Tuesday, 3 December 2013

By on December 3rd, 2013 in news, science kits

07:41 – When I read about Amazon’s plans to deliver by drones, I thought it was a story from The Onion. When I realized Bezos was serious, my first thought was probably the same as most other people’s: we’ll have hundreds of Amazon drones buzzing around town, crashing into trees and power lines and each other and falling out of the skies when they malfunction. My second thought was also probably the same as most other people’s: I wonder if I’ll be able to order RPGs from Amazon and use the RPG itself for last-mile delivery. When you care enough to send the very best…

Posts here are likely to be very sparse for the rest of the month. In addition to trying to keep up with building and shipping science kits, I have to get the earth science kit prototyped by year-end and the manual written. Not to mention regular Saturnalia activities. I won’t have much time to post here.


60 Comments and discussion on "Tuesday, 3 December 2013"

  1. CowboySlim says:

    As a Christmas present, I was about to order a chemistry kit for delivery to AlGore. But I reconsidered when I realized that he already knows more than everybody else about CO2.

  2. Chuck W says:

    Odd that the eco-freaks were getting their way, then fracking turned that all around. No peak oil in the foreseeable future, US now exporting more energy than it is importing, and the economy, although set back nearly 20 years by the loss of trillions of wealth in the dual bubble crashes of housing and banking, is moving along faster now than it did back then as we cover the same ground all over again. Will be interesting to see how dictator Nobama will go about stopping that.

  3. Chuck W says:

    Whoa!—who thinks this is a good idea?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25197786

  4. ech says:

    EMP disablers for cars have been in the works for a while. They might be safer than the three other ways of stopping a pursuit:
    – bullets, as cops are bad shots and will even shoot at minivans with kids in them
    – spike strips, which seem to be hard to deploy effectively
    – ramming, which is dangerous for all involved and for bystanders

    Of course, the unit they showed was huge and looked hard to set up. The sawhorses holding up the waveguide were a great touch. So it’s of limited utility until they can make it smaller and cheaper. Shrinking it might be hard as highly directional microwave antennas are constrained by the laws of physics.

    I would guess that there might be a few of these already deployed in protection of high value targets in the US, along with the microwave area denial system that induces heating in the skin. (In fact, Our Good Host might want one for his anti-Santa system – it would spook the reindeer.)

  5. ech says:

    Well, the shoe in Michigan dropped. Detroit is in bankruptcy. Many of the pensioners are going to get screwed, after having been the recipients of unjustified payments. (See the following for astounding tales of fiscal insanity:
    – the “13th payments”: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/detroit-s-pension-madness.html
    – extra interest to guaranteed investment accounts: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-02/detroit-pensions-unsafe-at-any-speed-.html

    I really hope the bankruptcy trustees go after the pension management team and sue the crap out of them.

  6. MrAtoz says:

    It’s about time Detroit went bankrupt. From what I can see the only reason it didn’t happen earlier is because of all the people on the teat. I wonder how many depended on the teat to live on. At least they have ObuttwadCare, welfare, and every other social money program to fund their life styles.

    Maybe Mr. Ray should move to Detroit for his “retirement” plan. I’m sure the feds will be rolling in truck loads of OPM for the indigent.

  7. Ray Thompson says:

    we’ll have hundreds of Amazon drones buzzing around town

    Nah, if I see one I am stealing it.

    Maybe Mr. Ray should move to Detroit for his “retirement” plan.

    I would never be that desperate. Homeless and living in a shelter would be better than living in Detroit.

  8. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Well, as far as I’m concerned, these people have already been paid their pensions in full; it’s just that they were paid that money while they were still employed. What disappointed me about the news stories is that apparently Detroit will be paying them at least something, rather than the zero cents on the dollar they should be getting. To do that, Detroit will stiff secured creditors.

    Anyway, the Detroit situation is just a preview of what’ll be happening to everyone’s pensions–private, local, state, and federal. They’ll either default entirely or pay off in dollars so inflated that they might as well be worthless.

