Stalingrad WWII 1943

The decisive battle between Germany and Russia.  The Russians took horrendous losses but won the battle.  And went on to win all the future battles with the Germans.  Turning point in WWII.  Stalingrad was a medium duty Russia city on the Volga River.  Not the size or importance of Moscow or Leningrad, but a serious city with some serious industry.  Paulus, the German commander completely blew it.  To take a city or a castle you have to encircle it, cut it off from supplies and reinforcements and starve it out.  Paulus didn’t bother, he didn’t cross the Volga river to get on the far side of Stalingrad and surround it.  He called on the Luftwaffe and artillery to blow the place up and ordered his infantry to assault it.  The Russians dug in and shot down the attacking Germans in droves.   
   Georgy Zukov, Stalin’s top general, the man who had clobbered the Japanese in 1939, talked Stalin into fixing the Germans at Stalingrad.  The local commander was told to hang on, help was coming.  Two huge Russian armies of 250,000 men each were launched against the German supply lines and cut them.  Suddenly Paulus found himself cut off in Stalingrad with no rations or ammunition.  The German’s “fireman” Walter Model organized a rescue mission.  Paulus should have ordered all his troops to pull out of Stalingrad and head for a roundez vous with Model.  Paulus failed to do so, partly because Hitler was against the idea, and partly thru who knows what personal failings.   
    The Russians captured or killed all of Paulus’s 250,000 men.  The German army never recovered from this terrible loss.  

Who should a political representative answer to??

 There are two legitimate choices and a bunch of illegitimate choices, with the illegitimate choices shading over into crime.  The first legitimate choice is his/her district, the voters who elected him/her.  (Note: I need some unisex pronouns for use in cases where I don’t know the sex of the person I am writing about) The second legitimate choice is the political party, democrat or republican in the American case.  After the representative gets to Congress he/she will feel great pressure from the other representatives to vote to support the party every time.   Senator Joe Manchin (R West Virginia) was subject to this strain last week.  The party wanted him to vote for Biden’s “Build Back Badder” bill, a $2 to $4 trillion collection of freebies and  pork.  Senator Manchin’s district did not want “Build Back Badder” they felt (correctly) that it would increase inflation and raise their cost of living.  Senator Manchin, to his credit, voted for his district, and has been heavily dumped on by the democrat party for not supporting them.   

How to pronounce omicron (latest corona virus strain)??

 I pronounce it like it is spelled, starting off with "O".  I hear people on TV and radio pronounce it like it was spelled Armicron, starting off with "A".  Dunno how that happens.  I don't do radio or TV. 

So who will the Democrats run in 2024?

 They could run Biden again.  I think any Republican could beat Biden in 2024.  Biden's health might fail in the next three years and he will say he won't run again.  Or the democrats decide that running Biden is just handing the presidency to the Republicans, and decide to pick a more electable candidate.  Trouble is, just this year, I cannot think of any democrat that would make much of a president.  Scratch Kamala Harris.  Scratch Elizabeth (Fauxahontis) Warren.  Scratch AOC.  The Bern?? Who else do they have?  Must be somebody but I cannot think of a name.

  For that matter, I wonder what the Republicans are going to do for 2024.  There is The Donald.  Formidable candidate, who brings a lot (37 million?) of voters with him.  He also brings a horde of bitter enemies.  Ted Cruz?   Marco Rubio?  someone else? who knows?  A lot can happen in the next three years.

Don't infect friends and family.

 Why the lines to get tested for Corona virus?  Even if you test negative today, you can catch it before you get to Grandmothers.  If you are serious about it, get vaccinated, that works and it lasts.  This testing business seems like a waste of time to me.

55 MPG CAFÉ is greenies idea to push sale of battery powered cars.

 There is no way Detroit can make even the smallest cars do 55 mpg.  Heck, a 250 CC motorcycle won’t do 55 mpg.  They will have to resort to cheating, like the flex fuel rule that lets automakers collect a serious CAFÉ credit for each flex fuel (runs on alcohol or gasoline) car they make.  Or miss the 55 mpg target and pay Uncle some extra money to sell the non performing cars, (and raise their price). 

  This all comes from the greenies idea that they can prevent climate change (global warming we used to call it) by reducing the use of oil and gas.  This is why Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office.  This is why Biden has canceled all oil and gas leases on federal land.  Doing both of these things hiked the price of gasoline from $2.20 last year to $3.40 this year.  The greenies believe that they can save the earth by killing off real cars and converting us all to battery cars.

   Couples of things the greenies don’t know or ignore.  Mining and refining the substantial amounts of lithium to make a battery car’s battery produces as much green house gas as a gasoline car will over its life time.  The electricity to charge a battery car comes from power plants burning coal, natural gas, or oil.    Thermodynamics says that only 30-40 % of the heat energy in the fuel comes out as electricity, the rest goes into the plant’s cooling system.  The greenies are dead set against nuclear power and over the years have pushed thru safety regulations so bad as to make nuclear prohibitively expensive. 

Bake a mince pie.

  Buy a 27 ounce jar of Non Such mince meat.  Find a 9 inch pie pan.  If the pan looks old and dry, grease it lightly with veggie oil or butter, or what ever. Make enough pie crust for a bottom AND top crust.  2 ½ cups flour, ½ Tsp backing soda, 1/2 Tsp salt, ½ to 1/3 pound of fat.  I use butter. In the old days we used Crisco. Sift the dry ingredients together.  Add the butter.  Use a pair of table knives to cut the butter down into pieces the size of a navy bean.  Add ¼ cup good cold water.  Knead the pie crust until it is uniform and medium sticky.  Add a small bit of cold water if the pie crust needs it.  Divide the pie crust in half. Put the top half into the freezer.  On a floured board press the bottom half of the crust as flat as you can, then roll it out good and flat.  Check the size of your rolled out crust against the 9 inch pie pan, roll some more.   Slide the rolled out crust off the board and onto the pie pan.  Fill the pie fan with the Non Such Mince Meat.  Roll out the top crust and put it on the pie pan.  Trim the crust around the pie edges and use a fork, tines out, to crimp the top and bottom crusts together.  Bake for 30-35 minutes at 400-425 F.  Back the heat off to 300 F and give it another 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool enough to eat. 

