09:19
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We have another blizzard in the forecast, with one to three inches (2.5
to 7.5 cm) of snow expected today and this evening, followed by
freezing rain overnight. (I know those of you in the North will laugh
at this, but here in the Southland this qualifies as a blizzard.)
Atlanta is already a mess, with numerous accidents during the morning
commute, and the mess is heading our way just in time for the afternoon
commute. Barbara plans to hit the gym after work, but may come straight
home if the roads start getting messy.
We did a Costco run and
had dinner with Paul Jones and Mary Chervenak yesterday. They were in
Hawaii for Christmas, and Paul had an unexpected detour to Oklahoma on
his way home. His dad was hospitalized, but seems to be well on his way
to recovery.
I'm still working on the chemistry-of-life lab
sessions. I hope to finish that group in the next couple of weeks and
move on to microorganisms. When I say "finish" I mean finish designing
and writing up the lab sessions. I still have to actually do the
sessions, shoot images, and do any necessary re-write on them before
they're really finished. But the initial work is the time-consuming
part. Actually doing the labs and shooting images is the quick, fun
part.
08:56
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I know this will come as a shock to most of my readers,
but I've
decided to buy a Kindle. My only two real objections to the Kindle were
the DRM and the outrageous price of ebooks. Both of those problems are
resolved or in the process of being resolved.
The first problem,
DRM, is trivial. To remove DRM from a purchased book, all one need do
is punch 411 on the Kindle to get its serial number and run a Python
script that strips the DRM, leaving an unprotected ebook file. As to
the second problem, I've always said that DRM-free ebooks should cost
as much as a used paperback, and it appears that is starting to happen.
Authors, from first-tier New York Times bestsellers to complete newbies
are coming to
realize that they don't need publishers.
Instead, they can publish themselves through Amazon and other
e-publishers, set the selling price at $2.99 or thereabouts, and earn
as much or more in royalties than they'd earn from their traditional
publishers on a $25 hardback (or a $9.99 e-book from the publisher).
Stunning, but true.
This is happening because Amazon has seeded
the market with e-book readers. With millions of them now out there,
e-books are positioned to replace printed books almost entirely in the
near future. We've now reached critical mass, and authors are in the
catbird seat. We can now go directly to our readers. Traditional
publishers are no longer the gatekeepers, and are no longer in a
position to claim literally 90% of sales revenue. The only reason
they've been able to do that is that they controlled distribution.
That's no longer true. Of course, Amazon thinks it now controls
distribution, but it doesn't, really. The authors do, and will continue
to do so.
Smart publishers, like O'Reilly and Baen, will survive
and even flourish. They're the ones who actually look upon their
relationships with authors as partnerships. But the publishers who
exploit authors, which is to say most of them, are finished. Put this
prediction in your calendar and check back in five years. By January
2016, the Big Six fiction publishers will be toast, bankrupt or nearly
so. The word "book" will have undergone the same transition that "mail"
did earlier. The e-qualifier is often dropped for mail, and in
fact the snail-qualifier is now needed to refer unambiguously to
traditional mail. In five years, the word "book" will mean e-book,
unless the printed-qualifier is attached.
In the past, I've said that huge changes are coming. That's no longer
true. They're here.
09:20
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I was just stubbing out a lab session about natural selection (exposing
a culture of non-pathogenic bacteria to antibiotic discs and
reculturing the few survivors in the mostly-clear areas around the
disc) when the Braun beeped to tell me my pot of English Breakfast Tea
was ready.
Barbara's breakfast dishes were in the sink, so I
loaded them into the dishwasher. As I was doing that, I noticed a bunch
of handwashable stuff on the sideboard: Barbara's plastic tea pitchers
and other plasticware, a pizza pan, a couple of pots and pans from
dinner last night, and so on. Ordinarily we rinse stuff like that
thoroughly with hot water, so thoroughly it's hard to tell it's not
clean, and then pile it on the sideboard. Every couple of days, we do
dishes manually.
So, thinking about natural selection as I loaded the dishwasher made me think about a journal entry I made a dozen years ago.
Saturday, September 5,
1998
I have, I think, discovered a secondary sex characteristic never before reported in the
literature. It has to do with a person's attitude to what should be put in the dishwasher
(or the washing machine, come to that). My attitude, which I think I share with most men,
is Darwinian. If it can't survive the dishwasher, better we find out now, before it has a
chance to pass on its genes. Women always have pity for the weak, and so sort things that
should be washed by hand. As I was loading the dishwasher, the dialog went something like
this:
Barbara: "Are you insane? You can't put 18th century crystal in the
dishwasher!"
