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Category: government

Thursday, 31 May 2012

07:40 – Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments is officially complete and off to O’Reilly’s production folks. I’ve already issued several purchase orders for the forensics kits, and will be putting together and issuing more of them over the next few days.

10:08 – I’ve enabled registration for this site, which I’m hoping will allow registered users to edit their own comments, at least for a short time after they post them. If you’re a regular here, please go ahead and register and let me know if you can edit your own comments.

16:44 – That loud sucking sound you hear is the sound of people withdrawing their money from Spanish banks. The MSM hesitates to call it a bank run, but what else would you call a net withdrawal of about $125 billion for the month ending today? Like all other eurozone banks, all Spanish banks are not just bankrupt but zombiefied. Their net worth is so far into the red that there’s nothing to be done. The Spanish government, bankrupt itself, can’t help them. The EU can’t help them. The IMF can’t help them. The ECB has already put more than $1 trillion in funny money into the EU banking system. As I predicted, that’s actually done more harm than good. It delayed the final collapse, of course, but at what a price. Spain is very close to following Greece down the tubes, and there’s nothing anyone can do now to stop it. Expect severe capital control measures to be implemented, possibly as soon as tomorrow. Not that those will do any good.

Even EU, ECB, and IMF officials are now speaking openly about the collapse of the eurozone, and “collapse” is one of the kinder words they’re using. This is a real train wreck, not just for Greece and Spain, but for the rest of the eurozone. The UK, Sweden and other EU nations that are not members of the eurozone will also suffer heavily, but nowhere near as badly as those in the eurozone. Germany has to be very near the point of abandoning the euro, if only in self-preservation.

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Friday, 18 May 2012

07:52 – Barbara slept at her parents’ house Wednesday night and then went into work yesterday after visiting her mom at the hospital. She left work early to go back over to the hospital to visit and then have dinner with her dad. Her mom is doing better. She may or may not be released today. Barbara slept over at her parents’ house again last night. She’ll take her dad over to the hospital this morning and then head in to work. Colin and I have been scrounging meals as best we can. In the evenings, we’ve been re-watching series one and two of Heartland.

Two weeks left until the final deadline for Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments, and it looks like we’ll make it with time to spare. That’s good, because we definitely need to spend some time this weekend rebuilding our stock of chemistry kits.

13:12 – It’s looking increasingly possible that the breakup of the eurozone won’t result from the Greek government (such as it isn’t…) defaulting, but instead from a run on Greek banks. Greeks are now lining up outside banks to withdraw the entire amounts in their accounts. Ordinary Greeks perceive, rightly, that their money is much safer under their mattresses than it is in a Greek bank. One day soon, Greece and the world will learn with no notice that Greece is no longer in the euro, but has converted back to the drachma or whatever they choose to call their new local currency. When that happens, Greece will institute capital controls even harsher than those now in effect, to prevent euros from fleeing Greece. (Smuggling literally suitcases full of euro notes is now common; a lot of that is stopped at the borders, but I suspect most of it gets through.)

When the banks open that Morning After, Greeks will find that all of their euro deposits are now are now drachma-denominated, no doubt at an exchange rate of 1:1. Of course, despite the fact that the euro will soon itself be in free-fall, one drachma won’t actually be worth anything near one euro. When Greece adopted the euro a decade ago, the drachma:euro exchange rate was, IIRC, something like 350:1. And Greece was at that time in a lot better financial shape than it is now. My guess is that the drachma:euro exchange rate will soon be at something like 1,000:1, if not 10,000:1. And then we’ll see the real inflation taking hold, just as it did in Weimar Germany. People will have to haul a wheelbarrow full of overstamped drachma-euros up to the counter to buy a cup of coffee.

