09:30 – I need to decide what to do with our Netflix subscription. Right now, we’re paying $10/month for unlimited streaming and one disc at a time. As of our anniversary date on 26 September, that jumps to $16/month if I do nothing. I’ll probably bump it to $20/month for unlimited streaming and two discs at a time.
Netflix really miscalculated when they introduced the $10/month plan, which was $8/month for streaming and $2/month for the one disc at a time. I think they assumed that most people on that plan would watch nearly all streaming, and get an occasional disc to fill in gaps. What we did, and what I suspect most people on that plan did, was the opposite: watch DVDs as much as possible and fill in with streaming. As a result, Netflix was sending us about eight discs a month for that $2, or $0.25 per disc. Given that Netflix had to pay postage both ways, and considering DVD acquisition costs and handling expenses, Netflix was probably losing at least $10/month on us, and probably a similar amount on many of their $10/month customers. That obviously couldn’t go on, so Netflix put a stop to it.
Netflix has been pushing streaming heavily for obvious reasons. Delivering an hour of streaming costs them maybe $0.05, including content and transmission costs, while delivering an hour of content on disc costs them an order of magnitude more. If I were Netflix, I’d continue to increase prices, both for streaming and discs. Streaming, so they can afford to buy more streaming content. Discs, because they want to discourage people from renting discs. Additional revenue will allow Netflix to expand their streaming options dramatically. And price increases won’t lose them many customers. What, after all, are the alternatives?
While they’re at it, I think Netflix should introduce a separately-priced streaming channel or channels for live sports. Netsportz? Assuming that only 20% of their members sign up at, say, $20/month, that’s still more than $100 million/month in revenue. They could buy a lot of live sports for $100 million a month. And, of course, a lot more than 20% of their membership would probably sign up for an all-sports Netflix channel, and they’d probably be willing to pay more than $20/month.
Work on the biology lab book and kits continues. We have quite a few chemistry kits in stock now and components to build a bunch more, so we can forget about chemistry kits until stock gets low. I’m prototyping a biology kit now. There are lots of decisions to make. Some of them seem minor, but have implications. For example, do I include a sleeve of plastic Petri dishes, which are inexpensive but cannot be reused, or do I include two (or three or four) glass Petri dishes, which are fragile, much more expensive, and require autoclaving, but can be reused indefinitely? The problem is, which is the better choice depends on the person who’s buying the kit. For many homeschoolers, the plastic Petri dishes would be better. They’re cheaper, more convenient, and pre-sterilized. For others, who might do a lot of culturing, the glass Petri dishes are the better choice. I’m inclined to think that the latter group are in a small minority, so right now I’m leaning toward the plastic dishes. What I may do is offer an optional separate culturing kit with glass Petri dishes, several types of agar, and so on.
11:07 – In case you’re wondering what happened to the title in today’s entry, WordPress screwed me again. I’d entered a title and most of the text, at which point Colin started bugging me to go out. So I clicked the Save Draft icon. WordPress, instead of saving, blew me all the way out to the login screen. I logged in, and found my entry was truncated in the middle of the second paragraph. So I used Firefox’s back button to return to what I’d entered. I finished the entry and posted it. I *know* that entry had the title, because I looked before I clicked the Publish button. But for some reason WordPress kept the entry but lost the title.
Unfortunately, that’s nothing unusual for WordPress, which is extremely unstable, at least on my hosting service. I frequently get error messages when I try to save a post, and even more frequently when I’m using the Tools section of the dashboard to backup my site from the server to my local machine. I use WordPress only because my new hosting service offered a one-click install, but I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a better system available.
