Campaign Rhetoric

 

I listened to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris doing their what-do-you-callit speeches on the car radio last night while driving up to Lancaster for a VFW election event.  They both talked a lot, using the vague generalities dialect of English.  They spent a lot of words trashing Trump, never a specific accusation, just blaming him for everything under the sun.  And a few outright falsehoods.  Kamala accused Trump of destroying American jobs just a week after the government released the jobs report showing 1.8 million new jobs this quarter.  Biden said that Trump inherited his good economic from Obama.  And a couple of other whoppers that slip my mind right now.

   No campaign promises.  No Statements like “If elected I will do thus and such to make your life better.” No promises to lower taxes, increase spending on pet programs, open the borders, reform criminal justice, increase EPA regulation, subsidize battery powered cars, protect forests and wild lands, insert your favorite Democratic program here.

   In short, the only reason Biden and Harris gave us to vote for them is to get rid of Trump.  Nothing else. Will this work in November??

Remote learning is really homeschooling

 Been a lot of talk about re opening the schools, especially k thru 12.  Parents are all in favor, with out open schools they cannot go to work, someone has to stay home and look after children.  The teachers are NOT in favor, they claim they will all catch COVID-19 and curl up and die. Most of the medics say this is not a problem, that small children are mostly immune to COVID-19.  And now we have some talk about "opening" the schools to offer "remote learning".   That's not really opening the schools in most people's book.  

The younger children need an adult, Mom, Dad, a grandparent, someone, to teach them.  The adult picks the lessons, finds the textbook or DVD or logs them in.  The children need someone to explain what they are supposed to be learning, and to insist that they sit down and work the home work problems.  The really small children have not learned to read yet, so following written directions is beyond them.  And even teen aged high school students can be exceptionally unmotivated and fail to do any of the "remote learning" work.  They need an adult to push them into learning.  

At this point, I don't see much difference to the parents between "remote learning" and home schooling.  I'm thinking unless your school is really open and the children can go to it 5 days a week, you better set up for homeschooling.  One parent has to stay home and school the kids. To my way of thinking, a good textbook[s] is/are essential.  You explain the lesson best you can.  The kids won't remember everything first time thru it.  They have the textbook to reread the lesson, pick up the points they missed, and lots of homework.  There are some very good lectures out on VHS or DVD.  My little local library has a set of VHS tapes of a course in the American Revolution.  A Gettysburg University professor stood behind a lectern and just lectured.  He was good.  He had some maps, and some prints of period paintings, but none of the fancy re enactment stuff you see on the history channel.  He told it straight, none of that Charles&Mary Beard "Economic Interpretation of the Constitution" stuff.  It was a college course, but it would work just fine for high school.  It was so good I watched all the tapes, on my own time, just for enjoyment.  There has got to be more good stuff like this out there.

Watching the Shakespeare plays is educational, especially if you discuss each one after watching it. Writing an essay every day is excellent.  Word-for-Windows takes a lot of the curse out of writing.  Field trips to historic sites, Bunker Hill, the Constitution, Lexington, Saratoga, what ever is in your part of the country, are great learning opportunities.

    

Robocaller strikes again

 The phone rings, a heavily accented voice says something about a $250 purchase charged to my amazon plus card.  Connection is terrible and the caller cannot tell me what company he works for, or where he is located.  Heavy accent.  So I log into my amazon+ account, and it only shows a few items that I did in fact order last month, no mystery $250 purchase.  So I hung up.  I think this is a scam of some kind.

I need to work on my bill to outlaw robo callers.

Getting thru New York

 Going from here (Upstate New Hampshire) to Pennsylvania or Maryland, you gotta go thru New York.  And get over the Hudson river.  The GW bridge can have one hour traffic backups.  Tappan Zee is a little better but not much.  And the bridge up at Newburg is out of the way.   

Mayor De Blasio has announced police checkpoints going into New York, hassling out of staters to quarantine themselves for two weeks.  That's gonna make a bad traffic situation worse, pulling over all the out of state cars.  Forget using GW bridge at all.  Learn to love the out of the way Newburg bridge. 

Mail in voting

 

Me, I think it is one giant opportunity for voter fraud.  When a ballot arrives in the mail, it lacks a photo ID.  For that matter it lacks a live face for the poll worker to compare with the face on the photo ID.  We have had cases in NH of dozens of absentee ballots showing the same address, namely a Dartmouth dorm room.  I don’t believe going to the polls is any more dangerous than going to the grocery store, something that we all do once a week (or oftener).  At least for voters that is, for poll workers (all volunteers up here) it is a little more hazardous since poll workers have to meet and speak to every one in town, all day.  And then count ballots into the wee hours.  Thankfully that gives us a good result by morning.  If we allow mail in ballots post marked by Election Day, they won’t all trickle in for a week.  So we won’t have a winner or a loser for a week.  For those of us public spirited enough to run for unpaid public offices in New Hampshire not knowing is a real hardship.  

