Black Panther 2018

   I missed seeing this in the theater last year.  After reading much hype I net flixed it and watched it.  Meh.   Opening credits scene showed a cool metal armored riding rhinoceros.  Never did see it in action in the movie but it looked cool in the credits.   The hidden black African kingdom of Wakanda needs a new king.  Wakanda possesses lots of high technology, anti gravity stretchers, Millennium Falcon style aircraft, futuristic cities and more.  The plot is obscure.  Many of the characters speak an African language which I don’t understand.  I never did catch the stage names for any character.  If the hero had a love interest it was never clear which chick it was. 

   The hero must win the kingship thru single combat with someone else.  This happens out doors in a small river leading to a mighty waterfall.  Of course, I expected the loser to get thrown down the waterfall.  Well that didn’t happen, this time.  Hero gets the crown, rules for a while, then suffers a rematch at the waterfall some time later.  This time he gets thrown over the falls.  He survives, and makes a comeback in the last reel. Not clear how. 

   The cast is all black, Wakanda is black, and Marvel ran Black Panther comic books for years.  That was after I had given up comic books so I missed out on much of the background of the movie.  Needless to say black fans just loved this movie. 

   Me, not so much.  They had Darkman working the camera giving us a lot of pure black scenes with only mumbled dialogue to clue us in.   Since the cast was all black, nothing showed up in the dark scenes. No even an eyeball.  At least in Game of Thrones you could see a white face or two barely visible in the black. 

NH arsenic limit in drinking water.

And I forgot to write about HB 261 concerning arsenic limits in drinking water.  It would establish a limit of 5 micrograms per liter for arsenic.  That’s really low.  I asked the advocates for this bill (Sen Feltes and Sen Sherman) where this limit came from.  Who or which organization recommended this VERY low limit. Neither of them knew where this VERY low limit came from. We are talking 5 parts per TRILLION here.  Back when I took chemistry in college it was felt than anything less than 1 part per MILLION (1000 parts per TRILLION) wasn’t going to hurt anybody.  Anyhow this cute little bill was adopted on a voice vote (all ayes, no nays).  Dunno how much it will increase everyone’s costs, first to make a measurement that delicate and second to reduce the arsenic content that much. 

NH needs to require public speaking senior year of high school

Down in Concord VERY few people can speak properly.  They mumble, they don't speak loud enough to be heard even from the front row of seats.  They slur their words, they talk too fast.  I sat thru a capital budget hearing.  I took a front row seat.  Of all the witnesses testifying, I could not tell what project they were advocating, where it was to be, how big it was gonna be.  All the witnesses were such poor public speakers that I missed most of their words.
   My high school required public speaking, a once a week course, of all seniors.  It was taught by the headmaster, old Daniel D. Test.   Held in the school theater, we spoke from the stage, Dan Test would sit in the last row.  And call out "I can't hear you" if you were not speaking loudly enough.  That course has stuck with me, and done me good over the years.  We ought to require it of all New Hampshire high schools. 

NH Senate Session 23 May

Senate session, 23 May.  Knocked off 17 bills on the Fast Track (consent) calendar with one quick voice vote.  Tackled 33 bills on the regular calendar. Took until 5 PM, even though we finally kicked half a dozen unlucky bills forward to next week’s session.  I didn’t get home until 7 PM.  Long day. 

    The Democrats passed four gun control bills on roll call votes, 13-10.  Democrat Fuller Clarke was absent, accounting or only 13 Democratic votes instead of the usual 14.  HB 109 demands a “universal background check” for all gun sales.  The “universal” check is some how different from the Instant Background Check that is current law.  HB 514 requires a three day waiting period between purchase and delivery of a gun.  That ought to kill off gun shows in New Hampshire.  And HB 564 allows local school committees to set up gun free zones and what ever else strikes their fancy.  Finally HB 696 which allows a judge to order confiscation of a citizen’s guns and ammunition upon a single complaint from just about any body, including live in girl friends.  No hearing, no pleading, and the government is under no obligation to return the seized firearms, ever.   Lesson: Democrats are the party of gun control.  If you want to keep your gun, vote a straight Republican ticket.  Contact governor Sununu and ask him to veto all three of these.   

   Then Democrats pushed thru a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) bill.  Retirees will get a 1.5% boost in their state pensions.  The $140 million cost will go onto local property taxes. 

    HB 628 will require some, a lot, they didn’t say, buildings to provide adult changing stations.  First I ever heard of that. Retro fit or new construction, didn’t say.  This “issue” should be dealt with by the state building code board. 

