09:36 – Heads-down work on the forensics book this week. We’ve gone about as far as we can on the biology kits until the last couple items arrive. Once that happens, we’ll be ready to assemble the first batch of 60 biology kits, some of which are already spoken for. I’m also preparing follow-on purchase orders, so that if necessary I can be ready to drop those immediately.
At this point, we’re thinking about doing several different forensics kits, one overall kit that includes the specialty materials needed for all of the lab sessions in the book, and several smaller kits that focus on specific aspects, such as a fingerprinting kit, a blood-testing kit, a forensic drug testing kit, and so on. We may also offer those special forensics kits as classroom kits, with sufficient materials for, say, 30 students working in groups of three. Doing that raises shipping issues because of the larger amounts of hazardous chemicals included. Rather than being able to ship air under the Section 173.4 small-quantity exemption, we’d have to ship ground under ORM-D regulations. But all that is a long way off.
Just want to add that the recent Firefox upgrade to 10.0.2 is bringing my computer to its knees. I hope anybody who is still in the Firefox v.3 to 4 range has not upgraded recently, unless you have endless RAM. Nowadays, I cannot have more than a few windows open, and those with only a few tabs each. Formerly, before I got out of the v.4 area, I could have 15 windows open with 15 or more tabs in each, with virtually no effect on performance. And that is how I prefer to operate.
If your Firefox ain’t broke, beware of upgrading! Really.
Still on Firefox 3.6.x. No plans to upgrade, unless Sandra Bullock asks me very nicely, in which case I’ll upgrade (and restore from a backup to 3.6 when she’s finished having her wicked way with me.)
Has anyone read Fred’s latest rant? He’s obviously extreme, but there is a big kernel of truth in it. I’ve been drafting an article myself, that goes in much the same direction.
I am equally sure that every single member of my family (mostly living in Texas and the Deep South) would brand him (and me) as unpatriotic and anti-American.
He’s nuts. I’d rather read Pournelle, or Coyne, or almost anyone else.
‘Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice…’
Sometimes the truth sounds a little extreme. Most Americans seem to me like they need a splash of ice-water to their faces. Fred fulfills that role nicely. But of course he is a racist, fascist, sexist, etc., etc. Or like the Soviets used to say about various dissident parties, he’s clearly insane.
I have no ear for people who live in other countries and bitch about the one they left. And Fred is downright insane.
Yet Fred does have a point. America has been bungling “diplomacy by other means” since Vietnam.
Who gave us the right to be the world’s moral police? We should STFU and tend to our own knitting.
ANyway, here’s something completely different which you guys might like. Is it just me, or has the German Sheperd been bred into nothingness? Except for police dogs, I don’t think I’ve seen such fine specimens in years. Video below is from 1986, and from the UK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=f309fSTWYo4
Agreed. And the next time there’s a tsunami or earthquake or invasion by an overpopulated neighbor, we should sit back and laugh. “Sucks to be you!” I can live with that, though I’ll bet a bunch of the world’s poor couldn’t.
I don’t believe schadenfreude is in the American character. Much the opposite, in fact. Just keep the god-damned government out of the equation! Personal and voluntary contribution will say, and tell, far more than imperial Largesse.
Fred is not nuts; he’s just wired differently. And I wonder from all the misspellings, if the tequila was in too close reach. But I can tell you he describes the World View accurately.
In fact, is there that much difference between the US and China? Both repress their own people; both have military that do not mind running over anybody and everybody that gets in their way; neither minds torturing; both like locking lots of people up for loooong times; both could not care less about civil liberties; both have horrible health care systems; both want to nationalize and control what you have access to, on the Internet. No one I talk to in the US — no one in either party — is happy with the course the US is on. But is that changing? Not in the least. Meanwhile, our infrastructure and technology falls way behind the rest of the Western world (cell phone calling reliability and quality in this country is sickeningly far behind Europe).
Moreover, I think the odds are quite good that we will find our military in Iran before the year is out. We have such an affection for the Middle East, just like China does over Tibet.
What Chuck and Jim said. Fred is not insane, though it may be convenient to label him as such.
Chuck is right: this is the world view of the USA – or at least, the parts of the world outside of the former British empire. What I find surprising is how impossible it is to discuss this with most people in the States. Certainly, my entire family accuses me of being un-American and unpatriotic, when I suggest that the series of wars in the Middle East were, um, less than wonderfully conceived. From their point of view, at least, America can do no wrong.
