09:18 – Work on science kits continues, as does work on the prepping book, AKA The Book That Wouldn’t Die. I’m still jumping around in the book, writing a section here and a paragraph there as I think of things to add.
One of the reasons I look forward to Barbara retiring is that she’ll be able to do much of the work on science kits that I have to do now. I’ll still do things like designing new kits, making up reagents, and so on, but she’ll be able to do the repetitive things that take up my time now. Things like filling chemical bottles, building subassemblies, assembling finished kits, keeping inventory and cutting purchase orders, shipping kits, and all of the other stuff that eats my time. She’s good at this kind of stuff, and I’m not. Freeing up my time will allow me to do more of the stuff that requires my knowledge and abilities. Not that I plan to work Barbara to death by any means. She can do part-time what takes me nearly full time, and she’ll have the other half of her time free to do personal stuff. Including travel, although I’m very nervous when she’s far from home.
10:29 – The US Postal Service and Swiss Post have really outdone themselves. On Saturday the 23rd at 4:12 p.m., the USPS picked up a kit here that was destined for Switzerland. I just got an email update telling me that the kit has arrived at the local post office in Switzerland. I believe that’s the fastest any of our international shipments has arrived, including kits shipped to Canada.
The US Postal Service and Swiss Post have really outdone themselves.
I sometimes get surprised by the USPS.
I ordered my German Train tickets on a Monday. The request was not processed until Friday because of DB being on strike. My order status never changed so I contacted a former exchange student in Germany so they could call DB and find out what was going. DB indicated they would process the tickets that day and that was a Friday. On Monday I had the train tickets that had been mailed from Germany.
Yet it takes three week days to get a letter from Knoxville to Oliver Springs. If it is over a weekend you can add two more days. I drive the 30 miles every day from my home to downtown Knoxville and it takes me about 40 minutes. Yet mail takes days. Mail coming from Germany takes less time.
We did send a package to Norway ($65) and it took almost a month. It was a good sized box with five pairs of shoes. Former exchange student ordered them and sent to us. We removed the shoes from their individual boxes, enclosed a couple of birthday cards and sent them to Norway. Even when you include shipping the cost was about half what they would pay in Norway. Enclosing the birthday card avoids import duties and taxes in Norway.
I sell a lot of electronic kits to European customers shipped by either first class international mail or priority mail.
The Swiss PO is amongst the fastest in my experience.
Canada is highly variable and The Netherlands can take 60 days for delivery. Germany is 30 days in many cases. I think a major part of the delay in The Netherlands and Germany relates to assessing VAT and duty and then collecting that from the customer.
I also receive frequent requests to declare the value as “gift – $10.00” While I feel sorry for the customers hit with high taxes, they elected those governments and I refuse to put a false customs declaration on any shipment.
“America has already taken in one-fourth of Mexico’s entire population.”
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2015-05-27.html
I am not sure where we are going with this but I suspect the problems will multiply.
We’re lucky in North Carolina. We have a fair number of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal I’m sure, but all of them whom I’ve met seem like good people. It’s just like any other group. There are very good ones and very bad ones. Smart, hard-working, honest ones, and others who are none of those. That’s why I have no interest in judging people as members of groups, only as individuals.
Plenty of room! Come one, come all, you struggling masses yearning to breathe free, it’s one big giant PX, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Bottomless Pockets Taxpayer! No need to learn the language or “assimilate;” far from it! Make the local dolts learn YOUR language and customs and start it in their crappy skool system. Make it MANDATORY.
How about this: we take in the very good Mexicans, bar the rest, and send them our morons, dolts, cretins, politicians, banksters, financial wizards and lawyers. We’ll of course send them on foot with one canteen of water and our choice of “coyotes,” mainly extreme right-wing types armed to the teeth who get bonuses for heads and pelts.
Wow !! Bravo Bob !!! I’m impressed.
@OFD: what you’re suggesting worked very well for Herr Hitler back in the 30s and 40s. He got rid of millions of Jews, gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political prisoners, etc., etc.