  If you want to bake ten inch mince pies, buy two jars of Non Such mince meat.  Roll the crusts out extra thin and things will work.  

 

 Merry Christmas everyone!

National Inventiveness.

 Been a lot of talk on the internet about the Chinese are getting ahead of us at inventing new products and new weapons.  We here in the United States were the world’s champions of inventiveness for many years.  Even so, there are a few things we could do to improve the situation.

First of all we could clamp down on patent trolls.  Anyone who introduces something new will be sued for patent infringement just as soon as something new looks like it will make money.  The trolls, pretty much all lawyers, hold vaguely written patents with claims as broad as all outdoors, pop up out of the woodwork and demand money.

   We need to reform the patent office.  No patent should be granted unless it describes a device in enough detail as to permit someone to make said device, and that the device works after it is built.  This means the patent application shall contain a drawing with dimensions, a test procedure so you can see if it is working, a parts list, an electrical schematic, and a parts list.  Patents of devices containing computers or micro processors shall contain a listing of the computer program. Patents that lack this detail will not be granted. 

   All patent applications shall be publicized so that interested parties, often competitors, have time to review the patent application and if it conflicts with patents they already hold, or is ordinary prior art well known in the trade, they can make objections.  The patent office shall hold a meeting on each patent application where interested parties can voice their objections to granting the patent. 

    Interested parties may sue the patent office to repeal old patents which do not conform to these new guidelines.

   Much research is conducted by universities, using grant money.  A distressing number of papers published by these scientists fail to duplicate.  In other words when other people attempt to duplicate the reported results they cannot do it.  This is so common that I encountered it myself.  I had searched the literature, found a paper describing a method that we needed.  I spent a week coding it up and debugging it.  It worked, only the performance was only half what the paper had claimed for it.  I finally telephoned the author and asked him what I was doing wrong.  The author, somewhat sheepishly, admitted that he had left out a factor in his computation of efficiency, and the method was only half as effective as claimed in the paper.

    This sort of thing wastes a lot of time and money.  Grantees ought to keep track of research they funded that fails to repeat.  The scientists who publish fails-to-repeat papers should become ineligible for any more grants. 

  Doing just these two things would increase the number of new things invented and developed, a lot. 

 

Dumbo. Disney. 1940.

Rumor got around saying that Disney was going to vanish Dumbo, probably over those scenes with a flock of black crows, speaking in black accents.  I kinda liked Dumbo, having seen it in my childhood.  Timothy the mouse was an attractive character and so was Dumbo.  So I rented it from Netflix before Disney made it disappear.  Actually, looking at it today in 2021, 60 years after it was made, it was still pretty good.  Animation was excellent.  The stork expressman delivering Dumbo to his mom was excellent.  He was so good that he appeared in a couple of other Disney movies.  Actually the most anti black scenes were some short shots of black roustabouts hammering big top tent pegs into the ground in a rain storm.  Although I am pretty sure that circus roustabouts when Dumbo was made were all black.  The scenes with the black crows speaking in black accents seemed pleasant enough to me.  The crows were friendly, they encouraged Dumbo, including giving him the famous magic feather.  

   Anyhow I think the talk of Dumbo as a racist film is malarkey, it is a good fun film that has been around for a long time. 

Corona Virus tests.

 President Biden has called for millions of test kits.  Fox had Robert Redfield of CDC on this morning.  Redfield thinks we need more tests. 

   I have a few questions about all this test talk.  Do we need a lab test to tell if someone is sick?  And, what do we do about cases where the test comes back positive yet the patient is perfectly well?  Is this a real case of Corona virus or is it a false positive from the test?  How was the test verified?  How many subjects were tested by the test?  And how did we verify the test results.  Do we have other tests or procedures?  What might they be?  And how accurate are they.  In short, what makes us think this un-named test really works?  Some numbers would be convincing.  So far the TV news has offered NO numbers.

  And, even if the test works, how is it going to help in the Corona virus pandemic?  We can tell patients who are sick without using lab tests. 

Senator Manchin voted for his constituents.

 

Senator Joe Manchin just announced that he cannot vote for the Build Back Badder bill, a favorite of Joe Biden and leftie democrats that is pure pork and freebies.  Manchin said his constituents were solidly against the Build Back Badder bill and as their representative, he had to vote the way his constituents want, not the way the Democrat party wants.  Naturally the lefty side of the Democrat party was furious, called Manchin names, and acted out in other ways.

   I say more power to a politician who votes his district.  We have four congressional reps here in New Hampshire who don’t vote for what their constituents want; instead they vote for what the Washington Democrat party wants.

Why we don’t want Putin to invade Ukraine.

   We remember that Hitler started WWII by invading Poland in 1939.  We figure that if we forbid the invasion of neighboring countries, we can prevent WWIII.  And we don’t like invasions on humanitarian grounds; the people in the invaded country take it in the neck.  Ask any Pole, they will tell you. 

Ever since WWII America has believed that national borders should be inviolate.  We have even fought wars over this, the Korean War being the clearest example.  North Korea invaded South Korea with out warning.  We raised a huge army, fought a vicious 3 year war, and preserved the original state of South Korea.  As a side effect, today’s South Koreans have a warm spot in their hearts for Americans.  They have industrialized and are now an important power.  They were nowheresville back when the Korean War started.

