaining evening.

The customer’s partner came over to see why Candlestick was getting loud and starting to strut like a randy rooster.

Usually, in these kinds of situations, one of the couple is markedly more masculine than the other. It always struck me as odd that non-traditional couples who were bravely striking off to find their own, personal reality worked so hard to jam their pentagonal prisms through round and square holes. Never-the-less, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that every customer feels they have a home at Muy Verde (Page 5, 15, 25,…,135). But I digress.

I could not tell which of the two was the masc and which was the fem. Both had patchy facial hair. Candlestick was wearing yoga pants, a tutu and sparkly slippers while partner had on a cowboy hat, pronounced mammary development, a spangly sash with a tin-plated rodeo buckle, "Where's Waldo" striped socks and wing-tips.

They both smelled strongly of cannabis.

“So, Karen, policy dictates that I tell you to fill out the on-line complaint form and it will be processed in eight-to-ten business days.”

“You called me Karen!!!” he said with eyes snapping. He was really stuck on that.

“Yeah, well. I would get fired if I used the wrong pronoun but there is nothing in the manual mandating discipline if I don’t use your preferred first and/or last name. I know because I looked” I said with a tired sigh.

“So Candlestick, why don’t you and your buddy take your bags of munchies and toddle on out of here so good, hard-working people like Josh can go about their jobs and ensure that the citizens of this fair city have food to eat and a libation to unwind with after dealing with difficult people?”

Page 78 of the employee manual suggested that re-framing roles in terms of overarching objectives and reiterating how everybody must cooperate collective to meet the needs of society is the most productive method to defusing conflict. Also pursuant to defusing conflict, I maintained eye-contact with him while explaining the overarching reasons for Muy Verde reason for existence.

Candlestick was spitting mad and was starting to stamp his feet. His buddy was close behind. Empathy and all that.

“If you need help filling out the on-line form, I am sure you can find a 13 year-old somewhere who is familiar with the internet” I added. “On second thought, maybe you should find a 19 year-old. Yeah, in your case, a 19 year-old would be a much safer choice.” 

The manual points out that while creating empathy bonds are the first step, the issues brought by customers must be resolved. Clearing my throat "You know, in recognition of the fact that your self-esteem is so bruised by a gay dude refusing to play your childish, Simon-Says pronoun game, maybe you should consider using the self-checkout lane in the future..."

Fifty-two seconds later, I pulled out my smartphone and tapped in 9-1-1.

“You again, Jerry?” Anthony sighed from the other end.

“Yeah. Sorry. We have two customers destroying the Convenience Center and assaulting our cashier. Can you send Law Enforcement?” I asked.

“On the way” Anthony said.

“Do you want me to stay on the phone?” I asked. The company manual is very firm on staying cool and maintaining command-and-control during crisis situations.

“No, we got this” Anthony said, the quintessential professional he always was.

Maggie was giving as good as she got. She was a farm girl from the valley. The company manual mandated a 30 day suspension “for investigative purposes” when there was an employee-customer altercation. Seeing how Maggie had an uncle who was an attorney I had no doubt that in Maggie’s case it would be 30 days PAID leave and that she would be reinstated. The security video would show that the customers had instigated the altercation...totally unprovoked by Maggie.

And then Big Mike waded into the fray. Big Mike used to be a bouncer, back in the day and he still lifted. He had been in back mopping up a huge spill of orange-juice. Muy Verde was deeply committed to the environment and used glass packaging as much as possible to save the oceans and because glass was recycleable (Page 83). Unfortunately, dropping a case of orange juice made for a sticky mess that would get tracked all over the store if it was not dealt with immediately.

Boy! Big Mike certainly knew how to throw a straight-arm. This was not Big Mike’s first rodeo by a long shot. He knew how to game the security cameras and it LOOKED LIKE he was simply throwing up a fore-arm to defend against the aggressor’s swings. You had to be watching to notice that the arm continued to accelerate after it had batted away the ineffectual swing. The straight-arm clothes-lined Candlestick’s anorexic buddy and in Candlestick’s rage he was unaware that it was now two-against-one.

The kerfuffle ended seconds afterward.

