08:00 – More science kit stuff today.
I knew when we started the science kit business that we would be doing something important, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me just how important it is. The future of this country, assuming it has one, will come down to home-schooled kids, who are the only ones nowadays who are getting a real education. Public schools have become all about progressive indoctrination. Home-schooled kids are the only ones who are learning about–to borrow a phrase–truth, justice, and the American way. We have to give them the tools they need. So we’ll continue doing our small bit to contribute to that.
On that note, I’ll go back to making up chemical solutions and filling bottles. That seems pretty mundane, but it’s important.
09:05 – I really like these gallon bottles that Costco uses for purified water. They actually hold a gallon when filled to the neck. In fact, for our purposes, they might as well be huge volumetric flasks. I can judge to 3.8 liters ± about 0.5% just by looking at the fill level in the neck. Also, the labels come off without leaving a bunch of adhesive on the bottle. Finally, they’re polyethylene terephthalate, which is the ideal plastic for most chemical solutions other than strong acids or bases. I’m running short of gallon containers, so I’m going to empty one or two of them into 2-liter bottles today so I can use the bigger bottles for chemical solutions. That’ll also cut down on refrigerator space for Barbara’s water.
Starting today a pleasant 80F. Predicted 106F with humid air from the southeast. Wonderful.
Fair
80°F
27°C
Humidity 25%
Wind Speed E 6 MPH
Barometer 29.88 in (1011.0 mb)
Dewpoint 41°F (5°C)
Visibility 10.00 mi
Heat Index 79°F (26°C)
Last update 26 Jun 5:54 am PDT
I was watching Justice League cartoons on Netflix, and that phrase was truth and justice. The reference to the American way was completely gone. What is the American way, or should I say what was it? The American way is or was the idea that we could have a civil society built by people who disagree about almost everything.
Our host is an Atheist, and I’m a Methodist and that’s a huge disagreement which will never go away. However, despite that huge disagreement, I have no doubt that Bob’s science kits are a quality product, and I look forward to buying one of each for my daughter when she is old enough. Despite the fact that I have what Bob thinks are silly religious beliefs, I am sure he has no reservations about selling me science kits.
I have a couple of acquaintances who moved here from Utah. When I found out they were from Utah, I suppressed a small urge to ask them if they’re weirdo Mormons. Now I’m tempted to ask them if they know where the local cannery is when it’s open. I think that the Salvation Army is a group of Christian weirdos. I won’t be joining them any time soon. Even given that, I think a dollar given to the Salvation Army will accomplish more good than paying another dollar in taxes.
What made the United States of America great is the associations we used to form voluntarily with others who we don’t completely agree with were the most important institutions in our society. With the rise in influence of Progressives the mostly, but not always civil debate in our society is being snuffed out.
Agreed. I have no problems with any religion, other than that totalitarian political system masquerading as a religion. What anyone wants to believe is his own business, not mine, as long as he doesn’t try to force his beliefs on others, including by establishing them in law.
Most of the religious people I know are good people, and that includes the radical Southern Baptists. I take issue with them when they try to force their beliefs on marriage, abortion, etc. on people who don’t agree with them, but otherwise they’re fine by me.
And I most certainly take exception to those who worship at the altar of progressivism, because their real goal is to compel everyone to worship at their perverted church. People who live to get into other people’s faces need to be killed. It’s the only way to discourage them.
I should have quoted that phrase from the TV series Superman in full: “The never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.”
Given the political trajectory I wonder how much longer before home schooling and private school is outlawed, with the expect exemption for high ranking political figures and their pet donors. The “State”, however it is defined today, cannot afford to let people go without indoctrination.
SCOTUS just made same-sex marriage legal nationwide.
I should also be clearer. The American way has happened here for most of the last 200 years. The benefit of this is something that too many seem to take for granted. I’m not saying that the American way should remain uniquely American, other countries would benefit from making it their own. What I call the American way could just as easily be called Western Civilization or liberal democracy. I think the foreign policy of the United States should be all about promoting liberal democracy in other countries. I don’t mean the forceful promotion as in post WWII Japan and Germany, but from the realization that the real friends of the United States are liberal democracies. For those countries that are not liberal democracies, we should reward the slow shift towards liberal democracy and discourage the shift away from liberal democracy.
I interpret liberal democracy to be almost the exact opposite of those ideas proposed by so called Liberal Democrats in the United States.
The only real friends we have left are Canada and Australia.
Jim C,
It’s my understanding that, like gun control laws, anti-home-schooling laws are a product of Nazi Germany.
Home-schooling is illegal in many places around the world and de facto illegal in places in the US. Many of the logical things for home schoolers, like getting a subject matter expert to present to a group of home school kids, trigger laws regarding unlicensed teachers and result in prosecution and persecution.
There are ways to beat the system. Sarah Hoyt writes about how she used the schools as day care and taught her kids after school.
I’m only just engaging with the school system and already, even at a kindergarten level there is much to hate.
I note that almost NONE of the people running this country or it’s companies, have kids in public schools. That right there should tell you something.
nick
The Obama Crime Family is in charge
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/was-supreme-court-justice-john-roberts-blackmailed/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=ShareButtons
I think the only way we get out of this mess, if we ever can, is a grassroots effort to squash the federal government and its minions, including their families. Electing people and sending them to DC is an exercise in frustration. It’s pointless. With so few exceptions as not to matter, they all end up co-opted. We need to make the “flyover states” physically dangerous for federal minions, like the old days when bootleggers made revenuers disappear. The states need to exempt their citizens from sending any money at all to the feds, and then secede. I’d much rather send the money I’m sending now to the feds to the NC state government. The red states and their people can go it alone and together with each other.
I’ve felt for a while that the republic is lost. Now I propose that it’s time to change the name of the Country. The United States of America is a laughable name that no longer represents what we truly are. The Country is no longer united and the concept of state obviously means nothing.
The country that I was born into, “The United States of America” was something special, but what exists now is not. Let’s change the name instead of allowing it to be tarnished by what’s going on and what is to come.
I’m sure the Left would be thrilled with this too since they feel that what came before was evil.