One other factor in the Ukraine situation.  Today’s Russia is smaller; less populated, and has fewer natural resources than the old Soviet Union had it its disposal.  We would just as soon keep things that way.  The old Soviet Union was a dangerous competitor.  When the Soviet Union broke up in 1989, about a third of it became independent of Russia.  The new Russia, although a powerful state, is not as powerful as the old Soviet Union was.   

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

 Just for the record, I am in Mittersill.  I am close enough to walk to the Peabody slopes chair lift.  I get the same amount of snow as Cannon, at least Cannon base.  Cannon summit often gets a bit more that the base.  I measure the snow fall on my deck with a wooden yardstick.  I am an old Cannon skier, I started skiing Cannon when I was four.  I finally gave up downhill skiing when I turned 70, which was a few years ago.

   It is 9:30 AM and the snow seems to have stopped, although the weather people are talking up a "winter storm warning" lasting until 11 AM.  They forecast 4 to 8 inches.  I got 5 inches.  That is enough to make the skiing really good at Cannon.  

How dangerous is the omicron variant of Corona virus??

How dangerous is the omicron version of the Corona virus? Really?  Guys like Tony Fauci are claiming it is worse than the original.  Some TV news states that NO ONE has died of omicron (yet).  Other TV newsies have said the omicron is very contagious but the symptoms are milder and less likely to kill than the original version of Corona virus.   No one has presented any numbers, so anything might be true.  It would be nice to have one of the few responsible news outlets left to give us some facts. 

Putin and Ukraine.

 

According to today’s Wall St Journal the Western Europeans told Russian dictator Putin that serious economic sanctions would follow an invasion of Ukraine.   You would think that would carry some weight with Putin, but who knows?  Putin may not believe the Europeans mean it; he may believe that Russia’s economy is so local and so self sufficient that European and American economic sanctions won’t hurt. 

   Driving Putin toward invading Ukraine is history; Ukraine has been a central and famous part of Russia since medieval times.  Putin undoubtedly wants to own Ukraine for its historic significance to Russia.  He may want to invade while he still has an army to do it with.  Russia’s birth rate is in a death spiral, and Russia may not be able to recruit a decent army by 2040 for lack of young men to draft

Merry Christmas.

 

Merry Christmas is almost dead.  Clerks and cashiers and bag boys are saying “Happy  Holidays” or “have a nice day”.  No “Merry Christmas”.

Improve the criminal justice system.

 

The American criminal justice system is run by lawyers, largely for lawyers.  Lawyers love to drag things out; it gives them more billable hours.  For instant the Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death five years ago.  He is still alive, in jail, with lawyers arguing the rightness of his sentence.  He will probably die in prison of old age.  The lawyers have collected five years worth of billable hours.

Reforms we ought to make:

1.       Prosecutors should only be allowed to charge a criminal with ONE offense for each arrest.  Right now the lawyers charge the criminal with half a dozen crimes, some more serious, some less serious.  Then they say “plead guilty to this lesser offense.  If you insist on going to trial we will prosecute you for this really terrible offense that has a mandatory 20 year minimum sentence.”  This is plea bargaining and most American criminal cases are settled by a plea bargain.  It’s cheaper than a trial.  It’s not very fair. 

2.       We ought to go over our criminal statutes.  There has got to be a whole bunch of offenses from the old days that nobody cares about in the 21^st century.  Remove them.  Decriminalize possession of pot.  I see no reason to jail people for mere possession.  Rewrite what is left using plain Standard English, no Latin, and no lawyer gobble de gook.

3.       Forbid no knock raids.  Bust down someone’s door at o’dark thirty, and they will shoot, every time.  A no-knock raid is just provoking a gun fight in which some one gets killed.  Not good law enforcement.

4.       Justice delayed is justice denied.  I think one year is plenty of time for lawyers to run off a trial, yielding a sentence or an acquittal.  If the lawyers cannot get the lead out, the defendant should be acquitted after one year from his arrest.  

Lame Duck

 As soon as Biden announces that he is not running in 2024, he becomes a lame duck.  Many (most?) politicians figure that a fellow pol who won't be around in power very long doesn't need my political support.  Such a pol is called a lame duck and looses much of his ability to influence people and events.  So Biden won't say he won't run in 2024 until the very last minute, convention time in 2024.  Biden's statements that he will run in 2024 might be real but probably aren't.  

I assume the heavy duty democrats are feeling around quietly for someone to run in 2024.  Kamala Harris does not look good.  Biden doesn't look good.  Pelosi and Schumer are too old, not not very presidential.  I cannot think of a democrat state governor who is any good.  Who is left??

For the Republicans, Trump is there.  If his health holds up and he wants the nomination it is probably his for the asking.  If he decides not to run, we have Ted Cruz, Desantos. and Marko Rubio and probably more.

Would you give a floor mat as a Christmas gift?

 Weathertech is all in favor.  They are running TV ads saying that their floor mats are made in the USA, with American labor, and American raw materials, not stuck on a slow boat from China.  All very virtuous, but somehow the idea of a floor mat under the Christmas tree does not catch on with me.

Biden is blaming the tornados in Kentucky on Climate Change.

 Yeah right, we blame everything on climate change these days. We used to call things like this acts of God.  Now we call them climate change.  I liked God better.

Vote a straight Republican ticket this time.

 

US voters gave us Biden, a crime wave, the Afghan disgrace, the price of gasoline, the price of fuel oil, inflation, what have I left out?  We have a federal election coming up in 11 months, less than a year.  Voters ought to vote Republican now that we see how awful a Democrat administration can be. 

