08:19 – With three weeks left until the election, both campaigns are starting the final push. I don’t know how it is in other, non-swing states, but here we’re being subjected to a barrage of campaign phone calls and fliers. I’ve been averaging a couple phone calls a day from the presidential campaigns, and that doesn’t count the ones from the campaigns for state and local offices. I can’t wait for this to be over.
09:36 – I need to make up two liters of Benedict’s qualitative solution. I have the 34.6 grams of copper(II) sulfate and 346 grams of sodium citrate I need, but I just realized that I’m fresh out of sodium carbonate. So I just put a kilo or so of sodium bicarbonate in a glass baking dish and stuck it in the oven at 450F. At that temperature, two molecules of sodium bicarbonate quickly decompose into one molecule each of sodium carbonate, carbon dioxide, and water. In half an hour or so, I’ll have a baking dish full of pure anhydrous sodium carbonate.
Of course, the widely ignored “do not call” list, by cold-callers, does not legally apply to election candidates. Nor do advertising sign ordinances. Something on DrudgeReport about all the trash election mail keeping the USPS out of bankruptcy for a few weeks.
No calls or flyers up here so far; the majority of yard signs in this area concern local candidates only.
Our big thing is we’ve gotten a new town manager who comes from a fairly long tenure in an adjoining town and we are also looking at a merger of the city and town emergency departments, allegedly to save money and resources. And that’s about it; reminds me of older Jeff Danziger cartoons about Vermont headlines: “Cat Runs Away” and “Clothesline Snaps.” That ain’t too far from the truth here.
“At that temperature, two molecules of sodium bicarbonate quickly decompose into one molecule each of sodium carbonate, carbon dioxide, and water. ”
So much for any abeyance on global warming. Fortunately, the EPA may not be monitoring the air in your neighborhood on Sundays.
I’m glad I’m not in the US – unsolicited phone calls drive me up the wall. Were I in your position, I would unplug all of my phones until after the election.
Meanwhile, the Romneyites rejoice in the change in standing resulting from the first debate, while the Obamanites say throwing the debate may be part of a grand strategy.
Yeah, Obama reminds me of a little kid who gets his ass kicked at some game or other and then says he wasn’t really trying.
Well, let’s see if he gets his ass kicked again. And I see the Heroine of Tripoli is playing games with various appointments and positioning herself for something or other. Barry better put a steel plate underneath the backs of his jackets.
There is a way to use Google Talk to screen your calls and even transcribe phone messages to text and email them to your smartphone, but I have not yet learned from my kids how to do that. I do not answer the phone, unless it is family or a known business contact. Let them eat messages. I probably will not call back later.
Lawn signs here are for local candidates. Tiny Town is overwhemingly union Democratic—which is why 99.9% of all industry has left here. There are no union shops left. Seeing as how the town was the only place in the state where the National Guard was called in during union strikes when I was a kid, it is a good place not to locate business. The union goons are running the city now, and they will not make deals for anybody. Thus only businesses leaving and none locating here. And the local newspaper wonders outloud why Tiny Town cannot attract any business except a new Hardee’s. (Opening next month.)
They did manage to get a renter for the former Chrysler factory, which was built brand-new when Daimler bought it, then promptly closed down completely and the building sold. A buyout by former management failed. It has sat empty since a couple years before I returned. And even though it is supposedly rented, it is not at all fully occupied with only a few cars parked there daily.
The only guy cashing in on Tiny Town is the local junk dealer. He is going great guns and just had a railroad siding installed, activating a track route that has been dormant for more than 20 years, while he buys up old building and tears the town apart, selling the pieces. He is tearing down an Allegheny cold roll steel plant—one of the over 4 dozen businesses that have closed or failed in Tiny Town since my family moved to Indy. The area is in reversal, as it returns from a once overwhelmingly manufacturing town to a small farming community.
Boy, Indiana is giving store owners/employees a lot of leeway to kill thieves—armed or not. This is the second such case this month, and it was announced there would be no charges in the first case. Richmond is the next town east from Tiny Town, on the way to Dayton, Ohio.
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/east_central/e-indiana-pizzeria-worker-fatally-shoots-robber
Seems to be the perfect amount of leeway, if you ask me.
That is our future in a nutshell right there, courtesy of Chuck, in Tiny Town: fab career: junk dealer. Get started now; there’s shit-loads of abandoned stuff all over the country. And thieves and burglars and robbers and suchlike will now be shot on sight. Later, as things get a little nastier, they’ll be hung and left up as warnings.
Fun times ahead!