Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post #1998: Done in by a push pin.

 

Yesterday morning, while out for a bike ride, I ran over the above-pictured push-pin, in the parking lot of a park.  Despite its small size, it had no problem going right through the tread of my bike’s rear tire.

Mirabile dictu, I was able to get home before the tire went fully flat.

As my reward, I spent the next hour replacing the tube in my rear tire.  But at least I could cuss and sweat on my own back porch, instead of at the side of the road.

They say you never forget how to ride a bike.  But you surely can forget how to fix one.  The whole affair was a bit of a learning experience.

1:  Changing the tube in my back tire made me feel like a kid again.

Barely competent, and unsure of my ability to get by in the world.

But perhaps your childhood differed from mine.

In any case, I can still change a rear bike tire all by myself.  There was a fair bit of head-scratching involved, due to the unusual construction and tight clearances of my semi-recumbent bike.

But, in the end, I replaced the inner tube without breaking anything.

Source:  Wikipedia.

Except the Third Commandment.  (Or Second, depending on what you consider to be the theologically-correct numbering system.)

When it comes to moving rusty nuts and bolts, I consider a liberal amount of swearing to be at least as helpful as a liberal dosing with penetrating oil.  Neither one actually affects the rusted parts, they just give you the courage to twist harder on those parts than you otherwise would.

And, in any case, God seems to treat the breaking of Commandments much as our judicial system treats crimes by the rich and powerful.  The penalties for transgression are theoretical in nature, and if they occur, will happen so far in the distant future that they provide no practical deterrent to behavior in the present.

So, overall, it was a win.  This push-pin cut my bike ride short, but I confirmed that I can replace a bike inner tube using only the tools I routinely carry when I bike.

That was a nice surprise.

2:  Inevitable surprise

 

Post #1853: Urban bicycling really is as dangerous as it looks.

Bit of an oxymoron, that.

This minor random mishap reminded me of the events discussed in Post #1853, linked above, regarding a young woman who was killed while bicycling in a Maryland bike lane.  A truck turned right, across the bike lane, and ran into her.  Five seconds sooner, or five seconds later, and she’d have had no problem.

Similarly, this particular tire puncture depended on an almost comically improbable series of events.  Within my randomly-chosen bike route, across the entire width of an empty parking lot, a half-inch to either side and I’d have missed that push-pin.

But if you bike enough miles, you’ll run into your share of punctures.

And, like clockwork, about 1,000 bicyclists a year die in accidents in the U.S.  Year in, year out.

It’s a fair bet that each and every one of them was surprised by it.  Yet the overall rate remains rock-steady.

Weirdly, the flip side of that combination — the improbability of any one event, yet the stability of an average rate of such events — is that I must be having near-misses all the time.  Hundreds of tacks that I passed by but didn’t run over, for every one that I did.

And, correspondingly, accidents that would have happened but for a few minutes’ or seconds’ difference here or there.

It’s just the way it is.  You’ll typically never know how lucky you were.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

3:  The psychological benefits from owning emergency supplies that have quietly gone bad.

After I had put a new tube in that tire, I decided to patch the old one and keep that for a spare.  Rather than haul myself to the bike store for a new tube.  And as a consequence of that, I corrected a misunderstanding that I had had since I was a kid.

I thought that an un-opened metal tube of tire patch glue would last forever.

I was off by roughly infinity minus four years.  The tube of glue in my patch kit appeared pristine and flexible, but the solvent had evaporated long ago.  The tube of glue looked and felt perfect.  Still flexible, no leaks.  Only when I punctured the spout and squeezed did I realize that it had joined the choir invisible some years before.  Nothing came out.

Now that I look in detail at bike tube patch kits, the shelf life of an unopened tube of rubber cement is maybe  four years, when stored outside.

The upshot is that I had been carrying around a useless patch kit for years. 

Or, more likely, decades, given the indirect evidence.  My econometric clock says that I likely purchased this patch kit some time around the turn of century.  My kit, with a price tag of $3, currently sells for $5 and change on Amazon.

The fact that this was clearly purchased at a bricks-and-mortar retailer is just another blast from the past.  One with price stickers, yet.  They were a thing.  Look it up if you don’t believe me.

And yet, until today, carrying that patch kit on my bike gave me a sense of security.

Which means that, oddly enough, I was better off carrying a useless patch kit than carrying no kit at all. 

To be clear, if I’d known I had no way to patch a flat, I’d have been worried.  But with a (useless) patch kit on board, I never gave flat tires a second thought.

Rabbits’ feet.  Amulets.  Lucky charms.  Inner tube patch kits.

It’s all about the power of belief.

4:  Why do I even have a wet-glue tube patch kit?

The unfortunate answer is, because I’m old. And, like so many things, technology changed when I wasn’t paying attention.

The unusable patch kit was a wet-glue patch, requiring application of liquid contact cement (or rubber cement or sometimes a mysterious “vulcanizing fluid”), plus a peel-n-stick patch.   Patching inner tubes this way — gluing on a bit of rubber using rubber cement — goes back at least a century.

But now, there are so-called pre-glued patches, where no wet glue is required.  Just peel-n-stick. 

As it turns out, I owned both types of repair kits, from the same manufacturer (Park Tool).  Unlike the wet-glue kit, pre-glued patch kits remain good almost indefinitely.  My pre-glued patches were still good, and ultimately I patched the tube using a pre-glued patch.

Pre-glued patches are also faster and easier to use.  Lightly sand the area around the hole clean, peel-n-stick, and press firmly into place.  (The Park Tool patches are clear.  This makes it easy to chase any air bubbles out from under the patch.)

Plus, there are no fumes, no messy glue, no waiting for the glue to dry or cure.  No short-lived tubes of glue, period.

So that raises an obvious question:  If pre-glued patches are faster, easier, and have a longer shelf life, why do wet-glued inner tube patches still exist?

The internet tells me that old-style wet-glued patches are viewed as permanent, while pre-glued patches are viewed as temporary. They are expected to leak, eventually.  So if you want to fix your inner tube permanently, you need to use a wet (rubber-cement-style) patch.

OK, why even bother to patch a bicycle inner tube?  (Other than for expediency, I mean — for the second or later flat occurring on a given bike ride.  Assuming you carry a spare inner tube when you bike.)

