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Daynotes
Journal
Week of 28 February 2011
Latest
Update: Sunday, 6 March 2011 10:10 -0500 |
09:46
-
Disturbing article in the paper this morning about health inspections
of North Carolina restaurants. Of about 375,000 inspections, nearly all
of them resulted in an A rating. Only about 5,000 of them resulted in C
ratings, and only 17 of the 375,000 resulted in failing ratings. Nor is
this a matter of inspectors being bribed or going too easy on the
restaurants they're inspecting. The inspectors are actually constrained
by regulation from awarding low grades to restaurants that any normal
person would award a failing rating. Apparently, it's actually not just
possible but routine for restaurants infested with cockroaches to
receive A ratings. I suspect other states are similarly lax.
With my self-imposed deadline of 15 May to start shipping the
microchemistry kits, I'm going to a 4:3 schedule. Mondays through
Thursdays I'll devote to the home biology book. Fridays and the
weekends will be devoted to the microchemistry kit. There's really not
that much left to do on the microchemistry kits, other than
administrative details. The documentation needs a bit of polishing, and
I need to pick up a few final pieces locally. Stuff like copper wire,
steel wool, cotton balls, toothpicks, and so on.
Next weekend,
we'll build a bench in the unfinished area of the basement, which'll
serve as a staging area for assembling the kits.
10:25
- Barbara sent me a link to a video of Paige the Border Collie making breakfast. It's currently on the top of the playlist on Paige's YouTube channel.
Other breeds can be trained; Border Collies can be educated.
(Incidentally, those of you who aren't dog owners probably assume that
after the video ended Lauren gave the waffle to Paige or threw it away;
I'm betting Lauren ate it herself. Well, I'm sure she gave Paige part
of it.)
According to my 4:3 schedule, I should be working on
biology lab stuff today, but I was in the middle of a lab session on
synthesizing esters for the microchemistry kit so I decided to finish
it up. Maybe I'll whip up some isoamyl acetate, which smells like
bananas. It also attracts bees from great distances and excites them
into a stinging frenzy. Years ago, I suggested isoamyl acetate
incorporated into suntan lotion as a subtle murder weapon to novelist
Peter Robinson, but I guess he decided not to use it.
Free Kindle ebook of the day: Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World
10:27
-
What is it about US politicians, who always seem to act first and think
later, if ever? Just because Libya is in turmoil doesn't mean the US
has to do anything about it. At most, the US government should concern
itself with getting our own people out of there, which has apparently
been done. Why, then, have we moved a carrier and other assets
into position off the Libyan coast? What happens in Libya is none of
our business, and certainly not our responsibility. I don't really care
what happens in Libya, or Egypt, or anywhere else in islam. I don't
like any of
the sides, and it doesn't matter much which ends up on top. They all
hate us anyway.
Ultimately,
I think it comes down to the old saying about when all you have is a
hammer. We have lots of hammers. They're called carrier strike groups.
They cost an unbelievable amount of money to build and maintain, so I
guess our politicians feel compelled to use them. The only thing
they're good for is projecting power to influence events in other
countries, which is something we shouldn't be doing anyway.
With
all this talk about the budget crisis, I have an obvious suggestion:
let's mothball all or at least most of those carrier strike groups. We
have 11 of them now, which is about 9 or 10 too many. Maybe keep one or
two active just in case someone really pisses us off. In addition to
the obvious money savings, direct and indirect, that would also greatly
reduce our ability to intervene in things that are none of our business.
While
we're at it, we need to be looking at other serious cuts in the
so-called defense budget, which is at least 10 times larger than it
should be. The truth is, we don't have a defense budget; we have an
offense budget. Or, more properly, an intervention budget. We should be
spending only enough to protect the US from invasion, which can be
accomplished for a tiny fraction of what we spend now. We also need to
maintain deterrent capabilities, for which we need only warheads and
the means to deliver them. Turning a target into a smoking heap of
rubble is sufficient; we don't need to be able to put forces on the
ground, let alone keep them there for years on end.
07:59
-
This is a bit disconcerting. I download ebooks from Amazon to my
computer rather than directly to my Kindle, mainly because I don't
trust the cloud and prefer to keep a local copy. I also keep Wi-Fi
turned off on my Kindle, both because having it on reduces battery life
and because I really don't want Amazon fiddling around with my Kindle.
