I realize I have fallen into a bit of a problem with results

I was a Project Manager. I trained Project managers, and did it well. However, I recently listened to a podcast that pulled something out that I have used. In my work, defining the desired result and then working backwards to achieve it is hard-wired into my brain.

Looking at the country, I tend to do the same thing. I am afraid of the outcome of my country IF everything I am afraid of happens. So I see everything bad that does happen through that lens, rather than looking at how it actually is. I might be horribly right that everything is going to the dogs. Then again, I might ascribe some actions and outcomes to an end result that isn't really there.

It doesn't mean I am wrong on everything, but it might mean I am overreacting to some things. I can't see it because I am convinced of where this will end if we don't stop it. It is an interesting take on people's views in general, and mine in particular.

"Beginning at the end" and working backward is a problem-solving technique where you start with the desired outcome and then trace the steps back to the initial conditions. This approach is particularly useful when the beginning of a problem is unclear or when a direct approach might be complex. It's also helpful in planning, where you might start with a deadline and then work back to determine the steps needed to meet it. 

This is a real life proposal from our Head of Immigration and a reality show producer....

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/producer-swears-reality-show-for-citizenship-wont-be-a-complete-dystopian-nightmare/

We are watching Rocky

 We have a friend's dog for a while, Rocky. The owners are traveling until Monday. So he's hanging with us.

Eurovision is this week-end

 Eurovision is this weekend and I am so excited!!! I won't bore you with the details :see the Netflix movie "Eurovision" with Will Ferrell to get the full picture.

But, to get you ready, I am including this song, which did not win, but was kind of perfect for an example experience - "Give That Wolf a Banana". It is a request to give the wolf that ate grandma a banana. Really.

I am of 1.5 Minds about this.

 I am of two minds about this, and I might be stretching it. I think it is a 100% good idea, with only a smitch of WTF.

Let's start with the good.

In Colorado Springs, teachers are being priced out of the district where they teach. This is a common enough issue that it has happened before in Palo Alto, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and more. In these four cities, public workers were able to live until housing prices rose to the point they couldn't afford them.

It isn't just teachers, it is policemen, firemen, and others that can no longer afford to live in the communities they work in.

So, Colorado Springs is collaborating with a company to build a tiny home village for teachers. It will be a quaint area with individual homes, each about 325 sq. feet. They will have a bedroom, a full kitchen, a living area, and a bathroom. Additionally, the "village" will feature walking paths, raised gardening beds, and a communal kitchen/event space.

The homes will be built on a soccer field on campus. And about 75% of the teachers are interested in living there (there will be fewer homes than that). Here are some images:

BUT...

Here is my problem. I agree with the solution, but this should not be a problem. 

Why can't we pay teachers enough to live on? Sure, the tiny home option is excellent for these people, but why is it a problem to begin with? I don't have kids, but I would like enough money to be paid (yes, from my taxes) to those who will shape the next generation.

I know I am a progressive snowflake who wants to bring socialism to America for saying this, but... We are a rich country. Instead of subsidizing Exxon and Shell, why can't we pay teachers more?

FFS

FFS

If you are going to list the 10 largest cities by population, LA is number 2. That is correct.

Unfortunately, of the millions of great pictures of Los Angeles, you choose one of (checks notes) Beverly Hills.

Idiots.

Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills 

Made in America - Would We Pay More?

One of the reasons the President has claimed he put tariffs on foreign goods was to move manufacturing back to America.** 

Americans have always said they are willing to pay more for American-made products. So he tested how true that was. He sells filter shower heads. Right now, he sources them from China. He tested the cost of them made in China with the costs of making them in America, with the same margins. (I am not sure what tariff rate he used in testing. This was done when there was still a 145% tariff. I don't know if he used that or the old 64% tariff before Trump. The results would be even more skewed if he used the new (now removed) tariff rates.

Anywho, you can guess what he found.

For the Made in China version, he sold 548 units.

For the Made in America version, he sold 0 units (zero).

There is a significant cost increase, but that happens when you move manufacturing to the US. It seems this is not a slam dunk.

* He has also said the reason for tariffs is to bring in billions of dollars, but that falls apart if we reduce tariffs as much as we have. Even with tariffs, that free money comes from consumers.

Home Made Pies - But No Room

 We stopped at this dinner that had been established in the 1930s. It was on the first road across Zion (at a state-of-the-art (at the time) tunnel.

