As I browsed a bit through the comments, I see mostly replies from either people who have no experience of home schooling or others who are parents home schooling their kids. However, I would like to add my own experience as a child who has experienced almost all types of popular educational methods. I've been to public schools, private schools, correspondence schools, and even college as a replacement for high school. I was also home schooled for a number of years. So here's my story of each method:
From pre-school to first grade, I was in two different private schools. Now, of course, I can't judge much of the academics here since I was so young, but I can judge stress levels. This whole time era was stressful for me due to the quite strict nature of the second private school I attended. If my parents didn't move me out of there, I'm not sure how long I would have lasted.
From first grade to fourth, I was in three different public schools. I loved first and second grade. I learned, played, and just enjoyed everything about it. But, by third grade, the school system decided to try a whole new system of learning. I don't remember the full details, but it involved a complete rework of everything I was used to already. I balked at this change and my parents eventually forced the school to put me in a class that still used the old method. By fourth grade, we had moved so I had to attend a different school. I just couldn't fit with their educational method, and my parents were still frustrated from the last issue a year before. Thus then began a leap into home schooling.
For the rest of fourth grade, my parents bought a preset curriculum and associated books. This didn't end well as neither of my parents had college degrees and since this required quite a bit of hands on work from them, I got frustrated at them.
Starting fifth grade, my parents found, at the time, a totally new way to do home schooling. It was a correspondence school where the school sent everything required and vhs tapes of a licensed teacher in an actual classroom. It was like I was there but didn't have to deal with the nonsense of actually being there. Plus, I got to go as fast or slow over the material as I wanted. This gave me so much freedom that I really enjoyed learning and just kept going.
By the time high school was approaching, the correspondence school just wasn't cutting it enough for me. I wanted more without the wastes of time that it required. And, since this was now the dawn of online versions of everything, my parents signed me up for an online school. But for me, this still seemed pedantic and generally not very engaging.
After frustrating my parents for so long at this point, they worked with the local community college and got me enrolled, full time, at 15 years old. This basically replaced my high school years, and interestingly enough this didn't cause much of an issue of not having any prerequisite knowledge from high school. It goes to show you how much college repeats the same info in high school, especially for the lower level classes. I also absolutely loved this time as I was able to dive deep into learning all that I wanted.
So, here's my opinion of each method:
Private and public schooling can be stressful both from the system itself and from other classmates. Even though I can't comment on bullying as I never was, the stress from the system caused me issues. And not having the freedom to learn the way I wanted would have hindered me. Socializing in this format didn't happen a whole lot for me. I always kept one or two close friends and that was it.
Standard home schooling didn't work for us. But, I can see it working well with parents with better education. Of course, I do think there needs to be a good relationship between the parents and the child or none of this will work well.
However, the correspondence school is an awesome option for parents who either don't have a great education or aren't up to the challe
Being a former USPS employee, this just seems about right. The USPS, at least at the local post office level, has a mismatch of crazy tight security or almost nothing at all. I mean everything is watched (or believed to be watched) at the post office, but then once your mail leaves the office, the carrier can do practically anything he or she wants to do with it. Of course there's laws against this, but still, there's no security, nothing, once the truck leaves the office. No GPS, no cameras, nothing. And if you're a rural carrier, no one inspects your vehicle to make sure you cleared all mail from it. So this type mismatched security probably follows upward to the higher offices.
Bit of a disclaimer: I live in Kentucky and have run multiple small businesses here so I know a thing or two about the State Gov't.
Generally, the state doesn't do much in making sure things run as the law says it should (well, except for taxes, they're quite up on that). But, they most definitely do get involved when complaints are made. This is a pretty big profile thing and I bet they'll keep an eye on it. I also can see quite a number of disbelievers applying for job positions just to get rejected to then make a complaint. This might really bite them in the butt in the end, which I personally would like to see. This is bordering on religious support from the gov't.
