08:51 – If you believe the BBC, which is always risky, rats may have been getting a bad rap all these years. A new paper reports that rats were not the carriers of the Black Death. Instead, it was apparently gerbils who carried the plague bacterium, which I still think of as Pasteurella pestis. Just one of many Gram-negative species that has caused untold death and suffering to humanity.
Barbara drove the Trooper to work again today. The forecast calls for more winter weather coming in this evening, with anywhere from 3 to 6 inches of snow depending on who you believe. She’ll decide this afternoon whether to come straight home from work or stop at the gym. We’re under a winter weather advisory until noon today for black ice from the remnants of yesterday’s snow, with a winter weather watch starting this afternoon for the snow expected this evening.
I’ve reached the stage in the prepping book where I already have a ton of material written but it feels like I’m only about 10% done because there’s still so much left to write about. This has happened on every book I’ve ever written, but it always seems to come out okay. Right now I’m working in section I (the first month), writing the chapter on electricity, light, and communications.
14:50 – I just finished the first draft of what is tentatively designated Chapter I-8. It’s from section I (the first month), and it covers Electricity, Lighting, and Communications. If you’d like a copy of the PDF, email me at thompson (at) thehomescientist (dot) com.
I should emphasize that this is a first draft, direct from my keyboard. I haven’t done any editing or rewrite at all. There’ll be typos I’m sure. There may even be major missing sections that I somehow forgot to include. There aren’t any images yet, and I haven’t even started to format it for print. The final chapter may well look a lot different.
If you do get a copy, please keep it to yourself. Don’t post it anywhere. This really is rough, and most authors wouldn’t even consider letting anyone see their work at this early stage.
“Just one of many Gram-negative species that has caused untold death and suffering to humanity.”
Is Gram-negative any more deadly than G+?
There are many Gram-positive pathogens, but the really nasty ones tend to be Gram-negative. Also, most current classes of antibiotics are more effective against Gram-positive than Gram-negative. We really, really need one if not several new classes of antibiotics that are effective against G- bacteria.
Hi Bob,
Completely off the wall, but I happened across this article today, which I thought might interest you…
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/2015/02/24/build-a-world-class-insect-imaging-system-for-under-6000/
Hey, being a Stasi goon pays good money here in the USA:
http://freebeacon.com/issues/lois-lerner-received-129k-in-bonuses/
“Former IRS official Lois Lerner received $129,300 in bonuses between 2010 and 2013, records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show.”
I saw that on the gerbils earlier; what other great historical events will eventually be revised, one wonders; we were always told it was the rats.
Of course we were always told that the War Between the States was fought to end slavery and that the attack on Pearl Harbor came totally by surprise and those Duke University guys were all rapists.
Gee whiz, Dr. Bob, y’all are getting more snow than us up here; we have just a few snow showers predicted for today and it’s in the mid-20s, might hit 30 by Saturday, no other precip in the forecasts. Of course whatever lands on us in November and from then on, stays here, so it’s been a sorta wintuh wonduh-land for months now.
You have to wonder why political appointees get bonuses. Well, I guess not. See Mr. OFD’s posts.
lol You can’t make this up. White House changes the narrative. Illegal crimmigrants are now Americans-In-Waiting. Federal Judge halts Obola’s executive immigration crime. Obola says he will follow the law. Obola tells DHS to keep letting them go, because he supersedes the judiciary or something. Wut a country!
Obola and his lawyer thugs have outright stated that he is above any laws and can rule pretty much by tyrannical executive fiat, whenever he so chooses; the groundwork for this, of course, was laid by his immediate predecessor, and a long ways before that, even.
Incidentally, the top VA honchos also got, and get, very nice boner checks for themselves, despite the documented horrors of the system in recent years. A few bureaucrats were sacrificial goats, but the real bastids are still there. In any case, even the goats got nice severance packages, natch.
Americans-in-Waiting, eh? Fine. Bring ’em on in. Let them have the entire Murkan Southwest, the new Aztlan. Break up the Empire. Hope they enjoy the blistering heat and dried up aquifer out there. And our major metropoles throughout; also seething cauldrons of resentment and hate.
Can you imagine millions of new Murkans with no skills who will eventually get welfare, medicare, etc.? There is no way to support this scheme other than the gummint taking everything and handing out to who they think deserves it. Certainly not WHITEY!, heteros, vets, anyone right of center, etc. I can kiss my pension, SS goodbye. People who actually contribute to society (and the ruling class) will get a nice place to live and access to real food. The rest of us are off to the nearest PRC and our soy rations. No Tobasco for the first 6 months till you prove you are a controlled citizen.
