{"id":1097,"date":"2013-02-28T09:56:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T13:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2013-02-28T15:02:09","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T19:02:09","slug":"thursday-28-february-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/2013\/02\/28\/thursday-28-february-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday, 28 February 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

08:56 –<\/span> Colin let me sleep in this morning. I awoke at 0755 and found Colin sprawled full-length on his back on Barbara’s side of the bed, still fast asleep.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the new science kits I’m seriously considering is a consolidated middle school science kit. There are three “standard” middle-school science courses: life science (introductory biology; usually grade 6 or 7), earth science (or earth & space science; usually grade 7 or 8), and physical science (introductory chemistry and physics; usually grade 8 or 9). Many homeschool parents try to cover all three of these courses in two years, grades 7 and 8, leaving grade 9 available for a first high school level science course. Traditionally that’s been first-year high school biology, with first-year high school chemistry in grade 10, but increasingly homeschoolers (and many public schools) are swapping those, teaching first-year chemistry in grade 9 and first-year biology in grade 10. That’s because modern biology courses are increasingly taught bottom-up–starting with the chemistry of life, life processes, cellular chemistry, and so on–rather than the old top-down approach of starting with organisms and working down toward cell-level issues.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

We’re already planning to introduce separate kits for each of those three courses, starting with life science, but I realized that there are likely to be enough materials in common in those three kits that it might make sense to also offer a consolidated kit that would include the equipment and chemicals to do all three courses. It’d be a relatively expensive kit, but not as expensive as the three separate kits. If we do decide to offer a consolidated kit, it’d be a 2014 or even 2015 product, but it makes sense to think about it now because it would effect how we design the three separate kits.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

And, on that note, I think I’ll make up a liter of universal indicator solution today, because that’s one of the chemicals that would probably be in the kit and I haven’t used it in probably 40 years. The stuff is ridiculously expensive to buy<\/a>, but considerably less so to make.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

11:49 –<\/span> I thought this was interesting. Apparently, acetaminophen is even more toxic to snakes than it is to people<\/a>. That’s pretty damned toxic, considering that something like 50,000 Americans a year are treated in emergency rooms for acetaminophen poisoning and about 500 of them die.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

14:02 –<\/span> I have finally had enough of being spammed by Shapeways. I was surprised that they spam, because they’re supposed to be a community effort in the MAKER tradition. But they’ve been spamming me for two or three years now. I have clicked on the unsubscribe link many, many times. I have sent them email. But the spams just keep on coming. So finally I went to their customer service page and left the following.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do I have to do to get you to stop spamming me? I bought one item from you (a Dremelfuge centrifuge head) two or three years ago, and you have been spamming me ever since. I never “joined” your community, nor did I ever give you permission to email me.<\/p>\n

So, please take me off your mailing list immediately. I should tell you that I’m an O’Reilly\/MAKE author, and if you keep spamming me I’m going to do everything I can to make sure my readers are aware that I consider your company’s business practices unacceptable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

08:56 – Colin let me sleep in this morning. I awoke at 0755 and found Colin sprawled full-length on his back on Barbara’s side of the bed, still fast asleep.\n<\/p>\n

One of the new science kits I’m seriously considering is a consolidated middle school science kit. There are three “standard” middle-school science courses: life science (introductory biology; usually grade 6 or 7), earth science (or earth & space science; usually grade 7 or 8),<\/p>\n

 » Read more about: Thursday, 28 February 2013  »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-kits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}