  9. Lynn McGuire says:

    _Slow Apocalypse_ by John Varley
    http://www.amazon.com/Slow-Apocalypse-John-Varley/dp/0425262138/

    It is great blessing to live in a time of plenty for the human race. People think that the time of plenty will last forever. They forget that this time of plenty has lasted for almost a hundred years now in the USA and other westernized countries. However, the natural condition of the human race is borderline starvation caused by famines and/or wars.

    What would happen if that balance is upstaged in the USA? John Varley examines the case where a biologist invents a bacterium that turns crude oil reservoirs
    into sludge by combining regular oil molecules. All of a sudden, there is zero oil worldwide.

    My thoughts on the book? Excellent. John Varley moves well from space opera to apocalyptic novels.

    My thoughts on the topic? Have resources allowing you and your family to live for three months minimum. Canned foods work well here as they do not require
    cooking. Water storage is tricky but a swimming pool might work. Two guns for each member of the family plus 10,000 rounds of ammo is also a necessity. Have a bugout plan. Don’t store gasoline (unless you have a totally enclosed pressurized tank like an old propane tank) but do have several empty five gallon cans that you can fill if you get nervous. After all, once the emergency passes you can use the gasoline in your car at will. And have a place that you can go to.

    My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    Amazon rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars (56 reviews)

  10. dkreck says:

    So if Amazon ever does start using drones how soon until they start getting hijacked. I’m thing a pneumatic cannon of some sort.

  11. Chuck W says:

    After all, once the emergency passes….

    Personally, I think if we ever reach the point that all those measures are necessary, the emergency will not pass, it will be permanent.

    Nevertheless, I do not think we will have that kind of regression, except extremely localized for disruptions like train/plane/truck wrecks and impossible-to-prevent natural disasters. Those truly will be temporary.

  12. OFD says:

    Three months or more of canned goods and all that ammo won’t be much use if the Grid goes down and stays down for a while. And bugout to where? Very, very few people are equipped to just bug out into the wilderness and live off the land. If I was thirty years younger I would have already bugged out and been set up in another country by now; too late!

    I agree with Chuck; it it gets to this point it will likely be permanent; I disagree with Chuck in that it is all too likely; this regime has demonstrated to my satisfaction that it loathes and distrusts the country and its people and will not flinch from exploiting any crises it can instigate, including power outages, racial/ethnic violence, and mass civil unrest, to which it will then respond with overwhelming violence in order to establish its unquestioned hegemony.

    But eventually their control will fracture and loosen, due to the financial house of cards collapse, mainly, and whatever they’ve done to destroy our energy resources. Once they can’t pay the cops and soldiers, it’s all over. And that can happen very quickly; to wit, Exhibit A: New Orleans just one week after Katrina. The cops bailed and went home to protect their families and properties, at least those cops who weren’t out actually robbing, raping and murdering with the other criminal scum.

    There will be armed gangs roaming around, composed of extremely desperate and fearful people; the most dangerous, by far, will be the ex-cops and recent combat vets.

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/dave-hodges/the-coming-civil-unrest/

  13. Chuck W says:

    The meanness in purposely and forcefully closing anything with a public face, including pulling down public Internet access to anything but the disfunctional Nobamacareless website, and even closing properties that do not even belong to the government—like Mount Vernon—does show that they would gladly pull the trigger if something like Ohio State or Tienanmen Square ever surfaced here.

    Isn’t the whole purpose of computing to put things on automatic? Why not just let everything run until it breaks?

  14. Lynn McGuire says:

    I was walking through my local Wal*Mart last Saturday and suddenly realized what a labor savors that place is. I have always thought that labor savers were just dishwashers and such. However, being able to go to a store and get a lot of stuff really saves a lot of time and effort. At least for me it does.

