AOC is bloviating on Fox this morning

 She thinks calling the southern border catastrophe a "surge" or an "invasion" is beyond the pale. Racist she called it.  This is important?  Well maybe it matters to Democrats since it doesn't seem to matter to us regular Americans. 

Will a high lunar tide float the Ever Given??

Huge container ship that ran aground in the Suez canal, blocking traffic in both directions since Tuesday.  Rots a Ruck.  Tide in the Mediterranean is wimpy wimpy.  Around here (New England) we get a nine foot lunar tide.  The Egyptians report expecting a 1.5 foot lunar tide in the canal tonight.  Eyeballing the pictures of one huge container ship, I don't think 1.5 foot tide is going to get her off.  Maybe if they have every tug boat for 500 miles around tugging on her ???  Rots a Ruck.

"Infrastructure" spending and new taxes

 The Democrats want to spend another $3 Trillion on "infrastructure".  Used to be "infrastructure" was concrete things like Interstate Highways, dams, bridges, levees, stuff you could see and touch and was anchored in concrete, not liable to moving to another state.  Apparently this "infrastruction" bill has serious money for a bunch of stuff that is not really "infrastructure".  And to pay for this extravagance the Democrats were proposing new taxes on cars and mileage.  The Democrat advocating the new taxes said that the traditional federal gas tax was obsolete.  Presumably he believed that battery cars were running on the public roads tax free because they don't use gasoline.  That's a stretch, actually fake news.  Most of the cars on the road today still run on gasoline or diesel.  In all my days I have only seen (and ridden in) just ONE battery car.  It was owned by an old high school classmate, something of a gadget freak, named David Biddle.  Biddle's idea of an afternoon's entertainment was to take his battery car down to the local mall, where they had a free 440 volt charging station.  While the car sucked up juice we walked around the mall and spent money.  

   So, I don't believe we need to replace the gas tax just to nail the very very few battery cars on the road.

The Professionals, Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin 1966

 One of the finest westerns.  Texas millionaire hires four tough guys to ride into Mexico and rescue his wife who have been kidnapped by banditos.  In addition to Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin we also have Robert Ryan and Woody Strode on the posse.  Everybody is tough.  All sorts of firearms, Colt revolvers, 1911 automatics. Lewis guns, Winchesters, 1903 Springfield rifles, machine guns, shotguns.  Lot's of good one liners.  "Hey Gringo, where did the bullet bit you?  In the ass."  "You bastard.  With me an accident of birth, but you sir are a self made man."  Claudia Cardinale plays the very sexy kidnapped wife.  I first saw it down at Keesler AFB when I first joined the Air Force right out of college in 1964.  The troops loved it. 

Generic Nasal Spray as good as Afrin

 For stuffy nose, common in the winter, I have been using Afrin nasal spray for many years now.  Trouble is, it has become ridiculously expensive, like $9 for a 1/2 ounce bottle.  I found a generic version at Rite Aid, $6 for a full 1 ounce bottle.  And it works just as good as Afrin.

We need nutcase control more than gun control

 The two recent atrocious mass murders have brought Democrats out in full cry for gun control, by which they mean taking everyone's guns away.  If not all a once, chip way at gun ownership bit my bit.  While we allow homicidal maniacs to run around loose.  In most of these horrible cases, the killer was well known as a nut case to friends and family, teachers, police, and others long before he flipped out and killed a lot of innocent people.  

   And yet we let these dangerous men run around loose.  What we should do in these cases is bring the nutcase before a psychological panel which would determine if the subject was truly dangerous.  Insane potential homicidal maniacs would be involuntarily confined in a state mental hospital.  We used to do this, back before the civil rights movement of the 1960's put an end to involuntary confinement. 

Picking your college major.

 OK, you have decided to go to college and you think you have the stick-to-it-tivness to graduate.  Second big important choice is choosing your major.  Most companies only hire people who majored in something they need.  After graduation you have to go out and make a living for yourself.  You will spend a lot of your time for the rest of your life making a living.  Life will be better if you like what you do to make a living. 