   We can help those voters.  We need to talk up the good points of the Republican candidates. Mention their names and where they are coming from.  Do a little research and talk up what they promise to do when elected.  Arguing with a voter is counterproductive; voters don’t want to be argued with.  Stick to talking about the goodness of Republican candidates. 

   We ought to be able to vote in a Republican majority in both the federal House and Senate.  That should stop the worst of the Democrat bills.  In New Hampshire we need good Republican candidates for our two US rep seats (Kuster and Pappas) and we need someone to run against Maggie Hassen for US senate.  We gained a Republican majority in state government last year, we need to keep that.  You can do the state good by voting a straight Republican ticket. 

    We need to get rid of Republicans in Name Only (RINO’s).  These are politicians who claim to be Republicans but down deep they are tax and spend democrats.  I don’t know of any in New Hampshire, fortunately.  Voters in other states should identify their RINOs and primary them.  I call any Republican who votes for Democrat laws more than just a few times a RINO.

Windows beat solar panels.

 

How to use solar energy for real.  Don’t mess with photo voltaic panels.  Go for plain old glass windows, facing south.  In my place, on a cold winter day, (10 F) I get so much solar gain thru my windows that my furnace doesn’t kick in all day.  Now the windows need to face south, where the sun is.  They ought to be thermo pane, two sheets of glass with ¼ inch airspace in-between the two sheets.  Just plain glass, one sheet, looses too much heat.  Saving my furnace from running half a day saves a LOT of expensive ($3.499 a gallon) furnace oil.  This is a far greater saving than solar photo voltaic panels offer.

  While we are at it, those big south facing windows need eaves, set so that the winter sun shines right in but the summer sun is blocked.   I am at 45 degrees north latitude (upstate New Hampshire).  The earth’s axial tilt is 22 degrees.  In summer, the axial tilt points toward the sun, giving us warm summer temperatures.  In the winter, the axial tilt points away from the sun, giving us snow.  In summer, the noon day sun is at 45 degrees (my latitude) plus 22 degrees (axial tilt) for a total of 67 degrees.  In winter, the noonday sun is 45 degrees less 22 degrees axial tilt for a total of 23 degrees.  You want eaves that give a 45 degree angle (shadow angle) to the bottom of the big south facing windows, this will let the winter sun shine in and block the summer sun.

   While we are talking about eaves, good deep ones will let the rain water run off your roof and fall upon the ground with out making the soil soggy around the foundations.  With good deep eaves you can skip gutters, downspouts, cleaning leaves out of the gutters, and ignoring all those ads for gutter screens. 

   Anyhow, good big south facing windows do more for your house  than solar photovoltaic panels.    

Stiffer Building Codes

 This morning's tornado hit has killed 70-80-100 we don't have a full count yet.  TV of the worst hit buildings show a lot of damage, some deaths, but the roofs look like they almost stayed on.  When things settle down, they might have the building code people look at the damage and make recommendations for stiffening the building codes for new construction to make the area a little more tornado proof.  More hurriquake nails?  more steel angles holding the roof on?  Something else?  Anything?

Let's hear it for companies.

 

Companies do a lot of good in America.  Many of us are employed by companies, paid by companies, given free health insurance by our companies, while the company is supplying product or services or entertainment to the most of us at attractive prices.  In America the streets are paved with gold the saying goes, and it is companies that do the paving.  Since the companies are owned, either by their stock holders or outright by their founders, or the children of the founders, the owners take home a generous, not to say outrageous, portion of the company’s earnings.  Far more than the average worker.

  Naturally, the various governments in America, federal, state, and local often do things helpful to companies on the theory that companies do a lot of good and need support.  Lefties hate companies and want to take every opportunity to tax them, regulate them, sue them, and make life difficult for them.  Only the fact that the company’s employees support their company and promise retribution at the polls (We will remember in November) keeps the lefties in check. 

   Lefties get their ideas from Karl Marx, who advocated getting rid of private property and having the government own “the means of production” and pay everyone a fair wage. By which Marx meant everyone got the same wage, from the new hires sweeping the floor, to the manager of the business.  And government got to install the managers, government bureaucrats to a man, who were not very good at running a business.  Dickering with suppliers for best price, hiring and firing, appointing people to important offices, setting prices, reviewing advertising, all those management things. 

   In America, we came up with a better way share out the profits of companies.  We invented labor unions.  The unions would negotiate for better wages and benefits, with the threat of a strike to back up their positions at the bargaining table.  Non union industries mostly pay union scale so that they can stay non union.  Management at every company I ever worked for would do almost anything to stay non union. 

Hold them accountable

 The TV people love to said it, "Hold so=and=so accountable".  Sounds really serious, particularly when talking about some no-good-nick who deserves to be boiled in oil.  In real life, we hold someone accountable by chewing him out and then letting him go.  Next time you hear someone use "hold accountable" know that they are lying to you.  The words I want to hear are "execution" and "long jail sentence".

What's a cubit?

What’s a cubic inch?  (What’s a cubit?).  It is a measure of the size of a piston engine.  Cubic inch displacement is the volume of a cylinder, measured from top dead center to bottom dead center (stroke). Another way of phasing it is displacement of a single cylinder is the cylinder’s stroke times the piston’s area.  And naturally for a multiple cylinder engine, which most of them are, the displacement of the entire engine is the displacement of one cylinder times the number of cylinders. 

   The larger the engine’s displacement, the more power it can produce.  Power comes from burning fuel.  The bigger the displacement the more fuel the engine can burn.  Rule of thumb used to be, that a well designed engine could produce one horsepower per cubic inch of displacement.  Now a days I see plenty of new cars with advertised horsepower considerable larger than one horsepower per cubic inch.  I am not sure I believe those numbers. 

