Education for STEM subjects

Wall St Journal ran a op-ed about this yesterday.  The authors criticized American schools up one side and down the other.  But, their complaints didn't resonate with me.  The trashed both science and mathematics education for being "fifty years out of date". They trashed computer science for just teaching software and not teaching anything about the electronics that make the CPUs tick.  And they plumped for teaching "discrete mathematics" starting in sixth grade.
   The "fifty year old" slam doesn't mean much to me.  Isaac Newton laid out the foundations of physics 400 years ago.  They taught it to me in high school and I found it very useful through out a long career in electrical engineering.  I know the modern physics, quantum mechanics and Einstein, but most practical problems in the real world can be solved with plain old fashioned Newtonian physics.  Every kid ought to learn them.
    Knowing how computers work inside at the transistor level is useful, especially if you are going to design computers, but software is a large field, employs a lot more people that hardware design, and I know a lot of very decent programmers who have zero knowledge beyond software.
   They also push for teaching "discrete mathematics" ,a new term to me.  Boolean algebra is what we use for digital design, but unless the student knows ordinary algebra, Boolean algebra won't mean much to them.
   My prescription for better education is simple.  Merely require all high school students to take one year of physics, a year of chemistry, and a year of biology.  Even if the student has no desire to take a STEM major in college, they need some basic science to understand our increasingly scientific world.
   Plus, it should be the duty of all teachers to make sure high school freshmen under stand that they have to take the right mathematics in high school if they want to get into STEM majors in college.  All the STEM majors require integral calculus, and many require differential calculus and transform methods.  If the student isn't ready to take integral calculus freshman year in college, he is out.  All the STEM courses have calculus as a prerequisite.  You have to get your calculus in freshman year so you can take the STEM courses sophomore year.  Which means the student needs to have algebra, geometry,and trigonometry  under his/her belt during high school.  The integral calculus course won't mean anything if you don't have the prerequisites. 

Yesterday a 79 mph curve, today it's 30 mph

Yesterday the newsies were saying the Amtrak train was going 81 mph into a 79 mph curve.  This morning NHPR is reporting the curve was posted for 30 mph.  Either the curve did a lotta shrinking over night (unlikely) or yesterday's newsies got it wrong.  If the Amtrak train was doing 80 mph thru a 30 mph curve, that pretty much explains how the train came off the track.
   Some questions the newsies are too ignorant to ask.
   The "new" line the train was operating on.  How new?  Most railroad right of ways had track laid on them back in the 1800's.  Was this a brand new right of way, bulldozed out last year? Or was it an old line brought back into service?  How many years ago was the track laid?  What kind of ties were used?  Prestressed concrete ( which lasts forever) or traditional cresoted wood (which rots out over the years)?  Amtrak will run passenger trains over really crummy track.  At White River Junction VT, the wooden ties are so soft and rotten that you can pluck the spikes out with your fingers, but Amtrak runs over it.  What shape was the track in, really?
   If the curve was really a 30 mph curve, how was the train crew supposed to know?  Especially as this was the inaugural (very first) run.  Were there trackside signs like on the highway.  If so were the signs actually in place?  If the crew was supposed to look in their time table, or look at some electronic device in the cab, how were they expected to know when they approached this tricky curve?  It was dark, and this crew had never been over the line before.
   It's been reported  that $181 million was spent bringing this line into service.  For $181 million I would expect them to straighten out sharp and dangerous curves.   Just what was all that money spent on?  Who was the contractor, and what kind of experience did they have in building railroad lines?
  
 

$22 million for a UFO study??

The newsies have been talking this one up.  The Air Force had a UFO project going with a $22 million budget.  This ain't news.  The Air Force has had UFO studies going since 1948 (Project Blue Book).  There was the Condon report in the 1970's.  UFO's were first mentioned in the public press in 1947, so a 1948 Project Blue Book is getting right with the times. 
  And, when people see UFO's they tend to telephone someone, and someone is usually the Air Force.  Or other agencies refer callers to the Air Force.  And a lot of people see UFO's.  I saw one myself years and years ago in Franconia Notch NH.  For that matter I was on the flightline in Duluth MI the night we scrambled nuclear armed jet interceptors against a UFO that showed up on SAGE radar.  So there are a lot of reports, and the Air Force, as a good bureaucratic organization, feels a duty to do something with all those reports, if only to file them.  
   So I don't find the latest $22 million UFO study to be unusual.  The Air Force has been doing these studies for better than 65 years.