    HB 359 requires pharmacies to attach an orange sticker to all prescription bottles containing opioid.   The pharmacists are against the idea.  The prescribing doctor is supposed to inform his patients of opioid containing drugs.  Failure to do so is malpractice.  And the bright colored sticker will attract children looking for a high, thieves, and other problems.  Anyhow it passed on a roll call 21-1. 

   Bunch of other bills went thru, none of them very interesting. 

  And last of all we passed HB 706, the redistricting commission on a voice vote.  All ayes, no nays.  Like most voice votes.   This bill sets up a redistricting commission, even numbers of Democrats and Republicans, no elected officials, to draw new district maps after the 2020 census.   The commission is advisory, and the legislature can reject, redraw and otherwise do its own thing as the Constitution requires.  A lot of my constituents feel strongly about the Constitutional requirements.  In actual fact, the commission might do a better job that the Republicans did ten years ago up here.  Back then, they created a snake like district running from Franconia all the way to the Connecticut River, which was then held by a democrat, Rebecca Brown, for the next three elections.       

Congress is stalled out. And our New Hampshire delegation, Democrats all, ain't helping

I don't believe the Congress has passed much, other than the tax cut bill, since Trump got inaugurated.  They keep saying that passing anything, like immigration reform, would help Trump, and Democrats cannot stand that.  So they do nothing.   The only thing I can remember our congressional delegation doing is Anne Kuster voting against the Keystone XL pipeline.  With all here constituents needing furnace oil and gasoline to drive to work, she votes against a project that might lower the cost of both commodities.  Way to go Anne. 
   We need two new US reps and two new US Senators.  Steve Negron has declared against Anne Kuster.  Bill O'Brien was making noises about running for  Sheehan's Senate seat.  They need all the help we can give them.  

Is Socialism the same as the More Free Stuff party?

 Socialism is a polite word for Communism.  Karl Marx decried the capitalism of his time as exploitation of the workers.  Marx's solution was to have the government, Communist government, take ownership of all  the "means of production", basically the entire economy, and  to divvy up the proceeds of enterprises among all the workers.  Trouble was, after government take over, the enterprises stopped making money, and there was little or nothing to divvy up.  The revolutionary government of Russia in 1917 called themselves Communists and blackened the name of Communism so badly that future Communists decided to call themselves and their regimes Socialist rather than Communist.
   Today's  Democrats and/or Democratic Socialists are more interested in more free stuff than they are about government ownership of the means of production.  Or at least that's the way they talk.  We should remember that Communist or Socialist regimes inflict serious national poverty upon the nations stupid enough to embrace Communism or Socialism.  Examples are Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia.  So there will be little free stuff to hand out.
   Capitalism produces vast amounts of wealth and lifts countless people out of poverty.  Under capitalism all the means of production are owned and controlled by private individuals who operate them effectively.  The owners take a slice of the proceeds, in many cases a whacking big slice, but they produce  rivers of stuff, enough to fill our store shelves, and flood us with motor vehicles, aircraft, computers, gasoline, air conditioners, electronics, furnace oil, interstate highways, internet, and God only knows what else.  Better to have plenty of everything even if the owners get away with a great big slice. 
   You gotta wonder about those polls claiming that yuge numbers of people want "socialism".   What have our schools been teaching?

Silly talk about NH paid family leave bill. WMUR

We had Chuck Morse (Republican Senate minority leader) and Dan Feltes (Democratic Senate majority leader) on WMUR this morning.  They talked about the comprehensive family leave bill, which the Democrats passed and Governor Sununu vetoed.  Feltes was saying that we need the family leave bill to attract young workers to New Hampshire. 
   That's malarkey.  People decide to move into New Hampshire if they find, or think they can find, a good job, a better job than the one they have.  Then they consider housing costs (rents or house prices), taxes,  commuting time, and skiing, snowmobiling, ATV riding, hiking, climbing, fishing, and all the other outdoor activities that New Hampshire is famous for.   Few will get down to considering the presence or absence of paid family leave when deciding to come to New Hampshire.  Dan Feltes is flim flamming us on that one. 
   The bill the democrats passed, and the governor vetoed, (SB1) offered generous benefits, and a stiff income tax to pay for them.  The current economic boom, good times, came about from both federal and state tax cuts.  Adding a 1% (or more, a bureaucrat can raise it if he thinks the program needs more money)  undoes the good work that tax cuts have given us. 

