09:35 – I cleaned the fallen leaves out of the troughs on the roof yesterday. This year is the first time I haven’t climbed up on the roof to do that. Instead, I stood on the ladder and used a leaf rake with a handle extension duct-taped onto it to drag the leaves down and over the edge. I wasn’t able to get all of them, but I got enough. I won’t be climbing up on the roof any more. As Dirty Harry said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Today will be a good day to stay inside. The forecast is for rain and thunderstorms all day. I’ll finish the last load of laundry today and do some work on science kits.
I’ve been researching the competition for the prepping book. I’ve now looked at more than a dozen of the current general prepping titles and, with just one exception, they are universally bad. Not just bad, but hideously bad. And the exception is mediocre, at best. Almost without exception, the authors have no clue what they’re talking about on most or all of the subjects they “cover”. Pretty clearly, they’ve used the Internet as their source of information rather than actually having done any of this stuff themselves. One, for example, divides defensive weapons into four major classes: pistols, shotguns, rifles, and … carbines. Another talks about “hamm radio”, and it’s obvious from the rest of what she has to say about comms that this isn’t merely a typo. She’s completely clueless about radio. In her list of “top brands” of transceivers, she recommends, and I quote: “MURS (Multi-Use Radio Service), Yaesu VX-3R VHF/UHF, Handheld VHF 2 meter Amateur Radio Transceiver 5watt, and TYT TH-F5”. Geez. It’s like listening to a science lecture presented by someone who’s stumped if asked the orbital period of our planet.
11:48 – I’ve been getting the daily free Kindle books email from kebooks.com for a couple of years now. Usually, I just jump down to the mysteries section and download any that look interesting for Barbara. Today, I decided to look at the non-fiction category, where I found six or eight prepping books and three or four on Kindle publishing/marketing. So I downloaded all of them.
The prepping books are ridiculous, both in terms of content and size/price. A typical prepping “book” runs anything from 15 to maybe 60 pages and is normally priced at $2.99 to $4.99. What a rip-off, even if the content were worth reading. As to the books about publishing/marketing on Kindle, I’m not even going to bother looking at them. Why? Here’s the cover from one of them:
“…In her list of “top brands” of transceivers, she recommends, and I quote…”
Probably cribbed verbatim from Amazon’s listings.
“One, for example, divides defensive weapons into four major classes: pistols, shotguns, rifles, and … carbines.”
Carbines? I would have picked grenades. Nothing like a nice grenade for CQB when the Nazis/Japs/Red Chinese/VC/hadjis/tax collectors have broken through the wire and are rushing your position…
Same deal here; overcast, good chance of rain; working inside, mostly. Mrs. OFD should be arriving at some point to help me out.
Tomorrow is supposed to hit 58 here, with more rain. Window guys are coming, though, dump run to do, etc., etc.
Game at 1 so I gotta stock up on Moxie and pretzels.
“Nothing like a nice grenade for CQB”
I thought about providing instructions for making field-expedient grenades with pull igniters using soda cans, black powder, and gravel or metal junk, but I decided not to. I really don’t want my readers to get busted by the BATFE on federal felony charges or to accidentally kill themselves. Bad for repeat business.
I think the problem is: many preppers are into the movement because they have bought into some conspiracy theory. Just looking at the name of that link, “conspiracy theories”, you might think it’s meant to be a list of stupid stuff. Then you read the comments, where people are genuinely concerned about hidden Chinese bases in the US, chemtrails, and other such stuff.
Sort of selects for the lowest possible IQ, which is probably why the quality of the books you’ve found is so dismal. The large proportion of whack-jobs and left-end-of-the-bell-curve-types has given prepping a bad name. Meanwhile, I assume the people who are just interested in preparedness do it quietly, trying to avoid associating themselves with the conspiracy theorists.
Might be nice if one could invent a new word for “intelligent preparedness” as a means of differentiation.
IntPrep. I may steal that.
There are certainly a lot of the stupid/nutcase people you describe, and as always they tend to be a lot more verbal than real preppers, what I call “small-mouth preppers”. I’ve been a (relatively) small-mouth prepper for 40 years. I used to write stuff anonymously for Mel Tappan in the late 70’s, and when Bruce Clayton offered to credit me by name in the next edition of Life After Doomsday for some errors I’d pointed out in the first edition, I replied “PLEASE NO!”.