Walking up to the managers office and kicking away through the 50ml minis from the stand the couple had up-ended, Big Mike asked “What are you doing here?”

“The company manual states that terminated employees are to present themselves to the manager one week after termination to receive a box containing the personal contents from the employee locker they had been assigned” I said. Then I helpfully added “Says so on Page 137 of the manual.” 

Sniffing the air, I said "You might want to run through the shower and put on some fresh clothes. They must have broken some whiskey bottles in the scuffle." Muy Verde graciously supplied a small, uni-sex locker-room that almost nobody used.

“Jesus, Jerry” Big Mike said with a tired shake of his head. “I wish I could have kept you because you are a hard worker but you just seem to rub people the wrong way.”

“The manual says on pages 23 and 69 that customers are very empathic and can pick up on associate’s emotional state. I guess I am just soured on humans. They are all bastards and cannot be trusted.”

Big Mike nodded in agreement. “That they are. Indeed, that they are.”

 

---Author's note: Written in the first person because this is how I feel many days. This piece was also an exercise in using "tags".---

Beef, Sports-ball, Coleslaw, Pears, Pellets and Tags

I started several posts for this weekend. I even finished a couple. But I did not publish them. Puzzling.

I am finding myself more attached to the characters in the Cumberland saga than to the short-stories. Consequently, it is unlikely that a short-story will drop on Monday.

Mrs ERJ has several errands tomorrow that are not-negotiable so I will be watching Quicksilver.

On the positive side, I got the cows moved to a new paddock. I have 24 cow-weeks of forage standing in the pasture and three cows. The bottom line is that I need to depopulate at least two of the beasts and turn them into meat. The bottleneck is the coupling between needing a trailer and needing to secure a slaughter date(s). Each is contingent upon the other. 

The go-to-hell plan is to turn at least one of the beeves into a hanging carcass about Nov 10. By then, it should be cool enough to hang as quarters and then whittle away into freezer meat. Frankly, this is stressing me.

College sports

Father Dwight, pastor of where I attend church, is a University of Michigan fan. I went to Michigan State University. They competed in football yesterday.

"So, Father Dwight, do you know what MSU and U-of-M have in common?" I asked him this morning.

"Hard to say, Joe" he ventured, warily. (It is not like this is the first time we have had these kinds of exchanges).

"They both have perfect records in the Big Ten" I replied. MSU has a perfect record of all losses while U-of-M has a perfect record of wins.

Father Dwight nodded sagely. "Good way to look at it" he agreed.

Coleslaw

The first recipe we tried, 50:50 oil:vinegar and two teaspoons of sugar per cup of O:V, plus a bit of garlic and dill leaf was a home-run.

The cabbage was Deadon savoy cabbage. Carrots and a tart apple were also shredded and added to the mix.

Being a glutton, I will manfully try the other submissions.

Pear trees

I transplanted six pear rootstock on Friday. Five of them went into the food-hedge to be grafted over. One went into the "serious orchard".

I convinced Mrs ERJ to eat Asian Pears for her breakfast fruit so I can collect the seed. The downside of grafting for a food-hedge is that the plants take a beating and revert back to the rootstock.

One of the rabbit-holes I went down involved SSR DNA investigations of Asian Pears. It comes as no surprise that the DNA contradicts what the breeders claimed were the parents of many varieties. Chojuro and Niitaka pears are much more highly represented in fact than in the published records. Plant breeding is highly competitive and breeders have been known to be misleading in which parents have been most productive for them.

In my orchard I have both Chojuro and Korean Giant which has Chojuro as a parent. One of my Korean Giants is surrounded by European Pear Potomac which might be an interesting pollen donor. A bunch of Korean Giant X Potomac seedlings might be great trees to have in a food-hedge.

I like late-ripening Asian Pears. They are extremely productive, precocious and trouble-free. They are almost the perfect home-orchard fruit.

.177 Pellet guns

My Beeman pellet gun has shown a very marked preference for RWS Meisterkugeln 8.2 grain pellets.

I thought there was something wrong with the weapon or my technique. I just could not get it to "hit".

