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Category: government

Thursday, 9 October 2014

13:32 – Anyone who believes that Germany is in good shape should read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s current column: German model is ruinous for Germany, and deadly for Europe

As I’ve said repeatedly over the last few years, Germany is the real Sick Man of Europe. Its decline really started with reunification, and has become pronounced over the last 15 years or so. Germany faces a catastrophic demographic crisis, which is evident even now to anyone who cares to look. Stated simply. Germany is aging fast. Far more older people are retiring than there are young people to replace them. The cost of social welfare programs is already threatening the economy, and we haven’t yet even begun to see the disastrous effects of these increasing costs and decreasing output on the German government, economy, and citizens.

Colin and I are preparing ourselves for Barbara’s departure tomorrow. She’s making a car trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee with Frances, Al, and their friend Marcy. For the last several days, Colin has been focused on hunting. Usually he pretty much ignores squirrels unless they’re almost in his face. Lately, he’s been going into alert pose when he spots one even 50 meters away, and then attempting to stalk and pounce them. Barbara thinks his instincts are telling him that it’s time to fatten up for the winter. I think he’s afraid I’ll forget to feed him while Barbara’s gone.

My new air rifle arrived yesterday. It’s a Gamo break-action spring-piston model, which means I’ll need to break it in with 100 to 500 shots before it’ll settle down and start shooting with the accuracy it’s capable of.

It’ll be interesting to find out how much noise it makes. Many people think of air rifles as silent or nearly so, but in reality they can be quite loud, some models as loud as a .22 rimfire. It’s illegal to fire an air gun inside city limits, but if it’s not too loud I may wait until no one is looking and nail a squirrel for Colin’s and my dinner.

Work proceeds on The Ultimate Family Prepping Guide. Right now, I’m focused on the Food chapter. Thanks to everyone who’s signed up for the discussion list. As I mentioned when I announce it here, there won’t be much (any) activity for a while. I’ll start posting chapters for download as soon as I’ve finished writing them.

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Wednesday, 1 October 2014

10:02 – I got a fair amount done on the book yesterday, including reformatting it using the O’Reilly/MAKE stylesheet. Not that I think O’Reilly/MAKE would be interested in publishing a prepping title, but their stylesheet has lots of useful features, such as pull-outs for Notes, Warnings, and Sidebars. And, if it does turn out that they’re interested in buying the print rights at some point, the manuscript will already be properly formatted for their production folks. If O’Reilly/MAKE doesn’t want it, I’ll just self-publish the paper version on Amazon CreateSpace.

Poor Don, our UPS guy. He doesn’t know it yet, but I ordered a few thousand rounds of ammunition, which UPS is supposed to deliver Friday. That order includes 1,200 rounds of 5.56mm and 600 rounds of .357, which aren’t light, but the real killer is the 1,000 rounds of 12-gauge shotgun shells. Of course, there’s all the 7.62mm, .44 Special, and probably a couple more I’ve forgotten. Oh, yeah, and the 100 rounds of .22LR, which is all they allow in a single order.

12:43 – This makes for some scary reading, particularly since I believe Mr. Warner is optimistic: Mass default looms as world sinks beneath a sea of debt

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Monday, 15 September 2014

07:41 – I need to pay the estimated taxes today. I really hate writing big checks to the government for money we’ll never see again.

Barbara and I made up a bunch of chemical bags yesterday for chemistry kits. Today, I’ll get started on building another batch of two or three dozen chemistry kits, of which we currently have only three in stock. As expected, kit sales have started to slow down. We have only five kits queued up to ship this morning, plus whatever orders come in today before the mail arrives.

The news reports about Anna Marie Smith, the girl who was found dead at Appalachian State University, aren’t providing much information about what actually happened. Reading between the lines, it sounds like after only a couple of weeks as a college freshman the girl was desperately unhappy. One unconfirmed report from an unidentified source says that she asphyxiated herself, although nothing was said about whether that was an accident or suicide. If true, that won’t be any consolation to her family, of course, but it will ease the concerns of other parents.

12:52 – I get frequent emails asking advice about what to include in emergency kits. Obviously, there are many different types of emergency kits, ranging from ones that weigh a few hundred grams and fit in a belt pouch to vehicle kits that may weigh 20 to 50 kilos or more, not counting water, to fixed-base emergency kits that may weigh several hundred kilos or more.