I decided to become a large-mouth prepper when I decided to write a prepping book. I’ve thought about doing that over the last 15 years or so, and the pathetic quality of existing books finally kicked me over the edge.
Right now, one problem is that I’m writing this with Barbara as co-author, so I can say “we” think this or that, or “Barbara” or “Robert” does this or that. But Barbara says she doesn’t want her name on the book, mainly because she thinks all preppers are nutcases. This despite the fact that she has no problem keeping reasonable stocks of food, guns and ammunition, and so on.
Incidentally, I don’t think most of these authors are stupid or nutcases. They’re just ordinary people writing about something they think is important. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they’re talking about, except perhaps in small niche areas. That, and the fact that few of them can write with even basic competence.
Check your privilege, white man! Not everyone buys into the old white male notion of “scientificness”. And this “hand-on experience” you tout is completely insensitive to the differently-abled. Maybe they don’t even have hands!!! Did you even stop to consider their feelings??!!
Trigger warnings: ablism, elitism, white male privilege, work, jobs, hand jobs, religious bias, insensitivity, disdain for Chinese culture
“…the fact that few of them can write with even basic competence.”
I blame the publik skool system; my generation was clearly the last one, generally speaking, to come through it with a basic solid grasp of the three “R’s.” We see the discrepancy in our own kids and that whole generation, many of whom are writing and publishing these books and sites. A grammar/spelling Nazi like me is pretty much continually appalled daily by the stuff we see.
Besides the skool system, wife and I are agreed that it’s also due to the fact that no one reads anymore. Or if they do, it’s junk or comic novels and suchlike. Almost always published after 1965. Reading is key to everything else; if you don’t read, you’re screwed, as far as we’re concerned.
The famous Dunning-Kruger Effect. The hope is that the alleged wisdom of the crowds will point out the best and the worst of books (and products, restaurants, and whatever else). Experience suggests this is not the case. A solution that should work is knowledgeable editors and reviewers and such, but in practice this isn’t working too well, at least at this time and in the domain of “content residing mainly on the internet”.
RBT, a question about scientists:
Over at TakiMag*, Gavin McInnes claims
Does this sound right to you? It doesn’t square with my experience of scientists. I’ve worked with a dozen or so scientists and have a few as neighbors or acquaintances, but mostly I’ve worked with engineers** rather than scientists. Maybe my experience of them is not typical.
* Don’t blame me. I followed a bit.ly link, not knowing where it was taking me.
** And IT types, but most of the programmers who are worth anything treat it as an engineering task. Oh, and I’ve worked with tons and tons of bureaucrats, analysts, and other generally useless paperpushers.
” I followed a bit.ly link, not knowing where it was taking me.”
I’ve read takimag for years; they’re American/European paleoconservatives, mainly, like me. Taki himself is in his 70s and competes in masters-level judo tournaments and wins. He calls himself a “poor little rich boy” because his family were shipping magnates in the old regime of Greece, and he’s got a yacht. Knows many of the rich and famous from the past half-century or more and does not suffer fools gladly; calls a spade a spade. McInnes is usually pretty spot-on and very funny but he is probably out of his depth talking about scientists. To be fair, only one paragraph out of that piece mentions scientists at all. But yeah, it’s a pretty big brush to be splashing around and Mr. SteveF is right to call him on it, or at least question it.
It doesn’t square with my experience of scientists.
sarcasm: ON
RIP Marion Barry. Another great scientist.
sarcasm: OFF
I’m sure there’s a certain amount of professional envy. Scientists are people, too. But that statement is at best a gross exaggeration, at least as far as most scientists are concerned. Sure, there’s competition across the board, particularly for funding/grants. And, sure, there are lots of PHBs masquerading as real scientists when what they actually are is empire builders. But any real scientist loves new knowledge, hard data, no matter who discovers it. Real scientists are motivated, first and foremost, and often almost exclusively, by the prospect of discovering interesting things. It doesn’t even matter if it’s remotely in their field. A chemist is as excited by a break-through in biology as he or she is by an amazing new chemistry discovery, and vice versa.
Hey, Mayor Barry was the commencement speaker at Clark University down in Woostuh, MA back in the early 80s; they loved him!
