Saturday, 4 February 2012

By on February 4th, 2012 in science kits

10:55 – Barbara and I are doing inventory this morning. I really hate doing inventory. I prefer to use the OMGWO inventory method, but it does have the one obvious drawback. We can’t use typical inventory software, because it won’t accept reasonable things for “Quantity”, like “lots” or “too many”.

We just shipped what I thought was the next-to-last chemistry kit yesterday and the last kit this morning. Fortunately, I found one more completed kit. We haven’t finished doing inventory yet, but at the moment it looks like we have enough components to assemble 10 more kits, but that’s only because we’re currently showing only 10 test tube brushes in inventory. We may come across a case of those later, which’d mean we’d have enough components to build 11 kits (only 11 test tube clamps and 11 vials of pH test paper). And so on.

What we’ll do eventually is have one inventory bin for each item and maintain an accurate running inventory for each. But that’s a ways off. We do need to get it done, though, because we have biology kits and forensics kits in progress, and some items are common to all kits.

What worries me at the moment is that I’ve been talking to a woman who’s teaching chemistry at a private school and is likely to order several kits soon. I have no idea whether “several” means four or five kits or 15 or 20 kits. So we need to get a handle on inventory quickly as a first priority, generate POs for stuff we’re short of as the second first priority, and build more chemistry kits as the third first priority. Geez. I’m glad the biology book is off to production.


27 Comments and discussion on "Saturday, 4 February 2012"

  1. Stu Nicol says:

    Regarding the Colin conundrum:
    Conversation with my animal trainer friend pretty much echoes the previous comments, plus my own experience (my 12 year old female Boston Terrier has not had an indoor accident in 11 years and my 1 ½ year old Boston has not had one in 13 months):
    1. Take outdoors every hour or so during the day/up hours, once during the sleep hours and immediately after every meal. Supply a treat after every success.
    2. From my trainer friend and others I’ve heard that the fecal eating is a symptom nutritional issue such as lack of some mineral or other dietary necessity. Google or DVM.
    3. My trainer advices newspaper on the floor at the site of the indoor indiscretions and at the doggy door, if any.
    Note that my backyard is accessible via a doggy door, totally enclosed by 5 – 6 foot cinder block walls with secure, latching gates. Such infrastructure (sheesh, sorry, reading to much political crap) really makes it easy for us.

  2. BGrigg says:

    I find the OMGWO system breaks down the moment you find out your supplier uses the same system. The HFWDIDN? system is only good for getting your heart rate up, and not your sales.

  3. OFD says:

    When I hear the word “infrastructure,” I reach for my revolver.

    Not really, just funnin.’

    When I hear it, though, I immediately, thanks to years in IT, think of IT-related stuff, like hw and sw configs in a data center.

    Then I think of our national infrastructure of roads, bridges, dams, electric power grids, phone and network grids, etc., and I consider how much of the former is in rotten shape and our lords temporal would rather spend the (our) dough on foreign wars and endless DOD self-aggrandizement. Enemies everywhere, Oceania, etc., shades of Orwell. And while we have 30k troops serving as a tripwire on the Korean peninsula and more tens of thousands standing watch on our powder-keg frontiers in the nations we defeated 67 years ago, Germany and Japan, any half-wit of reasonable competence can do tremendous damage back here to our…

    …infrastructure….

    Of a piece with our airline transportation infrastructure, where we strip-search wheelchair-bound grandmothers, make people take off their shoes (because of one unsuccessful attempt years ago never repeated), and perversely frisk women and small children, any cretin can place stuff inside cargo holds and baggage.

  4. Chuck Waggoner says:

    Germany does not make you take off your shoes (although I never put them back on when they make me take them off in the US); they just have you put one foot at a time on a little step-stool, and wave a wand around it.

  5. Chuck Waggoner says:

    I have been complaining about the road infrastructure ever since I got back from Deutschland. We have not had a hard winter here in the land of the Indianeren, but nevertheless, pot-holes opening up are just unbelievable. It never used to be this way; now holes go unfilled for months, whereas they used to be filled in a day or two.

    This week has had daily heavy early morning fog, and — of course — I had to drive an hour or more to assignments in that. (A major interstate north was closed for over 4 hours in both directions, due to a massive accident.) There is a complete disconnect between Americans and logical ideas about what constitutes good use of time. Many, many days of the year, it was that foggy in Berlin. I sat in a very comfortable upholstered seat, grading papers, preparing for my next lesson, while it was almost impossible to see the people standing on the station platforms, until they walked into the train. And with electronic signaling, the train did not have to slow down for the fog.

