Has anything important happened in the real world lately?

The news is full of unimportant stories.  The classified memo.  Superbowl.  Guvmint shutdowns, they have another one coming up this week just for your entertainment.  Didn't anything  important happen all week?

So I read the famous classified memo.

Less than earth shaking.  It says the FBI flimflammed the FISA court to get a warrant for surveillance of Carter Page, a new name to me.  The FBI showed the Steele document, opposition research paid for by Clinton and the DNC, to the FISA court as evidence that Carter Page needed his phone and email tapped.  The FBI also showed a Yahoo news article based on leaks from Steele, as independent corroboration of the Steele document.   
   Seeing as how the FISA court is a pure rubber stamp, out of thousands of requests for warrants submitted to FISA,  only dozen or so are ever rejected.  So the famous memo identifies one case where the FBI flimflammed the FISA court and obtained a warrent improperly.  Wanna bet the FBI has been doing this all along and of those thousands of warrents issued, many of them are just as bogus as the one obtained on Carter Page? 
   The FISA court is secret.  We don't know who the judges are, where the court meets, we never get to see their transcripts and records.  They can order surveillance on anybody on the flimsiest of evidence, and have been for decades.  It's a rubber stamp.
  We ought to close the entire FISA court thing.  Law enforcement, including the FBI, should have to go to a real court, the kind that tries cases, in order to spy on American citizens.

Was it AmTrak's fault?

Certainly embarrassing to wreck a train full of Congressmen.   The train hit a truck at a grade crossing doing 70  mph.  Killed the truck driver, shook up a lot of Congressmen who were not in their seats.  Train stayed on the track, which is a good thing. 
   I think the fault lies with the truck driver.  The grade crossing was protected, crossbucks, automatic red flashers, and automatic crossing gates.  On TV you could see that the crossing gates were down.  We can assume that the crossing protection gear functioned,  that stuff is pretty reliable and I cannot remember a case where it failed to work.  Still, someone ought to check that, just to be sure. So how did that truck get on the tracks?  Either he got stuck on the tracks before the train arrived, or he was in a hurry and drove around the crossing gates.   So far the newsies have not said anything about that.  And, why did not the people in the truck get out and run when they heard the train coming.  Trains are required to whistle (sound the horn now a days) as they approach grade crossings, two longs, a short and a very long.  Those horns are loud, easily heard over the sound of a truck engine. 

State of the Union

I stayed up and watched it.  Trump mentioned the successes he has had so far,  spoke to and of some impressive people in the visitors gallery, a policeman, a soldier, grieving parents, a 12 year old boy, a Korean freedom fighter,  good people all.  He  announced his DACA policy, infrastructure policy, military funding policy, all good stuff, but nothing I hadn't heard before.   Trump was doing a national pep rally, and doing it well.  He even had me clapping in front of my flat screen TV, and I'm a cynical senior citizen.   The democrats were not into pep rally, they didn't clap or stand and clap hardly at all.   Cold water is what the democrats were into.  Fortunately there were enough Republicans at the show to give Trump a lot of standing ovations and keep the pep rally spirit up. 
    So all full of good patriotic spirit I stayed up and watched young Joe Kennedy give the Democrats reply to Trump's State of the Union.  Boy what a downer that was.  I remember young Joe's grand father RFK, and his grand uncle JFK, and neither of them ever talked like that.   Young Joe just gave a long lament about how terrible everything is, business is making money, taxes are being cut, all sorts of guvmint freebies are going away, one wail after another.  A real glass half empty talk. 

The losers always cry Gerrymander

Gerrymander, the art of drawing voting district lines to favor your own party and disadvantage the opposition party.  After the election, the losing party always blames a gerrymander.  We have to have voting districts, otherwise everyone runs at large.  Which is difficult and expensive, the candidate has to run ads, make campaign appearances, and put up yard signs all over the state, rather than just his own district.   To gerrymander, you arrange the voting districts either to pack the opposition voters into a few districts which you cede to the them, or to dilute the opposition voters among your strong districts, where they never have the numbers to win the district.   Elbridge Gerry, a serious Massachusetts politician, signer of the Declaration of Independence,  was governor of Massachusetts after the Revolution when redistricting created an odd shaped district, long and wiggly and looking like a salamander.  It was dubbed a Gerrymander, and the term has stayed in American politics ever since.
   Trouble is, gerrymandering is hard to define, and thus hard to legislate against.  So far all we have tried is the appointment of a "non partisan" commission to draw district lines.  Such commissions are better than nothing, but not all that effective.
   What we might try is a law that requires districts to be reasonable compact.  Define "reasonable compact" as the longest way across the district may not exceed twice the shortest way across the district.  That would outlaw the long and skinny districts.  