@RBT,
I submit that there aren’t any ‘blue states.’ There are blue counties, where a blue city makes up the majority of the population. (Well, there are a couple of tiny north eastern states.)
If you look at election results by county the whole red/blue thing looks very different.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/2012-election-county-by-county/
Someone smarter than me will have to do the math, but by gut, we seem to be pretty close to the point where the electoral college system will be broken. The only thing that will matter is the population of the top 5-6 cities, and they will (legally) determine the election thru force of numbers, no matter what the whole rest of the country wants.
There I go, working with votes, as if that was going to make a difference anyway.
nick
@dkreck, do you have personal weather station? If so, what brand?
I am an amateur meteorologist, been interested in weather since my grade school days in the mid-50s. We took a school field trip to WBBM-Channel 2 in Chicago to meet P.J. Hoff (called Chicago’s original weatherman: http://www.robertfeder.com/2014/09/10/remembering-p-j-hoff-chicagos-original-weatherman-with-character/) to prepare us for a long term science project of watching and predicting the weather for 30 days. There was a contest to go along and I won, my predictions beat P.J. Hoff’s. So for my prize I got to spend a day with him and he gave me a simple weather station. Been a hobby ever since. I currently have a Honeywell Weather Station that while no longer made still works well. The area I currently live in is has a large number of micro-climates so the so-called local weather is often way off.
And finally, @Al, for me your comment is right on (your last one too @RBT).
Edit: oh heck, all the comments today are great! Keep it up guys and keep your powder dry.
Haters.
“SCOTUS just made same-sex marriage legal nationwide.”
Thus overriding the states again and letting us know that the government intends to keep its mitts in the marriage racket.
They also upheld ObummerCARE and then I lost track (and interest) in the rest of their totalitarian decisions; we knew this was coming. Our only friends on the Court have been Scalia and Thomas and when they’re gone, the rulers will pack it like ol’ Pharaoh Roosevelt II did. And we all know by now that a Repub-controlled Congress means nothing, and that we have not a President anymore but an imperial uber-gauleiter who renders his diktats via “executive decisions” now. This is all being controlled or signed off on by the actual rulers, of course; none of it would be happening otherwise.
The pieces on that end of the board are falling into place; a corporate fascist oligarchy engaged in what has been described as “anarcho-tyranny.”
On this end of the board are increasing numbers of people who are angry, fed up and disgusted, and there is more push-back and blowback in progress now.
Rumors also circulate via people still working in the intel and security sectors of the Federal government that it is divided; there is almost a mini-civil war going on there, with the bad guys having the upper hand. I get the impression that the military and cops are in the same boat.
It remains to be seen how all this will shake out in the next few months and years; I expect more shootings, riots, mass civil unrest, and more State surveillance and repression. Some guys speculate that they won’t upset the continuing gravy train by attacking the so-called Three Percent out here. We’ll see.
I think it’s a lot less than 3% right now, but every new outrage boosts that. More important than the 3%, in my opinion, is what percentage of the general population sympathizes with the so-called 3%. Every new outrage boosts that percentage even more.
The true underclass + government minions is probably < 10%, which is already far outnumbered by the 3% and their sympathizers. And as the "we're not going to put up with this any more" movement grows, it'll eventually get to 90:10 or so close as not to matter. I'll never be part of the 3%, simply because I'm too old and decrepit to be anything but a liability to them, but I'm definitely in the sympathizer category.
The American way? Went out for lunch here today, and the restaurant was offering a special “American soup”. I was wondering if they captured a tourist or something, because I sure have no idea what kind of soup that would be.
High school graduation for the youngest today. Thankfully, the “No Child Gets Ahead” hasn’t hit here, and likely won’t. The university-track high schools are pretty tough, and he did very well. (Edit: just as an example – I don’t remember doing partial differential equations until college).
His class put on a great show for the graduation ceremony, and the school played along – a lot more original than the usual “student walks across the stage, shakes the hand, takes the paper.”. Then their ethics and philosophy teacher read a little speech (in rhyme, which is difficult in German), and included lots of inside jokes for the class. She is apparently one of those very memorable teachers.
Finally everyone went outside for champagne (drinking age here is 16 for most things), snacks and socializing. Looks like the kids are going to go out for one last party before heading off in their separate directions, so we’ll see the youngling tomorrow morning.
Support roles will be vital.
Comms, caches, cash, all critical.
There is always a need for a ‘rear area.’
John Ringo has some interesting thoughts on how to support and resist a seemingly overwhelming force in his Troy Rising series, which is a fun read anyway. The key is “don’t make enemies out of your potential and actual supporters” and “turn the crank just a little farther til it breaks” and find out who your outside allies might be. Have something to offer them.
I think there is great value in preparing the ground by getting people to read the right books NOW, before the shooting starts. Books that encourage and celebrate the values we will need, and that teach (subtly is best) some useful techniques or at least plant the seed.
If they enjoy those books, they will naturally feel more positively toward the ideas in them.
nick
@Brad
http://recipes.epicurean.com/combo_results.jsp?recipe_type=Soup&cultural_type=American
If any reader is in service at the moment, think of all the things you can do, within the context of your normal duties, that would help the right people and hinder the others.
-push the gear hard under the guise of zeal, while ensuring that it breaks down early.
-deadline gear for technical reasons
-master the art of required paperwork?
-insist on all the mandatory training and readiness in all the areas you currently hate (deadline the group because not everyone has been to sex harassment training?)
-“work to rule” – a great favorite of the unions
I’m sure an insider would know a bunch of tricks. For starters, do the opposite of anything you do now to actually get work done and avoid the timewasters.
nick
@dkreck, do you have personal weather station? If so, what brand?
No those figure come from the NWS in Hanford CA. They are for my zip code.
I used to have a basic consumer one from Edmund Scientific but put it away several years ago. Still have the outside temp sensor on the front porch that has a digital readout. Seems pretty close to the official numbers.
Also the remote rain gauge is now retired. There is no rain in California.
