09:59 – As I’ve mentioned, I want to create one new kit by the end of this year, and at least one more for 2013. My natural tendency is to focus next on the more advanced science courses typically taught in grades 11 and 12: physics, and various advanced/AP-level sciences. But, after considerable thought, I’ve decided to go in the other direction. We have biology and chemistry covered. Those are typically grades 9 and 10. So I decided to focus our efforts for the coming year on grades 7 and 8, to fill out our kit offerings bottom-up.
So we’ll be doing kits for Life Science (typically grade 7 or 8) and Physical Science (typically grade 8 or 9). Life Science is an introduction to biology, and Physical Science is an introduction to chemistry and physics. We’ll probably also do a kit for Earth/Space Science (typically grade 8 or 9). Most homeschoolers will do two of three courses in grades 7 and 8, and some will do all three in grades 7, 8, and 9. The problem with that is that 9th grade is normally the start of high-school level science courses, usually either high-school chemistry or high-school biology. The other problem is that I have to be very careful about the CPSIA. In other words, these kits will be designed and intended for only students who are at least 13 years old. Otherwise, the regulatory burdens would be impossible.
Four more troops lost. Mostly crickets from the MSM.
http://news.yahoo.com/military-afghan-inside-attack-kills-4-us-troops-070458530.html
Bloody damned CSPIA! I keep wondering when they will ban safety pins because of the number of babies pricked each year. Fizzy drinks are the small end of the wedge…
Unlike most, I actually hope the wheels come off. Not a full collapse of civilization, but enough of a crisis that a lot of the deadwood is shuffled off. We’ve had things too easy, and the number of parasites has grown to the point where they’re killing the host.
So I guess this means another 11.5 years until I can buy my daughter one of the science kits. I guess I’ll just have to order a forensic kit for myself as soon as I scrape up the funds.
SteveF and I were apparently separated at birth. I don’t see how anything other than the wheels coming off is gonna change anything for the better. Ezra Pound said that the West was “an old bitch gone in the teeth” during the Great War and a century later the old bitch is a twitching, barely warm cadaver. Which people have either forgotten about entirely or they piss on it.
You’re about ten years older than I, so I think that implies a very prolonged labor if we are indeed twins. Our poor mother. How about you can just be the cool older brother I never had? (I had brothers, but they were younger and not cool. Not that I was the cool older brother, either. We had, like, an entire household of notcool.)
OK, I am the cool older brother. Grew up during the Glorious Sixties. Grew my hair long in high school and sometimes wore a headband and tie-dyes. Smoked dope, sold it, and also did acid and drank beer and wine throughout. Honor roll, nonetheless, and also ran track and played football as what was then known as an “end” and occasionally second or third choice QB. Had lots of cool records and listened to WBCN in Boston when Peter Wolf was the DJ. Went to rock concerts, political demonstrations (with SDS, the Panthers and the PLP), and wrote poetry modeled on Ginsburg’s “Howl.” Also collected stamps and coins and built model tanks, ships and planes and then blew them up. Total wise-ass all through skool from first grade to commencement. Worked part-time jobs as movie theater usher, supermarket stockboy, department store stockboy and young adult sales, delivered newspapers, mowed lawns and shoveled snow. Scored high enuff on SATs and Achievement tests that I coulda gone to a really good college but instead enlisted with Uncle at 17, still in my senior year, with both parents’ written permission. All of that, unfortunately, is true.
So as a cool older brother the coolness might possibly consist in the fact that I did a whole lotta shit and never got arrested, jailed or sent off to reform skool, as was threatened throughout.
And SteveF has apparently turned into a bitter, mean, violence-oriented old curmudgeonly SOB just like me only ten years sooner. Congratulations, Steve!!
OFD wrote:
“Grew up during the Glorious Sixties. Grew my hair long in high school and sometimes wore a headband and tie-dyes. Smoked dope, sold it, and also did acid and drank beer and wine throughout.”
I was a child of the Seventies and loved it. Very *very* short hemlines, tie dyed t-shirts (I love them). Only wore a headband playing basketball. Did note of that other stuff except for a very small amount of booze when I was a teenager. Wine? How could you? Wine’s a girl’s drink.
*note. none
Speaking of CSPIA, IMO, it is more the laws than the money that is the problem, and an ancient Roman-like collapse of government—not society (Roman citizens helped the “barbarians” destroy Rome)—is where we are headed. Nobody cried when Rome fell; they rejoiced that oppressive laws fell, along with the capability to enforce them.
Furthermore, CSPIA is typical of new laws that encourage the Gestapo-like reporting of neighbor on neighbor and children on parents. Read near the end of this story:
http://www.examiner.com/article/mother-arrested-for-letting-kids-play-outside-you-could-be-next
Americans often speak their mind to the point that they piss off neighbors, and then one of them fabricates a story that truly harms the other one, like above. All the citations we got in Strausberg for not raking leaves nearly every day in the fall, arose when American stepson told a neighbor to f-off; only it turns out the neighbor worked for the Ordnungsamt. Every fall at least twice, somebody came around and cited us for unraked leaves, when other properties around us looked just as bad. We had also been parking the cars in the strip in front of the house, between fence and road. After the f-o encounter, started getting tickets for that. That one was not even against the law, and when taken to court, the tickets stopped. But we know who called the cops. People get shot in Indianapolis several times a year for road rage incidents, where somebody confronted another over a traffic incident and got shot. Speak your mind at your own risk.
I can also attest that fear of police, TSA, and other government authorities is palpable in this country, and that is in stark contrast to what I experienced in Berlin. In the US, when someone sees a policeman in a car while driving, everyone in the car seems to shout out, “There’s a police car over there!” and immediately, the driver goes on the defensive by displaying his best behavior. That never happened in Berlin, because police are almost never looking to hand out citations.
Typical of the European attitude, my cousin in Belgium was once going down a one-way one-lane alley, when a police car came down it the wrong way (no emergency lights on). My cousin would not yield, and forced the police car to back up all the way to the next intersection. Think people would try that in the US? Police just do not scare people in Europe, whereas they scare the bejesus out of Americans.