Lynne Blankenbecker at the PBVRC Spaghetti Dinner

The Pemi Baker Valley Republican committee is a very active group, based in Plymouth.  They put on a monthly spaghetti dinner, which is always well attended and fun to go to.  Now that I am running for NH senate district 1, I went to the affair on Friday night, thinking to meet some voters, even though Plymouth is a little south of my district.   For everyone's edification, NH senate district 1 starts at the Canadian border and runs south to a line of Bath, Benton, Woodstock, and Thornton.   Any how I got to show my face and give my campaign speech.
  Best speaker of the evening was Lynne Blankenbeker. She is running for US rep from Congressional District 2, the western half of NH, currently held by Anne Kuster, a fairly worthless democrat.  Lynne has an impressive resume, service in both USAF and USN, attained the rank of captain in the Navy (Navy captains are much higher rank than Army or Air Force captains).  Ran for and won a NH house seat way back in 2009.  She spoke force fully and well Friday night.  I was impressed. 
   Everyone ought to make an effort to hear Lynne speak.  Her campaign website is https://www.blankenbeker.com.  They will have a list of Lynne's speaking engagements.  It's well worth your time to go hear her. 

Career Choice for college students.

Op Ed piece in last Saturday's journal entitled "Why do Women Shun STEM? It's Complicated".  The writer is a female professor of engineering.  She mentions a number of things, but she dwells on the effect of liberal arts faculty bad mouthing engineering and other STEM subjects to the students.  Women students get told that STEM subjects just lead to jobs in cubicles crunching numbers.  Which isn't true at all.  Engineering is very creative, engineers get to create new things with their own hands, work the bugs out, and bring them to market.  Beats selling life insurance or real estate all hollow.  I am retired after fifty years doing electrical engineering, it was fun, and it paid well. 
   As a college student, you need to decide on your career after graduation.  You need to do this early freshman year, by Christmas time at the latest.  Once you have picked a career, then you must pick a college major that makes you employable in your chosen field.   Career choice is tough.  As a freshman you don't really know what the ropes are, most of what you do know is vague hearsay.  What do  you really want to do to make a living?  So you talk to parents, friends, relatives, anyone about it.  One caveat.  Don't take advice from the faculty or your college advisor (who is also a faculty member).  Reason is simple.  Anyone who has pushed and struggled hard enough to become a professor of anything, is going to tell you that what ever it is that he/she is teaching is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  That's just the way people work. College faculty think their job is to train up students to become professors just like they are. 
   Couple of things to know.  First, teaching college isn't what it used to be.  Most college courses are taught by part timers (adjunct professors they are called) who receive miserable pay and no benefits.  And no chance of tenure.  Second, there are a lot of things taught in college that are of little to no worth out in the real world.  Majoring in "studies" (gender studies, ethnic studies, environmental studies, any kinda study) is a total loser.  Anthropology, sociology, astronomy, art history, music appreciation, are not much better. 
   One good trick, read a biography of someone who followed the career path you might be thinking of taking.  
  
  

12 Strong 2018

Netflix brought this to me yesterday.   It's a war movie, about a 12 man Special Forces team send to Afghanstan in the very early days after 9-11.  They served as forward observers and brought in smart bomb air strikes that enabled the Northern Alliance to overcome the Taliban in a matter of weeks, after years of loosing to the Taliban.  It's not bad, but not compelling.  I didn't watch it to the end. 
   A lot of internet critics slammed it for political incorrectness, they wanted a movie to trash the US intervention in Afghanistan.  This one portrays the American effort as good, and the special forces guys as heroes.  Which is fine by me.  Lots of action, explosions, fighting, not much dying.  They hired the blackout camera man from Game of Thrones.  He turned the lights out on the sets while filming, yielding the annoying but trendy black on black scenes where you cannot see anything. 
   Acting was only fair.  Despite some name brand actors (Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon) the actors failed to really engage us audience folk.  No really snappy lines of dialog, little background of friends, family, lovers, children.  No good jokes.  I couldn't related to any of the characters very well. 
   Overall a C movie. 

Has anyone seen any Russian hacks on Facebook or Twitter?