When they first put up this sign, it was supposed to read HOME MADE PIES. But there wasn't enough room, so they wrote HO MADE PIES.  Apparently, that was fine for decades, until "ho" meant what it does now.

But people loved the sign, HO and all, so they kept it through all the upgrades.

PS: The pies were very very good.

The owner passed away not long after it was built, but the wife took over for decades, and it is still family owned.

We all have something...

When watching news, TV, or the movies, Ed and I both do something familiar to everyone in some sense or another. 

Ed will stop and point out grammatical or spelling errors in scenes. He can spot them with only a hint of the writing. I do the same thing with maps and geographical mix-ups. "No, that is not Bhutan on the map! It's Nepal!"

But part of this story on what drives this woman crazy is funny and relatable.

Let me quote.

(from the first Charlie's Angels movie.)

...

But Bosley has a radio transmitter implanted in a tooth, and so as the Angels wade through the flaming wreckage of their old offices, they hear a familiar voice. At first, they have no idea how to find him, but then a clue appears: A bird flies to the window of Bosley’s cell. And at our heroes’ darkest moment, it sings its song.

“It’s a Sitta pygmaea!” observes Cameron Diaz’s Natalie, who is allegedly a bird expert. “A pygmy nuthatch! They only live in one place: Carmel!”

And so, with that one bit of birdsong, and Natalie’s expertise, the Angels are able to locate Bosley in Carmel, California, free him from his prison cell, and save the day.

Like most of the movie, this scene is knowingly dumb and very fun, and yet, as any bird-lover can’t help but notice, it is absolutely riddled with errors.

The problems with the scene are as follows:

First, the pygmy nuthatch does not “only live in one place.” I’ve personally seen pygmy nuthatches in at least three states, and they can be found in at least three countries.

Second, the bird shown on-screen is not a pygmy nuthatch. The pygmy nuthatch is a tiny, drab, almost gray-scale bird, so small it can fit inside a roll of toilet paper. Instead, what’s on-screen is a Venezuelan troupial, which is black and neon orange, almost six times the size of a pygmy nuthatch, and also—as the name suggests—not found in Carmel.

Finally, and this might be the most baffling thing, the bird heard on the soundtrack is neither a pygmy nuthatch nor a Venezuelan troupial. It’s an unknown third bird whose identity has, until now, befuddled birders for years.

The Full Story is here - but I showed the best parts. I now realize no one cares where Belize is :-).

Well that was a lot of who ha for nothing

 blink

It is too bad that he can bully, but folds under pressure from outside the country.

Happy Odometer Day

 

Remember when I said we had weird Holidays here? Well, it is National Odometer Day.

There you go!

PS - They suggest you check your odometer today.

Happy Birthday Lynn

 Lynnie,

I tried to get you a plane, but Qatar was all out of them.

Well...

Happy Birthday anyway, 

Scooter

I wonder if we are de-evolving

 There is a joke image that imagines we are evolving into the next phase of humanity - and it sucks.

It is humorous.

But I wonder if we are really de-evolving in other ways. 

Maybe just Americans?

Think about it a little - all of these relate to some of us at one time or another.

1. We have turned our backs on intelligence. One of the things that differentiates us from other animals is that we have language and the ability to pass it down to our descendants. That means that humans start out ahead, even as we are born. 
   But now we don't believe in science and the progress of the past. It is a privilege of the first world to disbelieve in germs, vaccines, and health. It is a privilege that billions of people don't have -  because they don't have access to solutions. We are so smart at fixing things that we no longer worry that they will kill us (measles, COVID, drug use).
2. We have run out of empathy. There are too many people to care about anymore. 
3. Our attention span has dwindled to nothing.
4. We are losing, in many instances, already have lost, the ability to write by hand. We can still read, but our writing is becoming illegible. Cursive is becoming a lost art. And how do you maintain knowledge if we can't pass it from one generation to another? Our current computer system works as long as there is energy to preserve our files, but without it, our knowledge fades away.  And obsolescence is built into our system.
   I can easily get information from a 300-year-old book, but imagine a work of science that can only be obtained via a 5 1/2 inch disk, or worse, an 8 1/2 inch floppy disk. Without the ability to write and the ability to read other people's work, we will lose our history and science.
5. We are destroying our environment. Almost all animals learn not to foul their homes. We are spread worldwide, and we are shitting in our house a lot.
6. We honor selfishness. Back in the day, we thought about the good of others. Barn Raisings, community food drives, helping your neighbor with food or clothes in bad times. Now we elect leaders who look out for themselves first, their donors second, their families third, and their voters if they have anything left over.