NH Senate session 15 May

Senate session, Wednesday 15 May.  This was a long one.  Started at 10 AM and lasted until 5 PM.  We dealt with a lotta bills, most of them nit noi unimportant stuff.  We kicked things off by passing the Fast Track calendar with 17 bills on it with one quick voice vote, no debate.  Then we faced up to 51 bills on the regular calendar. 

   We killed HB 558 the plastic straw ban bill.  We amended HB 560, the plastic bag ban into something totally different.  After amendment HB560 didn’t say any thing about plastic or bags, but now requires cities and towns to report weight of trash dealt with to DES.  Guess my town will have to buy a scale. We stalled off HB 447 about school calendars by re-referring it to committee.  It would have allowed school boards to start school anytime they please which guts an earlier bill we passed that required schools to start after Labor Day.   I think starting school before Labor Day is child abuse, but teachers and administrators would start school in July if they thought they could get away with it. 

   We passed HB 446 on a voice vote.  This bill allows editing your birth certificate to remove “Male” or “Female” and replace it with “Other”.  We passed HB 669 that would do the same for NH driver’s licenses on a voice vote.

   That’s all the interesting bills.  The bulk of them are just not interesting enough to me to comment on them.  Twelve bills created study committees, which I think is a polite way of killing the issue. 

   And, we passed HB 280 making the red tailed hawk the state raptor.  Important issue that.  Apparently a bunch of 4^th graders proposed this bill four years ago.  Those kids are now in 8^th grade, and they were present for the vote on HB 280.  I think we taught them that it takes forever to get the NH legislature to anything. 

NH Senate Activity. 13 May

Ed Comm hearings, Tuesday, 13 May.  This was executive session day, no hearings.  We only had two bills to deal with.  HB 131 was an attempt to recover the Signum University degree granting authority.  We passed a bill in the Senate to grant degree granting authority to Signum back a month ago.  For some unclear reason the House killed it last week.  We tried to revive it by tacking the Signum bill onto HB 131 as a rider.  Ed committee chairman Senator Jay Kahn discouraged this scheme, saying the house would kill it.  He suggested we offer the Signum amendment as a floor amendment during senate session this week.  Well, that never happened, and Signum, an innovative way to gain a college degree is without NH support, even though the NH Dept of Ed thinks they are doing good.  Too bad. 

   Then we rehashed HB 226 which would grant teachers their “experienced educator” certificate after only three years of class room teaching, instead of the current five years.  We added a lot of verbiage to the bill, making it harder to figure out what it was doing.   Which is OK by me.  Three years of class room teaching is plenty.  In the Air Force we put teachers in front of classrooms after only three weeks of training.  And the Air Force teachers, just sergeants, pulled right off the flight line, with classes of rowdy teen aged airmen, did just fine.  I took some courses and the instructors were as good as, of better than, any teachers I ever had. 

Anyhow, Tuesday cleaned up the last Ed Comm bills.  No Ed Comm hearings next Tuesday. 

What to do about Facebook?

They have been selling user's data.  They don't keep anything confidential.  They have been kicking conservative posters off.  They are almost the only game in town.  So what to do?
1.  Do nothing.  If Facebook kicks you off, start a blog. 
2.  Use anti trust laws to break Facebook into two (or more) viable pieces.  This ought to create competition.  Conservatives black balled off of one piece can re apply to the other piece.  The two pieces ought to compete for advertising by lowering their rates. 
3.  Regulate.  Set up a commission of "impartial" members to lay down the law to Zuckerburg.  Will stir things up for a while.  Then Facebook will capture the regulators by taking them out to lunch, and other juicy things, and offering them cushy jobs with Facebook if they treat Facebook right.  Plus, real control of what Facebook actually does will remain in Zuckerborg's hands.  The regulators won't be able to tell if Facebook is doing what they are told to do or not. 
4.  Encourage a competitor to compete.  Probably not viable.  Facebook has occupied the market space and getting started against them probably is not possible. 
5. Something else? 

I started up a Facebook page to support my Senate campaign.  It got a lot of hits.  Like 150 for each time I posted.  I believe it did me a lot of good in the election.  I won after all.  I am still on Facebook.  They have not booted me, or even bitched to me. Yet.