@RBT: Exactly, there are so many, depending on what region you’re from. I still figure they caught and cooked a tourist…
Re 3%, if it comes to it, I surely do hope for a more peaceful change of power. Maybe several secessions. Leave D.C. ruling exactly nothing. If it really gets bloody, well, there’s just no telling what will come out the other end.
There never is in a revolution. They tend to eat their children. The first American revolution was an exception. The contemporaneous French revolution was more typical.
I don’t see the feds giving up without widespread bloodshed, but there are a lot more of us than there are of them. That’s one good reason why we have to fight to keep them from disarming us. The late Murray Rothbard was fond of equating the government to a criminal gang, and gangsters don’t hesitate to spill blood to keep what they have. And you can be sure that the Obama Crime Family is no different.
I don’t think our current lords understand what “consent of the governed” means. They seem to think that people can be governed without consenting. That may be true for a while, but eventually they’ll simply refuse to acknowledge these gangsters as a legitimate government. And, as Talleyrand said, “The only thing you cannot do with a bayonet is sit on it.”
brad wrote:
“…just as an example – I don’t remember doing partial differential equations until college).”
2nd year uni here, you’d generally be getting towards 19 yo.
The other thing the left seems to forget is a free society must be basically self governing. For government in a society that has anything resembling freedom, well over 90% of the population has to obey the law voluntarily. The percentage is probably more like 99%.
We did diffE as highschool seniors (~17 years old).
I did calculus as a high school senior and there were only 9 students in a graduating class of over 400.
Yeah, there were three of us in my senior math class, from a total graduating class of 700+. Delores Callahan was one hell of a teacher.
I just checked, and she was apparently still teaching in 2004, which was 33 years after I last sat in one of her classes.
http://www.ratemyteachers.com/delores-callahan/1010962-t
“The Dread Judge Roberts”
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/the-princess-rules/
I would snork if this stuff were not so important. I guess the soldiers in the APCs at the entrance of the street is next.
Wow, great cartoon Mr. Lynn. That is scary.
I see she’s 89 years old now, so she would have been 56 when I last sat in her class. Her hair was prematurely white; I think it changed when she was in her 30’s. Her house was about 3 houses away from ours, and I remember her hair being white when I was 6 or 8 years old.
Buy your Captain Confederacy comic books now before they are burned:
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=120881
No, the charitable and not for profit status of churches that do not perform gay marriages is next. Either that or the assault on marriage as a relationship between two people is next.
It’s my understanding that, like gun control laws, anti-home-schooling laws are a product of Nazi Germany.
The first gun control laws were in Turkey. After the guns were picked up, the Muslims started killing off the Armenian Christians. 1.5 million of them.
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2015/04/26/gun-control-remembering-the-armenian-genocide/
The Nazis performed nothing new. They were the imitators of many selected atrocities.
I don’t remember doing DEs in Year 12 HS. We did ordinary DEs in first year uni, the year I turned 18, and PDEs the next year (along with Fourier series and Laplace transforms and all that good stuff.)
“I’ll never be part of the 3%, simply because I’m too old and decrepit to be anything but a liability to them, but I’m definitely in the sympathizer category.”
There is a shit-ton for us old farts to do, Bob. What Mr. nick said. Intel being near the top, along with commo. Anyplace at all we can pitch in, maybe just providing a place to stay temporarily and cooking supper and handloading some ammo. But I’m also working on some basic PT to start off and trying to get some flab off, bring back the joint flexibility and some cardio. I wanna get back into hiking and canoeing more often in the warm weather, x-c skiing and snowshoeing in the winter, and be able to haul a loaded ruck and load-bearing vest with ammo and water a few miles. Without breaking anything, hopefully.
How many of you math wizards still use yer Diff and Calc? I never went beyond basic algebra and plane geometry and still only rarely use arithmetic, the tables of which they had us memorize back then. That was drummed into us like English grammar, until it became part of our DNA and bone marrow.
Thanks to Mr. Lynn for previously linking the DayByDay comic strip; I now get those in my own email and am a supporter this year. That dude kicks ass. What’s next for the Obercula Crime Family? Two-pronged visible attack on straight marriage “privilege” and anything smacking of the Confederacy, in progress as we speak. Next up: the continued public and non-public attacks on gun rights.
If some crazy bastards among them think they can confiscate all our firearms out here, half a billion to a billion of them, good luck. They don’t have the manpower or the gear to put an APC on every block. They’ll have to try it another way, with stuff like Operation Chokehold, Operation Fast-and-Furious, and fiddling with the supplies of powder, shot, bullets, and assembled ammo manufacture.
Probably also run some more black flag ops; yet another addled teenage white male with major family dysfunction, psychotropic drug usage, and ongoing therapeutic ministrations of some type or another. Or nutball suicidal hadjis. Look! They’re using GUNS! We gotta get these guns off the street. No one needs an assault rifle to hunt deer. Hey, if you have an irrational need for self-defense, get a shotgun! Just racking the slide will scare the bad guys away! Hey, what about OUR rights to enjoy a gun-free zone at our churches, skools, libraries and sporting events? No one needs more than ten rounds in one of them there “clips.”
I still use calculus and diff equations occasionally, but casually (in my head rather than on paper). It’s just another method of eyeballing/sanity-checking stuff.
I used to be able to haul around 100-pound sacks all day without even thinking about it. Now, even a 50-pound sack is a non-trivial amount of weight for me. I could still haul a 100-pound sack up a flight of stairs, but that’d be my limit and I’d have to rest for several minutes between trips.
Same deal on endurance. When I was 18 or 20 years old, I’d play serve-and-volley tennis all day long in the August sun, running 10 or 20 miles during that time, all in short flat-out sprints. A couple of minutes of that would literally kill me now.
About the only contribution I could make is that I know how to make stuff. When it comes right down to it, I’m a chemist.
I need to take the lesson my brother and I learned as college tennis players. I was pure flat-out power. I hit every ball as hard as I could. My brother was also more a power player than anything else, but he also had superb touch. (Ilie Năstase is the only other player I’ve ever seen who could consistently hit a backhand topspin lob half-volley; it drove me nuts. It really drove me nuts that Bill thought nothing of doing it.)
