> They did it in part by exploiting a loophole in a federal pandemic relief program launched to keep struggling arts programs afloat. The program was designed to award no more than $10 million in grant funding either to any one group or up to five “affiliated” organizations, with rules that were meant to ensure no single entity got a disproportionate share of the aid. <
This looks like a story buried within the story. “Loopholes” are built into rules and regs with the intention of letting favored entities to profit from them, to bestow government favoritism. But the reporters at NYT aren’t particularly curious about that, it appears.
No offense, but the rest to me looks a lot like the reporters uncovered a secretive sect acting secretive and sect-like. I imagine it’s valuable to family members of sect-members worried about the well-being of their loved ones. Maybe there’s a deeper layer I’m not seeing, but the sums involved seem like small potatoes in the world of scams and frauds and wasted public/private spending these days.
Good morning. Merry 5th Day of Christmas! Back from down South, returning to much warmer weather. A week ago Saturday, when Tennessee played the Buckeyes in Columbus, it was in the 20s. Today is about 60 and rainy.
Good morning. Gloomy but warm here on the coast of NC. My mom could be better, could be worse. She is comforted by background TV news, I am not. Online church has gotten complicated with the church changing pastors.
I came across this this morning -a dose of low key, informed, rational analysis re DOGE:
"As an example, consider a federal program targeted at improving the academic performance of young students, where there are numerous ways the funds can be spent. The federal staff administering the program could be told that for every percentage point improvement in the test results of the students, staff salaries are increased by 1 percent. This would give staff an incentive to research the best way for improving academic performance and for spending the funds in the most effective way."
Is the author too young to remember No Child Left Behind and the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal? The events came to light in 2009, and the criminal case just wrapped up this year, with no-sentence deals.
It's probably going to take a long time to teach people not to do that, if it can even be done. I doubt it. Why use a good $2 word when there are so many $5 ones just sitting around waiting to be misused?
Good morning. I'm not comforted by background TV news, either. Fortunately, any TV in the background here is usually "Top Gear": cars are F's current enthusiasm.
We're having a thunderstorm here in the Charlotte area. It's suppose to pass before we leave for church in a couple of hours.
That show’s configuration was fantastic. I’ve described it as three obnoxious British car guys who could have featured in a 60s British Invasion group if they’d had musical talent. Hilarious, though, if you like “yob” style laddish Brit humor.
Happy Fifth Day of Christmas! Today’s special animal friend is the common or ring-necked pheasant, Phasianus colchicus. This game bird was introduced into Europe from Asia in the first millennium B.C. and was fully naturalized in Britain by the 11th century A.D.
It is suggested that the “five golden rings” for this day refer to the pheasants. They are large, very handsome birds and could be considered “golden” in the right lighting, especially the females. The term may also refer to their value as a high-status food item. Ring-necked pheasants are a species of Least Concern and can be farm-reared.
The ring-necked pheasant was of course introduced into North America. Wikipedia states that it was introduced in 1773, and that it has impacted native American species like the partridge, wild turkey, prairie chicken, as well as ducks and other species.
BTW, Wikipedia has been extremely aggressive in its fundraising displays, virtually every time I consult them. I do believe in supporting Internet sites including "free software" sites (I use LibreOffice as a free replacement for MS Office products) but Wikipedia gets too obnoxious, and has a definite slant I disagree with.
Pheasant hunting used to be a pretty big deal here in Michigan, but by the time I arrived in the early 70s it was seriously on the wane due to a decreasing bird population caused primarily by habitat loss, and the decline in the popularity of hunting in general, which had also been underway for a while.
As far as breeding goes, ring necks thrive in "edge habitat" between open fields and woods, but not in woodlands themselves. Farm field fence rows are ideal. But post WWII, as farm fields increased in contiguous size to accommodate the efficiency of ever-larger equipment, fence rows decreased, putting a serious dent in the preferred breeding habitat of the bird in many parts of the state, which was a common occurrence throughout the Midwest as well.
The DNR here in MI instituted a program back in '87 to try to improve the situation by releasing and monitoring the "Sichuan" pheasant, a subspecies of the ring neck. Imported from China, this pheasant's natural habitat there is mountainous oak and pine forests along with the brushy edge habitat adjacent to agricultural fields. It was hoped that the Sichuans would nest and propagate in the still plentiful woodland habitat that the ring necks found so marginal as to not adapt to with any success. It was also thought that the birds might inter-breed to the point of creating a more suitable pheasant for the available habitat.