Answer:  Once up on a time, a bicycle inner tube was an expensive piece of equipment.  Here’s the entry from the 1918 Sears and Roebuck catalog.  The roughly $1 standard inner tube of that day equates to over $22 today.  So, back when wet-patching tubes was the norm,  an inner tube would have made a rather expensive disposable item.

Source:  Sears 1918 catalog is currently accessible from https://christmas.musetechnical.com/

Back in the modern world, I can pick up a replacement inner tube on Amazon for $5.  Or less than the cost of a single-use wet-glue patch kit.  Based on how frequently I have bike flats, and the short shelf life of the glue in a wet-patch kit, it’s actually cheaper for me to throw the tube away, than to buy and use a new wet patch kit every time I have a flat.  (New, because the glue will most definitely go bad after a short while, once the tube has been opened.)

Conclusion:  Time to join the modern world.

The upshot of this post is that my whole approach to flats on a bike was outmoded.  I carry a spare tube.  In addition, I should carry some pre-glued patches as a backup.

At the rate at which I get flats, it never did make sense to carry a wet-glue patch kit.  Not even a fresh one, that would actually work.  I just didn’t realize it until I tried to use the long-deceased kit that I had been faithfully carrying on my bike since roughly the turn of the century.

Alternatively, I’ve looked into modern tire sealants such as Slime (r) and similar.   They get mixed reviews, and they may have limited effectiveness in high-pressure tires.  But the worst part is that bike tire sealants have a shorter shelf life than a wet-patch kit.  Slime (and other self-sealing tubes) recommend replacing the tube every two years.

And I know what that means.  If I went to the trouble to install self-sealing tubes, I would undoubtedly treat it as a one-and-done.  So that when I had a flat, N years from now, they would no longer work.

Much the same as my wet-patch kit.

Sometimes the right solution isn’t about the technology, it’s about eliminating the potential for operator error.

Extras for Experts 1:  My wife’s solution to a bicycle flat tire.

So here I am, trying to drag my thinking out of last century, abandoning wet-patch kits for flat bike tires.

I made the mistake of asking my wife what she would like me to do with the repair kit on her bike.

Because, you know, you’d hate to be stranded by a flat, miles from home.

She looked at me like I was a moron, pulled out her phone, and gave me the one-word answer above.

Apparently my brain has not fully absorbed the development of cell phones.  Because in this entire process, that option never even occurred to me.

In any case, the lesson here is that a flat bike tire, in an urban area, miles from home, is hardly the disaster it was in decades past.

Extras for Experts 2:  Primordial Slime

I thought that Fix-a-Flat, Slime, and similar leak-stopping chemicals were a modern invention.

Not so, per the same Sears catalog referenced above.  They’ve been around since at least the WWI era.

Even stranger, this ancient Slime(r)-equivalent advertised leak-stopping fibers, exactly as some Slime products do today.  Except that in 1918, the fibers were proudly noted as being asbestos.

Post #1997: Fixing a resin-cased watch with a broken lug

 

If you are reading this, you probably have a resin(plastic)-cased wristwatch with a broken lug.  The lug being the place where the watch band attaches to the watch case.

The question you need to ask yourself is, how much effort do you want to go to, to fix a cheap resin-case watch?

In my case, I was so irked by the thought of tossing a functioning wristwatch into the trash that I started small and just kept ramping it up until I finally got a repair that stuck.

What finally worked, for me was to glue the steel watch band to the steel case back, using a thin patch of baking soda and superglue that spanned the watch back and the first links of the metal watch band.  In effect, I bypassed the resin case and broken lug entirely.

Edit 9/1/2024:  This repair is not waterproof.  Which, in hindsight, should not be a surprise, as regular superglue isn’t waterproof.  After about a month, the repair separated cleanly from the underlying stainless steel following several hours of outdoor exercise in the Virginia summer heat.

The obvious solution would be to use dishwasher-safe super glue, but that’s too thick.  Neither one I tried would soak into the baking soda.

So I redid the repair using the same regular liquid superglue as I used the first time. 

I wear the watch every day, and the second repair is holding up fine as of 11/19/2024.  Based on that, I’m going to claim that this makes a permanent repair, as long as you don’t get it soaking wet. 

The original post continues below. 

Ultimately, I chose this method because superglue has a reputation for adhering well to stainless steel.  I’m not sure how well it would adhere to a plastic (resin) strap.  But I wouldn’t rule it out.  If nothing else, the mix’s adhesion to stainless was way above my expectations.I’d be willing to try the same repair with a resin strap.  Certainly if the alternative is to throw the watch away.

You can’t see the repair when wearing the watch (a Casio A158WA).

And you don’t want to see it, when you take the watch off.

Despite the looks, the watch is still comfortably wearable, and the repair seems to be holding up well.

But the reality is that nothing else even came close to working.

Plus, it’s cheap and easy.  My only cash expense was for a new battery, because it seemed prudent to change the watch battery before doing this.  Once I figured out what to do, the repair itself took just a few minutes.

If that’s success, what were the failures?

Source:  WalMart. 

The best way to understand why I ended up with this expedient repair is to see what didn’t work.  In particular, these four approaches failed:

A drop of superglue on the lug takes essentially zero effort, but was a total fail.  Couldn’t even get the watch back onto my wrist before that gave way.

A drop of two-part liquid epoxy on the lug, ditto.  The act of buckling the clasp broke that free.

A small amount of JB Quik (two-part epoxy paste), applied between watch body and watch band, failed after a few hours.  It didn’t stick well to either the plastic case or the stainless watch band.

A larger amount of of two-part epoxy paste (JB Weld’s Quik Weld), applied as a patch across the stainless watch back and stainless watchband, held for almost a day.  But the JB Weld adhered poorly to the stainless steel, e.g., it was easily removed with a knife.

Why did this repair work?

To summarize the failures:

  • Glues don’t stick well to plastics, no matter what anybody tells you.
  • If you try to fix the lug itself, the surface area you’re working with is tiny, so there’s little area for the glue to adhere to anyway.
  • The resulting piece of hardened glue/epoxy is so tiny that it has little physical strength.

All of which told me that I needed to:

  • Glue to some surface where I could get some adhesion.
  • Glue to a much larger surface.
  • Use a much larger patch, so that it has some physical strength.

