07:36 – Well, of those six chemistry kits I put together yesterday afternoon, three are spoken for by overnight orders. I may run dry again by this afternoon. We’ll assemble another two dozen over the weekend and get started on yet another batch of 30.
I also need to get some purchase orders issued. When I called one of our vendors yesterday to check price and availability, several items were back-ordered, some until mid-October. Fortunately, I have other sources for all the stuff with long lead times.
16:20 – We’ve sold a total of only four chemistry kits today, so we still have two left. I’m headed downstairs shortly to box up 24 more, or as many as I can do with the components we have on hand and ready to use.
Barbara is always coming up with new ideas for how to use my new shipping scale. It’s accurate to one gram up to 20 kg, so there are quite a few things I can use it for. Here’s her latest suggestion.
So I decided to give it a try here at home.
And I just found out something else it works fine for. I’d ordered 400 alligator clip leads, which come in packages of five in small plastic bags, all contained in a large plastic bag. So instead of counting to make sure I had 80 of the small bags, I just weighed the big bag, which was 3.99 kilos. I then weighed five of the small plastic bags, which weighed 0.25 kilos. Much faster than counting, and less subject to error.
Oh, and FedEx just showed up with two early copies of Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments. It looks great.
Blackhawk down in Afghanistan. Another seven servicemen lost. I don’t know why all the news networks aren’t putting this as lead stories all week. Why aren’t the libs roasting Obama. This is his war lock, stock and barrel.
Most of the news sources I checked, including Yahoo News, Google News, The New York Times, Fox, Drudge and the L.A. Times had this as front page news on their web sites. Our local paper was the only one that I checked that didn’t.
The war belongs to all of the politicians who have supported it.
Rick in Portland
There is not much intelligence going into the construction of news reporting these days. It is just like judges—recently, I have seen judges just totally ignore provisions of the law and precedent quoted in briefs and do the Joe Paterno thing of ‘pretend it’s not there’. Same for the media. But it sure signals clearly the politics of the people putting together the publication/transmission.
In my era of working in newsrooms, the reporting staff were always liberals (conservatives have no interest in the field for some reason), but they worked hard to craft stories that were biased but did not look like it. If you read Dean Baker regularly, he frequently points out editorializing in the news reporting pages of various papers, including the Washington Post and NYTimes.
It is about to rain here. What is it that brings out the police/fire/ambulance sirens every time a windstorm kicks up before a rainstorm? It is happening right now outside Tiny House. Multiple sirens going off everywhere. Sounds like the Blitz. Do people go up to the roof to watch the approaching storm, and get blown off? I am baffled. Happens every single time.
Crap.
These kids deserve much better.
These kids have always deserved much better. War sucks incredibly. In my view, the only justifiable war we have ever fought was the one in 1812, which itself sucked rocks, and really didn’t accomplish much, like our unbelievably stupid attempt to invade Canada, of all places. All the others could have been avoided, every last one.
The media mostly suck, too. I have shortwave here and I get the rest online, mostly at foreign sites, because this nation (what a country!) has jack-shit for decent, accurate and objective news reporting.
And Chuck is right about judges, and I would extend that to prosecuting states’ attorneys and most police brass; this is no longer a nation of laws; laws are simply ignored. The SCOTUS can come right out and order some jurisdiction to do or not do something and it is ignored. If you are arrested or sued for something now it is totally the luck of the draw and may God have mercy on you in this foul and corrupt criminal system, not least of which is our electoral process, which some folks here discussed recently.
In terms of peoples over in Iraq or wherever risking their lives to vote; good. Now they have a taste of what we’ve already been through here, with the British in two wars and in the South when black citizens were denied. In those cases there were real choices then. Now there isn’t, and no amount of lecturing from current British colonies or other countries is gonna change my mind on this: it does not matter if, or how much, I care: period.