To sum up a years' long effort as succinctly as possible, it was a crash and burn in the end. The birds did not take to the woodlands as hoped nor inter-breed in significant numbers. I never heard the specific reasons for this. The DNR continues to prop up the ring neck population with annual releases of farm-raised birds in select locations. And hunters do still hunt them, though the seasons and other regulations are much more tightly regulated and enforced than in the past.
I used to see ring necks fairly frequently out on the back of my property when I bought this place 40 years ago. Even some bobwhites on occasion, since they like and share the same habitat. But the adjacent former farm fields that had been parceled off and were no longer in production were pretty much still grassland and not yet choked and thickly overgrown, or the location of new woodlands, which they slowly but surely became over the ensuing decades. Looking south from my place back then you could see over the tops of the fields for 1/2 a mile or more. Now I can't see past my southern property line because of the pine trees that have naturally grown up on the neighbor's property.
I haven't heard a ring neck crow in probably a decade now, much less laid eyes on one. I miss hearing that call and seeing them occasionally loitering around out in the open a few feet from the safety of the brush on the back edge of my place. And I've not seen a bobwhite in way more than twice that long.
In real estate it's said that location is everything. In nature it probably needs to be said more often that habitat is everything.
That feeds my suspicion that there’s a lot more to the story of bird species and their prevalence changing over time. As the northern hemisphere has experienced forest loss to clearcutting, small field farming, and now reforestation, the bird habitats have changed. The shift in predators for birds like the pheasants, bobwhites, and whippoorwills now includes coyotes, too… and so on.
But the story that certain very specific types of human activity threaten species’ survival is important for fundraising, so that gets amplified all over the place.
It’s interesting the extent to which we are oblivious to our impacts on the environment, especially when at more than one remove. Presumably, some other species will benefit from red cedars as grassland birds go into decline.
The story of the ill-fated passenger pigeons, for instance. I recall learning of them being so abundant that their flocks blotted out the sun. But another retelling has it (per Mann’s “1493”) that they at first benefited from human-caused changes to their environments that led to populations exploding for a time. Which would make sense, considering the other effects of the Columbian exchange that we have barely been able to reconstruct. Maybe it was a result of the Eurasian pandemics wiping out native human populations, or the introduction of swine and horses, or earthworms and other invaders. Who knows?
My maternal grandparents' house. They were Old Order Mennonites. Meaning 'horse and buggy' Mennonites. My mom would tell of getting up in the morning while it was FREEZING and having to get the coal fire going. Also, during the Energy Crisis in the 70's, my dad was proud that he was able to locate a Bucket-A-Day coal stove (apparently they were impossible to locate anymore) and he replumbed our newish "All Electric" house to use hot water heat. My parents were very proud of the "All Electric" badge on our front door. Until they weren't.
Ah the good old days!! I stoked wood in the 70s and 80s. About 10 cords of a mix of maple, oaks, elm (dead American Elm) and some pine (low heat content).
Splitting maple and oak and pine - eezy peezy. Splitting elm, using a gas engine powered log splitter even was a real challenge. Elms have very strong twisted grain that torque the steel I-beam. Push. Back off. Wood rotates. Repeat.
In my old genealogy work, one branch are the Germantown Sharpnacks with spelling variations.. One Catherine Scharpenacken married Christopher Sauer II. These folks were all paper makers and printers. They published the first all made in America Bible in German.
Apparently, a "Bible Patent" required all English, Oxford bibles to be printed in England in those times.
Thankfully I was spared splitting wood as a youngster. I guess due to our "All Electric" house. Many of my friends heat with wood and I gladly let them take away the downed trees on our farm.
Very interesting Bible link. I remember my grandfather's funeral was LONG and conducted entirely in German. Afterwards I asked my mom what the gist was, and she said it was basically "toe the line morally, or else!" My mom said that she got the impression that back in Germany her ancestors (name: Rissler) were Lutherans long before they became Mennonites.
