08:47 – The prepared microscope slides I ordered for the LK01 Life Science Kit arrived Monday. As I was unboxing and checking off items on the packing list, I was struck by a cunning plan. Although these slides are intended for the Life Science kit, there’s no reason they couldn’t be used as a core slide set by people using the BK01 Biology Kit. So I sent the following email to people who’d purchased the biology kit:
We spent several hundred dollars buying the prepared microscope slides that we used to shoot the images in Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments, so we know how expensive it can be to obtain the prepared slides you need for a biology course. That’s why we included a disc of high-resolution copies of the images from the book with the BK01 Biology Kit. And, although those images are useful, they’re not a complete substitute for using actual slides.
We’ve had many emails from people who’ve bought the BK01 Biology Kit, asking us if there is a source for a core set of prepared slides that would at least hit the high points. After a great deal of looking around, we concluded that the slide sets available were either too expensive, had a poor selection of subjects, or were of very poor quality. So we decided to put together our own set of core prepared slides, with the goal of picking a dozen or so key slides that we could offer at a reasonable price. We finally settled on the following 15 slides:
□ Amoeba (wm)
□ Anthers, lily (cs)
□ Bone, compact (cs)
□ Egg, horse ascaris (sec)
□ Euglena (wm)
□ Frog Liver (sec)
□ Hydra, budding (wm)
□ Leaf, lilac (cs)
□ Lichen (sec)
□ Mitosis, Onion Root Tip (ls)
□ Muscle, involuntary smooth (cs/ls)
□ Muscle, skeletal (cs/ls)
□ Neurons, multi-polar motor (wm)
□ Paramecium (wm)
□ Stems, Monocot and Dicot (cs)These slides are from the same manufacturer who produced the slides we used for the images in Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments.They are of decent quality, although they’re by no means the best available. (We’d love to offer those top-quality slides, but they’d cost anything from $8 to $20 each, so we’d have to price a set of 15 slides at $150 or so rather than the $52 we sell this set for.)
One of the reasons we hesitated to offer a prepared slide set is that our wholesalers typically stock few or no prepared slides. They’re special-order items, and it can take anything from several weeks to six months from the time we order the slides until they actually arrive.
We ordered 30 sets of these individual slides some time ago, and they arrived yesterday. We’ll be assembling the sets over the next few days, and will be ready to ship sets by the first of next week. We wanted to give those of you who’ve already ordered the BK01 Biology Kit the first opportunity to order a slide set or sets.
If you’d like to order a set, visit the BK01 Biology Kit home page:
If the demand exceeds the supply of 30 sets we currently have available, we’ll ship the first 30 orders we receive. If you order a set and are not among the first 30 buyers, at your option we’ll either refund your payment or put your order on our backorder list, to be shipped as soon as we’re able to build more sets.
The set price includes USPS Priority Mail shipping. Unfortunately, we can ship these sets only to US addresses, at least for the time being. No Canadian orders.
So now Barbara and I need to make up a batch of 30 of the prepared slides sets. We’re already taking orders for them, and I’m telling people that the sets will ship Monday. Meanwhile, our inventory of biology kits is getting low enough that it’s becoming critical. Since we started shipping kits more than a year ago, we’ve had to backorder kits only once, and that for only a couple days. If we don’t get on the ball, we’re likely to have to backorder biology kits, and I hate doing that.
14:17 – The other day I ordered a mouse, keyboard, and display from the Costco web site. The display hasn’t shipped yet, but UPS showed up a few minutes ago with the mouse and keyboard, in separate boxes. The mouse was fine, but the keyboard box was badly damaged, with most of the corners crushed in, one end ripped, and the sides dented in and creased. It looked as though the UPS truck had run over it, literally. I shot some images of the box and then called Costco. They’re shipping a replacement, and said it wasn’t cost effective for me to return the damaged one. Waylon, the rep, said to go ahead and open it, to pitch the keyboard if it was damaged, and if it was okay just to keep it as a spare.