The engineer missed the 30 mph speed limit sign

That's from the Wall St Journal on that train crash in Tacoma Washington this winter.  Reasonable, and easy to do.  And that's the engineer's story.
   My only question is, after spending $180 million on bringing this line into service, why is a dangerous 30 mph curve left in the track?  With $180 million to spend, I'd think they could have straightened that curve out to allow 80 mph running clean thru the whole line. 

I'll wash your mouth out with soap

Common threat to children using bad language.  Or sassing their parents.  Now the children say "I'll eat a Tide Pod"???  
Even on a dare,  I would not eat soap or Tide Pods, no matter what.  I learned that soap tasted awful at a very early age, probably from tasting it accidentally during bath.  
I don't understand the growth of Tide Pod eating among the young.  When I was a kid we knew better.

Why is Washington so disfunctional?

This came up in a discussion with youngest son.  We are still close enough to talk politics even though his politics don't always agree with mine.    To which I said, neither side (party) has enough votes to pass their program.  The Republican majority in the Senate is now down to one since the Alabama election.  The Republican majority in the house is a little bigger, but  the "House Freedom Caucus"  RINO's all, cannot be counted to vote with the party.  In short, the Congress is deadlocked between the two parties, neither has enough votes to vote their program thru and get on with things.
   The only solution is to convince more voters to join one side or the other, and give their side a solid majority.  This is hard.  First off, neither party has made (and published) a clear and simple statement of their views.   Partly because they cannot come together on one view, and partly because of the modern conviction that stating your views just makes you enemies, never friends. Which is why politicians refrain from saying any thing of substance  and talk about motherhood and apple pie. 
   Lacking any thing from the two parties, the voters will listen to respected public figures.  But we don't have many of those any more.  Used to be guys like Walter Cronkite, Jim Lehrer,  and David Brinkley had the respect of the public and were listened to.   Now a days all we have is Dan Rather,  Rachel Maddow, and Opray Winfrey.  Nobody respects them much.  And the entire MSM has destroyed any confidence the public might have held in them.  Nobody believes any politician much.   Public opinion isn't going to change much in the current absence of trusted voices urging change. 
   So, the current deadlock looks like it will continue for a long time. 

America needs more good citizens

Those DACA kids/young people.  When your parents decide to slip into the United States, kids don't have a choice, they have to go where mom and dad go.  Ain't the kids fault that mom and dad are illegal immigrants. 
   For the ones that have grown up in the US, have stayed out of serious trouble with the law, have reasonable English language skills (speak even if with a thick accent,  read a road sign, and sign their names) I am willing to extend them US citizen ship.  Especially if they have graduated high school, or even better college, have a job, are married, are veterans.  These are desirable citizens, and we need more good citizens. 
   Polls show that  a fair number of my fellow citizens think the same way.  Can the Congress Critters get their act together to pass a law letting the stay in the country, or even better make them US citizens?   I know that a lot of 'em will vote for Democrats once they are registered. but that's OK.  I'm happy to have good US citizens even if they don't vote Republican. 

World is getting noisier

Watch some TV news, which is pretty much all from an indoor studio somewhere.  Notice the background noise of ringing phones, emergency vehicle sirens, yelling and shouting,  car crash noises.  Let's hope all this noise is coming from outside the studio.  It's pretty damn loud.   Out on the street it's gotta be worse.  

Walls, Border type.