I concluded a long time ago that no one sells emergency kits worth having. The problem is that they are building these kits to a price point, and that price is absurdly low. No one is willing to pay what a real emergency kit would actually cost. One of those $79 car emergency kits is better than nothing, but not much better. What you’re really buying is false peace of mind. Unfortunately, if you ever really need the kit, that peace of mind will disappear fast. The contents are invariably shoddy, from the backpack that holds the kit to the individual items themselves. And the contents are almost invariably poorly thought-out. So, if you want a real emergency kit, the only option is to build it yourself.

I’ve been building car emergency kits for Barbara’s and my vehicles. I’m doing so modularly and iteratively, modularly because otherwise it’s too hard to keep track of what should be in there and what can be eliminated, and iteratively because I keep modifying and improving as I go along. Here’s what’s currently in the fire-making kits. This is the half-page label that’s on the outer bag.

Fire Making Kit

Zippo lighter: Not fueled. Fuel evaporates within a week or so after filling. Use Zippo fuel in this kit. In an emergency, gasoline, charcoal lighting fluid, Coleman fuel, VM&P naphtha, or a similar flammable liquid may be used. Slide lighter body out of shell, lift the end of the pad on the bottom of the lighter body, and add a teaspoon (5 mL) or so of fuel (sufficient to saturate cotton under pad). If you replace the flint, be careful when removing/replacing the screw that restrains the spring-loaded flint follower. Package also contains: Spare flints, spare wick, and four 15 mL bottles of Zippo fuel.

Magnesium fire starter: Use a knife or the included tool to shave off a small pile of thin magnesium shavings (the light metal that makes up the body of the starter). Strike the tool or knife blade against the flint striker on the edge of the tool, directing the sparks into the pile of magnesium shavings. Caution: magnesium burns extremely hot and with a brilliant white flame.

Stove, Coghlan folding: nominally uses canned fuel, but works fine with twigs, paper/cardboard, and/or sawdust/paraffin fire starters.

Fire-starting bricks (nine 8 oz.): Compressed sawdust/paraffin. Use small chunks as tinder or kindling. If no other fuel is available, may be used as main stove fuel for heating or cooking. One ounce will boil a quart/liter of water in Coglan stove.

Tinder: Vaseline-soaked cotton balls in film cans. These ignite easily and one burns long enough to ignite a pile of kindling of dry, pencil-size sticks.

All of these items are available locally and from Amazon.com and other on-line vendors. The total cost is $40 per kit, give or take. I always have at least two or three lighters in my possession, but for Barbara’s kit I’ll also toss in a three-pack of fueled Ronson Comet refillable butane lighters. The Comets are not particularly reliable, but I’ve determined experimentally that they retain their butane charge for at least months even in a hot vehicle.

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Friday, 12 September 2014

08:02 – Next week’s vote on Scotland’s independence from the rest of the UK (rUK) has a lot of people running scared. There’s a great deal at stake, not least the stability of Europe as a whole. If Scots vote in favor of splitting from the UK, it may well be the first in a row of toppling dominoes. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article is worth reading: Only Germany is holding together as separatists threaten to rip Europe apart

My guess is that Scots will vote to remain a part of the UK, but it’s likely to be close. Put simply, Scots would be crazy to vote for independence. Scotland is poor. The rUK subsidizes Scotland to the tune of several thousand pounds per year for every Scottish man, woman, and child. With independence, that subsidy disappears and the Scots’ standard of living immediately plummets. The only real asset Scotland has is the North Sea oil and gas fields, whose output peaked 15 years ago and is rapidly declining. It’s unlikely that the EU will accept Scotland as a member, nor will it be able to adopt the euro. All of the UK political parties have said that Scotland could not continue to use the UK pound, other than in the sense that Panama uses the US dollar. Scotland would end up alone and isolated, and the economic consequences would be disastrous. None of which guarantees that Scotland will not vote for independence.

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Thursday, 12 June 2014

08:39 – It’s a small victory for sanity, but the city government has finally decided to kill the West End trolley service downtown. The “trolley” is actually just a standard city bus duded up to look like an old-fashioned trolley. It’s been running since 1988, and has never had many riders. The vast majority of the time, it has no riders at all, and just drives around empty but for the driver. Every time someone gets on that bus, it costs city taxpayers $23. And it took the city council 25 years to realize that it was a waste of money.