   In recent times the car industry has begun to rate displacement in liters instead of cubic inches.  Handy conversion factor, there are 63 cubic inches to the liter.  A liter is a tad more than a quart.

   Car engines only have to produce full rated horsepower for short periods of time, say the time between when the traffic light goes green until the car reaches the speed limit (or perhaps a little bit more).  Then the throttle is eased back to probably a quarter or less of full rated power.  It doesn’t take much power to keep a car rolling at a steady speed.  If a car engine were operated at full rated power continuously it would break down after a few minutes.  Engines for aircraft and boats need to produce substantial power to keep the aircraft or boat moving.  Air or water drag is far greater than road drag in a car. 

Advice for Joe Biden

 Joe,  You don't ever tell the Russians, or any of our other enemies, that we are not planning military action.  You let them guess what we might do.  They might, or might not, fear US military action, but you want to leave 'em guessing.  We might just scare them off if we kept our mouth shut.  

Note:  If you want to get Putin's attention, transfer a US armored division into the Ukraine.  We do have an extra armored division don't we?

Capitalism vs Communism

 “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”  Winston Churchill said this. 

 

We used to call it communism, but the Russians blackened the name of communism so thoroughly that lefties now call themselves socialists instead of communists. What ever you call it, it goes back to Karl Marx, writing in the 1850s and 1860s, very early in the industrial revolution.  Things were rougher back in those early days. Marx observed that the capitalists, those who owned the businesses, took home a lot more money than the ordinary workers did.  Marx called this unjust (and a bunch of other things too) and proposed his solution.  Private ownership of nearly everything would be made illegal.  Government ownership of “the means of production” would pay everyone in the enterprise the same wages. 

    This sounded pretty good, and the Russians, the North Koreans, the Cubans, and the Columbians, and some others too, fell for it.  The results were not good.  “The means of production” were operated by government bureaucrats, who are never very good at anything, especially something difficult like management.  Lacking anyone to cut deals with suppliers, and truckers, hire and fire, and take risks, the businesses languished, lost money, did layoffs, or went out of business.  Government wages were skimpy at best.  Production fell off.  Plenty of misery was created.  “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”. 

    Capitalism has incentives.  The capitalists are strongly motivated to make the business a success, mostly because they wanted the money, and partly because they wanted the fame that came to successful capitalists. The more valuable workers get pay raises to keep them working for the business, as opposed to quitting and going to work for a competitor.   With everyone in the business motivated to make it a success, it will succeed.  That is why they say the streets in America are paved with gold.   

December 7th, the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

    A most important event in World War II.  When World War II broke out, with the German invasion of Poland, the United States made a very firm resolution to stay out of this new European War.  We had suffered serious casualties in World War I and had gotten little to nothing for it.  Part of little to nothing was the Senate, led by Senator Lodge, refused to ratify the League of Nations treaty that Wilson brought home from Paris.  Be that as it may, the Americans were NOT going to join another European war, no matter what.  The American establishment, starting with President Franklin Roosevelt and working down, saw Hitler as an existential threat and wanted to deal with him.  But the voters were dead set against that idea, and Roosevelt, probably the strongest 20^th century president, was unable to change voter’s minds.

   Pearl Harbor changed all that, overnight.  The word that the Japanese had sunk our battle fleet, with 2400 casualties, in time of peace, with out a declaration of war, was infuriating.  The country went from isolationism to “let’s fix the Japanese” in less than a day.   

   In actual fact, it took a very stupid Japanese government to do Pearl Harbor.  There was plenty of stuff they could pick up, cut off European colonies that had plenty of oil to keep Japan running.  We would have sent some nasty grams about this, but before Pearl Harbor there was no way we would have done anything more than nasty grams about Japanese aggression.  After Pearl Harbor we were mad and wanted revenge.  We got it. 

   At the time, the United States was the most powerful country in the world.  We had an educated loyal population of maybe 120 million, a continental territory, plenty of natural resources, a huge industrial base, and a Navy about as big as Japan’s.  In short we were an 800 pound gorilla, and the Japanese kicked us in the teeth.  Not smart. 

   Winston Churchill had been working his hardest to persuade the Americans to come and help him deal with Hitler.  Churchill could be very persuasive, he had established a good working relationship with Roosevelt, he was well known thru his writings, but until Pearl Harbor he had not been able to talk the Americans into joining Britain in the war against Hitler.  Churchill heard the news of Pearl Harbor over a regular radio broadcast.  He immediately called Roosevelt, expressed his sympathies, and offered a declaration of war against Japan that very day.   He ended his day convinced that the United States would get into the war against Hitler and supply the combat power needed to defeat the Nazis.  Churchill wrote in The Grand Alliance “Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

Breaking the line

   Crossing the Tee did not work in sailing ship days, partly because sailing ships could not sail into the wind.  At best a square rigged sailing warship might point up 35 degrees into the wind, leaving 55 degrees to go before being head to wind.  In short, there was 110 degrees of course where sailing fleets could not sail, out of 360 degrees for a full circle.  Whereas a later steam fleet could steam any course the admiral desired.

   Sailing fleets sailed and fought in line ahead, at least after the British took out the Spanish Armada back in Queen Elizabeth’s time.  In fact the British Fighting Instructions to its captains were very firm, not to say fierce about staying in line, not breaking out the line for any reason whatsoever, on pain of court martial.  If my fleet is in line ahead I can do the enemy a lot more damage because all of my guns bear on the enemy.  Not only that, I will take less damage from enemy fire hitting my sides, which are stout and nearly shot proof, than a single broadside delivered to the vulnerable stern, one of which can knock all the fight out of a ship. 

