August Night Sky

The Full Moon appearing this month is named after North America's largest fish - the sturgeon. Other names for this Full Moon include Green Corn Moon, Grain Moon, Barley Moon and Fruit Moon. 

The Sturgeon Moon has its origins in the great number of sturgeon that were once found in the lakes and rivers in North America.  It’s likely that with the arrival of European settlement the name was borrowed from native-American usage.  

I live close to Sturgeon Bay - named for the large number of sturgeon found here when settlers arrived.  Nowadays, over-fishing has just about eliminated this species from the Great Lakes.  Sigh.  The largest population of sturgeon in the world can be found in the Lake Winnebago waterway system not too far away.

August's full moon is special - as it features a partial lunar eclipse.  This occurs when the earth passes between the sun and the moon.  If you live in the norther hemisphere the earth's shadow is going to creep-across most (but not all) of the lunar surface beginning tomorrow night and into early Friday morning.  

During this event, the moon moves through the earth's umbra, the dark center of its shadow.  As the Sturgeon moon rises, later in the evening - 11:12 PM CST - the moon will dim and as the partial eclipse reaches its peak it will appear reddish-orange.  It will not technically be a full blood moon as there isn't totality; nevertheless, it should be worth staying-up to check it out.  It will last about 5 and a half hours.  Because you are not looking at the sun no special safety precautions are needed.

This will be the best lunar eclipse anywhere on earth until New Year's Eve 2028! 

Fingers-crossed for good viewing conditions for the next couple of evenings.

Trade Policy Trump Style

 

Just about the time you thought we had this wrapped-up, last Friday trade talks with Canada collapsed.

This is fascinating to me inasmuch as just like the decision to go to war with Iran; this administration leaves each and every last decision on all matters of trade and war, including right down to each and every last country, including terms, to the whims of one sole individual. 

Mr. Trump.

And just like Groundhog Day, every day can be a repeat of the prior or maybe something different; all dependent-upon Trump's mercurial personality, his feelings of self-aggrandizement in the moment and generalized impulsiveness.  Some days are predictable, most are tolerable; while the worst ones are like dealing with a whining toddler tossing toys out of his crib.

Mr. Trump's obsessive trade war with Canada is based-upon an imbalance of trade with the United States that is driven entirely by globally-needed oil. They don't like to talk about; but I'll make it simple enough for a layperson to understand.

An interesting factoid is that the US merchandise trade deficit with Canada is essentially an energy story.  In 2024 the US ran a $64 billion goods deficit with Canada, but that deficit disappeared and became a $34 billion US surplus when energy was excluded.  The US also ran a roughly $24 billion surplus specifically in manufactured goods.  Canadian energy exports, namely crude oil, account for the bilateral deficit.

In other words, Canada isn't beating American manufacturers in some broad-based flood of manufactured goods.  Canada supplies the United States with enormous quantities of energy that the US economy needs, while the United States sells Canada more manufactured goods than it buys from Canada.    

That doesn't mean every Trump tariff policy toward Canada is necessarily motivated by the headline trade deficit; Washington has cited border security, fentanyl, autos, steel and other issues.  

In 2025, the United States ran a $46 billion goods deficit with Canada, but it also ran an approximately $85 billion net deficit in energy trade. The implication is that the United States' overall goods deficit with Canada was not the result of a generalized Canadian advantage in manufactured goods; again it was overwhelmingly an energy phenomenon, offset by U.S. surpluses in other categories.

Nevertheless, if the argument is that America is being economically victimized by a one-sided Canadian trading relationship, the numbers don't stack-up.      

This time, and perhaps because the world needs North American oil; and possibly as a consequence of Mr. Trump's ill-advised unilateral war, it looks like Canada has its sights on our looming midterm elections and is digging-in for a protracted standoff with Trump.  I suspect with hopes for a change of venue in their on-again, off-again trade talks with the administration.   Other countries around the world are watching too; following how tit-for-tat retaliation works with Trump's personal negotiation style.  My sense is that Canada is willing to wait this out as post-election the ground may shift enough giving Democrats the upper hand in the House and providing some breathing room and space for normally trade-minded Republicans to find their balls.  Perhaps the Senate is in play too?  Who knows?  Time will tell.

