Dragonfly Feast (With a Realization)

I was sitting at my computer pounding out one thing or another when movement outside the window at my left caught my attention. There was a swarm of large flying insects flitting back and forth making aerial acrobatics. They seemed to be flying randomly around the back yard. The frame of the window made it impossible for me to determine just how many insects there were.

Dragonfly eating an emergent Stinkbug.

I stopped and went out on the deck to see more of what was going on. The bugs were dragonflies. Dozens of them speeding back and forth making impossible turns in mid flight and pivoting once again in this mid-afternoon spectacle. I moved further away from the back door and the sun illuminated the reason for the amazing antics of the dragonflies.

Tiny fluffs of another insect were rising out of the grass and floated upward as the dragonflies snapped them up and turned for the next one. These smaller bugs were mosquitoes and they were making a feast for the dragons. Hundreds if not thousands of them became a meal for the predators that flew far faster and with superior agility. I watched for several minutes before returning to the computer and Googling: What do dragonflies eat.

The results confirmed my observations and showed my several YouTube video clips of everything one might want to see about dragonflies, and more. One site asserted that if I had lots of dragonflies around, it meant that the area was environmentally clean since the dragons were quite sensitive to contaminants.

This made perfect sense since I do not poison my grass nor fertilize it to make it better looking. The boy I pay to gut the grass uses a mulching mower that puts all the cuttings back into the soil. Hand weeding of the occasional dandelion and chick weed takes care of that.

A few days later I observed a swarm of dragonflies debugging my front lawn too. Across the street and on both side of my yard there were no feasts going on. Either I am the only one with "a lawn picnic" of insects or the other lawns are inhospitable to the dragons.

Later in the summer I will be welcoming the mantises that frequent my pine bushes for the feast that will be there.

The Realization: I read a web article that credited the warmer climate of Europe for the northern migration of mosquitoes. The little buggers are adaptive in that even in the presence of drought conditions they seem to be able to grow faster in the warmer days. While my back yard is in that newly developing sub-tropical climate of Maryland, USA, and the dragonflies love the area, so do the mosquitoes. The arrival of the Dragons coincides with the massive population burst of the mosquitoes. We have been getting almost daily rain in Central Maryland for the month of August 2012. Although not necessarily a pool of standing water, my backyard might have small breeding puddles down in the mat of grass that covers the soil like a carpet.

---

TweetTweet This Post

So We Say Goodbye To One of Our Own

Ericka and her mother have been long-standing members of the Car 5 Gang. Others have come and gone while still others changed schedule and took up on earlier or later trains. Some, like the Princess, have moved on to other endeavors such as out of state colleges or different jobs that do not require commuting on the MARC. New family members take their precedence as in the case of our “Bicycle Coastguard Girl” who traded her folding bike and daily commute for now two little girls.

On July 24, of this year, Ericka made her last run with us in favor of a new house south of where she works rather than our northern location. In honor of that departure her mother and Trish organized a pizza and beer commute to celebrate our grief at her departure. The train itself did what it could to almost quash the party by having funky doors that were not being cooperative. Our train boarding time was shortly delayed while the maintenance crew worked on them. The sledge hammer that was stood up along the narrow platform 13 seemed incongruous but was not actually used in the door repair procedures.

For our celebration Larry, Sam and Shelly all opted for the later 5:20 train home in order to attend our celebration.

At one point Trish phoned to say that she was almost to Union Station and that she needed help carrying in all the supplies. I told her I’d come if necessary and she said that she left messages with two other people to meet her if possible. Noise levels were high at Union Station and the conversation difficult. Shelly and Jan and I went to the second car doors to await the authorization to enter when they got the door closers synchronized, or whatever they needed to accomplish. That is when Trish called again and said she was there by the elevator and needed the carry assistance.

I could not reach George or Mike who were still back by the waiting room so I started back to get to Trish. I med George along the way and passed the mission off to him. He passed Mike and the two of them went on the mission to bring the pizza and beer back to the train. Jan, Shelly and I occupied our end of the train to protect it from interlopers who would take up our party space. A short time later, Mike, George and Trish arrived with the supplies and we all congregated within the next few minutes.

We missed Billy, Big Bobbert, Diane and a myriad of folks who have not been around for our irregular partying. Chris, Mark, the other Mark, “Raven” and Gerry. Some of them are just on different schedules and someone knows where they are. Others have just faded into the mythology of the Car 5 Gang.

How to Impress one-half of the Electorate

Except for the President of the United States a candidate for public office only needs to motivate one-half of plus one registered voters to cast their ballots for you. When the tally is done, the candidate that has the most votes wins the office. That may seem simple but getting to the ballot is the bigger task.

Most candidates for public office start out with a built in electorate constituency that will back them no matter what else they might say or do. That is, no matter what else they say or do than the single position that the candidate declared at the outset to assure that he/she has the necessary support. In American politics today the key word is Abortion. The candidate is either for it or against it. The alignment of support is more zealous and frenetic on the side of being against it.