This is yet another reminder of why I don’t use UPS, and would prefer that my vendors didn’t either. Of all the hundreds of kits we’ve shipped, almost all of them have arrived intact. We’ve had, IIRC, two broken thermometers and one broken beaker. Oh, yeah, and one kit delivered to a Florida address just before a tropical storm hit. That kit got so wet that the cardboard box disintegrated, but everything in it survived unscathed. I tend to think of the plastic bags we use for interior packing as protecting against leaks from the chemical bottles, but they also do a decent job of protecting the contents from tropical storms.
Conversely, nearly all of my wholesalers use UPS, and we get a lot of boxes delivered. I’d guess that at least a third of those boxes have visible damage, although it’s often minor, such as a crushed corner or two or perhaps a big rip in one side. I guess my wholesalers have learned what they’re up against because there’s usually no damage to the contents.
That’s one of the main reasons I’m loyal to USPS, although by no means the only one. USPS is also, in my experience, faster than UPS or FedEx for any shipping option that’s even close to the USPS price. For example, I shipped a chemistry kit last Saturday to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. The USPS says Priority Mail normally takes one to three business days in transit, according to the zone. Bethlehem is definitely not in the local zone, and I expected the transit time to be two days. It arrived Monday, in one business day. Same deal on shipments out to the west coast, which are definitely supposed to be three days in transit. Quite often, USPS gets the package to an address in LA, Seattle, and other large west coast cities in just two business days.
USPS also doesn’t dick around with all the surcharges that UPS and FedEx charge. The first time I considered shipping kits to Canada, I looked into using UPS or FedEx. The problem was, I couldn’t figure out how much it would cost to ship a package. I knew how much the package weighed, its dimensions, the origin address, and the destination address. That should be sufficient to get a firm price. It’s not. UPS and FedEx both have all kinds of added fees for different stuff. If they attempt to deliver and can’t, they charge a redelivery fee. They charge different amounts depending on whether the address is residential or business. I was flabbergasted when I looked at the number of different add-on fees I might or might not need to pay, many of which were entirely outside my control. USPS, on the other hand, makes it extremely simple. I use flat-rate boxes and regional-rate boxes. The flat-rate boxes are just that; they cost the same amount regardless of where they’re going, as long as it’s a US address and as long as they’re under a generous weight limit. (For example, the large flat-rate box ships to any US address for $14.62, and can weigh up to 70 pounds; the regional-rate box B, which is what I usually use, has a weight limit of 20 pounds.) Oh, and the boxes are free. With UPS or FedEx, I’d have to buy boxes, which aren’t cheap.
Several people have asked me why I ship via USPS instead of using UPS or FedEx. That’s why.
I detest eco-organizations that go out of their way to panic people…
Today, son #1 came come from a school trip to one such place, where they talked about plastic. Plastic in the oceans is a problem, no question. But they filled him up with stuff about how plastic particles make their way into your bloodstream and all of your cells. You are doomed, you are going to get sick and die! The end is nigh!
As I understand it, plastic in the oceans disintegrated into tiny particles that get ingested by sea life. The plastic itself I imagine as being pretty neutral – it’s just going to come out the other end, as it were. Chemical additives may be more of a problem, and I can imagine them being absorbed into tissues.
The thing is: I cannot find any further information on the Internet except that promoted by one or another extremist eco-organization. Does anyone have a suggestion for an objective, neutral source of information on this stuff?
I have a theory that our descendents will mine our landfills for raw materials. This is already being done for natural gas but that gas must be cleaned if any wallboard has been dumped in the landfill. It turns out that scrap wallboard degrades into several components including a sulfur compound. That sulfur compound creates H2S and SO2 which must be removed from the natural gas before selling it. Of course the natural gas is low heat content so the CO2 needs to be removed also in order to boost the heat content.
Heh. Years ago, I absolutely ruined a distopian novel that Jerry Pournelle planned to write. The basis of the whole thing was that society had collapsed along with its whole infrastructure. Because all of the easily available mineral resources like iron ore had been mined years before, the new society had no steel, aluminum, copper, and so on. I pointed out that, even if it had corroded, getting steel out of stuff like bridges and I-beams and rebar was a hell of a lot easier than getting it out of iron ore even if that was lying around on the surface, and that there was a metric shitload of aluminum and copper free for the taking, assuming they didn’t mind “mining” buildings and ruins for it.