Easy free up of a couple of Gigs of disk space

In win 10, do "disk cleanup".  You can get there from Explorer.  Right click on your C: drive and then click on "properties".  The properties window offers "disk cleanup".  Click on that to run cleanmgr.  Select "Clean up System files"  and hit "OK" to kick things off.  It's quick, and it will usually squeeze a Gig or two out of C:Windows\System32\drivestore.  At least it did for me on new laptop (Redkey)  and old desktop (Smallbox).  Every Gig of storage counts for something, even if laptop has 256 Gigs of solid state drive, and desktop has 2000 gigs of good old rotating hard drive. 

Biden Trump presidential debate[s]

All kinds of TV talk about how/why Biden should avoid debating Trump.  Some in favor, some against.  I don't understand the talk.  We have had head to head debates ever since Kennedy and Nixon in 1960.  We will have them this year.  If we don't, everybody will assume that Biden figured Trump would beat him, badly, and so he pulled out to avoid getting clobbered on live nationwide TV.  Most of us will take that as a sign of Biden's weakness.  Personally I think Biden will debate because he is old enough to understand that he has to debate if he wants to win. 

Hurricane with strange name peters out

We are pretty far inland for hurricanes to reach us.  But this one, with an unpronounceable name beginning with I, that I have never heard of before, was forecast to run right up the Connecticut river valley and hit us dead center. Well, we did get some rain and wind last night, but nothing extraordinary.  And its all gone this morning, sun is out, nice day.

Does it make a difference if Microsoft buys Tik-Tok?

TikTok is a wildly successful Chinese company, specializing in (I think) swapping video clips between teenagers. They have been accused of gathering intelligence data for the Chinese government.  From what I hear, the Chinese government puts the arm on companies to do this and that, and it is pretty hard for a company to resist.  The government requests are backed up by the secret police and concentration camps.  And, I don't expect a Chinese company to have many scruples about spying on the Yankees.  Things have gotten so bad that the Trump Administration is talking about banning Tik Tok completely. 

  To avoid Trump's hammer, Tik-Tok is talking about selling itself to Microsoft, hoping that as a wholly owned subsidiary of a US company, they would avoid an open break with the Administration. 

  Perhaps.  But an internet company like Tik-Tok (or Facebook or Twitter or any of them) is largely software.  The software controls how much information is gathered, where it is stored on disk, and who has access to it.  And the software is controlled by just a few software programmers.  Presumably these guys are Chinese nationals, living somewhere in China.  And they work for the Chinese CEO of Tik-Tok.  Would Microsoft buying up all the stock give them control of the software heart of Tik-Tok?  Or would the Chinese software guys keep on doing what they please, or what pleases their boss regardless of what Microsoft might like?

   We might be better off just banning Tik-Tok completely.

I got a new laptop yesterday

Poor old laptop (Flatbeast) died.  Pressing the power button failed to start him up. So I did some Web crawling, looking at laptop ads.  There are a lot of 'em.  Judging from the ad volume you would think that industry has produced plenty of laptops. I decided I wanted to touch the product and check it's key feel.  So, off to Best Buy in Lebanon I go.  They are open on Sunday.  And they had some, but not many laptops in stock.  The salesman told me that they would sell out of everything within days.  So maybe laptops are not so plentiful.  Anyhow I get out of the store with a brand new Acer Nitro R5 1650, only $669.99.   Hmm.  Poor old deceased Flatbeast only cost $300 and change five years ago.  Progress.

   So I plug it in and power it up.  It does not boot up into Windows, it boots up into Curtana, a user hostile interface from Microsoft.  Curtana forces me into opening a Microsoft account, something I didn't want to do.  I have not figured out how to dump that.  After some fiddling around I managed to link up with my desktop and start transferring files.  I got one good file transfer and then the home networking broke.  It is now demanding passwords and hints but rejecting them after I enter them.  And refusing to transfer any more files.  Gotta work on  that.  Half the reason for getting the laptop is to backup my desktop. 

Herman Cain

I am very sorry to hear of Herman Cain’s death.  I heard him speak back in February of 2011.  He came up to Plymouth and spoke at our Lincoln Reagan dinner, held in the old Plymouth railroad station.  Since Plymouth no longer has passenger rail service, the railroad station is now a senior center.  Herman was a dynamite speaker; he got repeated standing ovations from the white, middle class, Republican, rural audience.  If we could have held the election that February night, we would have elected Herman right then and there by unanimous consent.  I heard Martin Luther King speak once, many years ago.  Herman was every bit as good a speaker, the best speaker I had heard since hearing MLK. 

