Detroit Iron

 Detroit is hurting.  Last couple of car postings, 20 hottest cars of 2022 and the like, were all foreign cars, mostly Japanese or Korean.  Except for single mentions of Corvette, nothing made in Detroit.   It didn’t used to be that way.  Ads and TV shows needing wheels now a days always show a nice Detroit car, usually a convertible, from the 60’s or 70s.  Never a Toyota or a Honda. 

   You would think one of the big three could pull the old tooling out of storage and knock off a few thousand classics from the old days and sell them.  AND, cars from the old days did not need semiconductors, except for a handful of simple ones in the car radio.

   Far as I can see, Detroit doesn’t make real sedans any more, just little econoboxes.  Closest you can come to a real sedan is a “crossover” SUV.  Crossovers are built on car chassis, the body extends the roof clear back to the rear bumper.  You don’t get a trunk, but you do get some storage space behind the rear seat.  Some models allow the rear seat[s] to fold down or come out to allow big stuff like sheets of plywood to fit inside. 

   The “crossover” name is historical.  The early SUV’s, Chevy carryalls and Jeep Wagoneers were built on pickup truck chassis, which yielded a big SUV that rode like a truck.  The “crossover” SUV’s built on car chassis are smaller, gas mileage is better and the ride is better.

War on Menthol cigarettes.

The Biden administration wants to ban menthol cigarettes.  They have not presented any evidence that menthol cigarettes (Kools) are any worse for your health than ordinary cigarettes.  The Biden people said that menthol cigarettes were favorites among the black community and outlawing them would encourage/force blacks to give up smoking. Speaking as someone who started smoking in college and smoked two packs a day for 20 years before giving it up, trying to force people to give up smoking is a lost cause.  The urge for a smoke can be extremely strong, far too strong to resist.  And, smoking tobacco has been legal in the US since Jamestown.  Trying to force people to give it up strikes me as tyranny, a specialty of Democrats. 

   I know, and they know, that smoking (with or without menthol) is bad for you.  Over the years a lot of people have given it up, and lot of people had not.  I think this country has bigger fish to fry than getting smokers to give up smoking. 

What is gonna happen in November?

 The Wall St Journal had two op ed pieces about this.  One piece by Daniel Henniger of the Journal and the other piece by Karl Rove, political advisor to George Bush.  Both of these guys have been in the business for a long time.  They usually get it right.  I trust them both. 

   They both think the democrats are gonna get creamed in November.  So do a lot of other political pundits, both the newspaper kind and the TV kind. 

   I am all in favor.  Far as I am concerned Biden is responsible for $4.25 a gallon for gasoline, 8.5% inflation, the disastrous bug out from Afghanistan last August, and shortages and outrageous prices at the grocery store. I hope the voters are sensible enough to vote a straight Republican ticket in November.  We need 10% margins in Congress to get anything done.  That is 40 house seats and 10 Senate seats. 

Let’s get that FBI warning off the DVDs

    Every DVD I play still has an image of the FBI’s badge above a copyright warning that threatens to sick the FBI on anyone who duplicates the disk or plays it over the air or some other obscure crimes.  Let’s be real, the FBI exists to investigate crimes and enemy spies, and over just the last few years they have been taken up investigating Republicans.  Copyright infringement of a DVD is a minor civil offense, which should be investigated at the copyright holder’s expense.  The FBI doesn’t have to time or the inclination to go after teenagers who duplicate DVDs. 

    And, the younger generation feels it is perfectly OK copy anything they like, music, movies, games, Mickey Mouse or whatever.  When they get old enough, they will vote against parties and politicians who support copyright law.  The Republicans could gain a foothold with the younger generation by supporting sensible copyright reform, such as copy right lasts for only 17 years, for music, movies, and Mickey Mouse.  The labels would scream and cry and threaten to hold their breath, but the labels don’t have the vote.  The younger generation does have the vote.

   At a minimum we could tell the labels that the FBI badge is copyright to the government and it will cost the labels $5 a DVD to use it. 