    But here, I have to take my life into my hands, as it was so foggy that trucks were going 55, instead of their legal tops of 65, but yet people were speeding by me at 80, when there is no way they could see far enough ahead to justify anything faster than 55.

    This week, I did run into a woman who saw things my way. Her office was in Chicago, but she frequently must come to the Indianapolis office. She flies. I informed her of what she already knew by telling her that it is faster to drive between Chicago and Indianapolis, rather than to fly. “I would never get anything done, if I had to drive everywhere,” she responded. My point exactly. Whereas Americans — in Tiny Town alone — gladly throw out over 2 hours a day doing nothing but twisting a wheel and pushing pedals, something that requires even a higher level of awareness and devotion of their attention than most of their day at work. That is truly insanity.

    But it will not always be that way. Globalization pits every factor of life against its equivalent in the rest of the world, and the cost of personal transportation is proving unaffordable in the US. Quite obviously, we cannot afford to maintain the roads we have, let alone expand to accommodate the burgeoning population. Figures on how old cars in the US are, were recently released, and the average age of a car here is now 10.5 years — the oldest figure since the end of WWII.

    Germany is living proof that mass transit can be fast, clean, comfortable, and efficient. And it is infinitely cheaper than making personal transportation for every member of society the priority.

  6. Raymond Thompson says:

    Germany is living proof that mass transit can be fast, clean, comfortable, and efficient. And it is infinitely cheaper than making personal transportation for every member of society the priority.

    Here you get politicans and local governments involved and that destroys everything. Case in point is between Knoxville and Oak Ridge.

    Everyday thousands of people transit from Knoxville to Oak Ridge to work in the many DOE facilities and for contractors. It would ideal to have mass transportation. They tried for a train. But between the two counties and the two cities there was much fighting over who was going to get money for the system, basically who would be able to tax the price of tickets more to get their bigger share of the pie. The end result was a ticket would be about twice the cost of driving by car.

    They tried a bus. But it left at the most inconvenient times, times when people were not able to use the bus. For me to get from Oak Ridge to Knoxville I would have to leave my house at 5:30 and drive to catch the bus. The bus would leave at 6:00 getting me to downtown Knoxville at 6:45. My work hours are 8:30 to 4:30, most people work from 8:00 to 5:00. The outgoing bus left at 7:00 in the evening getting back to Oak Ridge at 7:45. I do this commute everyday and it takes me 35 minutes and my fuel charges are less than the bus ticket.

    Going to Oak Ridge from Knoxville the buss left at 6:30 getting people to the plant at 7:15. They are union or contractor employees and they are not going to get to work early for any reason. Leaving the bus left about 6:00 heading back to Knoxville.

    The schedules sucked and I think were designed that way on purpose. The ticket prices were high, $7.50 each way. The whole thing was designed to fail. It was started with grant money from the federal government. All the outfit that started the thing wanted was the federal money, not a system that worked. So when the grant money ran out the bus service stopped. I am sure the owners made off with a lot of money. Not from passengers as the busses always ran empty, but from the grant money.

    Knoxville has no airport. The closest airport is in Alcoa, a short drive from Knoxville. Reason it is not in Knoxville is because of the taxes that Knoxville wanted to rape from the travelers.

    At one time US Airways wanted to put their national hub in the area. But Knoxville, Alcoa, Knox County and Loudon county got into a pissing war over taxes and what they wanted to charge. It was going to make the operation of the airport prohibitive. So US Airways told them to stuff it and instead chose Charlotte which welcomed US Airways with open arms.

    McGee Tyson airport is still a two-bit airport with overly high tickets prices. Low cost airlines come in and the only route they fly is to Orlando because of the airport authority demands for more money for the more popular routes. It is cheaper for me to drive 200 miles to Atlanta (or 150 to Nashville) and catch a flight than it is to use McGhee Tyson. And that includes factoring in the cost of gas and parking.

    So don’t expect any reasonable solutions for mass transit in the US in the forseeable future. As long as the various local governments see it as a source of revenue all wanting their piece of the pie, the cost for such a system is just too high. You could build it, but no one would use it. Then the operators of the system would just be scratching their asses wondering why. The same mentality that tries to revitalize downtown by funding the changes by charging more for parking driving more people away from downtown.

    You think our federal government is loaded with idiots? Try the local level. They make the feds look intelligent.

  7. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    As I’ve said before, you can’t compare Germany, a tiny little country with a high population density, to the US. Nor would I want to pay European prices for gasoline.