Islamic terrorists have posted a lot of really disgusting and hateful stuff on Facebook.  I'm glad to hear Facebook is doing something about that.  At least that's what I hear, mostly from Facebook. I can believe as much of that as I please.  They claim that Russian trolls have used Facebook posts to influence the 2016 election.  Not sure if I believe that.  Putin, old KGB man, has good intel on America, and must have known that Hillary was his best bet.  Hillary isn't very smart, isn't very brave, and would never give Putin any trouble over Russian aggression anywhere.  Trump was (still is) a wild card.  Nobody knows what he will do next.  Putin knew all this well before the US election.  It is inconceivable to me that Putin wanted Trump to win. 

Avengers:Endgame 2019

I took it in at the Jax Jr in Littleton this afternoon.  The theater was chilly, even for me wearing a fleece vest over my shirt, and a ski parka.  It's looong.  Three hours.  A lot of scenes when far longer than need be.  I recognized some characters from previous Marvel flicks,  Captain America (Steve Rogers) Tony Stark (Ironman but we don't see him wearing the Ironman suit), Rocket Racoon, Groot, Thor, Hulk.   Bunch of new faces that meant nothing to me.  Some of them vaguely familiar looking, must have turned up somewhere sometime in a Marvel movie.  The bow and arrow guy from I forget which flick turned up.   
    There was a hint of plot.  The Avengers must develop time travel to got back and acquire/steal/rescue five magic gemstones needed to save the world.  Some awful catastrophe has overtaken poor old Earth and with the five magic stones the avengers can fix it.  Needless to say the stones are recovered and then a lot of hand to hand combat with a large armored nasty happens. 
   Despite glowing rating in the print press and Rotten Tomatoes, I was not all that impressed. 

New tariffs on Chinese goods will make life interesting for WalMart.

Nearly all the goods on Walmart's shelves are made in China.  The 25% tariff going into effect is going to put a squeeze on Walmart.  Unless there is more juice in the business (like 25% juice, which is unlikely) which I doubt, something has got to give.  Most likely Walmart will have to raise their prices. 
   As for me, I don't shop Walmarts all that much.  At my stage of life I am pretty well fixed for housewares and clothing and appliances.  I do buy my prescriptions there, but I think those are all made in USA. 

May you live in interesting times.

Words of the Weasel Part 57

From Aviation Week.
    The Dragon capsule had successfully completed a series of 2-sec. firings of its small Draco thrusters, used for in-space maneuvering and was about 0.5 sec. from igniting eight Super-Draco  launch abort motors when the anomaly occurred, destroying the vehicle, Koenigsmann said.

In plain English.  The launch abort rocket engines exploded during ground testing, destroying the Dragon crew capsule. 

Mechanical failure doesn't get much worse than this.

Question for the Space-X folks.  Why are not the launch about engines solid fuel?  The ones that blew were liquid fuel engines burning hypergolic (ignites upon contact, no ignition required) hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.  Solid fuel is stable, does not leak, and is very reliable.  Launch abort means rocket the capsule off the top of, and away from, an exploding booster rocket.  Never been done to my knowledge.  Requires VERY rapid response.

NH Senate activity 7 May 2019

Things are slowing down.  For the usual Ed Committee meeting this Tuesday 7 May, we had no new bills to hear.  We went into executive session to rehash some bills previously heard.  We took up HB 131, a bill to create yet another study commission on prevention of suicide among school children.  We decided it needed more study, and postponed action until the next meeting.  Next was HB 149 concerning co operative school districts, and how to handle matters should the level of cooperation drop off, and one party want out.  We decided that existing law was just fine, and we voted HB 149 Inexpedient To Legislate.  We discussed HB 226 which wanted to decrease new teacher apprentice time from 5 years to 3 years.   Cannot remember what we decide to do with this one, my notes are silent on the matter.  We probably decided to kick the can down the road and deal with it later.  We did vote HB 258, a bill requiring study of teacher training, Ought To Pass, 4-0. Frankly, this is a no account bill.  The best teacher training is training in subject matter, English, US history, science, foreign language, art, etc.  A teacher that knows his or her subject matter can do a fine job teaching our children.  We voted HB 437 a quibble over paperwork, changing “ethics” into “conduct”. Ought To Pass, 4-0.  And we voted HB 447, which would have allowed school to start before Labor Day rerefer to committee, giving us more time to argue about it.  And we closed out the morning by voting HB 489, a bill concerning transfer of students from one school district to another, Inexpedient To Legislate. 

   We took a brief recess and then heard John Tobin’s presentation on state aid to education.  We need to do something.  Poorer towns like Berlin are running out of school money, despite outrageous property tax rates.  We need to do something to help out the towns with little assessed value in their tax base. 