Yup, yup, had to do plenty of that during my tenure. Though, seriously, there's plenty of crazy packages that get sent through USPS directly that are kinda tough on the poor carrier. I remember somebody shipped a concrete statue (yes, we're talking about a 70lb statue here which is the upper weight limit for them), and I had to carry the thing up a flight of steps in the middle of winter with ice on the ground. I was really kinda surprised I made it without flying down the steps with a concrete statue landing on my head. Actually, I was kinda glad I had the statue and not carrier that usually ran that route. I don't think she could have done it.
Ok, for a bit of reference, I was a rural mail carrier for awhile. And from being a carrier and talking with fellow carriers after being one I can tell you people don't really send much first class mail anymore. The USPS is now basically converting into the last mile run carrier of packages, both originating from their system and both Fedex and UPS's systems. The local post office I've worked at has at times not been able to handle the sheer volume increase of packages. Now, if people want to ship packages, they can already print their own postage off their computers so this device does nothing for that (and there's plenty of bulk label creation systems for larger shippers which is what I do now). The other fairly large user of the USPS is advertisers using bulk mail rates and they won't use a device like this since they already have permits. So I see little use for this.
Also, having worn glasses for so long I've gotten used to the built in "objects flying at my eye" protection they offer. My glasses have caught more than a few flying objects and/or children's fingers.
That is so incredibly true with myself as well. I can't count the number of times I would have to go to the hospital to remove something from my eyes. (And the time I did wear proper eye protection, I ended up getting concrete dust in an eye when removing the safety goggles as the dust was sitting on the goggles. I had to get the stuff scraped out, not fun at all.)
Plus, I absolutely love having transition lenses. Nothing beats having automatic sunglasses while outside. Then, of course, they'd probably have to knock me out to perform the surgery, as I have a real hard time letting anything near my eyes. With that concrete dust, I needed three nurses to hold my eye open. . .
I agree as I actually seen an almost pretty bad accident this 4th with amateur fireworks. Since it's legal to shoot off amateur mortars in this state, at least half the households here were shooting them off this year. The neighbor behind us had something go wrong and the mortar went a partially curved trajectory and ended up hitting a power line which caused it to redirect straight for where my other neighbor was shooting his fireworks off. Of course it exploded when it hit the ground and if he was there at that time, it would have been pretty bad.
I do have to add there's a few more attack venues than just at the receiving end of a check payment. There is literally no security at your mailbox, and practically nothing in the mail trucks that pick up your checks. Anyone can take the check right out of the box, and everyone knows something's in there with the little flag being up. And then there's no cameras or security in the mail trucks themselves. Besides federal law, there's nothing stopping a carrier from pocketing a check, which I think is pretty unfortunate. Your best bet if paying by check is to deposit the envelopes directly at the Post Office. There's plenty of security inside the office and processing centers that at least there's a much less chance of anything happening once inside the system.
The USPS has been swapping in LLVs for owner owned vehicles, but usually that only goes for routes that are under 25 miles or so and have a large number of boxes. My main route was one of these, consisting close to 25 miles with 750 boxes. What seems to be happening is what was considered 'rural' back 15 years ago isn't really rural anymore but is still being delivered by rural carriers. So in higher density areas, they're turning what was traditionally a real rural route into a sort of city/rural route with LLVs.
I do have to say there is generally a fight with the carriers to get them to go over to LLVs. Most like to use their own vehicles because they're more comfortable, ie air conditioning and just better interiors. Plus, them dang LLVs are horrible in the snow with rear wheel drive and non-equal axle spacing (front tires are closer together than back for easier maneuverability around cars in good weather) vs a true 4 wheel drive jeep. It's quite fun trying to stick mail in a box while you slide by it.
Well, having anything that provides faster reading would really improve efficiency. These same scanners are used by the clerks when all trackable items arrive at the PO. So speeding both the clerks and the carriers jobs would really help.
I can't give much perspective from the city carrier side, but as a former rural carrier, I didn't see much push to violate safety protocols from management. Actually, my manager was particularly up on new safety info coming from higher up and made sure we all knew about it once a week. However, I do have to say a few things on the incentives to break safety codes. All rural carriers are paid via route evaluations. So, if your route evaluates for 8.5 hours to complete, you will get paid for 8.5 hours no matter how fast or slow it takes you to complete it. So, the faster you complete, the 'more' you get paid per hour and the chance to help other carriers complete routes if there's problems. I had a time where I finished my route early and worked on a second route while still being under the evaluated time for the first route. So I was getting paid twice, evaluated time for the first route, hourly for the second. That really brings an incentive to get your route done as fast as possible despite safety rules or accuracy.