The Trump administration is now talking about a combination of masonry wall, cyclone fencing, and electronic surveillance.  The MSM is criticizing them for backing off from a 2000 mile masonry wall.  Does not bother me much, at least the cyclone fence part.  A good cyclone fence, with three strands of barbed wire on top is pretty effective.  You cannot get vehicles thru such a fence, at least not without leaving a whacking big hole which is a tip off to the Border patrol. 
   I am not impressed with the electronic surveillance idea.  I was in South East Asia during the war when we tried electronic surveillance along the Ho Chi Min trail.   We air dropped a humongous load of sensors, microphones mostly, up and down the trail.  Mostly the sensors went dead in a few days.  Some of them picked up monkeys howling in the jungle or water buffalo snorting and stomping.  Never did detect a Cong. 

USAF talking about buying lightweight fighters

The first line jet fighters (F22 and F35) cost $50-80 million a piece, and cost $35000 per flying hour.   They are fast, loaded with fancy avionics and expensive missiles, and need long paved runways.  
   For ground attack missions, something simpler and cheaper with modest performance can do the job. Some recon, some close air support bombing, some strafing, and some training.  Modest performance might be  500 knots top speed, 100 knots landing speed,  propeller driven, 700-800 horsepower turbine engine.   With some really sharp bargaining, you might be able to buy such a plane for $1 million apiece.    If  the enemy doesn't have an air force, or a squadron or two of our high performance fighters  takes care of enemy fighter opposition,  such a modest performance (approximately the performance of a good WWII fighter) aircraft could be very effective. 
   There are a number of American allied countries that have  security problems, that a little air power might solve, who could afford some $1 million warplanes,  but could never afford high performance high cost  jet fighters.   If USAF were to demonstrate the effectiveness of light weight fighters,  they would be encouraged to try some.  "If the Americans are flying them, they must be OK."

Oscar Nominations for Best Picture 2018

They nominated nine movies.  Five of them I never heard of before.  Fine publicity work there. Two of em (Dunkirk and Darkest Hour) I have seen, in theater, and they are not bad.   I had actually heard of another two (The Post and Shape of Water).  I cannot imagine ever going to see either them. 
   Perhaps there is a connection between mediocre to miserable Oscars and the worst year for box office receipts?

Darkest Hour 2017

Good Flick.  Gary Oldham plays Winston Churchill and plays him well.  Churchill was the key allied leader in WWII.   The movie shows Churchill  rallying the British rank and file, silencing the appeasers,  launching Operation Dynamo (the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk).  This is a crucial period in WWII.  England was the only important European power that Hitler never conquered.  Had England crumped, Hitler and his Nazis would have owned Europe, pretty much forever.  The movie ends with Churchill giving his "fight them on the beaches, fight them on the landing grounds.  We shall never surrender." speech in Parliament.   Far as I can tell, the movie follows the real history of the time.   The real history is so dramatic that nobody can imagine a way to make things more dramatic. 
    I liked this movie better than Dunkirk.  We watch one key protagonist (Churchill)  leading his country to fight against the Nazis.  Dunkirk was more into battle field views of anonymous British soldiers.  
    Costumes and sets were excellent.  Sets were ingeniously lit with the brightest light centered on the important actors in the scene.  Most scenes were the famous smoke filled rooms, the air blue with tobacco smoke.  Lots of very fancy period bric a brac every where, on desks, bureaus, and whatever.
    I saw the movie at the Lincoln NH theater on a Sunday night.  Crowd was light.  In fact there was only one other person, aside from myself in the theater. 

Coffee, making thereof

Your coffee is good when you can enjoy it black.  If you have to do the cream and sugar thing, it means your coffee is coming out bitter.
Step 1 in making good coffee is a clean coffee maker.  Brewing coffee releases all sorts of oils and fragrances which stick the the coffee maker innards.  After time ( a few hours) the oils turn rancid and make the next pot taste bitter.   You need a coffee maker that is easy to clean, inside and out.  The French press is good,  it comes completely apart and you can get inside it with a wash rag or a sponge.  The Silex vacuum coffee makers are good, all glass,  easily cleaned.  Percolators are bad, the inside of that perk tube  is just plain uncleanable. 
Step 2 is good coffee.  Shop around,  try a can of the expensive stuff.  Try some cans of the supermarket brand cheap stuff.  Keep some notes so you can remember what you like.  Up here, Surefine 100% Columbian $4.50 a can makes very good coffee, as good or better than some $10 a can coffee from Dunkin, Green Mountain and others .
   I don't do the grind it from beans thing.  I buy ground coffee and keep it in the fridge after opening it.  Works for me.
   Put in one heaping tablespoon of coffee for each cup of water.  Give the coffee at least four minutes to brew.  Try a little salt with the coffee.  Sometimes salt improves the coffee, the US Navy swears by it,  sometimes not so much. 