We might be related going back far enough. I remember growing up in Lancaster County, my peers marvelled at "The Mennonite Game". Meaning, when visiting someone, all our parents were always able to establish that our families were related if they kept tracing the family tree far enough. As kids we found this both fascinating and creepy :)
The "Germantown Germans" refer to a group of primarily Mennonite settlers from Krefeld, Germany, who founded the town of Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1683, establishing the first intentional German-speaking community in America under the leadership of Franz Daniel Pastorius, a German lawyer and agent for William Penn; this settlement was significant for its early stance against slavery, as documented in a protest drafted by Germantown settlers in 1688
They also were called "Dunkers". Which if I recall without Google, was derived from "Tunker". It was like a large community left that part of Germany for the religious freedom here.
If I remember correctly, the term "Dunker Brethren" was one I heard occasionally growing up. Your information about Germantown was interesting. I only found out recently that a Bowman ancestor was one of five white settlers who founded Lancaster County, PA in the early 1700s. It seems that the information on that early settlement was not well known until recently. In elementary school we learned about Martin Mylin, who was one of the five, who developed the "Pennsylvania Long Rifle", (historians now suspect it was primarily his son), which became known as the Kentucky Long Rifle, erroneously. If I remember correctly.
Also, the Conestoga wagon was developed a few miles from where I grew up.
They're kinda cute, very sloth-like in how they move. Drove to the lake in rain and fog yesterday. The ice no longer looks safe which is a bummer because I love to walk on the lake in the winter. I saw the snowy owl again on my way here. It pretty much keeps to the same area, perched on different light poles. I have a few hours solo until everyone else arrives and I'm enjoying every moment of the peace.
Yesterday was productive in research. I had to correct a bug (no, not one an anteater would want) in a data set, some data got jumbled. I spent four hours collecting data a co-author thought the project needed. We disagreed over whether a new variable would work, but I collected it anyway. Five new variables, and only one worked: the one we disagreed about! 😀
The frustration is the University failed to renew its license for Stata, which I use. They hope to renew it soon. But the deadline to submit this is January 7th. So I was running preliminary models in Microsoft Excel, which is sort of like using an ice cream scoop to shovel your driveway. It works, but takes longer. Excel does have an add-in for this, but checking Variance Inflation Factors is done by hand. Each set of results opens in a new worksheet, and all data must be contiguous, so data on Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, or Panama are all out.🤦♂️
But I got an adjusted R-Squared value of .314, which for this type of research, is really good. As in I have an underlying fear I screwed something up in Excel. It might be irrational but great results do that to a person.
I sent the raw data to my co-author in Michigan (a contiguous state, so Excel works), who'll re-run it in Sas. Sas is for people who like drive a manual stick Maserati while also holding a cup of coffee and a doughnut at the same time. Powerful...Did you know most Masters degree programs in Data Analytics offer courses just in how to use SAS? SAS itself offers several residential courses as well.
Long story short, it's an event study, where we look at the stock price changes to companies when a major announcement is made. In this case it's the members of the World Federation of Advertisers when the WFA announced it was closing GARM, in response to an Elon Musk lawsuit. Musk claimed GARM was trying to hard Twitter advertising.
The argument is that by avoiding a lawsuit, the WFA member companies will enjoy a positive stock market reaction. The "hook" is that the individual firms wouldn't be sued (only 4 out of 84 were sued), just the WFA was sued. Guilt by association?
There's hope for me yet! 😀A Variance Inflation Factor is when multiple variables in your data are measuring the same thing, and it makes your analysis look better than it actually is. The term academic nerds use is "multicollinearity". BTW, a high VIF is not always bad news, but good luck convincing reviewers of that, most of whom see the number and assume it is bad news.
If they ate stinkbugs I think Katie wouldn't mind having one living in our woods. Although inside the house I can only imagine the damage they'd do to the furniture, or the stairwells.
I found their defense mechanisms interesting. Many Republicans this week believe Trump was test-marketing some administration plans by releasing a foul smelling Elon on reporters, who are often seen as predators to incoming administrations. But I could be wrong.
If you want something to eat stinkbugs, you could get a bearded dragon.
Drama Queen rescued an anole on Thursday. He got in the house when they were taking the trash out, and he loved her, as all animals do. She felt sorry for him because was cold, tired, and battle-scarred. "At least I can give him end-of-life care," she said, and now he'll live out his final days in a warm plastic box with a supply of small insects.