   At this stage in your life you may not have a clue as to what you want to do after graduation.  I didn’t.  But you need to work on it.  Talk to family, talk to anyone you know who is holding down a job.  Read some biographies of people you admire to see what they did for a living.  Read the Wall St Journal to see what industries are growing and what industries are shrinking (dying?).  

   You have to pick your major in freshman year.  Not that the college demands it (they should but don’t) but your major influences your choice of classes to take.  For example if you decide to major in a STEM subject, you need to take calculus as soon as possible, first semester freshman year is best.

   College offers three general categories of majors, totally useless, liberal arts, and STEM.  Totally useless are any kind of studies, gender studies, black studies, ethnic studies and more.  Anything with studies in the name should be avoided.  Nobody will hire someone who majored in “studies”.  Also art history, sociology, political science, underwater basket weaving, archeology, nobody hires anyone who majored in any of this stuff. 

   The seven liberal arts are/were English, history, foreign languages, music, art, philosophy, and theology.  English and history will teach you how to write and writers are instantly employable.  English is limited to the works of a few hundred English authors.  History is broader, covering everywhere in the world going back to the invention of writing several thousand years ago. Any company doing business overseas is always glad to hire an American who can speak the language “over there”.  They trust Americans more than they do foreign nationals.  Music is good if you have any musical talent and you plan to perform.  If you don’t have any talent, music won’t do anything good for you.  Likewise art, you have to have some artistic talent for it to do you any good.  Philosophy is fun but the only job it leads to a teaching it.  Theology is pretty much obsolete now a days.

   And STEM.  Physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, programming, mathematics, business, and more.  There are a lotta jobs for STEM majors.  The best STEM subject is engineering.  It is fun to do, and engineers are always in demand.  The STEM field demands calculus, the text books do things in calculus and lacking calculus the homework will be meaningless to you.  You want to sign up for calculus freshman year.  Calculus requires that you already have algebra and trigonometry from high school.  Note to high school students, you want to take algebra and trig unless you want to lock your self out of a STEM major in college. 

Getting my Corona virus vaccination

 Today I got my second shot of Moderna vaccine.  It was a strange deal.  Right after NH announced we could register for a vaccine shot, I logged into the "VAMS" website, answered all the silly questions and received an email promising an appointment email in a few days.  Well the appointment email never arrived.  I logged into "VAMS" again. answered all the question ans again "VAMS" promised my an appointment email within a few days.  It never arrived.  So I tried "VAMS" for a third time.  This time I was able to obtain an appointment in May.  Some time later the phone rang, it was a new vaccination site starting up in North Haverill, only a couple of  towns over from Franconia.  " Would you like an appointment with us?" they asked.  "If you can get me anything before May I will be right there" I replied.  They came thru, I had my first shot two weeks ago and my booster shot today.  Give me a couple of weeks for the shots to settle down and I will be as Corona proof as possible. 

Let's keep the Senate filibuster

 The "filibuster" has changed it's meaning over the years.  Now "filibuster" simply means requiring a three fifth's vote (60 senators) to pass anything that one party or the other party doesn't like.  Years ago it meant taking advantage of the unlimited debate rule and talking and talking until either the windy senator keeled over or they decided to drop the issue and move on to other things.  There is a long evolution of the filibuster from unlimited debate into today's 60 vote requirement to pass anything.

Now the Democrats, who have the thinnest possible margin in the Senate, want to get rid of the filibuster all together and pass everything on a 50% plus one vote.  That will allow the Democrats to pass a whole bunch of stuff that they cannot get 60 senators to support.  

Me, I think anything that cannot gain three fifths of the senators support is probably a bad law and we do well not to pass it.  Let's keep the filibuster to guard against passing bad laws. 