So we have another voice on it:
“August 16, 2012
Obama Will Win
Posted by Michael S. Rozeff on August 16, 2012 05:36 AM
Intrade has Obama at 56.7%, down from about 59%. Romney’s more pointed attacks and choice of Ryan have coincided with this decline. Nevertheless, I feel (based on no research except general reading and knowledge) Obama will win. Meanwhile, an excellent case of insider trading can be brought against Paul Ryan. He had what is called “material nonpublic information” and acted upon it. Will the SEC do that? Ha-ha-ha.
Ron Paul was the strongest candidate for the nomination, but the Republicans chose to die instead, wedded to their habits of thought and their ingrained channels of power, influence and money. Paul could have hit Obama very hard by melding the negatives of deficits (and looming breaking of social promises) with useless foreign wars and spending into a positive program of reducing government spending while cutting taxes and taking steps to restructure the social programs and eliminate whole departments. He could have attacked Obama on the TSA and on the FED.
Don’t vote.”
I think that it will come down to Florida again. Or, FloriDUH as my friend in Jacksonville puts it. They are currently trending Obama but may cut and run. It will be Obama at 51% or Romney by 60%.
Rick says:
“The war belongs to all of the politicians who have supported it.”
You are absolutely right. But, Obama is the CinC and has proclaimed this the right war.
The other part of this is that it can possibly be argued that Bush sincerely believed in that war, but his guy is clearly doing it solely for whatever political advantage he can wring out of it, no matter the deaths and the crippling of our troops and the same for the usual “collateral damage” civilians just trying to get through the day like most of us in this world.
“this guy” not “his guy.”
Agreed with OFD. The CinC is solely responsible for maintaining or ending this war. Since it is still going with no clear benefit to the security of the nation, I guess Obummer thinks this makes him a hawk for political purposes.
This also gives him a clear escape route for not getting involved in the Likud Party’s foreign policies in the Sandbox; gee, it ain’t ’cause he’s a pussy; he’s knee-deep in the Afghan chaos, wot a guy! Thus, no overt encouragement of, or cover for, the Israeli war machine gearing up to attack Iran or whoever they feel today is their biggest threat. Rest assured, though, that if Likud and Bibi decide to roll that way, our armed forces will provide air cover and spec ops FACs on the ground, some of the latter having been there already for years. The Israelis are also likely to use low-yield tactical nuke bunker-busters, and we will claim with them that we gave them our newest super-duper conventional busters, and the resulting radiation being seen from space is due to the Iranian nuke stuff that got blown up.
Should be interesting. If by some weird fluke Mittens gets in, however, look for a full-speed-ahead green light to Likud and also more of our own involvement in the rest of the Sandbox countries, while simultaneously managing to really piss off the Russians and the Chinese. Mittens don’t care; he and his family have zillions and if they all go up in smoke, too, he will be a god in outer space and he can ditch Ann and get himself a new, younger harem out there. Sorta like Islam and Scientology.
OFD wrote:
“The Israelis are also likely to use low-yield tactical nuke bunker-busters, and we will claim with them that we gave them our newest super-duper conventional busters, and the resulting radiation being seen from space is due to the Iranian nuke stuff that got blown up. ”
If someone analyses the fallout products they’ll be able to work out which reactor produced the fissile material.
Where will said analyst come from, and will they be paid or unpaid, and will their report be believed or will some agent or other simply pencil-whip a phony report to the specs of the U.S. and Likud? We know the origins can be worked out, but who will tell us the truth?
Looks like cats aren’t totally useless:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-17/cat-collar-clue-helped-return-lost-camera-to-owner/4205176
Though I am surprised it hasn’t eaten the baby yet.
We’re not seeing much of the election over here, for which I can only be grateful. From what I see on US blogs and sites, Pournelle’s characterization is apt: “the silly season”. The most recent criticism of Romney I ran into criticized him for joining a fraternity in college and for marrying a blond woman who isn’t overweight. What possible relevance either of those points have, completely escapes me, but apparently they are important to someone…
I’m not going to vote this time. Voting from abroad is a pain, at least in the district where I am registered. Neither of these guys is worth the time it would take; both will preside over the continuing downfall, just in different ways. Going through the hassle just for a “protest vote”? Nah, ain’t gonna do it.