  15. Lynn McGuire says:

    80 F and sun shining here in the Land of Sugar. All of the air conditioners have been turned back on until Friday night.

  16. Chuck W says:

    Have an early job on Friday, the very day we are to get hit with snow, sleet, and sub-freezing temps. Then I should have the rest of the year off. That ought to allow me to get set for work on Tiny House that starts after 1 Jan.

    I hate shopping with a purple passion. I can only take it for about 20 minutes max, then it is like being in prison—I gotta get out. My wives were the exact opposite and loved shopping. In the grocery, I always had my eye on the checkouts. When they were empty, I commandeered the carriage and we checked out. I told them that if they wanted to come back by themselves, then they could, but I was leaving. They never argued, because they knew we had gotten 90% of what we came for. No reason to make it even more tedious by waiting until there was a 20 minute line at the checkout.

  17. OFD says:

    And once again I vote with Chuck; go to the store with a list, get your chit and get the eff out. Keep an eye out for the register line with just guys in it, too. They’re like us; they wanna get the eff out. If unavailable and stuck per usual behind cretins with another moron behind the register, cultivate some sort of Zen-like meditation routine. And position yourself in such a way that the usual suspects can’t sidle around you from either side, crowd you, or rub against yer butt to see if you’re twerking.

  18. Chuck W says:

    US falling further behind in Pisa scores of countries’ educational performance.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25187997

    We are now #26. Above chart does not show all countries. Pisa tests are given every 3 years and scores are released a year later, so the one released today is for 2012.

    Breakdown into Math, Sciences, Reading.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#2012

    Why is Shanghai used to represent the whole of China? If they get to do that, then why cannot we limit our figures to some education capital, like Boston?

  19. Chuck W says:

    BTW, my son sent me a link to a 1930’s movie with twerk dancing in it. Miley did not invent it. Cannot find the link right now, but it was a black and white movie. Not much better in life than being twerked.

  20. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Pisa scores are completely meaningless. The average doesn’t matter. At all. What matters and what should be compared is the top 10% or, better, the top 1% or even 0.1%. Ultimately, those are the only ones that matter.

    Public schooling should end at 8th grade for 90% of the students. Any more than that is wasted on them. High school should be only for the top 10%, and college/university for the top 1%, at least if the taxpayers are paying for it.

  21. Chuck W says:

    I agree 100%. Problem is, schools are the babysitting system for parents who work. Are 8th graders capable of merging into society as workers?

    They definitely were in my grandparents’ generation, because hardly anyone went beyond primary school, let alone graduated from high school. My mom and dad were the first in their families to go to—let alone graduate—from college.

    One of the reasons BBC put forth today as the reason the US does so poorly in the Pisa tests, is that the average US high school kid is up at 05:30, at school by 07:00, and does not get to bed until 23:30. Apparently there are now studies showing US kids are actually sleep deprived in large numbers, and therefore cannot do well on any tests. In the countries performing highest on the Pisa tests, kids get much more sleep than in the US.

  22. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Yep, when Jas was in middle-school and high-school there were frequent nights when she got only four or five hours of sleep. I think the average teenager needs nine hours, if not ten.

  23. OFD says:

    There was a recent Atlantic Monthly article on this; the educationist commies have been loading the kids up with homework at an increasing rate and level for years now; my nephew down in MA has to give up basketball, which he loves, due to the load they dump on him, including weekends and holidays.

    Agreed with Bob and Chuck on the skool system; close most of it, if not all of it, and concentrate on the best and brightest, mostly STEM kids. But the bastards running the system will never go for it. So all of us lose and lose badly, for generations to come.

  24. OFD says:

    For the possibility that Bob or someone might be interested in integrating this very nice piece of work into a curriculum or maybe a home-school kit in the future on astronomy:

    http://www.amnh.org/our-research/hayden-planetarium/hayden-planetarium-promos/download-files

  25. Miles_Teg says:

    RBT wrote:

    “Public schooling should end at 8th grade for 90% of the students.”

    And then they’d do what?

    I would certainly have been in the 90% and then I wouldn’t have got my science degree and career as a computer programmer.