    Sailing ship actions depended upon the wind.  The British preferred to hold the weather gauge, (to be to windward of the enemy)  This permitted them to control the action, they could engage when they felt the time was ripe, or not engage but keep the enemy at battle stations for days.  The French preferred to hold the lee gauge (to be down wind of the enemy).  This permitted a French admiral, who saw his fleet getting beat, to order a turn downwind, a square rigger’s best point of sailing, and get away. 

   If both sides stayed in line ahead and fired on each other, in many cases neither side could do much harm to the enemy.  Lot of powder got burned, lot of victory claims were made, but nothing was decided.

   Nelson understood this before Trafalgar.  He decided to try “breaking” the enemy line, having a lot of his ships get thru the enemy line and then bring two broadsides to bear on each enemy ship, the broadside of the ships that broke thru the line and the ships that didn’t.  This was totally against Fighting Instructions, hence Nelson’s famous comment    “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”  At Trafalgar Nelson in 100 gun Victory broke the French line in one place and Cuthbert Collingwood, his second in command broke the French line in another place. The result was annihilation of the French fleet, handing control of the sea to the British for the rest of the Napoleonic wars.

Handguns inapropriate for teen agers

 The Crumbley parents are facing involuntarily manslaughter charges, probably because Mr. Crumbley bought the handgun his kid used to murder four classmates and wound a lot more.  The story I get is Mr. Crumbley went shopping for the handgun with his son.  

   I don't think teenagers need or should be allowed to have handguns.  Want to teach the kid to shoot?  Get a .22 rifle, preferably a bolt action or a lever action rather than semi auto.  Or a .410 shotgun. 

Crossing the Tee.

A century ago crossing the Tee was the battle winning naval maneuver.   Warships, (battleships mostly) traveled in line ahead, each ship followed the ship ahead of it.  Full firepower was available to both sides, the guns were all mounted in turrets that could traverse 180 degrees.  Dead ahead, not so good.  Only the lead ship could fire dead ahead.  The ship behind the lead ship could fire somewhat to port or to starboard, but could not fire dead ahead lest it hit the ship leading the line ahead.   

   To cross the enemy's Tee you brought your line ahead fleet in front of, and at right angles to, the enemy.  Then was all of your guns could fire on the enemy and only the few forward guns of the enemy lead ship, four or maybe six, could return fire.  

The classic maneuver was used at Jutland, the first and only head to head clash of modern battleship fleets.  Canny old admiral Jellicoe, commanding the British fleet, managed to cross the German's Tee twice that day.  Crossing the Tee remained an important maneuver up and thru World War II when the aircraft carrier became the important capital ship.  Carriers were expected to stay well out of gun range of an enemy fleet and let her aircraft do the work. 

Why movie soundtracks have gotten so bad.

 Lengthy rant worth reading is here:

 https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-dialogue-has-gotten-more-difficult-to-understand-and-three-ways-to-fix-it/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

It was Charlie Wilson's War that started the current trend of garbled movie sound tracks.  It is NOT my hearing going on me.  The sound tracks on my classic movies from the '50's and '60's are clear as a bell.  I can hear every word on my TV, it is only the new movie sound tracks that are garbled.  Curse of the sound man I call it.

There are some things any sound man can do.  First you gotta mute the score and the sound effects when the actors are speaking.  Second the actors have to speak up and not mumble. Finally you have to place the mikes in the right places. 

Mandates, Corona virus type.

   Democrats are pressing for “mandates”; laws that would require everyone to get the Corona virus vaccine whether they want it or not.  Industry is responding that the necessary firings of unvaccinated workers would cripple their productivity. 

   Don’t get me wrong, I think the vaccines work, are better than 99.9% effective, and are safe.  I got my first two vaccinations back in February and March, and got my booster shot yesterday.  I think people who don’t want to get vaccinated are wrong headed and I would try to talk them into getting vaccinated.

   However, America is a free country (at least it used to be).  People walking around unvaccinated don’t bother me, I am vaccinated and that protects me.  I see no reason to force the firing of all people who don’t get themselves vaccinated, except for the unholy desire to boss people around just for the fun of it.  I think everyone ought to get vaccinated, but I don’t think we should force it by law.   

Those that worry about catching Corona virus from the unvaccinated should get themselves vaccinated.

I got Boosted this morning.

 My doctor recommended it.  So I did it.  Other than a needle stick in the arm, didn't hurt a bit.

Will Corona virus be around forever?

 

TV people are talking about Corona virus will be with us forever.  Historically this is not true.  The Black Death killed something between a quarter and a half the population of Europe back in the 1340’s.  It came back at least once, maybe twice, and killed a lot more.  The Black Death makes Corona virus look like a bad cold.  Over the years, the Black Death lost its power to kill.  It hasn’t been around in centuries.  Partly this come from the survivors passing on what ever it was that made them survivors to their children, and partly the Black Death mutated in the direction of being less lethal.  After all, if the virus kills its host before it has time to infect other people, it is going to die out with its unfortunate hosts. 

   At any rate, a lethal disease that nearly depopulated Europe 6-7 hundred years ago is not a problem today. 

New Strain of Corona virus

 Omichron I think they call it.  The only way we can identify it is by decoding its genetic material in the lab.  It has a lot (25-30?) mutations in the working part of the virus.  Which makes all the medics suspect (but they lack real evidence) it can do all sorts of bad things.  There are a lot of people, newsies, health bureaucrats, big pharma, and others, who are profiting from the Corona virus pandemic.  These people are overjoyed to find and excuse to keep the pandemic going, and keeping the money flowing their way. 

