Rat Dogs

Rat Dog No. 1. Daisy. She does not mind the snow.

Rat Dog. No. 2. Dottie. Technically our first dog. Tolerates the snow, but likes beds better.

Daisy again. Note the snow.

RADIATION SCARY!!!1!!11!!!!1!!

Corners of the internet were aglow last night and this morning after reports surfaced screaming about uranium ore stored at a museum at Grand Canyon National Park.

As with 99.9% of the stories about uranium and radiation, ignorance and fear were the common denominator.

By far, CNN(!) has had the best mass consumer coverage on the situation from a scientific point of view. None of the reporting I’ve seen, however, has any concrete numbers showing how serious the threat was.

This is what CNN has to say:

Anna Erickson, associate professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at Georgia Tech, said the uranium exposure at the museum is unlikely to have been hazardous to visitors.

"Uranium ore contains natural (unenriched) uranium which emits relatively low amounts of radiation," Erickson said. "Given the extremely low reading (zero above background) 5 feet away from the bucket, I'm skeptical there could be any health hazards associated with visiting the exhibit."
In other words, all you folks who are congratulating yourself for cancelling or foregoing vacations to the Grand Canyon and this museum in particular are congratulating yourself for avoiding a risk that simply doesn’t exist.

Elston Stephenson, the park’s safety, health, and wellness manager, is right to be concerned about chronic exposure to the uranium by park staff. Maybe. The lack of any numbers showing how much radiation was being emitted within that 5-foot circle makes it difficult to determine the chronic risk to workers who may have lingered for a long time within five feet of the buckets.

The Verge, however, is doing the public a lot better with their story, as is The Arizona Republic with a  story of its own.

The Verge interviewed Kathryn Higley, head of the School of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Oregon State University, who said in part:

Without knowing exactly how it was stored, looking at some of the measurements that were taken, the radiation readings certainly are above what you’d consider the normal background. But the likelihood of people receiving serious radiation exposures is extremely unlikely. People work around uranium in the process of manufacturing fuel, for example. But also I’m looking here on the radiation levels taken by some park personnel, and it says five feet from the bucket is basically a zero reading.

So you see the dose rate drops off really, really quickly as you move away from the source. It’s a combination of dose rate and the length of time that they would’ve been exposed to it. And they’re not going to be hugging this thing and lugging it around for extended periods of time. I’m not seeing a health risk. I’m seeing people being sloppy and did some things that they really shouldn’t have done. And they’re probably going to get a nasty note from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, like “Why do you have this in a closet? What are you doing with it?”

The Arizona Republic found other experts, who basically say the same thing. (Although the AR article contains a glaring error – noting that gamma radiation can be stopped by a person’s skin or a sheet of paper; that’s absolutely not true, and that gamma radiation is the principal radiation coming from the ore, but is rather properties of alpha radiation, which is principally what uranium ore emits.

Clearly, the authors of the AR article should have said the uranium is emitting alpha radiation, not gamma.

More damage done there by incorrect reporting than by the radioactive ore itself.

To me, the most frightening thing about this story is the continued ignorance of the real dangers of radiation, and the lack of hard numbers in reporting on incidents such as this.

Truth is, you’re sucking in all sorts of radioactivity all the time. Behold.

I’m not saying I’d want to camp out sitting on buckets of uranium ore – without moving – for 20 years. But the risk of getting cancer from these buckets of ore is unbelievably small.

The Best Part, 2019-2

"Monstrous Regiment," by Terry Pratchett

Jackrum softened his voice a little when he saw their expressions. “Lads, this is war, understand? He was a soldier, there were soldiers, you are soldiers . . . more or less. No soldier will see grub or good boots go to waste. Bury ‘em decent and say what prayers you can remember, and hope they’ve gotne where there’s no fighting.” He raised his voice back to the normal bellow. “Perks, round up the others! Igor, cover the fire, try to make it look like we were never here! We are moving out in number ten minutes! Can make a few miles before full daylight! That’s right, eh, Lieutenant?”

Blouse was still transfixed, but seemed to wake up now.

“What? Oh. Yes. Right. Yes, indeed. Er . . . yes. Carry on, Sergeant.”

The fire gleamed off Jackrum’s triumphal face. In the red glow, his little dark eyes were like holes in space, his grinning mouth the gateway to a Hell, his bulk some monster from the Abyss.

He let it happen, Pollly knew. He obeyed orders. He didn’t’ do anything wrong. But he would have sent Maladict and Jade to help us, instead of Wazzer and Igorina, who aren’t quick with weapons. He sent the others away. He had the bow ready. He played a game with us as pieces, and won . . .