  26. SteveF says:

    As happens on rare occasions, I disagree with RBT. Public schooling should not end after 8th grade because there should be no public schooling at all. It was an interesting experiment with good intentions, but the road to illiteracy and brainwashing is paved with good intentions.

  27. OFD says:

    Oh same, here; I’d close the whole mess; all publik skools and 90% of the colleges and universities. But assuming we still run some vestiges of State skools then I’d go with Bob’s program.

    I dunno what Greg woulda done after being dumped at 8th-grade; I would also have been in that 90%. At thirteen I was building all kinds of models, collecting stamps and coins, and listening to all kinds of music. I expect the best shot I might have had would have been to apprentice in a machine or electrical shop, and I was reading my ass off anyway by then, all kinds of books, so that would have continued regardless. Maybe I wouldn’t have been bored rigid (I kinda like that instead of “stiff” and use it now, thanks to Greg’s Aussie locution) throughout high school and fled to work for Uncle in his overseas depredations at seventeen.

    I’d probably be retired now, and maybe passing on my technical knowledge to younger rascals; I might still have ended up, though, working in IT anyway. And now I’m playing catch-up learning a bunch of this mechanical and electrical stuff at sixty.

  28. SteveF says:

    Because Miles_Teg delivered his bon mot over the internet, shouldn’t his “locution” be “elocution”? Only if he stands up and reads his forum comments in front of a crowd, of course.

  29. OFD says:

    In a bucket of water holding the mike; then it would be “electrocution.”

  30. Lynn McGuire says:

    The meanness in purposely and forcefully closing anything with a public face, including pulling down public Internet access to anything but the disfunctional Nobamacareless website, and even closing properties that do not even belong to the government—like Mount Vernon—does show that they would gladly pull the trigger if something like Ohio State or Tienanmen Square ever surfaced here.

    I view everything coming out of Obummers mouth as a lie until proven wrong. He is a vindictive man who does not love his country. I never thought that we would have a President who does not love his country. This may get worse before it gets better. There are many things that he can do to gum up the system.

    We probably need a lottery system to make people serve in the USA government elected jobs. Kind of a “tag, you are it” system. The first sign of a person wanting the job is a sign that they need to be excluded from the pool. I do not know when Congress transitioned from a part time, unpaid job (like it is here in Texas – kinda) to a full time highly paid job. We need to reverse that also but I see little chance of it.

  31. SteveF says:

    who does not love his country

    I have seen no evidence that Obugger does not love Indonesia.

  32. Lynn McGuire says:

    Am I the only person wondering how those Amazon drones are fueled and what their range is? Those 8 props look like they could chop you up some if you and it are trying to occupy the front porch simultaneously.

    CNN says 10 mile range with a 5 lb payload. Thats not going to work here in the greater Houston metropolitan area (100 miles east to west and 60 miles north to south).
    http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/02/tech/innovation/amazon-drones-questions/

    I wonder if Amazon’s network can say “Skynet”?

  33. Lynn McGuire says:

    I do not understand women. Been married to one for 32 years next month and I do not understand them at all. I just know how to avoid taking a beating.

    I am trying to buy the wife a 2014 Honda CRV for Christmas to replace her 9 year old Honda civic coupe. She does not even want to go test drive one and claims that I am trying to ruin her life by taking her 5 speed hot rod away from her. I am totally perplexed. I must admit that the only problem that her car has is that the CD / MP3 player no longer works and she wants a new player. But, the CRV has more rear room for my daughter’s wheelchair and other junk. But it is an automatic only.

  34. OFD says:

    “I have seen no evidence that Obugger does not love Indonesia.”

    I don’t believe Obummer was from Indonesia or Kenya; I think he’s a genuine Murkan citizen who lied and scammed about being a foreign (“international”) student back in the day to gain easier entry to college and then on from there. Which could be one reason so much of the record on him from back then is MIA. But I also believe he was raised up as, and apprenticed as, a prime sleeper Soviet asset, knowingly or not, and he has been fulfilling expectations rather handsomely so far. The Jarrett woman in the WH is also an Iranian-born communist and both remain good pals with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, while David Axelrod has done yeoman work for the Party behind the scenes.