So one day we were at the college courts, waiting for a court to come free. There were these two old guys (probably all of 40 or 45) hitting junk shots back and forth. They asked Bill and me if we wanted to play doubles. We looked at each other and figured why not? We thought we’d blow them off the court and they’d go home with their tails between their legs. We did beat them in straight sets, but it wasn’t as easy as we though it’d be. I’d hit a booming backhand, expecting it to be a clean winner, which it would have been against most excellent players, and the damned ball would come floating back. We got so tired of these cripples coming back over the net that we both started overhitting (well, Bill did; I always hit as hard as I could). So these old guys actually took games off of us, which stunned us both.
When we finished, they said they’d never played anyone as good before, and we told them that we were surprised at just how good they actually were. I remember the one guy’s comment, that he played a power game when he was in college, but as he’d gotten older he realized that he no longer had the power to play that kind of game so instead he concentrated on consistency and placement. I need to remember that now that I no longer have what it takes to play a power game.
OFD wrote:
“How many of you math wizards still use yer Diff and Calc?”
I use calculus a bit in my head. I only use DEs for pleasure.
“I never went beyond basic algebra and plane geometry”
You could learn. I didn’t start learning Latin and ancient history ’till I was 30.
I remember asking Paul and Mary (both Ph.D. chemists) how often they used calculus and they both said never. I was surprised. Calculus is simply gorgeous, and there are certainly opportunities to use it in day-to-day scientific work.
Area under the curve calculus is what I’ve used mostly since getting a BS/MS in Maths and retiring from the Army. I used calculus the most while working as a ORSA pod in my secondary.
IMHO it’s impossible for a serious chemist not to use calculus, even a cook^H^H^H^H organic chemist… 🙂
They’re probably using it without thinking about it. Or perhaps they use the term fluxions… 🙂
Haven’t needed any kind of calculus for years. Seeing my son learning it was a bit of a refresher for me, kinda fun.
What we both do, for a lark, is participate in the International math and logic games. This doesn’t require anything above basic algebra and geometry, but it’s fun. We’ve both made it to the final round in Paris this year, for the first time.
I’d link to an English page, but being run by the French, they’re really bad about putting stuff up in other languages; anyway, their website sucks in any language. We take the exam in German; they are available in English, but I can’t find any online. Hmmm…here’s a sample algebra problem of moderate difficulty:
The factorial of a positive natural number n is written as n! and is the product of all natural numbers from 1 to n. So: 1! = 1; 2! = 1*2 = 2, 3! = 1*2*3, 4! = 1*2*3*4 = 24, etc.. By definition 0! = 1. A certain 3-digit number is equal to the factorial of its digits. Which number is it?
“You could learn.”
Why, pray tell?
As it is, I’m learning some radio electronics stuff and a bit of gunsmithing, and what math is needed for that. Otherwise, I’ll happily pass…and on to Latin and Greek and ancient and medieval history, philosophy and theology…
“…but as he’d gotten older he realized that he no longer had the power to play that kind of game so instead he concentrated on consistency and placement. I need to remember that now that I no longer have what it takes to play a power game.”
This line of thought would seem to overlap into other fields; maybe I can’t hump an M60 for ten miles in jungle heat with a pile of ammo anymore and smoke a ciggie while doing it, but I might be able to provide some nice intel and commo to the guys who are. Maybe even repair some firearms and radio malfunctions. And cook ’em up some nice grub.
I remember Nasty from watching tennis a lot with my first wife; he was a character. I also saw an aging Jimmy Connors playing his heart out a number of times and sending younger guys to the showers more than once, too. The wife was big on womyns’ tennis, so we hit the local shows of the Virginia Slims Tournament…do they still operate…lessee….hmmmm….I guess it’s all WTA now, eh? The online articles talk about it like it was only in the early 70s but I distinctly remember going to matches in Worcester and Boston in the 80s.
Imagine watching the Twin Towers, Helena Sukova and Claudia Kohde-Kilsch (6’2″ each) in a doubles match against Pam Shriver and Martina Navratilova. The Towers got their asses kicked, with Claudia swearing in German throughout.
Also once saw Martina return a hard serve while twisting 360 degrees in mid-air; didn’t think that could be done.
Yay! It’s Gay Day! So say the Hollyweird crowd. Gays are now finally free! No more oppression! Oh wait, reparations are next. Then forced worship to make up for all the fag jokes. What will really happen is the lining of thousands of more lawyers pockets as the divorce rate triples.
If two Gay guys get married, and a cop is called in for a domestic dispute, hearing one guy call the other “fag” whilst slapping him, is that a *hate* crime? Or only if the assault is by a Straight White Male Christian proto-Ape. I gotsta know.
Coming soon to a suburb or an exurb next to you, PRCs (Public Residential Complexes):
http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/06/paul-hancock-fha/
This is the one that really bothers me. In fact, where does the Federal Government get its authority to create or subsidize residential housing?
Fairly soon, when one builds a house, you will have to build a Section 8 house right next to it.
Hater.
Your sarcasm has been noted, sir.
A microaggression.
In other nooz, one of our escaped rascals has been shot and killed not too fah from the notoriously max prison he got out of three weeks ago; the cops blew his shit away when he allegedly had a gun himself, not sure if he fired it first or what, but I AM sure the cops would have had either explicit or implicit orders to shoot on sight. The other guy was apparently still with him and hightailed it into the woods.
http://www.wcax.com/story/29419437/richard-matt-shot-david-sweat-on-the-run
As previously mentioned,
“Fairly soon, when one builds a house, you will have to build a Section 8 house right next to it.” This is literally true in Chicago, only you put them in the basement apartment, and sell the ground floor and upper floor to yuppy kids who don’t know any better. Happened in my sisters’ neighborhood.
Listening to BYU radio this afternoon and they were talking about fighting segregation in the US by forcing developers to do low income set asides in every new project. It seems it has massive effects on the poor who get to move in, while having NO effect on the rich. I’ll believe that in 5 years.