 May I offer my sincerest sympathies to the family of that brave Texas soldier who lost his life attempting to rescue some illegals crossing the Rio Grande.  That soldier should be awarded a medal.

Howitzer.

   Up til, or perhaps thru WWII artillery was composed of guns and howitzers.  Guns had longer barrels and longer range.  Howitzers were built the same as guns but had shorter barrels and could elevate them higher than guns.  The shorter barrel made them lighter and easier to move.  Forty five degrees of elevation gives best possible range for artillery. After WWII, since the pieces were mostly the same, parts would interchange, we stopped making much talk about the differences.  The 155mm (6 inch) howitzers we are sending to Ukraine can fire a 95 pound shell a tad more than 7 miles.  I am using figures from “Shells and Shooting” by Willy Ley published way back in 1942.  I am not aware of any technical improvements since then that would increase range or weight of shell much. 

   For artillery fire to do any good at seven miles you need recon to spot your target, and ideally a forward observer to report where the shells are falling and allowing the artillery to correct its aim.  Seven miles is a long way out for recon and a long way to push out forward observers.  The 7 mile range of the 155mm howitzers is probably plenty.

Election Strategy for Republicans

The woman’s vote is more important than the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Asian American vote or any of the other groups.  Women are 50% of the population, which is more than all the blacks, all the Hispanics and all the Asians all put together.  Last couple of elections the Democrats won the woman’s vote by 10%.  That wins the election for Democrats, right there. 

  As a party we Republicans need to win the woman’s vote if we want to win the midterm elections in November.  Despite all the happy talk on the TV about a Republican year, if we don’t get the women to vote Republican, we are stuck with Democrats, including that clueless Biden.

   One thing to do, don’t talk about abortion.  Some woman are for it and some are against it and no matter what side a Republican takes it will hurt, not help.  If there are other issues we Republicans need to address, I don’t know what they might be.  There ought to be some pollsters who might know something.  We ought to find them and listen to what they have to say.

The homelessness crisis.

You can see video from California towns mostly showing streets, parks, vacant land anywhere full of tents.  This seems to work out in California where the winters are not too bad.  It doesn’t work in New Hampshire where the winter temperature can drop down well below zero and stay there for a week.  Nobody can live in a tent, be it unheated or even heated in that kind of weather. 

The problem has a number of angles to it.

   There is not enough housing, and little new housing is being built, and the existing housing is too expensive for ordinary people to afford.  This unfortunate state of affairs is caused by snob zoning.  Many many towns don’t want more housing, the residents think the town is too big as is and they don’t want it to grow bigger.  So they zone for nothing but single family houses, on quarter acre lots.  They zone out apartment houses, trailer parks, and “tiny” houses.  The only fix I can think of are state laws restricting the powers of town zoning boards. 

   There are a lot of unemployed people.  When you are unemployed, you cannot afford any kind of housing.  One part of our unemployment problem comes for having a lot of citizens who lack any usable skills, who cannot get to work on time, and who cannot come in to work every day, or have criminal records, or are drug addicts.  In short they are not employable. This is the result of the failure of the public schools to teach any thing of value and who waste time on lefty things like Critical Race Theory.  We could try remedial operations like the CCC camps we used to run back in the Franklin Roosevelt years.  Such a camp would take in anyone, give them three square meals a day, give them 40 hours a week of work, and offer medical care for any problems the campers might have.  The work might be kinda low end like picking up trash along public roads, raking leaves, or shoveling snow.  It might be things like digging needed drainage, or clearing land for farming or building.On the other hand CCC campers mostly created the Cannon Mountain ski area back in the 1930s.

  And we need to reduce the number of drug addicts.  Right now a lot of doctors prescribe opioids to everyone who comes in their door.  Some states have opioids prescribed in 75% to 85% of   all office visits.  That is ridiculous.  I have lived a long life, I have gone to the doctor’s numerous times, and just once, after a tooth extraction, did the dentist proscribe Percoset for me.  And the patients find the opioids make them feel good.  When the prescription runs out they start to buy street drugs, which are a lot cheaper than prescription drugs.  We need to clap down on doctor’s proscribing practices.  We also need to spread the word that street drugs are souped up with fentanyl.  About 20% of street drugs have enough fentanyl in them to kill you.

