V-22 Osprey vs large Helicopters

A few numbers:
Chinook CH-47
Cost                   $38 million
Combat Radius 200 miles
Cruise Speed     160 knots
Payload             24,000 lbs

Super Stallion CH53
Cost                  $24 million
Combat Radius 621 miles
Cruise Speed     150 knots
Payload              30,000 lbs

Osprey V-22
Cost                   $72.1 million
Combat Radius  426 miles
Cruise Speed     275 knots
Payload              20,000 lbs

The Marine Corps loves the V-22.  Not sure why.  All the V-22 offers over the CH53 is much higher cruise speed.  The CH-53 has better combat radius and payload.  We could buy three CH-53 helicopters for the price of a single V-22.  

Taking Honest Work From Trial Lawyers

Yesterday's Wall St Journal had an op-ed piece headlined "Safety from Hackers -- and Trial Lawyers".  The author, Brian E. Finch is a lawyer working for a "cyber security" law firm.  He is advocating passage of the "Cyber Safety Act" thru Congress.  This  act would shield companies from law suits over security breaches.   
    Right now, companies can get sued down to their socks when hackers get thru their security and steal customer lists, with addresses and credit card numbers.  Mr. Evans thinks this liability is horrible and discourages innovation in the tech industry. 
   Me, I think fear of lawsuits is the only thing preventing companies from selling even more insecure products than they do today.  Suing Micro$oft for the uncounted security holes in Windows would improve world wide cyber security.  The hackers that cracked the federal Office of Personal Management got their hands on my old Air Force service records and records of security clearances that I held for years after leaving the Air Force.  Right now, any thoughtful company will take all the precautions it can think of to keep hackers out, for fear of dreadful law suits and market annilation when loopholes let the hackers in. 
   We got a lot of excess lawyers sloshing around the country, mostly causing trouble.  Let's put them to work suing companies that peddle insecure products or who fail to safeguard  their customer's records.

Meet Jane Walker

Big liquor company Diageo is launching a whiskey for women brand.  Called Jane Walker, with a snappy new label showing a sharp looking female version of Johnny Walker.  The scotch inside will be the same as what goes into Johnny Walker Black Label bottles. 
   Will it sell?  Consider that few guys will buy a women's whiskey, which cuts the new brand off from half the population, the harder drinking half.  How many women will buy a women's whiskey rather than the old reliable well known Johnny Walker?  Or old reliable Cutty Sark, J&B, or Ballentine for half the price of Jane Walker ?

Dr. Seuss is back on top

Wall St Journal, best selling books week ended 18 Feb.
Hardcover Fiction

Green Eggs and Ham                           Dr. Seuss   Number 6 in sales
One Fish Two fish Red fish Blue Fish   Dr. Seuss    Number 10 in sales.

Not bad for a couple of children's books that have been in print like forever. 

Alternate History: WWII Might have beens

Everyone agrees that Hitler's greatest mistake was to take on the Russians before finishing off the British. In 1940 the German army had shown it was lightyears ahead of every other army.  The Germans had occupied Denmark and Norway, invaded and conquered Poland, Holland, Belgium, and even France.  All the Germans needed to do, to settle Britain's hash, was to get their army, actually just a small part of their army, across the English Channel.  After Dunkirk the British Army was in no shape to stand off an invasion of Boy Scouts, let alone a couple of panzer divisions. 
   The only problem from the German point of view, was getting their army across the channel in one piece.  They had about 2000 Rhine river barges to make the crossing in.  These were seaworthy enough for a channel crossing in good weather.  Summer weather.  Trouble was, the British had a couple of hundred destroyers, fifty cruisers, and a dozen real battleships to oppose such a crossing.  When the British steam up along side a river barge in a destroyer,  that's the end of the river barge and all its troops, (or cargo).  The Germans only had about ten destroyers, some subs, a couple of cruisers, and a couple of light duty battleships.  The Royal Navy would have an enjoyable turkey shoot cleaning out that batch.   The only equalizer the Germans had was the Luftwaffe, and for that to be effective it had to defeat the Royal Air Force.  You cannot take out surface vessels when you have Hurricanes and Spitfires on your tail.  The Germans tried to take out the RAF in the summer of 1940, resulting in what we now call the Battle of Britain.  Unfortunately for Hitler,  the RAF out shot the Luftwaffe that summer. 
   One equalizer that the Germans might have obtained, the French Navy.  France was a great power, and had a sizable Navy, not quite as big as the Royal Navy, but far superior to what the Germans had in 1940.  The French were pissed off at the British, they blamed the British for their defeat by the Germans that summer.  According to the French, the British didn't send enough troops, enough aircraft, and they bugged out when the going got tough.  If the Germans had stroked the defeated French enough, they might have been able to get the French to join them in an invasion of England, and bring along their Navy.  This would have required a lot more diplomacy from the Germans than was usual for them, but it might have happened.  And if so, it would have been curtains for the Brits in 1940. 
This worried the British so much, that they sank a good portion of the French fleet in North Africa just to make sure they didn't join the Germans. 