In the Air Force we always had backup generators

Apparently the civilians at Atlanta airport did not.  When their power went out, they shut down, closed the field for landings and takeoffs.  That's not right.  There could have been an airliner low on fuel needing to land right now, before the tanks went dry.  It could have been after dark with airliners on final approach, following the runway lights, which suddenly go dark
  The Air Force always had engine driven generators on base, enough to run essential stuff, the runway lights, the tower and its radios, the instrument landing system (ILS), the ground controlled approach (GCA) radar, the beacon, the nav aids, TACAN and VOR, and some flight line lighting.  We could fly even with a power outage.
   I think the civilian airports ought to be required to do the same.  Having a huge airport go dark and shut down with out warning is dangerous.

Trump Tax plan hits "the rich"

 All though the top rate ($500,000 and up) drops from 39.6% to 37%, the next rate, 35% used to start at $425,000. Under the Trump tax plan, you hit the 35% bracket at $200,000. In short a whole bunch of reasonable well off taxpayers got boosted up into the 35% bracket, whereas under current law, they paid 32%.   The really rich save 2.6% but the quite well off get hit for 3% more.
   The middle class ($38,701 to $93,701) get a 3% to 4% cut.
This is just looking at rates, I did not figure in the effects of doubling the standard deduction.  

How to tell an advanced economy when you see one

Simple.  Advanced economies can export automobiles to the United States.  All others have to import cars from the few advanced economies that can make them.  This year only Germany, Japan, and South Korea make the cut.  Over the years the British, the French, and the Italians dropped out of the US car market.  The Chinese are clearly thinking about getting into the US market but they are not here, yet. 
   That's a remarkably small list.  Nice thing is that they are all three solid US allies (now). 
   The British had a nice US export business in sports cars in the '40s and '50s.  Road and Track magazine was started for sports car owners, owning mostly Austin Healey, Jaguar, MG, Morgan, and Triumph sports cars.  The imported sports car business finally began to fade in the '70s partly due to competition from Ford Mustangs, and partly due to the truly awful reputation for flakiness that British quality control (or lack of it) created.  "Lucas, Prince of Darkness" was the slam directed at British electrical systems (all built by Lucas).  The Italians had the same problem, Fiat was said to stand for "Fix it Again Tony".   The French tried to sell the Citroen DS-19, a distinctively styled car, very low, tail lights mounted on the roof, and an enormously complex hydraulic system that was virtually unrepairable.  Later they tried with Peugeot sedans.  I can remember car pooling out to Raytheon with a guy who drove a Peugeot.  In the winter he had to open the hood, remove some strange engine part and bring it inside to keep it warm so the car would start at 5 PM.

Flying a V2 rocket out of wartime Poland

This story comes from Antony Beevor's  "The Second World War".  The Polish resistance found a V2 rocket that had crashed in the Polish marshes.  The resistance got to the V2 before the Germans, took it apart and spirited it away.  The resistance contacted their Allied support in Britain, and a specially modified C47 transport was flown into Poland to fly the V2 rocket back to England for examination by Allied scientists.
   That must have been one awful hairy flight.  From Britain to Poland was just about the limit of a Gooney bird's range, even with extra fuel tanks.  The flight path either had to cross Germany, which was crawling with fighters and antiaircraft guns, or fly around Germany, presumable over the Baltic sea.   Find a landing strip, big enough for a C47, in the dark, with no electronic navigation aids.  Then they had to get the V2 rocket inside the Gooney bird, a tight squeeze.   And they had to find gasoline in Nazi occupied Poland to refuel the Gooney bird for the return trip.  And get off the ground before the Germans arrived to arrest them all.
   All  in all, flying a B17 to Schweinfurt, or a B24 to Ploesti would be less dangerous. 

Chromebooks for children

Article in the Wall St. Journal yesterday.  What sort of computer to get for a 12 year old.  Answer: a Chromebook.  Looks like a laptop, does NOT run Windows, and costs $300-$400. 
  Not cheap.  I bought a brand new HP Pavilion laptop running Windows down at Staples a little while ago for $300. 
   And for a 12 year old?  I can remember doing a lot of stuff when I was 12, all of it a lot cooler than websurfing on a laptop.  Fishing, skiing, bicycling, electric trains, building tree houses, playing guns with the neighborhood kids, toy soldiers, plastic models, wood working in Dad's shop, hiking, shooting bow and arrow... 