Dam Busters 1955

 An oldie but a goody. A World War II RAF miracle operation, probably the best mission the RAF flew.  The mission was to destroy German dams in the Ruhr, creating devastating floods and depriving German war industries of needed water and electricity.  The film, by a British movie company, opens with British engineer Barnes Wallace devising the totally novel bombs needed to take out a dam.  Dams are very big, very strong, and ordinary bombs won't break them.  We see Wallace getting his bombs to work and the RAF setting up a special squadron of the new four engined Lancaster bombers to deliver the bombs.  The film was made back in 1955 when the Brits still had some real WWII Lancasters flying.  We see the real aircraft down at 60 feet above the water, roaring in on English test dams, and later on the German dams,  at 250 knots.  The flying scenes are very good and make the movie.   It is in black and white which was standard for war movies back then.  There were some amusing but realistic touches.  The car doors on the British sedans slam with a tinny rattle.  Not like the bank vault clunk you get slamming the door on a Detroit car.  The Barnes Wallace home has a plate rack running around the room high up.  My grandmother's house in Montreal had just such a plate rack.  Grandmother filled it with decorative liquor bottles instead of plates.  Enjoyable watch and the movie tells the story straight. 

Do you want to go to College?? This year??

High School graduation is coming up .  If you are a senior, it's time the think about college.  College is rediculously expensive.  A four year degree at a reputable college will set you back $100K to $200K.  That's new house money.  And you cannot get out of paying it back.  Bankruptcy doesn't work on school loans.  If you start, you have to finish and graduate, otherwise all the money you have paid in is wasted.  You still have to pay it back, but you don't get anything for it.  So, your first question, to yourself, ought to be "Do I have to stick-to-itness to make it thru?"  

    College is not much, if any, more difficult than high school.  If you have no trouble doing high school, you will have no trouble doing college.  On the other hand, if getting thru high school was a major strain, college will be at least as stressful, maybe worse.   

    If you are unsure of yourself, you can take an off year.  Enlist in the armed forces, hike the Appalachian trail, take a job, go to Europe, Spend a summer as a camp counselor, spend a winter as a ski bum, sail around the world, anything.  The Corona virus makes next year a good one to take off.  They will probably still be into face masks, and "distance learning", and no parties, and no real face-to-face classes.  After a year or two of off year, you will understand yourself better, and you will get a lot more out of college.

    And, there are a lot of well paying jobs that don't require college at all.  Machinist, NCR tech, truck driver, heavy equipment operator, lineman, cop, auto mechanic, fireman, railroad engineer, fish and game warden, plumber, electrician, professional sports, and a lot more.  Think about it.  If college looks like four more years of boring book work, and you like working with your hands, you might be happier as a skilled worker.  

Foster Grants reading glasses

 I just had operations for my cataracts.  The new plastic lens give my excellent distance vision, No so good close up for reading vision.  I bought a couple of pairs of Dollar Tree reading glasses.  They work, but not great, everything more then two feet away is blurry..  Going thru Shaws food market I struck a bunch of reading glasses, Foster Grant by name, $35 each which is a big step up from the Dollar Tree.  I bought a pair.  They do work better than Dollar Tree.  They even have a slight yellow tint in the lenses which is supposed to block out blue light from screen displays, which is said to be harmful. 

So how do I pick a defensive handgun??

 First you want to pick a cartridge that has enough punch to do the job and is widely available.  Of which we have 380 Auto, 9mm, 45 ACP for automatic pistols and 38 Special, 357 Magnum, and 44 Special and 44 Magnum for revolvers.  Then we want to find a handgun that fits well in our hand.   In my experience the old 38 Special Air Force issue revolvers were miserable to shoot.  Grips were too small and they had been marinated in gun oil for 25 years and were slippery.  The Army 45 auto was much better.  Your experience will differ.  But you want to shoot at least one box of ammo before buying the gun.  Once you have bought the handgun you need to shoot it, at least once a month until you can keep all the shots withing a 6 inch circle at 25 yards.  Shooting two handed.  If you cannot hit squat with it, it won't do you much good. 

So what is available in SUV land?

 

Since Detroit is no longer making sedans, I thought I would take a look at SUV’s.  Start with Chevy.  They offer 7 different SUV’s from a 5 passenger Trax and Trailblazer and working up to the 9 passenger Suburban. Other than size, they all look pretty much the same.  The small ones have really dinky engines, 1.4 liters (call it 87 cubic inches) and even the big ones don’t have much engine, 2.5 and 3.0 liters.   Gas mileage on even the dinky little engines is unimpressive, 27 city 31 highway.  I owned a full size 1999 Cadillac De Ville once with the Northstar V8 engine that did as well.  No manual transmissions just slush boxes. 

