I survived cutting wood

 

Chainsaw with 20" bar included for scale

One of the hazards was the Poison Ivy vines wrapped around these logs. The PI took off when the ash trees died since it was no longer shaded. 

The backstory is that Josh's little brother was given an outdoor boiler as a gift around Thanksgiving. Josh's little brother is almost out of wood to burn. Josh's little brother has two children under the age of three. Last year Josh's little brother burned $3000 of LP heating his home.

Josh looked at the weather and noticed that we are in for a three-day thaw. It will be impossible to get into the swamps starting Sunday at noon. Josh was going to cut whether I was there to keep an eye on him or not.

About two-thirds of the trees had been mature ash trees. The majority of them died long enough ago that the roots rotted and they fell over. There are still a few, here-and-there, where they are lodged in the walnuts, oaks and hackberry trees that remain. We avoided those areas.

Josh has a tracked skid-steer. I helped a little bit...just enough to stay warm...while Josh cussed at his chainsaw, cut wood, loaded into the skid-steer bucket and dumped it out where little bro can get to it. Two hours of helping "a little bit" was enough. I talk a good story but I must confess to occasionally gilding the lily to make the story a wee bit more entertaining.

Judging by eyeball, Josh's little brother has enough wood to last another month or so. Not bad for one man working two hours while the other guy supervised.

Grab-bag

Most of the new drywall is up on the walls. I redid the two worst walls and intend to do spot repair on the other two.

Prep seems to take a long time. The drywall goes up fast once the walls are ready.

Side story

Southern Belle is my oldest daughter and she is a planner and get stuff done kind of gal. At fourteen she decided she wanted the basement remodeled so she could entertain her friends down there. She helped me frame it in but where she real shone was in drywall work. Some people just have an affinity for it.

Fast-forward to Summer 2008.

Mrs ERJ and I decided to follow in the footsteps of the Steve Pettinger family. Steve had a pile of kids and he and his wife decided that the typical "Senior Class Trip" was not in alignment with their family values. 

So they told their oldest child "We will go any place in the Continental United States for your class trip but it will be a FAMILY trip. You plan it. You figure out the location, transportation, lodging, the sights we see and the activities we do."

Southern Belle's first plan was to go on a cruise. That was a no-go for a couple of reasons. "...Continental United States..." and it was not in alignment with our family values. As children of parents who survived the Great Depression, Mrs ERJ and I define ourselves by what we produce, not by how many extravagant pleasures we can consume.

I was a little bit concerned that Southern Belle would nibble the ears off the chocolate rabbit to make it fit in the box but she surprised me. She slalom to the other side of the road. She decided that a vacation in New Orleans', post-Katrina Lower Ninth-Ward was the ticket.

Adventures included rehabilitating flooded houses...where her skill with drywall was much appreciated. In fact, she was adopted by a wreck-of-a-man who was the other drywall specialist. He was so happy that he showed her many of his tricks.

The "wreck" had been living in his car for the last two years, was diabetic and struggling with circulation issues in his feet. And he drove down to N.O. and was helping to rehab shotgun-shacks for people he had never met. There was no pay involved but they were fed hotdogs and soda pop for lunch. Maybe "Hero" is a better description than "Wreck".

Other adventures included planting aquatic plants in the swamp, cutting grass in the LNth Ward because the New Orleans zoning people were issuing tickets for long grass. Mind you, the owners of the houses were in Houston and the house had been swept off the slab and New Orleans was starting the process of confiscating the property because the grass was longer than three inches.

The only really touristy thing we did was to visit the aquarium. 

Cutting firewood today

My nephew plans to cut firewood today. 15-to-20 mph sustained winds. 30-to-40 mph gusts. Current temperature is 10 Fahrenheit. I will be there to help.

Cattle

We are getting to the time of year when it is hard to keep cattle in the pasture. They chewed down all the grass.

Hay quality is an issue. Sprite brought over a bale and 3/4 of it disintegrated on the way.

Sprite offered to let me move the cattle over to her pasture but the fences are in bad shape and the ground is frozen so it is hard to pound in posts.

Five pounds of grain a day per calf goes a long way to keeping them happy.

