Eaton Rapids Joe

Global distribution of Tuberculosis. TB is endemic in countries in bright green, yellow, orange and red

It is a safe bet that nearly every outbreak of TB in schools and nursing homes is due to a recent immigrant from a country where TB is endemic. In the case of the nursing homes, it is likely a worker.

Many non-Western countries take pride in owning dogs that have not been spayed. Their dogs are projections of their machismo and virility.

It is also a point of pride that their dogs can fend for themselves and are not "in prison" all day long.

Just a reminder

"Some of you will die. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."

The politicians who are fighting against the SAVE Act are the same ones who think it is peachy-keen to expose your school-aged children and senior citizens to medieval diseases and think that having a certain percentage of little, old ladies torn to death by feral dogs is an acceptable price to pay for their getting reelected.

My dad introduced me to the concept of time-on-task.

He was the principal of a "Junior High School" as they were called back-in-the-day.

One of his jobs was to evaluate every instructor once a year. Many of them failed his evaluation and were put on improvement plans.

Two "high runners" for failure were "Failure to write a lesson-plan" (i.e. they were winging it) and "Low time-on-Task". 

As my dad explained it to me, the low time-on-task instructors dilly-dallied at the start of the session. They chit-chatted about what they had done on the weekend or their plans for the evening. Or they might let the kids horseplay or have conversations...waiting for them to calm down before starting instruction.

Kids adapt to the teachers' styles. My dad was very much in favor of giving them enough time to pull out a note-book and turn to a blank page before starting instruction. What is that? Maybe 30 seconds after the second bell rings.

Some instructors NEVER got to the required material before the end of the class session.

My dad deviated from the minimum requirements for the teachers who he judged to be inadequate. He demanded copies of daily lesson from those who did not use them. He was shocked to learn that some universities were teaching education majors that lesson plans were OPTIONAL. Many of the students who had attended those universities did not have a clue about how to organize and document an effective lesson plan. My dad had to teach those teachers what a functional plan looked like.

For the teachers who failed time-on-task, he typically moved them down a grade and "partnered" them with a good teacher who was in the grade they left. My dad coached the senior partner to remind the slacker that he was screwing the team if he did not deliver students who had mastered the skills and knowledge required to be successful the next year. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.

Later in life

Later in life I was given a lesson on time-on-task by a third-shift, alternate Committee Man (a Union Steward).

He was explaining why management was lucky to get five hours of work from a tradesman in an eight-hour work day. That is kind of a big deal on a Sunday when they are getting paid double-time, i.e. sixteen hours worth of wages. Five hours of work for sixteen hours of pay isn't a great investment.

"Look here, Joe. Right off the top you lose ten-percent for breaks. Contractually, you have to give them 0.8 hours of breaks. There is nothing you can do about that."

"Then you look at the goat festival (not his actual wording) in the mornings. You have them stand around waiting for their work-tickets. Doug (the planner) is still making changes to the tickets after the starting bell and the first electrician might get his work-ticket a half hour after he punches in. The last one waits an hour."

"Then the tradesmen have to go to the parts-crib to get any special parts they need. They stand-in-line until it is their turn."

"Then they go stand in line at the tool crib and pick up special tools."

"By then, it is time for first break. So they don't turn a wrench until 9:30 and two-and-a-half hours have gone by."

"Then, at the end of the work-day they have to return the special tools and any of the unused special parts, so they start standing-in-line right after last-break. You easily lose another hour there."

"It only gets worse from there. If they get into the middle of the job and they were given the wrong part or if they discover that then need a different special tool...the have to make another trip to the cribs."

"And it is MANAGEMENT failures that prevent you from getting 7.2 hours  of work out of your people." 

Things were much more organized by the time I left that company. They had a skilled tradesman with restrictions "kit" the jobs. The special parts and tools were put into snap-top bins and prepositioned those bins the job-site. The bins had a printed "manifest" taped to the lid listing what was included in them with boxes to check-off when the parts/tools went in and when they were returned. 

The tradesmen were informed of their weekend jobs late in the shift on Friday. That is something management had resisted because they were concerned that some tradesmen would be no-shows if they were assigned to unpopular jobs.