I ain’t moving to no PRC and I use Frank’s Hot Sauce anyway.
If the State actually does try to pull off a major nationwide act of piracy like this, we can expect a few tens of millions of armed Murkans to be violently outraged and respond accordingly. This is probably what the State is prepping for, while we prep with our ham radios and trying to find more boxes of .22LR and learning how to can tomatoes.
This is probably what the State is prepping for, while we prep with our ham radios and trying to find more boxes of .22LR and learning how to can tomatoes.
lol And then, of course, the State will come and try to take our tomatoes. Lock and load one 50-round drum mag in your Ruger.
I should probably start distancing myself from you right-wing types before I end up on some government list. I’m hoping my socially liberal side will convince the feds that I’m not worth bothering with. On the other hand, I did coin the name Heimatsichheitshauptamt for homeland security and I did suggest that the director of the HSHA should hold the rank of Oberstgruppenführer.
Pournelle thought I was kidding about that. I finally convinced him I was deadly serious.
Too late, Dr. Bob, much too late. You and Dr. Pournelle are clearly established right-wing types and your published works and utterances are replete with evidence accordingly.
And I knew you weren’t kidding and I would also be deadly serious about that. Fits the program and its gauleiters perfectly.
I should probably start distancing myself from you right-wing types before I end up on some government list.
lol
Is there a list you are not on, Dr. Bob? Possibly the TSA PreCheck since you rarely fly.
I’m pretty sure the TSA has “shoot on sight” next to my name.
In 1975, I got a quick look at my FBI file. Even 40 years ago, it was more than an inch thick.
Well, finally a government program I can get behind:
(CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Service’s Office of Refuge Resettlement (ORR) has confirmed to CNSNews.com that abortion is one of the emergency medical services that must be made available by federally funded caregivers of illegal alien unaccompanied minors (Unaccompanied Children or UC) who have been sexually assaulted and become pregnant.
Dang! Mr. OFD spotted on Mars!
I thought it was reading this forum that will get me sent off.
I purchased a BaoFeng BF-F8HP a couple of days ago.
I was just talking to some aircraft on approach to McCarran.
Is that bad?
Naughty, naughty. Seriously, be very careful about using that radio on any frequency you’re not licensed to use.
“… TSA has “shoot on sight” next to my name.”
Yeah, but can they hit anything?
“Even 40 years ago, it was more than an inch thick.”
Ordinarily I’d guess it’s now in a big database somewhere but knowing the Fed leviathan like I do, I bet it’s still in paper form and now the size of the Infernal Robbery Shitheads tax code.
“Mr. OFD spotted on Mars!”
Told ya I have connections with spec ops. I’m getting some advanced training from Martian commandos up here even as we speak. They laugh at the crappy WordPress typing I have to do; to them it’s like Sumerian cuneiform is to us.
“…reading this forum that will get me sent off.”
Always possible, unless you knuckle under and become a Stasi supergrass.
“I was just talking to some aircraft on approach to McCarran.”
This just in from our nooz bureau in Lost Wages:
“A U.S. citizen using the pseudonym MrAtoz has been arrested today in conjunction with a possible anti-government plot whereby he was attempting communication with classified aircrew during classified operations at a classified location. He is being held at an undisclosed classified location while a full investigation is conducted by classified personnel. More at our 11 o’clock nooz update. Stay tooned, citizens.”
Naughty, naughty.
This just in from our nooz bureau in Lost Wages:
I was also using a laser pointer so the pilots could find me.
Is that bad, also?
In 1975, I got a quick look at my FBI file. Even 40 years ago, it was more than an inch thick.
What was in it?
Gee whiz, we’re dealing with a real live terrorist criminal here, folks!
Ex-military, too, more cause for alarm.
I didn’t get to see what was in it. The guy I was talking to just closed it and put it in front of him on his desk. It may have been a fake for all I know. I was only 21 at the time and I hadn’t done anything at all to merit federal attention other than chemistry stuff, radio, blowing things up, mouthing off loudly about Kent State, and messing around a bit with firearms converted to fire full auto.
Anyway, it was me who contacted them to report that someone on their ten most wanted list was trying to steal my girlfriend. They took it very seriously. Three carloads of FBI agents arrived less than an hour after I called, and it was a 70+ mile drive from their Pittsburgh office. They had others go to my parents’ home and wake them up. My parents thought I’d applied for a job with the FBI and their visit was to do a background check. In the middle of the night.