Pournelle’s response was, “Shit. You’re right. Oh, well…”
Not the suggestion you were looking for, but I’d suggest if you can’t find it with Google, it doesn’t exist…
The name of that distopian book is _Soft_Apocalypse_ by Will McIntosh:
http://www.amazon.com/Soft-Apocalypse-Will-McIntosh/dp/159780276X/
“What happens when resources become scarce and society starts to crumble? As the competition for resources pulls America’s previously stable society apart, the “New Normal” is a Soft Apocalypse. This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang. New social structures and tribal connections spring up across America, as the previous social structures begin to dissolve. Locus Award finalist and John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist Soft Apocalypse follows the journey across the Southeast of a tribe of formerly middle class Americans as they struggle to find a place for themselves and their children in a new, dangerous world that still carries the ghostly echoes of their previous lives.”
Can I note that USPS is losing money hand over fist? It is just another federal agency spending more money than it takes in. Any other normal business would raise their rates and cut their expenses in order to keep on making a profit but not USPS. I figure that a first class stamp should be $0.75 and there should be no Saturday deliveries for a start:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/08/it-all-your-money-us-postal-service-bailout/
I’ll grant you that USPS does a good job in the USA. However, outside the USA, UPS rules for packages. Do you have to take your packages to the Post Office and personally vouch for them since they weigh 1 lb or more? We had to do that after 9/11 and moved to UPS so they would come to us. Back then we were in a office building with a massive mailbox that we could not leave packages at.
Actually, USPS isn’t losing money on operations. In particular, their package delivery business is quite profitable. Their problem at this point is that congress has the final say. USPS can’t close offices that shouldn’t exist. They can’t lay-off unneeded staff without permission. They have to deliver on Saturdays. They have to pre-fund their retiree medical program, which no one else has to do. It’s congressional mandates that are screwing the USPS.
The USPS does not need to make money. It is mandated by the Constitution. If it loses money hand over fist, tough—it was considered imperative by the founders. I have no problems should it lose money, but would sure like to see those losses minimized. Saturday delivery should have been abandoned when Canada did, decades ago. Extra charge for Saturday delivery, like Fed Ex does, is fine with me. And I don’t want mail from anybody who does not pay first-class rates.
I have had USPS mail/packages lost forever (quite a few, actually—even recently with tracking; they have no clue what happened), but never destroyed. UPS has totally destroyed several packages both sent and received by me. Which to use is a dilemma.
I think that all mail should be First Class. There should be no bulk mail for advertisers. The periodical, book and package rates should be OK.
Bulk mail here isn’t much of problem as it is legal for advertisers to put stuff in your letterbox. I actually don’t mind, because I actually want to read some of the advertising, such as grocery store catalogs. The rest of it I sort out and put in the recycling bin. Takes me less than a minute.
Ever since small multi-band transistor radios have been around—back all the way to the early 1960’s,—I have had one—with shortwave capabilities since the 1980’s. I left one of the Sony ICF series in Berlin when I came back. Not much of a loss, as it was really pretty crappy. Ran through a set of batteries in just a few weeks of listening in the kitchen only when cooking; I expect a small radio to last a few months with such sporadic use. Only Sony “broadcast products” seem to be worthwhile these days (cameras and recorders), and they cost real big money.
So I have been looking around for some small radio to replace that Sony left in Berlin, and stumbled across the Tecsun PL-398MP. MP stands for the fact that you can insert a flash card (up to 8gb) and play MP3’s with it—a useless function for me, but the predecessor model, the 390, seems to have a high failure rate, so the newer model with MP3 added, it is.
This radio is completely Chinese designed and built, incorporating a Silicon Labs SI4734 DSP receiver chip. Other radios employ the same chip, but do not have the sensitivity of the Tecsun PL-398. After a week of playing around with this little gem, I find that I like it a lot. If you are not into radio DXing, then there might be the complaints others have expressed on the Internet, about the speakers being small and tinny. Right—this is not a boom box, and there is no bass in those speakers, but for small radios which I have had since I was a kid who got the very first transistor FM radio to be on the market, and have been through many such radios since, the sound of the speakers is pure and clear, but no bass. Plugging it into an amplified system shows the output sound is full hi-fi—just not on the built-in tiny, tinny but clear and distinct speakers. Good earphones also provide full-range sound.