Actually, the rural runs aren't that particularly expensive to the USPS. I was once a rural carrier, and most rural routes actually require the driver to use his/her own vehicle (with a paid stipend on vehicle use). This is actually a cheaper arrangement for the USPS than sending LLVs around. Plus, with the rural routes, you don't get that much of a drop in box count. They just add more miles to your route. The PO I worked for had a rural route that had over 100 miles on it.
Nah, 'bulk' mail is never sent first class. They got a rate class of their own, usually marked as 'standard'. Having a bit of inside knowledge of the post office as a former carrier, I can definitely say they make a pretty penny on all that bulk mail. This is why they won't do anything that would disrupt that revenue stream especially with the massive drop in first class (which was mostly comprised of business correspondence, ie bills and checks going back and forth).
As a former rural carrier, I can tell you those blasted scanners the USPS gives the carriers are a total pain. They can't scan barcodes in full sunlight, which is absolutely crazy considering we're either outside or in a truck that has full windows. So next time watch your poor mail carrier try to scan your next package, especially if there isn't a cloud in the sky. You'll see us try to hide the thing in the shade, move the scanner around, and generally get aggravated at it. Something like NFC would be a godsend if its implemented correctly. Of course, however, how much of a chance is it that the USPS would actually implement it correctly?
There's actually a bit more to this. As a really avid home grower (albeit, getting closer and closer to actually selling some stuff), I've seen another type of patent that growers need to watch for, besides just the GMO stuff. It's called plant variety protection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Now PVP IP is definitely less restrictive than general patents, but it is still another hurdle that growers need to look out for. Also, as described in that wikipedia article, there are true plant patents for asexually produced varieties. I've seen this specifically when buying raspberries. They had clear warnings on them that the variety was patented and no reproduction of the plants were allowed, though exactly how that is suppose to be accomplished I have no idea since raspberries spread and reproduce greatly on their own. And, btw, these patented plants can all be readily purchased through home grower catalogs, and there's a lot more of these patents and PVP than you would think. You also don't need to sign any licensing paper. The patented varieties are basically EULA licensed for home grower/non propagator use only.
And also to clear up a bit of a gray issue, you definitely can replant seed from F1 hybrids. They will grow and not have any crazy seed termination stuff that Monsanto was playing with. The only thing is you won't really get the vigor and some of the other properties of the F1 even if you make sure there is no cross pollination between varieties. And if you play with it enough, you might even be able to gleam a new heirloom variety from the F1 after stabilizing the genetics via standard plant breeding tactics.
As a former carrier, I can tell you that carrier was acting as legally required. They're not allowed to throw away mail at all, even at the request of the resident. Doing so will get you fired and/or in handcuffs very quickly. A carrier can only set aside undeliverable bulk mail that a clerk will later throw out. And only standard rate mail without a "Or Current Resident" endorsement going to a resident who doesn't live at the address (or all bulk mail going to a vacant address that doesn't have 'forwarding service requested' endorsement) can be given to the clerks as undeliverable. The rest is either forwarded, sent back as unable to forwarded, or delivered.
Btw, some post offices will let you sign up for a list to stop delivering 'boxholders'. Those are the things that either weekly newspaper or flyer type things that have coupons and such.
As a former rural carrier, I can say that the 'bulk business mail' (not allowed to say junk mail when you work for the USPS) does make up a good portion of the volume. However, the volume of bulk mail is barely staying stable. A steep rise in cost may cause it to plummet like first class. What is really keeping the doors open at the USPS, especially after talking with some of my friends at the local post office is the insane increase of packages. Amazon has shifted a tremendous amount of package volume to the post office, either directly, or via UPS SmartPost type things. Package volumes at my former post office are so high right now that they've had to send substitute carriers just to help deliver packages that the normal carrier can't fit in their vehicle. I've never seen that before when I worked there.