As far as I can tell from listening to the TV, there is no documented clinical difference between the Omichron variant and the parent virus.  Patients get sick, in the same way as the old style virus.  I have not heard any clinical evidence that the Omichron strain is better or worse than  the "standard" strain.  Other than getting that booster shot this week, I will just watch the circus on TV.  Beat the Press had Fauci on this morning.  Fauci claims the booster shot improves your antibody levels by a yuge amount.  No numbers on how yuge is yuge, no description of the experiments that yielded this encouraging info.  This is the talk of a medical bureaucrat rather than a working MD who treats live patients. 

Seven Inches of snow in Franconia Notch

 This all fell last night.  Although we had snow flurries all day yesterday there was no buildup until later.  It was cold, 24F at my place early this morning.  That gave us nice slight and fluffy powder snow, the best kind for skiing.  No wind, so the snow stays on the Cannon trails rather than blowing into the woods.

Went to the Grocery Store today (Black Friday)

 Shaw's in Littleton.  Looks like Shaws  beat up on their supply chain and got a lot of stock in for Thanksgiving.  They were offering it on sale today.  Big 20 pound turkey went for $46 before Thanksgiving.  It was marked down to $13 day after thanksgiving.  Some things were still expensive.  Nice Ribeye beefsteak $15 a pound.  Lot of strange brandnames on stuff, brandnames I had never heard of before.

I heard a reason for the growth of skinless, boneless, tasteless chicken parts.  Apparently the skin and bones are chopped up really fine and used to make chicken nuggets.  Remind me to stick to recognizable parts of chickens, like thigh, and breast. 

Jefferson’s words have taken on a broader meaning over the years.

 

“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness--- 

When Jefferson wrote this he was thinking of contemporary England, which supported a heredity nobility.  Birth into a noble British family, duke, earl, marquis, knight, granted all sorts of privileges denied to commoners. 

   In 1776, in America, Jefferson was saying that there would be no American nobility; every American would have the same rights at law, the same advantages in seeking government jobs and military commissions as everyone else. 

   Move forward in time to 1865, with the Civil War won by the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation made to stick by the Civil War victory, and “All Men are created equal” was expanded to include blacks.      

   Move forward in time again to 1920, when woman’s suffrage was legalized by Constitutional amendment, and “All Men” is restored to it’s meaning of “all mankind both men AND women”, which it bore in Jefferson’s time. 

   Writing about this in 2021 it is clear to me that the meaning of “All Men are created equal” is much broader today, then when Jefferson wrote it.  This broadening is all to the good. 

Having Thanksgiving a few days early

 Daughter and Youngest Son decided to have Thanksgiving dinner with Mother.  But they came an visited me in Mittersill Sunday thru Wednesday.  We (the children actually) threw a before Thanksgiving family dinner up at the chalet.  We had John and Maggie, Carol and Zach, and all the kids.  Youngest Son wanted to do Tandoori chicken, which came out tasty, although a bit spicy.  Despite outside temperatures near freezing, and snow flurries the big Weber grill was pulled out from the garage and fired up on the deck.  The freed up the 24 inch kitchen stove for side dishes, basmati rice, cucumber salad, hot groovy bread. 

  A good time was had by all.

It's all Paid for. Yeah Right.

 Biden's $2 TRILLION dollar (or is it $4 TRILLION?) Freebie and climate spending bill (super porkulus bill) squeaked past the house.  Democrats are saying "It won't hurt, it is all paid for".  Yeah right.  The bill authorizes the federal government to spend $2-$4 trillion dollars, which means handing out cash, or writing checks, or doing electronic funds transfers.  Right now, before the super Porkulus, federal taxes cover about 60% of federal expenses and federal borrowing covers the other 40%.  Adding $2-$4 TRILLION in federal spending will require either a solid federal tax hike (unlikely) or a lot more borrowing.   The Feds borrow money by printing and selling Treasury bonds,  T-bills, which are nearly the same as money.  Samuelson, author of the standard economics text when I was in college, called T-bills "near money".   There is a 5 day a week, 8 hours a day bond market.  Anyone can sell their T-bills for cash and get paid in two or three business days.  For the feds to borrow more, is the same as printing more dollar bills.  Inflationary that is.  So the Biden people's claim that "It's all paid for" is false, us taxpayers will have to cough up the money sooner or later.  

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

 I have my children coming up, so I did some spiffing around the old place this Saturday.  The place was built in 1962, so it ain't new, and many would call it old.  I started out to clean the oven.  This oven is a son-of-a-gun to clean.  The lower heating element makes it impossible to clean the oven floor, unless it is removed.  So I get my set of spintites to unscrew the heating element.  Got the screws out, pulled the element forward and drew an impressive zap.  I had forgotten that one end of the heating element was always hot, even with the oven turned off.  So down to the basement to pull the stove circuit breakers.  Juice off, I tried to disconnect the two wires leading from the stove to the oven heating element.  One came off, the other refused to come off no matter what.  Best I could do is tape the heating element up out of the way.  

   So I started to clean the oven grates.  Part way thru this I noticed a lot of water building up under the kitchen sink.  Some inspection revealed a broken hold down nut-thingy under the sink.  So it's Saturday, Franconia Hardware is open, and down three mile hill I go.  Mike has the right parts, Mike has the right parts for everything.  Back up three mile hill I go.  Install the new U bend.  It leaks,  I tighten the nut-thingies with a wrench.  That manages to break the downspout.  Back down to Mike's I go.  He has a new down spout.  It's getting dark by the time I get the kitchen sink drain back together.  Then I have to finish up cleaning the oven and get the heating element back in place.  I manage, by which time it is 5 o'clock.  So I feed the cat and make myself a good stiff drink.  

Long day.