Kept touting the benefits of an integrated society but couldn’t name any except that it improved kids “holistically.” Whatever the F that means.
nick
I was doing some hobby stuff last with MS Excel, random number generator, normal distribution shaper to do some probability analyses.
This is literally true in Chicago, only you put them in the basement apartment, and sell the ground floor and upper floor to yuppy kids who don’t know any better. Happened in my sisters’ neighborhood.
We don’t have basements on the Gulf Coast.
So the mail came, and if I had purchased one of those Bravo Company stripped uppers, I’d be hard pressed to figure out what blemish caused it to be sold as a blem. And I’d be surprised that it came with a forward assist and a dust cover door.
But of course, that would only be if I’d purchased a couple…..
nick
Naughty boy.
You do know you can’t hunt deer with those things, amirite?
I think I can, If I could find some deer. I know I can hunt pigs. And pecan fed piggie is REALLY good eatin’.
nick
re calculus and diffE: I still use them once in a while. Not often. Mostly I’ll use approximations* or fill-in-the-numbers pre-crunched formulas. I’ll bet Mary and Paul do the same; calculus or diffE went into the algebraic formulas, but isn’t used directly.
re marriage: I thoroughly favor multiple marriage. I have only one wife at the moment, who nags me only half to death. I need another, concurrent wife to finish the job. (My only concern is that the second wife would nag me only half of the half to death, leaving me more miserable but not quite dead yet, a miserable version of Zeno’s Paradox.)
re gay acceptance: I’m going to start dressing like Elton John or Liberace. If anyone says anything about it looking gay, I’ll say, no, I’m straight, I just like to dress like this. Then, later, I’ll file all sorts of criminal and civil charges and get a big payoff for the hate speech and damage to my precious ego and of course the microaggressions. Cha-ching!
re home schooling (paragraph added via edit because of derp): I can’t do the full-up homeschooling gig (because I can’t afford to give up the daytime income and haven’t found a way to make the same amount via self-employment) but pay more than I can comfortably afford to keep my daughter out of the public school system. On top of that, my wife and I significantly add to her education at home. eg, the 7-y-o has written most of the first draft of an age-appropriate “chapter book”, and is doing a decent job because her semi-pro author father is teaching her about plotting and characterization and the rest. She’s age-appropriate literate in Chinese, learned Venn diagrams and about a quarter of Aristotle’s syllogism patterns when she was 4, learned to read when she was 4**, and I’ve been teaching her to improvise fugues on the piano***. This summer I’m planning on teaching her trigonometry and Logo programming so she can create letters using turtle graphics strokes. (Yes, I’m bragging a bit about my utterly awesome daughter, but mostly I’m pointing out that a lot can be crammed into the little babies’ skulls if the parents will just get off their asses.)
* One “practical” example I saw of using calculus was to figure out how much paint you’d need to cover an irregularly-shaped area. Bah. The “covers 300 sq ft per gallon” claim is just an estimate and even if it were perfect, you’re not going to buy 2.6 quarts, you’re going to buy 4 quarts because a gallon can is cheaper and more convenient than three quart cans. An approximation is plenty good enough.
** Via phonics. Of course. I wanted her to actually learn to read. Interestingly but not surprisingly, most Chinese people learn to read English mainly by whole-word memorization. If they teach their kids to read English, they use the same method and the kids are handicapped unless they learn to overcome it.
*** Had to teach myself first, which was difficult because I don’t play piano.
I find myself using OR methods fairly often.
“I know I can hunt pigs. And pecan fed piggie is REALLY good eatin’.”
I hear tell that TX is dang near overrun wid hawgs and it’s basically open season on ’em and you kin even hunt ’em from choppers! Paging Colonel Atoz…
“I need another, concurrent wife to finish the job.”
No you don’t. One is usually capable of the operation.
“I’m straight, I just like to dress like this.”
So you would be a cross-dresser. At least that’s what they used to be called. Maybe there’s a different name now…transdresser? Or is it all just subsumed under the “T” of the “LGBT”? Enquiring minds wanna know. What about the BDSM community? Aren’t they feeling left out today? Or do they LIKE it?
“An approximation is plenty good enough.”
Yessir, that’s my method right there. Also: “Good enough for gummint work.” Even though I don’t work for the gummint no mo.
I skated thru math by the skin of my teeth. Didn’t like it and had drunk the Kool-Aid that girls don’t do math (odd because I didn’t typically buy into any of that garbage).
In my senior year I took Calculus and Physics. I needed them for my college major. It was the first year Calculus had been offered at my high school. There were perhaps 8 of us from a graduating class of 120. And a freshman. Our freshman was a brilliant and sweet natured kid.
We all worked very hard. Differential equations were neat.
Calculus was beautiful and made sense to me. No previous math had held any appeal.
I adore Calculus. I wish I worked in a field that gave me a reason to use what I had learned.
I never took to the calculus, and requiring it in uni was a good way to keep me from becoming an engineer. Thermodynamics and steam tables were an effective weed out technique too.
We had something called “pre-calc” at my high school, a high-achieving college-prep private catholic school. We might have even had a calculus class. I needed to avoid it in order to get my GPA up enough to actually attend a university. Oddly, I loved and overachieved in the geometry class I took instead. LOVED proofs.
Foreign teacher’s assistants, hormones, beer and fraternity life basically killed any chance of my passing calc or diffeq in university (a private lutheran school, specializing in engineering, law, and business for the failed engineers….)(nurses too.)
Oddly enough, when I was still working for the big company that had me flying all over every week, I used a lot of trig and geometry. I could locate points in 3d space much faster with lines, string, plumbbobs, measuring tapes and math than the desk engineers could with theodolites and Total Stations. I’ll admit that sometimes my lines were from a laser and the plumb lines too, but I used a LOT of string, measuring, and math. And if a Total Station was not available, I just did my thing anyway with what I carried in a briefcase. There was a certain aerospace defense contractor that looked on in disbelief (and later amazement) as I used modern versions of tools familiar to the greeks and egyptians to quickly and accurately lay out his expensive and very high tech structure, that had stymied previous staffers.
