07:45 – Barbara and I worked all day yesterday building kits, and we’re in good shape again on finished-goods kit inventory. We have about two dozen each of the chemistry and biology kits ready to ship, and we got started on another batch of 30 chemistry kits. We’re also well into building the first batch of 30 forensic science kits.
I also made a very lucky catch last night. O’Reilly sent us two print copies of the forensic science book, and I was flipping through it last night while we were watching TV. I happened to notice that the instructions for one of the lab sessions told the reader to heat the 250 mL beaker in the microwave or on a hot plate. Hmmm. I was pretty sure that my preliminary bill of materials for the forensic science kit specified a 250 mL polypropylene beaker rather than glass. I checked, and sure enough the equipment list for the forensic kit listed the 250 mL PP beaker. If that had slipped through the kits would have shipped with the PP beaker and there would have been an epidemic of melted plastic beakers. So I changed the equipment list to substitute a 250 mL glass beaker. I hope that’s the only thing I overlooked.
As the election campaign season heats up and the outraged howling continues that We All Must Vote and when we do we need to vote for Mittens so as to get rid of Tweedledum:
“…. a population that rejects the state will also reject the idea that voting is a duty, or a right, or, incredibly, both simultaneously.”
http://lewrockwell.com/orig12/poindexter6.1.1.html
Actually OFD, 90 million Americans can be wrong. And IMHO they are.
But, I can tell you’re getting tired of me advising you to do good. I’m getting tired of you complaining about a government you won’t bother lifting a finger to change.
If I promise to not nag about voting, will you stop complaining?
One impression that I have over the ages is that only 1/3 of the populace will vote on anything. The other two thirds are too busy, don’t care, protesting the candidate (saw that big time with George H. W. Bush) or do not qualify to vote.
Be thankful we can still vote. It may be taken away from us someday as in the following out of date scenario:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/94243593/The-Day-the-Dollar-Died-by-John-Galt
“Actually OFD, 90 million Americans can be wrong. And IMHO they are.”
I disagree. But noted; a Canadian citizen thinks that 90 million Americans are wrong. This American citizen thinks that most Canadians have the almighty State they deserve and apparently have no problems with.
“But, I can tell you’re getting tired of me advising you to do good. I’m getting tired of you complaining about a government you won’t bother lifting a finger to change.”
It is your HO that you are advising us to do good. What is the good of voting in a meaningless system that pays zero attention to us? And as for lifting a finger to change this government, yeah, I have: voted all my life until this year; changed from Repub to Independent in 98; had previously worked on Patrick Buchanan’s campaigns and been involved with the former TV programs “Capitol Gang” and “Crossfire.” And long, long ago, worked with SDS, the Panthers and the Progressive Labor Party (all commies by the way) to try and get some changes made in Boston at the Bromley-Heath housing projects.
“If I promise to not nag about voting, will you stop complaining?”
Rather than “complaining” I am pointing out the problems and the issues as I see them to probably not the best of my poor ability to wring the right words from my native tongue. You evidently think we doth protest too much, and we definitely think you Canadians, Australians and British protest too little.
“…Be thankful we can still vote. It may be taken away from us someday…”
No. I am not thankful we can still vote. The vote currently means nothing. It is a colossal joke. We pretend to vote and they pretend to represent us. That is bullshit. And for all practical purposes, then, it *has* been taken away. We are no longer citizens but subjects; of a feloniously criminal State that commits war crimes at will around the world and is about to show us back here just how up close and personal that sort of thing can be. Already robocops blithely follow whatever orders issued to them by the brass and the politicians, themselves in thrall to a ruling class that cares naught whether we live or die, so long as we can be plundered and our children sent off to fight endless clusterfuck wars every generation.
Grateful for a phony plastic bone they throw us? Nope. This dog won’t hunt anymore.
Actually, fewer people are voting as the long-term unfolds. Unless some research is done into why, we can only guess, but obviously more and more people consider it a completely unnecessary activity.