The breakthrough was in realizing that a) this was a $20 watch, b) the battery lasts seven to ten years, and so c) there was really nothing to stop me from literally gluing the watch band to the watch back.  Basically, just take the plastic case and plastic lug out of the equation entirely.

I chose superglue because it has a good reputation for sticking to stainless steel.

But I also needed a physically strong patch, because it needs to keep the watch band rigidly attached to the watch.  That way, the broken lug simply doesn’t matter.   All the force between watch and watch band is transmitted through the glue patch.

That suggested trying the baking soda and superglue hack.  I had always thought that was just internet-based nonsense, but in fact, there’s some good chemistry behind it (reference).  Assuming that reference is correct, the baking soda isn’t merely a filler, it actually cures the superglue in a completely different fashion from what would normally happen.  The result is stronger than superglue alone, and has better adherence to whatever you’re trying to glue to.

Instructions, such as they are.

In any case, the repair was simple.  In concept.  The tricky step is wetting the powder with the glue, which turns out to be a timed test, as the superglue sets rapidly under these conditions.  If you try this, and read nothing else, read the paragraph below on wetting your baking soda with superglue.

  • Scrub the watch back and the watch band to remove dirt and oils.  Dry them.
  • Gently re-attach the watch band to the watch, using the broken lug.  This doesn’t have to be physically strong, it just has to look OK.  The repair itself is concealed on the back of the watch.
  • Set that face-down in a position that approximates the curve of the wrist.  (Because one or two links of the watch band will end up rigidly attached to the watch case, if this repair holds.)
  • Lay and sculpt your baking soda.  Spoon on and smooth out a bit of baking soda, being sure to cover a large area of both the watch back and the watch band, and making it thick enough that it will have some physical strength.  And yet, not too thick, or it’ll be uncomfortable to wear.  I was shooting for something about as thick as the pad portion of a band-aid.
  • Wet your baking soda with superglue.   Slowly drip on liquid (not gel) superglue until the baking soda is saturated.  I used most of a one-gram tube of Ace Hardware Future Glue liquid super glue.  See below for greater detail.
  • Dust a little more baking soda on, to cure any liquid glue remaining on the surface.
  • Let it sit for five minutes or so.
  • Clean up any excess glue using a sharp knife.
  • Use a bit of sandpaper to smooth out the surface that will touch the wrist.

In hindsight, cleanup would have been a lot easier if I’d taped over the parts where I didn’t want glue to stick.  But it wasn’t hard to remove the excess glue with a knife.

I don’t know if this baking-soda-and-superglue patch will stick to a resin band.  But it should be easy enough to try it and find out.

Wet your baking soda with superglue, some details. 

The tricky step in this repair turned out to be wetting the baking soda.  It’s a timed test, because the baking soda/super glue mix sets up fast.  And it’s critical to wet the baking soda patch thoroughly with superglue, because where you don’t, it won’t stick.  For sure, you need to get the full depth of the patch wet with superglue, all the way down to the substrate (e.g., stainless steel, in this case).

On the plus side, you’ll be done with it before you know it.  Because it behooves you to move fast.   Once I figured that out, I essentially paved the top of the baking-soda patch with closely-spaced drops of superglue.

I can tell you from experience that you pretty much can’t go back and fix any mistakes.  So if you (e.g.) get too little glue on a spot, by the time you go back to re-wet it, the top will already have skimmed over with hardened superglue, and you’re out of luck.  For a couple of “dry pockets”, I ended up using the tip of a knife to pierce the thinnest part of the dried layer of the superglue, then added fresh superglue.

Separately, in the end, I wish I’d done more (or, really, anything) to prevent adhesion of excess glue and excess glue/baking soda mix.  I wish I had used some tape, or light oil, or similar.  As it was, I ended up using the tip of a sharp pocket knife to scrape off excess glue and glue/soda mix.  FWIW, that’s a task that you should do as soon as feasible, e.g., before the mixture has had hours to cure.

An irrational repair?

To be clear, this is a cheap watch.  I could replace this watch — literally a more-recently manufactured clone of the unchanged model — for about $20.

But I like this watch.  It’s lightweight.  The only material that touches skin is stainless steel.  The quartz works are guaranteed accurate to within 30 seconds a month (or about twice as accurate as the best mechanical watches.)  This particular watch only gains seven seconds a month.  This makes the watch low maintenance, in that it stays within a minute of true time as long as I set it twice a year for the change in daylight savings time.  It’s waterproof enough that I can scrub the schmutz off of it.

And it’s simple.  Unlike any other digital watch I have owned, I can use all of its functions without reading the manual.

It has some faults.  The LED back-light is comically dreadful.  And the clasp is insecure in several ways.  And, as I now know, the plastic case is a potential failure point.  But Casio does not put this works into a metal case.

Anyway, I already own it.  And I hate tossing stuff that’s still (mostly) working.

Once I made my mind up to try to fix it, I was just too stubborn to give up.

Boiled down

How much effort are you willing to go through, in order to keep wearing a cheap plastic-bodied watch with a broken lug?

If you already own baking soda and liquid (not gel) superglue, it will take you just a few minutes to try this repair.

The big surprise was how strong and adhesive the super-glue-and-baking-soda patch is.  Before this, I had assumed that was all internet hype.  But, in fact, there’s good science behind it. And in this instance, it worked better than JB Weld epoxy, which is high praise indeed.

And when you get right down to it, what have you got to lose?  If it doesn’t work, then you are left with a broken wristwatch.  Which is what you already have.

 

Post G24-023: Taste test of tromboncino, cucuzzi, and yellow summer squash.

 

 

Background:  I’m trying two alternatives to traditional summer squash in my garden this year.

For this post, I steamed immature fruits from tromboncino and cucuzzi (a.k.a. zucchetta a.k.a.  guinea bean), along with yellow summer squash from the store.

Above:  Top is zuchetta, middle is yellow summer squash, bottom is tromboncino.

Here are my impressions

Steamed immature tromboncino squash tastes quite similar to yellow summer squash.  The only giveaway is a slightly bitter note that yellow summer squash completely lacks.  I’d phrase that as yellow summer squash tastes “sweeter” or perhaps “nuttier” than tromboncino.

(I’ve seen tromboncino described as having a “cucumber” note, and in hindsight, maybe I’m tasting a bitterness similar to that found in the undesirable part of a cucumber.  But only a touch.)