Cops should be fair minded and open minded.

This FBI guy, Peter Strzok, clearly is not.  And he is a cop.  The text messages between him and his girl friend, lawyer Lisa Page show hatred, minds made up, and a desire to influence elections, and possible thoughts of doing a political assassination, which no cop ought to do.
   How did this turkey get to be a senior FBI guy?  He was senior enough to be in on interviewing Hillary about that email server,  senior enough to be loaned out to the Mueller "investigation".  He's been at the FBI for years.  Surely FBI does yearly performance reports like we do in the armed services?  Over all those years nobody mentioned that Peter Strzok was a deep left screwball?  And they promoted him? 
   And there are enough deep lefties at the Bureau for Peter to hook up with a lawyer who shares his warped views?  God help anyone that lawyer prosecutes. 
   The only difference between the police force of a democracy and a Gestapo is the quality of the agents.  Clearly Peter Strzok, and his girlfriend lawyer are the dregs.  Both of them ought to be fired, ASAP. 

Most comments on proposed regulations are fake

Front page of today's Wall St Journal.  For example, a comment to the FCC opposing net neutrality was filed by a woman who died twelve years  ago.  The Journal mailed queries to the authors of a million comments.  7800 queries bounced back due to bad email addresses.  Of the queries that obtained a reply, 72% of the replies denied ever having sent in the comment.  Plus, looking at the comments received, the bulk of them are copies of each other. 
   The conclusion is that most of the comments are generated by 'bots, computer programs that just add false addresses and send the same message over and over again.  To the point that for the agency to read these comments and act upon them is folly.

The Roy Moore election is on today.

And the newsies are commenting about it.  But, they aren't saying anything about turnout at the polls.  Is it heavy? or light?  Polls don't close for hours, and they don't do exit polling like they used to so we won't know who won until late this evening or even until Wednesday.

Chain immigration and immigration lotteries?

That's what we are hearing about the Bangladeshi immigrant who tried to bomb the New York subway yesterday.  Both of these concepts are new to me.  I never heard of either of them before yesterday.  Apparently we are issuing green cards just cause someone has a relative already in the US.  And the lottery who knows how that works. 
   Both of these programs are unfair and wrong. 
   Immigration to the US is highly prized all over the world.  Everyone would like to move to the US.  Nobody wants to move to Venezuela, Cuba, or Russia.  We ought to take advantage of this and accept immigrants who will become loyal and valuable citizens.  
   We can only accept so many immigrants per year, lest they swamp the country.  I submit that we can handle immigration equal to say 1% of the present population.  Since US population is about 330 million, that allows 3.3 million immigrants per year.  I'm thinking we have ten times that many applicants.
    So, we set up a point system, each applicant gets so many points for qualities we deem desirable.  Like points for holding a doctorate in the hard sciences, points for speaking, reading, and writing English.  points for being of working age.  Points for assisting the US armed forces. Points for knowing a trade, publishing a book, points for engineering degrees, points for knowing how to program computers, points for being married, points for having children, plus a whole bunch more desirable and useful skills and accomplishments.  Subtract points for a criminal record, or membership in ISIS and the like. Some appointed committee can have a wonderful time setting up the point system.
   Then we assign a score to every applicant, and admit the top scoring 3.3 million applicants.  We tell the rest of them to try again next year. 
   That's fair.  And it will give us a lot of good decent citizens and fewer subway bombers. 

I don't envy Alabama voters

They have a lesser of two evils choice ahead of them.  Vote for Republican Roy Moore, despite believable reports of dating underage or really young teen age girls while in his 30's.  The accusations are 40 years old, but there are a number of them.  Plus Moore has made some very hard right statements on the social wedge issues. 
  Or vote for Democrat Jones, who is pro abortion, and very left, especially for a conservative state like Alabama.  Doing so would  knock the Republican majority in the Senate down to just one, permitting any senator to kill anything just 'cause he feels like it.  It would seriously weaken the Trump administration.  Something that a lot of Alabama voters don't want to do. 
   There has been talk of a a write in campaign for someone I never heard of before.  I doubt that will go anywhere. 
   We will know how it turns out by Wednesday.  The polls are calling it for Moore by a razor thin margin of a couple of percent.  It will be interesting to see if the pollsters got it right this time.  They have blown predictions several times in the recent past, especially the Trump Hillary contest.

