09:56 – This weekend, we’ll get started on building the restricted chemicals and small parts subassemblies for the biology kits, 60 sets of each. We may also make up 60 sets of the unrestricted chemicals, although one of those is still missing and will be until the backordered methyl cellulose arrives. The following weekend, assuming the methyl cellulose has arrived, we’ll start assembling full kits, probably two or three dozen to start with. There are already people on the waiting list, and I want to get those orders filled before the book hits the stores.
As expected, Greece has formally defaulted by announcing its intention to enforce the so-called Collective Action Clauses that it retroactively inserted in its debt contracts last month. The bad news for Greece is that, even after triggering the CACs, they’ve still come up at least $4 billion short of the Troika requirements for approving the new bailout. That means that, unless the Troika changes the rules that they’ve repeatedly insisted will not be changed, the new bailout will not be approved. Right now, I’m sure there’s a lot of scrambling going on behind the scenes to somehow get everything approved, but it’s by no means a done deal. Eleven days from now, Greece may or may not have the money it needs to redeem the $18 billion or so of debt that matures that day.
Could this guy just STFU and stay out of people’s bedrooms?
OFD goes on and on about Catholic martyrs. Can someone make one out of this anachronism, and soon?
Ah, at first I thought you were talking about Santorum, but then I clicked on the link and realized you were talking about another piece of human garbage.
Granted, Ratzi and his predecessors have done a lot of damage to humanity, but at least he doesn’t have the US armed forces, including nukes, at his disposal. I don’t understand how any sane person could even consider voting for Santorum and giving him control of those. Might as well give them to an ayatollah.
Sorry, should have made my post a bit more specific, but they’re all cut from the same bolt of cloth.
What I don’t understand is why Santorum is so popular among protestant evangelics. Do they not understand that, if he had his way, Santorum would round them up and burn them at the stake as heretics?
On a related note, I see that that buffoon Limbaugh has again “apologized” for his remarks. What I don’t understand is why the girl who was the target of his remarks has not sued him. He made actionable defamatory claims about her, calling her a prostitute. Unless he can prove that she literally accepts money in return for sex, she should be able to take him to the cleaners. I wish she would.
I think it’s a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sort of thing. The Prods have their ‘burn’ list too, and he’s the type that might share his matches.
I’ve stopped trying to understand American politics. It just doesn’t make any sense, at all.
Well, first let’s pretend that everyone involved in politics is an amoral, lying, hypocritical scumbag who gets all tingly at the thought of power over the proles.
Uh, I think that “let’s pretend” was a little too accurate.
Wouldn’t naive be more accurate?
Gloria Allred has already suggested Limbaugh be sued:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/glorida-allred-seeking-ways-to-prosecute-limbaugh
I don’t think that will happen since Fuck’s, er, Fluke’s dirt will be dug in to. The Dems don’t want that to happen as long as she is useful as an Obama tul.
I do not “go on and on” about Catholic martyrs, but could easily do so, as they are still being brutally persecuted and martyred all over the world, but only throw in the odd comment after the usual flurry of attack-dog stuff like the preceding here.
We will simply have to disagree, the dozen or so here who have a thing about Catholics and the Catholic Church, and the roughly billion or so of us Catholics. Whatever. And the Holy Father does have the Swiss Guard and I will be arming them with nukes soon.
We will also have to disagree about this Fluke person, a rabble-rousing liar and bullshit artist who is not really a cute little put-upon first-year law student but a cold and calculating 30-something radical feminist activist running a stealth operation, herself run by rabid Catholic-baiting neo-Marxist secular agents. Limburger is a media creation and bona-fide imbecile and what he said merely shows him and his ilk for what they are. Call her what she is, and not the usual locker-room sexual insults.
RBT wrote:
“What I don’t understand is why Santorum is so popular among protestant evangelics. Do they not understand that, if he had his way, Santorum would round them up and burn them at the stake as heretics?”
Okay, so why aren’t you voting for him?
My question on this silly election bullshit was how come Bishop Mittens gets most of the Roman Catholic vote in Ohio?? I need to fly out there this weekend and ask my co-religionists WTF is UP with them??? It does not fucking compute.