    OFD hopes/plans to have scads of boffo fun shooting down any drones he sees around Retroville.

    “I do not understand women. Been married to one for 32 years next month and I do not understand them at all. I just know how to avoid taking a beating.”

    You and me, both, brother. I’m on my second (and last) marriage, going on sixteen years now; previous was seven years. And both marriages have been after a random series of girlfriends going back to high skool. It is a mystery, my son, and we mustn’t question the ways of the Lord too closely. That, and the necessity of avoiding all kinds of unnecessary grief, hassle and PITA. Keep yer head down, yer powder dry, and a low profile.

    My new favorite saying is “You may be right.”

  35. Miles_Teg says:

    SteveF wrote:

    “As happens on rare occasions, I disagree with RBT. Public schooling should not end after 8th grade because there should be no public schooling at all.”

    Yeah, good point. I’ve always suspected he was an authoritarian commie in the pay of the teachers unions.

  36. brad says:

    Disability payments: If you don’t have really stringent controls, you get abuse.

    The lengths some people will go to get a free ride can be shocking. There was a women here who has some horrible, unhealable disease all over her arms: literally open wounds. Came the day the undercover camera filmed her: perfectly healthy skin with lots of scars. They kept filming, and just before a regular doctor’s visit they saw her mutilating herself. IIRC it involved boiling water and a knife…

    Add lack of stringent control to the ever-broadening definition of disability – including everyone whom the PC-types feel sorry for – and you get to 10 million people real quick.

    – – – – –

    Re the PISA results, thanks for posting that! I didn’t know the new ones were out. Switzerland does have a problem with literacy, which comes from the 20% foreigners living here. Literacy is improving, and the government tries to claim credit, but the real reason is that ever more Germans are moving here, as opposed to the previous influx from eastern Europe, and the Germans obviously already speak one of the national languages.

    Shanghai is top, sure, that’s manipulated. But do note that Macau is also on the list, and is probably more representative.

    I disagree with our host to some extent. After junior high, the people not suited to an academic education should be tracked into practical education. The system here works really well: Anyone in the trades has a three year combined school/apprenticeship that results in very capable tradespeople. Compare this to the UK, where the apprenticeship system has totally died out: the quality of workmanship is despicable.

    BBC held an interview with a guy who import polish workers for his construction business. The UK unions absolutely hate him. In his interview, he said that it’s not about low wages – he claims to pay quite well. Instead, he flat out said that the UK workers are lazy, unreliable and incompetent. How he’s avoided being beaten to death in a back alley is a mystery…probably Polish body guards.

  37. Ray Thompson says:

    I must admit that the only problem that her car has is that the CD / MP3 player no longer works and she wants a new player.

    Get a new radio/MP3 player/CD player/IPOD player installed. You will never win the battle. I want to replace my wifes 2002 Highlander with a new model. She wants nothing to do with that. I want to replace my 1999 F-150 with a new model with lots of bells and whistles. The model I looked at had retractable running boards, pretty cool in my opinion. Her comment was “something else to break”. Sigh, did not buy the truck.

    I go to buy a new camera. Her comment “what is wrong with the camera in your iPhone”. I mean, seriously! We have HD on the main TV yet she continues to watch the SD channels as she says she sees no difference in quality. When I bought a bluray player you would have thought the world ended as the VCR was good enough.

    Ah, but time to replace all the lights on the Christmas tree. We bought all LED colored at the end of last year because the lights were on sale. Now she does not like the lights and wants to replace them with all white. Of course they will cost more and we will have a couple thousand colored lights that will be stored in case we need them. Why store them when you don’t like them? Oh wait I know, next year we will need colored lights because she won’t like the white lights.

    No one understands women. Their minds don’t work normally.