It only takes ONE scumbag

To put an organization's reputation into the toilet.  In the case of the FBI,  Comey was that one scumbag.  He tried to influence the 2016 election by first declaring that Clinton's email server scandal was a non issue, and not prosecutable.   Then a few weeks later, when Anthony Weiner's laptop, loaded with Hillary emails, turned up, he reversed himself and declared the Hillary investigation was back on.  After that, everyone knew the FBI was trying to tip the election.  And all the thousands of decent, loyal, hardworking FBI agents get tarred with the same brush.  They are all still good decent agents, but Comey has made us taxpayers suspect them all. 
   For those of you looking for reasons to trash Obama, his appointment of Comey to run the FBI is a big one.

Raytheon and Analog Devices make WSJ 250 best managed companies

Interesting and kind cool.  I worked at Raytheon, Equipment Division in Wayland in the '70s and at Analog Devices in Norwood in the '90s.  Cool to see that places I used to work are considered well managed by the Wall St Journal.  I was a little disappointed that Bernie Gordon's Analogic didn't make the list.  I worked for Bernie for quite a few years, he was a difficult and demanding boss, but he did know what he was doing. 

To Jerusalem

Looks like Trump is going to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  The US Congress voted to do this some years ago.
On the Pro side, the Israelis love the idea. A lot of US citizens are in favor.
On the Con side, all the Arab countries, who have never accepted Israel, are against it.  It will surely make diplomacy with Arab regimes more difficult in the future. 
   We could punt on the idea, yet again.  The Israelis will be disappointed, but they are on our side no matter what.  On the other hand, the Arabs are difficult to deal with no matter what.  Maybe moving the embassy to Jerusalem will send them a message.
   This looks like a judgement call to me.  I don't have any experience in the Middle East, so I will defer my judgement to those who know the area better. 

Gobble-de-gook overload

According to the Wall St Journal writing about the tax bill currently in a House Senate reconciliation hassle, "It appears to prohibit  mortgage-interest deductions for all second homes."
Appears???  This is a law.  Things in law don't "appear".  They are either legal or illegal.  Sounds like the lawyers have laid on the legal gobble-de-gook so thick that nobody can understand it. 

DACA

Delayed Action for Child something or other.  Bad acronym.  We are talking about people who were brought into America as children, who have grown up in America, and are still illegal immigrants pursued by Mr. Migra. 
   I have a lot of sympathy for these people.  I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack.  Those that have served in the armed forces ought to get citizenship right then and there.  Those who have graduated high school and/or college, are gainfully employed, are paying taxes and are staying out of trouble with the law, we ought to let them stay in the country, and apply for citizenship.  I'm sure plenty of other Americans agree with me. 
   It's a powerful issue.  Congress ought to deal with it by passing a law.  And, that law ought to stand on its own, for an up or down roll call vote so we voters can see where our Congress critters stand on the issue.
  Right now they are talking about hitching a DACA bill onto a "must pass" bill like extending the federal budget.  The idea being, that the must pass bill will drag the less popular DACA bill thru and offer cover to Congress critters who can say "I had to vote to pass the budget lest the government shut down" 

The Euro's are still bailing out the Greeks.

Small piece in the Wall St Journal today.  The Greeks and the Euro's have reached a "preliminary agreement" on the austerity measures the Greeks must adopt in order to qualify for E5 billion handout next month.  The Euro's keep insisting upon reduction of Greek government workers, and pension payments, and better tax collection.  At one time 25% of the population of Greece was drawing pay from the Greek government.  And humongous numbers of people were drawing pensions.  Every time the Greeks make a move, or even a whisper in the papers, about accepting Euro austerity demands, they get riots in the streets. 
   The E5 billion is down from the old days.  In past years the Greek bailouts were much higher, say E50 billion.  The Euros think the money will let the Greeks make the payments due on Euro bonds and loans.  Let's hope that works out.  The Greeks are having trouble making payroll, and so Euro bail out money might be diverted into other things. 
   We think the Euro's are doing the handouts to prevent the Greeks from defaulting on their loans, which would impose serious losses on the Euro banks stupid enough to still be holding any Greek debt.  So the idea is to dole out money to the Greeks to use to pay off their debts.
   Smarter would be to tell the Greeks to suck it up.  No more bailouts.  Go ahead and default.  You won't be able to borrow a plugged nickel anywhere in the world, and you will have to balance your budget.  
   Far as I can see, the bailouts just allow the Greeks to spend other people's money for no good reason.
 

