Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

We watched Happy People: A Year in the Taiga today.

Mrs ERJ had been cleaning all day.  Belladonna is planning a bonfire in the near future and we are spiffing up the place.

Kubota popped in about half way through.  He was enchanted by the dogs and the action.

Craftsmanship

The principal subject commented that a man can lose his wealth, he can lose his health, but he will always have his "skills".  He goes on to make a set of skis using an axe, wooden wedges and a hand plane.  A point that he makes over and over again is that the craftsman must know his material, he must select it with care...and he must work with the grain.

Dogs

The principal subject commented that he had thought he was a master trapper before he was dropped into the taiga for his first season.  He was wrong.  Food and winter clothing drops were missed.  His human partner bailed out.  He should have died.  But his dog knew what she was doing.  She was a master hunter.  She kept them both alive.

He had very strong opinions and emotions about dogs, including one that died distracting a bear that was about to maul him.  That dog died in his arms.

Fuel

I admire any culture that can thrive in places where the temperatures regularly drop below -40 for extended periods of time.  However....

The central proposition of Thomas Homer-Dixon's book The Upside of Down is that civilization is subsidized by vast amounts of energy, nearly all of it in the form of oil/natural gas.  He draws parallels between the Roman Empire importing vast amounts of grain/wood/wine/olive oil from the periphery of the empire to support the center.  Depletion of the resource base and population overshoot of the center doomed the system.  The implosion started slowly and it was possible to stall the implosion.  But the pressures increased and the final collapse proceeded from the periphery (frontiers ceded) and accelerated inward.

The spoiler in me wants to point out that those hand crafted wooden barges and dugouts are being pushed along by modern, two-stroke gasoline powered engines.  The hunters/trappers would not be able to push out to their territories 180 miles upstream without those gasoline powered outboard motors.

Their territories are approximately the size of four mid-Western counties.  They set about one thousand traps.  It would be impossible to service those traps without the use of modern snowmobiles.

The traps were masterpieces of field engineering.  Two trees were cut with an axe to form two clevises that aligned.  A crossbar was run between them.  A second crossbar was poised above the first with an exquisitely simple, yet sensitive trigger comprised of three pieces of wood.  One was shaped like a "4".  One was shaped like an "h".  The other was a tickler that held the bait.

"What about sled dogs?"  you might ask.  They feed them fish.  They catch the fish using gill nets made of synthetic fiber.  The men who were too old to go out trapping continued to maintain a run of fish net, under the ice, all winter long.  Without inexpensive, synthetic fibers nets would be fragile luxury items.

Additional subsidies result from the fact that people in urban economies juiced up with fossil fuels can pay high prices for furs.  The economy of the taiga village would collapse without high fur prices.

Finally, a politician visits the village.  He travels on an enormous river boat. He gives the obligatory speachs.  The children pay attention because of the novelty.  He off loads many hundreds of kilos of grain to show his appreciation.

Secondary food sources

Even though  the summer is short they were hard core gardeners.  They make fairly extensive use of poly film to extend their growing season.

They also kept dairy cows.

They collected pine nuts by hitting tree trunks with enormous mallets.  They then ran the cones through a machine that resembled a corn sheller to shatter the cones.  The ground up cones were then winnowed using baskets and the breeze.

Summary

The principal said that the taiga demanded industry yet he also noted that greed was despised.  Trappers who would do anything for a few more coins destroyed much.  They might start trapping before the furs were prime to have a few more pelts...at the price of the catch in the neighboring trapper's territory.  Or they would keep trapping into the month of March when all they were catching were pregnant animals.

Things that made me smile

Seen on a 3/4 ton pickup truck.

Seen at a local gun shop.  Nothing for shotgun or handguns but a decent selection for long arms.

The top shelves of the same cabinet.

Houston: We have a problem

From Forbes:

It was disclosed this week that attorneys for the city of Houston, Texas have subpoenaed sermons and other writings from local ministers who are opposed to the new Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) championed by its mayor.

A number of Houston pastors have joined a drive to repeal the new ordinance, collecting over 50,000 signatures, with only 17,259 required, to place the matter on the ballot. The Mayor and City Attorney have disallowed most of the petitions on various legal grounds, and that matter is now in court. 

But most outrageous of all is the obvious violation of the First Amendment. Churches and pastors are specifically protected in their speech and religious practice under the First Amendment.

The chilling effect on ministers is precisely what the city and its mayor seek, of course, and this they cannot do. This is legal intimidation, pure and simple. Politicians are not free to outlaw or make legal threats over speech they do not like, or think is politically incorrect, in the face of the First Amendment.

Most Pastors I know would be willing to face the Contempt of Court charges that would result from non-compliance with the subpoena.  One issue that might conflict them involves whether they will have a job after they are released.  Most Pastors have families and their pastoral duties are how they put food on the table.

We can show our support of the Bible and the United States Constitution by contacting our church elders (or their equivalent) and volunteering that it would be a Pauline badge of honor to belong to a church  where the Pastor has the sand to make the hard choices.  We can volunteer that our Pastors should stay on the payroll in the event of legal entanglement (for this issue) and they should be guaranteed their job when they return.  If history is any indication, they will write some mighty fine sermons while in prison.