I agree with explaining the acronyms, but, sadly, the 'editors' can't even get spelling and grammar correct in many of the summaries, let alone the finer nuances of writing what an acronym means.
I've read the article and have researched this before for my own farm. There are products already on the market that seem to do what the article talks about so I'm not really sure that this is anything new. However, if they are using Azotobacter bacteria, I'm curios how they are making it symbiotic as it generally isn't.
Ahh yes, I can see that with trying to compete against native plants. However, the interesting part is, with tomatoes anyway, that the whole nightshade family has very little representation in the native weeds here in the state of Kentucky. I've only identified a few different species growing on my land and the only one that has any strength to really compete is horse nettle. I've rarely seen black nightshade, and it seems to barely compete. So, I'm thinking the whole nightshade family doesn't compete that well over the long run in this area. Now, for the brassica family (ie, mustard, broccoli, canola, etc), I've got plenty of native brassica weeds. I have seen some of my kale going wild and easily establish itself as a weed. This family is much more 'weedy' and can easily compete. And of course, you got 'wild carrot', ie Queen Anne's lace, and its poisonous cousin, Poison Hemlock. These two will readily establish themselves in wild fields, and I can easily see regular carrots doing the same if we ever let them go to seed. So I think alot of competition ability of our regular crops depends on family basis.
Heh, no, not always. Have you ever grown a large plot of tomatoes? During harvesting you always end up losing a few, the tomatoes subsequently rot, and the seeds go into the soil for the following year. They then sprout in the spring, but only the hardiest remain after the late frosts and generally crappy spring weather (for tomatoes that is). These tomatoes sprouted in a field that I planted a cover crop over in the fall/winter and didn't do a thing to the field till just recently. No watering, fertilizing, or care. I even cut down these tomatoes with my lawn mower to kill off the over wintered cover crop. So, I ended up with over a dozen super strong tomato plants that look healthier than anything I got growing at the moment.
Sadly, this does happen, but really for social security and other gov't benefits checks, it takes a whole corrupt post office to pull it off. When I worked for the post office as a rural carrier, social security checks came in via a different system, outside of your DPS mail. It wouldn't take much at all to tell if a single person in the chain was stealing them. But, if the supervisor was in on it, then all bets are off. It would have to go through the postal inspectors only to try to catch it.
That's pretty difficult, actually, at least if you dropped the dvd's at the post office. The back room of a post office is pretty well secured to protect such things, with cameras everywhere. I've worked at a small/medium sized post office and have toured a processing plant, and there is quite a bit of interesting things going on to prevent stealing of mail. I especially liked the closed in catwalks with one way mirrors for the postal inspectors that go all the way around the processing plant. Even at my post office, there was a separate entrance with its own key going to a secured room for a postal inspector to enter only. The joke of the whole thing is though that outside of the post office/processing plants, there's pretty much no security. Most of the rural carriers drive their own vehicles, and there's no inspections to make sure you cleared out all the mail in your car. And for the postal trucks, there's no cameras or gps to track where you're going, but they at least check the truck to make sure everything is out. So, how difficult is it to take mail while on route? Sadly, incredibly easy. And many carriers have went to prison for it because of doing even more incredibly stupid things, like stealing tracked packages.
Now, here is a possible reason why those dvds got there at different times. I was told that I needed to separate all netflix dvd's I picked up from the regular outgoing mail. The clerks then did something different with them compared to the regular outgoing mail, but I'm not sure what. I would happen to guess that they are sent through different channels. So, maybe some of your dvd's were separated, but not all. So some got there faster than others.
And, as a former rural carrier, I can tell you that arrangement is quite profitable for the post office. The rural carriers have to go their routes anyway, so the extra package load costs quite little. The only costs are some time for the clerks/management to sort the incoming packages in the morning, and the slightly higher evaluations for the routes (which translates to a small bit more money to the carriers).
The question is, who is in charge of the education in this country? Not so easy to counteract years and years of government mandated 'education' that is taught to a very large percentage of the populace. . .
