Fruit flies are a science teacher’s nightmare. They’re a classic study for genetics- short life span, only six chromosomes. The trouble is, no matter what you do, somehow, someway, the darned things get loose. Fruit flies. Everywhere. They breed like, well, flies, and aren’t nearly as selective about diet as the name would suggest.

A fruit fly infestation is hard to get rid of, because total removal of food sources is difficult. However, the combination of fruit fly trap and removal of food sources does prove effective.

While they have a surprisingly varied diet, they do prefer fruit. Like many animals that eat fruit, they’re attracted to the smell of fermenting fruit. The bait, then? Apple Cider Vinegar.

What makes your cup (disposable- easier to throw the whole thing out that way) into a trap? That’s the drop or two of soap you add to it.

Fruit flies are tiny and attempting to land on the surface of apple cider vinegar wouldn’t normally pose much in the way of problems. Soap disrupts the hydrogen bonds between water molecules, which in this case means it disrupts the surface tension. A classic classroom illustration is pepper floating on the surface of water. A drop of soap and it sinks.

So, apple cider vinegar for bait. Soap to disrupt the surface tension so they fall through and drown. Then, wait a few days. Fruit flies have short life expectancy, and you want to catch all of the newly emerging adults as they hatch as well. An effective trap, and an infestation removed.

This chart is taken from inflationtool.com   It isn’t the whole thing – more of a teaser of excerpts to convince you that the link is worth the click and the read.  As a generality, it looks like having a bunch of oil keeps the Saudi inflation rate down, China and Japan have low inflation rates, and Costa Rica is doing a good job.  The whole chart – at the link – provides a lot more information.

Country	Current Inflation Rate	2021
Argentina	71.00 2022-07	50.94
Australia	6.14 2022-Q2	3.50
Austria	9.33 2022-07	4.25
Belgium	9.94 2022-08	5.71
Brazil	10.07 2022-07	10.06
Canada	7.59 2022-07	4.80
Chile	14.09 2022-08	7.17
China	2.70 2022-07	1.50
Colombia	10.84 2022-08	5.62
Costa Rica	3.50 2022-01	3.30
Czech Republic	17.24 2022-08	6.61
Denmark	8.91 2022-08	3.09
Estonia	24.79 2022-08	12.14
Eurozone	8.90 2022-07	5.00
Finland	7.79 2022-07	3.47
France	6.08 2022-07	2.75
Germany	7.90 2022-08	5.31
Greece	11.40 2022-08	5.11
Hungary	15.60 2022-08	7.40
Iceland	9.74 2022-08	5.11
India	5.78 2022-07	5.56
Indonesia	4.69 2022-08	1.87
Ireland	8.69 2022-08	5.52
Israel	5.21 2022-07	2.81
Italy	7.93 2022-07	3.90
Japan	2.50 2022-04	0.80
Latvia	21.55 2022-08	7.92
Lithuania	22.36 2022-08	10.56
Luxembourg	6.76 2022-08	4.14
Mexico	8.70 2022-08	7.36
Netherlands	11.96 2022-08	5.71
New Zealand	7.30 2022-Q2	5.95
Norway	6.53 2022-08	5.31
Poland	15.60 2022-07	8.60
Portugal	8.94 2022-08	2.74
Russia	16.70 2022-03	8.39
Saudi Arabia	2.67 2022-07	1.24
Slovakia	13.63 2022-07	5.82
Slovenia	10.96 2022-08	4.88
South Africa	8.05 2022-07	5.93
South Korea	5.71 2022-08	3.70
Spain	10.55 2022-08	6.55
Sweden	8.49 2022-07	3.87
Switzerland	3.45 2022-08	1.53
Turkey	80.21 2022-08	36.08
United Kingdom	8.80 2022-07	4.80
United States	8.26 2022-08	7.04

The second installment of the Lincoln Electric member uprising.  I need to include a bit of an explanation of the Rural Electrification Act and the Rural Electrification Administration – Rural Electrification Administration (REA) provides a good description of how and why legislation was passed that gave the Electric Cooperatives a financial advantage (over the private electric companies) in providing electrical service to rural areas.  Go ahead – read it.  I’ll wait.

