War of the sexes. Our safety. The real war.
I never win the battles about microbes. If there is an argument that Zoriana can't go to kindergarten because she's coughing and should give microbes to everybody else, the fact that the cough hasn't changed for three weeks and she's feeling healthy doesn't carry any water.
My claim that we can afford to leave the broccoli out overnight and cook it in the morning doesn't carry any weight either. But occasionally I do win one. I came up with an argument this morning that lent itself to measurement.
The window was opened as I was frying bacon. It was on a low heat and I couldn't spell the bacon, but obviously offended somebody. When the bacon was done I closed the window and I got the argument that when she wakes up in the morning she can't breathe. There's not enough oxygen in the house. We have used it all up and we need open windows.
I find on the Internet that a human being uses about 400 L of oxygen the day. 400 L of oxygen would be about 2000 liters of air, given that the air is 20% oxygen. 2000 liters is 2 cubic meters. I figure that our house is roughly 12,000 m3, so in theory, she could be locked up in the house for two years without any new air and be just fine. Every time somebody opens a door (2 m2 area) or window we probably get half a cubic meter or so of air coming in. We have ventilation through the ceilings and under the doors one thing and another. She backed off! Amazing!
Another fear came up yesterday was raw milk. We bought 1.5 L of milk at the farmers market. The children demanded something to drink on the way home. I said I wasn't going to buy anything so they drank the milk. It was delicious.
Grandmother was terribly concerned. You might get sick from the milk. I didn't understand the entire argument, but I remember from my childhood that there was a disease called undulating fever that came from unpasteurized milk. That's the reason Louis Pasteur invented his process.
I have not heard about undulating fever for many decades. My guess is that it has been well controlled. There aren't enough human carriers, and they probably do a pretty efficient job of vaccinating or isolating the cows that have it. My guess is that milk remains pasteurized and homogenized because it's cheap to do and everybody expects it. At any rate, the kids all drank raw milk and I don't think that any harm will come of it. We will let it turn sour make pancakes.
On a related note, I made sure that all of the kids were wearing caps as we went out yesterday morning. Mother would have insisted on it. Within three minutes I had one of the caps in my pocket. In another 10, a second. Then Marianna started messing with my cap, pulling my hair, and soon there was a third in my pocket. I expect that the kids benefit from the sunshine exposure. They get their vitamin D. Had mother asked if they had their hats, of course they did. I would neglect to mention that they weren't on their heads.
We have an invitation to go to Western Ukraine, to Uzhgorod, right on the Slovakian border. To be safe. This goes to the question of what relative danger we are in.
This morning Oksana tells me that there was an explosion and air raid siren about six in the morning. Many people would be scared to live in the city with air raid sirens. They were a fixture in life when I was growing up. There was also a civil air patrol, civilians who stood guard and watch for incoming aircraft. The Russians never came, but they tested quite frequently, In the for schools periodically in which we did have to get under our desks and cover our heads with our arms to protect ourselves against nuclear explosions. I got used to air raid sirens. During my four years in Vietnam. I heard some periodic explosions. I got used to them, and didn't get nervous unless they were loud and close.
Returning to Kyiv, I'm not going to get wrapped around the axle about an explosion I didn't even hear this morning. Kyiv is a big city – 324 square miles. The radius of destruction of a rocket is maybe 300 feet – that's where your would be most likely to be injured by shrapnel. The odds of a random rocket explosion getting you are small. Add to that the fact that although the Russians’ aim is terrible, they still don’t miss by a mile, and we are that far from anything of value: military stuff, infrastructure, or even big apartment buildings.
I have not reported much war news. It is proceeding slowly. There are 25,000 Russian soldiers isolated on the west bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region. There are estimated to be 60,000 Ukrainians holding them there. The bridges are mostly blown so there is not enough logistics capacity to support that many people.
So which way is it going to go? My estimate would be that the commentators are right. The Russians are not prepared for winter weather. They don't have warm clothing, enough ammunition or even enough food. Ukraine would be smart not to press the offensive quickly. The Russians’ will to resist will diminish as the weather continues to get cold. Now, will they get relief?
Russia has drafted 300,000 soldiers. Putin is threatening a million. I recall the process by which I became a soldier back in 1964. Basic training required pretty big physical installation (Fort Ord), plant and equipment, and quite a few training instructors. At the end of eight weeks I had been trained to use a gun and been put in a little bit of physical shape.