Robert and Co. will not vote for Sanctimonious (me, neither) because he will burn ONLY the Prod fundies. What the atheists would want is for some fundie Prod candidate to burn Catholics, too, and thus they all cancel each other out. But then guess what? The hadjis walk in unopposed and set up sharia and all them science experiments go down the tubes, literally, and one either converts or enters dhimmitude. Also, no skinny actresses walking around half-nekked, no woman marathoners in tiny shorts, and pretty much no booze except for the head dudes, of course.
Or maybe someday, several thousand years from now, it can all be a wonderful secular humanist paradise.
I don’t know why the fundies are voting for a Mick or a Mormon, they’re both heretics. On the other hand Ron is a good libertarian and Baptist. What more could one want? They should have been voting for him in droves.
Hey Chuck, is this guy related to you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Waggoner
Evidently, more than a ~dozen dislike the Catholic Church; you’ve previously mentioned how so much of America seems hostile to it.
For practically all the same reasons you hate Islam, you should hate other religions.
“For EXACTLY the same reasons you hate Islam, you should hate ALL other religions.”
There! Fixed it for you. Don’t you just hate not being able to edit posts? 😉
Okay, I have copyright on “Don’t you just hate not being able to edit posts?” and such. That’ll be $2.50 to my tip jar please.
I meant, as might be evident from the post, the dozen or so HERE on this board, not the millions abroad in the country who are bigoted and prejudiced against the Catholic Church. I am well aware of the past 400 years of that.
Islam is not a religion; it is a cult of slavery and death. Convert at scimitar-point and be a slave, or die.
Science and Reason can tend to be religions, as they were during the French Revolution, the consequences of which we are still suffering around the world. That is where the destruction of humanity lies; not in the succession of bishops and popes. The numbers don’t lie: a direct line from Rousseau and Robespierre through Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, et. al. and infecting all our Western institutions, especially academe and government.
Hah! You can’t stop me! I got it off the internet, and everything on the internet is, like totally, free.
Besides, I want the actual lawyer’s cease and desist letter, so I can frame it as a badge if honor.
Really, Davy? You think it was the Muslims who invented convert or die? Is your memory really that selective?
Time to back away slowly, again…
The RC church was still forcibly converting people as recently as the late 19th century, and perhaps even more recently.
Me and the Swiss Guards will be making the rounds soon with our pikes and halberds to forcibly convert certain parties in North America.
Hah! You can’t stop me! I got it off the internet, and everything on the internet is, like totally, free.
Not quite o’ Jedi Master. If you take just one thing from the internet it is stealing, plain and simple. You should know that. However, if you take many things from the internet it is called “research” and is apparently perfectly OK.
So next time you take something from the internet, take more than one. Just to keep your conscience clear.
Ah, you just don’t know about all the other times…
I believe my .307 will trump the SG’s pikes and halberds, too!
What the heck is a .307? Ah, a .307 Winchester lever rifle? Wow, I have been around firearms for forty-plus years and had never heard of this round.
Got a round for each SG coming at you? All at once? Listen, better to just convert peacefully and all will be well, son, all will be well.
Make sure you bring your cats – if any survived their trip downunder – so we can vaporise them too.
Ah, a British alternative spelling. And “downunder” rather than Down Under?
Clearly something went wrong during colonisation….
OFD wrote: “What the heck is a .307? Ah, a .307 Winchester lever rifle?”
Precisely. A 1894 AE (Angle Eject) model, to be precise. The .307 is really a .308 with a larger flange to assist in ejection, and a snubbed bullet, to prevent accident discharge in the tube magazine. Crazy hard to find ammunition for it, now. So I stocked up. It will chamber and fire a normal .308, but the thought of five cartridges triggering each other in the tube reduces it to a single shot.
I have a scope, and will use it to thin the ranks from afar. It’s taken down elk, so I don’t think a man would be much of an issue. Son #2 will be using the Ruger .22 with his scope (headshots are his specialty) and Son #1 has the shotgun for closer work. Those aren’t the only weapons, most of which can trump halberds and pikes. It’s not like we’re on horse back, you know.