Who will buy Greek bonds?

Nobody in their right mind.  The Greeks have racked up debts equivalent to several years of Greek GNP.  They are still spending more than they take in with taxes.  No way are they going to be able to pay off what they owe right now, let along pay off any future borrowings.  All sensible people know that lending more money to Greece is like pouring the money down a drain.  The Greeks just don't have, and never will have, the ability to pay it back. 
   For some reason, unclear to me, the EU (Germany mostly) has been giving the Greeks bailout money to keep them from outright default on their debts.  Why the EU feels this generous is a mystery, but they do.  And, for some years, the EU has run a Greek supervision operation that tries to tell the Greek government what to do to balance their budget.  The Greeks hate this.  They have been rioting in the streets of Athens to show their displeasure.  But the EU has been saying, "Do it our way, or no more bailout money." 
   And just last week, the EU began talking about getting out of the Greek supervision business in August and letting the Greeks do their own thing.  Not discussed was whether the bailout money would continue after August. 
   Greeks don't have their own currency, they are on the Euro.  Greeks cannot print their own Euros like they used to do when they were using their own drachmas years ago.  Now the Greek government has to borrow money when expenses exceed tax revenue, which they do, every year.  And what sensible person would loan the Greek government a dime?  Fortunately for the Greeks there are plenty of sucker banks who will buy anything, no matter that the borrower will never be able to repay. 
   It will be a good sideshow to see what happens to the Greeks after August.  Bring popcorn. 

Looks like the Congresscritters blew it.

They  were unable to pass a budget or a continuing resolution to fund the Federal government.  Republicans and Democrats are on the tube, blaming each other for the shutdown.  Neither side is explaining what great issue is being served by this impasse.  They probably don't know themselves.  After all they are Congresscritters, none too bright.  The MSM is busy blaming the Republicans, as usual.  We shall see if any voters believe the MSM any more. 
   I suppose the shutdown will continue until the pain becomes too acute and Congresscritters agree to fund the government again.  The pain is largely felt by servicemen who won't get paid.  And snivel servants declared "non-essential" who don't get paid either.  I feel for the servicemen, they don't get paid much and just paying the bills each month is tough.  I don't care that much for the snivel servants, they can go out and find honest jobs in the private sector.
   As far as I am concerned, the Post Office will continue to deliver my mail and my Wall St Journal, and my Social Security electronic funds transfer (checks are obsolete) will continue to happen.  At least that's what they are saying on TV.  I am not entitled to an income tax refund, so the IRS can stay laid off forever far as I am concerned. 
   I hear that the Congresscritters will continue to get paid, which is a scandal, they ought to be the first to have their pay stopped. 

Conquer the World with Soft Power

We  used to be good at that.  American soft power crumbled the fearsome Soviet Union.  We never had to use our substantial hard power against the Soviets,  in general a good thing.  Instead Hollywood movies, blue jeans, hot rods and drag racing, rock and roll, major league baseball, a booming economy where the streets were paved with gold, Voice of America and the BBC, and democracy, convinced the average Russian-in-the-street that America was way cooler than Russia.   This finally lead to the overthrow of the Soviet government in the late 1980's.  The Russian people, who had stood shoulder to shoulder against the Nazis under Stalin, just lost faith in Communism and wanted a government and economy like the Americans enjoyed. 
  Now we have Islamic terrorism to confront.  If soft power worked against the Soviets, a very tough opponent, it ought to work against the Islamics.  Some of the soft power that stood us in such good stead in the 50's and 60's is looking dated now.  Hollywood has almost forgotten how to make a good flick.  Detroit is bankrupt and the Detroit auto industry is building boring little econoboxes rather than 409 Impalas and GTO's. Pop music lacks any one of the stature of Elvis or the Beatles, short wave radio is mostly gone, replaced by the Internet. 
   We do have some soft power stuff going for us.  Apple and Iphones, Facebook and Google.  The world still sees our streets as paved with gold, that's why so many of them want to move to the US.  But the Islamic terrorists put up a show so strong as to recruit lone wolf terrorists with just Internet contact.  We need to do something about that.  Some movies making fun of them, or some horror flicks starring Islamic crazies in place of the usual monsters.  We could get pop music back on track by returning control of the industry to real music people, like it was in the 1950's, rather the the current crop of clueless suits who persist in featuring wimpy boy bands.   To replace VOA and BBC we could build up a respected international web site centered on real news (if there is  a journalist left alive who could run such a site).  Jim Lehrer hasn't been on air for quite a few years. 