Actually, the PL-398 is probably the best such radio I have ever owned. Aside from superlative sensitivity (which outdoes a Grundig using the same DSP chip) it is the only small radio I have ever seen that actually plays stereo from the 2 built-in speakers. There are all sorts of bandwidth filtering options, and of course, it has 6 bands of shortwave—which I do not use often, but really do not want to be without. Additionally, it has AM and FM bands programmable to either of the slightly different frequency ranges of both the US and Europe (although I have not figured out how to successfully do that, yet).
It has a sensitivity readout in dbu and also signal to noise in db. Now those readings are likely not super-accurate, but right now, the radio project needs some general reference, because another station on the same frequency, seems to be broadcasting considerably overpowered and interferes with our signal, and we want to try and determine if that is so. Those readings will help.
Also important to me, but likely not to the general public, is a stereo indicator, which almost all radios nowadays lack. For the occasional radio work I am involved in, I have a real need to know where a receivable stereo signal ends. Many FM stations are now broadcasting so many subcarriers what with HD radio and RDS song title identification, that the stereo signal actually does not reach nearly as far as when the stations formerly broadcast only the main channel and the stereo pilot subcarrier. With this radio, I know whether the stereo subcarrier is strong enough to be resolved by most radios. Lower-powered stations do not get the stereo signal out very far, and most people cannot detect that they are not actually listening in stereo.
One final feature that no other radio—that I know of—has, is an automatic scan that will check all frequencies of your choice of band(s), and store it in memory. Then you can switch between the stations it found, without having to spend hours checking out whole bands for listenable signals. Reviewers (and myself) are astounded that it can actually find listenable signals buried in a noisy frequency. Both the volume and tuning thumbwheels are digital steppers and not analog potentiometers. When going through the dial with the tuning knob, you are actually stepping through frequencies, the same as if you were pushing an up or down button. Same for volume. One complaint is that the volume steps at too great an interval, so people who are trying to listen at night in quiet settings with other people around, find that the sound is either too loud or too soft, as it is not continuously variable with this stepper method. I agree with that, but it is not a show-stopper, considering all the other plusses of this radio.
This is not equivalent to high-end ham radio receivers, but is definitely the best shortwave multi-band small radio I have ever seen. Which is why I mention it here, if someone is in need of a similar small radio.
About US$60; I got mine from Amazon.
Tiny Town actually has one of the most powerful and biggest-audience country radio stations in the state of Indiana. You can hear it clearly from Ft. Wayne near Detroit, to Terre Haute in central West. I don’t ever go much further south than that, so I don’t know how far it can go there.
Now I agree with Grace Slick, who when asked on an interview show back in the ‘80’s what she thought about the rock artists who were moving to country music, and her reply was, “I’ve got enough problems of my own, I don’t need to hear somebody SINGING about theirs.” Like my true line about TV,—“I don’t watch it unless I am getting paid to,”—same with country music—“I don’t listen to it unless I’m getting paid to.” And I have, actually; did quite a bit of concert video from Branson, MO back in the ‘90’s.
But today, I was checking out the Tiny Town station on the Tecsun radio, which station pretends it is located in Muncie, because the local Tiny Town car dealership is the only business rich enough to advertise on a popular country station. The DJ was a young guy, who obviously had the control board set up backwards. Some radio boards will dip the audio when you hit the mic key. For the whole afternoon, it was actually making the music louder when he hit the mic, burying his voice so it was completely indiscernible.
It is sad and maddening that no one involved with radio stations these days even listens to them. When I worked in radio and TV (at that very station as a teenager, unbelievably—although it played rock, not country, back then), if something like that happened, somebody from the office would be in there after the first time, telling the board operator something was wrong. If not somebody IN the station, then somebody who worked there who was listening in a car or at home—even if it was another employee’s spouse. Mostly because of this screw-up, I continued to listen all afternoon long, and the problem was never corrected. He signed off to an automated satellite feed at 7:00pm, still unintelligible.