But for now, Greek banks are paying off euro depositors in euros, of which they are embarrassingly short and getting shorter. At this point, there isn’t technically a run on the Greek banks, because they’ve been able, so far, to meet depositor demands. But with Greek depositors withdrawing euros at a net of something like 5 billion a week and increasing fast, that’s likely to change very soon. Remember, neither Greek banks nor the Greek government can issue euros. They print them, yes, but only as authorized by the ECB, which isn’t authorizing them to print any more. In the absence of authorization, any euros that Greece prints will legally be counterfeits. Not that I’d expect that to prevent them from printing those euros. Desperate people take desperate actions.

So ordinary Greeks now have two priorities. First, get their euros out of Greek banks. Second, get those euros out of Greece. And who can blame them?

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Tuesday, 15 May 2012

07:48 – I’m working on the final lab session in the forensic biology group, on separating DNA with gel electrophoresis. That’s the final lab session, other than the one that I skipped back in the soil analysis group, on chemical characteristics of soil. For that one, I intend to do a quantitative analysis of phosphate using the molybdate test. I’ve never done that one, or if I have I don’t remember doing it, so I need to mix up some reagents and do the reaction several times under different conditions to make sure things are reproducible before I write up the lab.

Barbara’s firm is having an employee night at the stadium tonight. If it’s not rained out, she’s going to baseball game; if we have another deluge–we had 6 inches (15 cm) of rain yesterday–she’ll just hit the gym as usual.

11:33 – A year ago, I said that Greece reminded me of that scene in Blazing Saddles where Bart takes himself hostage with his pistol to his head, threatening to shoot unless his would-be lynchers backed off.

That worked for Bart, and it’s been working for Greece for a year now. Each time the Troika tried to force Greece to implement realistic measures to deal with its debt crisis, Greece refused, with the implied threat of defaulting on monies owed to EU banks, the ECB, the IMF, and other government and quasi-government entities. The EU, of course, never really cared if Greece defaulted on monies owed to private creditors. In fact, the Troika forced through the short-sighted private-sector involvement, whereby private investors were forced to take an immediate 75% write-down on the debts owed them, in return for new Greek bonds valued at a nominal 25% of the debt Greece actually owed. (Of course, those “new” Greek bonds, issued in March 2012, are now worth essentially nothing.) But the Troika made sure of the important part; that Greece continued to pay the debts owed to the Troika.

Well, it’s now obvious to everyone that those debts will also have to be written off. Actually, it’s been obvious for a long time, but EU leaders are just getting around to admitting it publicly. And, with Greece’s departure from the eurozone and return to the drachma no longer in any doubt whatsoever, Greece no longer has that threat to hold over the Troika’s head. That means no more money from the EU, the ECB, and the IMF, which means Greece must default (again) the next time a significant bond payment becomes due. That won’t be long.

Meanwhile, the EUrocrats are, as always, living in a dream world. They believe–just how catastrophically wrongly will become obvious very soon after Greece defaults–that “contagion” can be avoided. This despite the fact that Spanish 10-year bond yields are higher now than they’ve ever been since the euro was introduced, with Italian bond yields not far behind. When Greece defaults, the bond market will immediately shift its focus to the other weakling eurozone countries, namely Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland, with Belgium and France not far behind. Many people, including me, have made reference to a toppling row of dominoes, but in fact the impending catastrophe is more likely to resemble a house of cards, with the whole mess collapsing in one huge pile. I hope Germany has done as I speculated they’ve been doing, printing new marks and getting ready to change back to their old currency overnight. Otherwise, even Germany won’t escape the collapse.

The EU succeeded in putting off the collapse for a year now, but at hideous cost. I am reminded of that famous film clip of the catastrophic failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, caused by positive feedback. Everything, and I mean everything, the EU authorities have done for the past year has been positive feedback in terms of the effect on the euro, which, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, was fatally flawed at the design stage. Ultimately, the result will be the same.

16:31 – Now that Merkozy is no more, with Francois Hollande replacing Sarkozy as the French president, we needed a new name for the French partnership with Angela Merkel. Apparently, Frangela is out to an early lead. I think my proposal is much better. Merde.