Happy Fourth Day of Christmas! Today’s special animal friends are four calling birds. The people who know these things report that “four colly birds” is the earliest version. “Colly” means “coal colored” or deep black. (“Collier” for a worker in the coal industry is still in use, at least in crossword puzzles.)
The blackbird in question is Turdus merula, the Eurasian or common blackbird. (The Turdus genus are the thrushes.) Adult male blackbirds are black, with a bright yellow or yellow-orange beak and eye-ring. Females and juveniles are brown.
A species of Least Concern, the blackbird is found throughout Western Europe and in parts of Africa, Arabia, Turkey, the Caucasus, and into the Middle East. Their original habitat was deciduous or mixed forests, but now they can be found all over, including in urban centers. Their diet includes a lot of insects, worms, and other invertebrates, as well as some seeds and fruit.
In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which got the ball seriously rolling on public awareness of the environment and issues concerning it, which would lead directly to the creation of the EPA and things like the ESA.
I think it helped, along with state level protections in the U.S., growing efforts at conservation around the world, CITES, etc. There have been failures, detours, and unintended consequences, but I think the outcomes have been very positive overall.
I blame Peter Sellers. Growing up, we used to play the Pink Panther theme song while squishing them on the sidewalk. We'd sing "Dead ants dead ants, dead ants, and" well you get the picture.
How Shen Yun Tapped Religious Fervor to Make $266 Million
Interesting scam uncover
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/nyregion/shen-yun-money-falun-gong.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lE4.Swsn.k6nKdzpJ6lJU
> They did it in part by exploiting a loophole in a federal pandemic relief program launched to keep struggling arts programs afloat. The program was designed to award no more than $10 million in grant funding either to any one group or up to five “affiliated” organizations, with rules that were meant to ensure no single entity got a disproportionate share of the aid. <
This looks like a story buried within the story. “Loopholes” are built into rules and regs with the intention of letting favored entities to profit from them, to bestow government favoritism. But the reporters at NYT aren’t particularly curious about that, it appears.
No offense, but the rest to me looks a lot like the reporters uncovered a secretive sect acting secretive and sect-like. I imagine it’s valuable to family members of sect-members worried about the well-being of their loved ones. Maybe there’s a deeper layer I’m not seeing, but the sums involved seem like small potatoes in the world of scams and frauds and wasted public/private spending these days.
I remember Victor Clairmont's saying that the show was a Falun Gong production. It was just too expensive for us.
Not a cat. And not a tarantula. It's kind of cute, with the white fur and all.
Some of the small ones are about cat-size.
And yet there's more to the cat business than size. I can't picture an anteater curling up in a lap.
("He knows the cat business" was my dad's pronouncement of approval of the cat that was introduced into his household and soon earned his favor.)
"Way to cat!" we used to say to Jake and Shannon.
Good morning. Merry 5th Day of Christmas! Back from down South, returning to much warmer weather. A week ago Saturday, when Tennessee played the Buckeyes in Columbus, it was in the 20s. Today is about 60 and rainy.
Good morning. Gloomy but warm here on the coast of NC. My mom could be better, could be worse. She is comforted by background TV news, I am not. Online church has gotten complicated with the church changing pastors.
I came across this this morning -a dose of low key, informed, rational analysis re DOGE:
https://jocoreport.com/you-decide-will-the-doge-succeed/
(I do have a tendency to put an extra "d" into the acronym, dripping with cynicism. )
"As an example, consider a federal program targeted at improving the academic performance of young students, where there are numerous ways the funds can be spent. The federal staff administering the program could be told that for every percentage point improvement in the test results of the students, staff salaries are increased by 1 percent. This would give staff an incentive to research the best way for improving academic performance and for spending the funds in the most effective way."
Is the author too young to remember No Child Left Behind and the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal? The events came to light in 2009, and the criminal case just wrapped up this year, with no-sentence deals.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/atlanta-public-schools-cheating-scandal-defendants-court
Note: the writing at the Fox 5 Atlanta site is terrible. Second note: Everyone please stop using the word "educator" for "school system employee."
“We’re not going to pay you more, but we’ll give you a fancier-sounding job title and description for your resume.”