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As I browsed a bit through the comments, I see mostly replies from either people who have no experience of home schooling or others who are parents home schooling their kids. However, I would like to add my own experience as a child who has experienced almost all types of popular educational methods. I've been to public schools, private schools, correspondence schools, and even college as a replacement for high school. I was also home schooled for a number of years. So here's my story of each method:
From pre-school to first grade, I was in two different private schools. Now, of course, I can't judge much of the academics here since I was so young, but I can judge stress levels. This whole time era was stressful for me due to the quite strict nature of the second private school I attended. If my parents didn't move me out of there, I'm not sure how long I would have lasted.
From first grade to fourth, I was in three different public schools. I loved first and second grade. I learned, played, and just enjoyed everything about it. But, by third grade, the school system decided to try a whole new system of learning. I don't remember the full details, but it involved a complete rework of everything I was used to already. I balked at this change and my parents eventually forced the school to put me in a class that still used the old method. By fourth grade, we had moved so I had to attend a different school. I just couldn't fit with their educational method, and my parents were still frustrated from the last issue a year before. Thus then began a leap into home schooling.
For the rest of fourth grade, my parents bought a preset curriculum and associated books. This didn't end well as neither of my parents had college degrees and since this required quite a bit of hands on work from them, I got frustrated at them.
Starting fifth grade, my parents found, at the time, a totally new way to do home schooling. It was a correspondence school where the school sent everything required and vhs tapes of a licensed teacher in an actual classroom. It was like I was there but didn't have to deal with the nonsense of actually being there. Plus, I got to go as fast or slow over the material as I wanted. This gave me so much freedom that I really enjoyed learning and just kept going.
By the time high school was approaching, the correspondence school just wasn't cutting it enough for me. I wanted more without the wastes of time that it required. And, since this was now the dawn of online versions of everything, my parents signed me up for an online school. But for me, this still seemed pedantic and generally not very engaging.
After frustrating my parents for so long at this point, they worked with the local community college and got me enrolled, full time, at 15 years old. This basically replaced my high school years, and interestingly enough this didn't cause much of an issue of not having any prerequisite knowledge from high school. It goes to show you how much college repeats the same info in high school, especially for the lower level classes. I also absolutely loved this time as I was able to dive deep into learning all that I wanted.
So, here's my opinion of each method:
Private and public schooling can be stressful both from the system itself and from other classmates. Even though I can't comment on bullying as I never was, the stress from the system caused me issues. And not having the freedom to learn the way I wanted would have hindered me. Socializing in this format didn't happen a whole lot for me. I always kept one or two close friends and that was it.
Standard home schooling didn't work for us. But, I can see it working well with parents with better education. Of course, I do think there needs to be a good relationship between the parents and the child or none of this will work well.
However, the correspondence school is an awesome option for parents who either don't have a great education or aren't up to the challe
Being a former USPS employee, this just seems about right. The USPS, at least at the local post office level, has a mismatch of crazy tight security or almost nothing at all. I mean everything is watched (or believed to be watched) at the post office, but then once your mail leaves the office, the carrier can do practically anything he or she wants to do with it. Of course there's laws against this, but still, there's no security, nothing, once the truck leaves the office. No GPS, no cameras, nothing. And if you're a rural carrier, no one inspects your vehicle to make sure you cleared all mail from it. So this type mismatched security probably follows upward to the higher offices.
Bit of a disclaimer: I live in Kentucky and have run multiple small businesses here so I know a thing or two about the State Gov't.
Generally, the state doesn't do much in making sure things run as the law says it should (well, except for taxes, they're quite up on that). But, they most definitely do get involved when complaints are made. This is a pretty big profile thing and I bet they'll keep an eye on it. I also can see quite a number of disbelievers applying for job positions just to get rejected to then make a complaint. This might really bite them in the butt in the end, which I personally would like to see. This is bordering on religious support from the gov't.