Canada's retaliatory tariffs won't go into effect until after Labor Day and are likely to focus on things like appliances, agricultural equipment, minerals, steel, dairy, pulp and paper.  If Mark Carney were to take a page out of Ontario Premier Doug Ford's playbook, Canada will focus on taking a shot at Trump's base in both key swing states with significant trade ties to Canada (Michigan and other Midwest and Great Lakes states come to mind) along with critical red states such as Texas and Florida.  I can sense Canada's growing outrage and frustration.  After-all, Mr. Trump commenced his second term with demands that Canada become the 51st state.  

Brilliant.  

If Canada's first impression was that Trump is simply a garden variety asshole; I suppose given everything that has transpired since, he's gonna always be an asshole.   

Remember the guy who claimed that the tiny island nation of Madagascar was picking on us?  Yup, Howard Lutnick.  Whispered Palace Intrigue would suggest that the recent deal fell apart when Mr. Lutnick got bent out of shape over his impression that US Trade Representative Jamison Greer's dealmaking strayed onto Lutnick's turf; namely automobiles, steel and aluminum.  Imagine that; infighting among administration supplicants and sycophants.  In the mean time, the relationship with our single largest trade partner on the planet suffers and US consumers pay the price.

I cannot predict where this ends as I no longer have my crystal ball.  That said, and because we're only a couple of months from the mid-terms, I'll go out on a limb and predict Canada imposes more pain on American consumers who are already restless and grumpy about Mr. Trump's sloppy war and haphazard trade policy.  Between now and the election there will be an abundance of overblown reality television drama-style nonsense before we learn how this ends.

Meanwhile, as far as negotiation tactics go, Trump’s tariff threat hurts US automakers and consumers more than anyone else.  If anybody is under the impression that all Canadian auto and parts production will be re-shored in the US in the next four months; they are certifiably delusional.  That is a MAGA fever dream.

In closing there is this.  Further evidence that import taxes (tariffs) are ultimately paid by consumers; Mr. Trump is ostensibly and temporarily lifting them on imported beef.  And if you think temporary antics like this are a substitute for intellectually-solid trade dynamics or that the price of a Whopper is going to go down I have a bridge to sell you.

Such is the result of leaving decision-making on trade entirely in the hands of an impulsive and incurious individual.  Just like like a war in the Middle East that has gone south; you're gonna get sketchy results.... 

 

Mighty Oak

While working last weekend on the construction of a deer stand on the lean-to of the barn (granary) I spied this.

A tiny oak seedling seeking freedom thru the crack in the deck.

Imagine that.

An acorn likely gathered and secreted by a critter in its lair beneath the porch decking.

Against the foundation, middle of the deck, the acorn germinates in near darkness.

Miraculously, it seeks and follows the smallest amount of sunlight filtering through the crack.

And emerges triumphantly into daylight.

Astonishingly, this happens to be the little oak that beat nature's odds.

I'm not betting on it's long term plans for survival or its options; but I'm gonna leave it be for the present.

Some things in nature never cease to amaze me....

  

Built To Last

Located at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and Kentucky is one of Sturgeon Bay's more prominent lat 19th-century commercial buildings; the Hay Hardware Building.  I paid a call last week for an annual eye exam at Door County Eye Associates and always enjoy the tasteful blend of old architecture and a new professional suite replete with modern technology.

Hardware merchants Charles Tifft and John Hay expanded their business in Ahnapee (Algoma) to Sturgeon Bay in the 1880s.   Hay moved to Sturgeon Bay to manage the store.  The business grew in popularity with Door County farmers supplying everything from heavy agricultural supplies, nails, paint and fencing.  As the business grew, Tifft and Hay built the brick building at what was then the primary business corner of downtown at the intersection of Cedar and St. John Streets.  It opened in September of 1889.

During the economic depression of 1894 the two men parted company and John Hay assumed full ownership of the Sturgeon Bay business as Hay Hardware.  Around the turn of the century a matching brick addition as built at the rear to house a tin shop for the hardware business.  Prior to the opening of the Michigan Street Bridge in 1931 this building was downtown Sturgeon Bay's business anchor.  It operated continuously as a hardware store for ninety years before closing in 1979.   