I read an interesting article on CNN yesterday, America’s middle class: Poorer than you think

In terms of average net worth per adult, the United States comes in at $301,000, fourth behind Switzerland, Australia, and Norway. But in terms of median net worth, the US comes in 19th, at only $45,000. Neither of these numbers is particularly useful. The average is skewed by the fact that the US far and away leads the world in millionaires and billionaires. If you consider a group of 100 people, one of whom has a net worth of $100,000,000 and 99 of whom have a net worth of zero, the average net worth of that group is $1,000,000. The median is skewed by the fact that the poor in the US have essentially zero net worth. The bottom 40% hold less than 0.5% of total US net worth, the bottom 60% something under 5%, and the bottom 80% something like 10%, leaving about 90% of total US net worth to be shared among the top 20%. If you want numbers that provide a better picture of the US middle class, look at the net worth and income necessary to be in the top quintile.

10:16 – Most of the backorders are starting to clear out. UPS showed up yesterday with 200 beakers and 480 graduated cylinders that had been backordered for a couple months, and FedEx is supposed to deliver 300 5/10/15X folding pocket magnifiers today that have been backordered for 3 months or more. That’s a relief, because we were down to only 50 or so of the magnifiers in inventory, and just four of the cylinders. Now all I need to do is get all this stuff moved downstairs and checked into inventory.

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Thursday, 5 June 2014

08:07 – Public schools have been in the news here lately. With the Republicans firmly in control of state government, big changes to public education are in prospect.

Legislators are doing their best to do away with tenure for public school teachers. That suffered a setback recently when a liberal judge ruled that the state couldn’t take back something that had already been granted. I expect the state supreme court will reverse that decision. And North Carolina is withdrawing from Common Core, which the state just began implementing recently. A review panel has been set up, tasked with adopting new state curriculum standards, with the provision that Common Core is not acceptable even if the panel determines that it is the best available alternative. And legislators have carefully crafted a new law to get around US Supreme Court decisions on restricting religion in public schools.

The real problem is that the politicians have set their sights far too low. The fundamental problem is public schools, period. The North Carolina constitution requires the state to provide an elementary through high school education to all children. But the constitution doesn’t specify how that is to be done.

The solution is to establish an educational voucher system. A real one, one that is available to all students’ families rather than just a tiny percentage. And one that is funded directly by the pool of money allocated to public education. Those vouchers should be for the amount the state currently spends per student, and the amount of any voucher redeemed at a private school should immediately be deducted from the budget allocated to the public schools in that student’s district.

It’s also important that the state implement absolutely no requirements or standards for private schools, including any restrictions or requirements concerningn secular versus religious, teacher certifications, and so on. It should be entirely up to the private schools themselves to set their own policies and to the parents and students to decide what constitutes an appropriate education.

The immediate result of such a true school choice program would be that public schools would have to compete efficiently and effectively in an educational free market if they want to survive at all. Most would not, and that’s all to the good. Would some students receive very poor educations? Of course they would, but almost certainly fewer than currently receive very poor educations in our existing public schools.

15:05 – I’ve been making up solutions and filling bottles all day, hundreds of bottles. And I just got to the next item on my to-do list, which is methyl red solution. Methyl red, AKA 2-(N,N-Dimethyl-4-aminophenyl)azobenzenecarboxylic acid, is extraordinarily insoluble in water. So much so that the solution we use, 0.02% w/v, exceeds the solubility of methyl red. That’s 0.2 g/L. If I simply add 0.2 g of methyl red to a liter of water, about 90% of it (at a guess) remains undissolved.

Fortunately, there’s a way around this. The sodium salt of methyl red is considerably more soluble than the free acid. Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking about that when I ordered what amounts to a lifetime supply of the free acid. So I need to convert the free acid to the sodium salt. That’s easy enough to do: simply dissolve the methyl red free acid in a (very) dilute solution of sodium hydroxide to form a solution of sodium methylredate. (I lay claim to creating that anion name; Google finds zero instances of it.)