And bigotry seems to be alive and well in the good old U.S.A.
I think that’s one of many reasons why Gore Vidal liked to call Amerika the “United States of Amnesia”.
Ann Coulter is basically just a pathological liar, and a bigot. Along with her cohort Rush Limbaugh.
Well, now, Mr. Sam; I would not be using the same methods Corporal Schikelgruber had in place. The derps I’d be sending away, would be getting sent away, not to certain death and they’d at least have a fighting chance. And I’d have the records on them as just what they did in the way of damage to this country and its people, all nice and aboveboard and legal. The wizards who either through incompetence and/or malice aforethought tanked our economy and put millions out of work and wrecked families, for instance. The political hacks and minions who’ve demonstrably acted in treasonous fashion throughout their sordid “careers.” Etc.
My bigotry, as such, is not against anyone by reason of race, religion or ethnicity per se, unlike the aforementioned Hitler person.
Incidentally, both Koba the Dread and Chairman Mao made Hitler look like a piker, by geometric factors, but we never hear about them. Things that make you go “hmmmmmmm….”
Ann Coulter is basically just a pathological liar, and a bigot. Along with her cohort Rush Limbaugh.
At the risk of Bob’s good nature and nickle, please provide specific examples for each person of their lies. Generalizations are worthless to me. I’ve studied Coulter and Limbaugh quite a bit over the years. Both blow their own horns loud and long but I have yet to catch either in a lie.
I’ve been living in the Houston metropolitan area since we moved back in 1969. I was born in the area but moved to New Jersey when I was six weeks old. Houston has always been a city of many races that usually get along to some extent. Better than most large cities in the USA. However, the MS-13 guys scare the living you know what out of me. And Houston has many of those.
@OFD
Yes, I agree – “Uncle” Joe (Stalin) committed his own horrific genocides.
But there’s a great Martin Luther King quote that I really admire …
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
I actively protested against both the Vietnam War and the Iraq invasion. And yes, I know that Saddam too was a mass murderer. But guess who supplied him with many of his weapons.
“And yes, I know that Saddam too was a mass murderer. But guess who supplied him with many of his weapons.”
I know full well, as do most literate combat vets, that many of the weapons our enemies use/d against us originated in some way, shape or form with our parents’ and our own tax money. A rank obscenity, run by cynical bankster types, political hacks, venal arms merchants and chickenhawk sons of bitches. So, in a nutshell, my mom and dad might have paid for the shrapnel I still carry in me and when I finally croak, I will have paid for my own VA bronze grave marker, too. Sick, ain’t it?
And speaking of liars, MLK was one huge mofuckin’ liar hisself; between plagiarizing his B.U. doctoral dissertation and lying to his wife and family while he engaged in insanely serial adultery and also cozying up to known communist agents.
I agree with Mr. Lynn on Coulter and Limburger; they talk a lotta loud talk but I’d need to see data or links to actual lies, and like our friend down in Sugarland, I’ve listened to the latter in the past and read Coulter’s stuff right along.
Besides all that, I wanna take Ann out to lunch or dinner and feed her a decent fucking meal and fatten her up a little and then roger her silly so she’ll become a nice person.
@Lynn
@OFD
That’s the diabolical part, they both know that they can’t outright lie, or they’d be sued for libel and/or slander. But the intent is there. They both twist and distort the truth to such a degree (frequently by omission or quoting out of context or extreme exaggeration), that the effect is basically the same as if they’d flat out lied. I don’t want to get into a long drawn-out argument (I both don’t have the time or the energy), but one example that comes to mind off the top of my head is the Sandra Fluke slander by Rush. And to his credit he eventually did apologize for what he said. You can read all about it here …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Fluke#Controversial_comments_by_Rush_Limbaugh
Controversial comments by Rush Limbaugh …
Main article: Rush Limbaugh–Sandra Fluke controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh%E2%80%93Sandra_Fluke_controversy
(quoted excerpt (much more in the full Wikipedia articles)) …
“On February 29, 2012, Rush Limbaugh labeled Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” based on her speech before House Democrats. Fluke appeared to support mandating health insurers to cover contraceptive costs. Limbaugh stated:[35][36]
“[Fluke] essentially says that she must be paid to have sex—what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”
Political figures, including President Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner, voiced disapproval of Limbaugh’s comments.[37] On March 3, Limbaugh apologized to Fluke for his comments, saying his “insulting word choices” were meant to be “humorous”, and that he never believed her to be a “slut” or a prostitute.[38][39] Fluke rejected the apology as dubious and inadequate.[40]”
The point I’m trying to make is that just because you aren’t saying an outright lie, if the intent to deceive is there, by whatever means, then it really does constitute a lie. That’s why in courts of law we swear to say/tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth !!