Essentially, the conflict boiled down to structure – a private electric company (Montana Power for example) was supervised by Montana’s Public Service Commission.  With Lincoln Electric (and the other Montana Rural Electric Cooperatives) the assumption is that the coop board members will represent the cooperative’s owners and users.  The slogan is still on the wall: “Owned by the people we serve” and we still hear the deliberate misquote “Owned by the people we screw.”  Both versions can show some support.

I knew most of the board members.  I worked with many on projects unrelated to electricity before and after.  Still, Lincoln Electric’s management only needed to convince six out of ten to go along – and they had worked together for a long time, and developed trust.  Gareth Eaton and Duke Baney weren’t so easy to convince – and it was their dissatisfaction with the explanations that led to the member uprising.  Gareth talked to his son Craig.  Duke shared his concerns with Kenny Gwynn  and Al Luciano.  The management and remainder of the board didn’t see it – but the member uprising was coming.

There’s a 1944 publication online that tells of the strengths and weaknesses of cooperatives at historians.org.

1. A cooperative business is set up by a group of individuals to obtain services for themselves at cost—not to obtain profit from rendering services to others.
2. A cooperative business tries to render the greatest possible benefit to its members—not to make the largest possible profit.
3. A cooperative distributes any surplus income over the cost of doing business among those who are served by it, in proportion to their use of its services—not in proportion to their investment.
4. A cooperative is controlled by its patron members, each of whom ordinarily is allowed a single vote—not by the owners of its capital stock, if any, in proportion to the number of shares they hold.
   
   In other words, the chief aim of cooperative business, as contrasted with other kinds of business, is to provide goods and services to its members at cost. A cooperative does not engage in buying and selling in order to make a profit for its members. Although it may buy and sell from the general public in order to carry on its own business, this is incidental to its chief aim—serving its members.

A common problem with co-ops is that the organization is theoretically operated for the benefit of its members, but there is a tendency for co-ops to shift from that emphasis to being operated more directly for the benefit of the employees.  A glance at Lincoln Electric’s declining numbers for a quorum at the annual meeting suggests that a lack of general interest from most of the membership.  At the most recent annual meeting, the report on the website shows 101 members required for a quorum and 25 employees of the cooperative.  Those numbers show how difficult it is to “render the greatest possible benefit to its members” as a priority over rendering the greatest possible benefit to its employees.  It is a natural tendency of management to look for agreeable board members.  (Board members have been known to argue against this statement, but I have yet to be convinced by those arguments)

The big concern that led to the members revolt was that the manager was retiring, had pretty much selected his own successor, and the board supported paying him his full wages for the next two years as a consultant.  Another concern was nepotism.  The electric service was probably close to the best in the state, and office services were available to the public 5 days a week. 

Next installment:  Force 5: Fresh Breeze – small trees in leaf begin to sway

This time I didn’t need to bother our overworked election officials to find out how many and which of our state senators and representatives will be unopposed on November’s ballot.  I could go to nrapvf.org and find out . . . as well as learning the candidates NRA grades.

Unopposed for the State House are:

District 1         Steve Gunderson (R)                          District 2         Neil Durham (R)

District 6         Amy Regier (R)                                   District 8         Terry Falk (R)

District 9         Tony Brockman (R)                            District 11       Tanner Smith (R)

District 14       Denley Loge (R)                                 District 16       Tyson Running Wolf (D)

District 18       Llew Jones (R)                                    District 19       Russel Miner (R)

District 27       Josh Kassmier (R)                               District 29       Douglas Flament (R)

District 32       Jonathan Windy Boy (D)                    District 34       Rhonda Knudsen (R)

District 35       Brandon Ler (R)                                  District 36       Bob Phalen (R)

District 37       Jerry Schillinger (R)                            District 39       Gary Parry (R)