Immature cucuzzi gourds?  Quite a bit different from yellow summer squash.  Charitably, even steamed, they have sort of a raw-green-bean note.  Uncharitably, they kinda taste a little like dirt.

Not much. Not even close to spit-it-out bad.  But a little goes a long way, when it comes to tasting like dirt.

In times of famine, sure, I’d eat either one.

The upshot is that if I were pining for summer squash, I’d get it at the grocery store.  Second choice, I’d eat immature tromboncino.  It’s not bad.  Put some pasta sauce on it, and I wouldn’t know it wasn’t summer squash.  But if the only option were guinea bean, I’d find something else to eat.

All of this, because the presence of squash vine borer in my area makes it a real chore to grow “regular” summer squash.  Either I spray my plants for weeks on end, or I lose them to the vine borer.

Or I try something weirder, of which, growing then eating these two immature fruits as if they were summer squash, is one.  Because, in theory, the squash vine borer won’t bother these alternatives.  Or, at least, won’t outright kill them, usually.

Taste aside, the icing on the cake is poor productivity.  At least, so far, for me, both have had abysmal yield.  They are both sprawling, large-leaved squash/gourd vines that take up a lot of space.  But fruits are few and far-between.  (At least, in my garden, this year.)

Edit 9/8/2024:  My two tromboncini vines finally started producing a reasonable number of fruit in late August.  Large fruit.  Very large fruit.  If these will mature before first frost, tromboncini will have redeemed itself as a reasonably productive butternut-type winter squash.  I still wouldn’t grow it as a summer-squash substitute. 

For both plants, I can now stop eating the immature fruit and let some of it mature.  Maybe. Tromboncino is in the butternut squash family, and apparently produces pretty good winter squash.  So, mature, it ought to taste more like a butternut squash, which would be fine.  The cucuzzi, it’s a gourd, but in theory I think you can eat that one once it’s mature, as well.  I’m not sure I’m looking forward to that.

So the cucuzzi’s days may be numbered.  I think I’d rather let the trombincino take over its space.  (Edit 8/10/2024:  About a week ago, I sliced through both cucuzzi (gourd) vines that I planted, at the roots.  And yet, a small part of the cucuzzi vine appears to be alive.  I know not how.) 

YMMV.

Post G24-022: Time is nonlinear in the garden.

 

I don’t mean anything cosmic or metaphysical by saying that time is nonlinear in the garden.

I’m just trying to figure out when I should start clipping the flowers off my tomatoes.

And I come up with the ridiculous answer of “now”.

This post explains how I arrived at that answer.

 

Please remember to phrase it in the form of a question.

Image source:  WalMart.

Answer:  Now.

Question:  When should I start clipping the flowers off my tomato plants?

Really?

Yep.

The theory is ridiculously simple

For the sake of argument, assume it takes 55 days to manufacture a ripe tomato, under ideal growing conditions.  That is, 55 days elapse between the time the flower opens, and the time the ripe tomato is ready to be picked.

Further assume, correctly, that I place little value on green tomatoes.

How late can my tomatoes flower, and still give me ripe fruit?

For sure, frost kills tomato plants.  Halloween is my expected fall first frost date.  So, any tomato flowers opening after September 6 are probably useless to me.  That’s 55 days prior to expected first frost.  If first frost occurs on time, those late flowers won’t give me any usable fruit.

First complication:  Mere 50F cold damages green tomatoes.

During last year’s bumper crop of green tomatoes, I learned a lot.  Mostly, I learned to plant my tomatoes earlier.

But in addition, I learned that green tomatoes are permanently damaged by 50F nighttime temperatures.  This and other fun facts are summarized in:

Post G23-060: Gardening’s booby prize.

So if I want ripe fruit, it needs to ripen up before nighttime temperatures routinely drop to 50F or lower.  Eyeballing the weather for the past five Octobers, that happens around October 7 in my area.  Or 21 days before typical first frost.

As a result, the entire tomato-ripening timeline needs to shift back by 21 days.   Because I don’t merely need to avoid frost.  I need to avoid nights under 50F.   I need to start cutting the flowers off my tomato plants not on September 6, but on August 16.

If I want to pick ripe tomatoes before nights begin dipping below 50F, flowers opening after August 16 are useless to me.

Second complication:  Time is non-linear in the garden.

Source:  Gencraft AI

Everything in the garden slows as we slip into fall.  It slows, in part, because we see less sunlight.  It slows, in part, because temperatures drop.

Back-of-the-envelope, I guess that October days produce about one-third as much plant growth as August days.  In my climate (Zone 7).  That compounds a roughly 50% decline in growth due to temperature (October around here is about 10C less than August, which cuts the speed of a typical chemical reaction in half), along with having only about 70% of the sunlight that we see in August.  I’d then guesstimate that September days produce perhaps two-thirds the growth that August days do.

This means that the entire month of September accomplishes only 20 days’ worth of growing and ripening under ideal conditions.  And October only adds 10 days’ worth.  More formally, if October 7 is my end-of-season date (beyond which I can expect 50F and lower nights), then to get the equivalent of 55 days of perfect growing conditions, I have to start clipping off my tomato flowers on July 30.  Or, two days from now.

Conclusion

If my tomatoes take 55 days to go from flower to fruit, under ideal growing conditions, then I should start clipping the flowers off approximately 93 days before expected first-frost date.

Or, more-or-less now.

This sounds absolutely ridiculous.  But I swear it’s true.

Of the additional (93 – 55 =) 38 days that arise from the factors discussed above:

The flower-kill date moves up by 21 days, because the actual practical no-damage cutoff is 50F nights, not frost.

The flower-kill date moves up by a further 17 days because fall growing conditions are not ideal, and everything in the garden slows down in September and October.

Afterward:  A controlled observation is a form of an experiment.

I, like most gardeners, have a hard time cutting new flowers off my tomatoes.  Or, off my vegetable plants in general.  If nothing else, it’s an admission of finality for the year.  The only fruits I’m going to get this year are the ones that are already set, on those plants.

This year, I’m going to test the theory by marking a selection of flower bracts on my tomatoes now.  (Probably just put a twist-tie around them).  Then letting one or more rounds of new flowers survive, beyond the marked bracts.  Then seeing which of those led to mature fruits, before nights turn cold in the fall.