    Then I met with 80 fourth graders from Berlin, down for State House visit.   Bunch of cute young kids, most wearing red school T-shirts.  I welcomed them, I said a few good words, and I shook hands with all of them.  It’s a worth while educational exercise.  For kids to understand anything about democracy in New Hampshire, they need to visit the State House.   

After a quick lunch, I got to the Senate hearings on the state budget.  Every one speaking, spoke up for more money to their pet cause.   The only gave each speaker three minutes.  After an hour of this I left for the hearing on HB 557, a bill to curb robocallers.  I spoke, urging some cruel and unusual punishment for robocallers, boiling in oil for the first offence and burning at the stake for the second offense.  I mentioned the robocallers who call me, pushing drugs, about once a week.  I suggested that we require the phone company[s] to fix caller ID so it cannot be spoofed.  That would give the PUC something useful to do.   

Good vibes yesterday, Tiger Woods Medal of Freedom.

Fox broadcast it live and at length.  President Trump awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tiger Woods.  Trump spoke of Tiger Woods at length and with warmth.  I think a white president awarding honors to a black golfer is a nice touch. It might not heal all the racial divisions of the country, but it helps. Tiger Woods is a fantastically good golfer, perhaps the best there ever was.  The president plays golf himself, and knew the ins and outs of Tiger's career, along with some ups and downs, and he spoke from a good knowledge of golf, and a good memory of watching some of Tiger Woods best moments.  Well done to both men. 

Disk Hogs in the wild.

I just discovered that Firefox allows web sites to store megbytes of stuff on your hard drive.  This is not those little old cookies, which were in the 100 byte class.  This Cached Web Content is megabytes.  I found I had a whole gigabyte of  "stuff" stored on disk courtesy of Firefox.  You can free up a gigabyte of disk.  From within Firefox click on the nameless button with three horizontal stripes, far right on the task bar.  Click on Options.  Click on Privacy & Security.  Click on Cookies and Site Data.  Click on Clear Data.  Clear the check mark for Cookies and Site Data unless you want to have to log into all your favorite websites (can you find your passwords).  Leave the checkmark in Cached Web Content and click on clear.  It's worth doing this before running anti virus to speed up the scanning.  If anyone knows how to shut down Cached Web Content I would love to hear about it.
   I figured it was time to run antivirus on new desktop, SmallBox by name.  I downloaded the free Malwarebytes V 3.7.1.  The default scan option is quick, a minute or two but doesn't check your disk files.  The  "Custom Scan"  option does do disk files.  That took an hour.  A lotta time spent scanning the gigabyte of Cashed Web Content, courtesy of Firefox. and even more time scanning a gigantic new Windows folder at C:Window\Services\LCU.  The LCU folder is so huge that I googled on the name just to see what it was.  What little info turned up indicates that people know about it.  None of posts explained what it was, and whether I could delete it or not.  It's huge.  Any info would be welcome.
   Malwarebytes tagged a  profile folder to Firefox as malware.  I didn't agree with that call, and told Malwarebytes to leave that file alone.  It did find some seven registry keys and three other files as malware.  I let Malwarebytes quarantine them all. 

More doings in the NH Senate

Ed Committee hearing, 30 April.  Light day.  We heard just one bill, HB 631, establishing a deaf child’s bill of rights.  It had a lot of supporters. The language is vague and wimpy.   Twelve clauses begin with “Deaf or hard of hearing children have a right to” this that and the other, all vague nice sounding ideas.  No sentences with words like “The school committee shall” of “The dept of Education shall”.  I asked about this, and was told that the language was copied from a bill in some other state and the “no state mandates on cities and towns” law prevented stronger language.  Far as I can see all this bill does is give parents the right to sue, at their own expense, should they come to believe that their deaf child is not getting a fair shake.   We had a lot of witnesses testify in sign language.   In executive session we did a lightweight amendment and voted it Ought To Pass.  This bill, with or without amendments is reasonably harmless to my way of thinking. 

   Then I attended the hearing in the Transportation Committee on HB 591, the anti off road vehicle (ATV) bill.  If passed it would close most roads to ATV’s even crossing them, let alone going into town to buy dinner, and make it difficult to establish more ATV trails.  I testified that ATV users are bringing real money to the North Country and should be encouraged. We need their money.  And that I would vote against this bill when it gets to the Senate floor.