The American voter is notoriously single-minded in his/her support of a candidate. If the candidate has declared a position against abortion the anti-abortion voter has no choice but to support that candidate against all challengers who are for choice no matter how compelling the need for choice is. When being compelled by ones moral compass means overlooking the flaws in the candidate or his/her other positions, the alleged moral position must prevail. This is why we can get an anti-abortion Governor, Senator or Congressperson who will also support gutting state and federal budgets, decimating employee pensions, cutting upper-income tax rates, laying off tens of thousands of public sector employees, hamstringing environmental protections, deregulating financial institutions so they can self-regulate, in short all the things that are helpful to everyone on the socio-economic ladder on the rung below the "very wealthy." The seminal issue remains abortion, but in recent election cycles who may marry who and who may have access to legal employment has become additional cause celeb for the electorate to hurl insults about.

Charles and David Hoch of Koch Industries fame don't really have a strong opinion on same sex marriage or undocumented immigrants, or on abortion for that matter. What they need are the pivotal issues that voters will get behind and give support to the candidates that will vote in favor of the issues that their corporate industrial empire does care about. Koch Industries' behavior is just the opposite of the voters. Voters will cast their ballots for a candidate who will do them harm, while KI does not. If a Senatorial candidate was both against abortion and for higher corporate taxes and more stringent industrial regulation, do you think the Koch's would support that person? I think not.

There are other million dollar deep pockets that support the anti-abortion candidates, but they too are depending on the voters to commix their emotions about abortion with the economic benefits that accrue only to the wealthy and corporate strata.

Does abortion hurt Koch Industries and the other mega-million dollar conglomerates? Let's look at it. Abortion removes about ¼ of 1% of the population of the US. This number will easily be made up for by both immigration and other births. So KI will not suffer for a loss of consumers. If even one million same sex couples married and did not have the requisite 2.1 children per family, that too is negligible to the economy. The Koch's and their ilk would hardly notice. Actually, I suspect that they would develop goods and services that same sex couples would flock to and business revenues would not suffer.

What would be detrimental to the KI, et al would be the loss of about 12 million undocumented immigrants who pick our fruits and veggies, do our lawn work, clean our offices, drywall our new houses, pluck our chickens at the lowest wage practicable. Supporting a candidate who wants to deport all the "illegals" and their spawn will not get any of them deported, but supporting the candidate who claims conservative positions that include deportation of undocumented workers and their families will get the anti-tax on corporations and wealthy people candidate elected. Now that WILL benefit Koch's and Friends.

A candidate that declares him/her self against business regulations, against higher taxes, against public sector employees get the attention of the moneyed deep pockets of the world. But in the end it is the voters who do the actual electing. They need causes that they can actually understand. On one single level abortion is a simple concept to grasp. One abortion equals one less person born. But nothing is really that simple.

One abortion also equals one less share of a family's limited income; one less mouth to feed if you will. If the anti-abortion contingent stepped in to claim all non-aborted fetuses and provided that child a good life until age 18 and for life if developmentally disabled then there would be a good case for a significant reduction in abortion activity. David and Charles, where are your billions to make that a reality? I suspect that they only use the abortion issue as a means to an end. That is what I call Tuna! – buying and selling without concern for the consequences.

Abortion, and access to health care and the right to marry have become the emotional issues that get a candidate elected or defeated for office. They obscure the real issues that hurt people in far worse ways. Human needs and the needs of a corporation are vastly different. Those needs are at odds with each other. This is why corporations and humans cannot both be persons in the same reality as the Citizens United effort has begun to establish.

A simple equation demonstrates that there will be millions more people in the United States (and the entire world) who just won't be needed for the production of goods and services. We are seeing this in the now chronic unemployment level in the US. About 14 million people want to work and can't secure a living wage to support themselves and families. Our fiscally conservative response to this is what? We have politicians call for tax cuts, reductions in pensions, curtailing of Food Stamps and the other social support services that might allow some taxpayers to keep a few more dollars in their pockets. The other side of that equation is that the lower taxes result in lower revenues to pay for the support of people who are denied jobs. The economic activity spirals downward resulting in more unemployment and a greater need for social support systems.

Conservatives rely on the Them And Us mentality to attempt isolation of themselves from the realities around them. Instead of solving the economic woes of poor people, they are more inclined to wall off their homes in gated communities. Instead of educating people and creating a place for them to live and enjoy liberties, the Conservative is far more willing to build a prison and wall them in using petty crimes and minimum sentencing as their weapon of choice.

The fearful voter is so much more approachable with simple black and white issues than with the realities that are out there waiting to overwhelm the system when they reach Gladwell's Tipping Point. We need to devise a new economic system that accounts for the millions of people are neglected by our present bank-and-profit capital system. This is not to say that Capitalism is not a big part of what is needed. The big change must be in how we measure "profitability" and successful capital investments. Investment success is when more people are benefited by our actions and our votes.