Yup, yup, had to do plenty of that during my tenure. Though, seriously, there's plenty of crazy packages that get sent through USPS directly that are kinda tough on the poor carrier. I remember somebody shipped a concrete statue (yes, we're talking about a 70lb statue here which is the upper weight limit for them), and I had to carry the thing up a flight of steps in the middle of winter with ice on the ground. I was really kinda surprised I made it without flying down the steps with a concrete statue landing on my head. Actually, I was kinda glad I had the statue and not carrier that usually ran that route. I don't think she could have done it.
Ok, for a bit of reference, I was a rural mail carrier for awhile. And from being a carrier and talking with fellow carriers after being one I can tell you people don't really send much first class mail anymore. The USPS is now basically converting into the last mile run carrier of packages, both originating from their system and both Fedex and UPS's systems. The local post office I've worked at has at times not been able to handle the sheer volume increase of packages. Now, if people want to ship packages, they can already print their own postage off their computers so this device does nothing for that (and there's plenty of bulk label creation systems for larger shippers which is what I do now). The other fairly large user of the USPS is advertisers using bulk mail rates and they won't use a device like this since they already have permits. So I see little use for this.
Also, having worn glasses for so long I've gotten used to the built in "objects flying at my eye" protection they offer. My glasses have caught more than a few flying objects and/or children's fingers.
That is so incredibly true with myself as well. I can't count the number of times I would have to go to the hospital to remove something from my eyes. (And the time I did wear proper eye protection, I ended up getting concrete dust in an eye when removing the safety goggles as the dust was sitting on the goggles. I had to get the stuff scraped out, not fun at all.)
Plus, I absolutely love having transition lenses. Nothing beats having automatic sunglasses while outside. Then, of course, they'd probably have to knock me out to perform the surgery, as I have a real hard time letting anything near my eyes. With that concrete dust, I needed three nurses to hold my eye open. . .
I agree as I actually seen an almost pretty bad accident this 4th with amateur fireworks. Since it's legal to shoot off amateur mortars in this state, at least half the households here were shooting them off this year. The neighbor behind us had something go wrong and the mortar went a partially curved trajectory and ended up hitting a power line which caused it to redirect straight for where my other neighbor was shooting his fireworks off. Of course it exploded when it hit the ground and if he was there at that time, it would have been pretty bad.
I do have to add there's a few more attack venues than just at the receiving end of a check payment. There is literally no security at your mailbox, and practically nothing in the mail trucks that pick up your checks. Anyone can take the check right out of the box, and everyone knows something's in there with the little flag being up. And then there's no cameras or security in the mail trucks themselves. Besides federal law, there's nothing stopping a carrier from pocketing a check, which I think is pretty unfortunate. Your best bet if paying by check is to deposit the envelopes directly at the Post Office. There's plenty of security inside the office and processing centers that at least there's a much less chance of anything happening once inside the system.
The USPS has been swapping in LLVs for owner owned vehicles, but usually that only goes for routes that are under 25 miles or so and have a large number of boxes. My main route was one of these, consisting close to 25 miles with 750 boxes. What seems to be happening is what was considered 'rural' back 15 years ago isn't really rural anymore but is still being delivered by rural carriers. So in higher density areas, they're turning what was traditionally a real rural route into a sort of city/rural route with LLVs. I do have to say there is generally a fight with the carriers to get them to go over to LLVs. Most like to use their own vehicles because they're more comfortable, ie air conditioning and just better interiors. Plus, them dang LLVs are horrible in the snow with rear wheel drive and non-equal axle spacing (front tires are closer together than back for easier maneuverability around cars in good weather) vs a true 4 wheel drive jeep. It's quite fun trying to stick mail in a box while you slide by it.
Well, having anything that provides faster reading would really improve efficiency. These same scanners are used by the clerks when all trackable items arrive at the PO. So speeding both the clerks and the carriers jobs would really help.
I can't give much perspective from the city carrier side, but as a former rural carrier, I didn't see much push to violate safety protocols from management. Actually, my manager was particularly up on new safety info coming from higher up and made sure we all knew about it once a week. However, I do have to say a few things on the incentives to break safety codes. All rural carriers are paid via route evaluations. So, if your route evaluates for 8.5 hours to complete, you will get paid for 8.5 hours no matter how fast or slow it takes you to complete it. So, the faster you complete, the 'more' you get paid per hour and the chance to help other carriers complete routes if there's problems. I had a time where I finished my route early and worked on a second route while still being under the evaluated time for the first route. So I was getting paid twice, evaluated time for the first route, hourly for the second. That really brings an incentive to get your route done as fast as possible despite safety rules or accuracy.