I encourage kids co-workers and other interested parties to learn at least thru trig and plane geometry. It might just keep you employed.
(I’ve picked up a couple of calc books including the classic for teaching yourself. Haven’t had the time to even crack the cover. Don’t need to solve those types of problems anymore.)
nick
Pigs are a pest here in TX with open season year round. They destroy agriculture and threaten livestock. I’m hoping my buddy helps me out with some piggy this year. Last year it was about the same price as commercially produced pork after the butcher got done, even with the pig being free. However fun shooting hogs might be (don’t have the personal experience, but it’s supposed to be great fun) I’m not ready to pay for the privilege.
So after yesterday, ruling on obummercare, and acknowledging as they did so that it was contrary to the written law, today Scalia says the SCOTUS is the biggest threat to our liberty.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/06/justice-scalia-on-gay-marriage-ruling-i-write-separately-to-call-attention-to-this-courts-threat-to-american-democracy/
“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”
…
“This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”
…
“And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”
…
“With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence. ”
And yet, he continues to make judgements.
RTWT
This is the week that America died. The fatal disease has been festering, but today the vessel popped, the pustule ruptured, and the poison has had its effect. The decay will take some time, but the rotting corpse is past resuscitation. It can’t get any plainer that rule of law is dead, than a supreme court justice telling us so.
nick
The rule of law here has been dead a real long time, but this latest series of obscenities is the frosting on the cake; we have now been told straight out by all three branches of our government that they will do whatever the fuck they want, period. And fuck us.
The word I’m getting today off other net sources is that a whole lot more people just got motivated to get off their asses, finally.
I had a random encounter with an estate sale seller today who was very eager to tell me that something big is coming.
Ordinary folks see it. They are getting ready in whatever way they can.
nick
I graduated from high school in June 1983; mine was the first class which the county attempted to teach Calculus to seniors. Prior to that it was called Math V and was more or less Pre-Calc. Alas, the woman selected to teach it at my school was a complete dingbat who couldn’t teach her way out of a paper bag. (I’d like to know if she had a teaching degree or a math degree; I’m guessing the former.)
From a graduating class of 350 or so, there were 20 of us in Calculus, and none of us learned much of anything. It was almost as worthless as the Chemistry class we took as juniors. As a freshman at * Institute of Technology, I was very much thrown into the deep end, and struggled quite a bit.
On the other hand, my younger sister’s three daughters seem to have had a proper curriculum available in Calculus, Chemistry, Physics, et al. The really cool part is that the youngest one, who spoke only Mandarin until she was about 5 1/2, won the class prizes for best grades in English & Spanish. The school they attended is a private, religious one in a big city in Florida, something which was not available to my sister & I.
And the vicissitudes of my life in the years since high school & college have resulted in the atrophy of my math & programming skills. Life goes on.
Huh, Bravo Company still has uppers available. When they did lowers, they sold out in hours, not days.
nick
“…very eager to tell me that something big is coming.”
Yeah? Like what? Another wunnerful SCOTUS decision? We’re putting boots on the ground in Ukraine? Murkans can now marry their kids? An asteroid is about to hit Sugarland?
“Ordinary folks see it. They are getting ready in whatever way they can.”
See what? Getting ready? Oh boy. This should be good.
“…When they did lowers, they sold out in hours, not days.”
Sure. Uppers are a dime a dozen. But lowers sold legit are gonna have serial numbers on ’em, of course, and be recorded. How big you think the “other” market is out here with blank lowers? Which can be made in one’s garage or cellar now with a hand drill and a jig?
And what about that Confederate flag thing, eh?
http://takimag.com/article/the_us_of_shame_gavin_mcinnes/print
I’m gonna find one around here somewhere and put it up on July 4th. That’ll frost all the tourista sons of bitches and town and state staffers who show up clogging the street with their Beemers and SUVs on “Bay Day” here. Let’s see somebody try to take it down.
Oh no, he was specific and vehement, civil war or wide spread race war.
and he was arming up.
Everyone I talk to sees something bad coming.
—-
Lower doesn’t do you much good without an upper. I’m thinking maybe because it has some M4 features that people might not want, or possibly it’s like at the gun store, everyone who wants one and can afford it already has what they need.
Anyone who thinks they won’t be tracking uppers is insane. They subpoenaed supermarket records to see who bought HUMMUS for pete’s sake after 911. Ditto for barrels, trigger groups, and all the other goodies. Wanna bet they look at tac vests, single point slings, rail covers, optics, and all the rest? I wouldn’t be my life on it.
In a world where a famous person, one of the rich media elite, can go to prison for asserting her innocence (lying to federal investigators) which is the basis for our criminal law, then if you come to their attention, they’ve got you.
Got kids or grandkids you don’t want to see abused in state care? Better be ready to give up your (very wet and rusty “lost” guns.) If they knock on your door, you’ve already lost. Like the $20 you fold into your passport, or the bag of batteries in your luggage, you might want a “give up gun.” Let them grab something and move on. Maybe you’ll get one who isn’t a true believer. Just a thought.
nick
Any optimism I was feeling the last 2 days is gone, gone, gone like the rule of law and the country I was born in.
edit-cut some overly personal stuff
Gee, now I’m gonna have nightmares again…
…it’s true, though; if we come to their attention in a negative way and/or they need to make an example, well, what am I gonna do against a coordinated fire team assault on the house, back and front, at O-Dark-Thirty and flash-bangs, etc. They’re gonna have to get around to it pretty soon, though, ’cause I only got so many years left on the planet and they’re liable to be stuck focusing their attention on weightier and more lethal matters well before then. Some old ex-drunk ‘Nam vet might slip off their radar.
Back to errands and chores in the AM, and picking Mrs. OFD up at the airport tomorrow night sometime between 8:38 and midnight, depending on the airline, the airplane, the weather, etc. I’ll bring my Kindle and read stuff in the parking lot down there while I wait. Make productive use of my time; maybe SDR tips, maybe Saint Augustine or Edgar Allan Poe…
And she’ll be gone again from Wednesday and several days after to drive Grandma up to her cottage in northern New Brunswick, because 86-year-old Grandma insists on going up every summer still and down to Florida every winter still. Only her daughter has to do the driving. Then if memory serves, the next gigs are in Traverse City, Michigan, followed by Doylestown, PA (we’ll both go on that one) and then out to Stockton, CA again, staying with son and DIL and grandkids.