Robert: "Why not? It needs washed."
Barbara: "It's too delicate. You have to hand wash it."
Robert: "Whadya mean, delicate? It's glass, for god's sake. A little hot water and
soap shouldn't hurt it. Besides which, I'm more likely to drop it than the dishwasher is
to damage it."
Barbara: "It's not dishwasher-safe."
Robert: "Sure it is. It says so right here on the stem - 'Dyshe-washere
saefe.'"
Barbara: "Don't be ridiculous. There were no dishwashers in 1780."
Robert: "Hah. Shows how much you know. Leonardo Da Vinci invented one in 1483. Ben
Franklin's improved model sold in the millions. Well, in the dozens, anyway."
Barbara: "You're impossible. If you don't want to wash it, just say so."
Well, perhaps this exchange is slightly exaggerated, but that was the essence of it.
So, because the discoverer of a phenomenon gets to name it, I hereby dub this Dishwasher
Darwinism. A quick search of AltaVista and Northern Light for +"dishwasher
darwinism" didn't yield any hits, so perhaps I'll trademark the term.
I ended up hand-washing the crystal, of course.
There was
plenty of room left in the dishwasher, so in went everything:
plasticware, pots and pans and skillets, the pizza pan, everything. The
only concession I made was not to press the "High-Temperature Wash"
button. I debated about pressing "Heated Dry", but decided screw it. If
they can't stand the heat, get out of the dishwasher.
08:28
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I was surprised to read that Atlanta has only 10 pieces of dedicated
snow-removal equipment to serve the entire metro area. Residents are
understandably upset. Barbara says that her law firm, which simply
doesn't close for bad weather, closed the Atlanta office Monday
and expects it to remain closed all week. Thousands of other businesses
are in the same situation. Only essential roads have been cleared, and
most residential streets are impassable.
The article compared
Atlanta unfavorably to Cleveland, which has about 70 pieces of snow
removal equipment. Of course, Cleveland averages 80 inches of snow a
year, and Atlanta only two inches. As the Atlanta authorities pointed
out, if they bought the amount of equipment they needed to handle a
huge snow like this, it would sit idle for years on end.
Still,
there is something Atlanta could and should have done. When I was
growing up in New Castle, a small town in northwestern Pennsylvania, we
had frequent big snows. When that happened, not just the snow plows
would be out clearing snow. Just about every government truck--city,
county, and state, from garbage trucks to pickup trucks--had hydraulics
for a snow plow pre-installed. Even many school buses had hydraulics
for a plow. When it snowed, all of those trucks--dozens of them in our
small town--would have the blades installed and be out plowing, not to
mention all of the highway department and private construction company
graders. Most neighborhoods had at least one guy with hydraulics
installed on his pickup, and he'd be out plowing the neighbors'
driveways, usually without charge.
Even a big snow didn't have a
chance against that kind of effort. In 12 years of public school in New
Castle, I remember only once or twice that school was canceled for
snow. Even after a big overnight snow, by the time I left for school
all of the main roads would be plowed, many of the residential streets
would be plowed, and the salt trucks would be out. And they didn't let
a shortage of salt trucks slow them down, either. A few of
the trucks had flings, but every dump truck was out spreading
salt. Those that didn't have flings tail-gated it, using metal
grates that released the salt slowly as the truck drove down the road,
gradually raising its bed. Piles of salt were staged at various
locations around the city and county. I remember being surprised the
first time I visited our highway department and saw how small a pile
1,000 tons of salt made. I asked the guy why the salt didn't dissolve
in rainstorms. He said the piles were uncovered then because they were
in use, but ordinarily they were covered with plastic tarps that
protected them against rain.
So, on balance, I side with the
Atlanta residents. Atlanta should have done a lot more. For a pretty
small investment in hydraulics and plow blades and a few piles of salt,
they could have been prepared to field several hundred plows and salt
trucks instead of only 10. That investment pales in comparison to
having the entire city shut down for a week, not to mention the
property losses from accidents. At least no one has been killed, so far.
09:36
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The pest control guy just finished inspecting for termites and found
none. I asked him what they were using nowadays if they needed to
treat. He said mostly Dursban, but mentioned that the EPA had just
banned another of the ones they'd been using. As he said, "Every time
we find something that actually works, they ban it." Like every other
pest control guy I've talked to, he has a gallon or two of chlordane or
heptachlor sitting on the shelf, just in case. Those have the
inestimable advantage of actually killing termites while being harmless
to humans. As another pest control guy told me years ago, "The stuff we
use now just hurts their feelings."