Biden offers to spend $6 billion on nuclear power.

 Good idea.  I am surprised that he got the idea past his greenie backers/controllers. Greenies have been against nuclear power, fearing that nuclear reactors can turn into nuclear bombs and kill them all.

  Greenies also fear that CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming and fry us all.  This is not actually a problem; the atmosphere already contains a hundred times as much water vapor a CO2, as strong a greenhouse gas s CO2, so a puny 400 ppm of CO2 is not going to make much of a difference. 

   Good thing about nuclear power is it is there when we need it, after dark and on windless days.

 

 

 

You need votes in Congress to pass anything.

    Right now Congress is almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.  US Senate is exactly evenly split, 50 Democrats 50 Republicans. US house is close; the democrats have only a 5 vote lead out of a chamber of 400 or so members.  Which means, on any controversial bill, neither side will have the votes to pass it. 

   The country is divided between makers, who have jobs and pay taxes, and takers who are unemployed and drawing welfare.  Half the population pays no federal income tax.  They don’t make much, or any, money, and generous allowances in the Federal income tax for children, home mortgages, and other stuff reduces their federal tax to zip.  This isn’t right; all citizens should pay something, just to teach them that taxes hurt and should not be raised.  The poor don’t need to pay much, but they ought to pay something, just to give them the idea that taxes are bad. 

   Right now the Democrats are better known as the party of more free stuff and more taxes to pay for all the free stuff.  The Republicans are the party of the makers, they want to support business, which employs most of them, pays most people’s medical insurance, and produces the river of goods and services that make America the richest country in the world. 

   We have an election coming up in six months.  We have seen how bad a Democrat administration can be.  Every real American ought to vote Republican in November.  Give the proper party a sizable majority in Congress so we can get something done.    

Avenger’s: Infinity War 2018

    Meh.  A 12 foot tall bad guy with purple skin and a lot of muscles, Thanos I believe he is called, spends the 2 and a half hour movie beating the tar out of  Ironman, Spider Man, Thor, Rocket Raccoon , Groot, and a bunch of other super heroes whose names I missed.  It took me three tries on my DVD player to get to the end of this movie before falling asleep.  Most of the cast names meant nothing to me except for Robert Downey Jr doing Ironman and Chris Hemsworth doing Thor. 

   Thanos is ridiculously tough.  The space going super heroes guide an asteroid, solid rock, a thousand feet across and a mile long onto Thanos’ head.  For a minute we think maybe they got him.  Nah, Thanos shakes off all the rock a minute later and continues beating the tar out of the super heroes.

   They do a bit about an army in Wakanda fighting off an army of bad guys.  In other movies Wakanda shows up as a black inhabited and operated country in deepest Africa, industrialized, and equipped with advanced stuff like anti gravity stretchers and advanced aircraft/spacecraft like they have in Star Wars.  In this movie the Wakanda army, numerous and mostly infantry, is carrying short spears.  The few Avengers helping them out are carrying nothing heavier than shoulder fired assault rifles, which make a feeble “pop pop” noise when fired.  And in fact, the bad guys keep right on coming after even a lot of pop pops.  You would think that real Avengers would be carrying something that fired 50 cal Browning Machine Gun (BMG) rounds with a blam blam loud enough to damage the speakers in my TV set.  No such luck.  

550 Foot pounds per second equals one horsepower.

   The unit goes back to James Watt, who needed to sell his steam engines.  Watt was trying to tell customers than just one of his steam engines could replace so many expensive and hungry horses at their mines or mills.  We can assume that Watt chose a small and weakly horse for the comparison to make his engines look their best. 