Maybe this is as it ever has been. Maybe we will evolve forward, trusting the future will be secure with AI and scientists.

But I'm not seeing it.

Answer to the old Joke

 If a Pope falls in a forest, does he make a sound? Yes, if there are enough cameras on him.

It's a new Pope. Be in the moment Catholics!

Bunnies - Mother's Day.. What?

 I just realized that the bunny thing might have gone over many people's heads. So let us break it down. 

If you've seen an older movie or TV show, you might have heard a woman was pregnant obliquely. Something like "the rabbit is dead," or "poor bunny," or "the rabbit died," or something like that. There is a good reason.

White Bunnies for White Women

Before the 1960s, starting in about the 1920s, the test to tell if you were pregnant involved animals. The doctor (maybe a nurse for this one) would gather urine. Then someone would put it in a syringe and inject it into a bunny, normally in its ear.

Then the witch doctor would then spread the entrails out onto a marble slab and read... no wait, that was before the 1920s.

No, but the real thing was almost as bad. They injected the urine into the bunny. After a few days, they killed the bunny and examined its ovaries. If the woman was pregnant, the bunny's ovaries would have transformed. If the woman was not pregnant, regular old dead bunny ovaries.

Somehow, this was translated into humor as the joke was that a dead bunny meant you were pregnant - hence the dead bunny jokes. However, in reality, the bunny died either way.

They fixed this later. The bunny was saved, but it was messy. You had to pee onto the top of this thing.

I say people don't understand because of posts like this...

Happy Mother's Day

To all the Mothers out there, Happy Mother's Day.

I normally write a salutation and congratulations to mothers on this day, and to mine most of all. I know they did great work.

But...

They may have it easier than they think. Sure, we were all little bastards (non-literally), but, hey, it could have been worse.

The Good, no one expected too much. The Bad, everything else.

And let's not forget the real winners this Mother's Day.

Bunnies

So Happy Mother's Day. Aren't you glad we are out of the house?

If you ever wonder why Americans are...

 .. you know, hefty.

It is because of this...

That's a lot of sugar for $2.97

Well, that seems bad...

Okay, the government kills people in some states. The death penalty is still used, albeit enforced haphazardly.

If you must do it, there are bad, worse, and horrible ways to implement it. We tend to use the horrible ones. In this case, a firing squad in South Carolina was plainly not up to the task.

In the first modern death penalty carried out, Utah also used a firing squad (the prisoner was given a choice, and chose that). 

Utah used 5 volunteer police officers, behind a wall  25 feet away with a cutout for aiming and shooting. A bag was placed over the prisoner's head, and he was shot. One of the guns had blanks, so people didn't know who fired the "kill shot."

This year, South Carolina used a different system. They used 3 volunteers from the Department of Prisons, 15 feet away from the prisoner. Apparently, the Corrections Officers used either were absolutely horrible, or they purposefully did not shoot him in the heart. Instead, all three shots missed the mark, and the victim died slowly and painfully over a few minutes.

I think if we must have the death penalty, we should rethink it. Give the prisoner a bunch of pills and let him die. Or put him in carbon monoxide and let him die comfortably. The French guillotine, used until 1977, is also not terrible because it is quick and pretty fail-safe.

On the other hand, we in the United States use various means, defined by the state. Firing squad, electrocution (who can forget Florida's "Old Sparky"), or lethal injection. Lethal injection doesn't sound awful, but it doesn't always work or work quickly, because the countries that make the right drugs refuse to send them to the US. So we make do.

PS - England hung people until 1964. I think that is somewhere in the "worse" of the possible ways - but still below horrible.

Oddly proud I know these things... and of my friends

As I have spoken of often, I went to an (LA School District) elementary school in Gardena, CA. (For the Brits, elementary is the first 6 grades after kindergarten.) This comes up either in my conversations all the time, primarily because it was a particularly different school experience than most people's.

Gardena, where my elementary school was, was one of the two places in Los Angeles where the Japanese people were relocated AFTER internment. So I learned about Japanese internment about 4 decades before most Americans. My many Japanese classmates and friends were the first generation kids of the kids who were interned.

An aside. A common stereotype, which was based on fact, used to be the high educational standards held by the parents of these kids. They were very strict about studying and performing, so the school was a different experience for me than most of the LA elementary schools. It was perfect for me. I'm smart, but I need to be challenged, and that happened early in this school.