But then as Pontius Pilate said: “What is truth?” (Quid est veritas?).
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and interpretations, that is what America is all about, freedom of speech, and religion. And I respect that. So please allow me my own freedoms, opinions, and interpretations. And I will allow yours too. And may we all be able to discern the truth in all matters.
As always, Dave, I thoroughly enjoy your excellent sense of humor (“Limburger”). But if you fatten Ann up, then they can’t call her the “skinny bitch” any more !! 🙂
Back when the whole Sandra Fluke thing was happening, and I was reading the newspaper articles about it on the Internet (I don’t watch any TV) — I was also reading all of the comments posted by some of the readers below the articles. And I confirmed for myself the interesting observation made by many others … the vast majority of the comments were rehashes or re-wordings or exactly what Rush was saying. Does the term “ditto-heads” sound familiar ?? Only a very few comments referred to what Sandra Fluke actually told the House Committee. I had already downloaded her testimony, so I knew what she had said.
Nebraska has abolished the death penalty in part because it can’t get the drugs it needs. Why can’t someone in Nebraska, or the US in general, make these drugs? Is it really hard?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-29/conservative-support-for-death-penalty-falling-across-us/6506914
OFD wrote:
“Besides all that, I wanna take Ann out to lunch or dinner and feed her a decent fucking meal and fatten her up a little and then roger her silly so she’ll become a nice person.”
Um, wouldn’t that be a mortal sin?
Um, wouldn’t that be a mortal sin?
It would be a really stupid sin.
You guys are no fun.
And yes, I know that Saddam too was a mass murderer. But guess who supplied him with many of his weapons.
The USSR/Russians. The Iraqi army was equipped with USSR equipment – MiGs, AK-47s, etc. It’s a persistent myth that the US supplied them with arms. IIRC, we did sell them a few tactical radios. We did supply overhead images of the front during the Iran/Iraq war.
We’re lucky in North Carolina. We have a fair number of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal I’m sure, but all of them whom I’ve met seem like good people. It’s just like any other group. There are very good ones and very bad ones. Smart, hard-working, honest ones, and others who are none of those. That’s why I have no interest in judging people as members of groups, only as individuals.
Me too. I was just surprised that 1/4 of the Mexican population has immigrated to the USA. If I lived there and needed work, I would be strolling XXXXXX sneaking across the border also. The ones that I know are all hard workers, they mow my yard, clean my house, and clean my pool. The landscaper who rents my warehouse has about 10 or 15 of them working for him. All very hard workers.
Yeah, well, they grew up understanding that one has to work if one wants to eat. I wish our underclass had grown up that way, but if they had we wouldn’t have an underclass.
One of my disaster scenarios is “The Day the EBT cards died”. I just think that it is at least ten years away.
Could be ten years…
….or ten minutes.
….or ten minutes.
Nah, it will be a few days after the EBT system fails:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/bracken-when-the-music-stops-how-americas-cities-may-explode-in-violence/
Miles_Teg wrote:
“Um, wouldn’t that be a mortal sin?”
But Jesus himself told us to “love thy neighbor” !!
Didn’t he ?? 🙂
One of my favourite verses is 1 Tim 5:23:
“Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”
Amen to that… 🙂