Disappointments abound

 

What is wrong with this picture?

I went to my favorite big-box store to buy some seal strip for a door. The original strip was scratched away by Zeus telling us that it was time to let him in.

I think I have replaced the seal strip at least three times. This time the thick, open-cell strip that I have been using was not available, possibly due to supply-chain issues.

"No worries" I thought. I bought the next size down.

Measuring the gap that it needed to span I saw that I was at about 0.600" at the maximum. 

Again, "No worries". I cut a strip off wood from a 1-by-6 to narrow the gap. Being a fan of the Taguchi Loss Function, I tapered the strip to provide a gap that was exactly mid-range of the gap this seal-strip claimed to fill. That is (0.25" + 0.375")/2

Imagine my surprise when I installed the strip into the newly narrowed gap and saw that the strip was not compressed. Nope, not at all. It just "kissed".

What the heck!

I pulled out the digital calipers and measured the height of the seal strip fresh off the roll. It was 0.317" high. How can a strip that is 0.317" tall close a gap that is 3/8" (0.375") across?

Am I missing something?

The good news is that there is only 4 inches at the bottom where there is a gap. I will give the strip a few days to relax and grow. Maybe it was compressed to get it into the package. If it does not grow to fill the gap, I intend to glue a bit of shim or popsicle stick to the bottom of the door to close up the gap.

Intensive vs. Extensive agriculture

From the comments:

WindyWyo wrote "Ultimately it all comes down to conversion factors and feed efficiency."

And Michael responded "No, it doesn't NOT come down to conversion factors. My chickens eat things I do not want to eat. They clear my garden from unwanted bugs that eat my crops. Thus, I don't use as many toxic poisons to keep my garden reasonably safe from them. My chickens eat from the multi-species pasture I run. Thus, eliminating much of my need to use toxins to deworm my critters.

"Modern Industrial Farming" is profitable in the short run as History thinks but soon reduces the soil from a living self-regenerating system to a near sterile dirt that merely supports the heavily sprayed for bugs and weeds fertilizer fed structure...."

 

They are both right.

 

Within the narrow, financial context of industrialized, intensive farming Windy is absolutely right.

"Any  curve can be accurately represented with a straight line as long as you are looking at a short enough of a segment of it"  -Kay Banks explaining Integral Calculus

Industrialized farming is capital intensive. There is a ton of debt to service or a legion of shareholders who demand growth-and-dividends. The structure is animated by hordes of people, all of whom demand wages and benefits. 

Intensive, industrialized agriculture is similar to a high-speed plane, flying close to the ground. Things happen quickly. The metrics are simple and relentless:

• How many pounds of edible meat grown per square-foot per month?
  
• How many pounds of edible meat per pound of feed to three significant digits?
• How many pounds of edible meat processed per day per square foot of processing facility?
• How many pounds of edible meat shipped per hour of employee time?
  

These narrowly defined measures are susceptible to various kinds of traps. 

One of those traps is that fixed-costs are not fixed when production levels pass certain benchmarks. A chicken processing line can only travel so fast if humans are to perform their assigned operations. If more volume is to be accommodated then the line must be split and more stations (floor space and conveyor) must be added.

The other half of that trap is that variable-costs are not necessarily variable when production levels drop. You cannot lay-off half of your maintenance crew or only clean up half as often after the production in your chicken processing plant drops. It doesn't work that way.

Another issue is that variable-costs don't disappear when production levels drop or a plant closes because it is "inefficient". Those costs are transferred. People don't stop eating or paying their rent. They go on unemployment/welfare/disability; sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently.

Another transferred cost are the nutrients being stripped from Peru (fish meal) or soil erosion in eastern Iowa (corn and beans) or a myriad of other places. Those costs do not show up in the corporations' quarterly reports. 

A third issue is that the capital flows dwarf actual operating profits and can mask operations that are not viable when capital is flowing in or can swamp viable operations when interest rates rise and debt cannot be rolled-over.

Within the long time-line Michael is right.

Healthy, biological systems provide many "services" for free.

Free-range cattle, for instance, have a protein conversion ratio of about 4% vs. confinement chicken and aquaculture's ratio of 25%. The reason that free-range cattle is a viable industry is that it is extensive rather than intensive.

The cow harvests its own food and spreads its own waste. In most of the world requires no shelter. It may need hay in the winter or maybe it can be turned loose in picked corn fields or the grazier can carefully parcel out "stockpiled" pasture to get it through the winter in areas where heavy snows do not crust over.

Consequently, the person raising those cattle does not need to invest in equipment to mix rations or equipment to distribute it to every cage or pen. He does not need to remove waste nor does he need a lagoon to store it or equipment to mitigate spills. He does not need vast pole-barns nor does he need a bunch of people on pay-roll. 

His "monthly nut" is microscopic compared to confinement operations.