  Many many years later, Detroit used the idea, and the unit to advertise the power of car engines.  Everyone knew that more power gave a livelier car.  They started out measuring the power of an engine removed from the car and mounted on an engine dynamometer.  The engine was tested “bare”, no generator/alternator, no power steering pump, no air cleaner on the carburetor, no exhaust manifold or mufflers.  All of these things took engine power to run, said engine power subtracted from the power shown on the dyno. 

   About 1971 the big three in Detroit got together and agreed upon a new test procedure, engine was to be equipped with all power robbing accessories, an exhaust manifold, a muffler, air cleaner, the works.  The idea was to give car buyers a more accurate idea of how much usable power their new car might have.  The other effect was to reduce the advertised horsepower of all cars by about 15%.  Although car salesmen groused about the reduced horsepower claims, all makes suffered about the same amount, so things came out more of less even. 

   Things trundled along for many years.  Until in very recent years, some imported cars began advertising huge horsepower out of very tiny engines.  One of them was claiming 200 horsepower out of a 120 cubic inch engine.  For comparison a Chevy 283 cubic inch two barrel carburetor V8 only claimed 180 horsepower when it came out back in 1956.  And that was under the more generous rating system in use up until 1971.

   The long and the short of it is, I don’t believe the incredible horsepower claims from some tiny engines.  As a rule of thumb, an engine can produce about one horsepower per cubic inch of engine displacement.  So 180 horse power from a 283 cubic inch Chevy V8 is believable.  200 horsepower from a 120 cubic inch engine is not believable. 

Teacher Training

    There has been a lot of criticism of American Schools, K thru 12 and college.  Some things we ought to keep in mind.  The Catholics run very good parochial schools at very reasonable costs.  We sent our three children to parochial schools and the experience was good.  The public schools should take notes.

   I did Framingham public school up thru 9^th grade and then Westtown Friends School and then college and finally the Air Force.  I had pretty good teachers all the way.  There were a couple of duds, Miss Waters and Miss Coyne, but the rest were all fair to very good.  But the best teachers I had in all that time were in the Air Force.  USAF ran Field Training Detachments (FTD) to teach aircraft maintenance, airborne radar, jet engines, fire control, guided missiles, instruments, electrical systems, lots of good stuff.  The teachers of this stuff were really good.  They were just flight line mechanics, pulled right off the flight line and run thru a three week “How to teach FTD” course.  None of them had ever been to college.  But they were good.  They knew their stuff, backward and forward. Their classes were all teenage boys, who could be troublesome.  The FTD instructors never had any trouble with student discipline.  The students all knew they had to pass the FTD courses in order to get promoted from apprentices to journeymen, so an instructor’s invitation to a troublesome student to leave the class was effective.  

   My take away from the Air Force was two things.  The students had to know the material was essential, and the teacher had to know the material cold. 

   Which to my mind means prospective teachers ought to major in stuff they need to teach, like English, history, mathematics, foreign language, physics, chemistry, biology?  Not “education”.  My college roommate wanted to teach after graduation so he majored in “education”.  He told me it was the most worthless, boring major imaginable, and he only put up with it to get a job teaching in the public schools.  After watching the FTD instructors do a super job with just a three week “How to be an FTD instructor” course I can believe that. 

  American education would be better if we scrapped the “education” major entirely.  

Moskva, Russian Black Sea flagship sinks.

   Russians lost a nice big modern cruiser, Moskva, in the Black Sea.  The Ukrainians claim to have hit Moskva with two cruise missiles.  The Russians talk about an on board fire setting off some ship’s ammunition.  The Russians just don’t say how that fire got started, so it could have been Ukrainian missiles.  The ‘Merkins are saying they lack evidence that missiles were used.  Not very helpful to the cause of Ukraine.  We would have done better to say nothing. 

   Pictures of Moskva show a very handsome heavy cruiser; the sort of ship a Navy will build when they cannot afford air craft carriers and the air wing a carrier needs to be battle worthy rather than being just a target. Our latest carrier cost $10-12 billion, and the air wing maybe another $4-5 billion.  I notice that Moskva, in addition to a substantial missile armament also carried a nice big battery of guns.  Modern US Navy ships only carry a single little wimpy 3 inch gun. 

