Abolition:

 Way back when, long before the US Civil War of 1860, slavery was confined to the Southern colonies which would form the confederacy for the Civil War.  The North was into small farms owned and operated by free men.  The big slave worked plantations were a Southern phenomenon.  And the two systems did not interact much. 

   Starting back in the early 1700’s a feeling began to grow in the North that slavery was unfair, cruel, and close to a mortal sin.  Abolition it was called later.  For the Revolution, this feeling was submerged, all hands North and South, understood that to beat the Redcoats we Americans needed unity in the face of the enemy and we could not afford the political strains that abolition would bring, at least not until we had won the Revolution. 

After the Revolution abolition grew apace.  A lot of protestant preachers spoke in favor.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe became a best seller, selling nearly as many copies as the Bible.  The Republican Party was created to push abolition.  When the Republicans elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Southern states seceded from the Union.  When the South fired upon Fort Sumter the Civil War was on.  If the south had just let Major Andersen’s Fort Sumter garrison continue manning their guns, the North might well have let the South secede in peace.  But after the South fired on the Union flag, the North sprang to arms,  It took 600,000 casualties, more that all we suffered in all the other wars we ever fought to win the Civil War and free all the slaves. 

   We didn't fight the Civil War for white supremacy.  We fought it for freedom and liberty. 

DISH. Slow and a little flaky

 I got tired of Spectrum's endless price hiking and switched to DISH.  DISH works, most of the time.  The data rate is plenty fast enough for me.  What is slow is switching from one web site to another.  I fear this works by your system transmitting a request for change up to the satellite, and waiting for the satellite to respond.  Since every DISH owner in North America is transmitting requests up to the poor over burdened satellites, it is not surprising that some of the requests get lost and have to be re-transmitted.  When two requests to the satellite arrive at the same time, they jam each other and other requests must be re-transmitted.  Net result, it takes DISH noticeable longer to switch to a new web site than cable modem Spectrum.  

Disk comes with a massive video box which has instructions so complex I have not mastered them yet.  And the video box ("Hopper") occasionally dies.  If I cycle power and wait long enough (several hours last night) the video comes back.  

Is a Lush Beard a Signal of Having More Testosterone?

 Title of a piece on the Web.  Actually since many (most?) guys shave their faces every morning, it is hard to believe that a beard is attractive to chicks, or anyone else.  If they were, more guys would grow beards. Or that a beard is a mark of better genes or more testosterone or anything else other than being a guy.  And I have never heard a Darwinian (or any other science based argument) about why guys grow beards and chicks don't.

2 1/4 inches of snow in the Notch

First real snow of this winter.  It ain't enough to open Cannon, but it helps.

Dark Matter could be Macho's rather than WIMPs

Astronomers discovered a free planet, some 100 light years away.  It's a sizeable beast, several times the size of Jupiter and way out in free space, no star anywhere close.  Free planets are very hard to see since they lack a sun to light them up.  This one was detected by its infra red emissions.  

Are free planets the "Massive Halo Objects" (Macho's) of the missing mass discussion?  We are pretty such that the universe needs more mass, a lot more mass, than we can see glowing in the night sky.   This bit of knowledge comes from watching galaxies rotate.  Speed of rotation depends upon mass of the galaxy.  Heavier galaxies have to rotation faster to create enough centrifugal force to prevent the stars from getting sucked down into the galaxy center.  This bit of physics comes to us from Isaac Newton and is taught in freshman college physics.  That is where I learned it. 

   The mass of the galaxies was estimated by counting all the stars in the galaxy and assuming that the stars were of average mass.  Doing this came up short of mass, a lot short, say one or two times the observed (luminous) mass.  Two solutions were suggested.  There might be a new sub atomic particle with mass like a proton but as hard to detect as a neutrino.  This was dubbing Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (wimp for short).  This came up shortly after the Higgs boson was discovered, leaving a lot of particle accelerators and accelerator physicists looking for something to do.  The other idea was a "Massive Halo Object" (Macho for short).  

This newly discovered free planet is a Massive Halo Object.  There might be more, they are hard to detect so there might be a lot more.  Question:  How many free planets would there have to be to furnish the missing mass?  Is it a reasonable number?  Or is the required number so high that we would have noticed free planets zipping by the earth already?

Wind blew hard all night. Leaves are gone

 As late as yesterday we still had  fine crop of colorful leaves on the trees.  The wind blew hard all last night, and this morning the leaves are mostly gone, blowing across the road and my lawn in flurries.  We are into the bare tree winter look. 