16:44 – Oh, my. The day has been full of bad omens for Greece, if you believe that sort of thing. First, Hollande’s plane was struck by lightning on its way to Berlin. Then, in a story eerily reminiscent of Harry Chapin’s 30,000 Pounds of Bananas, a tractor-trailer crash in upstate New York has spilled 36,000 pounds of yogurt. Greek yogurt.

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Friday, 11 May 2012

07:57 – I finished the first lab session in the forgery group yesterday, on detecting alterations in documents, and started the lab session on analysis of inks by chromatography. I’ll finish that today and start on the final lab session in that group, on analysis of papers. Then it’ll be on to forensic biology.

I predicted recently that the Financial Crisis item would re-appear on the Hot Topics menu bar of The Telegraph, and a week or so ago it did. Things in euroland have been lurching from worse to horrible over the last couple of months. Merkozy is no more, with French voters electing Hollande to replace Sarkozy. Greece is in complete chaos after last week’s elections, unable to form a government. The new Greek bonds are now trading at 20%+ yields. Spain and Italy are again paying disastrously high yields on their bonds, and Spain is teetering on the edge of seeking a bailout. The German government refuses to make any further concessions, and is now saying openly that it’s time for Greece to leave the euro. I said a year ago that Europe could do nothing to prevent the collapse of the euro, and that any stopgap measures they implemented could only delay the collapse for a short time at huge expense. And that’s exactly what’s happened and what’s still happening. Two years ago, even one year ago, the EU authorities could have minimized the damage simply by admitting that the euro was a fatally-flawed idea and allowing the eurozone to break up naturally. Now they’ve dug themselves in so deep that the collapse, when it comes, is going to be catastrophic. And there’s no longer anything anyone can do to prevent that catastrophe. Expect to see yet another Greek default, probably in the next couple of months, that’ll set the row of dominoes falling one after the other. Things are going to get even uglier.

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Monday, 23 April 2012

07:38 – Back to heads-down work on the forensics book.

10:02 – Wow. The government’s bogus inflation numbers continue to surprise me. I originally wrote the text for this forensics book back in late 2008 and early 2009. I was just updating one of the lab sessions on soil analysis. It uses the Project Star Spectrometer, which was widely available for $25 or so back in 2009. (I know; I bought one and I still have the receipt.) Three years later, it’s still widely available, but now it sells for $37 to $45. That’s 50% to 80% inflation in only three years, or an annual inflation rate of roughly 14% to 22%.

13:25 – Derek Lowe has an interesting post up about self-medication: Making Their Own ALS Drug. As Bob Dylan wrote in his best track and probably the best rock-and-roll track ever, “When you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose”. And these ALS patients definitely got nuthin’.

What was particularly interesting to me is that Derek, a pharmaceutical chemist, states publicly something that few scientists would admit to: that if he were diagnosed with such a disease, he’d go the Hail Mary route and happily start taking this stuff. And, although few scientists would admit something like this publicly, it’s something that nearly all would do privately. In short, some evidence, no matter how scanty, is sufficient to take desperate action rather than doing nothing. When you know what the certain outcome is, even a one in a million shot is better than nothing. And many of these proto-drugs have sufficient evidence suggesting possibly beneficial effects that taking them on spec is considerably better than a one-in-a-million shot.

When the Cancer Cell article about dichloroacetic acid came out, I immediately downloaded and read the full paper. My reaction then was, “this might not work in humans, but then again it very well might.” So, that very day, I ordered 250 mL of reagent-grade dichloroacetic acid from Fisher Scientific and put it on the shelf. I forwarded a link to the paper to Paul Jones, and in a follow-up conversation I mentioned with some hesitation that I’d ordered the DCA. Frankly, I was afraid he’d think I was ridiculous for giving in to woo, but his reaction was the same as mine: it might not work, but then again what’s to lose?

