Gangs no, drugs, don't assume. I went to a rural school. The drug culture is alive and well. In many cases their parents were growing cash crops. That and illegal hunter is what kept their familier fed. The reason you don't hear more about it is they aren't greedy, they just want enough money to get by, a lot like moonshiners. Come to think of it, we have those too.

 

I could never quite understand the fuss made in the USA over moonshine? Is it some hangover from those ridiculous prohibition days?

What's the difference between someone making some homemade strawberry jelly (jam) and selling it at the market or some homemade beer etc, or even distilled spirits? Surely it's a taxation issue, ie if someone is operating a sizable business or not.

Are you guys allowed to make homemade beer? It's a popular garage hobby here in Australia.

 

Surely it's a taxation issue

bing..bing..bing.. you get a cookie..
Of course its a taxation issue.. I believe the government makes $2+ per each 750ml of "spirits" sold in the US.. and much much less for beer/wine.

millions and millions of gallons of moonshine are made yearly in the US

In the US (and I'm sure just about every country has laws about it) you can make up to a certain number of gallons of beer and it is legal.. More than that and they will find you and want their money.

 

Gangs no, drugs, don't assume. I went to a rural school. The drug culture is alive and well. In many cases their parents were growing cash crops. That and illegal hunter is what kept their familier fed. The reason you don't hear more about it is they aren't greedy, they just want enough money to get by, a lot like moonshiners. Come to think of it, we have those too.

I don't consider those drugs. Booze and weed are pretty standard everywhere in all ages and cultures. I'm talking about Crack, Meth, heroine, pcp, etc.. You probably have the Meth problem though because that tends to hang in lower income rural settings.

 

US schools aren't that great bro. We have school shootings now on regular basis's, we had one kid in Jacksonville jump out the back of a bus and commit suicide over bullying. Kids here are taking the punch the bully in the face way to seriously and using a 30-06. Also as far as Teachers being close to the students thats a myth in HS. Unless your in all AP classes your teachers don't give jack s$#$. They sit and collect their checks. We've cut their salary and overloaded the classrooms so much they basically split the kids into 3 groups. Boom boom (Which is where the trouble makers and mentally challenged students went) Normal classes where normal kids went, then AP where honors and Advanced Placement kids went. And it goes subject by subject. I was in like all AP courses but English. I hated reading fiction. I can sit and read a datasheet for days, but give me old man and the sea and I'm thinking about robot battles 2 minutes later.

My HS was nothing like that. We rarely had violence, and when we did, it was nothing more than a fist in someone's nose. It was never anything serious. Drugs were another thing, though. There was alcohol, but that wasn't as common. My HS had a greenhouse that all the "dopes" would go smoke weed in, and they were never caught. Huffing was common in the school shop, but that was just because the teacher wasn't very bright. There were cigarettes, but they're a little easier to track than alcohol and aerosols. But overall, my school was fairly peaceful and the days were uneventful. Then again, that was several years ago!

 

I could never quite understand the fuss made in the USA over moonshine? Is it some hangover from those ridiculous prohibition days?

What's the difference between someone making some homemade strawberry jelly (jam) and selling it at the market or some homemade beer etc, or even distilled spirits? Surely it's a taxation issue, ie if someone is operating a sizable business or not.

Are you guys allowed to make homemade beer? It's a popular garage hobby here in Australia.

One of the first things George Washington had to do was put down the Whiskey Rebellion. It was the USAs early source of income, long before the income tax.

 

One of the first things George Washington had to do was put down the Whiskey Rebellion. It was the USAs early source of income, long before the income tax.

Thanks for the read! 15000 militia marched in and nobody really punished, for a law that was repealed 10 years later anyway.

bing..bing..bing.. you get a cookie..
Of course its a taxation issue.. I believe the government makes $2+ per each 750ml of "spirits" sold in the US.. and much much less for beer/wine.

millions and millions of gallons of moonshine are made yearly in the US

In the US (and I'm sure just about every country has laws about it) you can make up to a certain number of gallons of beer and it is legal.. More than that and they will find you and want their money.

Well that's what I am trying to understand. It's ok for someone to make a few gallons of beer a year for their own use and there is no problem.

But if someone prefers to drink whiskey to beer (which is just choosing A to B) and they make even a gallon of that they are subject to federal felony conviction with severe penalties?

Something is really messed up there and i still don't quite understand why.

 

Something is really messed up there and i still don't quite understand why.

Tell me about it (I don't understand it either), and I live here!

 

Moon-shining is very illegal, but it is a time honored tradition amongst country folk. The problem is quality control though, you get someone who is new to the art it can be toxic.

When I was in college a guy brought a large copper pot to welding class. Somehow it wound up full of bullet holes. The other older guys were razzing him about getting some of his next batch.

Where to go to school (which is the purpose of this thread) depends on what you want to do with your life though, try to pick something you enjoy doing, and accept it is real work to learn skills for life.

 

To add to what bill said the first 10% that comes out of your still is toxic. Also the last 10% is of questionable quality. This is with everything steril and perfect. Now lets throw in 400 gallon copper stills, the price of copper today and what they use as substitutes. In the wild where bacterias can form, no way to clean them properly, they've even found dead animals in the mash in raids before. Then you have prohibition and its effects. When we had prohibition it created normal street gangsters into multimillionaires. The likes of being Joseph Kennedy, Al Capone, Jim Beam, and all the original 5 families. How many of you know JFK got elected and their family fortune came from illegal moonshine? Loss of taxes, and the substitutes that were being made like (I think Jamacian ginger root) People sold this as medicine but it contained alcohol. This caused an epidemic of people who developed neurological problems and got a distinct gimp in their step. Theres many old blues songs about it. It was called the Jake Walk Blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgfvzDEKTso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9UZct0EEH4

Luckily were all allowed to grow 10 tobacco plants.