   It was cold that February night.  I remember Herman standing in the parking lot, looking at the 12 foot high snow drifts all around the place.  He clearly felt he had traveled to the North Pole.

   I am sorry the Corona virus killed Herman.  He was one helova good guy.  He will be missed.

Grilling High Tech CEO's, medium rare

Congress hauled the CEO's of Google, Apple, Facebook, and a couple of others up in front of a Congressional committee today.  Questioning ran from hard to hostile.  Republicans accuse them of censoring conservative posts and advertisements.  Some Congresscritters want to regulate them.  I doubt that will work.  The only people who really know what the sites will do are the software guys who write the code.  Those people all work for the company management and will conceal anything that management wants concealed, and keep on doing in secret things the regulators want stopped, like gathering user data and selling it.  I don't see how any government regulators could ever understand what was happening and control what is going down.  Those regulators will come to work, put in 8 hours a day, draw their pay, and put out press releases telling how great they are doing, but they won't actually control anything important. 

More effective would be to use the old Sherman Anti-Trust act to break the big boys up into smaller pieces, like they did to Standard Oil better than 100 years ago.  The new pieces would have to compete with each other for users and advertisers.  If users and advertisers want a platform that does not censor them and does not sell their data to other advertisers, such a platform will emerge, rapidly.

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle, 1883

This is the Ur-Robin Hood book.  It has all the Robin Hood stories that I ever heard of, Robin Hood’s quarterstaff bout with Little John on a log over a stream, Robin Hood winning the Sheriff’s archery contest, Meeting Friar Tuck, slaying Guy of Gisbourne.  The only story left out is Maid Marion, her name is mentioned once but that’s it.  The language is middle English, thee and thou, everything is merry, withal, and more.  Gives the stories some flavor.  This is a new edition that turned up at the good old Village Bookstore.  We had a copy of this in the family way back when.  I don’t remember (or never knew) what happened to it. 

   The book is a telling of the Robin Hood stories.  It just tells them without any attempt to discuss whether Robin Hood really lived or is he just an English legend.  It doesn’t really matter, the stories are good stories, be they legend or real history. 

The pilots should have gone around.

Pakistani International Airlines crashed an Airbus A320 (flight PK8303) back on 22 May of this year.  The aircrew got out of position on the approach to landing.  They should have gone around again to get themselves at the right altitude, but they did not.  Where they should have been at 3000 feet, they were actually at 7500 feet.  The tower suggested that they go around to loose some altitude but the aircrew did not want to.  They managed to get the plane on the ground, but it was doing 200 miles per hour, a dangerous and ridiculous landing speed for any sort of aircraft, especially a passenger carrying aircraft.  Hot jet fighters have a landing speed of only 180 mph, to land a transport at that speed is very dangerous.  What is worse, for some reason the crew had retracted the landing gear and forgotten about it, so they made a wheels up landing at 200 mph.  After which, the crew decided to try for a go around.  They got the plane back in the air, but the engines had been banged around so hard when the plane landed wheels up that both of them failed.  The plane clobbered into a residential area less than a mile from the airport.  All but two of the 99 passengers and crew died.  One person on the ground was killed too.

   During the investigation following this accident, it was discovered that 262 of Pakistan's licensed airline pilots were flying on bad licenses.  It seems that those 262 pilots had not taken the written exam, but had paid someone else to take the exam for them. 

Is your college offering on-campus instruction this year?

A lot of colleges, many in California, won't open classrooms on campus this fall.  They will expect students to watch videos online, read their textbooks, and absorb the necessary knowledge to pass the tests, assuming they bother to test, sitting at home and web surfing it.  And to pay full tuition for the privilege. 

Was it me, especially if I was an entering freshman, I would opt for an out of college year.  Take a job, enlist in the armed forces, hike the Appalachian trail, work on a ranch, rebuild a classic car, do a winter as a ski bum, ride a bike across the USA, sail around the world, anything rather than pay outrageous tuition for the privilege of watching U-tube videos. 

Assuming you have not sent in the tuition check yet, you can tell the college you are taking an off year, and will be back next year.  And the colleges will have to grin and bear it. 

"Studies" to be required of California Students

The rule of thumb for college students is "avoid any major with "studies" in it's name.  Like gender studies, black studies, ethnic studies, ecology studies, etc, etc, ad nauseum.  Stick with real majors like English, History, Engineering, French, Chemistry, Spanish, Physics, Russian, Business administration, premed.  Even the ultra boring education major, if you can stand the boredom, it will get you a teaching job upon graduation.  Now, in contradiction to years of wisdom, the California legislature wants to require every college student be subjected to a course in "ethnic studies" as a requirement for graduation.