District 40       Greg Oblander (R)                             District 43       Kerri Seekins-Crowe (R)

District 45       Katie Zolnikov (R)                              District 53       Nelly Nicol (R)

District 54       Terry Moore (R)                                 District 55       Lee Deming (R)

District 56       Sue Vinton (R)                                   District 66       Eric Matthews (D)

District 71       Ken Walsh (R)                                   District 75       Marta Bertoglio (R)

District 78       Gregory Frazer (R)                             District 80       Becky Beard (R)

District 81       Ron Marshall (R)

Thirty-one of Montana’s 100 state representatives have no opponent in the general election.  Since legislative districts are apportioned according to population, this essentially translates to 31% of Montanans not having a choice on their state representative in November – because subsection 7 is ignored by their county election administrators.                                

In the State Senate, the following are unopposed:

District 1         Michael Cuffe (R)                                 District 5         Mark Noland (R)

District 9         Bruce Gillespie (R)                               District 19       Kenneth Bogner (R)

District 20       Barry Usher (R)                                     District 27       Dennis Lenz (R)

District 29       Forrest Mandeville (R)

Since state senate terms are 4 years, only 25 state senators are up for election this year.  The 7 unopposed candidates translates to 28% of Montana voters not having a choice on their state senator in the upcoming election – because subsection 7 is ignored by county election administrators. At least the folks voting for a US Senator in Pennsylvania can choose between a pair of bad candidates – here in Lincoln County when the primary ballot is printed, choice vanishes.  The problem here is not bad candidates – it’s that subsection 7 is being ignored and the voter’s last option for choice is taken away by unelected administrators.  I would probably vote for Mike Cuffe and Neil Durham . . . but with the decision already locked in stone by Paula, why bother?          

                         

 

Claremont Institute has an article called “The Looming Extinction of the Working Class.”

It begins with this paragraph: “You can’t have a democracy—at least outside of a one-party “people’s” version—without a middle class. Much of the last half millennia is the story of the bumpy rise of an expanding middle class, which successfully replaced ancient aristocratic structures, creating a remarkably innovative economic culture and a vital democratic society. But over the last four decades, this class—which includes artisans, small business people, and skilled workers—has been declining, largely as the result of economic forces but also because of political decisions to adopt policies inimical to those groups’ needs.”

I think the statement is about right – I came to the decision in early adulthood that small business ownership – particularly retail – was no place for me.  I never went so far as to describe the reason as “political decisions to adopt policies inimical to those groups’ needs” – but I won’t argue with the statement.

The article describes the influence of the Netherlands in developing the bourgeois class and the republican form of government:

“Across Europe, the old medieval order was undermined by a diminishing threat of invasion, more efficient agricultural practices, a demographic rebound, and the revival of commerce and urban culture, particularly around the Mediterranean and the Baltic.[11]

But it was in the Netherlands where the bourgeois class flourished most. At a time when property ownership was limited to a few, Netherlanders expanded their territory by draining swamps and building dikes, establishing new farms and businesses. Improvements in agricultural methods led to an early commercialization of the countryside and fueled a wider economic boom. As the economic historian Jan de Vries observed, “capitalism grew out of the soil in Holland.”[12]

After expelling their Spanish Habsburg rulers in the seventeenth century, the Dutch built the world’s most powerful maritime empire, with a fleet larger than all the rest of Europe’s combined. Amsterdam’s large port bustled with a rich trade in foodstuffs, hemp, hops, and dye plants. The opportunistic Dutch expanded their commercial activity in part by pioneering technological changes decades ahead of their competitors.[13]

But arguably their greatest achievement lay in creating a republic free from aristocratic or clerical domination.[14] The growing ranks of proprietors set down “the geographical roots of republican liberty,” notes historian Simon Schama.[15] Dutch culture was family-centered, inventive, sober, frugal, and tolerant.[16] Although it was majority Calvinist, the country boasted large colonies of Catholics, Jews, and other outsiders, including Muslims; indeed, roughly one-third of Amsterdam’s population in 1650 was foreign-born, though European.”