Poor old soldier! her father and his friends had sung while frost formed on the window panes. Poor old soldier! If ever I ‘list for a solider again . . . the Devil shall be my sergeant!

In the firelight, the grin of Sergeant Jackrum was a crescent of blood, his coat the color of a battlefield sky.

“You are my little lads,” he roared. “Aid I will look after you.”

One of John Steinbeck’s rules of writing goes like this:

Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice.

Another rule follows right after:

But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.

Here, Terry Pratchett breaks the second part of the rule. He throws his hooptedoodle in with the story. But just enough. Just enough hooptedoodle to help us see, for a moment, Private Perk’s Sergeant jackrum turn into the Devil from her father’s old song. The hooptedoodle slows the action down, but just for a moment. Just for that delicious moment when Perks realizes while Jackrum may play the fool from time to time, he is, at the fundament, no fool at all – and is in fact, devilish.

This represents the perfect balance of story and hooptedoodle. We slow down just long enough, at the end of the scene, to sweep ourselves deeper into Jackrum as a character.

So I need to do this with my characters as well. This is why you read lots of books, folks. So you see how others do it. And so you see how long it took them for it to become natural.

Spoopy? Spoopy.

Apparently, this short from Sesame Street scared a lot of little kids when it aired in 1975:



Though from a certain point of view it’s understandable why this might scare little kids. It’s hard to look at it now and be scared. And even harking back to my childhood, it’s hard to think of this being scary. I saw creatures and patterns galore in the plaster on various bedroom ceilings, and on the light fixtures in said bedrooms. One bedroom in particular was a joy – with the bed positioned just right, you could see Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner.

But scared of this? Not hardly.

Now this. This scared me silly as a kid:



I still get a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach watching it now. So I can understand how the Crack Master and his ilk might have been scary. Still: seeing patterns in cracks and in plaster feels a lot more common to me than operatic oranges . . . .

Then there’s this. THIS, oh my gosh this. SCARED THE BELOVED BEJEEBERS OUT OF ME. Damn train barreling RIGHT OUT OF THE FRICKIN’ TV SCREEN RIGHT AT ME. Right, boys, dismantle that tunnel quick!



Trains barreling out of two-piece puzzles have got to be even more rare than operatic oranges. Still. Brr. NOTE: The “Trains approaching” warning and the warning to stay behind the yellow line did not appear in the original. And I, being a country bumpkin from flyover country, had only experience with distant freight trains to help fill in the gaps in expectations.

Brains Trusting, the Pappy O’Dan’l Way

A few weeks ago, students began circulating a petition at our kids’ high school, asking for a day off.

Their reasoning? Surrounding school districts were cancelling school because a virulent flu bug swarming the area had caused more than 20% of the districts’ students to be absent from school.

Other schools were cancelling due to bad weather and closed roads.

Nevermind that absenteeism due to illness in our district wasn’t anywhere near the levels of the other districts – which are in many cases small enough fewer than 100 absent students could mean an absence of 20% of the student body. Nor did it matter that the only difficulties related to road conditions were in the foothills where buses were struggling on one route to pick up and drop off students. Students at our kids’ high school wanted a day off.

Direct democracy, some said, should be applauded. Power to the people. And a pox – in this case, literally – on a deaf administration not listening to the needs and wants of its constituency.

Of course, the petition at its foundation was stupid. Direct democracy doesn’t necessarily mean the wants and needs are reasonable or unlaughable.

And yes, representative democracy – or republics – have their own problems. But reading this article in Wired magazine today got me to thinking that if we jump on any populist or direct democracy bandwagon, we ought to do a lot of due diligence to find out who’s paying for the wagon, the oxen hauling it, and who has got the wagon-master in his or her pocket.

What played out in the Coen Brothers’ 2000 film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” played out in Italy not long afterward: Politically-motivated individuals latched themselves to the star (or five stars) of a popular entertainer and turned the world upside down in the process, while paddlin’ a little Italian behind in the process.



Pappy O’Daniel, in Italy, turned out to be a techno-utopian guru named Gianroberto Casaleggio.

He probably would have signed the high schoolers’ petition. And then taken over the movement to promote his own schemes.

Please stop reading this and read the article linked above. It’s an education on the pitfalls of direct democracy, and the democratization of a lot of things thanks to the Internet. It’s a story of how easily we are influenced by those behind the scenes who want to take populist movements and steer them in the direction they want them to go, often against the wishes or ideals of the movement in the first place.

We’re kinda seeing this firsthand with our own governance. Italy’s showing us what it’s like when that direct democracy is controlled by the same kinds of special interests that are controlling state or party or media or what have you.