I finally worked my way around to these pellets and it was as if a light-switch was flipped. Shooting chipmunks at 15 yards sounds pretty mundane but it is a big deal if you went from shooting patterns to whacking three-out-of-four.

For the record, a 8.2 grain, .177" pellet launched at 1000 fps is enough to smoke a Fox Squirrel at 10 yards. In my humble opinion, a Fox Squirrel is at least three times harder to kill than a full-grown Cottontail Rabbit.

Tags

One of the bits of advice I was given by Alma Boykin was to consider using a few more words to picture-frame my dialog to lead the reader and to help provide frame-of-context and a mental picture.

I am playing with that and it has been hard.

The writer jargon for that picture-frame is called "tags". Instead of "Blah, blah, blah" ERJ said. it could be something like "Blah, blah, blah" ERJ trumped while pirouetting atop the obelisk as lasers slashed downward from each of his lightening fast hands upon the infidels below.

Yeah...be gentle. I am new at this.

In response to TB's comment on the previous post

TB wrote: Well, on the bright side, the second article is an activity that is pretty much cost free. Which is important in these troubled economic times...

Q: How can you tell if somebody has an MBA?
A: "It depends"

Maybe "free" for people in our age cohort as long as we enjoy it with our spouse. Kids are expensive. Divorce is even more expensive.

A couple of articles to brighten your week

Viagra could cut the risk of Alzheimer's disease by 60 per cent in men and 45% in women, study finds

Sex Appears to Protect Brain Health in Older Adults, Scientists Say

The money quote: 

Among those aged 75 to 90, the frequency of sex appeared to be key. This group was found to have significantly better cognitive function five years on if they were currently having sex at least once a week.

A tip of the toque to Coyote Ken.

Gadgets, technology, prices, cabbage and other stuff

I am not a big "gadget" guy but they can make life easier.

I have a backpack that I put Quicksilver into and we take walks. It has been good for my physical and emotional health to get outside and walk for two or three miles. Quicksilver seems to enjoy it as long as there are birds, squirrels, dogs and cats to look at while walking.

I have a blinking LED light that I put in the mesh bag on the back of the pack for visibility. I simply turn it on to "heartbeat mode" and drop it in. That gives me peace of mind.

I added a solar-powered passive, IR driveway sensor to our bristling array of defense-in-depth. Handsome Hombre drops Quicksilver off at various times depending on when he is expected to show up at work. The sensor chimes that somebody comes up the driveway. Last night at 1:08 a half-dozen deer walked through and woke me up, but that is the price of progress.

The official blogging lap-top

The official ERJ blogging lap-top had a near-death experience a couple of days ago. It stopped charging. The battery icon would show it was charging but it never gained charge in the battery.

Quicksilver is as enchanted with this device as I am. She watches me as I plug things into the various ports on the device. She mimics me. Carrots, pacifiers, tableware, pencils...all manner of non-standard hardware have been tested for Windows 7 compatibility. When Quicksilver gets too kinetic, I put the lap-top into "time-out" to keep it safe and as a mild form of discipline (both Quicksilver and I suffer).

I was beset with anxiety. I did not panic but I priced out a new battery and charger. My anxiety increased when I undid all of the screws on the bottom of the keyboard and could not pry off the cover plate.

The problem resolved itself when I was transporting the lap-top and charger out of time-out. The connection between the 120V cable and the step-down transformer was loose. I firmly seated the 120V cable into the transformer and now everybody is happy.

Big sigh of relief!

Technology giveth and technology taketh away

My ability to comment is still mysteriously not working.

Reader Michael commented that the US population in 1850 was about 10% of our current population. He also noted that when the technology fails that we will likely see a horrific famine. Michael is implying that access to the inputs needed to execute those technologies are likely to be impaired for any one of dozens of reasons.

I mostly agree with his premise AND I want to add some nuance. Some "technology" is as simple as dates penciled on to the door-frame of a garden shed. Or selected land-races of various crops. Or the idea of growing multiple crops in the same field or a crop-rotation that includes nitrogen-fixing crops. Or the concepts of vitamins and complementary amino-acids in various foods.