Zeus

Zeus is the Junior Partner, that is, our surviving German Shepherd.

Last night he puked inside the house. Puked repeatedly.

A German Shepherd is capable of holding a great deal of vomitus.

He seems OK now but I only fed him a half-ration of food this morning. I will give him the rest later.

Comments

A thousand thanks for all of the comments on chocolate and chicken incubators.

The Aldi's chocolate was delicious. It was also made in Austria which has been even more aggressive regarding Covid vaccine than Canada. Another issue with Aldi is they announced that they are abandoning the North American market in 2022.

Lidl (also a German chain) carries Heidi's brand chocolate which comes from Romania. Romania has no plans to implement mandates. While we have no Lidl stores locally, Heidi chocolate can be purchased on-line.

Regarding buying an incubator ready-made, that would be the smart thing to do. But I enjoy projects and I can crank out many, many dozens of chicks per batch with a beer cooler sized unit. The part about the chicks needing room after they hatch means that I need to listen for peeping after day 19 and then decant all of the eggs to a space warmed with a heat lamp. I will burn that bridge when I come to it.

Fake News Friday: Eight States want to Join Canada

According to highly placed sources in the BDSM community the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois want to join Canada as the new province of Baja Manitoba while Vermont, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island want to form the new province of Baja Quebec.

Petitions are being passed around to collect signatures for a referendums in those states.

The Biden Administration issued a sternly worded memo warning Canada that they would have to take an equal number of Republican-leaning states as well.

Trudeau replied with a memo refusing to bend to political pressure and that he refused to accept Biden's "Poison Pill" demand. Trudeau composed the letter in French in a show of...well, whatever Francophiles show.

Conditions for Forgiveness

First, a sin must have occurred. In very general terms, a sin is when we intentionally cause an avoidable injury to another person or we violate a law given to us by God.

A sin also occurs when we engage in risky actions where injury is a foreseeable consequence. (Matt 5:21-42)

Some injuries are unavoidable and those injuries are not "sin". Regrettable, but not sin. Physics cannot be negotiated. Getting hit by a boulder is an act of God while an accident caused by driving too fast or pulling into traffic without looking is avoidable.

Forgiveness is starts when we perform a moral inventory where we look at our past and see where pain occurred. Then we evaluate our part in it causing, perpetuating or enabling that pain.

Contrite

The person who seeks forgiveness must be grieved that they cause pain to another, not because Karma bit them in the backside. Also not because they got caught. Nor because it is a "moot point", that is the sinner lost the power to cause or benefit from future sin.

Change your life

The person seeking forgiveness must be firmly committed to changing their life. Not "...want to..." but intending to make those changes. Compare "I want a Rolex watch" with "I intend to knock that guy over there on the head and steal his Rolex." "Want" is passive. "Intend" is active.

In many cases the best change involves avoiding the conditions that led them to sin. If a person has a problem with drinking then they need to stop buying bottles of whisky or stop driving down the street where their favorite bar is.

They have to stop dancing on the slippery-slope. In old-time, morality speak, they need to "avoid the near occasion of sin".

Confess their sins

God does not need to hear a laundry list of our sins. He already knows what we did. We need to say them out-loud to heal. We need to know somebody heard us and we need to hear somebody say "Know that God and this community forgives you" before we can move on.

Ideally, we confess to the person who we injured but that is not always possible because we cannot know every person we damaged or put at-risk when we sinned.

Consider somebody who drives while stupid-drunk. It is impossible to know every person whose life the drunk-driver put in danger. Confessing in front of a congregation or a representative of the Humanity will have to suffice. It might be an older brother in a deer-blind. It might be a grizzled veteran at the V.F.W. It should be somebody who will call B.S. if you are letting yourself off too easily.

Also, sometimes it is dangerous to confess to the person you injured: the Mafia Don you ripped off or the company you stole from. Confessing to a church elder, the congregation or a trusted family member will have to suffice. 

As a card-carrying Catholic I have to note that this is a generalized version of what the Catholic church teaches. I made the changes to be in alignment with a larger audience. 