In one of those strange, quirky twists, the State would end up supporting the Church in the event of tossing a bunch of Pastors in jail.  The law suites would be a walk-in-the park for any competent attorney.  The settlements would be weighty.

A rarely considered aspect of "indemnification" is that people are indemnified by organizations only under the circumstances where they are in compliance with the organizations policies and procedures.  From the perspective of the employee, it appears that they are being protected by the organization.  In fact, the organization is protecting its policies and procedures (arguably the heart of the organization) and the protection given to the individual is an unavoidable accident.

Since the City of Houston does not have a policy requiring intimidation of political opponents, nor does it have written procedures attacking the First Amendment, Mayor Annise Parker went "cowboy" and should be listed separately in the lawsuites and any efforts at municipal "indemnification" should be vigorously challenged.  She should have to pay her own law bills.  She should have to cough up compensitory funds in the case of a judgement that is unfavorable to her.

Actions have consequences.  A bully is still a bully, even after they are elected mayor.

Let there be light...

One of today's chores was to work on the lights in the breeze-way and the garage.

The light in the breeze-way is a motion activated light similar to this one.  We have four people and three dogs living in our house.  The comings-and-goings are nearly continuous.

Mrs ERJ informed me that the light was not meeting her requirements.  This was the easy fix.  Somehow the little switch that controlled duration had been bumped over to "Test" mode.  The light would switch on for approximately a second and then switch off.  I moved the switch to 1 minute.  We will see if that makes my "client" happy.

The garage

The garage is a classic case of bandages pasted on top of bandages.  The interior of the garage is 24' by 24'.  At night, it has been known to harbor were-wolves, zombies, vampires, panthers, wolves (of the canine sort), serial murderers, space aliens, subpoena servers, repo men and IRS collections agents.

Back-in-the-day, 4' fluorescent light fixtures and tubes were expected to last for twenty years.  We have advanced to the point to where they now have a life expectancy of 18 months.

I checked each fixture with a new set of tubes.  I ended up removing four of the six fixtures as lost causes.  I left one as-is, except for a new set of tubes.  The other had a bad cord.  I replace the cord and tubes. 

Those fixtures are on a timer similar to the one shown above.  Dads get very tired of hollering at kids to turn off the lights.  I expect to get flack from their future spouses for not training them to turn off lights but I will burn that bridge when it hoves into sight.

Discussion with Mrs ERJ suggested that a motion activated light might be handy in the garage as long as the switch controlled version was also available.  It is a well established fact that big cats, subpoena servers and were-wolves are a twitchy lot and will trigger motion activated lights.  Motion activated lights are of little utility against vampires, zombies and IRS agents given that they are cold blooded and motion activated lights operate in the infrared spectra.

So the current set-up in the garage is two, two lamp, forty Watt fluorescent light tubes on a wind-up timer and two 60 Watt incandescent floods in a motion activated fixture with a one minute "on" duration.

I am eagerly awaiting feedback from my client.

Containers for Storing Potatoes

The weather has been rainy.  My muscles are sore.  And I am digging potatoes more quickly than we can find containers in which to put them.

I called a local business man who is in the nursery trade.  Earlier this year he offered me a bunch of the pots that trees are sold in.  Customers turn them back in more quickly than he can reuse them.  Part of his dilemma is that he does not have a good way to sterilize them for reuse.

Roger still had them.  He would not take any money for them.  He said I could pay him with potatoes.

Twenty nursery pots of assorted sizes and styles.  Clearly, some of these are better suited to meet my needs than others.  But which ones?

If I had to pick just one I would probably go with  this one.  It is a "five gallon, squat".  By volume, potatoes "in the round" weigh about 4.7 pounds per gallon.  A five gallon container holds about 23 pounds.  A seven gallon container holds about 33 (the limit of what Mrs ERJ wants to dead-lift) and a ten gallon container holds about 47 pounds.

One of the endearing characteristics of the Classic 2100 (21 liters) are these handles.

One consideration regarding the choice of storage containers is the weight.  Since a container could well be in use for ten years one must think about our physical capabilities when we are ten or fifteen years older.  This might not apply to you if you are 27 years old but it is something old geezers like me need to think about.

And if we are guys, we must think about our better half.  Mrs ERJ can bend over and handle a seven gallon pot filled with potatoes (33 pounds, measured) today.  She would not want to fill a semi-trailer load of them but she can move them around.  Ten years from now?  The 23 pound, five gallon pot with the big, grippy handles will be the better choice. 

Myths of Street Fighting

Bill over at e.IA.f.t has a good post about adults fighting.  Bill does a very good job discussing a video that was referenced in the post.  It is a good thing, because it looks like Facebook took the video down.

In a nutshell, Bill's advice is to not "dance" when you find yourself embroiled in an altercation that could go sideways.  If you find yourself in a fight, do as much damage to the other party as quickly as possible.

As always, Get off the X.  And for your personal well being, call 9-1-1 as soon as you are in a safe place.  The first person to call 9-1-1 establishes the default narrative.  Everybody else becomes nicknamed "Defendant".