Same for food-storage. Dry foods last a long time. Sprouting grains and other seeds are a way of "making" vegetables in the winter that don't involve South America and Boeing 747s. Root-cellars, clamps and mulching root crops will keep many vegetables in eatable condition until spring-time. Pickling and fermentation can both preserve foods and increase some vitamins.

Technology that is "knowledge" can be scaled very rapidly and can be very durable. The key phrase is ...can be. Many of our recent failures in technology were due to atrophy of the skill-base. The water treatment plants in Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi as well as countless data breaches in the cyber realm come to mind. 

Prices

 

I had the opportunity to eat breakfast in real restaurants twice this week.

The first was at Truckin' Good Diner in Lansing. $15 for a pulled-pork sandwich and a half-handful of french-fries. Throw in a beverage and a tip and you were looking at a $25 bill. Yuppies and hip-young people were a steady stream of showing up and then walking away because there was a fifteen minute wait to get into the restaurant.

The second time was at a more local diner and with the tip it was $25 for a single two-egg omelette (which we split it three ways), a side of coleslaw and a cup of hot-chocolate (Quicksilver's first taste). 

---An Aside---

My plan for today is to go out to our garden and pick a head of cabbage and turn it into $60 worth of coleslaw with fifteen minutes of work.

I will consider it a great favor if any of my readers want to volunteer recipes for their favorite dressing for coleslaw. I like shredding in carrots and maybe even some tart apples. I favor non-creamy dressings that are not super-sweet but I will read all of the comments. I should have enough shredded cabbage to attempt several different batches of dressing. 

---End Aside---

The hip-young people will never have positive net-assets as long as they value "experiences" as much as they do.

Shelving

I am building some shelving to fit along a wall of our basement. I am enjoying the mental exercise. I will NEVER be a finish carpenter but it is shelving and it is going into a basement.

The specifications are for the shelving to span 12'  to be 16" deep and to have shelves at 16", 32", 44-3/4", 57-1/2", 70-3/4" height above the floor.

Mrs ERJ's enunciation

Strangely enough, Mrs ERJ's ability to enunciate words took a remarkable turn for the better this week.

History of population growth in Europe

Blogger will not let me comment.

Reply to Roger from earlier post: Regarding Ash seeds. We have very heavy Emerald Ash Borer pressure here. If I plant ash trees it will be Manchurian Ash which co-evolved with EAB and has demonstrated field-resistance. Thanks a million for your kind offer.

A short-history on the population of Europe over time

Europe's population increased at an average rate of 0.2% a year between 1400 and 1600. At that rate, it takes about 350 years for the population to double. As a frame-of-reference, much of sub-Saharan Africa's population is increasing at 3% a year (25 years to double).

All population numbers are by-guess-and-by-golly as census taking was not a priority in the middle-ages.

The Black Death is credited with wiping out between 25% and 40% of the population.

Recovery was very slow due to high infant and maternal mortality. The population grew about 10% every fifty years.

Population flat-lined between 1600 and 1700 due to the Little Ice Age depressing agricultural production.

Introduction of corn (maize) and potatoes led to 100 years of impressive growth between 1700 and 1800.

The Industrial Revolution super-charged that growth. Something as simple as using a windmill to saw timber into lumber for ship-building had a huge impact on being able to harvest seafood and shipping salt for food preservation and guano for fertilizer.

In the north, the Hanseatic towns faced intensified competition from the Dutch, who from about 1580 introduced a new ship design (the fluitschip, a sturdy, cheaply built cargo vessel) and new techniques of shipbuilding, including wind-powered saws. Freight charges dropped and the size of the Dutch merchant marine soared; by the mid-17th century, it probably exceeded in number of vessels all the other mercantile fleets of Europe combined. The English competed for a share in the Baltic trade, though they long remained well behind the Dutch.    -Encyclopedia Britannica

 

Consider the amount of waste involved in using a froe or adz to create a plank out of a split log. Consider the amount of labor required to put two men in a saw-pit to hand-saw multiple planks out of a log. Further consider the metallurgy of the era, the saws were made of wrought iron and the teeth were stubby and quickly dulled.