09:21 – Our ready-to-ship stock of chemistry kits had dropped into single figures yesterday, so I decided to raid my carefully rationed remaining stock of polypropylene beakers to make up another batch of ten chemistry kits, which was all I had sufficient beakers for. We have 600 each of the 50 mL and 100 mL polypropylene beakers on order, which are supposed to ship the end of this week or early next. I’ll just continue building more finished kits this week, except they won’t have the beakers in them. It’ll be easy enough to drop in the missing beakers when they finally arrive. And UPS showed up at dinnertime yesterday with 11 large boxes of stuff from another wholesaler. I had the UPS guy stack them down in the basement, so Barbara had to run an obstacle course this morning to get to her car when she left for work. They’d better not be there when she gets home, if I know what’s good for me.
We started watching a new-to-us series on Acorn streaming last night. It’s an Australian series called Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. The series is set in 1920’s Melbourne, and the lead character is a 40-ish aristocratic feminist James Bond analog. The (wo)Man with the Golden Gun, literally. It’s a fun series, with all the standard supporting characters one would expect. It’s not a parody, exactly, but obviously no one was intended to take the series seriously. At a million bucks an episode, it’s very high budget, particularly for Australian TV. I suspect they spent a large percentage of that on wardrobe and props, including the Hispano-Suiza that Miss Fisher drives. Netflix doesn’t have this series on DVD yet, let alone streaming. Barbara said maybe we should just subscribe to Acorn TV.
12:46 – In addition to being the chief cook and bottle washer for our company, I’m also the warehouseman. So I was just unpacking and checking in those 11 boxes that arrived at dinnertime yesterday. I’m getting too old for this. A case of 50 boxes of 72 microscope slides masses about 50 pounds (23 kilos), and is about the size of a shoebox. Those are dense little suckers.
13:44 – I see that the arguments about same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court are complete. Now we have to wait months for SCOTUS to make and publish its decision.
I honestly don’t see what all the to-do is about. The correct answer is obvious on the face of it. SCOTUS should rule that government cannot prohibit same-sex marriage in the same way that it ruled almost 50 years ago in the Loving case that government could not prohibit interracial marriage. Obviously, there are no arguments against same-sex marriage other than religious arguments, which the government is prohibited from considering. Those who support equal rights for gay couples are being reasonable; those who oppose those rights are utterly unreasonable. I’ve never heard any supporter of gay marriage insist that churches be forced to marry gay couples, nor even that religious bigots be forced to abjure their hateful beliefs. All supporters of same-sex marriage are asking is that the government not deny them the same rights that are taken for granted by heterosexual couples.
The truth is that the government has no valid interest in marriage, period. Government should be neither encouraging or discouraging marriage of any type, let alone requiring or forbidding it. If some gay people are offended that Barbara and I are married, tough luck. Their being offended should be of no concern to us, just as a heterosexual being offended by gays should be of no concern to gays. Offense is not injury, and attempting to use the force of government to require people to behave in ways you find inoffensive is intolerable abuse of power.