Notes for auto designers

Let's talk about the driver on the interior of the car.  The dashboard has to be usable in full sun and in darkness.  Those dinky little digital displays, LED's usually, just aren't bright enough to see when the sun is shining in thru the windows.  Where as a good round dialface, with a nice bright pointer is readable day and night.  Even better would be the system we used in the Air Force.  All gauges were marked in green for their normal operating range and red for dangerous ranges.  Hence the term "redline". 
   And the cost cutters keep pushing the cheapest kind of control, a single pole single position push button.  And they make black buttons on a black control panel, with tiny little legends on the buttons.  Leaving us drivers fumbling in the dark just trying to change stations on the radio.  The radio on my car is so bad that Buick wired up a complete second set of radio controls on the steering wheel, to make it easier to use the radio.  Fine industrial design that, dual controls on a car radio.  If they just made the buttons a contrasting color to the control panel it  would help a lot.   And they could standardize those steering wheel stalks that work the wipers and washer, the lights, the turn signals, and the slushbox.   And important controls ought to be knobs that you can feel for in the dark, not pushbuttons.  For extra credit put different shaped knobs on different controls so you can tell them apart by feel in the dark. 

Arming school teachers?

Depends upon the teacher.  Most of my elementary teachers, Miss Shirley, Miss Gaudet, Miss Percy, Mr. Convery, Mrs Falby were courageous, determined, and cool under pressure.  Miss Coyne, not so much, but five out of six ain't bad.  Middle school we had Miss Macglaflin, Mr Davis and Mr Sanacandro who all would qualify as courageous and competent.  High school not so much.  It was a a Quaker school, with most of the faculty firm believers in the Quaker doctrine of non-violence.  Although I admired many of them, they were not the kind of people to draw a bead on a school shooter and let him have it right in center of mass. 
   But the public school teachers came from a tougher mold, at least back in those days.  I wonder how teachers are now a days. 

Effective TV commercials

They have been playing one commercial, for some kinda herbal supplement.   They explain it contains a miracle ingredient from jellyfish.  Well, I remember the jellyfish part, but I cannot remember the name of the product.  Effective that ad was. 
   Then there is William Devane, distinguished looking older guy, who pitchs silver and gold on TV these days.  One of his ads starts out on the deck of a retired US battleship.  Devane is standing in front of the main battery giving the pitch.  "When the US used battleships to make its points, things were better."  Although the US launched battleships starting when they were first developed, except for the Spanish American War, a tiny sideshow long ago, we never used them in combat.  By the time the US Navy became the world class force, it was WWII and the battleships had been replaced by aircraft carriers.
   And I still haven't invested in silver or gold. 

Parkland Shooter. What should have happened

This homicidal manic should have been confined to a mental hospital years ago.  But we didn't.  We don't have mental hospitals anymore.  Up here in NH, mental cases often spend days confined in hospital emergency rooms, hand cuffed to the bed, 'cause there is nowhere else to put them. 
   Everyone admits that this shooter showed plenty of signs that were ignored and not acted upon.  Resulting in 17 innocents dying.  
   The problem is homicidal maniacs allowed to run around loose.  If they cannot buy a gun, they will find other ways to do evil.
    We need a fair system to identify and confine these madmen before they do awful things. 

AT&T Last Company Standing

All the others have changed their names.  Marketing loves to change the name.  They think they are smart enough think up magic names that increase sales.  Right.
So here we are,
Company                       Old Name                          New Name
 Electric Company.         Public Service of NH          Eversource
Telephone company        Fairpoint Communicatons   Consolidated Communications
Cable company               Time Warner                      Spectrum

Only survivor

Long Distance Carrier     AT&T                                 AT&T

This ain't Chicken Feed

Alexander Soros, son of George Soros, donated $650 million to the Democrats.  Wow! That is a lot of money.  According to the Free Beacon. 

