your weekly email from Tia Maria

 

ONE-WORD ESSAYS   Determination   Hope   Contemplation     Excitement   Security   Fear   Adventure   Contentment   Longevity   Curiosity   Heroism   Aspirations   Confusion   Honor   Accomplishment   Perseverance   Whimsy   Companionship   Beauty   Caring   Relating   Fruitful   Awe   Loneliness   Tradition   Tenacity   Friendship   May your troubles be less. May your blessings be more. May nothing but happiness come through your door.

lecture series of the week

women in antiquity: series of lectures.

Family News: Farms and taxes

I spent yesterday doing my income taxes.

I had most of the information but not all the W2 forms for small bank accounts etc. so if they audit me, because I didn't include the interest form from the bank to prove I "earned" $26 interest, I will have to get them from the USA.

If they want to simplify taxes for us old folks, all they have to do is say don't report under x amount of money.

Actually, my income is low so I pay no taxes, so theoretically don't have to file a tax return, but have automatic withdrawal from my pensions since they started before Lolo died, and we paid taxes back then. So now I get a refund, so I have to file to get the money.

Another way for tax reform is to stop taxing overseas income for expats. Every year there is a headline about Americans giving up their citizenship, as if this number (usually in the low thousands) is meaningful.

But a lot of folks just don't want to double pay taxes on their overseas income. DUH.

then there are legal problems if you own a business overseas.

Here in the Philippines, non citizens can't own land or business. Traditionally this is gotten around by marrying a local lady, which is why most of the Manila families who run the place have round faces and a fair complexion from their Chinese businessman ancestors.

Nowadays, a lot of US expats who married local ladies while in the military retire here and they run a business, again in their wives name.

Why not just become a citizen here? Ah, but they have a rule that if you become a citizen you have to give up your previous citizenship. So let the wife own and run the business, and if she passes, well, the kids will run it for you too.

Since I am a US citizen, that means I can't own any land here. But luckily under the law, you can't throw a widow out of here house even if she is not a citizen, so I am covered there.

One exception to the Philippine law is that our "balikbayan", returning Filipino citizens, are considered citizens, which is how Lolo, a US citizen, managed to invest much of his savings to buy back the family's rice fields that were "bought" (read "confiscated and given away") by the farmers under land reform 30 years ago.

The farmers got richer thanks to land reform, and sent their kids to school, and now have grandkids living in Manila or overseas, who don't want to go home to work the land, so a lot of the older folks are selling the fields, and we have first dibs.

The only problem? There is a limit on how much land any person can own. Families pool their resources and get around this by putting the land in the name of their kids, grandkids, and cousins, etc. etc.

and so we end up hiring farmers to work the land, often from Joy's home island in the Visayas...and for our rice business, we have arrangements to buy the rice of the nearby farmers and give them seedlings, seeds, manure, minerals, etc. to make sure they are growing it organically, not to mention helping them with the irrigation fees and threshing.

yes, the old water buffalo has been replaced by a handplow (a large roto tiller) and we thresh grain in the fields with our thresher after cutting it by hand... but now the harvesting is being done with machine too...

as for the waterbuffalo: we had two, but one died in an "accident" so we ate him. We still use them in certain fields and for vegetable crops, and to pull the thresher into wet fields where the jeep would get stuck.

So farming is evolving slowly.

I saw an "eco tourism" film on her island, about how wonderful it was and how happy and content the folks were living their traditional lifestyle.

Guess the film didn't ask how many of these content farmers had kids or relatives who left (and sent money home to pay school fees etc). And of course, the eco tourism people didn't even mention the NPA (communist militants) in the area, fighting for a better life, at least on paper.

Factoid of the day: Lost civilizations

The Luwian civilization: The missing puzzle piece in the Trojan war.

 

internet back on

So I am busy trying to get up to date in the news.

None of the news seems to be new: just rehashing old hysterical yelling at each other.

the only news here is the debate about divorce, which may become legal in the near future. Luckily for me, they recognize both overseas marriages and overseas divorces of overseas marriages (lolo was married and divorced years before I met him).


in the meanwhile, the rice harvest is going well. A big debate if the country is now growing enough rice to feed themselves or if they need to import it.

The dirty little secret is that they will import/smuggle in/bribe someone to import cheap rice anyway, meaning local farmers will again be screwed.