I chose to not debate that it is only necessary for us to confess to God because I am focusing on the damage guilt causes to the person carrying it. Most people seem to need verification from a fellow human before they can let those feelings go.

Atone

Make amends to a degree that is approximate to the damage you caused. Repair the fence you ran over. Tell the person you injured that you are sorry. 

If the person you sinned against is not available to make-things-right, then get as close as you can. 

Many people who repeatedly sabotage their relationships do so because they keep tripping on deeply buried, unresolved guilt-issues. Perhaps over a parent who is no longer alive. Maybe an ex-girlfriend who now lives out-of-state or refuses to speak with them.

Find somebody else's parent who is going through similar struggles and do what you can to ease their pain or broker reconciliation between parent-and-child. Find a young woman who is in a similar predicament to your ex-GF and do what you can to help her.

Let me reiterate that God does not need for us to atone and do penance. God can raise loaves of bread out of stones and armies out of nothing. God does not need to have us atone. WE need to atone so we can feel Forgiven. It is that "Economy of Forgiveness" thing. We equate value with price. We are much less likely to feel Forgiven when we don't pay a reasonable price.

Bonus

A.A.'s 12 Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

As you can see, the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps have a lot to do with seeking forgiveness (see steps in bold). Lack of forgiveness causes pain. Pain causes anger and more pain. Guilt can drive people to chemical distractions.

Odds and ends

Hershey Chocolate fired employees who were not vaccinated. Can anybody recommend chocolate that is manufactured by a company that did not fire people who made their own, personal medical decisions? We tend to favor dark chocolate here at Casa ERJ.

Can anybody recommend a way to compress oiy-tube videos? I know that commercial productions frequently compress video to make room for more commercials. They use digital compression so the speakers do not sound like they were breathing helium. There is so much great stuff on oink-tube but it takes so danged long to watch a video.

I am looking for a thermostat that goes up to 105 F for an electrical resistance heating application. It looks like chickens will be in short supply. Many of my neighbors have small flocks. Many of them have roosters and produce fertile eggs. Rather than spend $2.50 a chick I want to try to hatch eggs. Given the spread of bird flu, chickens might be in short supply by next spring. It would be good to be able to produce my own.

The picture in my head is a beer cooler with a false floor to hold the heating element (strings of incandescent Christmas lights). Humidity provided by damp towels on top of the egg cartons. Rather than turn eggs I can tip the entire cooler on its sides. I can fit a boatload of eggs in a beer cooler. 

Hung a little drywall today

I hung three sheets of drywall today.

Mrs ERJ lit a fire under me. She said it would be convenient if the guest bedroom was done in a couple of weeks so she could paint and decorate the room. Apparently we are expecting guests.

The bottleneck is the ice in the yard. The best route into the room is around the house and through the window. The fifteen inches (plus or minus) of snow on the ground is mostly gone but there are still patches that are polished ice. Not something I want the ever-lovely-and-no-longer-in-her-twenties Mrs ERJ to slip on while carrying drywall.

Belladonna helped me carry in three sheets this morning before she went into work. I had them up by one. I really didn't want to clutter up the room with excessive numbers of sheets.

Bella is feeling under the weather so we didn't move the next two into the room when she came home from work this evening.

I hope she feels better in the morning.

For the record, I am cutting the holes with a keyhole saw. There are not that many outlets and cold air return vents that it is an impossible number.

Forgiveness: The science

 

The most obvious failure of Christians when presenting their "case" to agnostics is that we use the arguments and language that has traction with believers. Rather, we should first share the portions of the faith that resonate with the not-yet-believing.

From the perspective of the secular, not-yet-believing, any serious discussion must engage them with "science". Science is magical to the secular, college graduate. Being able to make a cogent, scientific case for your point-of-view is the price of entry for them to consider your argument.

You may be puzzling over my use of the orchid as the header of these posts. The reason I chose this image (Ondontoglossum crispum, I think) is that it shows a clear "landing pad" for pollinators. The white petals and pink sepals shine like a ghost in the murky rain-forest. The bright "tongue" shows the pollinator exactly where to land to get the good stuff.