Veteran's Day

 The TV (at least Fox News) is making a bigger deal out of Veteran's day than they used to.  I'm a veteran, so this is just fine by me. 

Kyle Rittenouse Trial on TV

 What I see on TV is bad, bad, bad.  Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager, 17 years back than, 18 now was at the Kinosha riot.  Wound up shooting three rioters with his AR-15.  He is on trial for murder.  He is naturally claiming self defense.  To me, the prosecution wants to be proving that Kyle shot three innocent bystanders.  Instead the prosecutors have been talking about Kyle obtaining the rifle when state law requires you to be 18 to buy a rifle, (a misdemeanor, where as murder is far more serious).  And a discussion about bullets, full metal jacket versus soft nose bullets.  To which the proper answer (which Kyle did not think of) is "all bullets are deadly", rather than a gun magazine discussion of the merits of various bullet types.  And today a long discussion about video imaging techniques, what happens when a video image is enlarged.  To which the proper answer (which was NOT giver) is "Video imaging technology changes, a lot, from month to month and I have no idea what technology was used on this particular image. 

Way to stay in office. Have a scary bad vice president.

 

Every time anyone thinks about impeaching Biden, they immediately think of Kamala Harris succeeding Biden. Everyone thinks that bad as Biden is, Harris is worse. So nobody talks about impeaching Biden. So we just grin and bear it. We might be able to elect a good solid republican majority in the House and the Senate next year. Let's hope American voters are up for voting in Republicans.

Road Runner bites the dust.

 

My email account got deleted and all the posts there in are gone.  If you have sent me an email in the last ten days, I have not seen it.  If it is important, could you please resend it.  Roadrunner, my ex-email provider of some 15 years offered no reasons for deleting my email account. 

Anyhow, I have a new email provider, yahoo.com.  Which makes my email address dstarrboston@yahoo.com.  I would be obliged if you all could update your email lists.  Thanks in advance.  Sorry about the inconvenience.  And I will not be using road runner for anything ever again.

Govt Bond swings burn Wall St Investors

 Front page headline from the Monday Wall St Journal.  Turning to page A2, we have a couple of graphs for yields on 2 year and 10 year bonds.  The 2 year bond yield peaks out at 0.6%.  What is a Wall St investor doing messing around with a 0.6% yielding security.  Just about any stock will yield 6 %, ten times as much over a year.  I'd say those Wall St investors got burned by intense stupidity rather than bond market swings. 

Let's elect some Republicans to Congress

 We have seen the democrat party give us Joe Biden.  He has not been a good president, in fact he is a disaster.  New Hampshire right now has all four of its Congressional seats filled by democrats.  They have cast votes that hurt their constituents, such as voting down the Keystone XL pipeline which would bring economical crude oil from a friendly country (Canada) to American refineries to be turned into gasoline and heating oil.  Killing Keystone XL has contributed to $3.40 a gallon for gasoline, and worse for heating oil.  

New Hampshire could elect 2 Republicans to the House, which would cut Pelosi's vote margin down from five to three.  We could elect a Republican senator who by himself (herself) , give the Republicans control of the Senate.  

What is keeping us???

Cell Phone Battery Life

 I try to carry my cell phone everywhere, in case I fall down, or the car breaks down stranding me on I93, or you name the disaster.  My children all informed me that venturing out of the house, or even out of bed without a cell phone was a life risking activity.  It's a low end Sam Sung, model AM01.  I bought it after Tracfone announced that they would no longer support the even lower end Tracfone I had been using.  I got into the habit of plugging the SamSung into the charger when I went to bed in the evening.  Smart phone would give a chirp and display battery charge, 80-90%, in short, using up 10-20% of battery power for just sitting in my shirt pocket, not making any calls.  

   The charger ran into trouble and stopped charging.  I noticed the battery charge going down, reaching 7%.  I messed around on the keyboard, settings has a "battery" option now (it did not back when I got the phone)  and it offered a "max battery saving" option, which I took.  I also had a good look at the charger, which has a strange internal connector which had become disconnected.  Plugged the charger back together and it started to charge again. 

After a day or so I noticed that the battery was at 100% when I plugged it into the charger in the evening.  "Max battery saving" was doing some good,  the phone was claiming 8 days and a few hours worth of battery charge. That is a goodness.  I have had some lengthy power outages up here, but the worst was only six days.  That was back before cell phones.  So, on "max battery save" my cell phone ought to ride out the worst power failures I will ever suffer up here.  The max battery save mode gains much of its saving from doing the screen white letters on a black background, instead of vice versa. That way the battery only has to light the few pixels in the letters, rather than every pixel on the whole screen.  I find the screen easier to read the white on black background mode.  It also claims to have shut down some applications doing who knows what behind my back.  Anyhow, if you are running a low end Samsung phone, try the max battery save option. 