It’s better to die upon your feet, than to live upon your knees! – Emiliano Zapata
So was the .307 designed specifically for the lever actions? Gee, youse guys have an arsenal over there! We will approach with all due caution…
And I agree with Senor Zapata.
Yes, Winchester developed the cartridge specifically for hunters who wanted a “cowboy” gun. I would have preferred a .3030, but the price was right for the condition, which is excellent.
We’re not all gun-fearing wusses in Canuckistan, you know! Hust the ones that cluster around universities are. Up until the 1990s Canadians had more firearms per capita than the US, and almost all were long guns. None of that spray and pray stuff that’s the vogue south of here. We use one man, one bullet, to converse ammunition.
*Just, not hust!
I deplore the lack of functional editing capabilities of the new software.
There! That should be sufficiently altered to save my $2.50!
Ya missed one there, big guy.
converse -> conserve
Unless you mean you’re talking about your m4d l33t sk1llz, in which case drive on.
Me, too.
As far as arsenals, I’m feeling a bit undergunned right now, with just our assault rifles, pistols, riot shotguns, Atchison selective-fire 12-gauge, and ZSU-23-4. I tried to convince Barbara that we needed a Ma Deuce. She’d have let me buy the actual HMG, but then she found out what .50 BMG goes for per round.
As to the Swiss Guards, tell ’em that we Southern Boys have Claymores.
Which reminds me of the time my dad was helping me unload some stuff. “What’s in this tube labeled 81-mm mortar – WP,” he asked. “An 81-mm mortar white phosphorus round,” I replied.
“Up until the 1990s Canadians had more firearms per capita than the US, and almost all were long guns. None of that spray and pray stuff that’s the vogue south of here. We use one man, one bullet, to converse ammunition.”
Interesting, I did not know that. And I admire that firearms usage philosophy; just be advised that the spray-and-pray crap was instituted in our military and police forces right around the time OFD got the hell out of both. The buggers were afraid of one-shot-one-kill lawsuits and also didn’t wanna spend the bucks on training and ammo. So they figured, give ’em one annual qualification firing and a bunch of 9 and 40mm mags and empty them all over the landscape. Spec ops guys in our current forces have gone back to the .45ACP and the .308s.
WP, old Willie Peter. Nasty stuff. Charlie hated it.
SteveF pointed out “Ya missed one there, big guy.”
We “speak” with our bullets up here… 🙂
Ah, who am I kidding? Must have been caught up in the moment.
Miles_Teg says:
Hey Chuck, is this guy related to you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Waggoner
Not that I know. I have learned along the way, that Waggoner is no German spelling, and I have no concrete clue as to it getting changed. Family bible showed the primary German immigrant on my dad’s side as spelling it “Waggoner”; however, I strongly suspect that was changed by the immigration folks from Wegener, which is a very German name–and common,–but no American English name, and with several possible pronunciations to boot. Unless I can find out more about the original Waggoner immigrant–which is unlikely at this point–I will never know.
At least we know on my mom’s side, that the German name was definitely changed from the German Rahe, to American English Ray. My Rahe cousins own a whole chain of high-end furniture stores throughout Deutschland and beyond.
My Opa got a new name as a child, courtesy of Ellis Island. Nielsen became Neilson. Luckily Richard is spelled the same in Denmark and the US, else he’d have had a real identity crisis.
Last count I heard was that Limburger has lost 42 sponsors over the word “slut”. He cannot seem to keep his foot out of his mouth. First the ESPN firing some years ago; now this. Even a beginning radio/TV student knows better manners and how to stay out of trouble more effectively than him. But it all goes to show the true underlying colors–which I am afraid ain’t pretty. And you know what? This whole misstep centers around the religious view of whether sex outside marriage is permissible or not. It is the religionists like Limbaugh who are forcing their view on others, not the other way around. I have learned from my younger generation that sex today is recreation, thanks to both contraception and the elimination of disease through medicine. Scary stories promulgated by religions may have once had a place in generally reducing disease and surprise pregnancies, but they have now been relegated to what they are: fiction.