  8. Miles_Teg says:

    I’d love to be able to take more journeys by train. Preferably high speed, but something that involves speed, security, safety, less intrusive checks, and so on.

    I’ve got to the age where driving for eight hours (to Melbourne) or 14 hours (to Adelaide) just isn’t attractive. I drove to the latter at Christmas because the airfares and airport parking charges were very high, so I could have a serviceable car at the other end, and because I also don’t like flying. But I hated the drive. I use to love it 30 years ago.

    My car’s 18 years old now, only done about 148,000 km. I am casually investigating what car I’d get if I needed a replacement (I always buy cars new) but have no plans to do so unless my hand is forced.

    I usually take the bus to work because it’s cheaper and more convenient, but I can’t really do anything productive. There are usually some misfits of one sort or other on the bus, who are always trying to cadge a free ride, that make things a bit less pleasant.

    From a technical point of view I think efficient short and long distance public transport is possible in the US, but from a psychological point of view I don’t see it happening. Y’all wedded to your cars.

  9. OFD says:

    I thought of that, too, Bob; this is a huge country with vast empty spaces, mountain ranges, rivers, etc., etc., and comparing it to densely populated European countries who have been used to continual mass transit for most of a century by now is not going to work.

    But it does seem strange that this country, with all its scientific, engineering and technological know-how, has yet to come up with a safe, reliable and affordable system that works, at least in the major metro areas, and then how about the high-speed trains for the long distance freight and passenger runs? How about nuclear energy?

    Ray hits on the major obstacle here: the State. It would fuck up a soup sandwich, and when it gets its mitts into gigantic public transportation and infrastructure projects, it colludes with corporate interests and even organized crime and the fat cats always get fatter and the resulting mess is too expensive, took too long to build, and no one will use it as long as we have apparently endless decades of Happy Motoring ahead. The notorious Big Dig project in Boston took way longer to finish and ended up costing three times as much, and STILL, it is falling apart already. And one person, minding her own business, driving through it, was killed by pieces of falling…….infrastructure.

    And because of Three-Mile Island and the Fujijama catastrophe, we can just forget about EVER seeing nuclear power for our burgeoning energy needs, just like that one would-be shoe-bomber had millions of us taking our shoes off for many years thereafter. Amazing.

    As for fog, snow, ice, sleet and other foul weather on the freeways, we see apparently suicidal/homicidal motor vehicle operators up here, too; if anything, the buggers SPEED UP in dense fog and ice on the road.

    A nation of cretins, poltroons, and sheep, always being fleeced and sodomized by fat cats and fat rats, who evidently enjoy the sensation.

  10. Stu Nicol says:

    From OFD:
    “But it does seem strange that this country, with all its scientific, engineering and technological know-how, has yet to come up with a safe, reliable and affordable system that works, at least in the major metro areas, and then how about the high-speed trains for the long distance freight and passenger runs? How about nuclear energy?”

    Well, they are talking about high-speed rail here in the leftest wing coast. LA to SF for a 18 year build out @ $100 billion, which is 3 times the cost and double the build out time of 2008 estimates. The lies by the proponents are unbelievably riduculous. How about trains seating 2,000, leaving every 5 minutes for 19 hours per day at 70% (1,400 passengers each) capacity. Oh yeah, and 50,000 jobs…imagine all lined up on the tracks…about 100 feet apart. And they tell it with a straight face.

    Lies are just as bad in Spain with their high speed rail. Another financial disaster that they cannot afford. They have been featuring it in our local press as their population density and size are about the same as our state.

  11. brad says:

    Our host writes: “…you can’t compare Germany, a tiny little country with a high population density, to the US”

    There is some truth to this, but only some. The US is 25 times larger than Germany. However, if you take areas like the East Coast from DC through Massachusetts, then both the population density and the size are actually very similar; if anything, the US has a higher population density. The real problems lie elsewhere. I think there are two of these.

    First, public transportation is viewed by many people as something only the poor use. When did anyone on this board last use Greyhound? The buses are very comfortable, the bus stations generally well-positioned in city centers, but few people use the service.

    Second, the horrible mix of local, state and federal politics. California’s high-speed rail project is a case in point. A build-time of 20 years? Ridiculous! Anyone with a sense for numbers realizes that $100 billion for this train route is utterly out of proportion. This really means that the current crop of politicians want the credit (and money), and they’ll let some future crop eat the failure (this has already happened once, from the original plans to today).