Conversion ratios still matter in extensive systems. Reed Canarygrass makes an impressive pasture but you are not going to be able to pay your property taxes if your cattle will not eat it. The point is that the extensive agriculturist is like a plane flying 500 feet above ground vs  intensive agriculture's tree-top elevation. It isn't stress-free but there is time to think and respond when things happen.

Conceivably, carefully managed pasture could remain healthy for five centuries with little more input than an electric fence or hedges, movable watering containers to move concentrations of poop-and-pee around...and salt. The export of nutrients can be offset by feeding imported food (hay, grain) on the pasture.

The soil remains covered with green, growing plants so it is always capturing organic content. The "burn-off" of soil organic matter is related to erosion and soil temperature. The densely woven root system of the sward and the efficient capture of sunlight and water transpiration mitigate against both loss mechanisms.

The soil becomes rich in bugs and worms. Birds and other wildlife visit the pasture. Bees and other pollinators adore the clover and incidental forbs growing there.

Proponents of extensive agriculture are likely to say that extensive agriculture does not transfer costs the way intensive agriculture can, it creates and shares benefits.

Insect protein

I must confess that I am extremely cynical about insect based protein ever becoming a major source of dietary protein in the developed world. Let me share the reasons why.

Conservation of mass

In the world described by Newtonian physics, that is regions outside of nuclear reactors, outside of the interior of the sun or black-holes, matter is neither created or destroyed.

Since E=mc^2, energy is also not created or destroyed. It may appear to be created or destroyed but that is because it can be stored or it can flow.

At a micro-level, protein is an energy-intense, organically-bound form of nitrogen. Air is 78% percent nitrogen gas but the two atoms of nitrogen in a molecule of nitrogen gas are so tightly bound together as to approach an inert gas. If the chemists out there will forgive me for an analogy, changing atmospheric nitrogen to a form that is biologically available is the equivalent of dropping an empty bucket down a very, very deep well and then pulling the filled bucket back up to the surface. It takes a lot of energy.

 Insects do not create protein. They convert protein.

Insects cannot snatch nitrogen out of the air and create protein. Nor can they take ammonia or nitrates and convert them to protein.

So one of the critical questions is "What is the protein conversion rate" of an insect farm?

The short answer is "Not significantly better than confinement raised chickens or aquaculture."

Yes, insects can be fed waste products like manure or rotten melons but those products are low in protein or low in energy or both. To produce enough end-product to be economically viable insect farms require feed that is approximately the equivalent of what is fed to hogs or chickens. Thus, the primary argument for raising insects for protein is nuked...the insects must consume human-quality food to be economically viable and are thus competing with humans for food.

Another problem with insects is rather technical. Early scientific research on the concept used the approximation that the protein content is 16-times the weight of the nitrogen in the insects. That is, to calculate the protein content the researchers dehydrated the insects, put them in a container and pull a vacuum. Then they heated them up until the bugs were char. They ran the gasses through an analyzer to determine percent (weight) of the nitrogen given off.

While it is true that protein is 6.25% nitrogen by weight and 1/6.25% equals 16, an insect's exoskeleton is made of chitin, a nitrogen-rich polysaccharide. Chitin is NOT protein. More recent studies suggest that 25% of the nitrogen in the species of insects most commonly proposed for food is from their exoskeleton. That means that the slaughter-ready bug produces far less protein than the initial studies claimed.

As a final reality check, if there is no industry processing 2"-to-3" long bluegills which can produce 300 pounds of biomass (meat) per acre every year with almost no inputs then why would anybody think that it is economically viable to process much smaller bugs that must be fed human-quality feed-stocks for "meat"?

Summary

My take on insect-based-meat is that it is a tempest-in-a-teapot. The more important question is "What issues are this fabricated distraction masking?"

Measuring economic pain

I think many of us carry around the mental picture of a hot-air balloon sinking and the crew frantically jettisoning unneeded ballast and heavy, low-value cargo to avoid hitting a looming hazard.

The same thing happens as families experience economic stress. In fact, a time-honored way to assess how much economic pain is being felt in your community is to drive around and count the number of items parked beside the road with a "For Sale" sign in the windshield.

Since gas is expensive, a cheaper way to do the same thing is to go to your local Craigslist and type in certain keywords. Then, week-by-week track how many of those items are for sale by local owners.

Examples from the Lansing, Michigan area Craigslist on August 19, 2022:

Boats - by owner: 84 

Trailers - by owner: 75

ATV, UTV, Snowmobiles - by owner: 65

Ford cars-and-trucks - by owner: 52

Camper - by owner: 45

Motorcycles - by owner: 44   (Proposed by The Old Man in comments)

Lawn mowers (farm & garden) - by owner: 23 (Proposed by The Old Man)

ERJ Total pain index = 100,000 times 321 key items for sale in the Lansing Metro Area divided by a population 326,000. Multiplying the result by 100,000 makes the index more intuitively pleasing. The ERJ Total Pain Index for Lansing on August 19, 2022 is 98.4

It will be interesting to track this up to the mid-term election and then afterward.