It was then that I first realized how incompetent they really were. Nothing like the movies or the TV series. I mean stupifyingly incompetent.
Oh yeah, I remember that story; what was the outcome? i.e., where are the most-wanted p.o.s. and the ex-gf now?
Feebie incompetence is a gimme, right from the earliest days, too.
Let’s see. The most-wanted POS has his own Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jones_%28activist%29
He’s a buddy of Bill Ayers, so I’m guessing he’s also a buddy of Obama.
Ex-girlfriend is Karen Taylor. I haven’t seen or spoken to her in almost 40 years. We were living together when she decided to fly out and visit her brother in California. I figured there wouldn’t be a problem, since her brother was an MD, as was their father. It turned out her brother had become a Moonie. Karen also joined. I went out to Northern California to take her back, but I couldn’t do a thing.
Her parents wouldn’t listen to a word I said. They hated my guts, presumably because they thought I’d deflowered their little girl. After the mess with Jones, Karen tried to kill herself and ended up in the college infirmary. Her parents came down from Cleveland to see her. Her dad’s first words to her, and I quote, were, “You whore! You slut! Don’t wear white to your wedding!” After which he stormed out. This said to a 21 year old girl who’d just been through a horrible experience and then tried to kill herself. Barb Deem (who was my other girlfriend at the time and also Karen’s lover; things were a lot more complicated back then…) and I were flabbergasted. We expected her parents to be upset, but her dad was absolutely vicious.
Yikes.
There’s a movie script there somewhere.
Now I remember this asshole; and he lives fairly close by, down in the Capital District banana belt. Boy, if the you-know-what really does hit the fan someday, he’d certainly be on somebody’s list….just theorizing…not advocating…
My grandmother had a file due to her anti-war activities during Vietnam. She was a college prof at the time, and a firm Quaker. FBI watched her house for a while, so she went out one evening with milk and cookies for the agents and introduced herself.
Years later, my uncle got her file with a FIOA request. (Probably wrote it on letterhead from the TV station where he was a reporter.) Bottom line was they quickly figured out she was a nice little old lady that had a religious aversion to war.
I know I have a file, since I had a security clearance that included an extended background investigation. Plus I had a Secret at NASA so I could go into MCC and “position of trust” paperwork done also. I’ve had 10 card fingerprints done at least 5 times for all this.
I expect my father in law had one also. After he retired he got active in Communist party politics and made at least one visit to North Korea on party business. We found letter and stuff about it after he died. I knew that in the 60s he did some work with the Black Panthers – my wife has described what it was like for the Houston Swat team to visit the house at 3 AM looking for weapons. He was all bluster and no action – in life and politics.
Wow. Another movie script here.
My life has been so boring.
On the Quaker deal; a bunch of my ancestors on Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and in the New Bedford area of Maffachufetts went from being Pilgrims and Puritans to Quakers in the 18th-C down there. My paternal grandfather was farmed out with his siblings when his mom died and his father couldn’t take care of them anymore, and he grew up in Quaker foster families on farms in the area. He used to describe them sitting at Sunday Meeting with the men and women separated and being there for three hours without anyone speaking, unless someone felt the spirit move them so.
So much for the Society of Friends when he enlisted in the U.S. Army in the last year of the Great War. I have a picture of him and me when I was about four or five, with my beagle; the Great War vet and future ‘Nam vet. What a country. I’m dreading having a similar pic taken with my own grandson, who is about the same age now I was then; the old ‘Nam vet and him as a vet of whatever future damnable war he might end up in fifteen or twenty years down the road.
I probably have a file at the FBI, CIA, NSA for a lot of the same reasons ech and OFD. Military service, super secret clearances from working at some facilities at Langley AFB (probably long expired as I never renewed them when I left the service), multiple interviews with neighbors during my military career. Never did anything out of the ordinary (well except for that KOA incident that shall remain untold) so maybe they have shredded my file by now.
I doubt I am of the caliber of ech and OFD. Of course one does wonder why those two also have three letter names as do all FBI, NSA, CIA, KGB, etc. Coincidence?
Just coincidence, fella, move along now, nothing to see here…
Hey, I was just a lowly-ass gunner, a hired killer for the banking and oil guys…etc.