    At the base, as an overly simplistic proposal: what is missing at all levels is a hard-and-fast requirement for balanced budgets. If governments were required to be “in the black” every year, they would have to prioritize, compete for tax-paying industries, and there would be a lot less room for pork and boondoggles at all levels.

    We’re seeing exactly this debate here: the Swiss military wants to replace the older half of its fighter jets. The government has said “fine, this will cost Fr. 750,000,000. To finance this, we will be cutting spending for the next five years in the following areas…”. Sometime later this year, the population will vote: which is it to be, social spending or fighters? There is simply no option to just borrow the money for the jets, because the federal budget must remain balanced, and an option to raise taxes would be shot down in flames.

  12. OFD says:

    “…When did anyone on this board last use Greyhound? The buses are very comfortable…”

    Yeah, for midgets. I rode Greyhound and Peter Pan up here in Nova Anglia a few times several years ago, between northern VT and central MA, a three-hour drive by car and five or six by bus. I am bigger than the average North American or Euro male and it was sheer torture after about a half hour. Reminded me of the buses in southeast Asia, designed for pixies, munchkins and dwarfs. Never again. Train wasn’t bad, but again, took forever.

    Something reasonable could be done here, but never will, and eventually the days of Happy Motoring will come to an end and there will be gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, sackcloth and ashes. Our grandchildren will marvel at what stupid, lazy, selfish, short-sighted, spoiled-rotten, piggish cretins we were.

  13. Raymond Thompson says:

    Ray hits on the major obstacle here: the State.

    Not only the state but the local level. Every entity through which the tracks pass wants a piece of the pie, ie, taxes, on the rider. By the time the local governments get done the price for a ticket is prohibitive.

    Consider that flying from Chicago to Los Angeles takes about 5 hours and costs about $300.00 one way. That same trip on the train takes 3 days and costs a whopping $2000.00. And that does not include meals for which you are gouged on the train.

    A train can move one ton (2,000 pounds) of freight 400 miles on one gallon of diesel. It should be able to move one person 4,000 miles on one gallon of diesel. Factor in the cost of the train, maintenance, staff salary, insurance and other ancillary items the cost to take the train to Los Angeles from Chicago should be less than $200.00. But you have to add in all the taxes that must be paid to any entity through which the train passes through an extortion tax and the price jumps.

    Imagine if you will toll booths on every interstate highway in the nation where when you entered a state, a county or a city you were charged a few dollars. Some states do this with toll roads (how they do this on federal highways is a mystery) and it is most annoying. On a recent trip to New Jersey I had to stop three times on the interstate to pay the extortion fee. Ramp that up across the entire US and you have a real problem. That is what faces the rail systems in the US.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the ICE trains in Germany. The local loops were little more than busses. One train even had bus drive systems for locomotion and you could feel it shifting gears. Stops every 5 kilometers and a private vehicle would certainly be much faster. The train was on time and was clean and there were the fare skippers.

    In places like Germany without out mass transit you would have total gridlock. The Autobahn was packed like Atlanta during rush hour. Add in all the people on the trains and the road infastructure would not support the traffic. Rush hour would be from 0400 until 2200 each day. Don’t even mention trying to find a place to park. Mass transit is necessary just for survival.

  14. Miles_Teg says:

    I take the coach when I’m going to Sydney. I hate driving, especially in Sydney, and don’t like flying either, especially when it’s now so inconvenient. I’d never take a coach to Melbourne or Adelaide, it takes too long in an inadequate seat, but I would take a train. The longest journey I’ve taken by train is Perth-Kalgoorlie and return, 600 km each way. It was rather nice, and pretty spacious compared with a plane or bus. I just find trains really relaxing.

  15. Miles_Teg says:

    Oh yes, and I’ve taken some sort of express train from London to Paris. That was pretty good to and the scenery, in more ways than one, was great too… 🙂

  16. OFD says:

    We’re just not having anything sensible here, not gonna happen. Ever.

  17. BGrigg says:

    Well. Not with that attitude, we won’t!

    Mass transit only works in densely populated areas. New York-Boston-DC. And look, they have trains that work mostly, highways that you guys might complain about, but work pretty good for a colonist from the provinces, and proper subways.

    Out West is another matter. Thin population, hundreds of miles from each other. There is no “mass” to transit.

    Toll roads are more honest, IMHO. We have road taxes buried in our gas price, along with carbon offset taxes. Tolls at least trade you a ride on a nice highway for your money. I pay extortionate rates for every shit road I drive on.

    I’m beginning to think that Americans aren’t happy unless they’re complaining about something.