Anyway, this is another story we all learned in elementary school. 

Despite the Japanese people being interned in camps, many of them volunteered for the military.  Because the US government was worried they would defect in the Pacific Theater, they were put into segregated units and sent to the European Theater. The men who made up these units were intent on proving their worth to the country, and they fought valiantly.  Like the black military units, the Japanese units suffered more injuries than traditional units because of their location and their refusal to surrender.

And this unit was the first American unit into the concentration camp of Dachau. The Washington Post has the story - but I will pull and excerpt here.

WAAKIRCHEN, Germany — Eighty years ago, Abba Naor was among several thousand Jews and other prisoners evacuated from Nazi concentration camps and forced to walk for days on the notorious Dachau death march — without food or water, often in freezing temperatures. Many perished on the way.

On the eighth night, as snow fell and covered the exhausted prisoners, their SS guards — fearing the fast-approaching Allies — vanished.

The following morning, American soldiers appeared. But when Naor looked up, the faces he saw were unlike any he had seen before. They were Japanese American soldiers, part of a storied military unit that faced down prejudice and suspicion to fight Adolf Hitler’s armies in Europe. Some of them had family members imprisoned in internment camps in the western United States. 

I want to share one other thing. My generation of Japanese children and parents all but refused to speak about the reality of internment. The desolation and isolation of the camps, and the hatred and racism of the time, were too much to even think about. They were determined to raise Americans who would never be questioned again. 

I have never seen "Vintage" and "Ikea" used in conjuction

 The description of this item is more aspirational than real.

Friendship. In birds?

A new long-term study of Superb Starlings in East Africa is underway. They have long been known to fly in flocks and congregate together on the ground. But a new study which looked at 27 years of data has found a new relationship.

It is always hard to humanize feelings in other animals, but these birds appear to make friendships. In the wild, these birds build nests in groupings - usually for safety. But the Superb Starlings will keep their groupings for extended periods. After chicks are hatched, many different birds will help feed the new chicks. (This is different from those damn Cuckoos who lay their eggs in other bird's nests.)

I am going to pull part of this from the New York Times Science because they explain it better than I can.

me

Dr. Rubenstein’s lab has maintained a 20-year field study of the species that included 40 breeding seasons. It has recorded thousands of interactions between hundreds of the chattering birds and collected DNA to examine their genetic relationships. When Dr. Earl, then a graduate student in the lab, began crunching the data, she and her colleagues weren’t shocked to see that birds largely helped relatives, the way an aunt or uncle may swoop in to babysit and give parents a break.

But to their surprise, they found that starlings also helped nonrelatives, including when they might have helped family instead. Birds new to the flock helped those born within it, and vice versa. And because superb starlings often switch between breeding and helping roles, the team found that individual birds that helped nonrelatives one breeding season later had their good deeds repaid, sometimes repeatedly.

“The starlings are consistently investing in the same preferred social partners over their lives,” Dr. Earl said. “To me, that sounds like friendship.”

The idea that animals might establish friendships with unrelated individuals has provoked controversy among scientists, said Gerald Carter, an animal behaviorist at Princeton University and an author on the paper. However, a growing body of research has led scientists to accept that long-term reciprocal relationships exist among primates, elephants, crows and whales. There are also vampire bats that share blood meals with unrelated, hungry colony members, and unrelated, male Lance-tailed manakins serve as “wingmen” for each other to gain female attention.

But long-term relationships can be difficult to detect, Dr. Rubenstein said. The team needed 27 seasons’ worth of data to pick up hints of reciprocity in the starlings. He thinks they’re still underestimating it.

Interesting how we keep learning more about other animals' inner lives.

A Hike in Lower Bryce

When you view yesterday's post about Bryce Canyon, you see all the hoodoos from the top. But we took a different hike: the "Mossy Cave" hike.

This hike, at a much lower elevation, involves hiking up to an overhang that is icy in the winter and mossy in the summer. But we at the T took a hike up to a waterfall. It was very cool.

It has water all the time because an irrigation channel brings water to the town of Tropic just outside the park. That was one of the things that Mr. Bryce built. The water right now was all from snow runoff. It was fun.

Bryce Canyon

 Bryce Canyon is north of Zion, at a much higher level. It is famous for its "hoodoos," which are rock spires. The softer rock is worn away by water and rain, primarily through the freezing and thawing of water in the cracks in the rocks.