  38. dkreck says:

    Couple of thousand colored lights.

    How the hell big a tree do you buy?

    I get 8′ trees and put about 300-500 lights on it.

  39. bgrigg says:

    Lynn, I’m sure you’ve heard the homily “happy wife, happy life”, so follow Ray’s advice and buy your wife a new head unit and install it in her Civic. Collect the brownie points and don’t bother trying to figure her out.

    I stopped putting up a tree or any form of Xmas lights almost a decade ago. Bah, humbug!

  40. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Barbara loves her Saturnalia tree, which she calls a “Christmas tree”. I help her haul it into the house and then out again after the holiday. It makes her happy.

  41. Dave B. says:

    Public schooling should end at 8th grade for 90% of the students. Any more than that is wasted on them. High school should be only for the top 10%, and college/university for the top 1%, at least if the taxpayers are paying for it.

    I disagree with Bob. I think 90% of 8th grade graduates should go on to high school. Also I think we shouldn’t graduate anyone from the 8th grade who can’t do reading and math at the sixth grade level. I also think that at least half of the high school graduates should get post high school education. Probably half of those who continue their education beyond high school should get two year degrees.

  42. Lynn McGuire says:

    I have submitted three double DIN AM/FM/CD/MP3 units to her so far. All have been “I don’t like that”. Then I pushed her to the Crutchfield website where she does not like anything. I figure that I just have to do it.

    The other problem with her car is that it is a 5 speed standard. She had several breast cancer surgeries 8 years ago with two tumors and has zero lymph nodes left for her right arm. They removed every lymph node that they could find due to the secondary tumor. I am worried someday that her mild lymphedemia will flare into a major pain and I would like to reduce all strain on the arm. She does not agree and does not remember the 5 lb lifting limit the doctor gave to her for life.

    I don’t understand women.

  43. Lynn McGuire says:

    I disagree with our host to some extent. After junior high, the people not suited to an academic education should be tracked into practical education. The system here works really well: Anyone in the trades has a three year combined school/apprenticeship that results in very capable tradespeople.

    I totally agree with this and we used to do this in The Great State of Texas. I do not know why we quit and said all kids must go to college.

  44. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Well, that depends on what you mean by “level”. We market our homeschool science kits for “high school”, but in fact they’re what nowadays would be considered college-level. I’d require 8th-grade students to have reading and math skills that are now considered sufficient for graduating high school. A lot of people think that it’s calculus that separates the women from the girls, but in fact it’s algebra II. Most students simply aren’t bright enough to grok algebra II, which makes some school systems’ requirement of passing algebra II to graduate high school absurd. With that requirement, they’ll either have to graduate only a small percentage of their students or dumb-down algebra II sufficiently that “passing” it is meaningless. I don’t know what percentage of students have the cognitive abilities to deal with the abstract reasoning required in algebra II, but I’d guess it’s less than a third, possibly much less.

    As to beyond 8th grade, I differentiate between “education” and “training”. The former is academic; the latter is hands-on mechanical skills. Yes, ideally we’d have graduating 8th graders going into apprentice programs. The problem is, we really don’t need anywhere near that many plumbers, carpenters, auto mechanics, and so on. As I’ve said before, anyone of lower than average intelligence–in fact anyone lower than perhaps 115 to 130 IQ–is in a very real sense economically useless. That’s what automation has done. Many of these people currently are employed in government and business, but in what amount to make-work jobs.

  45. Chuck W says:

    Education would be much better if we went backwards to what we had in the ’50’s and ’60’s, when there was little emphasis on going to college. My particular high school had a high incidence of college bound—much higher than any other Indy high schools at the time, which—on average—was below 50%.

    Here’s one waste of education money:

    http://ezstream-media-1-1125.wm.llnwd.net/ezstream_media_1_1125

    That is a webcam at one of the county high schools that trains kids to work in radio. There are no jobs in radio, except for sales these days. The very few live announcer jobs are darned near impossible to get. A guy I know worked for almost 10 years in NYC until the Great Recession hit, and now he is in Grand Rapids, MI. He is lucky to have work at all, because almost all stations switched to computer or satellite-delivered programs during the recession.