And Joy is busy with working with the Dept of Agriculture on the organic farming initiative. This means more expensive food, but the food will be bought by the growing middle class instead of the cheaper imported chemical filled food imported from China etc.

Internet still out.

The harvest is good, we are all okay

internet out

A rice truck hit  low electric wire down the street, pulling down all the wires for Electricity telephone and internet, plus the poll (the old one: They are replacing the wooden polls with concrete ones but this hadn't been done yet.

So no internet for two more weeks.

Lecture of the week: Terror in history

Professor Teofilo Ruiz famous course is on line (until the copyright cops find it's there

Stuff below the fold

A podcast on genesis from a story point of view: do myths proclaim lies or a deeper truth?




-----------------
a musician's story



-----------------------

KFC runs out of fresh chickens in the UK

-----------------------

question no one except Trumpie boy is asking: Why the heck didn't Obama pass gun control laws?

On the other hand, trying to hospitalize (or jail) a violent teenager or a violent schizophrenic is almost impossible in the USA. I have experience with this problem both as a doc and a parent.

so you give them drugs and counseling and cross your fingers instead of hospitalizing them, as you would have done 30 years ago.

------------------------------
three billboards wins the BAFTA awards.

heh. I didn't know the Brits made that film.

---------------------
Plane crash last week in Russia, and now one in Iran.

in our prayers.

------------------------

India just snubbed BabyTrudeau. Yeah, supporting violent independence movements has consequences, bub.

-------------------
WTF is going on in Cuba, causing hearing and brain abnormalities? JAMA article summarized at link.

--------------------------------------
how to defeat a medieval army without fighting.

------------------------

Gene therapy for a rare retinal degenerative disease.mp3
------------------------

No, PeppaPig does not cause autism.

-------------------

Blood Cobalt

StategyPage discusses the chronic civil war (and refugees and starvation and disease caused by the chaos of the war) in Central Africa, partly tribal and partly because President Kabila refuses to leave. The bishops devised a peaceplan there, but were ignored, so it appears it will continue.

The MSM ignores it (just another civil war, folks, just move on)..

But how many in the MSM will cover this: President Kabila plans to tax mining companies taking out cobalt (and copper).

February 10, 2018: Congo confirmed it intends to raise taxes on minerals as well as raise the royalty rate mining companies must pay the government. Parliament approved legislation to raise mining taxes as part of a new "mining code." ... Most of the mining companies affected are European, North American and Chinese. Cobalt will become more expensive and so will copper. Why? In 2016 the world produced an estimated 123,000 tons of cobalt and 57 percent came from Congo. ..

So what, you might say? Well this is why:

Cobalt has many uses, but it is critical in the production of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the type used to power mobile digital devices and electric vehicles...

 and who is buying all that cobalt?

China has been a major buyer of Congolese cobalt so that increase will hit Chinese manufacturers particularly hard. In the first nine months of 2017 China imported an estimated $1.2 billion worth of Congolese cobalt.

and then there is the corruption angle:

..Gecamines, the stare owned mining company, plays a key role in mismanagement and "diverting" mining revenues. Gecamines officials are beholden to the Kabila government. (Austin Bay)

WSJ article on China's growing monopoly on cobalt. that will let them be a leader in electronics.

and a few more articles on my Mugabeblog.

Space babies

David Reneke has a post saying the next astronaut on the moon may very well be a lady, because NASA has a commitment to equality.

the elephant in the room: Babies.



Some female astronauts have been committed single women or lesbians, so no problem. But what about if they want to come home and have a child?

this 2010 article from Time magazine notes that China's female astronauts will be chosen only from women who already had a child.

The reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women's fertility. "It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA's Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China." Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family planning is not disrupted.

and this being China, you can note this little observation:

But at least one authority, Zhang Jianqi, former deputy commander of the country's manned space program, has stated that the requirement stands because married women are more physically and psychologically mature.

so how about the effect of zero gravity and radiation on fertility?

UK Telegraph article (2014):

Animal experiments have shown that both male and female reproductive organs are affected by zero gravity. It is also likely that space radiation is damaging the ovaries of female astronauts and the sperm production of men. Although most astronauts have already had their families by the time they go into space, NASA is so concerned that it now offers egg and sperm freezing.

in other words, they will get around the problem by using high tech interventions.

I remember one early astronaut whose wife bore a normal child after he returned, but can't find which one. But scientists were worried at the time about mutations if sperm or ova are radiated.