Recent research has documented a variety of ovulatory cues in humans, and in many nonhuman species, the vocal channel provides cues of reproductive state. We collected two sets of vocal samples from 69 normally ovulating women: one set during the follicular (high-fertility) phase of the cycle and one set during the luteal (low-fertility) phase, with ovulation confirmed by luteinizing hormone tests. In these samples we measured fundamental frequency (pitch), formant dispersion, jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio and speech rate. When speaking a simple introductory sentence, women's pitch increased during high- as compared with low-fertility, and this difference was the greatest for women whose voices were recorded on the two highest fertility days within the fertile window (the 2 days just before ovulation). This pattern did not occur when the same women produced vowels. The high- versus low-fertility difference in pitch was associated with the approach of ovulation and not menstrual onset, thus representing, to our knowledge, the first research to show a specific cyclic fertility cue in the human voice. We interpret this finding as evidence of a fertility-related enhancement of femininity consistent with other research documenting attractiveness-related changes associated with ovulation.   Source   (Note: small sample size)

So, from a biological, evolutionary standpoint, men would find women whose voices had the greatest pitch disparity between vowels and consonants the "most sexy".

I suppose the AI content creators are already aware of this and are exploiting it. 

I did a little bit of math yesterday.

Mrs ERJ got tired of my fretting around the house and suggested that I go out to the property and do some springtime chores.

It took me 0.5 hours to load the truck. Depending on the chores, it can take up to two hours to load the truck.

It takes 0.75 hours to drive to the property one-way. Of course, that takes longer if I need to stop at a store and pick up supplies.

I used a stop-watch and logged 3.25 hours of time-on-task work with another 0.5 hours of breaks between each hour. That is, work an hour then drink some water and have a bite to eat.

Adding up the time: 3.25 hours of work and 2.5 hours of overhead for a total of 5.75 hours clocked start-to-finish.

Add another 3.0 hours for the time I am responsible for Quicksilver and another hour or two for a nap which keeps my disposition sweet-and-happy and I don't have a lot of day left for recreational activities like writing deep and thoughtful blog posts.

That is why the recent content has been reading like a fifth-grader's "This is what I did on my summer vacation".

Yesterday's work-ticket

I start laying out beds for perennial plants at the property.

The plot that was brush-hogged has some naturalized crocus.

 

There has been the sudden realization that the current storm of events will impact fertilizer availability and cause shocks in the food supply.

At a very fine granularity, as gardeners and food-growers, we need to pay meticulous attention to the most basic elements of gardening. We need to run a full-court press against weeds. We need to really pay attention to soil-moisture. We need to plant at optimal times and choose varieties that are productive. We need to harvest food so it is not wasted.

As gardeners we need to examine some of our biases. Will it hurt anything if we tinkle in the orchard when nobody is looking? Maybe we don't dump the chicken litter into a pile but look around and find some plants that look a little bit puny and give them a shovel-full at their drip-line.

At a very coarse granularity, vast numbers of people in Bangladesh, East Bengal, rural China, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria and Mexico will depopulate and move to cities where "services" are offered. The good news is that many jet airplanes will be grounded and the mass migration will be restricted to trains, buses and hoofing-it.

At a granularity between the two extremes, meat will be come exceptionally expensive. Various political entities will come to the conclusion that it makes more sense to send grain to the countries mentioned above than to machine-gun refugees from those countries at their(our) borders in wholesale-lots. Grain that went to chickens, pigs and steers will be diverted to Bombay, Dhaka, Lagos, Mexico City and Cairo.

Seafood will increase in price by an even greater percentage. Seafood has a very high "embedded energy" cost that is masked by fuel subsidies by nation-states. If you like meat, buy a pellet-gun and learn how to shoot it. If you like fish, then learn how to tie an Improved Clinch Knot and thread a worm on a hook.

The good news is that food is about to become much more delicious without the benefit of exotic spices. There is no sauce that makes food more delicious than hunger. 

Bonus tip

Stock-pile enough sugar for a year's worth of canning.

Our biggest year for applesauce was 180 quarts. Given the amount of sweetening that I prefer, that requires 25 pounds of sugar. Even if I don't choose to can such a ridiculous amount of apple sauce, sugar will have trading value.

Characteristics of Money. Money is:

• Infinitely divisible
• Durable
• Universally accepted
• Compact 

Sugar isn't "compact" but it meets the other three criteria. And even if you don't use it for trading, in time you will consume it within your household.