Having the board do those dips is not the best way, IMO. For a long time, there have been automatic gain controls and equalizers that will automatically fade the music below the voice, if the voice is set a good 2db louder than the music. Sounds much more natural that way, as it does not sound like somebody is bringing the audio up and down—the voice is just stronger than the music.
The only song I could stand in all of that time was Brantley Gilbert’s “Country Must Be Country Wide”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8peBUdlUNmM
Gawd I hope it’s not country-wide. One great thing about living in Boston and Berlin: there were NO country music stations there. (Boston’s classical station has since turned country.)
“Not the suggestion you were looking for, but I’d suggest if you can’t find it with Google, it doesn’t exist…”
Yeah, that’s kind of the conclusion I was coming to… Unfortunately, son #1 is very impressionable, and not nearly cynical enough – despite our best efforts to get him to question what people are telling him. Ah, well, this too shall pass…
I remember reading someone’s observation that the ability of college age students to think critically is declining. Critical thinking is the most important thing that our education system can teach. There was a time when some liberal arts majors learned this in college, say in philosophy class. Sadly I think those days are gone. To some degree I picked it up studying electrical engineering in college.
Ah, for the good olde days, when only about 10% of high school students went on to college/university. That’s about the right percentage, since only about 10% are actually capable of doing what should be college-level work. Of course, that’s really about what we have now; 10% of college students majoring in real subjects, and the other 90% majoring in imaginary subjects.
About half of the people who go to college today really have any business being there. But reducing it to 10% of the population would be going too far the other way I think. The problem is that we as a society have found a couple of decisions that prosperous people make and decided everyone should be prosperous and therefore tell everyone to do them. Those two things are go to college and buy a house. So we made these things easier. The problem was the thing that separates the prosperous from the not so prosperous isn’t home ownership or college education, but thinking about the future.
What makes prosperous people prosperous is not that they go to college, but that they never stop thinking and learning. For people who never stop thinking and learning, college is a great idea.
In general I agree with that sentiment about country music, and have a preference for rock. But there are some songs that really resonate with me for some reason, and lately those seem to be country songs. From Darryl Worley’s “Have Your Forgotten” to Darius Rucker’s “It Won’t Be Like This For Long”, the songs that really connect for me are country, and that’s a trend that has been building for a decade.
Have you ever tried any radios from C. Crane? They always appeared to take the matter seriously.
Actually, I think 10% is overly generous. That leaves slots for the 1% or so who’re actually capable of dealing with real (STEM) subjects, many slots for those who want to major in non-rigorous but useful subjects like accounting, and a few slots left over for non-rigorous and generally useless liberal arts subjects. We need a few of the latter, but not many.
Miles: Did you get the download of Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit? I sent you another email with the link. Once you get the download let me know so I can remove the file from the website.
Thanks Ray. I’ll start downloading the 64 bit version now. Would you suggest downloading the 32 bit version as well? Some of my PCs are pretty modern, some of them, well, area bit older.
Chuck, what about Kenny and Dolly’s Islands in the Stream. That’s Country, isn’t it?
As to the kind of people who should be going to university…
I’ve been in classes with some pretty dumb and/or rowdy kids. The first year exams sort them out. But some of them are quite smart, but make some dumb mistake or choose the wrong subjects. I’m happy to have STEM subjects heavily subsidised, so even dumb students like myself can afford them and get in. I like diversity, so I’m willing to support through my taxes subjects like medieval French poetry, and English lit (high Dave!), even though they’re not much use. Some employers target really bright students, regardless of the subjects they’ve done, figuring that they’ll be smart enough to learn what they need on the job.
Dave B wrote:
“In general I agree with that sentiment about country music, and have a preference for rock.”
They stopped writing good songs in about the mid Eighties. Mid Sixties to mid Eighties was the golden age.
Ray, the 64 bit download is complete. The file size was reported as 3,319,478,272 bytes. Does that sound right? If so you can take that one down.