Now we have 2 opposite views here on this forum. Some believe a lot fewer people should be allowed to vote, through property ownership qualifications or some other test to eliminate irrelevant people’s opinions. Then there are those who think 100% voter turnout in the US somehow makes everything peachy-keen and hunky-dory, no matter what the outcome.
Clearly, voting is a legal right in the US, which does not have to be exercised. OFD is right—if the choice is between Big Money for Me but No Jobs No Money for the Middle-Class Romney or No Change Nobama, there is no need to vote and every right to complain. The only difference is that the course to ultimate oblivion will be slower with Nobama.
In one of my broadcast forums, somebody pointed to a PBS documentary on the very dramatic increase in deaths from incompetent contractors rigging antenna towers. The shocking thing is how little the climbers now get paid, due to the insertion of middlemen contracting between the tower owners and the climbers. Back when I was in college and starting out in the industry, climbers got $200 (late ’60’s) just to go up and change a light bulb—much more if there was structural work to be done. That was a helluva lot of money—equivalent to about $2k a climb nowadays. But guess what they get these days? Minimum wage. Having had a close friend who left the restaurant industry when they exempted restaurants from minimum wage requirements and he said the only people who would take the work were both stupid and untrainable, I suspect that basically describes the guys who now are climbers.
One engineer of a station whom I know, described watching as his $20k antenna was hooked to an ancient rusted winch on a rusted pickup truck by contractors he had no input or influence in hiring. He asked the guy on the ground, who was the supervisor of the construction crew, if he knew how to work the winch—especially the braking mechanism, because he said the winch appeared sorely underpowered—and said he got the cussing of his life from the mostly toothless slob who was directing things and operating the winch. The antenna was mounted onto the winch wire, and antenna along with one of the climbers started the hoist up to 500 feet amid the groaning of the clearly underpowered winch. At about two-thirds of the way up, the other climber, stupidly jumped onto the wire to join the first to the top. Immediately, the winch failed and started a descent. Because of the jump that the climber had made, the antenna and its load began swinging like a pendulum, and because of the actions of the climbers, trying to avoid injury as the antenna started swinging towards the tower, they actually made the swing more powerful.
Meanwhile, the idiot on the ground did NOT know how to brake the winch, and its speed in descent increased. The $20k antenna rammed the tower and was completely destroyed in the process. Both climbers managed to continue holding onto the wire. The toothless guy figured out how to slow the descent, but not stop it. Both climbers managed to jump off at about the 15 foot level, got up, and walked off the job. The toothless guy disconnected the antenna and drove off, never to be seen or heard from again.
The ramming of the tower by the now demolished antenna, had seriously twisted and bent the tower structure, and weakened it to the point that the rammed section had to be replaced. That basically required that the whole of the antenna from the top to the damaged section—including all other antennas at the top of the tower—had to be dismantled and removed, and the tower had to be reassembled and rebuilt from the damage point up. Total cost was hundreds of thousands of dollars, as those with other antennas had to be compensated for loss of revenue due to loss of their antennas during 3 days of reconstruction. Get this: the tower company had no insurance to cover the damage, so the station had to use its insurance to recover some, but not all, the loss of the antenna. The business of owning and maintaining towers is not very profitable, so many of them do not insure their properties. Like driving a car without insurance, that ought to be against the law.
I feel totally disconnected from the Republican party, which my family blindly followed—even more as time goes on. Those hypocritical wanna-be felons are the reason people earn less money these days while those at the top of the party get richer and richer. Look at the statistics! In another decade, there will be no middle-class, only rich and poor. Where on that scale do you think you will be?
Worse yet, guess who in Congress is richer, Dems or Repubs? I think you will be surprised. Check out those bastards net worth against yours. Then bow and curtsey to them like good little subjects. Because you ARE their subjects.
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Net_Worth_of_United_States_Senators_and_Representatives
Voting ain’t gonna stop the decline one iota, unless Gary Johnson miraculously wins. But don’t worry Bill, I’m voting for him, unless I happen to end up out of the country and can’t get an absentee ballot due to even more American incompetence.
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
VOTE NOW! VOTE OFTEN!
Come on down and help us out!