There is, of course, a difference between the USA and China. China makes no pretensions, domestically, to be anything but totalitarian. The American government still requires a fig leaf; must at least pretend to listen to voters. Of course, that won’t stop the next attacks, presumably on Syria and Iran. An analyst who’s opinion I respect, says that Iran will be seriously on the table in the Fall; timing would undoubtedly depend on the perceived effect on the elections. Apparently, the only thing that will end the endless series of undeclared wars will be national backruptcy.
@SteveF: “the next time there’s a tsunami or earthquake or invasion by an overpopulated neighbor, we should sit back and laugh”. Really, there’s a world of difference between offering aid and carrying out an unprovoked military attack. Iraq hadn’t attacked anyone, and Libya’s problems were purely internal. In both cases, US intervention has arguably made a bad situation worse: both countries have lost much of their infrastructure, and both seem likely to wind up under Sharia Law. Of course, it was all done with the best of intentions, so that’s ok then…
Re Fred’s spelling: he wrote some time ago about some pretty ugly eye surgery. I suspect his eyesight is failing, which probably also contributes to a certain bitterness in his writings…
Sure. But there’s also a lot of hypocritical bullshit involved in demanding the US stay out of a nation’s internal affairs and then demanding that the US provide food and medical supplies to cope with some disaster, and demanding the US keep a hands-off approach to how their aid is distributed, and then turning right around and demanding the US stay out of internal affairs as soon as the worst of the disaster is mitigated. I’m thinking of Indonesia and Turkey, but lesser examples are there, too.
Now, I’m generally not disagreeing with statements by others, above. I’m pretty isolationist as far as US national policy goes. Keep the US government and the US military out unless there’s a compelling national interest reason, usually involving a threat to the US. That’s the proper role of government. Zero out the government foreign aid. Allow US citizens to contribute as they wish, whether money or labor or mercenary groups. So far as I can tell, the US government is doing everything exactly opposite of how I think it should be. Which is the case in a lot more than international relations, come to that.
I nominate SteveF for President.
Do I have to be a citizen to do that? If so, could OFD or someone duplicate the nomination?
As I’ve said many times the US should renounce its declaration of independence and petition Her Majesty to take them back. Fifty bureaucrats in Whitehall could run the US better than either of the current main parties.
Please, Greg, have you not been paying attention to what has been going on in England for the past decade fifty years century? Whitehall can’t deal with the UK. The US made this problem, the US is gonna have to clean it up themselves.
No so’s you’d notice. The US may be circling the drain, but it’s in far the best shape of any major country, and all but a very few minor ones. The UK vies with Japan for the world’s record in terms of fiscal irresponsibility.
So, how come the strike through code not worky? both decade and fifty years should have strike through!
You’re about the fourth person in the last year to suggest that. Even setting aside the clown show of the election process, I don’t want the job, though.
… Which is probably another reason why I should be President.
I’d like to see a reliable test which could identify anyone who wanted to be a politician or senior bureaucrat or similar. Those who “passed” would be forever barred from working in the public sector. Once they’re ruled out, it probably wouldn’t much matter how the leaders were selected. Alas, psychology is 99 44/100% bunk, so my dream is likely to remain science fiction.
Not wanting the job is the #1 requirement, in my way of thinking. I think the leaders should be dragged into the office kicking and screaming, instead of the other way around.
Okay. I’ll prove you guys wrong. Make me dictator, and I promise you I’ll spend all my time eliminating taxes, repealing laws and regulations, firing government employees, and executing particularly egregious examples of politicians and bureaucrats, along with their obligate symbionts in corporations. (I promise to show restraint; I won’t execute any more than a million of them. The first year.)
Wanting to be dictator is #1 on the DON’T LET INTO OFFICE list. Sorry Bob, you’ve been eliminated from the nominations.
No, no. You guys can trust me. Honest.
I’ve never seen a more honest and concise statement from a politican.
Bob wrote: “No, no. You guys can trust me. Honest.”
And that’s #2 on the NEVER list!
I might take a chance with SteveF, he seems pretty sensible, on the whole, but not Robert; he wants to kill Santa Claus.
We need a dictator like Cincinnatus, who was invited by the senate to that post and promptly laid down his power when the emergency was over.
Of course, it would be too much to hope for another Cicero…
Santa Claus invades homes. The man’s a menace.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! That sentence demonstrates the shortcomings of text-only conversations better than anything I could have contrived.