My decision on the Petri dishes was made for me. I have two or three vendors from whom I can buy them. All of them ship in packs of 10. Presumably, those factory packs are well protected against breakage, but I have no desire to try to package individual Petri dishes. I sure don’t want to allocate the cost of 10 Petri dishes to each kit. Even if they were free, that’d be too many Petri dishes and too much room in the package. So I’ll go with a sleeve of plastic Petri dishes. I may or may not create a separate dedicated culturing kit. If I do, it’ll include a factory pack of 10 glass Petri dishes. I will probably list the kit contents as six Petri dishes, with a note that we actually include 10, but allow for 40% breakage. That way, if someone does get all 10 unbroken, they get more than they expected.
12:39 – Hmmm. I may have screwed Dr. Koonin big time. I noticed his free book on a list from irreaderreview.com. Chances are, not a lot of people who are interested in evolutionary/molecular biology read that list. But I had to go and tell Jerry Coyne, who has a large international readership, nearly all of whom are interested in evolutionary/molecular biology. Then PZ Myers, who has a gigantic international readership–he probably gets more visits in an hour than I get in a week–sees the announcement on Jerry’s site and posts a link on his own site to Dr. Koonin’s free book. Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins, who makes PZ look like small potatoes, also sees the announcement on Jerry’s site. I don’t know if he’s posted about it, but if he has, between Coyne, Myers and Dawkins, it’s unlikely that anyone on the planet who has much interest in evolutionary/molecular biology is unaware that Koonin’s book is available for free.
I just checked Amazon, and Koonin’s book is now in the Top Ten. Not the Top Ten biology books or even the Top Ten science books. The Top Ten among all books on Amazon. That means Koonin’s book is probably “selling” thousands of copies per day. And everyone on the planet who has any interest in the subject probably has a free copy by now, leaving Koonin’s remaining market as only people who are not interested in his book.
RBT wrote: “What I may do is offer an optional separate culturing kit with glass Petri dishes, several types of agar, and so on.”
This would be my suggestion. I suspect you’ll find that many homeschoolers will buy one book/kit and share, and would likely go for the glass Petri dishes. Many of them are fervent recyclers (at least in my neck of the woods), and have a preference for items that can be re-used.
Regarding the Petri dishes, yes, definitely go with a plastic set for the ordinary kit. For the glass ones, I as a notional home-schooling parent wouldn’t know how to sterilize them except to pop them in the pressure canner. I’m pretty sure the average household doesn’t have an autoclave.
A pressure cooker *is* an autoclave. Small differences in temperature make large differences in sterilization times. You’ll sometimes read that 100C won’t kill spores. The truth is, it will, but it takes a long, long time to do it. In a 15PSI pressure cooker, water boils at 121C, which kills spores (and everything else) in a few minutes.
Hmm. I thought there was more to it than that. It’s a good thing that I’d already acknowledged that my ignorance is legion, or my face sure would be red now.
I’d only ever seen the box-type autoclaves that look like kitchen microwave ovens (currently near the top of this page: http://www.nextag.com/autoclave/compare-html) but in looking down the page, some of them sure look like pressure cookers or canners. I’m guessing that the 10x price multiple is because these are medical devices rather than everyday houseware.
Re your WordPress problem; I’ve never experienced a similar problem, nor have I had any reports from the various people I’ve set up WordPress for. There is an auto-save in WordPress editing mode; you can see the autosaves below the editing area (if you have that option enabled in the ‘screen options’ dialog when editing a post.
So I’d have to disagree with your statement that “WordPress is extremely unstable”. The current version works just fine; and has for several versions prior.
The only problem I have had with a WordPress installation is with one customer that used a ‘related posts’ plugin (not the core WP code) that used some vulnerable code (the “TimThumb” problem). As long as some basic precautions are taken (strong passwords, renaming the account called ‘admin’, updating core code and the plugins, etc), I’ve found WordPress to be quite stable and secure.
Regards, Rick….
Oh, there are other factors, not least that a lot more pressure cookers are sold than autoclaves. A good autoclave is programmable and offers various pre-programmed sequences for sterilizing various types of objects and materials. It may also offer various pressure (temperature) settings so that you can use a higher temperature on objects/materials that will stand it in return for shorter sterilization times. Given my choice, I’d definitely choose a real autoclave, but the truth is that for home biology a pressure cooker from Wal*Mart is perfectly usable at a small fraction of the price.