A striking line from the article:

“[T]his was Casaleggio Associates’ modus operandi when it came to online votes: Provide a ‘cosmetic’ appearance of choice while pushing for a particular option.”

And it all reminds me of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

"Gentlemen," concluded Napoleon, "I will give you the same toast as before, but in a different form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm!" 

There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away. 

But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously. 

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I don’t know what the solution is.

Probably internet-directed direct democracy can work. But as rules are being set by such movements, rules also ought to be set by those considering joining them:

1. Find out who is pulling the strings.

2. Be wary of any popular entertainer or guru or any other corporeal entity suddenly spouting politics. Because popularity in one area doesn’t equate to adequacy – or even mediocrity – in other areas. I’m looking at you, Scott Adams.

3. Watch for leadership. I’ve been wary of “leaderless” missions since Occupy Wall Street, where spokespeople didn’t exist because everyone was their own spokesman. I’m seeing this in France’s gilets jaunes, and it’s not helping them in any way. Even direct democracies need leadership.

4. Find out who’s got the money.

5. Don’t ignore traditional politics’ or media warnings. Sure, they may very well be working with their own interests in mind. But a wary mind is an open mind, willing to listen to detractors.

I realize by doing this I have taken a tiny goose-step into, well, something. But nothing will come of it because I’m a nobody in a sea of nobodies. I’m pulling my own string and wishing I could start a petition to get a day off of work. I have no ace of spades up my sleeve.

Anyway, beware the cognitive surplus.

The Best Part, 2019-1

"Men at Arms," by Terry Pratchett.

“[G]ive me some more coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night.”

Harga looked surprised. That wasn’t like Vimes.

“How black’s that, then?”

“Oh, pretty damn black, I should think.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What?”

“You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night.”

Vimes sighed.

“An overcast moonless night?” he said.

Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.

“Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?”

“I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“You gets city lights reflected off cumulus, because it’s low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in – “

“A moonless night,” said Vimes, in a hollow voice, “that is as black as that coffee.”

“Right!”

“And a doughnut.” Vimes grabbed Harga’s stained vest and pulled him until they were nose to nose. “A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon to taste and a jam, jelly, or rat filling depending on national or species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut.”

“A doughnut.”

“Yes.”

“You only had to say.”

Harga brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into the kitchen.

Pratchett is at heart a writer’s writer, who often explores odd little tropes of writing with enough exaggeration to point out how most of the rest of us are mucking things up.

Don't Know What Worked, But I Gotta Keep it Up

I often share this video with my students as I’m grading their papers:



It’s a fun way – I think at least – to share a bit of myself with them, and to get them laughing even just a little bit about the grading process. Which, face it, isn’t always a fun thing.

This semester, though.

Typically, I’ve got a good-vs-bad paper curve that looks a bit like this (forgive the purple paper):

I’ve seen this semester after semester. There are about a half to a third of the students who get the concept and turn in a good paper, with about the other half or two-thirds falling in mostly the bad paper category. Sometimes the ratio of good-to-bad is about 1:1, but most of the time is about 2:1, so that’s what I expect.

This semester – and in both classes, no less – the good-vs-bad paper curve looks like this:

And it is NOT that I have lowered my standards. I’m grading the same way as compared to past semesters.

I can think of only three things that may have caused this. Okay, four:

1. I sent out a pre-course “English 101 Survival Guide” email in which I outlined, in detail, what the argumentative synthesis paper is supposed to look like.

2. I’ve provided my own example of what the paper should look like. Speaking of which, I really need to finish my Part Two.

3. The students enrolled in both of my classes are just generally better writers than what I’ve had in the past.

4. It’s a fluke that will not be repeated next semester.

I am as stunned at the ratio of good papers – I’m going to say the good/bad ratio is close to 7:1 this semester, in both sections – as Miss Shileds was as she read Ralphie’s perfect sentence:

“Listen to this sentence: ‘A Red-Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time.’ Poetry. Sheer poetry! Ralph, an A plus!”

Note two of the possibilities involve something extra I did this semester. Given my generally pessimistic outlook on life, I have to discount their impact. But barring numbers 3 and 4, these things are the ONLY things I’ve done differently this semester than in semesters past.

There’s only one thing to do: See if the fluke repeats next semester, while offering the same helps my students got this semester.

Also, I’ve really gotta finish writing Part Two.

And I should definitely get a hat like Miss Shields. Maybe that’s the only thing missing to get those few bad and mediocre papers over that good paper bar.