Actually, the rural runs aren't that particularly expensive to the USPS. I was once a rural carrier, and most rural routes actually require the driver to use his/her own vehicle (with a paid stipend on vehicle use). This is actually a cheaper arrangement for the USPS than sending LLVs around. Plus, with the rural routes, you don't get that much of a drop in box count. They just add more miles to your route. The PO I worked for had a rural route that had over 100 miles on it.
Nah, 'bulk' mail is never sent first class. They got a rate class of their own, usually marked as 'standard'. Having a bit of inside knowledge of the post office as a former carrier, I can definitely say they make a pretty penny on all that bulk mail. This is why they won't do anything that would disrupt that revenue stream especially with the massive drop in first class (which was mostly comprised of business correspondence, ie bills and checks going back and forth).
As a former rural carrier, I can tell you those blasted scanners the USPS gives the carriers are a total pain. They can't scan barcodes in full sunlight, which is absolutely crazy considering we're either outside or in a truck that has full windows. So next time watch your poor mail carrier try to scan your next package, especially if there isn't a cloud in the sky. You'll see us try to hide the thing in the shade, move the scanner around, and generally get aggravated at it. Something like NFC would be a godsend if its implemented correctly. Of course, however, how much of a chance is it that the USPS would actually implement it correctly?
There's actually a bit more to this. As a really avid home grower (albeit, getting closer and closer to actually selling some stuff), I've seen another type of patent that growers need to watch for, besides just the GMO stuff. It's called plant variety protection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... Now PVP IP is definitely less restrictive than general patents, but it is still another hurdle that growers need to look out for. Also, as described in that wikipedia article, there are true plant patents for asexually produced varieties. I've seen this specifically when buying raspberries. They had clear warnings on them that the variety was patented and no reproduction of the plants were allowed, though exactly how that is suppose to be accomplished I have no idea since raspberries spread and reproduce greatly on their own. And, btw, these patented plants can all be readily purchased through home grower catalogs, and there's a lot more of these patents and PVP than you would think. You also don't need to sign any licensing paper. The patented varieties are basically EULA licensed for home grower/non propagator use only. And also to clear up a bit of a gray issue, you definitely can replant seed from F1 hybrids. They will grow and not have any crazy seed termination stuff that Monsanto was playing with. The only thing is you won't really get the vigor and some of the other properties of the F1 even if you make sure there is no cross pollination between varieties. And if you play with it enough, you might even be able to gleam a new heirloom variety from the F1 after stabilizing the genetics via standard plant breeding tactics.
As a former carrier, I can tell you that carrier was acting as legally required. They're not allowed to throw away mail at all, even at the request of the resident. Doing so will get you fired and/or in handcuffs very quickly. A carrier can only set aside undeliverable bulk mail that a clerk will later throw out. And only standard rate mail without a "Or Current Resident" endorsement going to a resident who doesn't live at the address (or all bulk mail going to a vacant address that doesn't have 'forwarding service requested' endorsement) can be given to the clerks as undeliverable. The rest is either forwarded, sent back as unable to forwarded, or delivered. Btw, some post offices will let you sign up for a list to stop delivering 'boxholders'. Those are the things that either weekly newspaper or flyer type things that have coupons and such.
As a former rural carrier, I can say that the 'bulk business mail' (not allowed to say junk mail when you work for the USPS) does make up a good portion of the volume. However, the volume of bulk mail is barely staying stable. A steep rise in cost may cause it to plummet like first class. What is really keeping the doors open at the USPS, especially after talking with some of my friends at the local post office is the insane increase of packages. Amazon has shifted a tremendous amount of package volume to the post office, either directly, or via UPS SmartPost type things. Package volumes at my former post office are so high right now that they've had to send substitute carriers just to help deliver packages that the normal carrier can't fit in their vehicle. I've never seen that before when I worked there.