Oops … Richard Dawkins has definitely posted about Dr. Koonin’s book. Hope Koonin can leverage the wide coverage later on …
In some cases, medical tools and equipment carry a high price solely because it’s medical equipment. I used to know a pathologist, who used old kitchen knives and garden pruners when performing an autopsy. I even questioned him on the practice. He showed me the catalog of the equipment “designed” for his job, and lo, they looked just like normal pruners, only in stainless steel, and literally one hundred times the cost.
Question on the sterilization. I know that steam and heat are the purpose of the autoclave with the pressure merely to raise the boiling point of water. What is wrong with dry heat, say an oven at 150(c) degrees? Would that not have the same effect or is moisture really necessary for home use? I know some items would not survive the heat but surely a glass petri dish would be able to handle 150(c). I also know that the steam is used as it transmits heat much better than air and so sterilization is quicker. But is speed really necessary for home use?
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with dry sterilization. I often sterilize (glass) Petri dishes by putting them in the oven at 450F for half an hour or so. But dry heat is much less effective/efficient than steam. To sterilize as quickly as steam at 121C does, you’d have to use either a much higher dry temperature or extend the time considerably. That’s assuming that the object can tolerate it. I often sterilize polypropylene tubes, for example. They can tolerate 121C steam, but they can’t stand up to much higher temperatures that’d be needed for dry heat sterilization.
Also, there’s the inconvenient fact that water boils at 100C, give or take depending on pressure and solutes. No matter how hot the oven, the temperature of the boiling liquid won’t get any higher at normal pressure. Spores are resistant to heat, and if you don’t kill them they’ll germinate in your agar plate or whatever. (There is actually a cunning way to get around this, called Tyndall sterilization. Basically, you sterilize at 100C, which kills everything but the spores. You then incubate to allow the spores to germinate, and then sterilize again at 100C to kill the incubated spores. Repeat this two or three times and all the spores will have germinated and been killed.)
But the real problem is getting sterile conditions at 100C. Instead of autoclaving at 121C for 30 minutes, you might have to keep the culture containers at 100C for literally days to be sure everything was dead.
We just visited the local bunker, um, American Embassy to renew various passports. This is an adventure we must embark on every couple of years, because children’s passports must be renewed in person, with both parents in attendence.
It’s an adventure that absolutely requires the attitude: You’ve gotta laugh, or else you’ll cry. I encourage my kids to look at it as rare entertainment: security theater at its best.
As long as I have lived here, you have not been allowed to take any belongings into the embassy. No electronics, including mobile phones – this despite the fact that the process can take a couple of hours – and both parents are present and might want to be reachable for their jobs, or perhaps for other children. No backpacks – women are not even allowed to take their purses in.
It used to be that you deposited your belongings with the security guard in the entry area. The last time, they had gotten really paranoid, and erected a small building in front of the embassy where you left your belongings.
This time, we showed up a few minutes ahead of our appointment, only to be informed that our bags were not allowed on the premises at all. We were instructed to find someplace outside the embassy to leave them. For example, one could walk 10 minutes to the train station, rent a locker, and leave them there. As it turned out, a local bakery about 5 minutes away has seen a business opportunity, and will hold your bags for $4.00 per bag.
I won’t bother describing the rest of the security procedures. They haven’t changed from my last rant a couple of years ago, but they are just as over-the-top as you might expect. Oh, perhaps one new aspect: one family came with two infants. They were not allowed to take any liquids into the embassy: no bottles, no milk, no juice. Two infants, a couple of hours wait, nothing to drink, a sure recipe for happiness.
The individual people in the embassy are all very friendly, but the system they work within is just insane. Security über alles. Is this the face America wants to present to the world? Laugh, or cry?