Infrastructure/Pork bill passed the House.

 The bill is now trimmed down to a mere $1TRILLION.  It started out at $2.5 TRILLION.  So at least some trimming happened.  I think half of it is actually infrastructure and the other half pork and freebies.  Thirteen House Republicans (RINOs) voted to pass this democrat bill.  We ought to find out their names and districts and make sure they have opponents in the primary.  It's not clear to me if this bill needs to go to the Senate, or go right to Biden for signature and become law immediately.  

   And Congress has a second bill for $3.5 TRILLION or perhaps more, that is all pork and freebies to be voted upon this month.

USS Connecticut, Seawolf Class Nuclear Sub collides with sea mount

 Accident happened in the South China Sea back on 2 October this year (2021).  The sea mount was described as "uncharted".  The Navy relieved the captain, the executive officer and the chief of the boat. Amount of damage is undetermined, at least by civilians like me.  Must have been pretty bad, 11 crewmen were hurt (not seriously) and Connecticut traveled from the collision site to Guam on the surface.  There is talk about returning her to Bremerton Washington for repairs that might take a year or more.  

   This is the first I heard of this.  Chalk another one up for the MSM.  I came across it websurfing at the US Naval Institute site.  USNI has been around for 60 years that I know of, and probably a lot more, and I consider them highly reliable.  They were the publishing house that published Tom Clancy's first best seller, Hunt for Red October, after all the regular publishers refused to touch Clancy's masterpiece.  Sea Wolf was the last cold war nuclear sub design, so advanced that it was considered worth two or three ordinary nuclear attack subs.  They are expensive, we only built three of them since the Cold War ended.  They got named USS Sea Wolf, USS Jimmy Carter and USS Connecticut.  Dunno how the Navy got the Jimmy Carter name thru Congress.  Surely these Sea Wolf class nuclear attack subs would be VERY useful for stopping a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.  Well we have one less of them now. 

   Just how Connecticut managed to clip that sea mount is unclear.  How deep was the South China Sea at the point and how deep was Connecticut running?  Was it me, I would allow a thousand feet or more between my sub and the bottom, at least for peace time exercises, and in a poorly charted place like the South China Sea.

Buying at retail for this Christmas.

 I did it.  Last few Christmases I ordered everyone's Christmas present off the Internet.  This Christmas I went to LaHoute's ski shop in Littleton and came way with gloves, hats, and shirts.  Then I did the Little Book Store on Main St and came away with toys for grand neices and grand nephews.  I had a Christmas wrap session and I am now ready for Christmas.  Bring it on St Nick.

Biden is reported to have nothings to say about the Virginia election

 Jeez, What can he say?  His party took a big loss in Virginia.  What is there that any Democrat can say about it that sounds half way intelligent?

Virginia

 Glenn Youngkin has claimed victory just a little after midnight.  And the Republicans have won the lieutenant governor and attorney general races.  Margin of victory was thin, 2 or 3 %, but better than nothing in a long time democrat state.  I wish the new Republican government of Virginia all the best luck in the world.  This Republican win will certainly strike fear into the hearts of democrats about the 2022 midterm elections. 

Self Driving Cars

 All the car manufacturers are working on this product, some claim to have one that works already. Question:  Would you buy a self driving car?  Would you feel safe riding in one?  Me, I would not trust a microprocessor to handle Rte 128 rush hour traffic.  Especially when it snows. 

Booster shots?

 

Booster shots? I got my two vaccinations with the Moderna vaccine back in February and March of this year. The TV has been talking about booster shots for people like me. (I am well over 65) The talk was that CDC or FDA was looking into it and would let us know what was what. Some time has gone by and our ever vigilant and hard working bureaucrats have done nothing yet. My doctor was reluctant to recommend something that had not approved the the government. A proper attitude for doctors and just about anyone else. Anyhow I have not heard of FDA or CDC approving Moderna booster shots. I might have missed it, but I have been looking for it.

If the government OKed Moderna booster shots and my doctor said they would be good for me, I would go out and get one. Otherwise, wait and see.