Constructed of local stone and cream-colored brick the structure is a classic commercial design featuring an ornate corbelled brick cornice. decorative brick pilasters, six bay facade with limestone sills and lintels.  The building retains its original storefront and layout and showcases the original interior structural old-growth white pine timbers tied-together with iron rods and bolts.

                           When was the last time you saw square nuts that large?

Nowadays, the building persists as a contributor to the Third Avenue Historic District and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

And following my cataract surgery It has become brighter, clearer and more colorful  to behold.

The Changing Face Of Warfare

The other day I was sitting in my armchair thinking about lessons being learned by the grinding and ever-evolving war between Ukraine and Russia and the more recent war between the U.S. and Iran.  Armchair general stuff was swirling-about in my civilian brain.  Mostly about the asymmetric nature of the conflicts as it pertains to large, global powers going-up against smaller powers and the cost-asymmetry observed in the use of costly exquisite weapons to defeat numerous unsophisticated and cheap weapons.

Just as armor, gunpowder, artillery, naval power, the machine gun, poison gas, communications, mechanization, aircraft and mutually assured destruction changed the face of warfare; we are witness to another.    

Only last month an advanced AH-64 Apache attack chopper was downed by a loitering Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).  A $30 million aircraft defeated by an unmanned drone that costs $20,000.  The pilots survived and were pulled from the waters the the Strait of Hormuz by an unmanned drone watercraft.  Lots of technology packaged in this single incident and a huge disparity in the price of weapon systems.  

China currently produces UAVs and similar loitering drones at a scale  that is stunning.  And if we found ourselves in a shooting war over Taiwan all we got is an ever-dwindling supply of Patriot missiles to shoot them down.  At $4 million a copy.

Shooting million-dollar missiles at twenty-thousand-dollar drones is unsustainable. 

Say hello to the new face of modern warfare. 

Ukraine has embraced drone warfare in earnest; including the deployment of autonomous UAVs capable of  delivering a warhead over vast distances; all the while stalling and reversing Russian advances into their territory at a terrifying cost in Russian and North Korean lives.

    

Assembling a single modern Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor takes about a couple of years.  A solid rocket motor requires up to thirty months.  Setting-up a new assembly facility for Patriot missiles can presently take three to four years.

Ukraine assembles and delivers small FPV (First Person View) reconnaissance and kamikaze drones in a matter of hours to a couple of days.  Supply chain and procurement move an order from workshop to combat deployment in 24 to 48 hours.  Larger strategic strike UAVs and maritime drone boats requires only weeks.

Finally, there is the application of artificial intelligence to facilitate modern warfare. AI software processes real-time intelligence feeds to coordinate operations and advise targeting in single minutes and seconds.

Unmanned drones use onboard computer vision to lock-onto and strike targets independently; thereby defeating electronic jamming.  AI-enabled hardware permits inexpensive weapons systems to defeat high-value targets like tanks, missiles and ships.

Machine learning can sort thru overwhelming amounts of geospatial and signal intelligence that previously would require thousands of human analysts.  

Sadly, modern conflicts have become a test bed for rapid evolution in warfare and tactics as we've known it. 

Meanwhile, the administration has phased-out the Army's cutting edge drone warfare unit.   

And the U.S. is hesitant to allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles locally, partially to protect U.S. military intellectual property, but more so because it doesn't want Ukraine to do it better.  

Shortsighted?  Or brilliant strategy?  Judging from how the war with Iran is playing-out only time will tell.  Watch the Peter Zeihan video short to the end.  Better yet read the comments.... 

Wassup With The Fellas

If the weather holds the fellas and I plan to deploy a replacement deer stand today to replace the oldest of the factory-built steel tower stands dating-back to the early years.  If all goes according to plan I'll post photos and the backstory when I have time.

Meanwhile, there have been some other fellas showing-up on the trail cameras from time to time; those with the velvet antlers..... 

 

 

Friday Food Fun

Nick Offerman shows how easy it is to provide kids with healthy, farm-fresh snacks like pizza, taquitos, and fish sticks harvested straight off the vine. 

 Remember kids - if it comes from a plant it is healthy....