The real money in schooling is in the layers that never go near an actual student.
Parkinson’s Law in action. The ever-expanding bureaucracy and administration: “The Rising Pyramid”.
Yes, he is. I encountered him when I was in college. Nice guy.
I thought this statement was overly generous, a sacrifice on the alter of "let's get everyone to the table so we can talk."
The Atlanta scandal outrages me to this day. There is a special place for people like those teachers and administrators.
And definitely call teachers teachers, not "educators".
Teaching is the action. Education may or may not result.
It's probably going to take a long time to teach people not to do that, if it can even be done. I doubt it. Why use a good $2 word when there are so many $5 ones just sitting around waiting to be misused?
Budgetary restraints? Oh. Wait, can't short change the children -they deserve the best!
/s
Common sense constraints? No /s. :-)
Good morning. I'm not comforted by background TV news, either. Fortunately, any TV in the background here is usually "Top Gear": cars are F's current enthusiasm.
We're having a thunderstorm here in the Charlotte area. It's suppose to pass before we leave for church in a couple of hours.
I came through some heavy downpours late morning in SC—white-knuckle driving. At least the heavy truck traffic wasn’t too bad…
Top Gear - Clarkson, May and Hammond - is awesome. My daughter is the biggest fan in the house.
Yesterday we found a James Bond marathon and, later, Andy Griffith. I have seen adds for early NCIS and hope to find them later.
Her TV/cable is different from ours and l have been known to break it.
That show’s configuration was fantastic. I’ve described it as three obnoxious British car guys who could have featured in a 60s British Invasion group if they’d had musical talent. Hilarious, though, if you like “yob” style laddish Brit humor.
We watched an episode last night that had the guitarist Slash in it.
Cool.
Happy Fifth Day of Christmas! Today’s special animal friend is the common or ring-necked pheasant, Phasianus colchicus. This game bird was introduced into Europe from Asia in the first millennium B.C. and was fully naturalized in Britain by the 11th century A.D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TX3uT_4P6o
It is suggested that the “five golden rings” for this day refer to the pheasants. They are large, very handsome birds and could be considered “golden” in the right lighting, especially the females. The term may also refer to their value as a high-status food item. Ring-necked pheasants are a species of Least Concern and can be farm-reared.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4zLJ34urEw
The ring-necked pheasant is the state bird of South Dakota. They were introduced to the United States in the 1770s.
The ring-necked pheasant was of course introduced into North America. Wikipedia states that it was introduced in 1773, and that it has impacted native American species like the partridge, wild turkey, prairie chicken, as well as ducks and other species.
BTW, Wikipedia has been extremely aggressive in its fundraising displays, virtually every time I consult them. I do believe in supporting Internet sites including "free software" sites (I use LibreOffice as a free replacement for MS Office products) but Wikipedia gets too obnoxious, and has a definite slant I disagree with.
Agree about the fundraising schtick at W. If I were a pheasant looking for info, I'd definitely say it's nothing to crow about.
Howdy there, Phil!! Long time, no door. Miss me? Maybe just a little? No?
Well, welcome back anyway. Hope the South was hospitable and that you had a good time.
Hi there M! Trying to slip one past me? Looks like I have to miss you a bit more -- 🚪
Pheasant hunting used to be a pretty big deal here in Michigan, but by the time I arrived in the early 70s it was seriously on the wane due to a decreasing bird population caused primarily by habitat loss, and the decline in the popularity of hunting in general, which had also been underway for a while.
As far as breeding goes, ring necks thrive in "edge habitat" between open fields and woods, but not in woodlands themselves. Farm field fence rows are ideal. But post WWII, as farm fields increased in contiguous size to accommodate the efficiency of ever-larger equipment, fence rows decreased, putting a serious dent in the preferred breeding habitat of the bird in many parts of the state, which was a common occurrence throughout the Midwest as well.
The DNR here in MI instituted a program back in '87 to try to improve the situation by releasing and monitoring the "Sichuan" pheasant, a subspecies of the ring neck. Imported from China, this pheasant's natural habitat there is mountainous oak and pine forests along with the brushy edge habitat adjacent to agricultural fields. It was hoped that the Sichuans would nest and propagate in the still plentiful woodland habitat that the ring necks found so marginal as to not adapt to with any success. It was also thought that the birds might inter-breed to the point of creating a more suitable pheasant for the available habitat.