Congress critters blow it again

70% or more of the country wants to do something good for the DACA people.  Our Congress critters, Senate breed, were unable to pass anything today.  The Republicans lacked the votes to pass their bill, the democrats lacked the votes to pass theirs.  Neither side had the brains or the guts to find a compromise that both sides could vote for.  And so, the DACA people may all get deported beginning next month. 
Way to go Congress critters. 

Pentagon estimates $10-30 million parade cost

Chicken feed.  Wall St Journal carried this.  A single new jet fighter costs $80-100 million.  $10-30 million is nothing.  Remember Everett Dirksen's comment,  "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money."

Anyone got examples of Russian meddling in the 2016 election?

I read a lotta talk about Russian meddling vie social media.  But I haven't seen any examples.  How about a website or two? or some posts on Facebook etc.  If it happened, let's see some of it. 

It's Horrible

And my deepest sympathies for the victims of the Florida school shooting yesterday.  And that's all I am going to say, the TV news has been saying everything under the sun since it happened yesterday. So I don't need to add my two cents worth. 

Imran Amed, WSJ fashion plate

"Some ideas for fixing the fashion industry" is the headline of a piece in the Journal's Life and Arts section.  It's an interview with Imran Amed, rated "No 1 in GQ India's list of Best Dressed Global Indians.  Big color pictures of Imran to go with the article.  If he is well dressed, I'd hate to see a real slob.  Hair is uncombed.  Unshaven. Wearing a low speed dark suit made from some strange fabric, not the proper woven wool of a real suit.  No necktie.  A salmon pink sweater under the suit jacket, with white T-shirt showing at the neckline.  No shirt. And he is wearing boondocker combat boots instead of low quarter shoes.  Not my idea of well dressed. 
   His comments on the fashion industry are super bland.  He likes Gucci because they are selling well.  He likes Attico because they have 124,000 Instgram followers and they are selling well.   Insightful that is. 

Cops work differently in Israel

The TV news is talking about Israeli cops accusing  prime minister Netanyahu of corruption and mopery and dopery.  They say the Israeli prosecutors now have to indict Netanyahu, which is expected to take a year or more.
   Wow!  Over here the cops don't have the stones to accuse powerful politicians of corruption.   US cops know that the politicians control their funding, their hiring, their promotions, and much else.  If the corruption charges don't stick, and in US courts anything can happen, the accused politician has plenty of time and power to take revenge on the accusers. 
  I guess things work differently in Israel. 

New flu medicine

Japanese pharmacy company Shionogi announced an new anti flu drug that cures all types of flu in 24 hours, with a single dose.  The Wall St Journal didn't mention a name for Shionogi's experimental drug but it is not a vaccine, it works by disrupting the flu virus' ability to take over human cells and reprogram them to produce more flu virus.  The article indicated a deep understanding of the biochemistry of the flu virus.  It also mentioned a fast track approval process in Japan might authorize the drug for sale as soon as next month.  They talked about submitting paperwork to the US Fuddy Duddy Administration (FDA) this summer and waiting til next year for FDA approval for sale in the US. 
   If this works out, it will be great. 

What's going down in Congress about the Dreamers?

The Senate voted to discuss the matter.  Typical Senate malarky, you don't vote to have a discussion.  You bring a bill to the floor and discuss it.  Then you vote to pass it or kill it.
Far as I can see, the Republican position, as outlined by the president is this.  We do something nice (unspecified) for maybe 1.8 million DACA eligibles.  We fund the border wall.  We limit chain migration to immediate family, spouses and minor children.  We shut down the 50,000 person "diversity lottery".  We do all of this or nothing.
The Democratic position is murky.  They don't talk about it.  At a guess, they want nice things for at least the 800,000 people who signed up for DACA.  Maybe they are OK with the border wall.  They want to keep chain migration and the "diversity lottery" the way it is now.  They haven't really said all this out loud, but from listening to the TV newsies, I think this is where they are coming from.  I might be wrong.  The democrats would do them selves a favor by a  clear statement of where they are coming from.
  The Republicans have some internal problems.  An unknown number of Republican congress critters don't like the idea of letting anyone into the country and are against doing anything nice for 1.8 million DACA eligibles.  The president ought to be able to get enough Republicans to vote his way, but you never know.  The rest of the presidents ideas, border wall, chain migration and diversity lottery ought to OK with most Republican congress critters.
   Neither side has described just what nice things for DACA eligibles might be.  Was it up to me, I'd offer citizenship anyone who looks like a good, loyal, production citizen.  Say a clean criminal record (no felony convictions) graduated high school or college, married, employed, children, veteran or some subset of these.  Anyone who looks like trouble, gang members, drug runners, car jackers,  and such, deport them ASAP.  Short of citizenship we offer them ID cards that allow them to stay in the US, take a job, get a driver's license.  For extra niceness we could make them eligible for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid.
   The 800,000 vs 1.8 million comes from DACA eligibles fearing that going and registering with Mr. Migra was dangerous.  Mr. Migra might betray them and use the registration to hunt them down and deport them.  Which may happen unless Congress gets its act together in the next three weeks.  The administration estimates that about another million DACA eligibles were smart enough to keep their heads down and stay out of sight. 