The End of an Era

The End of an Era
Cross posted from my "Principle of Imminent Collapse" blog

The world is facing the end of the era of massive corporate production of goods and services. It is not really the fault of the corporations because they too are victims of the progress they made possible in the first place. There is a cyclic dependency of businesses needing to contain costs that feed into the reduction of the need for labor and therefore making it difficult for people to afford what the businesses provide. Unfortunately this reduction of the need for labor creates a cyclic dependency that results in much larger profits for the businesses. So while people are displaced from the means of personal wealth creation, the capital providers (Those Evil Capitalists) do better as the result.

There is a natural process of system aging that is referred to in environmental circles as eutrophication. While there is a precise chemical process associated with the aging process where excess nutrients are loaded into an aquatic environment causing algal blooms and degradation, there is an observational component too. A pond that starts out with clear clean water will ultimately fill in on its own with plant and animal detritus and slowly become a swamp or bog, then a meadow and finally a forest. Humans have accelerated the process in many places but it remains a natural system aging process.

Social, political and economic systems experience their own characteristic eutrophication process. Take for example the soft ice cream stand that was a ubiquitous part of the highway and byway landscape from the early days of inter-city automobile travel. Mr. Yost and his wife bought the manufacturing equipment, bought a cheap parcel of land out beyond the City Limits and built his little store. Motorists stopped by on hot summer afternoons with the kids fussing in the back seat. A cool cone and a hotdog settled them down. The Yosts made a good living off that place for 32 years. In that time he mostly only needed food supplies and electricity. The milk came from a local farmer and he could slice his own potato fries. His costs were low and all the profits were his annual income.

Then along came the Coca Cola regional sales representative. He convinced Mr. Yost to put in a red and white fountain and sell Cokes in cups with ice. He saw the benefits of this action posted on every billboard from City Limits to City Limits. He needed an ice machine now and some more space. All of these items were gladly provided by that Atlanta, Georgia corporation for a price. A bit of the Yost business revenue left the community. He took out a business loan from his local Savings and Loan, or Farmers and Mechanics Bank and expanded to include other menu items and accommodate the larger volume of weekend traffic that he came to rely upon. Business was good and he made more gross revenues even as the cost of doing business continued to rise and his net annual earnings remained flat.

Then along came the state highway department with a plan to build a town bypass to alleviate the traffic volumes in the town. The townies supported the plan but Mr. Yost was going to get bypassed too. With the inevitability of the construction, Yost used his savings to relocate out beyond the bypass. He now had to sell 60% more product at higher prices just to equal the money he used to make in his old location of 32 years. The land price was far higher than the first place along the old highway. The cost of construction was higher and there were new requirements for safe and hygienic operations. The now old Mr. Yost decided that he had had enough of the soft ice cream/burger and fries business. He put the business up for sale.

Mr. Yost needed to get enough money from the sale to retire on. After all he had sunk his saving into the relocation. The new buyer figured that he would buy the place, hire local kids to run it and have a pretty good investment on which to live. He borrowed the purchase capital from the Big Bank, NA and hired the kids. Now a huge interest principle was paid to a distant bank and that money left the community each month. The "kids" were from a town 20 miles away, because all the local kids were now too old to work for such low wages as this new Entrepreneur was willing to pay. All his supplies were shipped in from distant locations and that purchase money left the community.

Because everyone else was making their annual revenues off of Yost's Ice Cream Stand, the location had to sell 300% more product each year at higher prices than old Mr. Yost had to do in all his years of business. The new owner could not make a living on the location because all those other people and businesses were getting their share of the revenues. This business underwent the natural aging process that is akin to eutrophication.

Towns die when they age in this manner. The wealth creation that used to be present is removed to a distant place and the remaining people send all their income, pensions and savings to those places instead of keeping it local and sustaining their community. When the town was young, the corn came from a field the children walked past to get to school. Their peas and beans did not come in a can. The chicken parts did not arrive frozen from Alabama.

More people worked providing labor to produce things, and supportive occupations like accountant, lawyer, storekeeper, doctor, barber, service station attendant. Many of those people have aged and retired allowing someone else to take the reins. They did not go away. Mostly, they are still in the community collecting Social Security, pensions and annuities. Those funds increase the collective wealth of the community, but all their money leaves the community not to return.

The doctor is part of the health plan in an urban center, miles away, when he used to be the neighbor. Pharmaceuticals come from billion dollar multi-national corporations. Phone service is global with not one person employed to operate the system in any town. The money paid for telecom, internet and television content all leaves the community and ends up in the accounts of huge telecommunication corporations. Hint: TV used to be free.

While this aging process is a natural one, humans are accelerating it. Too many companies are depending on getting a percentage of every dollar of commerce, instead of their people doing something physical to increase the value of what they do. There are too few opportunities for an individual person to provide his labors for compensation that will allow him (her) and family to buy the necessary things of life that are priced by the companies who are getting their share of the dollar. Too much of business and commerce is funded with borrowed capital. This borrowing level makes everything more expensive. Mr. Yost originally could make a good living in half a year at his original location just outside the City Limits, doing much of the work himself. But when the investors and the banking system got involved the whole business when out of balance and ultimately failed. It's not really anyone fault, it's a natural aging process. The problem it we don't have a way to stop it or reverse it, yet.