I’m pretty sure, for example, that cherry tomatoes take less time to develop than full-sized (slicing) tomatoes.  And I’m pretty sure that my early-season tomatoes also take less time to mature than slicing tomatoes.  And so I strongly suspect that the right time to start clipping the flowers is directly correlated with the size of the final tomatoes.

If so, that should come out clearly in my end-of-season observations.

Post #1995: The Green New Deal. Like getting underwear for Christmas.

 

I heard that the presumptive Democratic candidate for President had co-sponsored the Green New Deal legislation, back when she was a U.S. Senator.

And now, she’s being pilloried for that, by the usual suspects.

So I got kind of excited.  As in, cool, maybe somebody in the Federal government has a well-thought-out plan for dealing with climate change.  How did I ever miss this dramatic step forward in Federal climate policy?

Unfortunately, instead of doing the normal thing and reading what people say about the Green New Deal, I actually read the Green New Deal legislation.

Only, there was no legislation.  It was a resolution, not a piece of legislation.  That is, an expression of some noble sentiment.  It’s the kind of document that starts off with a bunch of “whereas” paragraphs. So you know it doesn’t really serve any serious purpose.

Here’s a Google link to the Green New Deal resolution, as-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2019 (link).  Turns out, the 2019 Green New Deal resolution had about 80 co-sponsors.

It has been re-introduced in various forms since that time. I can only assume that (now) Vice-President Harris was one of many co-sponsors of one of the later, re-introduced version of it.  She was not a cosponsor of the 2019 House version, as she was a Senator.  Presumably, she was a cosponsor of a similar resolution in the Senate, at some point.

I checked out the 2023 version, and at least the first couple of pages were every bit as breathtakingly overblown as the original.  So I’d say it’s fair game just to quote the original.

There’s no there, there.

It’s an empty shell.  You may or may not consider it a nice-looking shell.  But it’s empty.

As soon as I started reading it, I realized there’s no there, there.  In the main, it’s platitudes, strung together, seasoned with grievance.  And it ends up being everything but the kitchen sink.

It’s not properly “a manifesto”, that is, a mere declaration of goals.  And least it didn’t sit that way to me, because a lot of those goals were given specific timelines.

But that’s it.  No details.  No hint of how to pay for it.  No hint of where to start.

Worse, to me, it seemed to call for miracles.  That is, things that appear to me to be absolutely technically infeasible, now, at least, no matter how much money you throw at them.  For example, converting the U.S. electrical grid to 100% renewable energy within ten years.  I’m pretty sure that no informed person thinks that’s possible.  I could be wrong.  I will eventually look to see if anyone has seriously asked and answered that question.

(Do I hear a voice complaining that Vermont’s grid is already there?  See Post #1952).

Edit: I stand corrected.  Maybe.  Turns out, the National Renewable Energy Labs studied what it would take to make the grid carbon-free (not the same as 100% renewable, due to nuclear power), in response to the Biden Administration’s bills investing in clean energy.  Near as I can tell, they consider it feasible to have a carbon-free electrical grid by 2035.  That’s not so different from what the Green New Deal calls for. The cost appears to be well under $1T.  Call it under $100B a year for a decade.

But, if you read the detail, you see phrases like ” Nuclear capacity more than doubles”,” … the potentially important role of several technologies that have not yet been deployed at scale, …”, and so on.  I think they also assume, in some scenarios, a more-than-doubling of electrical transmission capacity. 

If there were just one cutting-edge assumption, that would be one thing.  But I think if you look at everything that has to come together, my take on it is that, yeah, you could do it, maybe.  The notion that we’d have double our current nuclear generation capacity, on-line, in ten years, seems particularly far-fetched. 

But the point is, NREL is a serious source, and they have a serious analysis that says it could be done. And they say it would cost well under a trillion dollars.   Call it $100B a year for ten years, and done.

Plus, apparently the Biden Adminstration has a stated goal of a carbon-free grid by 2035.  So the Green New Deal isn’t the only place where that’s been called for.

And it kind-of calls for miracles routinely.  It’s full of little-bitty (/s) one-off items.  Like this one:

 (E) upgrading all existing buildings in the
5 United States and building new buildings to
6 achieve maximum energy efficiency, water effi-
7 ciency, safety, affordability, comfort, and dura-
8 bility, including through electrification;

All?  Sure, we’ll just upgrade all the buildings in the U.S. Just by-the-by.  I don’t see any problems with that.  (/s)

Or, even better:

 (O) providing all people of the United
13 States with—
14 (i) high-quality health care;
15 (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate
16 housing;
17 (iii) economic security; and
18 (iv) clean water, clean air, healthy and
19 affordable food, and access to nature.

So let’s create national health insurance and a government-guaranteed annual income (?).  As an afterthought?  While we’re at it?

OK, in fairness, they did lean on the Depression-era New Deal when they thought up a name for it.  That said, it’s not clear why you need to guarantee affordable food, if you provide economic security.  But I don’t think that logic is the strong suit of this document.  Or I don’t understand the cant.

Finally, there’s this:

 (E) to promote justice and equity by stop-
23 ping current, preventing future, and repairing
24 historic oppression of indigenous peoples, com-
25 munities of color, migrant communities,
1 deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural
2 communities, the poor, low-income workers,
3 women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with
4 disabilities, and youth (referred to in this reso-
5 lution as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable commu-
6 nities’’);

Those are all noble sentiments.  But a) do they really think that there’s not enough on our plate just trying to deal with climate change, and b) how, exactly, do they propose to do that?

But my negative reaction to that closing paragraph may be leaning a bit too hard on the green part of Green New Deal.   That’s where my focus is.  So to me, the purely non-environmental parts of the document often come across as just so much extra baggage.  Just something else to be objected to.  But that’s at least in part a product of my bent, and clearly not the intent of the drafter(s).

The fact that this document is so heavily laden with such items tells me exactly what this is:  It’s a feel-good document.  That’s it.  The Green New Deal is not and never was any sort of practical plan for moving the U.S. forward in terms of climate policy.  

Not that I can see.

But Democrats can say they’re for it, and Republicans can say the opposite.  So it gives us yet another meaningless thing to squabble over, without accomplishing anything.  As if we didn’t have enough meaningful things to fight over.