How to prevent foreign meddling in US elections

   Get rid of electronic voting machines altogether.  Go back to paper ballots, that can be saved and recounted.  The voting machines are merely desktop computers running an "I am a ballot" program.  They can be hacked before election day, on election day, and after election day.  The can be hacked over the internet, at the factory, in storage at town hall, during software updates, by sticking a flash drive into their USB port, and  a bunch of other ways.  You cannot recount a voting machine the way you can paper ballots.   Use paper ballots.  That will prevent anyone from hacking the election results.
    Demand source information for social media stories.  And for MSM stories.   If the story, no matter how juicy, doesn't have a source, it's fake news.  If a juicy story lacks a source, or the source doesn't check out, you gotta say to yourself that this story is BS.    
    Remember that the MSM is mostly the NYT and the WaPo, and the TV networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, and CNN.  These are all run by democrats and see their mission as electing democrats, not reporting the news.  The NYT has been in love with Communists since the 1930's.  They supported Josef Stalin, Fidel Castro, and the Viet Cong. 

So what hath Congress Wrought?

This morning's Wall St Journal was less than clear.  Partly because the Journal's stories went to press last evening before Congress voted on the thing. Far as I can tell it is yet another continuing resolution that runs out 23 March.  It lifts the Federal debt limit until March next year.  It lifts the spending caps by $160 billion on the military and about the same amount on "discretionary spending".  It does NOT authorize spending for the entire fiscal year, just for the rest of February and most of March.  And it  has a lot of pages, few of which anyone has seen, let alone read. 
   The House voted it thru at o'dark thirty, and Trump signed it sometime after 9 AM this morning. 
   Between the Trump tax  cut and this spending authorization every one expects the US to go in the hole by $1 trillion for this fiscal year. 

Cannon Mt Ski Weather. Six inches of new powder snow

I just put a yard stick onto the snow on my deck, and we got a real six inches of [powder yesterday.  No rain at all. Very light wind so the snow is on the trails, not blown into the woods.  Skiing at Cannon will be great this weekend.

Lets have a Parade

Parades are economical.  They show off your military strength to potential enemies.  The Soviets used to do a big one every year on May Day.  Aviation Week always ran a fair sized article about what the Soviets had displayed this year.  Seeing troops and tanks marching down the street carries more impact than dry intel reports. 
  And, parades show the tax payers that they are getting something for their tax money.  What's not to like.
  And parades are cheap, especially compared to even the smallest military action.  After all, the troops are all ready in the service, getting pay, uniforms, rations, and board.  The extra money for a bit of parade practice and transport to and from the parade site is chickenfeed as military expenses go. 
   And everyone likes to watch a parade. 

A Global Test for Kindergarteners???

Piece in today's Wall St Journal.  Some ed group I never heard of is proposing a world wide test for 5 year olds, so we can compare the effectiveness between kindergartens in various places.  Right.
   The kids don't get taught to read until first grade.  I didn't get good at reading till half way thru third grade.  What kind of test can you run on kids that cannot read the questions and haven't even learned how to write (Print!)  their names yet.  And we are going to do this world wide?  In every important language? 
   I always thought the purpose of Kindergarten was to get the kids used to being away from home for half the day, and to give 'em some experience in making friends and playing together.  Important socializing, but how do you grade socializing?  By how well the kids know the Alphabet Song?
   Is this a bunch of ed majors looking for something to get funding for?