And if the woman is pregnant, there are worries not only about radiation but on microgravity problems in the developing baby.

and another trivia fact: menstruation in space is a bummer, and one reason that early flights didn't include women.

and Wikipedia has an entire article on sex in space. Yes, it's wikipedia so don't quote it.

and of course, if any of them already have done "it", they are keeping quiet about it. 

--------------
update: this is an article about how high dose radiation therapy for cancer affects fertility and childbearing.

Family news update

The lesion that I thought was BCC was biopsied and turned out only to be a wart, so I don't need plastic surgery to remove it: the doctor just cauterized it.

So I bought a new tablet, actually a convertible computer with the money I had put aside from the budget for medical care.

For the last two days, I have been busy doing updates on it and learning how to use it in both regular and tablet style.

The bad news: I always used my tablet for email so had to find my passwords and put them back in.

Other family news:

My niece's skating team just came back from a competition in Austria. Who wudda thot? Guess she got it from her mom, since me and my brother tended to be klutzes.

A still small voice

according to a few Blog posts, the ladies on the View ridiculed those who "heard God's voice" as mentally ill.

True, those who "hear voices" of any sort could be having auditory hallucinations: Auditory hallucination are often a symptom found in psychotic episodes (from schizophrenia, mania, depressive psychosis,  or illness, fever, drugs, or poisons): that is, a sign of a serious mental illness.

But sometimes they are hynogogic hallucinations: From the border of sleep and awareness. This is not associated with mental illness.

however, God doesn't usually "talk" to us as in a hallucination (at least in my experience).

He talks to us in advice from others. He talks to us in coincidences. And he talks to us in the silence of our hearts when we are quiet.

Like Elijah: when told to wait for the Lord's voice, he ignored the wind, the storm, the rockslide  the earthquake and the fire. And then:

and after the fire a still small voice.

This is how most people know God's voice: it is small and it is quiet and "heard" in your heart, not a hallucination of an actual voice.

(but one note of caution:  often our own will is shouting do this or do that, so if the voice is about a decision, the wise caution to get a second person to discern if you should do it).

the still small voice is the voice of our conscience.


The best place I have seen this portrayed in a book is in the humorous books (link) about Don Camillo, a feisty priest in Northern Italy who often fights against the communist mayor, often using fists. Often at the end of the story, the priest goes to pray to Jesus on the cross, who talks back to him and often corrects him.

The Christ in the crucifix often has far greater understanding than Don Camillo for the troubles of the people, and has to constantly but gently reprimand the priest for his impatience....

According to Guareschi, priests who object to his portrayal of Don Camillo may break their staffs over his head, and Communists who object to his portrayal of Peppone may break a hammer and sickle across his back, but no one is to criticize him over Christ's voice, for that stands for his conscience.

But there are times when a person hears an actual voice and the person is not mentally ill and doesn't usually hear voices.
Often we hear this happening in times of peril or emergencies.

For example, once my father had a tire blowout when he was going 70 mph on the turnpike, and he heard a voice tell him: Pump the breaks pump the breaks. (slamming the breaks will lock them and cause a severe skid, which would have been fatal). No one in the car had said anything, but the voice saved my life and the life of my family.

Subconscious voice? An Angel? My father just shrugged and said he had prayed to "that guy" in our church for a safe trip, so he figured "that guy" told him how to control the car.

"That guy" was the saint portrayed in a statue at the front of our church, the good church father St Athanasius.

Just for nice: beautiful places to visit

------------

we are close enough to Manila to get tourism (and the homes of Manila people who build vacation houses here) and since we are near the base of the mountains so we have a lot of nature parks here. No beaches however: we are inland.

And things are getting safer.

SP has a summary of all the wars and geopolitical stuff going on here LINK

Multiculturalism

Black history month

If you want to really learn about various cultural aspects of the arts, the Library of Congress has a lot of lectures on this.



..................


lots of lectures for black history month there, on various African cultures both in Africa and in the USA or elsewhere that don't get a lot of attention: For example, the black elites, African Americans in Hollywood...about Ethiopia's history, and a a lecture on African elites in India... and overlooked leaders like Clarence Thomas or Condi Rice?

(am I the only one who thinks that the producers of "Madam Secretary" were racist for making their heroine a blond white lady? Never mind).


another source of Black History stories is the AAHIAH:

The stories of black cowboys and the Buffalo soldiers is starting to get told, but do you know the story of Stagecoach Mary?