Casablanca Bogart and Bergmann, 1942

Released in 1942, just after Pearl Harbor.  Black and White.  Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, is running a nightspot in Vichy France controlled Morocco.  The Nazi’s are muscling in on this nearly orphaned French colony after they defeated and occupied France in 1940.  Rick’s Café Americain has an American jazz band, brass and piano, fine dining, and casino gambling.  Rick’s place is full of refugees from the Nazi’s all trying to get to America, where the streets are paved with gold, and the Nazi’s cannot reach.  Rick looks all sorts of American, wearing a tan trench coat and a Fedora hat. 

   Into Rick’s café walks Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman, looking like a million dollars.  Ilsa is Rick’s old flame.  They were to flee Paris by train just ahead of the Nazi takeover of Paris.  They were to rendezvous at the railroad station.   Ilsa never shows.  Heartbroken, Rick is dragged on board the train by his trusty retainer and band leader Sam.  When Ilsa arrives at Rick’s café in Morocco she is sporting a tall handsome Resistance hero, Victor Lazlo, as a husband.  For the rest of the movie we watch Rick and Ilsa come to terms with the situation.  We see slippery Vichy chief of police, Captain Louis Renault, played by Claude Rains, maneuver between the Nazis, Vichy France, Rick, Victor Lazlo, and assorted low lifes.  We hear classic movie lines such as “Round up the usual suspects.” and “Play it again Sam.” and “Here’s looking at you Kid.”

  One of the best flicks old Hollywood ever made, a flick for grownups, rather than teenaged boys.  Eighty years have gone by and it still works.  I just finished sorting and inventorying my collection of VHS tapes and decided to watch this classic last night.  My aging VHS player still works. 

New drinkable beer

Great North Aleworks. IPA India Pale Ale  7% alcohol.  Pretty decent.  India ale and beer was originally brewed in England, barreled, and shipped by sailing ship around the Cape of Good Hope to India.  To keep it from spoiling on the long voyage it was brewed with an extra dose of hops.  Modern India ale and beer still has the extra hops, giving it a good strong beer flavor.  Presby's market carries it, in cans, with some kind of high tech six pack yoke made of black plastic. 

The Hacker's strike again.

Last year I got an apologetic letter from Uncle Sam.  The hackers had gotten into the government personnel records and taken them.  I didn't get too upset, all they could have gotten was my old Air Force service records from 50 years ago, and records of the security clearance I held up until about 10 years ago. 

Today a got an apologetic letter from by stock broker, Morgan Stanley,  about a hack at their place.  The story as Morgan Stanley told it in the letter, they retired an aging data center.  The hired a contractor (did not give contractor's name) to erase the disks in the data center servers.  Something went wrong, they were not too clear on what, and the data, names and social security and more, stayed on the hard drives and turned up somewhere, later.  Morgan Stanley has offered to pay for two years of an identity theft monitoring program.  I suppose I ought to take them up on that. 

The A10's are back

I have been getting a nice airshow, right over the house these last two days.  They fly up the Notch, at low level, less than 1000 feet.  I get a good view of the aircraft.  It's a little noisy, but I don't care, watching them fly low is fun.  The A10's used to do this, maybe 5-8 years ago, and then they stopped.  And they used to give is a flyover for the Franconia 4th of July parade.  I assumed the A10 unit had been rotated off somewhere.   Anyhow they are back, it's cool.  Glad to see them.

Everyone honors John Lewis

John Lewis, black civil rights leader, US representative from Georgia, died last night at age 80, from cancer.  It is good to see leaders from both parties and the news media doing him honor.  At least we can come together over something.

John Wick Movie 2014

 

Played by Keanu Reeves, John Wick is the toughest movie hit man ever.  Tougher than James Bond, tougher than Paul Kersey, tougher than any role Chuck Norris ever played, tougher than Arnold.   He is retired from the nameless agency he used to work for, happily married.  Suddenly his wife dies of mysterious causes and a bunch of thugs take a fancy to his 69 Mustang and beat him up, kill his dog and steal his car.  The rest of the movie is straight revanchism that leaves nobody alive.  John Wick shoots straight for the heart and kills them with every shot.  He uses a lot of ammunition before the end of the movie.  It’s a pretty stripped down movie, no love interest, no good one liners.  John Wick does get to drive a couple of cool 60’s Detroit hot rods, the Mustang and an Olds 442.  The bad guys drive SUV’s.  The formula must work since they made two sequels.  I watched it to the end, even stayed awake.  But it wasn’t as good as say Terminator 2.