“Barry did graduate work in chemistry at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., earning a master’s degree. He left school short of a doctorate to work in the civil rights movement.”
See? He WAS a real scientist!
One of Mordor’s finest, struck down at long last, a heroic warrior poet in defense of his people during evil times, etc, etc. All flags lowered to half-staff, parades, solemn remembrances, etc., etc.
Why I love dogs. Another great dog story.
Sniff, I needed that after the loss of Barry, sniff.
The dawg story was spoiled for me ’cause I made the mistake of scrolling down all the way and having a look at the late Duchess of Alba. Jeezum. I thought Halloween was over.
Well to generalize the old saying, “If you want a friend, get a dog.”
(and I actually say that after finding the drip irrigation on the patio chewed up this morning)
Is there an organized protest movement in Ferguson other than looters, thugs, baiters, etc.? What do they want to accomplish? Hang Whitey? Wilson will not be indicted. Even if he was, would a jury of his “peers” convict him of a crime? Obummer is Black, Holderbama is Black, proposed replacement is Black. Is this nothing more than rabble rousing by the baiters?
Have a Happy Thanksgiving in Ferguson as the population burns it’s own community to the ground, steals stuff and blames Whitey.
Someone mentioned getting a shingles vaccine yesterday, so I figured I’d just throw this out for the hell of it.
Once or twice a year a I get a cold sore on the same spot on my lower lip. Think it comes from shaving too closely, but who knows?
Anyway, when that familiar tingling starts, I rub Acyclovir oinment in a few times a day and it really, truly decreases the time to heal. If I catch it soon enough, the little herpes don’t even get a chance to blister.
I get mine in India for about a buck, but you’d have to see a doctor and get a prescription. But trust me, the stuff really works.
Abreva (Docosanol) is the over-the-counter stuff here for cold sores. I’ve used it a couple of times and it works well. Used early stops blistering. Usually cleared in 2-3 days.
I’ve seen that. Glad to know it truly works. Would love to experiement head to head against Acyclovir someday, but never get more than one little patch.
The doc told me what happens to some folks who get shingles; pretty miserable for around three weeks and then it usually goes away on its own; but for some, it doesn’t. Also sez no genetic factor, strikes male and female, at random and outta the blue. I figured a shot wouldn’t hurt. Doc sez he and others at the VA get their flu shots voluntarily, and *choose* to get them every year; also that the med people at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, probably the best hospital outside Boston and New York City, are *required* to get annual flu shots.
“Is there an organized protest movement in Ferguson other than looters, thugs, baiters, etc.? What do they want to accomplish?”
Yes. Mostly allegedly nonviolent groups, sometimes church-related, others not. The kid’s dad has even called for calm and staying cool and letting things take their legal course. But as with all these things, there are baiters fanning the flames, right on up to the WH. And on the other side, plenty of cops and people who would like to see tanks and Warthogs blow the place to shit.
The common sense thing here and with the Florida case, is realizing that a big aggressive and violent teenage male attacked an armed guy and even then the armed guy was hard-pressed to defend himself, but ends up responding lethally and terminally. So the armed guys get taken to the legal and media cleaners. Throw in the race angle and the sky’s the limit now. All peeps on all sides need to take a deep breath and a step back and work this shit out; no value at all in anyone else being hurt or killed out there and setting all kinds of nasty precedents elsewhere.
Our Canadian friends have more fun to deal with:
http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=d78920835c8c
From one of my gun site emails today:
“Yes, yes, I know . . . Lewis & Clark fed their party and amazed the locals with their lethal Girandoni air gun in the early 1800’s. But that doesn’t change the fact that an airgun is not a firearm per se. Of course, “firearm” is also a legal term. Our neighbors to the north have a thing about guns – especially unlicensed, unregistered and unrestricted guns. And so a panel of judges decided that an air rifle is a firearm – regardless of the firing system or the feet per second rate of the ejected pellet. Air rifles are now subject to the same gun control laws bedeviling firearms-owning Canadians. Or are they? Apparently, the legislature’s going to sort it all out. Of course, the Parliament and Premier won’t add any additional regulations for air guns while they’re at it, right?”
What do they want to accomplish? Hang Whitey?