Heavy week next week; thus, there won’t be much of me, so I’ll get this in now.
I don’t think I have listened to Jethro Tull in over 20 years. While researching something about Littlehampton UK (don’t gasp you Brits—it may be roughneck territory, but my aunt retired there and I liked it; and besides, Ronnie Barker lived right next door to her), I came across the little-known fact that some of the guys who ultimately became Jethro Tull—like Martin Barre—came from nearby Bognor Regis.
So I got out my Greatest Hits CD, took out all their famous hits (in the US; more were famous in the UK) and listened to the remaining 18 songs. Wow. There is just nothing coming out of anywhere that is nearly as creative these days.
Barre started as a teenager playing Bognor, Littlehampton, Plymouth, and other regional venues, eventually moving up to London and getting gigs in Italy and Germany. He knew several instruments, but guitar he considered his specialty. Unfortunately, it seems there were too many looking for guitar gigs, so he never got a job with his guitar, until Jethro Tull. In one group, they hired him for his horn playing, which the group declared as lacking in skill. One day, he practiced all night with his guitar, and the group (which lived together) realized he was more talented on guitar than their current lead guy and far better on guitar than horns.
Barre recorded with a couple different groups for Liberty, but only a few of the more than 15 songs laid down were ever released.
Here’s the page describing the history of The Noblemen, The Motivation, and Penny Peeps.
http://www.nickwarburton.com/wordpress/?cat=11
Don’t start that unless you are into music and have lots of time. It’s long. There is a picture there, taken of them in the ocean off the Promenade in Littlehampton. The beach was directly across the street from my aunt’s terraced condo. Great memories. Nudist camp on the sea, directly across the river inlet there, too. My aunt and her next door neighbor wanted to know anything I heard about the nudist activities.
Teenagers accomplished much more in the ‘60’s era than they do now, IMO. Aside from being at the forefront of music, they were independent. In one part of the article, Nick describes the Shoreline in Bognor Regis as “the only teenage hotel run by teenagers for teenagers”. Nowadays, kids are at home with mommy and daddy until they are 25 or 30.
Couple of links to the Penny Peeps’ Liberty releases on the Warburton page. Easy to see how their music evolved into what Jethro Tull became.
OFD wrote:
“Rather than “complaining” I am pointing out the problems and the issues as I see them to probably not the best of my poor ability to wring the right words from my native tongue. You evidently think we doth protest too much, and we definitely think you Canadians, Australians and British protest too little.”
Look, just get off your arse and vote Libertarian. That’ll make the Nazgul and their chief in Washington pay attention.
Ah, Chuck. I thought you might have been referring to a nice little town in the hills above Adelaide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlehampton,_South_Australia
If anyone cares to name a state that figures to be close in November I’ll come over and register in 100 different places (I’ll tell them I’m a Democrat who’s been dead 50 years) and vote for Gary.
John Corzine is rich, a Democrat and, arguably, a crook. Yeah, the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, who are bad enough.
Not sure what the Brits’ problem with Littlehampton is, but it is universal. It is the opposite of posh, whatever that might be; nevertheless, it was close for me to get to Brighton and Plymouth, where I spent a lot of time on visits. Never set foot in Bognor Regis, however.
Two more items. WETA-FM has upped their stream from 64kbps back to 128. Once again they are worth listening to, if you like classical. Pop this link into your MP3 player. They have the best processing for classical music I have ever heard. Usually there is not enough leveling of the volume on classical stations, but I never have to touch the volume knob with WETA.
http://stream.weta.org:8002/
One of my all-time obscure favorite tunes, which I have on vinyl, but never transferred to digital, is now on the Net. A group of teens from Greensburg, Pennsylvania—about 100 miles from our host’s former stomping grounds—who were trying to be Paul Revere and the Raiders knockoffs, did The Who’s “Can’t Explain” better than The Who, IMO. They called themselves The Napoleonic Wars. They had quite a few regional hits, but there is little left of them if you did not buy their records back in the mid-’60’s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-CiPOWa8OE
Oops. Something seriously wrong with the WETA stream, just as I recommend it. Sounds like somebody pulled 1/2 of a balanced audio line. Buzz and whine. Yuck.