Don’t count me among those dozen so-called Catholic-haters. My family is peppered with them, and I spent many a Saturday midnight as a target for flying “holy water” during childhood sleepovers with my friends, back when missing just one service could mean a trip straight to Satan’s lair with no possible intercession through purgatory; and no good Catholic mom would permit that to happen to children on her watch. So at first, it was not okay to miss the real Sunday mass. Then it was okay to attend one that started at midnight. Then it was okay if it started at 23:00 but crossed midnight before dismissing. Then it was okay that it was at 22:00, and now 20:00 on Saturday night. Wow, Harry Potter’s life scenarios make just as much sense.
It is all just one man’s (or one group’s) really obvious attempts to herd, coerce, and influence the actions of others. Since I try to both think and require reproducible proof,–none of which is forthcoming,–I can’t buy any of it.
“It’s better to die upon your feet, than to live upon your knees! – Emiliano Zapata”
Better still to get flat on your belly, take cover, and make prone shots.
Chuck wrote:
“I have learned from my younger generation that sex today is recreation, thanks to both contraception and the elimination of disease through medicine”
Chuck, you haven’t been paying attention for the last 30 or so years.
One of my good friends, a convinced atheist for as long as I’ve known him (since 1980) was deterred from having sex with a prostitute by the fear of genital herpes. He was visiting DC (yes, I know that’s the largest single occupation, especially on the Hill) and was accosted by a prostitute who asked “Hey man, wanna date?” She was black and he said he’d always wanted to have sex with a black woman, but fear of genital herpes dissuaded him.
There are a lot of resistant strains of STDs around, so free love has its risks.
Well, I suspect people in the teen through 20’s population do not use prostitutes to get sex — nor do they even have the money for that. I do not know anyone my age or younger, who has suffered from any form of STD, although — when I was a kid — my parents pointed out people their age or older who had suffered from “VD” (as they called it in their era). I know quite a few people who died from AIDS, or managed to get the serious form of hepatitis; however, AIDS no longer seems to be the problem it once was, and my understanding is that hepatitis is not passed through sex, but is most often caused by careless drug injection or transfusion of contaminated blood.
Young people I am acquainted with get regular STD testing (it is free — or nearly so — at most university health clinics), and Planned Parenthood is where most young people around me, seem to get their contraceptives.
“Free love” is an outdated term, so I am told. As I noted, sex is recreation today, and just as you might have handball or tennis buddies you regularly play with, regular partners for recreational sex are known these days as “f*ckbuddies”. The times, they have changed.
Years ago when we were still in Boston, my wife and I were walking past a teen couple who were across the street, arguing quite vociferously. They were probably 14 or 15 — not any older. I commented to Jeri at the time, ‘they’re in a sexual relationship. You don’t get that heated in argument unless sex has been involved.’ Jeri agreed.
Yeah, one of my nieces knew a “couple” in high school who split up (as a dating couple) but still met to have sex. I read about drug resistant strains of “VD” and think OH YUCK. Years ago I studied microbiology and immunology at uni and my textbooks had graphic pictures of the genitals and other parts infected by various STDs. Not at all pretty. Some people aren’t deterred, they think it won’t happen to them.
Chuck, AIDS is most commonly transmitted sexually. It is relatively hard to catch that way, and there are other ways to catch it, but I’d still call it an STD. The people your age and younger discreetly get treatment before it causes them to suffer. It’s my understanding that drug resistance is making STDs harder to treat but it hasn’t yet made them untreatable. A friend of my has a nephew who in his teen years contracted three different STDs.
Right. I did not mean to imply (apparently I did) that no one gets STD’s these days, but that — with regular tests and treatment when necessary — it does not pose the risks that were prevalent when my parents were teens.
I also don’t think I even remotely implied that AIDS is not sexually transmitted; my intention was only to indicate that people I know are no longer dying from it at premature ages. A couple decades ago, as many of my acquaintances were taken by AIDS as were dying a decade earlier in Vietnam.