So,
the other night, I'd downloaded several ebooks to the computer in my
office but I was in the den. Rather than go find the USB cable to link
my Kindle to the computer, I just turned on Wi-Fi and re-downloaded the
books directly to my Kindle. I then turned off Wi-Fi, turned off the
Kindle, and put it in the rack next to the display for my den system.
As I was sitting there browsing the web or checking email, the Kindle
turned itself on and displayed a message that it was downloading a
software update. I watched it for several minutes as it downloaded and
installed the update and then rebooted and shut itself off. Hmmm.
I
then picked up the Kindle and turned it on. When it came up to my home
page, all of my books were gone. Fortunately, they weren't really gone.
After two or three seconds, the list repopulated. Still, I don't like
the fact that Amazon is controlling my Kindle remotely, nor the fact
that they may be looking at what books I have installed on it. Why did
my list of books disappear even momentarily? Was Amazon verifying that
I was entitled to have those books and checking to see if it wanted to
delete any of them? Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but I really don't like
this.
11:22
-
I'm working on the home biology book, and I just added another chemical
to the list for both it and the microchemistry kit. It's starch
indicator solution, which is used in iodometric titrations. Until now,
I'd just told readers to use water that pasta, potatoes, rice or
another starchy food had been boiled in. That's easy enough to do--add
a few grains of rice to a test tube half full of water and boil it for
a couple of minutes--but it's one more task that needs to be done
before they get to the good stuff. Also, homemade starch water doesn't
keep for long, even stored in the refrigerator.
So I decided
just to include it in the kits. It's easy enough to make up. Just make
a paste of 10 grams of soluble starch in a little cold water,
add a liter of boiling water and boil for a few minutes, cool,
filter if necessary, and finally add a few crystals of thymol as a
preservative. That stabilized 1% starch solution keeps reasonably well,
particularly if refrigerated, but I'll probably fill 80 or 120 15 mL
centrifuge tubes at a time, put them in wet-dry racks, and
autoclave them. That way, they'll stay good forever until opened, after
which they can be refrigerated or even frozen.
08:20
- Now, this is disgusting: Fecal Matter Found on 72 Percent of Grocery Carts
I guess the next time we go to Costco we'll have to remember to
take along hand sanitizer and wipe down the handle of our cart. When I
mentioned this to Barbara, she told me that all the local supermarkets
have sanitary wipes at the door so that people can wipe the grocery
cart handles. I'd never even thought about this problem, but apparently
others have.
Barbara and I have been watching In Plain Sight
on Netflix streaming. It's a decent program, well-written and with good
acting. It's set in Albuquerque and features federal marshals who
operate the witness protection program. They relocate and babysit
witnesses, and frequently investigate murders and attempted murders of
these witnesses.
I've mentioned before that in science
pronunciation is often a matter of opinion, with different scientists
pronouncing some words in distinctly different ways and no one thinking
twice about those variations. For example, I pronounce the common
chemical phenol as fen-all, with equal emphasis on the syllables, but
it's also commonly pronounced feen-all, fenn-ohl, feen-ohl, and
probably other ways, with differing emphasis on the syllables. And I
pronounce the common indicator phenolphthalein as feen-all-thay-lein,
which is one of literally a dozen ways I've heard it pronounced.
Another example I mentioned in the biology book is the very common
biological stain hematoxylin, which is properly pronounced
hee-matt-oh-ZYE-linn, but which many biologists pronounce
hee-muh-TOX-uh-linn. And, as I said, no one thinks twice about these
differing pronunciations. It's probably all how one's first professor
pronounced something.
But every once in a great while, something
grates on me. During that episode last night, it turned out that their
witness had been poisoned by aconitine, which is one of the alkaloids
in monkshood. The proper pronunciation is ack-oh-NYE-teen, derived from
another common name for monkshood, aconite. (The Greeks used it under
that name to poison spear and arrow tips.) But throughout the episode,
the characters pronounced aconitine as uh-KAWN-uh-teen. Not once or
twice, mind you, but probably 20 or 30 times. The first time, it took
me a moment to realize what they were talking about. After that, it
just jarred.