   Anyway you slice it, accident or Ukrainian missiles, the Russians have lost the flagship of their Black Sea fleet.  All the TV newsies agree that this has hurt the Russians. 

FAA asks for modest 3.5% budget increase for 2023

    Considering the 8.5% Biden inflation loose in the land, a 3.5% funding boost is very modest.  Total budget request is $18.8 billion, which includes the big stick of the Air Traffic Control operation budgeted for $11.9 billion.  I have no idea how many air traffic controllers FAA employs or how much they get paid.   

   After the 737 MAX disasters, two deadly crashes within months of the aircraft’s release, FAA, prodded by Congress, is tightening up its certification and safety oversight operation by adding 57 new employees.  Too bad the Boeing suits pressured Boeing engineering into the 737 MAX disasters; they have raised costs thru out the industry thru more FAA required paperwork and more inspections. 

Biden going after guns instead of criminals

    Biden was on TV this afternoon, complaining about guns with no serial numbers (ghost guns he called them).  I don’t see the point.  We need to find, arrest, try, and convict the criminal, not the gun.  No point in investigating the gun, convicting the gun is meaningless.  Apparently you can now buy kit guns, mostly plastic.  The kits lack serial numbers.  The ones shown on TV look all sorts of rough and crude.  According to Biden, the lack of serial numbers is just awful, he didn’t spell out his specific objections, he just thought it was awful.  I got news for Biden.  A few minutes with a Dremel will take the serial number off of anything. 

Dune 2021

   It came in today after a long wait.  It only covers the first half of the Frank Herbert novel.  It brings the story up thru Paul’s duel with Jamis, and meeting Chani.  I assume if this one gets good box office, they will do another one (or two) to bring the story to the end.  None of the names in the cast meant anything to me.  Paul Atreides looks like a skinny teenager, but tall. Looks to be about 19.   

   In the book Bene Gesserit Mother Moheim asks Jessica “is he not small for his age?”  Jessica replies that Paul is only 15 and Atreides are late gaining full size and strength.  Paul has a shaggy wavy haircut that is always falling in his eyes.  I would think a warrior prince, trained by the likes of Gurney Halleck, Thufir Hawat, Duncan Idaho, and Duke Leto would have adopted a shorter military hair style that was not so long as to allow his opponent in hand to hand combat grab his hair and tug on it.  Jessica comes across as awfully short, shorter than Paul where as Paul’s mother ought to be a bit taller than Paul.  She has a very plain face that makes me wonder why Duke Leto saw anything in her.  The Harkonnens, Duke Vladimir, Beast Rabban, and Feyd Ratha all look adequately villainous. 

   Few names are ever mentioned.  I am an old fan of Dune; I bought the hardback when it came out back in 1967.  I was able to figure out who was who, and remember some of the back story of each character, but if you have not read the book, you will find the movie confusing.  The plot pretty much follows the book. 

US Air Force asking for some strange things for 2023

 The Air Force wants to retire a bunch of aircraft.  21 A10’s, 33 F22 interceptors, 8 E3 Sentries, and some other stuff, total 150 aircraft to be “retired” otherwise known as “scrapped”.  The A10’s will be missed.  They are the only aircraft in the inventory that can fly low enough and slow enough for the pilots to see ground targets, like tanks, and then hit them.  The supersonic jet fighters are not good for this.  The Air Force is run by fighter pilots.  They all worry about what it would be like flying an A10 and get bounced by Migs.  Answer, you supply fighter escort to your bombers.  This was the lesson of WWII.  The fighter pilots seem have forgotten it. 

   The 33 F22 interceptors is a long and sad story.  The F22 is a very hot air-to-air interceptor.  Numerous writers, in Aviation Week and other places claim that one F22 can beat 4 or 5 of any other kind of fighter.  The original F22 program planned to build 400-500 of them.  They were expensive; the last and cheapest batch was still $80 million a plane.  The defense secretary back a few years ago decided that was too expensive and canceled the program at 182 aircraft. Now they want to scrap nearly 20% of the not very big force.  Back in the Viet Nam war my fighter wing lost 90 fighters in as many days.  Keeps that loss rate going and in 6 months we won’t have any F22s left. 