But they did have me guarding nuke warheads in Maine for a while. Under the USAF “Human Reliability Program.” And the clearances, after the aforementioned interviews with other family, friends, neighbors, teachers, church, etc. and multiple fingerprint cards, etc. None active now, I’m sure.
Probably ech and Mr. SteveF and you were higher-level mucky-mucks who’d tell a drone like me to waste somebody and I’d just do it, immediately. Or, as an NCO, tell MY drones to do it. Dat’s how it work.
Good news, everyone! Amazon has picked up The Man in the High Castle for a full run. It’s adapted from one of Phil Dick’s best books.
You mean as a flick?
The Library of America series has a full multi-volume set of the late Dick.
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=311
I love to hate Nazis!
Anyone heard of this brand of case: Fractal Design?
Supposed to be better than Antec. I’m out of touch with this stuff so I’d like anyone’s informed opinion.
I haven’t built a computer in over a decade.* Off the shelf (or off the parcel delivery truck) is plenty good enough and cheaper, unless you have special needs like gaming or data crunching. Even there, it might be cheaper and easier to buy a pre-built gaming box or to rent cloud CPU cycles.
* The last one I built, in January of 2002, is still running as my home file and web server. I’ve replaced the power supply and the CPU fans but everything else is original equipment as specced in RBT’s Build Your Own Computer, Ya Bum. A dog by today’s standards, of course, but good enough for its purpose, even 13 years later.
RBT – just wanted to confirm that your mailing list software for your TUFPG delivered Chapter 1 this morning at 0437 PST. Now I have some “light” reading for the weekend. Non-disclosure agreement confirmed. Thanks.
Thanks. You’re the first person I’d heard back from, and my own address isn’t on the mailing list.
I got the email also and saved the .pdf for later reading; looks very interesting; thanks.
I got the e-mail too, and a couple of comments from other readers.
I got the prepping PDF email to both of my email accounts (office and home). I will take a look at it this weekend if life slows down a little.
my own address isn’t on the mailing list.
I put both of my email addresses on all of our lists. Helps me to see screw ups. Of which, there are none of course, just occasional minor errors. Ok, there are plentiful major screw ups, right, left, and sideways.
I got the PDF, too. Will go over it this weekend, assuming no family crises at home. (Translation: hahahahahahaha!)
Same here, but small crises already here. LOL.
Clue Number One: Is there, or are there, wimmenz in the vicinity?
No further questions, Your Honor.
Yah, pretty much.
I manage to go through life with very little self-caused crises or drama. Oh, sure, there’s the occasional poorly-timed mechanical failure or brain-dead moment by myself, but things generally go pretty smoothly when I’m left to my own devices.
My wife, and the other hand… She lives in a state of constant crisis and drama, almost entirely self-caused. Noooo, if your car has had trouble starting, there’s no need to tell your husband until the day it won’t start at all. Of course it takes only five minutes to get out the door and drive to your best friend’s daughter’s christening eight miles away, and you’ll be on time and you won’t disrupt the ceremony and cause hard feelings. Yes, screaming at people who disagree with you is the best way to make them change their minds.
And, because there’s crisis and drama everywhere she goes, she doesn’t realize that life doesn’t have to work that way. Crisis and drama is just the way the world is…
So, uh, I guess I jinxed it Friday evening when I said “assuming no crises at home”. Yesterday was nothing but crisis and drama, which left me harried all day and well into the night, trying to keep my wife’s temper from being inflicted on the girls (our 7-y-o daughter and another girl we take care of when her mother is too much of a nutcase to be trusted with her), and today I’m too exhausted to do much beyond stare stupidly at my monitor. Time was I could stay awake 100 hours without stimulants. Those days are long gone, and if I miss a night’s sleep I’m worthless the next day.
And, to add insult to injury, the carafe of my coffee maker cracked when I was cleaning it before making a pot this morning. And I’m not sure I trust myself to drive the three miles to the store to buy a replacement. Oh, the injustice!
Sorry to hear you had such a PITA time down there in the Banana Belt.
“…if I miss a night’s sleep I’m worthless the next day.”
Ditto, but after all those night shifts long ago, I am extremely jealous of my uninterrupted sleep time and take measures to make sure I get it, and have for years.
Minor crises here today but since my year so far of treatment/counseling at the VA, I’m hopefully bettuh able to handle them, other than brief, limited outbursts against inanimate objects, like your carafe; maybe it picked up my vibes from up here.
Eat a nice hot dinnuh and go to sleep, homes. Tomorrow is a new fuckin day.