Conclusion

Sometimes, the Christmas present looks better before you tear off the wrapping paper.  The tree of knowledge is not necessarily the tree of happiness.

Before I read it, I could at least imagine that somebody in the Democratic side of the Legislative branch of government had a plan for dealing with climate change.  Now I’m sure that nobody on Capitol Hill does.

I was hoping for a shiny new bike.  I got underwear.

On a more serious note, anyone who treats the Green New Deal as a blueprint for anything — e.g., a way to address climate change, a way to create millions of jobs, or whatnot — is being just being dishonest.  It is no such thing.

The next time I hear somebody tout the Green New Deal as “a plan for creating millions of high-paying jobs”, I’m going to mark that person down as an outright liar.

Because this isn’t a plan for anything.  It’s an expression of some noble sentiments, some of which you may agree with, some of which you may not.  Amalgamated into a document.

If that’s the extent of thinking, of the only major U.S. party that even admits that climate change is real, we are in some deep, deep shit.

Addendum:  Clean Up Your Own Damned Mess.

So, put up or shut up.  What’s my plan?

1  Whereas Adults of all races, creeds, national origins, sexual orientation, and economic status realize that cleaning up after yourself is a necessary part of being an Adult.

2  Whereas the exhaust gasses from fossil-fuel combustion are making a mess of the earth, via global warming and climate change, in ways that will be fairly important to future Americans, such as (say) being able to eat, and having a coastline that stays in roughly the same place …

3  Be it resolved that the Federal government’s response to climate change is to require all Americans act like adults and clean up their own damned mess. And to use all tools at our disposal to encourage other nations to do the same.

4  To enforce this new CUYODM policy, the Federal government will:

4.1  Solicit bids for industrial-scale removal and sequestration (permanent removal from the biosphere) of atmospheric carbon.

4.2 Use those bids to find the market-determined price of carbon removal, per ton.

4.3  Impose a tax on fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gasses, per ton of carbon content-equivalent, in that market-determined amount, so that each new sale of fossil fuels automatically generates enough funds to clean up the mess that combustion of those fuels will create.

4.4  Dedicate the resulting funds exclusively for paying for actual removal of carbon from the atmosphere.

4.5  Sequester any unspent funds until such time as carbon-capture-and-sequestration capacity increases to the point where all such funds are used.

4.6 Re-bid additional rounds of carbon capture at five year intervals, and adjust the amount of the carbon tax accordingly, until the U.S. has put in place adequate capacity to clean up all of the mess that we are creating.  (That is, carbon-neutrality.)  Any natural, provable carbon sinks, within the U.S. shall be included in the net-carbon-neutrality calculation.

4.7  Anybody who wants to extract and burn fossil fuels in the U.S. is free to do so.  As long as they pay enough to clean up the mess that creates.

Commentary:

When you step back from it, much of the history of U.S. environmental policy is just a case of asking that you clean up your own mess, rather than dump it in a public space.

There was a time, in the U.S.A., where anybody was free to dump pretty much anything, in any river or lake, or into the air.  I can recall, for example, that as a child, I attended a Catholic grade school that incinerated its own trash, on site.   This was private, industrial-scale garbage burning, in the middle of a large city (Philadelphia).  That was, apparently, a completely normal thing for the 1960s.

But, collectively, that any-mess-you-care-to-make policy led to such bad outcomes (reference Cuyahoga River fire), that we got the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, passed with bipartisan support.  The EPA, as I think I recall, was created under President Nixon.

In any case, if it’s not feasible to create that much carbon sequestration, at least we’d know that, and could quit pussyfooting around this issue.  If we literally can’t pull it back out of the atmosphere, the only real option, in the long run, is not to burn so damned much of it in the first place.

Post #1994: East Coast forest fire smoke. Again?

 

Update 7/26/2024:  Well, this is a puzzler.  Maybe I have mistaken some massive local fire for a plume of remote wildfire smoke. 

As of 2 PM today, it’s back, and worse.  Very strong smell of smoke, PM 2.5 readings in excess of 100 (in whatever units that is) in my yard, and the haze is visible when I look down the street. 

And yet, official AQI readings for my area don’t show anything out-of-line.  There are no reported wildfires near my home. I don’t hear any fire trucks.

In any case, the only thing I’m sure of is that the air in my neighborhood is smoky.  By sight, by smell, and confirmed by a reasonably-accurate PM 2.5 meter.  Either a house is burning down somewhere upwind of Vienna, VA, or we’re back to breathing forest fire smoke.  We’ve had more than enough rain in the past few days to suppress any sort of local massive wildfires.

I have no idea why the only coverage I can find, of this most recent forest fire smoke plume, is in the New York Times.  Perhaps I have mistaken some local source of smoke for a national issue.  But a PM 2.5 reading of 100, visible haze, and noticeable smell all add up to some materially unhealthful air.

Original post follows:

Yep.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that it smelled like burning wood outside.

As did my wife.

Uh, notice the smell, that is.

I then went through a routine of checking my local Air Quality Index (AQI), which was in fact unhealthy due to high levels of PM 2.5 (particulates).

Then went to the map (above, from the NY Times), to see that, sure enough, I was smelling some “light” smoke from forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.

Maybe I never much noticed this in years gone by.  Maybe.  But the trend for U.S. annual wildfires is clearly pointing up.

Source:  National Interagency Fire Center.

Normally, I’d blather on about global warming.  And, for sure, increased incidence of forest fires is a likely outcome of that.  And yet, I think we’re still waaay too early in the game for this to be driven by climate change. 

And, indirectly, the U.S. EPA seems to agree.  While they show the same trend that I showed above, they attribute it to cyclical climate factors that have led to a drying-out of U.S. western forest lands (reference EPA).  (I read “cyclical” to mean that those factors are expected to reverse.)  Though, obviously a general warming trend doesn’t help, even if the U.S. has seen only a slight degree of warming so far.

I’d say that the (sketchy) Canadian wildfire data seems to back that up.  To a degree.  If you include the period just prior to that shown above, the Canadian data show no strong upward trend.  At least, not  if you exclude that record 2023 season.

Source:  Natural Resources Canada.

In any case, I invite you to fill in your favorite rationale for this strong recent upward trend in U.S. wildfires, as long as you find some way to blame the libs/eco-freaks for it.  Including those wily Canadians.