DACA, Lotta talk, few specifics.

   I have a lot of sympathy for people brought into America as children and who have grown up in America.  Far as  I am concerned, we ought to treat them as if they were born in the US.  Make 'em citizens.
   For all the talk from the newsies about DACA, we have few details.   Such as cutoff age for membership.   Clearly children brought into the country at age 6 and under ought to count.  Maybe age 12 and under.  Age 21 and over, clearly should not count, we reckon 21 to be the age of majority.  What about teenagers between 12 and 21?   For all the newsie babbling on the tube, you would think someone would have mentioned an age limit by now.
   Detail.  Is anything else required to gain the privileges of DACA status?  Graduation from an American high school?  Graduation from college?  Good behavior, such as a clean criminal record?  Or perhaps just no felony convictions?   Reasonable English language skills?  Holding a real job in the private sector?  Marriage?  children? 
  Detail.  Just what benefits come from DACA status?  Immediate US citizenship?  a green card?  some kind of path to citizenship?  Eligible to vote?  US driver's licenses?  Permission to stay in the US for say five years?  Or ten years? Or for life?  I have not heard a word about this detail from the  newsies either.
   Detail.  Do we offer DACA status to children arriving in the future? 
   I think we citizens deserve these details.  Clearly the newsies and the Democrats don't think so.
   Bottom line, our country needs more good decent citizens.    We ought to work to keep the DACA cases of good decent people as citizens and throw the book at gang members, drug runners, bus hijackers,  San Francisco shooters, and Islamist terrorists. 

Windows 10 explorer

Window Explorer, not to be confused with Internet Exploder,  used to offer us users a view of the files we had on the hard drive, actually on all the drives, hard, floppy, CD, or thumb.  Now that we are upgraded to Windows 10, we find that Explorer doesn't work right.  The Win 10 version of Explorer shows four copies of all my files.  I keep my files in "My Documents" the traditional Windows location.  Only in Win 10,  Explorer show four versions of "My Documents" one of which just gives error messages when clicked on.  Which one is the real one? Why display the same thing four different times?   Is this to add confusion to us users? 
   And, Windows Explorer has forgotten alphabetical ordering.  Click on your desktop and ask it to sort your icons into alphabetical order.   The icons swirl around, but they do not wind up in alphabetical order. 
   Micro$oft strikes again. 

I wonder how that happens? The midnight pageview spike.

I get a few statistics from Blogger every day.  One them is "page views"  In fact I get a line graph of page views over time.  The funny part is the timing.  Every day, around midnight, I get a burst of 100 page views all packed into a very short time, like less than an hour.  Makes the graph look like a sea of low level grass with a whacking big spike of 100 page views sticking up once a day at midnight.  Why are they all packed in at midnight?  Surely normal people are in bed by midnight?  Is it robo webcrawlers all doing their crawling when the web isn't so busy?  Is it a bug in the Blogger software?  Something else?
   Inquiring minds want to know. 
   Also, how come I get so many page views from Italy?  Like more pageviews from Italy than from the entire US of A.  I don't post in Italian. 

Duck and Cover !!!

Damn.  That false alarm must have scared Hawaiians out of their socks.  As well it should.  If they sprang that up here in NH, I dunno what I would do.  I suppose just get down in my basement, which is masonry (cinder block not poured concrete which is far stronger)  If I survived the initial blast, I have no idea what I would do for food or fuel or electricity after the bomb.  
   And, we need to get serious about Little Rocket Man and his ICBMs.