  18. SteveF says:

    You know what really pisses me off? When people try to tell me when I’m happy or not and when they try to tell me why I’m happy or not. Jeez, what’s wrong with people? You know what’s wrong with people? They’re just not happy unless they can fit everything and everyone into nice little boxes.

    I’ll tell you, when I ascend, there’ll be some changes.

  19. BGrigg says:

    Isn’t “Change” trademarked, or something?

  20. Dave Browning says:

    The one place where high speed rail would absolutely make sense is the Washington, D.C. to New York City to Boston corridor. It is the Amtrak route which actually makes money. However the current medium speed train has to run at less than peak speed a lot of the time, due to state laws, track spacing and a stop in Wilmington, Delaware for the Vice President.

    The fact that nobody is discussing high speed rail for this route leads me to believe that all this talk of high speed rail is just bovine fecal matter. Very expensive bovine fecal matter, but that is what it is.

  21. Chuck Waggoner says:

    Why does “mass transit” have to make money? Most roads in the US don’t make any money at all, but yet, everyone screams that mass transit and the Post Office must make money. The Post Office is mandated by the US Constitution, and nowhere does the Constitution say it must make money!

    Raymond Thompson says:

    In places like Germany without out mass transit you would have total gridlock. The Autobahn was packed like Atlanta during rush hour. Add in all the people on the trains and the road infastructure would not support the traffic. Rush hour would be from 0400 until 2200 each day. Don’t even mention trying to find a place to park. Mass transit is necessary just for survival.

    Well, mass transit came first, but cars never became dominant there, like they did in the US, because Europe never allowed the car companies to buy and dismantle its rail, tram, and bus infrastructure, as did the US, stupidly. And people there understand that driving everywhere is a personal waste of lots of time. Hardly anyone I met in Berlin, even had a driver’s license. Most everyone reads on the trains and subways, or brings their small notebooks and gets some work done. Try that while twisting a wheel and pushing pedals for 45 minutes a day or longer. Add up all the time over your lifetime that you cannot do anything other than twist a wheel, push pedals, and pay strict attention to traffic, and you have some very serious productivity loss. I have driven over a million miles in my life (3 cars @ 300,000+ miles before I was 45), and that adds up to years of being handcuffed to the wheel, accomplishing nothing whatsoever at all.

    There is no way mass transit should cost more than personal transportation, and I have mentioned here before that the last year we were in Boston, our one car cost us a total of just over $7,000 — not including tolls (of which there are lots around Boston). A yearly pass x 2 of us, good on any of the Berlin transit system (trains, trams, subways, and busses) was the equivalent of US$1,400 (around $700/each) — a fraction of the cost of maintaining a car. Now that it’s just me alone, I have to pay the full freight of the car expense, and lots of people have 2 cars to maintain, so the individual’s car expense is not trivial.

    And that does not even take into account that forcing automobiles as the only travel alternative onto the population, denies travel to significant numbers of the population who — for one reason or another — cannot obtain a driver’s license, but could travel perfectly well on mass transit, if it existed. And that includes a lot of people of advancing years, who should not even be out on the roads driving.

    Moreover, recent studies have shown that roads in major US metropolitan centers are now fully saturated, and there is no more ability to add new roads to relieve congestion. Yet the car driving population in these centers continues to grow (Chicago and the tri-state New York area were 2 in the study).

    The US is the ONLY country in the Western world without a mass transit system; even Canada does better. I don’t WANT to drive — in no way is it a pleasurable experience to me at all. It is a drag, a complete waste of my time, requires exhausting concentration, and is highly dangerous compared to mass transit alternatives. But in the US, there is no alternative! (Busses for long distance travel do not qualify as “mass transit” to me, because they are not quicker than driving, since they use the same clogged road infrastructure as cars.)

    There is a way to deal with the tax situation. Private enterprise doing mass transit is about the worst possible way to go in getting it done. Private enterprise is not in charge of the roads we drive on, why should it be in charge of mass transit infrastructure?

    Taxes on mass transit should be barred by law. No one at any level gets one red cent from streets and highways. Except for certain toll roads and truck use taxes, they don’t get it now from roadways, why should mass transit for individuals be any different?

    The fact is that private enterprise in the US is about as out-of-control as it possibly can be, with a recent survey showing that executive compensation has just returned to all-time record high levels, when stock prices of almost all companies have actually declined since 2009, providing no justification whatever for such dramatically high pay levels. The average executive compensation in the US is now 110 times that of the average wage in companies.