To sum up a years' long effort as succinctly as possible, it was a crash and burn in the end. The birds did not take to the woodlands as hoped nor inter-breed in significant numbers. I never heard the specific reasons for this. The DNR continues to prop up the ring neck population with annual releases of farm-raised birds in select locations. And hunters do still hunt them, though the seasons and other regulations are much more tightly regulated and enforced than in the past.
I used to see ring necks fairly frequently out on the back of my property when I bought this place 40 years ago. Even some bobwhites on occasion, since they like and share the same habitat. But the adjacent former farm fields that had been parceled off and were no longer in production were pretty much still grassland and not yet choked and thickly overgrown, or the location of new woodlands, which they slowly but surely became over the ensuing decades. Looking south from my place back then you could see over the tops of the fields for 1/2 a mile or more. Now I can't see past my southern property line because of the pine trees that have naturally grown up on the neighbor's property.
I haven't heard a ring neck crow in probably a decade now, much less laid eyes on one. I miss hearing that call and seeing them occasionally loitering around out in the open a few feet from the safety of the brush on the back edge of my place. And I've not seen a bobwhite in way more than twice that long.
In real estate it's said that location is everything. In nature it probably needs to be said more often that habitat is everything.
That feeds my suspicion that there’s a lot more to the story of bird species and their prevalence changing over time. As the northern hemisphere has experienced forest loss to clearcutting, small field farming, and now reforestation, the bird habitats have changed. The shift in predators for birds like the pheasants, bobwhites, and whippoorwills now includes coyotes, too… and so on.
But the story that certain very specific types of human activity threaten species’ survival is important for fundraising, so that gets amplified all over the place.
Nebraska planted trees (red cedars), and now the trees are eating the ranchland and, coincidentally, the grassland bird habitat.
It’s interesting the extent to which we are oblivious to our impacts on the environment, especially when at more than one remove. Presumably, some other species will benefit from red cedars as grassland birds go into decline.
The story of the ill-fated passenger pigeons, for instance. I recall learning of them being so abundant that their flocks blotted out the sun. But another retelling has it (per Mann’s “1493”) that they at first benefited from human-caused changes to their environments that led to populations exploding for a time. Which would make sense, considering the other effects of the Columbian exchange that we have barely been able to reconstruct. Maybe it was a result of the Eurasian pandemics wiping out native human populations, or the introduction of swine and horses, or earthworms and other invaders. Who knows?
Placido Domingo, everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tLe_3Y5bq4
Was on the road in rain most of the day. Tiring.
collared anteater!! Well cool. I had wondered why the local Javelina is called the Collared Peccary. Collared from coal colliers is black.
Raise your ✋️ if you've ever had a house, or overnighter in a house heated by coal.!!
My maternal grandparents' house. They were Old Order Mennonites. Meaning 'horse and buggy' Mennonites. My mom would tell of getting up in the morning while it was FREEZING and having to get the coal fire going. Also, during the Energy Crisis in the 70's, my dad was proud that he was able to locate a Bucket-A-Day coal stove (apparently they were impossible to locate anymore) and he replumbed our newish "All Electric" house to use hot water heat. My parents were very proud of the "All Electric" badge on our front door. Until they weren't.
Ah the good old days!! I stoked wood in the 70s and 80s. About 10 cords of a mix of maple, oaks, elm (dead American Elm) and some pine (low heat content).
Splitting maple and oak and pine - eezy peezy. Splitting elm, using a gas engine powered log splitter even was a real challenge. Elms have very strong twisted grain that torque the steel I-beam. Push. Back off. Wood rotates. Repeat.
In my old genealogy work, one branch are the Germantown Sharpnacks with spelling variations.. One Catherine Scharpenacken married Christopher Sauer II. These folks were all paper makers and printers. They published the first all made in America Bible in German.
Apparently, a "Bible Patent" required all English, Oxford bibles to be printed in England in those times.
https://gruber.lstc.edu/luthers_bible/following.php
Thankfully I was spared splitting wood as a youngster. I guess due to our "All Electric" house. Many of my friends heat with wood and I gladly let them take away the downed trees on our farm.