Just how dilute? Well, the stoichiometry says that one mole of sodium hydroxide reacts with one mole of methyl red. The molecular mass of the free acid is 269.30 g/mol, while that of sodium hydroxide is 39.9971 g/mol. But making up a liter of 0.02% methyl red requires only 0.2 g, or 0.00074+ mole. Accordingly, for a 1:1 correspondence, I need about 29.7 milligrams of sodium hydroxide. The standard 6 M sodium hydroxide solution that we supply with many of our kits contains 240 mg/mL, so I’d need to add about an eighth of a milliliter of that solution per liter. The plastic pipettes we buy 10,000 at a time deliver about 33 drops/mL, so call it four drops.

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Wednesday, 19 March 2014

08:14 – Mr. Obama has done a lot of very stupid things, but ceding control of the Internet to “international stakeholders” has to rank among the stupidest. Control of the Internet–more specifically the root nameservers and IP address assignments–is a key US asset, and one that the US should refuse to relinquish under any circumstances. It’s bad enough that the US government controls the Internet through ICANN. Turning over that control to an international body is simply disastrous. Jon Postel must be spinning in his grave.

When I registered this domain name more than 19 years ago, there was little bureaucracy and no charge for a domain name. I had to register an alias, which was initially RBT1 and changed during the ICANN changeover to RT121. As RBT1, I set up two nameservers for my domain, filled in a short form, sent it off, and later that day received confirmation that my domain name was registered and would propagate to the root nameservers over the next day or so. That was it. Simple, fast, and free.

While I was at it, I also reserved a C-block of IP addresses for ttgnet.com. That was a matter of filling out another short form, including an explanation of why I needed the C-block. The guy upstream of us had to look at the application and decide if the request was reasonable. He decided it was, and a day or two later I had my C-block. Again, it was simple, fast, and free.

Then the US government decided to get more involved. ICANN was the result, and things started going downhill from there. I could live with IANA, but ICANN was a step way over the line. I knew then that we’d eventually regret that day, and there have been warning signs over the years. First, we started having to pay for domain names. Then ICANN took my C-block away from me. Now it appears that we’ll have the UN controlling the Internet, and doing so against our interests.

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Sunday, 29 December 2013

09:15 – Cool, rainy days yesterday and today. Our official month-to-date rain is about 5 inches (12.5 cm), but according to our own rain gauge we’re up over 7 inches.

Interesting article in the morning paper: The world braces for retirement crisis

The mainstream media is belatedly realizing just how bad things are. Even now, many people can’t afford to retire at 65, or even 70. As the years pass, this is going to get worse, much worse. With more and more older people expecting fewer and fewer younger people to support them, something has to give. Particularly since more and more of those younger people have crap jobs or no jobs, a phenomenon that is exacerbated by many of those older people hanging onto their jobs for dear life.

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Saturday, 21 December 2013

08:16 – With Christmas so near, kit orders have tapered off a lot. We shipped only three kits yesterday and have only one outstanding order so far today. Orders should pick up again the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, presumably because people have Christmas money to spend. Last December we did about 25% of the month’s business in that period. Meanwhile, we have a bit of a breather.

10:11 – It’s been a bad week for bigots. On Thursday, gay marriage became legal in New Mexico, and on Friday it became legal in Utah. Gay marriage is now legal in a third of the states. I suspect it’ll be legal in all states by the end of 2014. Let’s hope so, anyway.

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Thursday, 14 November 2013

07:50 – I just read a disgusting article in the morning paper. A local woman was just sentenced for starving her little dog to death. She left it in a crate, with a bag of dog food inches away, and just didn’t bother to feed it. The autopsy said the dog had literally starved to death, ultimately digesting its own bone marrow. What’s particularly horrifying is that the woman obviously had been giving the dog water because otherwise it would have died much sooner. She just didn’t bother to feed it. Although such animal abuse has been a felony in North Carolina since 2010, the judge sentenced her to community service and suspended all but 30 days of the jail sentence for the felony. He even let her serve just nine days in jail now, with the other 21 days to be served at her convenience over the coming months. If I’d been the judge, I’d probably have sentenced her to 30 days in jail to be served consecutively. Oh, yeah. She could have all the water she wanted, but no food for 30 days.

10:14 – Can Obamacare survive an enraged middle class?

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