    And the fact that Germany is smaller than the US makes it impossible to scale up their method of transit to the US? There are over 300 million people in the US, most of whom need to move from one place to another, both locally and long-distance. When I was a young kid, one could still travel from Tiny Town to Anderson (where I was yesterday) via train, in about 25 minutes (about half the time it takes to drive there). Rails once connected even the smallest of towns in the US, including those of the less populated Midwest plains and the West.

    I agree that — unless there is a real revolution — mass transit on even the smallest scale is a pipe dream for the US. It will be interesting to see how the US deals with that, as roads decline to impassable states, cars get to be as old as those in Cuber, the cost of cars climbs faster than incomes, and the energy price to run them continues racing through the roof.

  22. Dave B. says:

    There are mass transit projects which succeed on a smaller scale. Amtrak works in the densely populated northeast corridor. The Metro rail system in DC works remarkably well. We have to figure out how to duplicate those successes elsewhere.

    If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have taken the former Monon rail line on the north side of Indianapolis and converted it into a jogging/biking trail. I would seriously have considered it as a route for a light rail system instead. That is a densely populated area where a rail system would make sense. The big question to figure out would be how do we get it to go a mile further south into downtown Indianapolis, and to other future light rail lines in other parts of Indianapolis.

  23. Chuck Waggoner says:

    America’s only short-term solution is to build rail lines along Interstate highway routes. But they need to do it seriously, with dual tracks for 2-way travel. None of this reversible track stuff. We were stuck with one track out to Berlin Strausberg, and that limited train frequency to once every 20 minutes, when the need was for trains at least every 10 minutes, if not oftener during rush hours. (Part of East/West integration that has yet to be dealt with. The military air-training base in Strausberg is supposed to replace the now-closed Tempelhof, and a high-speed rail line installed to Strausberg by 2015. But that ain’t gonna happen on time, because they are already behind schedule due to fights over closing Tempelhof.)

    Tracks into downtown Indy can be built underground, for both trains and subways, and should be, so there is no competition with — or blocking of — road traffic above.

    I have long maintained that both Indianapolis and Minneapolis could be very convenient cities, if subways were built along just a couple of major routes. This recent week of Super Bowl has demonstrated that Indy needs to eliminate street parking and keep the parking lanes for bus traffic. That worked VERY well.

    I do not favor “light rail”. We need regular, standard train tracks, with comfortable carriages–not stripped-down sardine-tin busses running on rails. Seats need to be upholstered, padded, and comfortable, not those stupid molded plastic crappy things we had in Boston, that bums pee in and people spill cokes and coffee in, collecting in the indented seat part of it. Personally, I don’t think intoxicated people should be allowed on any mass transit, just as they are not allowed to drive. They cause just as much trouble on mass transit as anywhere else; they are seldom in their ‘right mind’; no one should be subjected to them. Get rid of them, and most of the problems with mass transit in Boston would be solved.

  24. BGrigg says:

    What most cities need is the old trolley systems that were torn up for “superior” mass transit methods.

  25. SteveF says:

    You’re thinking too small, Chuck. Intoxicated people, with their incompetence, bad smell, and unpleasant behaviour, are not the problem. The bulk of mankind, with their incompetence, bad smell, and unpleasant behaviour, are the problem. If you were to suggest killing off the stupid majority, I’d be right with you. Hell, I’d be way ahead of you.

    Killing off the stupid one at a time is much, much too slow. Currently my hopes lie in the continuing analysis of the human genome. As soon as the “stupid” gene is identified, I’ll develop 24-hour mad cow whooping ebola to attack carriers of that gene. Within a month, the earth’s population will be reduced 97% and the survivors can get on with their lives. Win-win situation because stupid people don’t enjoy living, or at least they shouldn’t.

  26. Chuck Waggoner says:

    Really, I don’t think it will wipe out 97%. I think it will be less than 33%. It is just that the stupid ones get all the publicity, because news and publicity is run by the stupid.

    But it sure will be good to get corporate CEO’s and most of the news media out of the way.

    Just keep that ebola away from me, in case I’m not immune.

  27. OFD says:

    SteveF has many very good ideas and I am of the opinion that he needs a separate blog here, hosted by Bob, of course. And his latest ties right in with what my late Aunt Elinor (no, not the one of Aquitaine, wiseasses) used to tell me: “David, 98% of the American people are stupid.” And you see right there, back in probably 1965, she was prescient, and even ahead of SteveF on this deal.

    Yo, bring on the ebola. Bob probably has a mix of it in his garage or something.

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