Yes, they do. They want revenge. They want the officer to be released to their mobs so they can hang him from the nearest tree. The protesters are not concerned about the law or the facts in the case. They refuse to acknowledge that Brown was a thug and the officer just saved the state a whole lot of money.
Of course Sharpton and Jackson, the two biggest racists in the nation, are fanning the flames. After all racism is their career path, the source of their income. Lazy assholes that are not qualified to do anything worthwhile for society.
OFD,
Got my Skeat today. What a treat! Definitely owe you one.
Broke it in as I was taught, just wish they still sewed books together in signatures but oh well.
http://www.amazon.com/Concise-Etymological-Dictionary-English-Language/dp/1596050926
Never been so happy about a dictionary since my mother gave me Chambers many, many years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Chambers-Dictionary-13th-Editors/dp/1473602254
The ripple effect: Five Cases Dismissed Because Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson Was No-Show.
Wilson has a target on his back. Would you show up if you were in his place?
@OFD: If you wanted sewn signatures, you could’ve gone with an earlier printing.
News guy I worked with started out in radio (ended up at WCBS Newsradio in NYC). As you might know, a newsman in radio has LOTS of down time between newscasts. He filled that time reading a dictionary from cover to cover. Best Scrabble player I ever encountered.
Speaking of radio, my broadcasting trades are saying that if streaming audiences continue rising as fast as they have the last couple years, in 2 years, more people will be listening to ‘radio’ via streaming than over-the-air.
Quite by accident, I stumbled across one of the interesting new digital outlets. Some former DJ’s (and a couple current club DJ’s) have created a video/audio channel. They call it the “Totally 70’s Radio Network”. Originates from Poughkeepsie.
No kidding. Something actually happens in Poughkeepsie.
http://vaughnlive.tv/totally_70s
(Won’t play on Apple products without Puffin. And they are live only evenings.)
“Got my Skeat today. What a treat! Definitely owe you one.”
Yo, just pay it forward, as the kidz say nowadays. Makes the haht glad to see someone else enjoys dictionaries and etymologies and words.
“Would you show up if you were in his place?”
Two ways to work it: disappear like he has, or brazen it out and walk tall. Be prepared, however, to use immediate lethal force again. The department brass undoubtedly told him in no uncertain terms to pick Door Number One. And they can find ways to accommodate pending court cases; not like it ain’t been done before.
“The protesters are not concerned about the law or the facts in the case.”
Most of them anyway. It’s the same mindset that refused/refuses to acknowledge O.J. Simpson’s guilt or that Trayvon was a noob gangsta thug like the punk out there. See, “four hundred years of slavery and racism” justifies that mindset; they can’t be racist but Whitey is de facto racist from birth. And you have white teachers and professors teaching this, as they’re doing right now at Framingham State College, Framingham, Massachusetts, with one of my nieces. ‘check yer privilege,’ ‘acknowledge your racism,’ it’s almost like an AA meeting: “My name is OFD and I’m an alcoholic.” Except with AA there is hope for your drunk ass; with them there is none.
Similar to the hadjis who behead former Army Rangers who’ve become “humanitarians” and converted to “Islam.” You can do all that but gotta get whacked anyway.
“@OFD: If you wanted sewn signatures, you could’ve gone with an earlier printing.”
Most likely, although there are some publishers, usually small, who do that type of binding here and there in the present day.
Just watched “CBS Sixty Minutes” and they did the first segment on Our Nay-Shun’s Crumbling Infrastructure. Which everyone knows about in Congress and gummint departments but allegedly cannot find the political will to find the money to fix all this stuff. They have zero problems finding more of our money for plenty of other bullshit, though. Watch what happens when that bridge over the Hackensack in New Jersey falls apart, a major rail link in the Megalopolis East. Or a 23-mile stretch of Route 95, again in Mega East, goes to pieces.
So we have trillions for dead-end stupid Sandbox wars, 30 million acres of Pentagon real estate, half a million DOD structures of which only half are currently occupied, and a joke of a publik education system, etc., etc. But zero for the hundreds of bridges, dams, major seaports, and airports that are disintegrating before our eyes. That bridge in Hackensack is 140 years old. Also ancient are the water systems under cities like Boston and New York. It’s gonna be pretty funny when all this shit starts going down the tubes.