Kenda!

-------------

Someone posted film of the latest Kenda cruise on youtube. Here is part one.

He also has a book out last year about his cases.

News below the fold

Morgan Tsvangirai has died: opposition leader who fought Robert Mugabe's tyrannical rule of Zimbabwe.



AlJ has a summary of his life LINK...

It's a dark moment for Zimbabwe. Iconic opposition leader and former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has died after a two-year battle against colon cancer. His death will remain as one of the rare moments that has united Zimbabwean politicians from across the political divide.

His loyal supporters are inconsolable at the loss of their icon, but perhaps the greatest tribute is that those from the ruling elite, who have opposed and ridiculed him as a politician, have shown him respect.

Tsvangirai has, without doubt, been one of the greatest and most influential political figures in Zimbabwean history. He has always fought for the underdog, starting his activism as a trade unionist while working in a nickel mine.

no, not as earth shaking as finding a few Russians trolled Facebook but in the long run more important for the people of Zimbabwe.

As I pointed out earlier: The real heroes are not fake silicon valley type Marvel universe heroes, but those who actually put their life on their line for their people.

wars around the world podcast

StrategyPage podcast discusses 2017

and one of their articles notes that the real danger is the ISIS widows.

Finally a black superhero

 

Well, we had lots of Tarzan/Phanthom/She type white heroes ruling in over black populations, often using advanced tech to do it. So I guess I shouldn't worry that the Panther is using high tech,
( probably bought from China who is trying to get dibs on all the African rare minerals).

but I had to laugh at the modern pushup bras worn by the lovely ladies in the dances.

And I wonder: is the Panther Bantu, Nilotic (like Papa Obama) or Masai?

supposedly he united five tribes, but the name of the country suggests a Bantu origin.

but with all the Nollywood talent out there, why are the set designers etc seem to have western names? (African-Americans are considered Americans in Africa, because the culture is different).

The design of the movie’s setting—the fictional African nation of Wakanda—mostly comes from production designer Hannah Beachler (Moonlight, Beyoncé’s Lemonade) and costume designer Ruth Carter (Amistad, Selma). “The challenge was imagining how something futuristic looks in Africa,”

then I ran into this:

Beachler says. “What would Africans have done given reign over their own culture, without having been colonized?

Uh, presumably she never heard of Ethiopia?

The cultures of Cush and Ethiopia go back 5000 years, with links to Egypt and the Middle East. Memnon was at Troy, for example. Ancient Egypt, and although traditional Egyptians were mixed race, the pharoahs got their bowmen from there, and they had pyramids, and their own script (one of the "undeciphered scripts alas). They almost took over Egypt during the Hyksos era, and later did take over Egypt. Black Pharohs? yup. The latest kerfuffle is if Nefertiti was Black: Probably not, but since her husband Ahkenatan's mom came from a "military" family, she might have been From Cush. (And Ahkenatan was the dad of King Tut).

One more comment:, the "advanced civilization" seems to be very European/tech oriented, as in Silicon Valley. Fancy trains and super powers.

Uh, what about sewers, midwives, medicine for high blood pressure, insecticides? African culture places emphasis on family ties and cooperation and care for their sick and elderly. Did the producers put any of this into their "advanced" civilization, or is "advanced" defined as techology and power?

yes I know: it's the Marvel Universe. So give them a break.

as for superheroes: Yes Nollywood has done that. 

but I probably won't see the movie until it hits HBO, and even then I may pass. I am not into the superhero genre: the last one I saw was Wonderwoman because my granddaughter wanted to see it and I was "duh".

Never mind.

The real super heroes in Africa:

Dr Vadgama Harsh, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, operates on a patient at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret on April 10, 2017.. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA | NATION MEDIA GROUP 

Family News

Robin just landed in Korea: no, not for the Olympics, but to visit her son who is learning the Korean language (he already knows Mandarin and of course, English, but not Tagalog, since he was born in the US).

I am old enough to remember a poor Korea with refugees etc after the war, but now it is a vacation spot: not just nature areas, but for shopping.


Robin is a textile artist and will probably shop for interesting textiles.

When Ruby was there, it was shopping shopping, shopping.