   They all come with an “entertainment package” featuring a 7 inch touch screen.  It is not clear if you get an AM-FM radio or a CD player with the “entertainment package”. A lot of new cars come with just a satellite radio that requires you pay the satellite company for service. 

  Pricing can be slippery.  On of them claimed a list price of $30K but they wanted $51K for the SUV pictured.  The options and this and that can be expensive, like $200 for floor mats.  They want $40 for a front license plate bracket.  It was not clear if this bracket was needed to mount a front license plate or was just a trim piece to dress up the license plate. 

Detroit is going, going, gone

 A piece from one of the car mags, "Best sedans of 2021".  They were all imports, from Korea and Japan and Germany.  No Detroit iron. 

Let's all get on Cuomo's case

 Newsies have been trying to get President Biden to call for Cuomo's resignation.  Biden did not comment.  What Biden should have said (and did not) was "Cuomo is a matter for the voters and elected officials of New York to handle.  I am from Delaware and a federal official."

Lets regulate the Internet

 So said a TV ad on Fox News.  It said something like "We have been improving the technology of the Internet for 25 years.  It is now time to improve the regulation of the internet."  Then in smaller type it said "This ad paid for by Facebook".   Facebook has gotten so big and bought up or run out of business all its competitors.  They own the social media business lock stock and barrel.  What kind of regulation could Facebook want?  

   I suppose they might like some regulations supporting or requiring everyone to censor Republican posts.  Facebook is doing it, and taking some heat about their censorship.  Perhaps they think the regulator could take the heat off of them. 

How Green is my airliner?

Ordinary jet fuel is a hydrocarbon, a compound of carbon and hydrogen.  When jet fuel is burned, in the engines, the hydrogen mates up with oxygen from the air yielding H2O or water.  The carbon mates up with oxygen yielding CO2 or carbon dioxide.  

Aviation Week features a seven page spread on "Sustainable Aviation Fuel"  SAF for short.  This miracle compound burns without producing CO2.  The Aviation week spread claimed that all the industry needs to do is convert over to SAF and that will get the greenies off the industry's back.  

   In this entire spread Aviation Week does not tell us what a "Sustainable Aviation Fuel is made from nor does it say how the stuff is made.  Nor what it costs.  They have made enough SAF for a handful of flights in real aircraft and existing engines work just fine on the stuff.  

   This is the first I every heard of SAF.  I have my doubts as to how much could be produced, especially produced at the cost of ordinary jet fuel, which is essentially kerosene.

Instapundit thinks Susan Rice and Dr. Jill are running the country

 Most of us don't think Biden is running the county.  We think Biden just signs or reads aloud anything his handlers put in front of him.  A figurehead.  The interesting question is who is pulling Biden's strings.

Instapundit thinks it is Susan Rice and Dr. Jill.  He does not give any evidence to support this belief. 

Wall Street is OK with the $1.9 Trillion "Covid-19 Relief Bill"

 The Dow Jones Average reached a new high after Biden signed the bill yesterday.  Of the $1.9 Trillion bill only 10% of the money does anything for Covid-19 work.  The rest of it goes to favorite Democrat programs, like the National Endowment for the Arts.  

   The US GNP is only a bit more than $17 Trillion, so this Covid-19 Relief Bill equals better than 10% of the entire GNP.  The money will simply be printed, debasing the currency, and creating inflationary pressures.  Everything will be a little more expensive due to Covid-19 Relief.  

Not to worry says Wall Street. 

Disney is dropping a lotta goldie oldies

 Peter Pan, my favorite Disney cartoon.  Fortunately I have it on a factory VHS tape.  Dumbo, the Aristocats, and Swiss Family Robinson are on the Disney hit list too.  So I rented them all from Netflix so I can enjoy them before Disney makes them all disappear. 

Must be Spring

 It is up to 52F, warmest it has been all year.  I bought a box of fresh strawberries for only $2.50.  They were $8 only a few weeks ago. 