Very interesting Bible link. I remember my grandfather's funeral was LONG and conducted entirely in German. Afterwards I asked my mom what the gist was, and she said it was basically "toe the line morally, or else!" My mom said that she got the impression that back in Germany her ancestors (name: Rissler) were Lutherans long before they became Mennonites.
We might be related going back far enough. I remember growing up in Lancaster County, my peers marvelled at "The Mennonite Game". Meaning, when visiting someone, all our parents were always able to establish that our families were related if they kept tracing the family tree far enough. As kids we found this both fascinating and creepy :)
The "Germantown Germans" refer to a group of primarily Mennonite settlers from Krefeld, Germany, who founded the town of Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1683, establishing the first intentional German-speaking community in America under the leadership of Franz Daniel Pastorius, a German lawyer and agent for William Penn; this settlement was significant for its early stance against slavery, as documented in a protest drafted by Germantown settlers in 1688
They also were called "Dunkers". Which if I recall without Google, was derived from "Tunker". It was like a large community left that part of Germany for the religious freedom here.
If I remember correctly, the term "Dunker Brethren" was one I heard occasionally growing up. Your information about Germantown was interesting. I only found out recently that a Bowman ancestor was one of five white settlers who founded Lancaster County, PA in the early 1700s. It seems that the information on that early settlement was not well known until recently. In elementary school we learned about Martin Mylin, who was one of the five, who developed the "Pennsylvania Long Rifle", (historians now suspect it was primarily his son), which became known as the Kentucky Long Rifle, erroneously. If I remember correctly.
Also, the Conestoga wagon was developed a few miles from where I grew up.
Elementary school was. It was quite the warmth.
✋ Not my own house, but a couple of friends when I was a kid.
No experience with coal.
They're kinda cute, very sloth-like in how they move. Drove to the lake in rain and fog yesterday. The ice no longer looks safe which is a bummer because I love to walk on the lake in the winter. I saw the snowy owl again on my way here. It pretty much keeps to the same area, perched on different light poles. I have a few hours solo until everyone else arrives and I'm enjoying every moment of the peace.
I hope you have a great weekend.
yawn!
Yesterday was productive in research. I had to correct a bug (no, not one an anteater would want) in a data set, some data got jumbled. I spent four hours collecting data a co-author thought the project needed. We disagreed over whether a new variable would work, but I collected it anyway. Five new variables, and only one worked: the one we disagreed about! 😀
The frustration is the University failed to renew its license for Stata, which I use. They hope to renew it soon. But the deadline to submit this is January 7th. So I was running preliminary models in Microsoft Excel, which is sort of like using an ice cream scoop to shovel your driveway. It works, but takes longer. Excel does have an add-in for this, but checking Variance Inflation Factors is done by hand. Each set of results opens in a new worksheet, and all data must be contiguous, so data on Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, or Panama are all out.🤦♂️
But I got an adjusted R-Squared value of .314, which for this type of research, is really good. As in I have an underlying fear I screwed something up in Excel. It might be irrational but great results do that to a person.
I sent the raw data to my co-author in Michigan (a contiguous state, so Excel works), who'll re-run it in Sas. Sas is for people who like drive a manual stick Maserati while also holding a cup of coffee and a doughnut at the same time. Powerful...Did you know most Masters degree programs in Data Analytics offer courses just in how to use SAS? SAS itself offers several residential courses as well.
Long story short, it's an event study, where we look at the stock price changes to companies when a major announcement is made. In this case it's the members of the World Federation of Advertisers when the WFA announced it was closing GARM, in response to an Elon Musk lawsuit. Musk claimed GARM was trying to hard Twitter advertising.
The argument is that by avoiding a lawsuit, the WFA member companies will enjoy a positive stock market reaction. The "hook" is that the individual firms wouldn't be sued (only 4 out of 84 were sued), just the WFA was sued. Guilt by association?
I understood a lot of that.
There's hope for me yet! 😀A Variance Inflation Factor is when multiple variables in your data are measuring the same thing, and it makes your analysis look better than it actually is. The term academic nerds use is "multicollinearity". BTW, a high VIF is not always bad news, but good luck convincing reviewers of that, most of whom see the number and assume it is bad news.
If they ate stinkbugs I think Katie wouldn't mind having one living in our woods. Although inside the house I can only imagine the damage they'd do to the furniture, or the stairwells.