Ah, but if I went, it would be to visit the historical sites where all those wonderful  K-Dramas are filmed. (with those gorgeous costumes)



Sigh.

Back on the home front: The rice harvest is almost over.
The main street is having holes dug in the middle to put up barriers and street lights in the middle of the street. Since there is so much congestion, one wonders if this will make it worse, but I suspect they will also stop double parking and going the wrong direction, stuff that tends to block traffic.

I went to get a haircut, but the only one in town who can decently cut my fine thin hair is off, so instead we went to the "Ukayukay" used clothing shop in the Palenke owned by a local Muslim lady, who usually has some larger sizes in her inventory. I Bought some used teeshirts and shorts: If they don't fit, the maid is slightly smaller than I am. And she was with me and bought a couple pieces too.

I have read a few complaining articles about used clothing and charity clothing "sold" to those evil entrepeneurs who resell them in Asia, undercutting the local industries.

This is a bunch of crap.

The cheap Chinese imports under price our local industries anyway.

Usually you see a dressmaker for good clothing or the local style of blouses and skirts for church, school, or work. Also for gowns for parties and dances.

The only other clothing made here are blouses or those wonderful cool house dresses (similar to mumus) that everyone loves to wear at home.

But here in the provinces we usually just wear jeans (or shorts) and tee shirts on the street: some "ukayukay", but often just cheap imports sold in the Palenke (open air market).

In other news: My new computer works great, but my tablet died. I'll have to buy a new one, alas.

But not now: I have to go to Manila to see the Dermatologist to get another lesion evaluated.

Medicare won't pay for stuff in the Philippines, but I do have Phil Health and enough savings to pay if I again need Mohs surgery (plastic surgery) on the lesion. The last surgery cost less than 2 thousand dollars for all the visits, so I can afford it.

But it does mean putting off buying a new tablet for now, since I tend to keep myself on a strict budget when it comes to "luxuries".

Attention California Gourmets

DaveBarry also reports that 20 pound rodents are invading California.

Weighing in at 20 pounds and measuring 2 feet, 6 inches long, plus a 12-inch tail, the nutria live in or near water. They're also incredibly destructive.
“They burrow in dikes, and levees, and road beds, so they weaken infrastructure, (which is) problematic for flood control systems,” California Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Peter Tira said.

and apparently also Louisiana, and BoingBoing suggests just eat them and no problem.




and for the real question of the week: Can you eat them for Lent?

Well, you can eat Beaver and Capybara (and alligator), but I don't know about Nutria or Cuy or Nigerian rats.

lots of people have weird ideas about why no meat in Lent, but I suspect part of it is that meat was a luxury for the rich and used in parties and fietas, and fish was eaten by the poor in the early church. So the church would easily give permission for the poor to eat their usual foods.

Also in Spanish lands, they have long been allowed to be dispensed from the rule. My sons and husband were not aware of the meat free Fridays...

nowadays, of course, that "rule" no longer exists except for Good Friday and Ash Wednesday.

Female mutant crayfish clones

forget the teenaged mutant ninja turtles: The latest WAGD threat to the world are Female Mutant Crayfish clones.

According to a new study published in Nature, Ecology and Evolution, the all-female marbled crayfish reproduces by cloning at a rapid rate, earning it comparisons to the fictional Tribble alien-species on Star Trek. "If you have one animal, essentially, three months later, you will have 200 or 300," Wolfgang Stein, a neurophysiologist at Illinois State University 

 via Dave Barry

apparently, some Germans put them in their aquariums, and then, voila, they had babies, and more babies, and...
ended up thrown out into streams and lakes there.

where the continued to lay hundreds of eggs which turned into more crabs.

NYTimes reports on the species, which has spread to several countries including Madagascar, causing havoc.

But the big question: are they edible?

Yes, but they are so small that they probably aren't worth trying to cook them.

Yum! Crawdads

wikipedia on crayfish as food... usually you only eat the tail, but can eat the claw if it is large enough.

UK Guardian on how to gather and eat signal crawfish, an invasive species in the UK.. watch out for those claws.

how to eat boiled Crayfish.

so can you eat all those eggs as sushi? We eat the eggs found when we open lobsters and prawns to eat, so why not?



in the USA, crawfish, aka crawdads, are associated with Cajun culture of New Orleans. And it is Mardi Gras time, so sing along:

The Southern Cross

DavidReneke has an article on the Southern Cross, a constellation beloved of those living in the Southern hemisphere.