Here’s the odd thing from this most recent experience:  These smoke plumes appear to have highly variable density at ground level.  Even after traveling across the country.

I really shouldn’t have been able to smell “light” smoke, from 3000 miles away.  But at that time, my PM 2.5 meter showed almost three times the particulate level outside, as did various on-line AQI sites.

I believe that these smoke plumes have that much small-scale variability in them, even after crossing the country.  They are a lumpy amalgamation of smoke, not a uniformly-dispersed smoke.  This is among the many things that makes predictions of daily smoke hazards, from remote forest fires, difficult.  My AQI forecast seems nowhere near as accurate as (say) the rain or temperature forecast, during wildfire season.

It was just last year that the air in New York was orange, for several days running, from Canadian forest fire smoke. And was merely hazardous to breathe, for a few more.  Both the data and my hazy recollection say that this is a new phenomenon.

No matter how you slice it, and no matter whom you blame for it, poor air quality from remote wildfire smoke appears to be the East Coast summertime normal now.

Post #1993: Reflections on renewing my driver’s license.

 

My trip to the DMV was a pleasure. 

I never thought I’d say that.  Not in my lifetime.  Not unironically.

But, truly, it could not have been easier.  I had to renew my license in person, if for no other reason than to have my vision tested.  I made an appointment on-line, followed the instructions, and the DMV worked like a well-oiled yet seemingly-people-friendly machine. 

Total time at the DMV?  Seventeen minutes, car-door-to-car-door.

Not like it was in the good (?) old days, that’s for sure.  But the VA DMV has been on a roll for decades now, in terms of streamlining service delivery and doing as much business as possible over the internet rather than in person.

The DMV even threw in the upgrade to RealID.  For a slightly higher fee.    Hate the concept.  Took them up on the offer anyway.

This is not to say that I am a pushover when it comes to upselling.  I declined the RealID subcutaneous RFID implant, even though the additional fee was quite modest.  Maybe I’ll go for that when I get my passport renewed.

In any case, I still see well enough to drive.  I’m still able to bumble my way through a DMV visit.

Guess that makes this a good day.  I should enjoy the now.

My next mandatory license renewal is in 2032.  Logically, I recognize that number as a year that will occur eight years from now.  But it otherwise lacks reality to me.  Might as well be forever and a day.

Post #1992: Minimum wage.

 

This post started off to be a cut-and-dried presentation of the real (inflation-adjusted) value of the Federal minimum wage.

So let me get that punchline out of the way:  $7.25 in January 2009 is the about the same as $10.79 in June 2024 dollars.  So says the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), via their graphically-challenged but zero-nonsense inflation calculator:

So, I’m done.  That $7.25 has been the Federal minimum wage since 2009. No matter how you slice it, that $7.25/hour appears low in real (CPI-adjusted) terms. Compared to … ah, you name it.  But in particular, compared to what it was in 2009, fresh off the last increase in the Federal minimum wage.

But so what.  Again to cut to the chase:  Of late, a lot of states have set their own binding state minimum wage laws.  Nowadays, the majority of states (and overwhelming the majority of employed population) have minimum wage laws that effectively supercede the Federal minimum wage law.

One thing of interest to me is that the jump from $7.25/hour to $12/hour, in three years, doesn’t seem to have increased Virginia unemployment markedly.  I mean, just at a glance, Virginia’s current unemployment rate is 2.7 percent.  That’s pretty good.  Just sayin.

Finally, nothing is free.  If, in the end, people who eat a lot of fast food ended up paying for that increase in the minimum wage … that’s not a terrible outcome.  We’ve long imposed sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco.  Think of it as one of those.

 

Round up the usual suspects.

Source:  Wikipedia.

I was struck by how much this map resembles just about every other map of America I’ve looked at recently.  With a couple of exceptions (e.g., Florida), it’s very much like every other Dems-vs-Republicans map I’ve seen.  By color, that could easily be a map of state mask mandates during the pandemic.

Well, here, test your prejudices.  If I told you that a handful of states literally have no legislation at all, regarding minimum wages — no mention of the concept in their laws — which states would you guess those are?   If you started in the Alabama/Missisippi/Louisiana area, give yourself an A.

Anyway, coasts versus interior, with a few exceptions.  Florida stands out as unnaturally progressive, given their general bent.  Otherwise, pretty much the usual suspects.

Virginia minimum wage law.

Source:  Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED)

The first punchline is that the Virginia minimum wage remains at $12/hour.  The story appears to this:  In 2020, Virginia raised its minimum wage, but at that time, required another vote for the portion from 2023 to 2025 to take effect. (That cautious approach is typical for Virginia state government, I’d say.)  The  conditionally-scheduled increase from $12 to $15/hour, from 2023 to 2025, was passed by 2024 the legislature, vetoed by the Governor, with veto sustained by the Virginia House.  (Weirdly, I can find virtually no press coverage of the Governor’s veto except this except this write-up from a legal firm).

So it stays at $12.  I have no idea what happens next, if anything.

The details of the Virginia minimum wage law are interesting.

For example, some types of jobs are categorically exempt:  Agricultural workers, as is traditional, but also … golf caddies?  I swear it says so in statute.

And prisoners.  Virginia’s minimum wage law does not apply to prisoners.  Nor does the Federal minimum wage law.  The more I read about prison labor, the less I want to know.  In Virginia, the law at least specifies that the resulting products have to be sold to government and related entities, and not sold on the open market (based on this statute), unless with specific approval of the Governor.

Does the Virginia minimum wage law cover tipped workers, or not?  My short answer is … yeahno.  Yeah, if I got it right, in theory, tipped employees are guaranteed $12/hour in combined wages and tips.  And, in determining the legal minimum hourly wage for a tipped employees, employers can assume enough tips that the legal hourly wage is … $2.13, per the U.S. Department of Labor.   Same as it always was.  (With the understanding that if the employee wants to demonstrate that the combined wage and tip income is habitually below $12/hour, so that the hourly wage paid by the employer should go up, the employee has to retain and show all tips to the employer, to establish the typical hourly tip income.)

The crazy-beyond-crazy sleeper is the definition of “tipped employee”:  A dollar a day.  In tips.  Federal law defines a tipped employee as anyone likely to make $30 or more, per month, in tips.  States just follow suit.