Paul and Mary are both organic chemists. Barbara is not a chemist, but she trusts the three of us. If the worst happened to any of us and traditional treatments held out no possibility of a cure, I think it’s very likely that we’d have a little get-together around the lab bench. We’d make up a big batch of sodium or potassium dichloroacetate and purify the shit out of it by repeated recrystallization, preparatory column chromatography, or whatever. So, yeah, I can understand why these ALS patients are willing to swallow a sodium chlorite solution and cross their fingers. When you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose. And the damned FDA and the rest of the government should just look the other way.

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Friday, 20 April 2012

08:17 – We’re now shipping biology kits.

Right now, getting a biology kit packed for shipping takes longer than doing the same for a chemistry kit. That’s because I know exactly what should be in a chemistry kit, so I can just eyeball it to verify that everything that belongs in the box is in the box. I’m not as familiar with the biology kits yet, so I have to check off each item against a printed list. We’ve made up the first batch of 30 biology kits and checked the contents as we added them to the boxes, so I don’t expect to find anything missing when I tape up a box for shipping, but I’m a firm believer in the measure-twice-cut-once school of thinking.

09:20 – Here’s one of those papers that may be revolutionary [PDF] or may turn out to be just another brick in the wall. Researchers administered Buckminsterfullerene to rats, and were surprised to find that their lifespans were extended by some 90%. As far as I know, this hasn’t hit the mainstream media yet, but when it does I expect a flood of people trying to get their hands on a supply of buckyballs, assuming that instead of living to 90 years old they can live to 171. Don’t rush out to buy any buckyballs quite yet, though. The effect may turn out to be similar in humans, but it’s quite possible there will be no effect or even negative effects.

H/T: Derek Lowe

16:33 – It really, really is time for the United States to withdraw entirely from the United Nations, and to expel the UN from US soil. Really.

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Friday, 13 April 2012

07:50 – Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month.

Spain is now on the precipice of complete economic collapse. Its banks must redeem about €600 billion this year, and those banks are already zombies. In March, Spanish banks borrowed €316.3 billion and redeemed €88.7 billion, for net borrowing of €227.6 billion, almost a 50% increase in net borrowing over the €152.4 billion they borrowed in February. The trend is obvious to anyone who looks at the data. Without a huge bailout, which simply isn’t in the cards, Spain will default catastrophically sooner rather than later. Portugal is in similarly horrible shape, as is Italy. Meanwhile, the second Greek bailout is already heading for the rocks, with a third bailout or outright default inevitable. And the markets have begun to sit up and take notice. As Jeremy Warner says, it’s time to put the doomed euro out of its misery.

11:38 – Colin is now officially a Fearsome Predator. As I was walking him just now, he started sniffing around the base of a small tree. An apparently-oblivious squirrel came around the trunk and hopped to the ground about a foot (30 cm) from Colin’s snout. He pounced and the squirrel screamed. (Seriously; they do scream.) The squirrel tried to take off running, but Colin had its tail in his mouth. Rather than simply hold onto it, though, Colin let it run, with him following behind it with its tail still in his mouth. They ran around a big bush into the next yard. When I got there, the squirrel was up a tree, with Colin pacing around the trunk. I told him he was a good dog, and we headed for home, with him prancing all the way. Fearsome predator, indeed.

Actually, that was Colin’s second victory. He caught a bird when he was a young pup. He didn’t hurt it, either. Border Collies almost never harm something they catch. They have all the chase-and-capture instinct of their wild ancestors, but all of the kill instinct has been bred out of them. Of the many, many times over the years that our BCs have caught prey–ranging from birds to squirrels to frogs to possums to, on one memorable occasion, a feral cat–the only times any prey have been harmed were the feral cat that Duncan bit in half after it tried to claw him and the squirrel that Duncan killed after it bit him in the snout. Duncan, justifiably annoyed with the squirrel, struck faster than a rattlesnake, grabbed it, and gave it one deadly shake.