Notes:

The media focuses on "Wall Street" and jawbones about "Main Street". The ERJ Total Pain Index is an effort to capture what is happening on "Maple Street" where regular folks live.

Boats and ATVS, UTVS and Snowmobiles are seasonal but tend to offset each other.

Most of the items on the list can be characterized as "toys" or discretionary items. Ford cars-and-trucks were included even though vehicles are almost a necessity because some households have a "spare". Also, as the recession deepens and people lose jobs, the second vehicle becomes a luxury and that "spare" that can be sold to temporarily make ends meet. If you choose to replicate the index for your own area-of-operation and you live in a "Blue" area, choosing "Toyota" or "Honda" instead of "Ford" will be a better measure.

"Ford" was included to enable additional diagnostic flexibility as the recession progresses. As starvation progresses, at some point the patient runs out of fat and starts metabolizing muscle and internal organs.

Craigslist allows shoppers to specify whether the seller is an owner or a dealer. I chose to look specifically at owners as I think that is a more responsive metric. Dealer inventory can float or shrink for various reasons other than economic pain.

Southern Belle: Mid-visit review

 

Humor: 90 second run-time

Southern Belle booked her ticket home for the end of the month. That means we are about halfway through her stay and it is appropriate to comment on how it is going.

The positive

She cleans like the proverbial "white tornado". She does a load of dishes and vacuums all of our carpeted floors at least once a day. In fact, that is one of my few complaints. My coffee-cup disappears from where I put it down last.

She is cheerful and snatches Quicksilver out of my hands when she needs her diaper changed.

Since she is breast-feeding and it takes time to do so, she has slowed down a little bit. I thought I would need a list of places to go and things to see but she is now much more of a home-body. It has been a very peaceful and relaxing visit.

She helps keep me on-track for my Physical Therapy homework. She is taking three classes at the gym because she wants to regain her pre-pregancy figure and she drags me along.

She helps pick pears and zucchini and tomatoes and broccoli and....

The negative

I still don't trust her to make my coffee because she has a sense of humor and you never know.

Frugal meal of the day: More Porridge?

Oatmeal

Oatmeal can be gussied up fancy or eaten plain. It can be eaten hot or cold or made in a large batch and parceled out over many, many days.

I like mine with raisins and dried cherries. Yeah, I know...I am soft because I wallow in luxury. 

Measuring out amounts, 1.5 ounces raisins and the same dried cherries. It comes to a scant handful each. Put them in a coffee mug and top off with water. Heat in microwave for two minutes.

Put 2.7 oz oatmeal in a bowl (2, 1/3 cup measures) and then add hot water/fruit mix.

Stir.

Put in microwave for an additional 30 seconds. The advantage of heating the water separately is that mixing everything together and then heating increases the risk of the mix boiling over and making a mess. The final re-heat is to add some more heat after the cold meal and bowl chill the hot water.

Let the oatmeal/water/fruit soak up the water for five minutes.

Then I add about a tablespoon of flax-seed oil. Flax-seed oil is low-inflammation and also can help stabilize moods. Adding any kind of fat (butter or bacon grease, for instance) to the oatmeal makes it stick to your ribs and you will not get hungry as quickly. I can make it to one-in-the-afternoon on this breakfast.

Finally, I add a drizzle of molasses. I started doing that because I was not used to the taste of the flax-seed oil. Molasses adds a lot of flavor with a minimum of additional calories.

It is a fool's errand to list prices because they change rapidly, but at the time of this writing 2.7 oz of house-brand oatmeal is about twenty-five cents. Three ounces of raisins adds another sixty cents. The flax-seed oil adds about twenty-five cents.

Key point: the oatmeal is about 25% of the cost of the meal and my princely meal can be economized even more if things get tough.

Natural and predictable consequences

Woke Minneapolis school district's new teacher contract stipulates that all white teachers will be laid-off before a single person-of-color is laid-off in the event of budget issues.

Regardless of seniority. Regardless of their history of discipline actions. Regardless of skill-sets and linguistic abilities or age-group they are credentialed to teach.

Currently, 80% of grade-school teachers are white. I assume the stream of eligible teachers coming out of college is about 75% white.

There is a shortage of people willing to work. Teachers are leaving $40k/year positions and working in retail management for $55k because of the similarity in skill sets.

Due to revenue constraints, public schools cannot match those salaries.

Wait for it...by December the Minneapolis school district will be whining that no white people are applying for their open positions and they cannot find enough qualified P-o-C who want to work in Minnestupid.

The reason given for the blatantly racist contract is to rectify long-standing racial discrimination and they point to the racial composition disparity between the students and the teachers as "evidence". That might be true IF the immigrants to the United States was 80% Swedes and Norwegians, Krauts Germans and Italians. But 95% or more of the immigrants are P-o-C and their children are filling city schools and the parents are not qualified to teach.

Stupid should hurt.