Virginia Election

 Fox gave good long interviews to both McAuliffe and Youngkin.  I call it even steven, even though Fox is a Republican media.  Youngkin sounded really good, talked about concrete things he would do, starting with throwing critical race theory out of the public schools.  McAuliffe not so good, he used a lot of political bafflegab, and then started trashing his opponent, calling him a racist, a Trump stooge, and I forget what else, but it was not complimentary, or fair.  Polls are indecisive, one poll puts Youngkin 8 points ahead, another poll puts the election even.  We will know something in a couple of days.

So how do those containership ports work?

 Surely those big steel containers don't have paperwork showing where they need to go on the outside of the container somewhere.  Would not a few rough seas wash such paperwork overboard, or at least get it so wet as to be unreadable?  How do the crane operators, truckers, and railroad crews know where to send each container?  Clever computer programs that display the bill of lading for just entering the container serial number?  Do containers have serial numbers painted on the outside?  You would think they do, but I have never gotten close enough to see them. 

Ideally the crane operator would pull a container off the ship and drop it on a truck or a train and get it out of the port right then and there.  If they pile the containers on the ground in the port that slows things down.  The containers piled on the ground have to be picked up and loaded on trucks or trains sooner or later.  Which takes as much crane time as unloading them from the ship in the first place.  Faster is to unload the containers off the ship right onto trucks or trains and get the containers clean out of the port right then and there.   

I am thinking that a long train of double stack flat cars, pulling slowly along side the ship as the crane unloads is the way to go.  Only drawback is the train only goes to one place, so all the containers wind up somewhere like Salt Lake City from which they get sorted out and shipped to their owners.

And despite what union leaders say, the port can move more containers if it runs three shifts and operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

After Biden How can any American vote for the democrats?

 It has been only 10 months since Biden took office.  In that time he turned Afghanistan over to Islamic crazies, failed to get our non combatants and our Afghan friends to safety before pulling our troops out, hiked the price of gasoline from $2.10 to $3.40, clogged up the ports of LA and Long Beach, crushed GNP growth down to 2%, thrown a lot of people out of work with his vaccine mandates, and more bad stuff that I could think of if I took some more time.  This is just the stuff on the top of my head.

Not only is Biden a disaster, from whom we may never recover, the democratic party nominated him when there were a bunch of much better democrats (just about any democrat is better than Biden).  I say decent Americans ought to vote Republican to save our country, like the Republicans did back in 1860.

Wall St Journal is catching up

The mail person delivered the Journals for Tuesday, Wednesday and today.  No Thursday.  I started reading them.  The Tuesday edition has a long piece abput how ready the Taiwan armed forces are to repel an invasion from the communist mainland.  The piece concluded  that Taiwan's military was not very ready.  Not a word about navies.  Can the US Navy sink the communist invasion force while it is crossing the Taiwan Strait?  Does Biden have the stones to order our navy into action?  Is the US Navy, widely known for collisions  with merchant vessels (good seamanship there), competent enough to defeat the Chinese navy which will surely have orders to protect Chinese troop ships at all costs. 

That giant freebie bill

The Democrats seem to be having trouble rounding up the votes to pass their $3.5 Trillion (or $6 Trillion or $1.75 Trillion versions).  Strange that the Democrats don’t have a name for this bill, other than its cost.  Seem to me that the Democrats packed every social welfare freebie scheme there ever was into the original version.  Trouble is, although there are Democrats who like this freebie or that freebie, there are no Democrats that like all the freebies.  And each such Democrat thinks they can get the price of the bill down by dropping the freebies that they don’t like.  I believe this is how they got the bill down to $1.75 Trillion from $3.5 Trillion.  How low can you go?

   Answer, you can go to zero.  The country has gotten along without any of the freebies in this bill since 1789.  We can get along just fine without this bill just about for ever. 

   It would have been more straight forward to propose a separate bill for each freebie and try and pass it.  Instead they jammed all the freebies into one gigantic bill on the theory that the more popular freebies would pull the less popular freebies thru.  With luck, we can defeat the whole d**n thing and save ourselves from a humongous tax hike.

My Wall St Journal didn't make it.

 Second day in a row.  Many of my posts are inspired by pieces in the Journal.  Best thing to arrive in the mail was Rail Model Craftsman.  The model railroad hobby is shrinking.  The hobby no longer attracts young boys.  Partly because the real railroads don't run in a lot of places, plenty of boys can grow up and never see a real train. Partly because the models have gotten very expensive.  There was a time you could buy a kid a complete HO train set for $39.95.  Now it is $139.95.  A single freight car model kit used to be $3.  Now they go for $30 and more.  

  It is too bad.  Model railroading taught electricity, carpentry, metal work, use of air brush, photography, track work, and model building.