 

and to prove I know a lil bout the subject. Check it yo! A memento from my earlier days. Luckily we had full access to lab supply company and had dozens of condensers even large tubes with coils inside, to these straight water condensers, even our mash stills were huge pyrex bottles. I posted a dev kit with it so you'd know I'm real.

 

anyway, we have K12 now have to go w/ 6 years hig schol!

 

Traditionally here it goes in this order.
(School 1)
Preschool

(Elementary School 2)
Kindergarden
1,2,3,4,5

(Middle School 3)
6

(Jr. High School 4)
7,8,9

(High School 5)
10,11,12

Some districts merge 9th into highschool and 6th into JR high. Also some smaller and private schools Have all in one school. But when you have a HS with 2000 students its not feasible to have that many students in one school.

 

To add to what bill said the first 10% that comes out of your still is toxic. Also the last 10% is of questionable quality. This is with everything steril and perfect. Now lets throw in 400 gallon copper stills, the price of copper today and what they use as substitutes.
...

I get your point but I'm not buying the "it's illegal because it's toxic" argument. Someone can just as easily make bad beer or wine which is toxic, and that's legal. In fact red wine is about the most toxic of alcohol types with a lot of red wine production needing to be corrected by nasty chemicals to bring its methanol content below the safe legal limit. That's why you'll get really bad hangovers from red wine.

Someone serious about their hobby and good with a still can produce much LESS toxic alcohol than most beer and wine as the still can remove the toxins, which is part of what distillation does. In some countries where home distillation is legal they use fractional distillation to make very high quality "clean" alcohol much better for you than the majority of commercial drinking products;

http://homedistiller.org/intro/types/fraction

" It will result in an alcohol 95%+ pure (the theoretical limit without using a vacuum is 95.6%), with no other tastes or impurities in it. Note that both reflux and fractionating stills can still be used to make whisky, rum etc, as they allow a very precise "cut" between the heads, middle, and tail runs."

And sorry Lightfire for getting the thread off-topic! Regarding schooling I always got top marks in school but almost 100% of my income after leaving school was from information and skills self taught.

In other words, if you want to make money from doing X then forget school and study X, practice X and then make money from X. In the information age you have better information than any school already free at your fingertips. Why waste time sitting in a classroom full of stupid people learning worse information more slowly?

 

No its a combination of things. 80% taxes, ineffective law enforcement and the explosion of wealth and crime it brought. 20% QC. While most hobbiest will have good quality, many people are just in it for the money. And when their running stills producing 200 gallons a day sometimes QC isn't very good. Your also talking about a much smaller and newer stills. The big ones use welded together scrap metal and really don't care what type. And the fact you just can't keep a steril environment in the woods. So while letting hobbiest make booze is ok in pretty much everyones eyes. When you start running large ops, they start cutting corners and using bad materials. Proof it wrong or add in other bad alcohols to up its proof. Then you also have the snake oil stuff like the Jake Walk Blues. This started to become an epidemic in the south.

 

and don't feel bad, lightfires gonna be the king of his class with what were teaching him, hell he'll be teachin the teachers.

 

In other words, if you want to make money from doing X then forget school and study X, practice X and then make money from X.

I can understand what you mean, but I would have to respectfully disagree. I would HIGHLY recommend you stay in school. There are things you can learn in a public school that you can't learn on your own. If for nothing else, go to school for the social atmosphere. It plays a critical role in the creation of your people skills and how you interact with them. School is not just for learning about subjects like math, history, or science. It indirectly teaches critical skills that everyone needs in order to talk to people. However, that should not keep you from studying whatever you want on your own as well. That's how I feel about it, anyway. In my opinion, you should NOT forget school--it is a necessary piece of your life. But make sure you also do what YOU want to do, and study as much as you can in your free time.

 

Jeeze, Lightfire, stay in school man.

I can understand your dilemma, I was (still am) very shy, but I do have freinds I can chat with. You mentioned saying that stuff in classes was easy. I felt the same too. But remember that what is easy for you is not always easy for other people. It could be that some people were jealous of your academic abilities, and took it out on you by picking on you.

To get around this, just don't say anything if you find it easy. Cruise through the lesson, get the work done. If you really find it easy, then your teacher WILL notice, and might give you some harder questions. Do not mention that it's easy in front of the class, because that makes one look like a swat, and nobody likes a swat.

I echo what DerStorm says, stay in school. Find people you share interests with, and be nice to EVERYONE. That mentality has helped me get through school with no problems at all from peers and from teachers.

I get the work done, and the teachers like me.

I don't brag or boast, and I'm nice to everyone. Even the 'tough' kids like me, because I think about things form their point of view. Sometimes you've just gotta learn how to circumvent and get around people you might not normally get on with, and I'm very lucky to have found how to get on with just about everyone.

Stay at school, get the work done, and think about others - you'll do fine.

Sparky

 

You present a very good point Sparky. When I was in middle school I won the science award for the school. People hated me after that. They didn't get that we were taught earth science in that grade. I had been involved in digging fossils and geology since I was 3. so naturally I knew more then the teachers. But I won that award and people all got jealous. Luckily it was a 1 year school and I went to another school the following year.

 

@ spark, i never said stuff in cl ass is easy @ max, ouch !! digging fossil?? how do you dig that at age 3