Looks like the Royal Family made a mistake

 This Meghan Markle is truly making the British royal family look really bad.  You would think that the Queen and Prince Charles would have checked out Meghan Markle before the marriage and found her unsatisfactory and made it clear to Harry that marrying her would be a disaster for him and for the rest of the family and the realm.  Obviously that did not happen.  Too bad.

I wonder which senator missed the vote

 The US Senate voted thru the Democrat's $1.9 Trillion Covid19 "relief" bill last night.  The vote was 50-49.  I wonder which senator missed that vote.  Probably a Democrat.  Of the $1.9 Trillion only $0.38 Trillion goes to Covid problems, the other $1.52 Trillion went to favorite Democrat spending projects like National Endowment for the Arts. 

Break up Amazon. Bring back Dr. Seuss

 First we have the Dr. Seuss publisher announce that six good Dr. Seuss books are "offensive" and they will stop publishing them.  Then today we have Amazon announce that it will no longer sell them.  We can fix this.  Amazon is a monopoly, has most of the book selling market.  Sherman anti trust act allows the government to break up monopolies.  The US justice department has a whole anti trust division staffed with well paid lawyers.  They could break up Amazon into two or three pieces.  Divvy up the office buildings, the advertisers, the customers, the shareholders equally.  Let the pieces compete with each other.  One piece will decide they can make money selling Dr. Seuss, after all he dominates the Wall St Journal weekend reviews of books.  Dr. Seuss usually comes in first in sales, beating out all the other books on sale all over the country.  

   They did this to the Standard Oil  company about 100 years ago. 

Dr Seuss ain't dead yet

 Walking thru WallyMart today.  They had a big stand full of Dr Seuss books right in the middle of an aisle.  Celebrating National Book Month.   Good Show.  Dr. Seuss is a best selling author, shows up as such in plenty of Wall St Journal pieces. 

She should have slapped him in the face. Hard.

 Her name escapes me, it was the chick who had a picture in the NY Post of Cuomo placing both hands on her shoulders.  My mother would have done so. What do they tell young chicks about getting along in the world now a days?

New Hampshire needs real power plants

 Real power plants will produce electric power when ever it is needed.  Fake power plants (aka "alternate energy") only produce power when they feel like it, when the sun is up or the wind is blowing.  We get plenty of cold dark calm nights up here and we need enough real power plants to carry the full load of the entire state.  We cannot depend upon fake power plants.

It would be best if the real power plants were owned by New Hampshire electric companies and located in New Hampshire.  The present deal where companies like PSNH are expected to buy electricity on the open market from out of state generation operations is dangerous.  When power becomes short the out of state operators may not sell to us up here.  If we owned the generators, and they were located in New Hampshire we could be assured of receiving the plant's full output in times of shortage.  

And  while we are at it, we ought to built a decent gas pipeline out to the Bakken.  Out there they have so much natural gas that the frackers are paying people to get rid of it all.  Private industry would be happy to build such a pipeline if we could keep the greenies off their backs. 

I like art and the arts

 On the other hand, good art sells for enough to support the artist.  Art that requires a government subsidy is bad art.  If the art was any good people would spend good money to buy it.  So, I gotta wonder about money for the endowment for the arts tucked into the Corona virus relief bill.  I think that is pork.

Paperpushers wreck Arecibo radio telescope

 On 10 August one of the cables holding up the 950 ton suspended instrument platform broke.  They spent the next three months doing paperwork (a plan for temporary repairs).  On 6 November a second support cable failed.  More paperwork was accomplished.  Then finally on 1 December the last cable failed and the 950 ton suspended instrument platform fell, busting a huge hole in the parabolic reflector and destroying all the instruments in the platform.  

What they should have done, back in August when the first cable failed, is simple. Get about six big rolls of good stout steel cable.  Run six cables out to the suspended instrument platform to hold it up even if all the original cables broke.  The should have been able to get that done in less than three months, even out in Puerto Rico, where everything has to be shipped out from the mainland.  Instead they accomplished paperwork while the Arecibo radio telescope fell into ruin.  They are going to abandon it now.