Category: politics

08:37 – The results of the Merkel-Sarkozy summit are in, and they’re exactly what I predicted. Nothing whatsoever. Merkel and Sarkozy issued a statement expressing their joint determination to do whatever it takes to defend the Euro, as long as it doesn’t involve them spending any money. No Eurobonds, no expansion of the pathetically small bailout fund, nothing. Business as usual, in other words.

Oh, come to think of it, they did propose that all 17 Eurozone nations be required to amend their constitutions to include a balanced budget amendment and cede their national sovereignty to Germany, which would in turn agree to make the trains run on time. And, in a sop to hard-pressed European banks, all of which are bankrupt by any normal definition of that word, they also proposed a Tobin tax on financial transactions, which would merely drive economic activity out of the Eurozone. Fortunately, actually implementing anything they proposed will take years, by which time the Euro will be only a distant memory. In effect, Angie and Nick sat around discussing which hors d’oeuvres to serve at their next dinner party while their house burned down around them.

I spend some time yesterday looking into prepared slides to include in the kit for the biology book. There are two alternative, neither of them good. First, I can buy prepared slides sourced from China or India. Some of these are actually quite good, and they can be priced at only a couple bucks each on average. The problem is figuring out exactly what they are. I can’t buy slides from the companies in China and India that actually make the slides. I have to buy from US distributors, who have no clue what the slides actually are. If I’m lucky, they’ll specify the genus and species of the specimen or the type of section. If I’m very lucky, they’ll specify the genus and species of the specimen and the type of section. If I’m extremely lucky, they’ll specify both of those and the type of staining.

And it’s nearly impossible to ensure that a sample slide I look at will be representative of the actual slide when I order it in bulk. For example, yesterday I asked a distributor rep if I ordered a slide set from them if it would have the exact same slides that I could order from them individually in bulk. She said yes, but then added, “But sometimes they’re dyed different colors.” Arrrghhh.

The alternative would be to order slides from the one US company that still produces them. Those slides are absolutely gorgeous. I’ve seen examples. And, rather than the two or three word description common with Chinese and Indian prepared slides, their descriptions often run a paragraph, giving details about the exact species, histology and sectioning method used, and staining protocol. The problem is, those slides sell for $6 or $7 to $25 each. A set of 25 slides could easily run $250 or $300. That’s far, far outside the budget of most home schoolers, who see apparently similar sets advertised for $50 or $60.

Unless I can find a reliable source of inexpensive prepared slides, I suspect that what I’m going to end up doing is ordering inexpensive prepared slides in bulk and then checking each individual slide before adding it to a set. For example, if I’m putting together 100 sets of 25 slides, one of which is Amoeba proteus, I’ll order 100 Amoeba proteus slides and run each of them through my microscope to verify that it’s usable. I can probably verify 100 slides per hour, which means that 100 sets of 25 slides will require 25 hours of my time just to verify the slides.

Actually, it may not be that bad. I used the A. proteus example because I once saw a Chinese prepared slide that was allegedly A. proteus but had no amoeba under the coverslip. For most specimens, that won’t be a problem. I can simply view one slide and if it’s acceptable the others will also be acceptable. But for “feature” slides, such as a slide showing specifically a particular stage of meiosis, I’d need to check each slide.

08:38 – As it turned out, all the discussion about security of digital camera images was moot. When Barbara got home yesterday, she told me that she’d removed our memory card from our DSLR and was using a memory card that belongs to her law firm.

The first 28 chemical blocks are complete, with the exception of 0.1 M IKI (iodine/potassium iodide) solution, which I’m in the process of making up. I actually have iodine and potassium iodide in inventory, so I could make up the solution directly from the two chemicals. But I’m preserving my stock of iodine crystals by working from purchased Lugol’s iodine, which is an aqueous solution of 2.2% iodine and 4% potassium iodide. To get a solution that’s 0.1 M with respect to both iodine and potassium iodide, I have to add a small amount of iodine to the Lugol’s solution and then dilute it. The problem is, it takes the iodine forever to go into solution. So I have a volumetric flask partially full of Lugol’s iodine solution to which I’ve added some iodine crystals. Every time I think about it, I give the flask a swirl. After several days, the iodine will eventually go into solution.

This is all because about three years ago the DEA reclassified iodine as a List I chemical, supposedly to combat illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. All they’ve really done is make things more difficult for people who need iodine for legal purposes. It used to be you could order iodine from any lab supplies vendor. For that matter, you could walk into the outfitter store at the mall and buy a bottle of iodine crystals. Now, anyone who wants to sell iodine has to jump through legal hoops to do so. There are all kinds of requirements, including keeping detailed paperwork on sales. And, if it turns out that the iodine you sell has been diverted to illegal use, you can be held responsible. Finally, the necessary license to sell iodine costs something like $2,500 per year, which means that most companies that used to sell iodine now find it uneconomic to do so.

The “trigger level” for iodine sales is now one bottle containing no more than one fluid ounce of a solution that contains no more than 2.2% iodine. If you go into Walgreens, you’ll find they still sell bottles of iodine solution of that size and concentration, which they can sell without restriction, as long as they sell only one per customer per transaction. But when I order one liter of 2.2% Lugol’s solution from one of my vendors, they have to record the transaction details and provide them to the federal government. In theory, the feds could show up at my door and ask me to provide details about the disposition of that liter of Lugol’s solution. In practice, that’s very unlikely to happen, but even so.

The Euro drama continues, with France increasingly under the gun. Right now, France is desperately worried that it will lose its AAA bond rating. As well it should. If US bonds are no longer rated AAA, no other major country’s bonds should be rated AAA. Rating the bonds of France, the UK, and Germany AAA while the US rating is lower is simply ridiculous. The US is much, much less likely to default on its bonds than any of those other countries, whose economies are in much worse shape than ours. The markets themselves have shown how ridiculous S&P’s rating reduction for US debt is. Since S&P reduced the US bond rating, risk-averse investors have greatly increased their purchases of–you guessed it–US bonds. Yields on US bonds have continued to fall, indicating that the markets think US debt is the safest there is. The demand for dollars is so high that US banks literally don’t want any more dollars from foreigners, because the banks have to pay to insure those deposits. Large US banks have started charging foreigners who want to make deposits. That’s right. Negative interest.

09:48 – I see that Spanish and Italian bond yields are down slightly because the ECB has begun buying them. That won’t last long, either the ECB buying these junk bonds or the lower yields on Spanish and Italian debt. At a very high price, the ECB has bought a few weeks at best, and more likely a few days. And the first shoe has dropped. A national political leader, the former prime minister of Finland and the current leader of the opposition party, has suggested a break-up, with the northern FANG nations splitting off from the bankrupt southern tier, a proposal that is almost certain to gain the support of Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Luxembourg.

Work on building more chemistry kits continues. The first batch of chemical blocks is mostly complete, and that’s the part that requires most of the work.