Kyle Rittenhouse trial is OVER. Thank Goodness.

 The jury acquitted Kyle on all counts.  From what I saw on TV, it did look like the people Kyle shot were really attacking him, and he shot them in self defense.  The jury saw it that way and they spent more time looking at video of the riot than I did.  Good thing for Kyle the jury was able to acquit on all charges.  Weasel juries will try to split the difference, convicting on some charges and acquitting on others.  That weasel makes the defendant guilty but the jury can point to the charges they acquitted and claim they were doing the right thing.  In Kyle's case, the jury did the right thing and acquitted him on all charges.

In this case a white teenager shoots three white rioters.  I don't see how anyone can call Kyle, or anyone else in the case a racist.    

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial was in Wisconsin.  Bill de Blasio and Mario Cuomo (New Yorkers both of 'em) had comments on the case.  What do a couple of New Yorkers know about a trial in Wisconsin??

Technological advances: the rifled musket.

 Some things move slowly.  The British Army issued a smooth bore flintlock musket, Brown Bess it was called, for nearly 100 years.  Infantry tactics were worked out.  You have your men load their muskets and fix bayonets.  You close with the enemy, very close.  Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes was the order given at Bunker Hill.  That's probably 20 feet, so close you cannot miss even with a smooth bore.  After firing on the enemy  you went at them with bayonet and gun butt.  Nobody got a chance to reload.  This state of affairs lasted up thru the Napoleonic wars.

   Come forward to the American Civil War.  All the new Army officers, recently pulled from civilian life, are furiously reading Jomini, Napoleon's biographer/historian.  Both Civil War armies, Union and Confederate figured Napoleon knew land warfare, he won a number of striking victories.  The Americans figured if it worked for Napoleon it ought to work for them.

There had been one important technological change since Napoleon's time.  The muskets were now rifled. The troops could open fire at 200 yards (600 feet) and get hits.  Rifling had been around for a couple of hundred years, problem was, using a round ball in a muzzle loader, it was quite difficult to force the ball down the barrel.  The ball had to be big enough to take the rifling, which meant the rifling had to cut grooves in the lead ball.  So, rifled guns were made, were used, but they were so slow to load that armies issued faster loading smooth bores.  

   The French solved the problem with the invention of the Minie ball, a lead slug with a hollow at the back.  The explosion of the gunpowder forced the hollow rear end of the bullet to expand and take the rifling.  The Minie balls were cast small enough to just drop down the muzzle, just like a smooth bore.  So now we have a rifled musket, that loads as fast as the old Brown Bess smooth bore.  And it is in mass production, issued to most of the troops at the start of the Civil War and issued to all troops by the end of the Civil War. 

    So now we consider the effect on infantry tactics.  The defender, standing his ground, can open fire when the attackers are 200 yards away.  By the time the attacker has charged 200 yards, the defenders have time to reload, at least once, and give 'em another volley.  The defenders get at least two shots for each man.  The attackers only get one.  Muzzle loaders cannot be reloaded on the run, you have to stop, stand still, to get the powder, the Minie ball, and the wad down the barrel, to say nothing of getting the percussion cap on right.

   That's what happened to Pickett's Charge.  Union infantry shot Pickett's men down before they got close enough to use the bayonet.  And something similar happened at all the Civil War battles.  Defenders always defeated attackers.  This was not supposed to happen if you had read your Jomini.

Malwarebytes vs Word vs Win 10

 

Word for Windows choked up when I tried to print. Drew an error message from malwarebytes about an exploit. Uninstalled malwarebytes and Word can print again.

Death and Taxes

 My telephone bill, just plain old telephone service, was $26.95.  Of this, $15.30, better than half, was federal tax.  It's not one tax, it is seven different taxes, designed to disguise how much Uncle is nailing me for. 

Movie the Golden Compass. 2007

 Based on a fantasy trilogy by Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass,  The books were good, they are young adult (YA) which I read as more interesting and better written than Adult Fiction.  The movie was pretty good.  Dakota Blue Richards does a fine job of playing Lyra, the main protagonist, even though she was only 13 years old at the time.  I thought she did more for the movie than Nicole Kidman or Daniel Craig.

   It is too bad that they never made movies from the other two books of the trilogy.  It could have been mediocre earnings from the Golden Compass.  From a budget if $180 million, they only made $70 million in the US and Canada.  Worldwide earnings were better, $370 million, so they should have made a fair amount of money on the Golden Compass. 

Abolition:

 Way back when, long before the US Civil War of 1860, slavery was confined to the Southern colonies which would form the confederacy for the Civil War.  The North was into small farms owned and operated by free men.  The big slave worked plantations were a Southern phenomenon.  And the two systems did not interact much. 

   Starting back in the early 1700’s a feeling began to grow in the North that slavery was unfair, cruel, and close to a mortal sin.  Abolition it was called later.  For the Revolution, this feeling was submerged, all hands North and South, understood that to beat the Redcoats we Americans needed unity in the face of the enemy and we could not afford the political strains that abolition would bring, at least not until we had won the Revolution. 

After the Revolution abolition grew apace.  A lot of protestant preachers spoke in favor.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe became a best seller, selling nearly as many copies as the Bible.  The Republican Party was created to push abolition.  When the Republicans elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Southern states seceded from the Union.  When the South fired upon Fort Sumter the Civil War was on.  If the south had just let Major Andersen’s Fort Sumter garrison continue manning their guns, the North might well have let the South secede in peace.  But after the South fired on the Union flag, the North sprang to arms,  It took 600,000 casualties, more that all we suffered in all the other wars we ever fought to win the Civil War and free all the slaves. 

   We didn't fight the Civil War for white supremacy.  We fought it for freedom and liberty.