How far will we go to stop the NORKs?

From getting nukes that is.  They are really really close to having nuclear tipped missiles that can reach the US.  The last test flight showed enough range, and then some, to hit Washington and Boston.  There are reports that the missile broke up on reentry, but they ought to be able to fix that.  Then they need to build a nuke small enough to fit on the rocket, a nose cone that can withstand reentry, and a reliable fuse.  I don't think any of these will take very long to do.  The NORKs could have it all together within a year.  After that, Katy bar the door.
   The NORKs want missiles to keep us from doing regime change on them, the way we did on Saddam Hussein.  As it is, they have enough conventional artillery within range of Seoul to deter damn near anyone, with nukes in their hands, they figure to deter even us.
   And the NORKs are dead set on getting nukes.  I cannot imagine Rocket Man backing off his nuclear program for anything less than the Chinese cutting off all trade with him.  And the Chinese clearly don't want to do this, they like having the NORKs around as a buffer state, and as a semi tame attack dog to let out to bite the Americans every so often.
   We could slap a good stiff trade killing tariff on Chinese exports to the US.  That would hurt China, and it might get them to cut off the NORKs.  The Chinese would not like it but we could do it.  If we have the stones.  Nobody knows if Trump would do this, and if the country and the Congress would back him up if he tried it.  I have not seen any Gallup polling on this subject.
   Or we could try straight forward military action, air strikes followed with ground forces.  This amounts to starting up the Korean War all over again.  Last time was bad.  This time would probably be just as bad.  And the South Koreans would take a lot of damage and casualties, something they certainly are not happy about.
   Or we could do the paper tiger act, keep on snarling at the NORKs but not actually do anything.  This would probably cause the Japanese, the South Koreans, and maybe even Viet Nam and Taiwan to go for their own nukes.  Which is bad, but at least these countries are all US allies or friends.  It would shake up the Chinese though.

King Solomon's Mines 1985

Some how I missed this one back in 1985.  It's a fun, lightweight African adventure story featuring Richard Chamberlain as Allan Quatermain, intrepid great white hunter, and Sharon Stone, American beauty searching for a father lost in darkest Africa.  Also has John Rhys-Davies as villainous Turkish war lord.  A lot of scenes put one in mind of/were ripped off from, Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Lots of action, including funny scenes of African cannibals popping the lead characters into a giant cooking pot filled with water and sliced vegetables.  
   The title of the movie comes from an old H. Rider Haggard adventure story, published a hundred years ago.  It was a best seller back then, it's been mentioned repeatedly in other fiction stories, but I have never read the book.  I suspect the movie takes little from the novel other than the title and the names of the characters.  There were older movies of this title, one from 1937 and one from 1950. 
   All in all, an enjoyable flick.  Lightweight but fun. 

New Product Design, Winners and Losers

Maybe a dozen years ago Boeing and Airbus were casting around for an idea for a new aircraft.  Airbus decided to build the largest plane that available engines could hoist off the runway, the A380.  It was a double decker, four engines, seating 500 passengers.  Boeing did some market research and decided that more modest aircraft, seating 250-280 passengers was about right for the market.  After all it takes some doing to round up 500 paying passengers to fill an A380.  The Boeing plane, the 787 has only two engines (engines are the most expensive part of an aircraft), a very high tech "composite" fuselage and lithium ion batteries which gave a lot of grief. 
   As of right now, Boeing has sold several hundred, and has a backlog of close to 1000 787's.  They judged the market right.  The A380 has only one customer, Emirates, who has an order for another 42 A380's.  After which, the production line will shut down.  And as things are, Airbus is loosing money on every one they build.  Emirates (and no one else) is thinking about ordering some more, but they fear that Airbus might stop building A380's at a loss.  So they have not committed to an order. 
   Looks like Boeing's marketeers called it right.  The Airbus marketeers followed the Field of Dreams marketing plan (If we build it they will come).   Airbus has taken a big hit on the A380.  So big that they might not stay in business at all.