Good Day. Falcon Heavy launch successful. Stock Market is up 500 points

All 27 engines worked and worked right.  Booster separation worked.  A Tesla roadster is on its way to Mars.  Both boosters  landed safely at Cape Canaveral.  The main stage was supposed to land on a ship at sea.  Haven't seen the video of that, but it probably worked.  Good job SpaceX.  Take a few Attaboys.
   And the stock market came up 500 points.  It was dicey, lot of up and down movement all day, big moves too, but after yesterday's 1200 point "correction" (we don't dare say crash anymore), it is good to see the market go up instead of down.
   The TV is talking about "program trading".  By which they mean the computers panicked on Friday.  The computers all issued sell orders which drove the Dow Jones down 1200 points, a record one day drop.  Once the market starts down, the computers all have preprogrammed sell orders (sell this and that stock if the Dow drops below whatever).  The computers are quick, and all their sell orders hit the market within milliseconds. 

We oughta reform US Copyright law

Right now copyright lasts for 70 years plus the life of the owner.  Any thing can be copyrighted, leading to endless welfare for lawyers like the lawsuit over one click or two clicks to place an item in your digital shopping basket.
   We ought to go back to a 17 year limit on terms of copyright.  All the real money is made by the time 17 years is up.  The author ought to get off his couch and write something new after 17 years of royalties.
   US Constitution Article I Section 8 clause 8 reads "To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."  Note to the reader.  This clause does not authorize copyright of "business methods" (that one-click two-click foolishness) nor mathematics, nor software, nor music.  The exclusive rights are granted only to "Authors and Inventors", real individuals, not corporations, not patent trolls.
   And copyright should only last while the book is in print.  Once out of print, it should be legal to Xerox copies as needed.
   And makers of toys and models should be immune from predatory lawyers owned and operated by the real life businesses.  GM should not be able to shake small makers down just cause they are making Hot Wheels toys or plastic models of GM cars.  Railroads should not be able to shake down model train makers for painting rolling stock in proto type paint schemes.  
  

Has anything important happened in the real world lately?

The news is full of unimportant stories.  The classified memo.  Superbowl.  Guvmint shutdowns, they have another one coming up this week just for your entertainment.  Didn't anything  important happen all week?

So I read the famous classified memo.

Less than earth shaking.  It says the FBI flimflammed the FISA court to get a warrant for surveillance of Carter Page, a new name to me.  The FBI showed the Steele document, opposition research paid for by Clinton and the DNC, to the FISA court as evidence that Carter Page needed his phone and email tapped.  The FBI also showed a Yahoo news article based on leaks from Steele, as independent corroboration of the Steele document.   
   Seeing as how the FISA court is a pure rubber stamp, out of thousands of requests for warrants submitted to FISA,  only dozen or so are ever rejected.  So the famous memo identifies one case where the FBI flimflammed the FISA court and obtained a warrent improperly.  Wanna bet the FBI has been doing this all along and of those thousands of warrents issued, many of them are just as bogus as the one obtained on Carter Page? 
   The FISA court is secret.  We don't know who the judges are, where the court meets, we never get to see their transcripts and records.  They can order surveillance on anybody on the flimsiest of evidence, and have been for decades.  It's a rubber stamp.
  We ought to close the entire FISA court thing.  Law enforcement, including the FBI, should have to go to a real court, the kind that tries cases, in order to spy on American citizens.

Was it AmTrak's fault?

Certainly embarrassing to wreck a train full of Congressmen.   The train hit a truck at a grade crossing doing 70  mph.  Killed the truck driver, shook up a lot of Congressmen who were not in their seats.  Train stayed on the track, which is a good thing. 
   I think the fault lies with the truck driver.  The grade crossing was protected, crossbucks, automatic red flashers, and automatic crossing gates.  On TV you could see that the crossing gates were down.  We can assume that the crossing protection gear functioned,  that stuff is pretty reliable and I cannot remember a case where it failed to work.  Still, someone ought to check that, just to be sure. So how did that truck get on the tracks?  Either he got stuck on the tracks before the train arrived, or he was in a hurry and drove around the crossing gates.   So far the newsies have not said anything about that.  And, why did not the people in the truck get out and run when they heard the train coming.  Trains are required to whistle (sound the horn now a days) as they approach grade crossings, two longs, a short and a very long.  Those horns are loud, easily heard over the sound of a truck engine.