The next segment covered the Current Situation at Chernobyl, which I already knew about. Another media nail in the coffin of ever getting nuke power going again on this continent. No indication whatsoever that our technology and safety may have improved just a tad over the past three decades…
It would take a bile specialist…
“Something actually happens in Poughkeepsie.”
As a RHEL manufacturing cluster support drone, I was helping with all the IBM machines down there and in East Fishkill, as well as northern Vermont. Remote, of course. Now I’ll be lucky to get a rack monkey job again.
Massive rain and 40 mph wind pummeling the Midwest right now. Inch and a half of rain before it is all over at noon tomorrow (Mon).
http://image.weather.com/images/maps/current/curwx_720x486.jpg
Good thing it is not coming down as snow.
We gon git dat here tomorrow all day and into da night. Tanks, Mr. Chuck.
We also gittin’ nine windows replaced, according to Mrs. OFD an hour ago. Seven more to go after dat. Plus living room ceiling. Electrician. Plumber.
And while the temps are up and we have no wind, I can finish putting up plastic sheets over the screens on the back porch and cut down on most of the wind that blows through there (with snow in the winter) and then on through the rickety back door and kitchen window.
If you had Chicken Pox as a kid you are at higher risk of shingles. Or perhaps pus blishes.
“Yo, just pay it forward, as the kidz say nowadays. Makes the haht glad to see someone else enjoys dictionaries and etymologies and words.”
I’m still grateful for your suggestion. I have and will “pay it forward”, for all the good it might do me. I can think of only two people to whom I’ve sent dictionaries (both Chambers) who appreciated the things. Nonetheless, it’s the Right Thing to Do. The internetz will make a rope of words and strangle this business, so it’s nice to have books.
Another good one to pass on is:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=19568028
My son wanted an Air Soft pistol when he was younger. I had to buy it for him as he was underage to purchase it at the time. I wanted to make sure that the gun was safe for him to use, and so I shot myself in the palm from about a foot away. Hurt like the dickens and caused a bruise, but didn’t break the skin. Air Soft pistols are around 275 fps and the rifles are about 375 fps. I can believe the RCMP want stricter controls, they won’t be happy until we’re standing at attention all day, but the ruling party is as soft (no pun intended) on guns as a Canadian can get and have already repealed one of the more ridiculous barriers enacted by the previous Liberal government. Namely the Long Gun Registry.
Be careful when accessing news from Sun Media, they’re the Fox News network of Canada. I’m sure that some of what they say is the truth, but it’s hard to separate from the noise.
Also, Parliament is headed by the Prime Minister. Premiers are the heads of provincial governments.
“Barbara says she doesn’t want her name on the book, mainly because she thinks all preppers are nutcases. This despite the fact that she has no problem keeping reasonable stocks of food, guns and ammunition, and so on.”
Exactly. If you can find a way to reach the (potential) Barbaras of the world…
@SteveF, re scientists and hate: Nonsense, at least in the CS field. I spent several years in the research area. It is certainly true that you “want to get there before the other guy”, if there’s some low hanging fruit to be had. But hate? The most I ran across was irritation, when you saw someone’s results being lauded because they worked for a well-known researcher/institution, even though the results were actually crap.
My general impression is that there is a lot of “old boys network”, where results are evaluated first on where they come from, and only second on their quality. Also, there are far, far, far too many grad students out there, producing masses of drivel. Although sometimes there is entertainment value in the results of “publish or perish” when so many people want to publish…
The next segment covered the Current Situation at Chernobyl, which I already knew about. Another media nail in the coffin of ever getting nuke power going again on this continent. No indication whatsoever that our technology and safety may have improved just a tad over the past three decades…
We had a Chernobyl in the USA, it was called Three Mile Island. And just like Chernobyl, the other nuclear plants at the site continue to make electricity.
The most lethal power plant disaster in my lifetime was caused by a weather event that experts say only happens once every thousand years. No, I don’t mean the tsunami at Fukushima, I mean the 1975 failure of a Chinese hydroelectric plant. In other words a dam that burst.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBanqiao_Dam&ei=jipzVNW0FYekyATPjIKwCQ&usg=AFQjCNH8iP6RrjpkFymZuSUs5L9NxeeeZw&sig2=doIxNZ5JXd3AP3NHX1qe9A&bvm=bv.80185997,d.aWw