Autism, Vaccines, and "The Debate"

I’m going to tell you what infuriates me about the autism/vaccine “debate.”

The so-called debate detracts from the challenges of raising an autistic child and places the “blame” – and that’s what they want to do is place the blame – on some choice they think they can make to protect their children, when reality tells us things quite different.

And it’s reintroducing the world to childhood diseases that have been successfully kept in check until the “debate” arrived on the back of one faked study.

One faked study. Take that in.

Meanwhile at our house, we’re dealing with autism all the time. Not brought on by vaccines. But brought on most likely by genetics because the condition gallops on both sides of the family and has for generations, even in generations who lived before vaccines were common.

I’ve learned with autism there’s coping mechanisms. For example, I can ease my own anxiety if I know I have a task coming before me and I mentally go through the motions of accomplishing that task. This “priming the pump” makes performing the actual task a lot easier.

There is no coping mechanism with which to handle the “debate,” except not to engage.

I don’t know what the root of our family’s struggles is, I just know that over the first weekend in February, two things:

1. Super Bowl
2. Autism.

Autism first. Our oldest at the center of it.

First a bit of a story.

The Sunday before Christmas 2018, we were pulled in to meet with the bishop and stake president. The stake president had received an email from Salt Lake, honorably discharging our from the obligation of serving a full-time mission. (We’re Mormons and Mormon boys – and increasingly girls – are expected to serve a full-time mission for the church, giving two years of their lives to spread the gospel. I served in France, by wife in England. In my family alone we had missionaries serve in Argentina, South Korea, two in France, and in Hungary.)

That he received a discharge was real surprise. Back in November, we took him, at the behest of the church to LDS Family Services to be tested to see where he fit on the autism spectrum because we’d known since he was a preschooler that he had Aspergers. At the time, I told the tester that I suspected our would struggle on a regular mission and might be better served as a service missionary, but also tossed in the caveat that he’d go wherever the Lord saw fit to send him. The testing must have revealed my hunch as right. So the paperwork to get him on a service mission, after some hiccups, is underway, with a calling time likely in mid to late April.

In the meantime, we decided to get him enrolled in some BYUI classes. He’s taking 12 credits – a calculus and physics course, a Book of Mormon course, and is in one of my Foundations English classes.

Calculus has proved to be much harder than he expected, so he’s falling behind in his other classes. This past weekend, he had to go to Rexburg to take a test at the testing center – after missing the first test because I don’t know why. He’s done calculus to the expense of all else and wants to drop physics. He’s lost his scholarship for the semester because he’s not taking enough credits, but I don’t see how we can add any more to his load.

So this weekend he snapped at his mother when she asked how he was doing. Thus Sunday after church we had a come to Jesus meeting where we talked about how that kind of behavior isn’t acceptable, and that when we ask how he’s doing it’s not to point fingers or to catch him doing anything wrong, but because we know he’s struggling and we want to know what we can do to help him. So after a rather tense pre-meeting meeting with him on my own Saturday night to prep him for Sunday, the path forward is this:

1. He needs to communicate with us quickly where he’s at in his classes, so we know where he’s at.

2. He has to let us communicate with his instructors to see what he can do to get him up to speed. This might be difficult, depending on the instructor. Calculus instructor, so far, seems to be reasonable. I haven’t winkled a contact number for his physics instructor out of him yet.

3. We’re getting him set up with BYUI Disability Services. Hopefully that ball will roll quickly, but as LDS Family Services is involved, it might take up to 30 days. Hoping we hear much sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, things are in motion.

4. He is also committed to using his planner to plan his weeks out, and to communicate with his supervisor at the DI to minimize schedule changes and duty changes, in order to reduce his stress and anxiety. I might have to follow up on this, particularly to ensure they know he’s on the autism spectrum.

I’m hoping this will help get him back on track and off the thinking that Mom is checking up on him in some kind of GOTCHA capacity. Which she is not.

Because I’ve had the thought – we had pretty easy kids and teenagers, for the most part. Maybe we’ll pay for that in their young adulthood? Then there’s Isaac who’s just barely a teenager and really gearing up to be a pain in the butt. We’ll see.

I shared part of this message from James E. Faust with son and wife on Sunday. Hoping it helps.

The Super Bowl is, of course, anticlimactic after all of this. We watched the boring game and the mostly boring commercials. We had pizza and chocolate milk, which was the best part.
Sounds fun, right?

So the “debate” calls up. If you could do just one thing to help your child – any child – avoid the struggles of autism, you’d do it, right?

My response to this question: Depends on that “one thing.” What do you recommend?

No vaccinations, the “debate” says.

Fine.