By then I hope to have at least one web site up and running, one Fed license, and my Technician license, if not the General, too. And be well along on my basic PT and attic workshop config.
@OFD,
I’m sorry you saw that. After my shower, I’ve edited it. It was needlessly personal.
I’m not very happy right now. This quote from the beach attack in Tunisia is doing a number on my head.
Just go, tell our children that their daddy loves them: Fiancee tells how hero father used his body to shield her from bullets as he was shot three times in the stomach by terror gunmen in Tunisian massacre
Even if the guy recovers from the wounds, he’s f#cked. And how good could trauma care be in Tunisia?
The religion of pigs claims another 100 victims and destroys their families in one day, and jugears is whining about a flag. Not a f#cking word.
People wonder why I carry my blow out kit when I travel, and why I took my trauma bag and IFAK to the beachhouse.
This is the war we should be fighting. Not against our own.
nick
messed up the href tag again.
nick
Gun control, restrictions on handguns in particular, were implemented here (Canada and maybe other commonwealth countries) in the ’20’s. The story I was given (and I have heard many contradictory reasons for gun control) was the threat of anarchist attacks. On the other hand, I don’t think that hand guns have every been as popular here as in the States. We never had a “wild west”. The Northwest Mounted Police preceded the settlers and even the Klondike Gold Rush was relatively orderly. On the gripping hand, there are a LOT of long guns in this country and I’m sure that not all were registered.
For the 1963, Grade 13 Departmental Physics examination, we were told that any question that we answered using calculus would NOT be marked. Calculus did not become part of the high school curriculum for about another 10 years.
They subpoenaed supermarket records to see who bought HUMMUS for pete’s sake after 911.
By god I’m in deep shit. I love that stuff.
OTOH marriage discrimination continues against a large portion of the population. Single people are denied many breaks by the government. (no I’m married)
“This is the war we should be fighting. Not against our own.”
We wouldn’t need to fight that war, either, if we stayed out of those places overseas and closed almost all our bases and brought our troops home. But yeah, they’re the main EXTERNAL enemy now, after we’ve defeated the Nazis; the communists are another story. We may have held them off militarily but they’ve been oh so very successful in their Long March through all our cultural institutions here in the West. The hadjis’ methods are similar; their own Long March through a de facto invasion of Europe and the demographics, with a compliant and cowardly Euro “leadership.”
Our truly main enemy is INTERNAL and within our gates and people are starting to see this in greater numbers. Where we’re told our primary worries are “gay rights,” the Confederate flag, and “gun violence.”
You can be fired for confederate boxers. Really? I see a big law suit coming on this one…
http://www.mediaite.com/online/south-carolina-cop-fired-for-picture-of-himself-wearing-confederate-boxers/
It hit 105F yesterday. Prediction for today is only 102F, so time to start some chores while it is still only 80F.
One last link. JG on the flag bs.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420382/liberal-identity-politics-jonah-goldberg
I was a real loss for math in high school. Back in my day math was required all four years: algebra, geometry/trigonometry, calculus, and finally either advanced algebra or advanced calculus. I barely passed except for the geometry/trigonometry sophomore year, got an A+ in that mainly because the teacher was really great. She didn’t follow the standard course but instead related the geometry/trigonometry to everyday life and we did not spend endless hours doing senseless proofs.
The training that the Navy gives its Nukes has got to be the best in the world. All the BS is cut out and everything is practical and related to running a Nuke Plant and real life. The Navy crams 8 years of education into 6 months. They also had a novel way of setting up the classes, we were tested in all the areas at the beginning and placed with people who scored in the same area for each class so you were working with peers of the same competency level. The instructors were able to teach to the whole class. The result was that at the end even those that started out in the “dumb” class were performing at 80% to 90% of those who were in the “smart” class. Once we got all the book learning we went off to 6 months of operating nuclear plant prototypes where we learned to work as a team and within our rates in a controlled real life environment.
IMHO if the government un/dis-education system was to follow the Navy method there is a chance that we might be able to recover most of the lost minds, and the PT that goes along with it would probably help with the obesity problem.
The religion of pigs claims another 100 victims and destroys their families in one day, and jugears is whining about a flag. Not a f#cking word.
There it is from the weakest President in history. Glad to see you on board with the ad hominems for ObuttWad. I was willing to give him the benefit of doubt at the beginning, but now despise him for criminal he is. Sad that after his term he will out and make $1 million per speech bashing the USA, while we pay taxes through the ass for crimmigrant health care.
DadCooks, the original purpose behind proofs in geometry class was to teach methodical, logical reasoning. That purpose was lost well before I got to 10th grade, and probably before my mother was born and likely before my grandfather came to the US. All that was left was following the mechanics laid out by the teacher, who didn’t understand the purpose any better than the students.
Whether that was a worthwhile direction to take geometry class is debatable. What is pretty well established is that it hasn’t worked, not for the past several decades at least.
Chatted with the guy at the dump/recycling center this morning; his oldest son was already through most of high skool here and was going into the Army anyway so they weren’t concerned at that point about home schooling. However his 11-year-old son and daughter are being home-schooled and he and his wife wouldn’t put them in the publik skools for all the tea in China now.
As for math, I “got” plane geometry in my sophomore year but algebra may as well have been Sanskrit after quadratic equations and I said to hell with it.
“This is literally true in Chicago, only you put them in the basement apartment, and sell the ground floor and upper floor to yuppy kids who don’t know any better. Happened in my sisters’ neighborhood. ”
Well, in Chicago, Polish Americans would by a house, live in the basement and rent out the 1st and 2nd floor flats. That’s why there was no suicide in that ethnic group. Can’t die jumping out of the basement window.
What was the number of attempted suicides in that ethnic group?
I never took to the calculus, and requiring it in uni was a good way to keep me from becoming an engineer. Thermodynamics and steam tables were an effective weed out technique too.