I found their defense mechanisms interesting. Many Republicans this week believe Trump was test-marketing some administration plans by releasing a foul smelling Elon on reporters, who are often seen as predators to incoming administrations. But I could be wrong.
Swing and a miss ...
If you want something to eat stinkbugs, you could get a bearded dragon.
Drama Queen rescued an anole on Thursday. He got in the house when they were taking the trash out, and he loved her, as all animals do. She felt sorry for him because was cold, tired, and battle-scarred. "At least I can give him end-of-life care," she said, and now he'll live out his final days in a warm plastic box with a supply of small insects.
Happy Fourth Day of Christmas! Today’s special animal friends are four calling birds. The people who know these things report that “four colly birds” is the earliest version. “Colly” means “coal colored” or deep black. (“Collier” for a worker in the coal industry is still in use, at least in crossword puzzles.)
The blackbird in question is Turdus merula, the Eurasian or common blackbird. (The Turdus genus are the thrushes.) Adult male blackbirds are black, with a bright yellow or yellow-orange beak and eye-ring. Females and juveniles are brown.
https://ebird.org/species/eurbla
The male T. merula is considered a very fine singer, which may explain the lyric’s development as “calling birds.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3yAR4_xr9g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4REEz5wars
A species of Least Concern, the blackbird is found throughout Western Europe and in parts of Africa, Arabia, Turkey, the Caucasus, and into the Middle East. Their original habitat was deciduous or mixed forests, but now they can be found all over, including in urban centers. Their diet includes a lot of insects, worms, and other invertebrates, as well as some seeds and fruit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9RH3wSq1cA
Here's a video of a related species, a blackbird found in North America. It too is known for music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoapfjTh8ek
Per TSAF... It was on December 28, 1973 that the Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Nixon.
I wonder if it helped...(?)
We still have giant condos and the Bald Eagle
In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which got the ball seriously rolling on public awareness of the environment and issues concerning it, which would lead directly to the creation of the EPA and things like the ESA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
I remember reading her book in the mid 70s, and how it changed my view of some things and made a lasting impression on me.
Much has changed since then, and on balance much for the better, I think, despite the bureaucratic boondoggling we often hear of in this field.
One thing's for sure. Carson understood man's nature and place in the world better than most:
“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.” ― Rachel Carson
She arguably saved 100 million lives globally, and increased longevity for the world's population by some good years.
Or, arguably, contributed to many deaths from malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.
I think it helped, along with state level protections in the U.S., growing efforts at conservation around the world, CITES, etc. There have been failures, detours, and unintended consequences, but I think the outcomes have been very positive overall.
Agree, Cynthia. See above.
Good to know.
Good morning, everyone. I slept until almost 7:00. I need to go to bed earlier!
Pretty cute, though if were an ant I probably wouldn't think so.
What about if you were an uncle? Sorry. Not sorry. I just can't help being cute sometimes.
OK... go ahead and fire at will...
In Texas fire aunts are a major pain. I mean ants.
Oh. That was cute?
>sound of shot; check's earlobe for blood... dry as a bone<
Nooo... not *that*. Meeee!!!
Well, my mother thought I was cute, among other things anyways. But I guess that was part of the job description. 😇😏
Sorry about that. I was firing at Will, but he must have ducked.
Will usually has his ducks in a row as to when to duck and too often escapes his just deserts.
*round of applause* for the correct use of "deserts."
If they have to tell you, it's not.
Wonder why no one thinks ants are cute…not even the cuddly little larvae. Exoskeletal shaming should be a thing of our barbarian past!
I blame Peter Sellers. Growing up, we used to play the Pink Panther theme song while squishing them on the sidewalk. We'd sing "Dead ants dead ants, dead ants, and" well you get the picture.
Slogan: NO BONES ABOUT IT!
Not bad.
Thanks! Still workshopping it.
It's concise and memorable, but I don't think it conveys a strong message about why we should cozy up to our chitinous companions.
So, I guess you wouldn't recommend it as a campaign slogan for any of our chitinous candidates that run for public office?
Ok. Working.
"Cuddly little larvae" is not a phrase I expected to see.
"Exoskeletal shaming..."
That's pretty good.
I will work on a slogan!