UPS
showed up yesterday with boxes of stuff that I'd ordered back in
October for the microchemistry kits. The delay was my fault, really.
I'd told them to combine shipments, and a couple of the items were
back-ordered. I now have all the components I need to put together the
first three dozen kits, although I haven't finished writing the
documentation. And, of course, for liability reasons I won't actually
distribute any of the kits until I've incorporated the business.
My
mid-range goal is, on average, to be assembling and shipping about 20
to 30 kits per week, or roughly 1,000 to 1,500 kits per year, although
sales will be extremely seasonal, with big peaks around the start of
each school semester and a smaller peak before the summer break. I
probably won't achieve that goal this year, but it should be reachable
in 2012, given that something like 2.5 million students are currently
being home schooled. And then there are the DIY science enthusiasts.
I'm
also working on other kits. I'll have a biology kit available by the
time the biology lab book I'm working on now for O'Reilly/MAKE hits the
bookstores late this year, and I've already done some work to stub out
kits for AP chemistry and a one-year high school forensics course.
Eventually, I also plan to do kits/courses for physics and earth
science. My overarching goal is to make all of these kits as rigorous
as possible while remaining affordable.
09:38
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As regular readers are aware, I'm a strong supporter of gay rights. But
I'm an even stronger supporter of First Amendment rights, including
most emphatically freedom of speech. The formerly-free country known as
Canada stomped all over Canadian's free-speech rights last week when
the government banned the iconic rock track Money For Nothing by Dire
Straits. My Canadian readers may want to file the following lyrics for
future reference, since they're now illegal in Canada.
The little faggot with the earring and the makeup Yeah buddy that's his own hair The little faggot got his own jet airplane The little faggot, he's a millionaire
How
could any rational person find those lyrics so offensive that a
national government needed to protect its citizens from hearing them? I
assume the lyrics refer to Elton John, and I'd be surprised if even he
found them that offensive.
11:29
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The washer started dripping last week, so Barbara and I headed out to
Home Depot this morning to buy a pair of washer hoses. Actually, we may
end up leaving those on the shelf as spares, because after I replaced
the washers yesterday the drip seems to have stopped.
While we
were at Home Depot, I took the opportunity to pick up some chemicals. A
two-pound (900+ gram) bottle of Root Kill, which has the contents
listed as 99.0% copper(II) sulfate, set me back $12.50. Elemental
Scientific, which has some of the lowest prices available for
chemicals, charges $12.50 for a one-pound bottle of "pure" copper(II)
sulfate, which may or may not be as pure as the Root Kill stuff, but is
certainly no purer. From experience (and gravimetric analysis) I know
that the Root Kill really is 99% pure copper(II) sulfate and that the
impurities are pretty much all copper(II) oxide. That can be filtered
from solution, leaving essentially a reagent-grade solution.
I
also picked up a two-gallon (7.6 L) package (two one-gallon bottles) of
31.45% muriatic acid, which is to say about 10.3 molar hydrochloric
acid, for about $11. The last time I bought any of that, it was also
remarkably pure for technical-grade acid, almost colorless and with
very little dissolved solids. I use the stuff routinely for anything
that doesn't really require reagent-grade HCl.
I've been corresponding with Joe Konrath
about Kindle and e-books. Joe still calls himself a mid-list author,
but, as I pointed out to him, he's now outselling most of the NYT
bestselling authors, nearly all of it on Kindle. Joe is now selling
about 1,000 ebooks per day. And he's by no means alone. There are
scores of fiction authors whose Kindle sales are in the thousands of
copies per month, including some that are selling 50,000 and even
100,000 copies a month. Many of these authors, including ones that are
selling tens of thousands of ebooks per month, have never had a
traditional publishing contract. Joe prices his e-books at $2.99 and
makes a $2.04 royalty per copy sold (70% royalty from Amazon less a
$0.06 fulfillment charge to pay for the download), which should give
you some idea of the goldrush that's going on right now among authors
who've self-published for Kindle.
I emailed several of my
fiction-author friends to point them to Joe's blog. Some of them, like
Carola Dunn, have been writing for decades and have large backlists
that they could put up on Kindle with very little effort or expense.
Others, like Beverly Connor, are mid-list authors who are as good or
better than many big-name authors, but just haven't caught a break. I
hope that some or all of them will jump on the e-book bandwagon.
If
you own stock in any of the Big Six publishers, now would be a good
time to sell it. I very much doubt that any of them will still be
around, at least in their current forms, five years from now. 2010 was
the year that e-books reached critical mass, and printed novels are now
on the endangered species list.