    I got really upset when that high school station bought a new transmitter, which is about a $35,000 expense. Unfortunately, I my ire was somewhat misplaced because it turned out my tax dollars did not pay for that transmitter; my cousin, the banker, had the bank donate the money for the new transmitter. I guess I paid for it one way or another, as that is where I bank.

  46. Chuck W says:

    The cultural differences between the US and Germany frustrate and baffle me. Americans do not want anything new, and they seldom upgrade anything, including their furniture, house fixtures, or cars. It drives me crazy that the restaurants I visit around here have exactly the same decor they did when they opened—some over 40 years ago.

    Germans are the opposite. Just during the 10 years we were in Berlin, a couple restaurants we frequented, remodeled twice. Almost every retail establishment changes decors dramatically about every 4 or 5 years. People are on a 15 year schedule at home. They re-do some part of their house every year, so that by the end of 15 years, everything has been redone, including painting the outside. Jeri’s closest girl friend in Strausberg “bought a new kitchen” every 5 years. That meant new cabinets, new countertops, and new appliances. And that was not an unusual time interval.

    And it was really unusual to see a car more than 5 years old on the road. Most people we knew got a new car every 2 or 3 years—if they had one. Here, people buy something, and never upgrade it—in the case of houses, they don’t touch them for the rest of their lives!

  47. Chuck W says:

    The Android has been begging to upgrade for a few days now. I have been wavering—turns out with good reason. Damned upgrade lost many of my apps, lost my weather/temp widget, substituted finer, harder-to-read typefaces, and changed the ‘ghost’ cartoon image used as a contact picture for another cartoon with a really stupid-looking face drawn on it.

    Maybe there is a reason not to upgrade cars and Smartphones.

    This time, there was a “Wi-Fi Optimization” program, which—if installed—would report back to Sprint, all the various Wi-Fi networks I connect to. No thanks. I disabled that one. Just hope it does not make me connect manually to every network.

    Adblock says if you root your phone, their program will block ads from all sources, including the phone company’s 3G/4G data service. I cannot really root my phone because I am on an employee’s friends and family plan, but at this point, I sure trust the Android developers a lot more than I do Sprint and its updates. Right now, Adblock cannot block anything on my phone coming from 3G/4G.

  48. OFD says:

    “Most students simply aren’t bright enough to grok algebra II, which makes some school systems’ requirement of passing algebra II to graduate high school absurd.”

    Damn, I either wasn’t bright enough to grok Algebra I when it got to quadratic equations or I was too bored and lazy to bother with it, let alone move on to Algebra II. I’m tempted, though, to work through the Khan Academy courses just to see how fah I can get and/or if my brain has changed in the past forty-five years.

    Upgrades? I almost always upgrade the pooters and the phone, and we are busily upgrading the house and vehicles as time and money allow. Must be my Germanic ancestry before we left for England. And on another board I was just accused of being a neo-Nazi and advised to read “Mein Kampf.” So there ya go.

  49. Chuck W says:

    The one that gets me the most is a tavern in downtown Tiny Town. For a long time it was owned by my brother’s best friend from grade school. He sold it just before I returned to the US 4 years ago. The hanging sign out front has the name “Town Tavern” both painted in red and white and with neon over the letters on both sides. The paint long ago faded so it is impossible to determine what it once said. The neon part has gone out slowly, tube by tube. There is now only one tube on one side still lit, forming the vertical part of the “T” in “Town”.

  50. Miles_Teg says:

    I wondered what was involved in “Algebra II” in the US, so I Googled this:

    http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/rtqalg2.pdf

    None of this stuff looks hard. I know you can’t teach calculus to a horse but certainly you should be able to teach Algebra II to a Border Collie. I’ll see if I can get Mr Barkley up to speed over the Christmas break.