And he explains that the brightest star at the bottom of the constellation is actually a more than one star:

Acrux is about 321 light-years from Earth, and in fact it is not one star but two nearly identical B-class stars. These can be resolved in a small telescope, making Acrux a nice double, but they appear as a single star to the unaided human eye. The brighter of the two — call it Alpha-1, is magnitude 1.33 and the dimmer — call it Alpha-2 –1.73, with a resultant magnitude of 0.77. ,,,

  To make things even more complicated, it appears that Alpha-1 is in fact a double star, whose components’ combined masses are about 24 times that of the sun. Alpha-2 is a single star about 13 times as massive as the sun. Acrux’s position is RA: 12h 26m 35s, dec: -63° 05′ 57″. Source: Earth and Sky

he says that MarkTwain wasn't impressed when he saw it, but when I worked in Africa, at night I could see it in the south, hanging in the sky over the distant slag heap from an asbestos mine 20 milessouth of us. This is the closet photo to what I remember seeing:

Can we see it from here? no. Presumably we are too far north to see it.

but in the past, those in the northern hemisphere could indeed view the constellation:

 here is another factoid about the constellation. from GlobeAtNight:

Crux was visible to the Ancient Greeks, who regarded it as part of the constellation Centaurus. At the latitude of Athens in 1000 BC, Crux was clearly visible, though low in the sky. However, the precession of the equinoxes gradually lowered Crux’s stars below the European horizon, and they were eventually forgotten by the inhabitants of northern latitudes. By AD 400, most of the constellation never rose above the horizon for Athenians.

Sounds about right

the curse of modern medicine: in the old days, you did an exam, talked a bit about trivia with the patient, and on your chart wrote: Cold. Penicillin.

 Leaving out negative stuff in the exam (such as the secondary infection why you gave her the penicillin) and not mentioning that most of the visit was spent discussing the mom's depression because she had a cheating husband or kid taking drugs.

Nowadays, penicillin is a no no, but instead of chatting with your patient, you spend most of the visit "documenting" everything, and you never do get around to discussing the real reason she came to see you for a simple cold (to complain about her cheating husband or kid).

because paper work is now king.

and I retired ten years ago, before Obama care made it worse.

Epidemics? nothing new under the sun

Instapundit linked to a NYPost article on 7 ways to stop a plague.

don't bother to read it: it is a WAGD (we're all gonna die) post with an agenda:

Sadly, epidemic prevention doesn’t currently seem to be a priority for the US government. In February, the CDC announced they would need to cut their global disease-prevention efforts by 80 percent due to lack of funding.

all over the internet: WAPO here.

one wonders if this is true, or similar to the "Banned words" kerfuffle a couple months ago that turned out to be fake news.

what was cut was an Obamacare part of the funding
i.e. for bureaucrats to implement programs to investigate stuff that affect people.

and most of it is not for infectious diseases or epidemics, but for programs for the elderly, stuff that families used to do when there were still families out there (diabetes prevention, chronic disease self care, alzheimer's prevention, prevent falling are three examples). I mean, I support breastfeeding, but 8 million dollars to promote it? 126 million to stop smoking, fine: but where is that money going?

Oh yes, some of it is actually about epidemics: 300 million to make sure kids get their shots, and 40 million to help smaller places to get lab access to check for disease.

But most, I suspect, will go to a bloated bureaucracy, where most of the funding goes to pencil pushers, and good folks spend a lot of time in meetings and in "documentation" or "writing proposals".

To Know A Fly is a humorous novel about scientific research, and shows that even 50 years ago, how much time was wasted in getting money:

It is believed in some quarters that to become a successful modern biologist requires a college education and a substantial grant from the Federal Government. The college education not infrequently is as useful for acquiring proficiency in the game of Grantsmanship as it is for understanding biology.

No self-respecting modern biologist can go to work without money for a secretary, a research associate, two laboratory assistants, permanent equipment, consumable supplies, travel, a station wagon for field collecting, photographic supplies, books, animals, animal cages, somebody to care for the animals, postage, telephone calls, reprints, and last, but by no means least, a substantial sum (called overhead) to the university to pay for all the stenographers hired to handle all the papers and money transactions that so big a grant requires.

sounds about right.

I have a longer post about my experience with this at my medical blog.

You think the VA has problems? Try the IHS.