   The E3 Sentries are better known as Airborne Warning and Control AWACs for short.  An AWACs will warn our aircraft away from enemy fighters and vector our fighters onto the enemy.  They are in high demand all over the world.  Especially for a war against a first world enemy that has a real air force.  They are not so necessary going up against a third world power that lacks an air force. Which is the kind of enemy we have been engaging for many a year.

Colleges can cut expenses, a lot.

 Colleges could have students do the lighter work around campus, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, mow the grass, sweep the halls and classrooms, wash the dishes, set the tables, help in the kitchen.  We used to do that at my old high school, Westtown Friends School.  It worked out fine.  Westtown started the system during WWII when they could not hire anyone.  Each “work job” only took about an hour a day of student’s time.  With students doing a lot of the work, the buildings and grounds employees could be reduced to a whisper. 

  Colleges could get rid of all the “administrators”.  These employees don’t teach, they do nothing to educate students, but they all draw six figure salaries.  I have read that some colleges have as many administrators as professors.  I suppose administrators do various sorts of paperwork.  Should some agency demand that their paper work be turned in on time, the college should mail them a nice form letter saying “we are working on it” as politely and vaguely as possible.  The only paper work that has to be accomplished is report cards (a faculty responsibility) and the college catalog listing all the courses, their times, and the credits and courses required for graduation in all of the different majors.

College Loans are getting tough.

 Since the college loan system was put in, college tuition has risen thru the roof.  Any time any college feels it needs more money, it raises tuition.  The students, who have already signed tremendous loans, just grumble and sign again.  They have sunk so much money into their college educations that they will sign for another few thousand bucks and just grumble about it. 

    One thing we could do now.  All the money spent on college is wasted if the student flunks out and does not graduate.  We ought to require colleges to pay off the student loans of those who flunk out and don’t graduate.  This would sharpen up the college admissions offices to only admit students who can do the work.  Right now colleges admit just about anybody because the students that don’t make it don’t cost the college anything.  If the colleges were responsible for paying off the student loans of those who do not graduate, they would be much more cautious about admitting marginal students. 

Are there any good new movies?

 I was cruising Netflix today , the 100 most popular movies rented from Netflix.  Arghh.  They all looked boring except for Addams Family 2.  I gave the Addams a rent but I worry that it will be terrible when it gets here.  I am a movie buff, I have movies on VHS and DVD going back to the 1940s.  The new crop doesn't measure up.  Hollywood movies used to be world wide famous.  They helped us win WWII and the Cold War.  This current batch won't do anything that good. 

Do Adults ever buy hardback fiction to read themselves?

   Is anyone writing decent adult fiction anymore?  I look at the best selling hardback fiction in the Wall St Journal weekend edition.  Most weeks two or three classic Dr. Seuss books and some other children’s books are there.  Seldom are there any books in hardback fiction that I would care to read myself. 

   I’m thinking that the Dr. Seuss and other children’s books are bought by parents and other grownups as gifts for children.  I don’t think grownups read hardback fiction anymore. I know I am reading a fair number of Young Adult books. The YA books have protagonists that actually do something, have a plot that I can follow and have some interesting things happen, and other sequels so that if I liked the first one, I can buy and read some more of the same.

What are the Russians thinking?

    TV coverage of bodies lying in the street, many of them bound, mass graves and blown up buildings are going all over the West, and making us think the Russians are real barbarians.  It is doing them harm, we think that people that uncivilized need some harsh sanctions, like cutting off their oil sales, messing with their credit, seizing $120 million yachts, and other stuff is what they deserve. 

