Post #1984: “All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.”

 

Source:  Economist John Kenneth Galbraith (2001). “The Essential Galbraith”, p.186, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

To me, this quote sums up what’s happening with the November 2024 elections, and the takeover of American politics by the frankly pro-dictatorship anti-democratic MAGA forces. Continue reading Post #1984: “All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.”

Post #1983: Commentary on the recent Presidential debate.

 

Post #1894: Commentary on the NY Times/Siena College poll results.

From my November 2023 post, shown above, regarding a Siena University poll:

Here’s my take on the main message:

Biden’s too old.  

And other stuff, sure.

Weirdly, the main writeups seem to skirt this issue.  But to my eye, this is something that everybody agreed on.

Separately, smears work, disinformation wins. 

...

But if my only alternative to Biden is Trump, then “too old” doesn’t exist.  If Biden’s breathing, I’m voting for him.

Nine months since that Siena U. poll, and I’d say that pretty much nothing has changed.

Luckily, this Presidential race is very much a case of needing to outrun the bear.  You don’t have to be fast, to outrun that bear.  You just have to be faster than the person you’re running against.

And so, thankfully, Biden doesn’t have to be a great candidate for President.  He just has to be a better alternative than Trump.

And I’d say he has that knocked.  For me, if forced to choose between an old guy who struggles to keep his head on straight, but hires the best and brightest, and understands America’s place as leader of the free world, versus a dictator-smooching adulterous shameless liar who hires his relatives for key jobs and seems dead-set on destroying the American system of free and fair elections … I’ll take the old(er) guy any day.

Not much of a defense of the Democratic candidate, but given his opponent, it’s all that’s necessary.

Post G24-020: (Not quite the) driest June on record.

 

Today is one of those sultry summer days where Nature just can’t quite seem to make up its mind to rain.  Or not.  It’s overcast, humid, hot, and windless.

Not that a little bit of rain is going to make much difference at this point.  My garden water barrels have been empty for most of June.

June 2024 is going to be the second-driest June on record in this area.  The records, in this case, go back to circa 1960, for Dulles Airport.  Even if it does finally manage to rain, it’s not going to rain enough to change that.

According to NOAA, Dulles Airport (one of the weather stations of record for my area) has received a total of just 0.69 inches of rain, so far, this June:

Source:  Weather Underground, historical weather for Vienna VA

National weather service monthly precipitation data (Google link for Dulles) show the following:

For Washington, DC, the NOAA precipitation record goes back to the 1930s.  There, 2024 is shaping up to be the third-driest June, edged out by 1988 (as above) and by 1940.

Dry, no matter how you squeeze it.


Conclusion

If if have learned nothing else from back-yard vegetable gardening, it’s that I would surely starve if I had to grow my own food. 

So far this year, I’ve had poor yields of peas, potatoes, and garlic.  My 100-square-foot potato bed yielded just under 50 pounds of potatoes, most of which were small (but still edible) potatoes.   (Thus giving me the potato yield assumed in the movie The Martian, see Post G23-016.  If I eat 2000 calories per day, my 100-square-foot potato bed generated enough food for nine days.)  For my garlic, I suspect I’ll be lucky to end up with a half- ounce of usable garlic per square foot, from a roughly 64-square-foot bed.

And now, my little patch of garden is surviving courtesy of my municipal water supply.  Absent that, pretty much everything in the garden would be dead, given the drought.

On the plus side, my investment in surface-laid irrigation is paying off (e.g., Post G22-027).  Right now, I’m using a mix of 1/2″ dripline, 1/2″ drip tape, and some “bubblers”.  To water my garden, I dial in an hour on my hose timer, and walk away.  Beats the heck out of toting watering cans in the heat.

Post G24-019: Photosynthetic efficiency, or finally understanding the back-yard garden trellis.

 

Most plants can’t make use of anywhere near the full intensity of summer sunlight.  Perhaps you knew that, but I didn’t.  Depending on the plant and the conditions, photosynthesis maxes out at as little as one-seventh or -eighth of the intensity of noon-day sunlight (at my latitude). Anything beyond that is wasted. Continue reading Post G24-019: Photosynthetic efficiency, or finally understanding the back-yard garden trellis.

Post G24-018: Where are the bugs?

 

Edit 7/16/2024:  The cucumber beetles finally showed up this morning.  And, we had a few Japanese beetles.  Still no sign of the squash vine borer, though, despite having several varieties of cucurbits in my garden.

Where are the bugs?

I guess I shouldn’t complain, but certain of my garden insect pests are missing.  And — see below — that’s likely due to drought in this area.

It’s now way past time for Japanese beetles (left), cucumber beetles (center), and squash vine borers (right) to show up.  These should all appear when we’ve reached ~1000 growing-degree-days of accumulated warmth for the year.  That occurred in this area almost two weeks ago.  We’ve now accumulated somewhere in excess of 1300 growing-degree-days of warmth.  So these pests are way overdue, no matter how I figure it.

Source:  Cornell University.

And yet, so far, I’ve seen a total of three Japanese beetles.  Cucumber beetles — normally found in my squash blossoms every morning — are nowhere to be seenDitto for the squash vine borer, which should be fairly easy to spot due to its bright orange coloring.