We who live in the era of the tip jar have to wonder just how old that $30/month figure is?  Answer:  In round numbers, that hasn’t been updated in half a century.  I finally tracked that down (California State University Office of the Chancellor, Google Link to pdf), emphasis mine:

 20 As amended by section 3(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1977, effective January 1, 1978. Prior to January 1, 1978, the dollar amount was $20.

As an economist, I have long viewed the ubiquitous tip jar as rational reaction to the abysmal minimum wage.  Two sides of the same coin, as it were.

But with this mismash of state laws, I no longer understand how to think about the tip jar in retail settings.  I need help.

Dear Kamala:  Please post Federal guidelines on tipping.  TIA.

This request flows from what I see as the unfortunate but true connection from adequacy of the minimum wage to tipping.

Kamala Harris, please threaten to push for a modest raise in the Federal minimum wage.  Currently $7.25, last increased in 2009.

But wait, didn’t I just get through showing that, these days, the Federal minimum wage hardly matters?

Answer:  Yes, that’s why this is a genius idea.  If the Dems are for it, the Republicans must be reflexively against it.  Even if it does almost nothing.

I want to hear the sound of Republicans collectively hocking a loogie on the very idea of a minimum wage.  (As a bonus, perhaps some will go on to heap scorn on child labor laws.)

More to the point, I want that collective Republican “patooey” to be heard clearly by 20-something working stiffs, particularly in the four battleground states circled above.  I don’t think anything could sharpen up the difference between the Dems and Republicans any more.

Secondarily, it would be fun to see the hoops many Republican governors would have to jump through to lambaste the lefty-libs for this notion, in those cases where their own state minimum wages are well in excess of the current Federal level.  Such states include Florida and South Dakota.

Fun, for much the same reason that watching Jeopardy! is like watching the Supreme Court.  We all know the answer.  All the art is in carefully phrasing the question that gives you that answer.

Plus, raising the Federal minimum a bit might help some of the lowest-paid.

You never know.

Stranger things have happened.

It’s up to the Congress anyhow.  So if the House is against you, you can blame them if nothing happens on this front.

Vice-President Harris, while you’re at it.

Howsabout taking a look at the Fair Labor Standards Act.

I mean, a dollar a day?  That’s in your law.  It’s how you define a tipped employee.  As documented above, that figure dates to 1977 legislation.  No huge exaggeration to say that it’s now a half-century out-of-date.  (N.B., per the BLS inflation calculator, $30 in 1977 is the equivalent of more than $160 today.)

Where you find one dusty old cobweb-covered provision, you’re apt to find many.

Haven’t you heard grumblings abut “wage theft”, from the masses?  I think this whole accounting-for-tips-of-tipped-employees thing is a source of grievances,  Wouldn’t it be nice to show some concern for what amounts to a common grievance of the poorly-paid?  That’s not to say that each such grievance is justified, but at a minimum to acknowledge that it is a grievance.

Or do you feel that the current system works well for such people, and nothing needs to change?  Or even, more narrowly, nothing in that law needs to change.

Or something else entirely.  Can’t rule that out.

Conclusion:  Why do the Heathen Rage?  Dead ends.

Best guess, many of them are not well off, and nothing about that looks like it’s going to change.

That’s my view of the root cause of disaffected youth.  In any case, I keep reading that The Youth are Disaffected.

And I keep meaning to look up that word.

Disaffected:  Dissatisfied with the people in authority and no longer willing to support them.  Per Google.  I think the nuance is more “indifference to what happens”, rather than those of the more active “burn it all down” persuasion.

My guess is that much of that, in electorate Youth (typically defined as 18-25 sometimes 18-29), comes from people who are (or perceive that they are) in dead ends.  Dead end job, dead end society, dead end politics. From that mindset, thing’s aren’t great now, there’s no obvious path by which they can get better, so there’s not much in it for them, for preserving the current system.

Not that all dead ends are remediable.  For goods and some services, American labor is in head-to-head competition with (e.g.) much lower-paid Chinese labor.  I don’t expect Amazon to be dominated by U.S.-made products any time soon.

So a bit of disaffection is warranted.  Google “disappearance of the U.S. middle class”, and you’ll get the drift.

Toss in some global warming, for sure. The Youth are screwed, the only questions are how much and how soon.  As a country we appear deadlocked on doing much about either.

Ponder retirement in their shoes.  Lifetime savings from working near the minimum wage?  Get real.  Top that off by looking at likely Social Security benefits 40 years from now.  Under no circumstances ponder Medicare.

Finally, purely based on anecdote, I think the prevalence of sub-middle-class -end jobs in America today is why The Youth really resent well-to-do geezers who won’t retire.  To them, old people who have made their fortunes, but continue to work, aren’t inspiring examples of living life to the fullest.  They are clogs in the pipeline of upward mobility.

“Boomer”.  An epithet used by The Youth in place of “old person, please do us a favor and die soon”.

And yet, even if there are some valid reason to see the world as full of nothing but dead ends, we really can’t afford to have the disaffected determine the election.

My feeling, FWIW, is that the arrow of time points in one direction.  You can’t steer a car by looking in the rear view mirror. Or fill in your favorite metaphor.

There is no way to go back to the future.  At best you can try to face forward as you stumble into it.  I just have to say the phrase “national climate policy”, and my choice is made.  With the idea being that some (Dems) beats none (Republicans).  And both beat pretending that climate change isn’t a threat, and using that as pretext for promoting greater use of fossil fuels (Republicans).

Drill, baby, drill.  As national climate policy, that’s a flunk.

So, Harris it is.  She’s got my vote.  I hope she’s up to the task.  The sooner she goes beyond criticizing Trump, and actually puts something useful on the table, the better.

I think there’s no better place to start than policies directly affecting low-wage workers.

Post #1991: My bike made a funny noise the other day …

 

 

Caution:  This post is an aging-related first-person anecdote.

… as I was riding it.

Sort of a creaky-cracky sound.

I assumed it was something amiss in the drive train, as the sound came and went right in time with my pedaling.

Tried to suss out what it was.

Turns out, it was my knees.

Whoa.  That noise, coming out of my knees?  Oh, that’s unambiguously bad.

In my defense, I’d never been in this situation before.  On the plus side, I did eventually figure it out.  And turned around, and headed home, and eased up.

So, I eventually did the mostly-right thing.

It just takes me a while to make up my mind.