The beauty we see is left behind.

Words and images don't really do it justice

FYI - if you heard about the people that fell in Bryce, it was right here about 2 days after we left.

Totally safe if you don't climb the fencing.

It was very cool! It was also very cold. It was around 32 - 34 degrees (i.e. 0 - 1 degree C). Now, the problem. I hate to be shallow, but... There isn't a ton to do here. If you are an avid hiker, you can go down to the bottom and back up, for a 5-mile trail. There are longer trails, but few that are shorter and/or on flat terrain.

 They are awesome and wonderous. And yet, that's it. You drive and see these hoodoos. Now there was a os. now there was a hike to ancient bristlecone pines that I wanted to do. It was much higher and about a mile round trip. No problem. But it was windy and freezing—literally below 32. We weren't prepared for that, and it was too cold to make it more than about 300 yards before I just gave up and we turned around.

I am not sure this needs much of a comment, but...

 Not needing a comment never stopped me. 

The question I have here is, what more can they do with 10,000 more troops? Israel, with US backing, has already limited people in Gaza to 1/3 of their land. They are already blockading food deliveries and starting to starve the people. They have destroyed over 70% of all buildings and 92% of the housing.

Dicks.

Happy Star Wars Day (and other goofy "holidays")

 Today is the 4th of May. In the US, we write it as May 4th. As in "May the Fourth Be with You," so it is Star Wars Day - (May the Force Be With You).

DA da da dant de DA DA

Anyway.

The point is that we have a bunch of silly holidays, some of which have become canon. (Also, I thought about this for a second before writing. I was not dwelling.)

There are at least 5 groups of holidays:

The first three are defined in the basic American way , i.e. we get the day off.

1. Religious Holidays, depending on where you live: In the US, we have a Christian tradition, so we celebrate Easter and Christmas. Other religions have their Holidays (Holy Days) that are celebrated in other nations.

2. National Remembrance Holidays: like Independence Day, Presidents' Day, Veterans' Day, etc.

3. Some are just happenstance days that became non-religious special days: Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Boxing Day (in UK), etc.

The next ones aren't "legal" holidays because we don't get the day off.

4. Random, but widespread: Some days are also widely celebrated, but you don't get a day off: Valentine's Day, Halloween, Black Friday, Arbor Day, 

5. Finally, some goof-ass days that some people find fun. Star Wars Day (May 4th), Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept 19th), Trump's Birthday Celebration / Army celebration (June 14th), Siblings Day (April 10th), Adopt-a-Pet Day (varies), etc.

Which brings me to this.

So it is Star Wars Day. Let loose and explore the galaxy today.

Kolob Canyon

 At the western side of Zion National Park is another entrance that dead ends. You have to want to go there.

It is Kolob Canyon. A stunning piece of land. The main canyon was the home of homesteaders and then John D Lee, who was hiding from prosecution for the "Mountain Meadows Massacre." It is a horrible story of an outlaw killer who got away.

But the Canyon itself and the views are stunning.

Enjoy

 I'm in a superass "bleh" mood today. Instead of my taking it out on everyone, please enjoy this image from last week.

Some good animal conservation news

 Two stories are great about animals. One is a success story, and one is a future plan.

First, there is a bird that was in danger of going extinct in England. It is the Stone-Curlew. The primary cause driving the numbers of birds and breeding pairs down was farming. Farms in England use the same land as the roosting place of Stone-Curlews. 

Conservationists in England have convinced many farmers to keep some of their farmed land in a natural state. It has increased the population in raw numbers and breeding pairs. They don't have large broods, but 6 new fledglings have been found this year.

The stone-curlew is about as big as a crow.

Then there is the fascinating story of Pygmy Asian Elephants. They are about two feet shorter than most Asian Elephants and are found only on the island of Borneo (a large island near Singapore shared by Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei).    

Well, as I have talked a lot about, the forests of Borneo have been decimated to plant Palm Oil Plantations, which are nature dead zones. Some parts of Borneo are dedicated to the elephant, but they cut the population into small, isolated habitats. 

An Indonesian expert (female - if it makes a difference) has proposed a system similar to wildlife overpasses in the United States. She proposes habitat corridors through the plantations to make passage between isolated elephant populations to build and support diversity. She has major backing and it is a great idea.

 Cool, right?

Anywho, here is a picture of the Borneo Pygmy Elephants.