When attempting to make an persuasive argument to the agnostic, SCIENCE is the landing pad of choice. They might not concede while you are there but with the grace of the Holy Spirit we pray they will thoughtfully reconsider your points in the near future.

The challenges of social sciences

Social sciences like psychology are often referred to as "soft sciences". That has nothing to do with the intellectual rigor of the course of study.

When a person performs an experiment in physics or chemistry the results will fall within a narrow range and the results of the experiment confers a high degree of predictive information.

When a person performs an experiment in the social sciences there is a very low degree of repeatability, the results manifests over a variable amount of time and there are often unexpected secondary effects.

Because the results or secondary effects might be unethical to expose humans to, and because of the fuzzy-results requiring very large sample sizes, psychologists often resort to rats or insects for their experiments. This obviously limits the ability to predict secondary effects in human communities.

Hypothesis ==> Experiment ==> Data ==> Analysis ==> Rule set

Suppose you were offered a choice between two brands of smartphones. One had been tested by a handful of young people in a sanitary lab for two months. The other had been torture tested in extremely harsh environments for a billion man-hours. Furthermore, the testers relied on the "apps" to make life-and-death decisions on a daily basis. During that million man-hour test it had been exposed to thousands of people who deliberately tried to break it. 

Which smartphone is likely to be better?

Let's take a closer look at the shortcomings of the social sciences and see how Exodus measures up as an experiment.

Low repeatability is addressed by increasing the sample size and increasing the number of "runs".

Depending on the scholars you reference and how they choose to interpret the word "eleph" the number of Israelites who left Egypt may have ranged between 3600 and 2,400,000.*

Even though the middle-East is drier in modern times than it was back in Biblical times it was still a thorn-desert and not very fertile. Every oasis had people around it and while they may have been hospitable to the occasional wanderer they would have been very defensive about large armies marching around the desert.

Leaving the group was very, very likely to have fatal consequences.

The distance between the southernmost extremity of the Jordan River and Cairo is approximately 300 miles. A fit back-packer who prepositioned his supplies could knock that out in twenty days. The Bible says the Israelite people wandered around the desert for forty years. While that might seem implausible, remember there were no straight line trails or prepositioned supplies. Moses left Egypt a young and hale man and died (of old age?) before the 12 tribes crossed into the promised land.

So even if you take the extreme-low estimate for the number, the indisputable fact that the terraine is an inhospitable desert and that they were homeless for 40 years, you are looking at an astronomical number of human interactions. That huge number means that nearly all unintended consequences were manifested and be ironed out.

The fact that problems could not be resolved by avoidance means that they had to be dealt with...and so did the secondary effects. The forty years in the desert was akin to being locked in an elevator with your mother-in-law and your bone-head cousin for forty years...while suspended over an active volcano with a diet of boiled chicken and saltine crackers.

Tough test!

Robust processes

Framed in that way, any person who respects science should concede that the Judeo-Christian heritage has a high probability of being "robust". That is, it has a very high likelihood of producing acceptable outcomes even when "fed" inputs with a wide range of variation.

Even if they cannot bring themselves to concede the point, the science is strong enough when compared to "rat-based" science that they are likely to not be dismissive when talking about Forgiveness.

*The word "eleph" always refers to a formation of fighting men. The high number uses a battalian-like number of 1000 fighting men and multiplies by 600, the number who left Egypt. Then there is a "multiplier" applied to account for women, children and men either too young, too old or too infirm to be "fighting men". Factors that mitigate against the higher number is that as slaves the Israelites would not have been permitted to engage in military training and large, complex formations seem unlikely.

The smallest number assumes that "eleph" refers to a single fighting man. Furthermore it assumes a multiplier of 6. That is, 1/3 of the men will be of the proper age and fitness to be considered soldiers. Remember, they did not have corrective lenses for their eyes, no formal dental care, no knee surgury.

As a frame of reference, except for the very most favorable sites, pre-agriculture villages topped out at about 250 people. The deserts of modern Jordan and western Saudi Arabia are not favorable sites. A group of 3600 would clearly overshoot the natural carrying capacity by at least a factor of 15 and more likely by a factor of 60.