Assuming that only 20% of their members sign up at, say, $20/month, that’s still more than $100 million/month in revenue. They could buy a lot of live sports for $100 million a month.
Not really. The contracts for any of the big 3 pro sports are bigger than that. The NFL gets $4 billion per year for TV rights. Even college football costs tens of millions per year per conference. Plus they have to pay the production costs of the games. DirecTV pays about $1 billion/year for their NFL package and charges $334.99 for it. The tv rights for the #4 sport, NASCAR, went for $800 million/year.
Could Netflix get into the market? Maybe, but they would need deep, deep pockets to do it.
Brad’s experience ditto’s mine in Berlin. At first, when we arrived just a couple months after 9-11, there had been no changes. It was necessary to visit the embassy more frequently in the beginning, and anyone was allowed in with anything but a bonafide camera. However, that changed, until it was the same as what Brad just described. Last time I was there, they would still stow your cell phone, but do not come with anything other than the papers you will need, or you will be sent away. And they do not tell you that, until you have waited in line to reach the inspection area.
Meanwhile, the whole compound–which used to be very open–was eventually surrounded by barbed wire (the razor kind like they use around prisons), the parking lane at the street had first been closed to parking by no parking signs, then it was entirely eliminated by barriers placed in the street, so no one could use it at all. Berlin police appeared on duty walking back and forth in front of the building during business hours, then a hut was built and it was manned by Berlin police 24/7. To enter the US embassy, you had to be first scrutinized by Berlin police, then subjected to US military inspection.
The place was originally constructed with one entrance, but they built a little inspection and shakedown area off to the side. Boy, do NOT get confused and think you can go into the main entrance which is the prominent feature of the building (there is nothing and nobody telling you the circuitous path you must take–except if you happen to see the people in front of you go the right way). A poor woman (who was not an American and spoke neither German or English) went the wrong way last time I was there, and she was hauled off by Berlin police. She was clearly confused–asking questions of people in line–and did not understand the protocol. (I suppose it might have been relevant that she kept pressing herself on people and jumped the queue to get to the entrance, too.) But there was no compassion for her inability to communicate–into the police car she went, and away she was whisked.
Finally, anyone (US citizen or not) wanting entrance had to queue in front of the building and wait–rain or shine,–as they would only allow so many people in at once (not a factor when we first arrived). My last wait outside (in the rain) to gain entrance was just under 2 hours–there were lots of students there to get visas for their next school year in the US. Btw, the people working inside were–I suppose–US citizens, but a good many of them had distinct German accents. When I tried to speak German with one woman, she refused to do so, and responded only in English–which both Jeri and I thought was odd.
It is quite concerning to me that the government’s attempts to scare the hell out of the US populace has worked. IMO, it is not even logical–and denotes some kind of mental aberration. Americans do not even realize that they have become caricatures for terror.
I noted here that a couple days after the recent earthquake in the eastern US, I was at work and was among people who had been on business that day and felt the quake in both Cleveland and DC. Their first and overwhelming reaction was that it was a terrorist bombing or attack. And they find nothing at all wrong with admitting that was their first reaction.
Meanwhile, none of the pansy candidates but Ron Paul find anything wrong with the status quo. They all WANT Homeland Security to continue. We have had entirely enough evidence to see where that is inexorably leading.
“Ausweis, bitte.”
Even Romans of Bible times got more respect than that. All they had to do was proclaim themselves a Roman citizen, and it was hands-off!
“Even Romans of Bible times got more respect than that. All they had to do was proclaim themselves a Roman citizen, and it was hands-off!”
Unless you were the poor unfortunate Verres, Roman governor of Sicily, was trying to extort money from. When he didn’t pay up and was a bit too free in his denunciations Verres had him crucified within sight of freedom in Italy proper. He was complaining that he was a Roman citizen and named various VIPs who could vouch for him, but it did him no good.