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Wednesday, 11 April 2012

08:07 – The taxes are done, other than printing off final copies to mail in. I’ll print those today, Barbara will sign the returns tonight, and I’ll mail them tomorrow.

So, it’ll be Romney versus Obama in November. I don’t much like Romney, to put it mildly, but he’s certainly worlds better than Obama. Let’s hope that Romney kicks Obama’s ass in November, and that the Republicans retake the Senate on Romney’s coattails. Ordinarily, I prefer that the president and congress be at each other’s throats, but we really need the Republicans in control to repeal all the laws that the Democrats passed and undo as much as possible of the damage that Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and their crowd have done.

And it looks like the economy will turn sour again, just in time to frustrate Obama’s hopes. From about mid-2011, telegraph.co.uk had a “Financial Crisis” link on the hot news bar on their front page every day. That disappeared a few weeks ago, but I predict it will soon be back. The effects of Draghi’s LTRO have by now pretty much completely worn off, and the market euphoria from the Greek default is fast dissipating. People are realizing that the LTRO and Greek default didn’t improve matters at all. Fundamentally, Europe is still bankrupt, and now the vultures are coming home to roost. The euro crisis is about to come roaring back, worse than ever before. Europe, having wasted a lot of money to buy a little time, is now in a worse position than it was. Spain will soon be forced to seek a bail-out, with Portugal and Italy not far behind. And the cupboard is bare. This will be an exciting spring and summer.

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Monday, 9 April 2012

07:55 – I start work on our federal and state incomes taxes today. As far as I can see, our LLC makes zero difference to how I’ll do the taxes. The revenue and expenses for the corporation go directly to Schedule C on the federal return, just as they did when I was operating as a sole proprietor. And the state return simply uses figures plugged in from the federal return, as always.

Speaking of the state return, I finally took some time yesterday to get my new Epson V300 scanner up and working. There was no prayer of that happening on my main office system, which is running Ubuntu 9.04 (!). So I took the scanner back to Barbara’s office and connected it to her system, which is running a more recent Ubuntu. Epson supplies Linux drivers, but the installation wasn’t completely straightforward. I had to install an older version of one of the support files manually, after which the scanner was immediately recognized by xSane. I did a test scan, and everything appears to be working normally.

What motivated me to finally get the scanner running is that the stupid North Carolina PDF tax forms can be filled out and printed with Adobe Reader, but they can’t be saved. How stupid is that? So, my choices were to just print an extra copy of the completed return for our records or to get the scanner working. Either that, or to what I’ve done in a couple prior years when I didn’t have a working scanner: put the completed forms on the floor and shoot images of them with a digital camera.

Barbara tried to give Colin a bath yesterday. As usual, she stripped down and got in the downstairs shower and then I brought Colin into the bathroom. The last time, he was pretty good about getting into the shower with her and seemed resigned to being bathed. This time, he simply refused to get in the shower. He was terrified. He actually snapped at Barbara. I could feel him shivering in terror. So we bagged it. With the weather getting warmer, it’s not a big deal. Barbara will wash him outdoors with the hose at the next opportunity.

We’re starting to get queries about the biology kits, which will start shipping next week. Other than the supplemental DVD included with each kit, we have the first batch of 30 kits made up and ready to go, with components for 30 more in the on-deck circle. We hope that’ll be enough at least to buffer the initial flood of orders when the book hits the stores, but of course we’re prepared to order in components for and assemble a lot more kits quickly if the initial flood of orders is larger than expected. We’re also in the process of making up 30 more chemistry kits, and we’ve penciled in some time in a couple of months to begin assembling forensics kits. Obviously, we’re going to be busy for the next few months.

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Monday, 2 April 2012

07:49 – It’s that time again. Time to start thinking about doing tax returns. That means I’ll be in a bad mood for the next couple of weeks. I’ll accumulate forms and get the paperwork together this week and work on the taxes this coming weekend.

Work on the forensics book continues, as does work on assembling a new batch of chemistry kits.

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