So I’ll potentially subject my son to this instead:



By golly this guy came up with some coping mechanisms, didn’t he? Right down to having to sleep inside a device for which he can no longer get parts because a vaccine made the machine an antique. A relic.

Or I could have let him die as a toddler from the measles.

Autism is a long road.

But the “debate” offers a string of Hobsons choices. I know what path I’d rather be on. Because I suspect the autism we see would still be there whether the “debate” won me over or not.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be. Because my kids would be dead or crippled and out of the gene pool, killing off the chance that they’d spread their autistic-carrying genes to another generation.

That’s where the “debate” lands us.

No thank you, folks. No thank you.

Louis Tully Would Be Proud

So for the first time in a long time, I’m not going to do my own taxes. And it’s all thanks to the “simplified” 1040 form, which now comes in handy “postcard” size, leading me to believe I’d misprinted the form after I downloaded it.

I’ve done my own taxes for the past 20 some-odd years, and have done fairly well, if I can say so. I even learned enough to amend a tax return to increase my refund after a rookie mistake in the early years.

But with the simplified, postcard-size 1040 this year, I’m going to TurboTax it.

Because – surprise – while the form is simplified, letting weenies in any tax bracket use it, all the complications got moved to a series of supplemental schedules. So what used to be one form for me – the 1040 long form – is now, at last count, three to four forms. With added complications and obscure instructions and forms that link you to worksheets and other instructions with their own worksheets and instructions, it’s hard to call the process simplified.

And I’m not doing anything all that complicated. A few dependents, no itemized deductions thanks to the increase in standard deductions, a renewable energy credit for the solar panels we installed last year, and a few other odds and ends. Nevertheless, I’m going to spring for the $40 TurboTax software I can get at Sam’s Club to streamline the process and not make any mistakes, particularly on the renewable energy credits, part of which appears I have to carry over to the 2019 tax year.



Also clear: It’s going to become important to increase our tax withholding as the next kid drops off the list of dependents, lest we begin paying additional taxes come April rather than get a refund.

And just so you know, I do look at myself as Prince John in this position, almost, and not as a peasant. But I’m the one doing as much squeezing as I can out of that insolent – musical – federal government.

Snow and Solar Panels, Part II

You may remember in early December my kvetching about how poorly* our solar panels worked when covered with snow.

Today I sat down and looked at our power production for December and January (this is our system's first winter) to get a clearer assessment of the good or bad of snow removal.

First, here's December:

You can probably tell on what days we removed snow from the panels -- and when the snow fell again. For the impaired: We cleaned snow from the panels on Dec. 8, late in the afternoon, and also on the 14th. Between that, you'll see three days of snow cover, followed by the end of the month when we just didn't have the gumption to get on the roof to clean things off at the end of the month.

And that's for good reason. The panels are on our second-story roof, which makes it ticklish to get up there even in fair weather, nevermind climbing through the snow to get there.

Now let's look at January:

On paper it looks like an even worse month than December. Again, we could have gotten up there to clear snow. But we had a lot of little snowstorms which would have meant cleaning the panels likely every other day through the first two-thirds of the month. We got to feeling in December that we needed to look at our production for a little while to see if getting up on the roof was worth the obvious safety concerns.

Let's look at the numbers:

For December, we generated about 62 kWh. Not spectacular. However, we were predicted to generate only about 146 kWh based on the length of the day and the position of the sun relative to our panels. So some loss, but not great.

For January, we generated about 79 kWh in a month in which it was predicted we'd generate 142 kWh. Better, but still not great.

For the last two billing cycles (our current cycle ended Jan. 9), we paid about $80 total for electricity. That's pretty good compared to the last two years without solar, when we paid an average of  $70.76 in December and $71.16 in January. If the panels were paid off, we'd be making bank. (Clearly, the goal is to get the panels paid off as quickly as we can.)

These comparisons would be easier to make if the billing cycles matched the months exactly, but who gets to understand electric company billing practices? Clearly we'll have to wait until the next cycle ends in early February (and the bill comes later) to get a clearer picture of the snow's impact on our production. Still, the numbers show snow does impact how much we end up paying each cycle.)

On the first day of February, we generated 10.74 kWh in a month wherein we're expected to generate 246 kWh. Given our average winters here, the worst of the major snowfalls is behind us. We'll see what happens, but I'm optimistic we'll hit that goal this month.

So is removing snow from the panels worth it? I'm gonna have to say it depends on your situation. If your panels can be reached mostly from the ground, the answer is probably yes. In our case, where the panels are on top of the second floor, I'm gonna say the risk outweighed the benefit.

*As in not at all.