Gordon Moore on explosives, and semiconductors

There is a $100/laptop thing going on

My kids both carry about 40 lbs of books to school in their backpacks. The teachers rarely if ever refer to them, but require them to be brought in, just in case.

A 'dynabook'

Why not? All the technology is there, and $100 less than the cost of most college textbooks.

The kids might have a "stash" there ;-)

School bureaucracies have gone nuts in recent years. Here, last week, they decided a 17 year old couldn't carry his diabetes test kit with him, since it had SHARP lancets.

A lawyer changed their minds real fast ;-)

I think it's time we tarred and feathered every school board member and took our schools back to parental control.

...Jim Thompson

This business of requiring *children* to lug many pounds of weight on their growing frame (and thereby deforming them for life) is inexcusable bullshit, and the schools should be sued for billions of dollars to get their attention, and then stop. When i grew up and had a fair number of books for school, there were

I don't think teachers can strike in Arizona. At least I can't recall of any since the early '70's.

Back then I "scabbed" and taught 8th grade math.

The little punks tried to give me a hard time, first asking, "Are you a teacher or JUST a parent?"

But I got control pretty fast... took a troublemaker out in the hallway, told him to look around. "Do you see anyone? Next time you cause trouble I'm going to bring you out here and kick the crap out of you, and no one will ever know."

After that, nary a problem ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I read in sci.electronics.design that Robert Baer wrote (in ) about 'Gordon Moore on explosives, and semiconductors', on Mon, 10 Oct 2005:

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Books claimed that locking them up for most of the day and all night infringed their basic librian rights. BOOKS MUST BE FREE!

growing frame (and thereby deforming them for life)

dollars to get their attention, and then stop.

books from that class, and remove the one or two for

two or three books would be taken home.

Fear of someone placing a bomb in there, that's what. They've dissapeared from airports, too, probably for the same reason.

Start by taking control back from the teachers and give it to the school board (at least they're voted into office). One local board is trying (teachers are now on strike for 5.8% per year for three years + reductions in insurance co- pay).

On Sun, 2 Oct 2005 15:03:14 -0700, Max Hauser wrote in Msg.

Wait -- are they not any more? Explosives are (possibly) different matter, but all this is harmelss stuff.

Don't forget potassium + water, and the arsenic mirror experiment (which blows up most of the time).

I didn't, but the main thrill wasn't its power but the fact that one had made actual nitroglycerine. Regular black poder or chlorate-enhanced variants thereof had higher entertainment value. Back then (20 years ago) I could buy most the necessary ingredients in any pharmacy (and my father would get the others). I don't know if that's true any mor.

robert

On Mon, 3 Oct 2005 13:34:42 -0700, Joel Kolstad wrote in Msg.

Absolutely.

Maybe. But there are hardly any websites that can compete with a good textbook, quality-wise. The Internet (as this newsgroup) is great as a medium for the exchange of ideas among people who already have a grasp of the subject. This may of course change in the future.

robert

My own chemical adventures included making rockets, smoke generators and moonshine.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Robert Latest wrote (in ) about 'Gordon Moore on explosives, and semiconductors', on Mon, 10 Oct 2005:

... and a good few who don't.

Have you ever read "Lucifer's Hammer", by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle? It's a huge novel about a dinosaur-killer grade meteor hitting the Earth, but since it's contemporary, they had weeks of advance warning, for whatever that was worth. One of the main characters, in preparing for the disaster, took all of the books off his shelves, triple-bagged them, and tossed them into his septic tank.

Another side note was a nuclear power plant, that just happened to have very tall berms all of the way around, because the greenies had convinced the authorities to "hide" the nuke plant. It survived the tsunami and flooding, and of course, was instrumental in the recovery of civilization. :-) A pretty good read, actually.

Cheers! Rich

This sounds just a little bit hysterical. No kid is going to carry around stuff that's so heavy that it will actually deform them. (they'll just say, "F*ck You!") If you're talking about some kind of preschool that they shuffle the SPMs off to before their bones are fully formed, that's the fault of the mindless breeders.

The politically paranoid probably banned them because they're afraid all of the kids will store their bombs there, or deal drugs out of them. ;-P

Cheers! Rich

...

Well, that would have been a good idea some years ago, but I'm afraid that they've been dumbing down the schools so bad, for so long, that today's "parents" are even stupider than their sprog. I was extremely lucky in that respect - my Mom didn't have labor pains (the family's favorite joke was that I was almost born in a toilet - my Mom was taking a leak when her water broke), so I didn't get the "normal" brain damage from being forcibly expelled through a reluctant canal - I just slipped right out, or so they tell me. But I was Mom's third, so whe was probably physically pretty well-prepared for it. Then, I think the magickal part is that she would set me on her lap and read to me, following along the words with her finger. By the time I was 7, I was reading the encyclopedia ("Richard's Topical Encyclopedia") recreationally. I also read my 5-years-older-than-I-am brother's schoolbooks, which gave me kind of a "leg up". There was also some great TeeVee back in those days, like when Walt Disney and Bell Labs actually televised edjamacational stuff, but did it so well that you didn't realize you were being edjamacated. :-)

But yes, useless administrators (and union bosses, and money sinks in general, and the politicos that let it happen) should be tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail!

Thanks! Rich

I'll never forget the time in about 9th grade chem class, where they were teaching us how to identify a bottle of a gas with a burning wood splint. Nitrogen puts it out, oxygen makes it flare up and burn white- hot, and hydrogen quietly burns with an almost invisible pale blue flame (although I've heard that a hydrogen flame in air makes UV). We made the H2 and O2 by electrolysis, which was way cool, and lessee - heated up some potassium permanganate with manganese dioxide catalyst, and made oxygen, and made hydrogen with zinc and HCl solution. Anyway, one day, when we came into class, the teacher had one of those collection bottles, and got one of the kids to volunteer to come up to the front of the class and put the burning splint to the mouth of the bottle, just as he took off its lid.

It had hydrogen and oxygen in it. BOOM! The poor gal almost shat. The windows rattled, and there were 29 secondary "plop"s when all of the kids' butts landed back in their chairs. I swear, I saw a flame four feet long, albeit almost instantaneously. I can't imagine "them" letting anything like that happen again - in fact, even at the time, I thought it was pretty stupid to make an explosion like that in a glass bottle that you're holding in your hand. =:-O

Oh, yeah, that's the same class where I flashed some CS2. That was very weird - for a few seconds, the whole world was blue flame, and then, of course, I found myself breathing SO2.

Ah, those were the good old days!

Thanks, Rich

Gee, Jim. Do you really have to threaten a 13 year old make you feel like a man? :(

They can't in NY either, but they do. Teachers have an amazingly powerfull union.

Good! We need more of it.

I guess he was asking you if he could get away with s*it, like he did with teachers. ...and the answer was that you weren't a wimpy teacher. ;-)

i second.

Bones are only fully formed around the age of 30. However, the real damage is done to those who are still growing, and that can be as late as 20.