In the meantime, I offer Klassik Radio from Hamburg.
http://edge.live.mp3.mdn.newmedia.nacamar.net/klassikradio96/livestream.mp3
Sorry Chuck. They need me up here, too. All I can do is cheer from the sidelines while fighting my own battles.
Chuck wrote:
“Never set foot in Bognor Regis, however.”
It is claimed that ‘the last words of King George V were “Bugger Bognor”‘ so perhaps it was best to defer to his august judgement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugger#Verb
Ha Ha. For all the American-English-Is-The-Greatest people…
A former work colleague who’s been living in the US for 20 years had this to say on Facebook: “Proper English is a second language over here. It’s all part of the poor edumacation system.”
Well, he needs to learn to spell the word education. Probably just a typo.
“Edumacation” is a common joking or ironic way to say “Education” in the US.
Oh? I thought it was an optional way of spelling, like Sox, Nite and Thru.
I think that if Obama is re-elected then the USA will have a financial crisis in the next 4 years. I think that if Romney is elected then the financial crisis will be delayed by a decade. In either case, we will have a financial crisis before 2030.
That’s a safe prediction, considering that we’re in a financial crisis now. 😉
What?! What are you going to believe, the trustworthy government numbers or your lying eyes?
The USA is not in a financial crisis now. Haven’t been in one since the 1930s.
You will know when we are in a financial crisis because your credit cards will not work and the bank doors will be closed. All transactions will be cash on the barrel and maybe precious metals or bartering only. We got to within 8 hours of this in 2008 but we did not get there.
Greece is in a financial crisis right now. It is my understanding that you cannot go into a bank there and get all the cash out of your account. They will only let you take small amounts out. I have no idea if credit cards still work there.
Greece had a 6% contraction of their economy in the 2nd quarter ? Why are the mobs not roaming the streets searching for politicians ?
What you are describing is what I would call a collapse rather than a crisis.
So what is a financial crisis ?
Ever try to get all your money out of a bank at once? None that I ever deal with allow that. When you signed up, one of the clauses in that document you signed is the bank’s right to delay paying you for up to 120 days, if they want. I have had that happen twice when we moved from one place to another. Those were in my lean days, and we really needed the money. Only thing we could do was write checks on the old account to the new bank, and wait 2 weeks for it to clear (took a long time for checks to clear back in that that day; it is quicker now).
Remember—as much as you think it is your money they have, it is theirs. If you don’t believe it, just ask them.
Yes. I closed a $40K business account last December and got a cashiers check for the amount. Mailed the cashiers check to the new bank. USPS then lost the cashiers check for 6 weeks. Did you know that you cannot do a stop payment on a cashiers check without providing a insurance bond for the same?
Note to self: Always write a check to the new bank account ! Only close the old account when the check has cleared.
BTW, most checks nowadays clear the same day. I have been thinking about getting one of those check canceling machines for my business as we would no longer need to deposit checks at the bank.
I have so many stories of problems with checks, I could nearly write a book. The latest is banks crediting my deposits by moving the decimal place 2 spaces to the left. A recent check for $2,000+ was credited for only $20+. This has happened repeatedly since I have been back. Some things seem so obvious, I just don’t get not moving ahead. My street has been torn up 3 times this summer to get to the pipes buried under it. The Germans put the pipes under the sidewalks, then the sidewalks are made with tiles. Need to get to the pipes? Pull up the sidewalk tiles, dig down and fix it, then replace the tiles. But even the new subdivision on the outskirts of town is burying all pipes under the street. Great thinking. Make-work if I ever saw it.
No checks in Germany. Only direct transfers from one account to another. Nothing to get lost or stolen. What are we waiting for?
I haven’t had a cheque account in over 20 years. What are they for?
One of my pals used to be the CFO for a small company, and he used the misplaced decimal trick with large bills. If an airline sent them a bill for $21032.00 he’d send a cheque for $2103.20. There’d be weeks and months before the total was paid. That firm didn’t last long.