I agree with explaining the acronyms, but, sadly, the 'editors' can't even get spelling and grammar correct in many of the summaries, let alone the finer nuances of writing what an acronym means.
I've read the article and have researched this before for my own farm. There are products already on the market that seem to do what the article talks about so I'm not really sure that this is anything new. However, if they are using Azotobacter bacteria, I'm curios how they are making it symbiotic as it generally isn't.
Ahh yes, I can see that with trying to compete against native plants. However, the interesting part is, with tomatoes anyway, that the whole nightshade family has very little representation in the native weeds here in the state of Kentucky. I've only identified a few different species growing on my land and the only one that has any strength to really compete is horse nettle. I've rarely seen black nightshade, and it seems to barely compete. So, I'm thinking the whole nightshade family doesn't compete that well over the long run in this area. Now, for the brassica family (ie, mustard, broccoli, canola, etc), I've got plenty of native brassica weeds. I have seen some of my kale going wild and easily establish itself as a weed. This family is much more 'weedy' and can easily compete. And of course, you got 'wild carrot', ie Queen Anne's lace, and its poisonous cousin, Poison Hemlock. These two will readily establish themselves in wild fields, and I can easily see regular carrots doing the same if we ever let them go to seed. So I think alot of competition ability of our regular crops depends on family basis.
Heh, no, not always. Have you ever grown a large plot of tomatoes? During harvesting you always end up losing a few, the tomatoes subsequently rot, and the seeds go into the soil for the following year. They then sprout in the spring, but only the hardiest remain after the late frosts and generally crappy spring weather (for tomatoes that is). These tomatoes sprouted in a field that I planted a cover crop over in the fall/winter and didn't do a thing to the field till just recently. No watering, fertilizing, or care. I even cut down these tomatoes with my lawn mower to kill off the over wintered cover crop. So, I ended up with over a dozen super strong tomato plants that look healthier than anything I got growing at the moment.
Sadly, this does happen, but really for social security and other gov't benefits checks, it takes a whole corrupt post office to pull it off. When I worked for the post office as a rural carrier, social security checks came in via a different system, outside of your DPS mail. It wouldn't take much at all to tell if a single person in the chain was stealing them. But, if the supervisor was in on it, then all bets are off. It would have to go through the postal inspectors only to try to catch it.
That's pretty difficult, actually, at least if you dropped the dvd's at the post office. The back room of a post office is pretty well secured to protect such things, with cameras everywhere. I've worked at a small/medium sized post office and have toured a processing plant, and there is quite a bit of interesting things going on to prevent stealing of mail. I especially liked the closed in catwalks with one way mirrors for the postal inspectors that go all the way around the processing plant. Even at my post office, there was a separate entrance with its own key going to a secured room for a postal inspector to enter only. The joke of the whole thing is though that outside of the post office/processing plants, there's pretty much no security. Most of the rural carriers drive their own vehicles, and there's no inspections to make sure you cleared out all the mail in your car. And for the postal trucks, there's no cameras or gps to track where you're going, but they at least check the truck to make sure everything is out. So, how difficult is it to take mail while on route? Sadly, incredibly easy. And many carriers have went to prison for it because of doing even more incredibly stupid things, like stealing tracked packages. Now, here is a possible reason why those dvds got there at different times. I was told that I needed to separate all netflix dvd's I picked up from the regular outgoing mail. The clerks then did something different with them compared to the regular outgoing mail, but I'm not sure what. I would happen to guess that they are sent through different channels. So, maybe some of your dvd's were separated, but not all. So some got there faster than others.
And, as a former rural carrier, I can tell you that arrangement is quite profitable for the post office. The rural carriers have to go their routes anyway, so the extra package load costs quite little. The only costs are some time for the clerks/management to sort the incoming packages in the morning, and the slightly higher evaluations for the routes (which translates to a small bit more money to the carriers).
The question is, who is in charge of the education in this country? Not so easy to counteract years and years of government mandated 'education' that is taught to a very large percentage of the populace. . .