I got B’s and C’s in calculus at TAMU because I did not get calculus in high school, a major, major disadvantage. A C in DiffEQ because I took 19 hours that semester. I got my degree in Mechanical Engineering in four years from TAMU because I took 18+ hours each semester. My GPA suffered but I graduated when I was 21.
Thermo, I love thermo! It is what I do for a living now. Thermo makes sense. Draw a boundary around anything and the energy and mass transfer around that volume must equal to zero or you do not have the problem well defined. Many engineers have trouble understanding this concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics
Number of Americans signed up for (Obama|SCOTUS)care: ~7M, or ~2.1% of 330M citizens.
Percentage of Americans self-identifying as homosexual: ~1.5%, or ~5M out of 330M. (The percentage is from an almanac. When I ask people to estimate the percentage of “gays” in the US population, the answers range from ten to 70(!) percent. The lefty-prog propaganda machine is good.)
So much damage to the Constitution, so little benefit to so few.
If it saves one child…
The percentage is from an almanac
Obviously the White Hetero-Male Christian Kracker proto-Ape almanac!
The Lefties wipe their asses with the Constitution these days. OdooshNozzle probably replaced the original Constitution and ripped it up into strips for the Oval Office toilet.
“When I ask people to estimate the percentage of “gays” in the US population, the answers range from ten to 70(!) percent. The lefty-prog propaganda machine is good.)”
No chit, hombre. Been like that for years. Their standard claim was a no-dissent-allowed 10%. Then some of their own activist academics in Kalifornia of all places did the math and the associated research and came up with between 1.5% and 3%, tops. But yeah, if you ask Mr. and Mrs. Murka and their kids, they’ll say anything from 25% up, and if you pick up a month’s worth of copies of our leftwing rag here in Vermont, “Seven Days,” or comparable publications elsewhere and went by nothing else, you’d figure that it was around two-thirds, and furthermore, the pop is about half-black and half Hispanic and there’s just a few pesky whites and Asians hanging on somehow and making all our lives miserable and they’re all in the Republican party, except, of course, for the homicidal gun nut maniacs on the fringes clinging to their religion, etc. Bitterly. The ads and articles are constantly pushing gay movies, gay dances, gay parades, and apparently 90% of Murkan musicians are either black or goofy white hipster types.
“The Lefties wipe their asses with the Constitution these days.”
These days??? It’s been birdcage liner from the day it left the old colonial printing presses, and torn asunder repeatedly, most infamously by the Great Eliminator and Pharaoh Roosevelt II. Now it’s fragments, like unto ancient papyri, soon to be lost to the ages, like that library at Alexandria.
And it ain’t just lefty bastards who crap on it; the so-called right and so-called conservatives have done plenty of damage when they were in power. To wit, guys like Nixon, Reagan and the Bush cabal. A pox on them all.
Bust up the Empire and then maybe one or more parts of it would be interested in working again with the original Articles of Confederation. The Northeast and Left Coast would be happy with their Communist Manifesto and Mao’s Little Red Book, of course, and the new Afrikan Republic in Louisiana and Mississippi could use the Nation of Islam texts sung to the tunes of Kanye West and Sista Soulja. Nuevo Aztlan can run their region with the hieroglyphs from the Maya temples in Yucatan and resume human sacrifice.
Ask people what the percentage of blacks is. NO ONE who hasn’t looked it up will say 12%.
Ask what the top ten industries are in manufacturing or ask them to say where the auto industry ranks in manufacturing. Hint, it’s not in the top 10. (The top 10 is mostly food processing.) But if 40 UAW @ssh0les get laid off it’s front page news. If 50 THOUSAND oil workers get laid off, it’s poetic justice and barely gets noticed. Same with NASA back in the day. Kill a program and 50k get laid off, NO ONE CARES. (Although I think NASA has so far abandoned its mission it should be disbanded.) I’m still sick of the UAW slackers getting the attention. US auto industry hasn’t been a good proxy for the economy in 30 years.
If you REALLY want to see gays overrepresented, watch TV. They comprise a much larger percentage of people on tv, because the producers of shows are gay and everyone they know is gay. So they think they are just being far, and that gays are still underrepresented.
nick
Hey kids!
Bulk rimfire ammo here:
http://www.surplusammo.com/pages/About-Us.html
Plus other goodies. Thanks to thesurvivalistblog.net.
“Ask people what the percentage of blacks is. NO ONE who hasn’t looked it up will say 12%.”
They’ll probably say percentages at least twice that, and no wonder, since the plethora of nooz bumf has been about them for the last couple of years and my siblings tell me network tee-vee would have you think they were 50%. (They’re all doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc. and white males are dumbkopfen schwienhunden, of course; payback for Step’n Fetchit and “4oo years of slavery.”)
“US auto industry hasn’t been a good proxy for the economy in 30 years.”
Another huge industry and employment sector is, of course, gummint, where we’re TOLD that one in six Murkans is employed thereby.
“If you REALLY want to see gays overrepresented, watch TV.”
No thanks. It’s so stupid as to be ridiculous now; half the pop is gay, half the pop is black. Gimme a break. Black Murkans are now outnumbered by Hispanics. And having a nice little war with each other in the ‘hoods and the prisons. So us evil Cock-A-Soids are still in the majority by far and furthermore, so are Christians. Hell, there are 70 million Roman Catholics alone, though you’d be hard-pressed to know it in the Northeast parishes anymore.
As for the top ten manufacturing industries, I woulda guessed food would be one; I’ll guess energy is in there, and DOD-related stuff. High-tech?
Percentage of Afrikan-Murkans in this town and city? Zero in the village here; and there’s, so far as I can see, maybe a dozen up in the city, out of a total town and city pop of 16k. The biggest minority here is the Froggies, many of whom speak French at home and with each other. They think I don’t know what they’re saying and their women are always hot for me but I don’t let on. (they’re too short).
I’ll guess energy is in there
Oil and coal and power generation are not always considered industrial companies.
Trying to find the article that laid it out.
grrrr.
nick