And Obama wins by a landslide! Unprecedented voter turnouts lead Democrats to complete domination of both Congress and the Senate. The Silly Season will turn to Brave New World.
What’s that line about good men doing nothing?
Hey, Obama is the right way to go. With Obama, the US will get where it’s going all the faster. Which would you rather have: a quick death, or a slow lingering illness?
Then cast your vote that way and complete the execution.
Meanwhile, an excellent case of insider trading can be brought against Paul Ryan.
That was debunked in two ways:
– the insider trade happened before the meeting where the insider info was disclosed
– the trade was from a blind trust that Ryan can’t manage or influence.
Also, insider trading rules don’t apply to Congresscritters.
Bill wrote:
“What’s that line about good men doing nothing?”
Bill, it sounds like it’s time for you to put on your oldest, most disreputable clothes, cross over to Washington, enroll in a few hundred places (tell them you’re a Democrat) and try and swing Washington out of the blue column. Are the boys old enough to help?
I sympathize with Brad’s problem. We never got to vote in the last election, so do not blame me for No Change Nobama. It was a Catch 22 situation: we kept contacting the Tiny Town voter office, telling them we had not received an absentee ballot, and on the third call, they told us—too bad; it’s past the deadline for sending them. Dead people still vote in Lake County, Indiana, but just try and get an absentee ballot as living voter.
That’s about what I go through. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. There’s actually a way to sign up to automatically receive a ballot for each election. It once worked for two elections in a row, but then mysteriously stopped.
I suspect there are enough military people that it works for them, but just living abroad as a normal citizen, and there apparently aren’t enough of us for them to have a real system in place. It’s frustrating, but eventually just not worth the pain.
The Machine deliberately works hard at excluding absentee ballots, mostly due to all the military and other similar personnel overseas who would tend largely to vote Repub. While the other Machine works hard here at playing games with voter registrations so as to exclude the underclass they want for their scut labor and service industry jobs that Americans allegedly won’t do, but they don’t want them voting.
Half to two-thirds of the electorate refuses now to play this charade, knowing full well that THEY are excluded from this system and any chance at all of fixing anything. And then are excoriated it for by foreigners and people here who’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and want everyone else to drink it, too.
“for it” not “it for.” Sheeesh.
I’d be perfectly happy with Heinlein’s idea: active-duty military can’t vote; only retired military and others who did dangerous service.
I’d be excluded on that basis, but that’d be fine with me. I’d trust those guys to make sane choices.
So what, only retired mil-spec guys and people who did dangerous service could vote? Like me? I dunno about that; I knew and know PLENTY of retired military and prior dangerous-service types who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a voting booth or small children or even other human beings, period. To assume that because of their former status they are somehow uniquely qualified to make sane choices? Nope. And way lots of them are damaged by experiences in said dangerous service as to preclude much in the way of sanity at all, not their fault, of course.
I would not exclude atheist chemists, however.
Boy, I wouldn’t trust a state run by such people. Last thing we need is a military police state, and that is exactly what we would have if the military had anything to do with it. It is unconscionable that there is a separate justice system for military and civilians. That should never have come about.
Military is brainwashed like a cult with objectives that are contrary to living a satisfying and peaceful life. The US is living proof of what that leads to. There was no time to brainwash new recruits for WWI & II. Those guys went in and did the dirty work and came home, most to never again worship their service (like my grandfather, who wanted nothing to do with anything military after his return to civilian life). Those guys are the real heroes, and they WERE in charge of the country after their wars. But the last thing I want is a country run by a bunch of brainwashed maniacs who have no problem locking people up forever with no charges, and waterboarding people to get information from them—because we know the information extracted from torture is always the most reliable information available.
Leave me out of that country.