If you think there’s any point in downloading the 32 bit version please advise.
Would you suggest downloading the 32 bit version as well?
No. I have removed the 32 bit ISO from the site. If the CPU is 64 bit, then install the 64 bit OS. Does not matter if you don’t intend on going beyond 4 gig (actually 3.5) of memory. 64 bit just runs better and when you have an app that is truly 64 bit there is noticeable increases in speed. Well, maybe I should qualify that as my experience has only been with photo apps and they definitely run better.
If you ever get the chance DO NOT EVER install 64 bit versions of MS Office. Many plugins will no longer work, including those from Microsoft, and that is a very real problem. 32 bit office runs just fine and for 99.9999999% of the population there is no need for increased size limits.
Yeah, but we don’t do that here. It would be SO UNFAIR. As a result, it’s possible for someone to graduate from college without being able to read, literally.
As I said, I have no problem with devoting a few slots to useless majors like humanities, but I don’t think taxpayers should have to pay for them. If someone wants to get a degree in, say, sociology, that person should have to pay the full costs themselves, with no taxpayer subsidy.
Actually, I don’t think even the traditional K-12 public education system can any longer be justified. The original purpose and rationale for that was to educate citizens and future members of the workforce. Ignoring the fact that public schools fail miserably at both, I have to question whether the goal is relevant any longer.
Teach the average students to read, write, and do basic math. Throw in a little basic science. They should be finished with school by about 6th grade. Teach the bright students, those around one sigma above the mean, through, say, 9th grade. Give the brilliant ones, +3σ and higher, a full ride through a terminal degree, as long as they choose a rigorous subject.
The file size was reported as 3,319,478,272 bytes. Does that sound right?
That appears to be correct. Burn to a DVD for safekeeping. To install download the Windows 7 USB tool from Microsoft and boot from the USB. Installation will go quicker.
In general I agree with that sentiment about country music, and have a preference for rock. But there are some songs that really resonate with me for some reason, and lately those seem to be country songs. From Darryl Worley’s “Have Your Forgotten” to Darius Rucker’s “It Won’t Be Like This For Long”, the songs that really connect for me are country, and that’s a trend that has been building for a decade.
For me, it is the exact opposite. Someone once criticized Stephen Sondheim as purposely writing needlessly sappy stuff. Country music has gone the same way, IMO—and furthermore, I don’t agree with the sentiments in the lyrics. So many songs out there now are about guys who volunteer for the volunteer military, then get whacked on some useless and counterproductive foreign assignment, and the song makes them out to be heroes. Now I have had close family killed in wars from WWII through Vietnam, but those guys they are singing about today are saps for ever having volunteered in the first place. If you want to have a wife and kids, do NOT sign up for the military. Good chance they will never see you again.
Like the light work of college, spoken of above, to me, country music is not difficult work. Stuff like what Grace Slick wrote is. About all I can say for country today, is that you can understand every single word they sing.
Glad to see a couple misconceptions already set righting the comments regarding untruths about the USPS (which is a corporation, not a government agency). I’m a bred and born American who now lives outside the USA (in the Philippines) for a number of reasons, not the least of which being huge savings on taxes, no Fox news on my cable TV and no NLF coverage.
Aside from those plus factors though, one of the things I miss most about living overseas is the USPS. The (vast majority) of Americans who think the world ends at the US border have NO IDEA what a blessing USPS is.
Recently I was back in the US visiting family and I had some items to mail. Went to the local post office with my eldest son who kept up a running commentary regarding the supposed ills of the postal system.
Selected my free mailing envelopes and boxes, packed and addresses and took them to the counter, debit card in hand, and the deed was done.
Noticing that the debit card reader did not offer a ‘cash back’ option, my son, who lived all his life in the USA but hadn’t been inside a post office in years,tried hard to hide his amazement at the free services and efficient, friendly clerks. “See dad,”, he complained, “No cash back. I told you the USPS was no good.”
As a Russian goes something like … “Only in America do the people have so much and still complain continuously about their blessings. The rest of the world expects nothing, and they are seldom disappointed”.