No-nonsense Self Defense

That point of view is supported by the author of No-nonsense Self Defense.  The link points to an article that is specifically about "knife fighting" but the concept applies to any street fighting.

Civilized people are at a disadvantage in street violence, just like a dog is disadvantaged in a conflict with a wolf.  A wolf does not "fight", it kills.  The wolf starves if it cannot efficiently kill with little or no risk to itself.  The dog thinks it is going to a fight.  The wolf knows that it is the axe-man in an execution.

So it is with a street animal.  There will not be "a fight."  They left that silliness back in 8th grade with the pecking order game.  Street violence is not about establishing pecking order.  It is the unilateral dishing of violence for gain.

Here are the "myths of knife fighting" as seen by the author of No-Nonsense Self Defense.  He does a fine job explaining each "lie".  The links are hot.  You should be able to pop open any topic that interests you.

Attribution:  These are No-Nonsense Self Defense links.  They are NOT my links.

• Lie #1You're going to have time to draw your own weapon 
• Lie #2 It's going to be a knife "fight" 
• Lie #3 But what if I'm cornered?" 
• Lie #4 He's going to attack you a specific  way 
• Lie# 5 And then he is going to passively stand there while you carve him 
• Lie #6 Trapping and stripping 
• Lie #7 Bio-mechanical cutting 
• Lie #8 Knowing how to stickfight means you know how to knife fight 
• Lie #9 Knowing kali makes you a knife fighter 
• Lie #10 Grappling with a knife 
• Lie #11 The knife is an extension of your hand 
• Lie #12 There is such a thing as a "master knife fighter" 
• Lie #13 That this is a "fight" at all 
• Lie #14 Expect to get cut 
• Lie #15 The FMA are the ultimate knife fighting systems 
• Lie #16 It's easy to disarm an armed opponent 
• Lie #17 You can successfully fight an armed attacker 
• Lie #18 Drills teach you how to knife fight 
• Lie #19 You can use a knife on another human being without legal repercussions

And I want to add Lie #20 You will know the number of wolves in the arena and be able to identify them a priori

The White Horse of the Apocalypse

The casual observer is likely to think that pestilence and epidemics are an unhealthy preoccupation among preppers.

This short essay roughs out why some people think the White Horse (pestilence) is about to break out of the barn.

Potential Energy

One article of faith among engineers and physicists is that systems always seek their lowest potential energy state.  One of the methods that is taught to develop the descriptive, mathematical formula for various systems is to define all of the potential energy states, take the derivative (slope) of that energy budget and set it (the first derivative with respect to time) to zero.

The same concept applies at the atomic level with electron orbits.  An electron can be excited to a higher state of energy, but in time it will eventually drop down to the lowest, most stable state.  Because the energy states exist in unique steps (or quanta) for specific elements, the excess energy that is shed when the electron drops down an orbit emits a light wave of a very specific energy...or frequency.  Sodium is orange, copper is bluish-green and so on.

Consider the common mouse trap.  An unset trap represents the lowest energy state unless one goes to the trouble of disassembling the trap.  Setting the trap increases the potential energy in the spring.  The system is held in check by a switch or trigger.  The system appears to be stable but it is not.  A slight perturbation of the trigger allows the trap to return to the lower energy state, less the thickness of the mouse's spine.

Human Biomass

In 2005 the human biomass was estimated to be 287,000,000,000 kg.  That represents a vast amount of protein and metabolizable calories for opportunistic life forms.  From the standpoint of a virus or a bacterium, every human, all 6.5 million of us,  is an open Petri dish seining the biosphere seeking the perfect predator.

Every year the human population goes up....more Petri dishes.  Every year the biomass goes up.  Every year the population density in barrios and mega-cities increases.

There are countless microbes looking for us, mutating by the hour, microbes that would love to participate in short-circuiting all of our biomass to a lower energy state.  It is just a matter of time before one of them finds us.

Perhaps not Ebola

Perhaps it will not be Ebola.  But perhaps it will be Ebola.

In Revelations the four horsemen ride together.  Pestilence, War and Famine ride together.  War destroys the infrastructure that grows and distributes food, destroys the infrastructure that provides healthcare.  Famine reduces our general vitality and vitamin deficiencies make us much more vulnerable to diseases.

Hajj

The mid-East is coming apart at the seams.  So we have the Red Horse covered. 

And into the middle of that chaos we have Hajj

From Wikipedia

The Hajj (Arabic: حج‎ Ḥaǧǧ "pilgrimage") is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, and a mandatory religious duty for Muslims which must be carried out at least once in lifetime by all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and can support their family during their absence.^[1][2][3] It is one of the five pillars of Islam. The gathering during Hajj is considered the largest annual gathering of people in the world.

Approximately 1.4 million pilgrims are expected from outside Saudi Arabia.  What would you do if you had the money and thought you might soon die of Ebola?  It might seem that this would be a good year to make your mandatory journey to Mecca.

Food Security

The United Nations is already predicting that Ebola will negatively impact the food security of Liberia, Sierra Leon and Guinea.  That would be the Black Horse.

And the fourth horseman

And the fourth rider, the rider on the pale horse, he is Death.