  51. Miles_Teg says:

    Chuck wrote:

    “The cultural differences between the US and Germany frustrate and baffle me. Americans do not want anything new, and they seldom upgrade anything, including their furniture, house fixtures, or cars. It drives me crazy that the restaurants I visit around here have exactly the same decor they did when they opened—some over 40 years ago.

    Germans are the opposite. (snip) That meant new cabinets, new countertops, and new appliances. And that was not an unusual time interval.

    And it was really unusual to see a car more than 5 years old on the road. Most people we knew got a new car every 2 or 3 years—if they had one. Here, people buy something, and never upgrade it—in the case of houses, they don’t touch them for the rest of their lives!”

    Come on Chuck! You can’t fool us. An Ozzie friend who lived in the US said Yanks routinely discard perfectly good furniture and appliances when they move. They just leave their 40″ flat screen and quality sofas by the kerb and buy new at their new address. (He also was spoken to by a suspicious police patrol for the serious crime of walking home from work – why didn’t you drive? You up to no good?)

    I don’t see the need to upgrade a lot, plus I think it’s economically and environmentally bad. I “upgraded” my 1970s vintage kitchen in 2002 because I *had* to. The oven and two of the four hotplates stopped working and they no longer made ovens and cooktops the right size to fit the holes. Eventually, it was just cheaper and easier to replace everything. I love the Seventies and was sad to see my burnt orange and mission brown kitchen go – but what could I do?

    I don’t see the need to buy new cars all the time. I have had three cars in 34 years, bought brand new in 1980, 1993 and 2012. What’s wrong with keeping a car so long as it is still reliable?

    In Australia there’s a bit of a trend for people to upgrade their homes rather than move, because of the costs such as real estate agents fees, removal and government stamp duty. I paid less than $2k stamp duty in 1985 on my current home (the rate was 2%), for my new home in Adelaide I’ll be paying about $32k (the rate is about 5%). That’s a fair chunk of money, and I am seriously cheesed off. Some people avoid this by just extending or putting in new features. I hate it because it’s such a large chunk of dough for nothing and it distorts the economy.

  52. Miles_Teg says:

    OFD wrote:

    “Damn, I either wasn’t bright enough to grok Algebra I when it got to quadratic equations or I was too bored and lazy to bother with it, let alone move on to Algebra II. ”

    Dave, it’s EASY. Even chemists can do algebra, so you should be able to get a PhD in it… 🙂

  53. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Greg, what looks easy to bright people is often impossible for average people.

  54. OFD says:

    See, Greg, there ya go; it was impossible to me at the time, being average. And lazy. And bored rigid. We must have had the two oldest teachers in the school system for the two years of algebra and they were dry as dust. I had a younger guy, who was the soccer coach, for plane geometry and I liked that and did well in it.

  55. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I doubt you’re average or anything close. Lazy and bored I’ll buy.

  56. Lynn McGuire says:

    And then we have our calculus lesson of the day:
    http://xkcd.com/1299/

    “Theory: Smugness is proportional to the negative second derivative of TV ownership rate with respect to time.”

  57. Lynn McGuire says:

    I love the Seventies and was sad to see my burnt orange and mission brown kitchen go – but what could I do?

    I miss avocado green kitchen cabinets.

    Not!

  58. Chuck W says:

    An Ozzie friend who lived in the US said Yanks routinely discard perfectly good furniture and appliances when they move.

    I meant to comment on this, but the time escaped me. Not sure where or when your friend lived here, but I have not seen furniture out at the curb unless some hauler were picking it up that day. The newer subdivisions have community rules, and even Tiny Town has an ordinance against putting anything at the curb, unless it fits in the trash pickup bins—that being done largely by those trucks with robotic picker arms that lift the city approved containers into which all trash must be put.

    This abandoning of goods does happen around student living in college towns, but that is the only place I have seen it. In most places in the US where I have lived, there are ordinances against that kind of thing, and you can get fined for violating it.

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