It wasn't until after five months’ training that I had a specialty – radio communication. Even the riflemen had what they called advanced infantry training for another couple of months.
Our NATO friends, France, England, Germany are training Ukrainian soldiers. People who have never been in the military may not appreciate how important that is. It means, among other things, that the recruits are safe while they are being trained. The Russians blew up trainees’ barracks of early in the war. Now they can’t
It gives our allies experience in training people, which is useful to them as well as us. It enables Ukraine put to apply more of its armed forces to the task at hand, defeating the Russians.
By the time he finishes basic training a soldier knows how to use a gun and is in something of physical shape. Actually, the physical conditioning was the most important thing that they did for me.
You still don't know anything about how a squad, platoon or company operates. You don't know about communications within a military unit. You don't know tactics. You don't know how to attack a machine gun nest, how to coordinate with mortars and artillery and so on. You don’t know much first aid. All of these things are necessary so you are effective in fighting and don't get yourself killed. Equally important, you don’t get your squad mates killed. Poorly trained and motivated soldiers are a danger to themselves and everybody around them.
Advanced Infantry Training addresses all of these topics at some level. To prepare today’s American infantry soldier is a matter of several months - it can be up to a year. I cannot imagine that the Russians have the time or the ability to do it right. In my opinion the Russians’ momentum has already died, and that the war will have been decided in the months it would take to train these legions of recruits. Most likely they will be expended as untrained cannon fodder, fueling resistance on the home front.
That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where Marianna accompanied me to the corner store and is now enjoying some late season sunshine in the back yard. Zoriana and I despaired of the bus again this morning and started walking, but were delighted to turn around after two blocks and see it arriving five minutes late. I dictated this blog on my twenty-minute walk home. Eddie, meanwhile, is supposed to be studying. To my delight, when I look in on him he usually is.
We have been drinking only raw milk for 11+ years. I've bought from stores, co-ops, neighbors and friends. Now I hand-milk daily for our family. Milk pasteurization started when they pulled cows into feedlots and started feeding them grain to increase milk production. Because the cow's rumen wasn't developed to digest grain, the cows were sick and thus the milk was sick and making people sick. Instead of getting to the root of the problem and putting cows back on pasture, where they belong, they killed the milk with pasteurization, making it a dead and inflammatory product. Raw milk is extremely healthy. It is a live food, teeming with beneficial bacteria. It also never spoils! It will go sour, but is still edible and usable - use for soaking grains, oats, baking, french toast, sour cream, cultured butter, etc. etc. etc.
Of course, many states have made raw milk illegal to protect Big Ag interests. Many of those are the same states where home births are illegal. .... perhaps the gross governmental encroachments go hand-in-hand. I have friends and family that get around these ridiculous laws by buying raw milk "for pet consumption only" or even working in groups to cross state lines and get healthy milk for their families "illegally".
When you write "undulating fever" I think you meant undulant fever or brucellosis, a very nasty disease. On our ranch we raise beef cattle. Each calf is required by law to be inoculated against the disease and herds certified to be brucellosis-free annually. The same is true of dairy cattle and goats. Milk from inoculated dairy cattle should be safe to drink raw, although I, personally, would not do so because raw milk may contain any number of other infectious agents besides brucellosis.
Regarding infantry training, you are correct, although I don't have much confidence in European NATO training, especially the British. In Basra, the Brits were utterly humiliated and had to be rescued by the Iraqi and American armies. In Afghanistan, British 40 Commando was similarly trapped and helpless until rescued by the US Marines' 3/7 who attacked the Taliban within 24 hours of arriving and crushed them in fierce fighting. Later, we trained 40co at 29 Palms and helped them become an effective fighting force.
Another factor in the effectiveness of infantry is the quality of the personnel. American soldiers come from ordinary middle class backgrounds, A and B high school students who after their contract go on to middle class lives. The British military is class ridden with a huge gap between the "posh" officers and the lower class enlisted. Even their accents are different. The only difference between American officers and enlisted is that the officers have been to college and became officers for the most part via ROTC or if mavericks OCS -- not the academies -- and the enlisted haven't yet; they'll do that on Uncle Sam's dime after they fulfill their contract.