   If the Russians had any sense, they wouldn’t leave dead civilians lying in the streets.  I don’t know where Putin himself is coming from, but the high command of the Russian army ought to have insisted that the troops lay off the civilians.  Somewhere down the chain of command, things were let slip.  Could have been officers at the division level, or at the brigade level, or the company level.  Or it could be that the troops just ignored their officers and started shooting civilians.  How ever it happened it hurt the Russians badly.  They should have known what this sort of behavior would do to them, and they should have prevented it.  They failed, and they are now drawing world wide condemnation. 

More Old Line Science Fiction Authors, L. Sprague de Camp

de Camp was a pretty good writer.  All his stuff is worth reading.  My favorite is Lest Darkness Fall. It's old, copyright 1939. but it still reads well.  Thru methods not well explained, a modern archeologist, Martin Padway gets miraculously transported from our modern time back to Ancient Rome of the 500s.  Despite being written about 70 years ago Padway comes off as a perfectly reasonable modern American in his dealing with the inhabitants of Ancient Rome.   Fortunately Padway knows Latin and Italian well enough to get along in Ancient Rome.  He manages to make a living by borrowing money from a local Rome banker and setting up to distill and sell brandy.  The time is just a few weeks before Justinian, the Eastern Rome Emperor will make his attempt to reconquer Italy for the Empire.  Padway decides to oppose Justinian and Justinian's general Belisaurius.  Thru good luck, and employment of some 20th century military ideas, the Goths in Italy, with Padway leading them, manage to defeat the Imperial invasion.   Padway meets a number of pretty and cool chicks, does not marry any of them.  All in all a good read.  You will enjoy it.   

How long before Biden crashes the US dollar?

Goldman Sachs asks the question.  These are bankers worrying about borrowing too much money.  When bankers express worry about such things, trouble is not far away.

Presby’s sugaring off party

Presby throws this party every year.  Breakfast of pancakes, choice of bacon, pork sausage, or ham, donut holes, coffee.  Kids love it.  Saw new maple sap tanks and the new stainless steel sap boiler, bought some maple stuff, and enjoyed the morning.

 

Biden’s 9000 oil and gas leases.

 Biden has been complaining that the oil companies have 9000 leases to drill and they have not drilled them.  What Biden doesn’t say is that some of these leases were for dry holes, land that just didn’t have any oil in it.  Others are leases on land that has a little oil, but not enough to justify sinking an expensive well which will never produce enough oil or gas to pay for the cost of drilling.  In both of these cases, oil company management is doing the right thing, conserving money by not drilling unless the well will be profitable, i.e. pay off the costs of drilling it. 

   Biden is threatening to cancel all the unused leases and maybe fine the oil companies for not drilling them. 

   This abusive policy is not going to increase domestic oil production and get it back up to where it was when Trump was president.  It will provide welfare for lawyers for years.

   Biden ought to get the leasing situation straightened out so that a lease is issued within a month of the oil company making a request for one.  He ought to sell leases off shore, in Anwar, just about anywhere except in the Grand Canyon.  And come up with a way to disqualify British Petroleum for gross incompetence and endangering everyone near a BP facility.  BP is the company the let the Alaska pipeline rust out and leak, managed to blow up their refinery in Texas, and caused that awful blowout in the Gulf of Mexico back in Obama time. 

Rare Element shortages.

    Lithium is element number 3, above hydrogen and helium.  It is an alkali metal with a single valance electron.  It is found in nature as various compounds.  Elements lighter than iron are quite plentiful in the universe and on earth.  The lighter elements are created in all stars, of which there are many.  The heavier elements, heavier than iron, are only formed in supernova, of which there are many many less than there are stars.  Only one star in 1000 (or more) goes supernova, so the elements formed in supernovae are scarcer, although available.  Copper, silver, gold and platinum are all heavier than iron, scarce enough to be called precious metals, but common enough to be used as money and as jewelry. 

   Anyway, we should be able to find plenty of lithium in North America if we look.  Actually they have found a sizeable lithium deposit out in Oregon.  The company prospecting this deposit was saying on the radio that required greenie paperwork will delay opening a mine in this deposit by five or ten years.  If we really need more lithium for batteries in battery cars, we could get it now be revoking all the greenie paperwork.