A local
teacher has just been convicted of taking nude photographs of a
14-year-old girl, one of his students. I think we can all agree that
this SOB should be fired and never allowed to teach again. However, the
penalty he actually faces is so grossly excessive I think it's probably
unconstitutional. He hasn't been sentenced yet, but he's facing a
prison term of 60 years. He could have murdered the girl in cold
blood and probably been sentenced to only half that, and been out in 15
years with good behavior. Ultimately, it all comes back to the
religious nutters' fear and loathing of anything to do with sex.
13:31
- Barbara brought me Ken Follett's latest, Fall of Giants,
from the library. At nearly 1,000 pages, 320,000 words, and about 1.5
kilos, it's a brick. So I went over to Amazon, hoping without any real
expectation to find a Kindle version at a reasonable price. I'd have
paid $2.99 for it, grudgingly, although $0.99 would be more reasonable.
(I was expecting it to be priced at $9.99 or thereabouts.)
But the moron publisher has priced the ebook at $19.99, $1.24 more
than Amazon charges for the hardcover pbook. NFW am I or any
reasonable person going to pay twenty bucks for a fiction ebook. They
could have had $2.99 from me, but they didn't want it. Bizarrely, they
seem to believe that the alternatives are to pay $20 or not have the
ebook, when of course in reality the alternatives are to pay $20 or to
have it for $0.
I just checked. It took me literally 12 seconds
to find a free copy of that book for the Kindle. I didn't bother to
download it because I'm already most of the way through the pbook. But
you can be sure that a lot more people will download that file for free
than will pay $20 for it. Most people don't re-read books, and
publishers need to realize that they're not really selling a copy of
the book; they're doing the equivalent of streaming a music track or a
video. And they need to price it on that basis.
It's interesting
to watch the publishing industry commit suicide, just as the music
industry has been doing. And, just as there is no shortage of talented
musicians selling their work directly to their fans, there's no
shortage of talented novelists doing the same.
10:10
-
Traditionally-published authors are quickly disappearing from the
Amazon Kindle Top 100 paid list. As of yesterday, there were 77 fiction
books in the Top 100. Of those, 29 were by indie authors, or about
3/8ths. Contrast that to just a few months ago, when almost no indie
authors were making the Top 100 list.
The reality is actually
more impressive for indies. Amazon lists are time-weighted to
something like 40% hour, 30% day, 20% week, and 10% month, which means
it takes longer to get onto the Top 100 list and longer to fall off of
it. Traditional publishers were having a big sale recently, which has
now ended. They were selling titles by their heavy hitters for $0.99 to
$4.99, and many of those titles were high in the rankings. They've now
raised the prices on those books back into the $7.99 to $14.99 range,
which will cut their unit sales volumes by a factor of 10 to 100, if
not more. For example, Alone by Lisa Gardner is currently at #2, priced at $7.99. But the only reason she's at #2 is that until a couple of days ago Alone
was priced at $0.99. A week from now, she'll be lucky to remain in the
Top 100, and a month from now she'll be gone. So, in reality, if we
could get an instant snapshot of Amazon's Top 100 at this point, indie
authors would probably make up more than 50% of fiction titles.
If
I were a traditionally-published big-name author, I'd be pissed,
because I'd know that I'm not going to remain a big-name author for
long if my publisher insists on pricing my ebooks at levels that ensure
they'll sell in small numbers. Just two authors, Amanda Hocking and
John Locke, both of them indie, hold 13 of those top 77 positions all
by themselves, with a mix of books priced at $0.99 to $2.99. They're
well on their way to becoming the new Pattersons and Grishams and
Cornwells and Larsons. The old ones will be just fading memories.
The
growth of indie authors would be even faster if it weren't for the
perception problem. As I said to Barbara this morning, many people
tacitly assume that the musicians promoted by the major labels must be
the best of the best and that indie musicians must be inferior. Of
course, nothing could be further from the truth. There are scads of
indie musicians out there who are as good as or better than the
big-name musicians. The same is true of indie authors, as Hocking and
Locke are proving. I've never read anything by either of them, but I'd
be very surprised if their combined sales of about 30,000 books per day
is pure luck. They're obviously good story-tellers, and they're
providing value for money. The traditional publishers aren't. Case
closed.
Copyright
© 1998,
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,
2011
by
Robert
Bruce
Thompson. All
Rights Reserved.