Does that mean they aren’t going to show up this year?  Or are they merely delayed for some reason?

A clue from Purdue U

Nothing heralds summer like the hum of Japanese beetles ravenously descending on a flower garden. Cool weather this spring has slowed emergence of adults from the soil. Heavy spring rains early followed by relatively drier weather in late June, may have trapped adult Japanese beetles under a crusty layer of hardened soil. Due to their large numbers in many parts of Indiana last year, they are very likely just waiting for a good rain to soften the surface, so they can dig themselves into the light of day and on to your flowers. So, if we get a little more rain by the time this article comes out, we are likely to be awash in adult beetles.

Source:  Purdue University landscaper report, emphasis mine.

The paragraph above was for 2022, for Indiana.

But it describes 2024 in Virginia well.  This spring was characterized by plenty of rain, followed by drought that kicked in just as we were approaching 1000 degree-days of warmth.

For Japanese beetles, at least, the bottom line is that they have probably been delayed by the drought.  For the other two, by analogy, it’s plausible that they, too, have been delayed by crusty topsoil resulting from weeks of no rain.

The bottom line is that I can’t count on having dodged these pests for the year.  Likely they are just waiting for enough rain to soften the topsoil, so they can dig themselves up into the light of day.

We had a welcome half-inch of rain last night.  Perhaps I’ll be seeing these old friends soon.

 

Post #1982: Will the real political donation limit please stand up?

 

 

It has reached the point where half of my incoming emails are spam from the Biden campaign. 

These emails are all solicitations for donations.  Given that this is all coming from the same source, you’d think they could figure out a way to limit it to one-a-day, or some such.  With this volume, they have crossed the line between persistent reminders and simply being annoying.

In any case, today it finally dawned on me that I could unsubscribe.  This is an odd thing to do, given that I never subscribed to anything in the first place.  But, semantics aside, as long as it gets them to stop, that’ll do.

The point of this is that I am baffled by Federal campaign finance limits.  Every time I hear about the latest multi-million-dollar fund raiser by either candidate, I keep coming back to what I thought the law said, regarding contribution limits:  $3,300 per person, per candidate, per election.  Like so:

Source:  FEC.

Normally, I’d just chalk that up to the norm for modern America, which is that there are no binding rules for the rich, only for the little people.  So, of course candidates can hold $100K/plate fund-raising dinners, for their campaigns.  At the same time that hoi polloi are limited, by law, to $3,300, if donated to to a candidate’s campaign.

I would do that, except that among my emails from the Biden campaign is a request to donate $5K. Like so, from my in-box:

How on earth can the Biden campaign solicit a donation for $5K, from a mere commoner like myself, when the legal limit on donations to a political campaign, for an election, is $3,300?

I realize there are no binding limits on what the wealthy can spend to try to influence politics.  But if there are no real limits to what the average Joe or Jane can spend, I sure wish they’d revise the law to make that clear.  The current situation — a $3,300 limit which just about everyone seems to be able to avoid, one way or the other — turns Federal campaign spending limits into more of a joke than they already are.

 

Post G24-017: First Japanese beetle and first red tomato. A first.

 

The Japanese beetle and the squash vine borer both show up somewhere around 1000 growing-degree-days into the year.

Source:  Cornell University.

This year being pretty close to average, temperature-wise, the Japanese beetles are right on time.  I saw my first one this afternoon.  Last year’s version of this post occurred on June 20.  The year before that, June 18.

It’s not so much that the Japanese beetles do a lot of damage in my garden.  It’s that, around here, they are easy to spot, and their appearance means that many other pestiferous bugs will soon be arriving.  Relatively pest-free gardening is over for the year.

While Japanese beetles arrive like clockwork, not so the tomatoes.  Every year, I plant some short-season/cold-tolerant tomatoes, including Burpee’s aptly-named Fourth of July.  And, owing to the warm weather, and maybe an early start indoors, for the first time ever, I have my first red tomato on the same day as my first Japanese beetle.  I believe this year’s winning variety is Glacier.

x

This early ripening is kind of a good-news, bad-news joke.  Good news is, it’s been so warm that the early-season tomatoes are extra early.  (E.g., a neighbor of mine has had ripe cherry tomatoes for about two weeks now.)  The bad news is that it’s been so hot, we’re already having nigh-time lows in the 70’s F, which is too warm for tomatoes to begin the ripening process.  So I’m guessing that I may get a few ripe tomatoes soon, but the bulk of what’s growing is going to remain green until temperatures cool off a bit.

 

Post #1981: Have you ever wondered why fat guys hang their gut over their belt?

 

It is not from being too cheap to buy a new belt.  In most cases.

In reality, a guy with a beer gut has no choice.  Belts seek the geodesic, that is, the path of least distance.  In this case, the path is around your midsection at the belt line.  If you have big gut, and buckle your belt at your navel, it’ll sag.  Maybe not immediately, but soon.

 

Left to its own devices, your belt ends up below your gut, at your personal geodesic. Continue reading Post #1981: Have you ever wondered why fat guys hang their gut over their belt?