Further in, the article goes into our more recent history: “Between 1940 and 1950, the incomes of the bottom 40 percent of American workers surged by roughly 40 percent, while the gains in the top quintile were a modest 8 percent and the top 5 percent saw their incomes drop slightly.[33] Between 2005 and 2014, the percentage of families with flat or decreasing real incomes rose to over 60 percent in the twenty-five most advanced economies.”

Under the heading “Why the Middle Class Declined we find: “these remarkable achievments of liberal capitalism are now distinctly threatened. This is likely not a “conspiracy” but the collective result of private actions driven by rational decision-making.

Until the 1990s, fields that were growing and promised higher profits invited newcomers, as one would expect.[36] Since then, there has been a marked decrease in the percentage of all small firms in both the United States and Europe as larger firms continue to increase their share of the pie.[37] Technology has played a critical role by facilitating global commerce and, increasingly, driving business from the Main Streets and local companies to massive firms with the ability to adjust to changing conditions.[38] . . . Roughly one hundred and ten thousand restaurants have shut down during the lockdowns, and some two hundred thousand more businesses overall have simply shut down.[40] It is no surprise that barely 16 percent of small business owners, according to one recent survey, think the federal government is performing well for them.[41] As executive compensation reached the stratosphere at the big tech and finance firms, the Harvard Business Review notes that small businesses—the bulwark of the yeoman class—face “an existential threat” to their existence.[42] The pandemic shift clearly favored big companies, who could deploy far greater resources make the necessary transition to the new reality. Big Pharma companies have reined in lucrative profits with vaccine revenue.[43] CEO compensation reached record levels this year; investment bankers on Wall Street enjoyed record bonuses; and the giant tech firms now boast a market capitalization greater than the bloated federal budget.[44] The biggest tech firms achieved new record valuations and ever-increasing domination. As millions struggle to fill their gas tanks and pay their rent, sales of business jets to the rising ranks of billionaires have soared to new heights.[45]”

As the article move on to the effects of “the clerisy” – the group the author identifies as responsible for the end of the working class – we note that author Joel Kotkin doesn’t feel that the extinction of the middle class is inevitable – but he looks at it as a social trend – not a conspiracy theory.  It’s worth reading.

There’s often a conflict between public school educators and home schooling parents. Parents that choose to home school are invested in education, they want the best for their kids- but their often invested in a version of education that looks somewhat different (or looks beyond) the typical public school classroom.

Certainly, it’s an easy area for conflict. The choice to home school after public schooling is often the result of conflict with a school district. And, a teacher is inclined to believe that the way they are teaching, their classroom instruction, is the best way of educating a child (if they didn’t- they’d be doing it differently, after all). So a teacher can hear an implied criticism in a parent’s decision to home school. Hurt feelings abound, even without the exchange of hurtful words.

Which is why in what should be a conversation between reasonable adults, all educators, all people who care very deeply about children and their education, conflict arises needlessly. A defensive school district says “No, you can’t come on our field trips.” Or “No, you can’t come for just one class.” And isn’t making that decision based on educating children, but in response to hurt feelings, to the sense of criticism they feel from a parent’s choice.

But a home school family still pays taxes to fund the local school. And they should still be part of the client base the school considers. School districts have a bad habit of treating school enrollment as a “all or nothing, my way or the high way” situation, when it shouldn’t be.

The best education available to a child may include both individual instruction in math, from a parent who once taught the subject, and art classes from a qualified art teacher at the public school. Education should never be one-size-fits-all, because children are not one-size-fits-all. Who better to know that, and to make the choices, than a child’s parents.

Hybridizing the home school/public school model offers the best of both worlds. I’m happy to say that our local school district is finally on board. This year, the district is accepting part-time enrollments, with a block schedule that makes that feasible even for families that are far off the beaten path. Hopefully our district will continue to view parents as partners in the educational process.