For all the talk about Russians and Trump in 2016, I have not seen any examples of things the Russians did, posted, tweeted, or commented upon.  So what did those alleged Russians do?  Can I see it anywhere?  For all the sound and fury, you would think there would be something that shows on the internet somewhere. 

Drug pushing robo callers

Lately I have been getting them.  There is the caller who tells me my shipment of pain killing drugs is ready for pickup.  And the caller who asks if I am over 65 and suffering from arthritis pain. And the caller who offers me any kind of prescription pain killer under the sun, just come down to our friendly pain management clinic.
   I wonder how much of the opioid crisis in New Hampshire is caused by telephone pushers of drugs.
   I don't have caller ID on my land line phone, and the robo callers don't answer my questions about who they are and what their phone number is, so I don't really have anything worth reporting to law enforcement.  

The Great Rift, by Michael E Hobart, Science vs Religion

Book review in Thursday's Wall St Journal.  Interesting writeup.  On the other hand, is the science vs religion topic truly relevant today?   Far back, in ancient times, before the invention of science, religion explained all things as God's will, the weather, disasters like volcano's, earthquakes, and  hurricanes, creation of the world and all that is in it.  Science, newly invented in the Middle Ages,  offered the Copernicus  heliocentric theory sometime in the 16th century.  That was the first  serious head-to-head set to, the Church espoused the older earth centered Ptolemaic system, for reasons that I no longer remember. They made life hot for Copernicus and then they laid onto Galileo even harder.   Darwin in the 19th century caused an even bigger fuss, a lot of people liked the creation story given in Genesis a lot better than they liked evolution and the idea that man was descended from apes. 
   But today, surely this is no longer a real issue.  I know the creation story in Genesis, I even read it aloud to my children.  I also know the creation story from astronomy, cosmology, geology, and evolution.  When I think about it, I realize that the two stories are incompatible with each other.  But,  that's OK by me,  I know and understand both stories (all except Guth's idea of inflation) , my head is big enough to hold them both and  let them be. I have no plans to resolve the issues, I know plenty of better men than I have tried and short of becoming an atheist, unattractive at my age,  there is no resolution.  The incompatibilities just don't bother me that much, I know they are there, I know they will be there for a long long time, and I know there is little I can do about it.  So I don't worry about it.
   
        

Strzok Hearing. Shouting match.

Peter Strzok  is the very senior FBI agent who ran the Russian Collusion hearings and the FISA court warrants to investigate members of the Donald Trump campaign and was on the Muller investigation team.  He was having an affair with Lisa Paige, an FBI legal type, and they exchanged some text messages indicating a super high degree of hatred for Trump, and a desire to tip the election to Hillary.
  Congress has been grilling Agent Strzok on live TV all day.  I would have liked to hear about  what evidence Strzok showed the FISA court to get warrants to surveil Trump campaign workers, what evidence they turned up about Russian collusion, both of which Strzok knows a lot about.  They never did get down to that.  Strzok kept refusing to answer questions claiming the the FBI didn't want him to testify.  Congress should have said, "Answer or you are in contempt of Congress, which is 6 months in slam for each question you refuse to answer."  CongressCritters don''t have that kind of stones any more.  The Democrats spent all their floor time trashing the Trump administration rather than boring in on the Muller investigation and Strzok's part in it.  Lot of shouting, lot of points of order, little real info.  They are still at it as I write this. 

How combat ready is NATO?

I read a couple of web postings saying that the German Air Force only has ten jet fighters operationally ready.  The rest, hundreds of expensive warplanes, are down for maintenance.  With only ten flyable fighters,  German pilots won't be getting enough flight time to stay proficient.  
   That is a ridiculous figure.  When I was squadron level maintenance officer in USAF, we were required to show 70% of out fighters in commission and ready to fly every day.  Our squadrons were 18 aircraft in those days, and 70% came out to 11 aircraft.  And we made that 70% OR rate every day.  In short, a USAF squadron had more OR fighters than the entire Luftwaffe.
  The Germans claim to be spending something like $60 billion on defense, 1.2% of GNP.  Which ain't enough if it leaves nearly all of their fighter planes grounded for maintenance.  
   I think Trump is right to yell at them for not paying enough for defense.  The Russians still have a large army, they have grabbed off big slices of Georgia and Ukraine, and Putin is talking about grabbing more.  Not the right time to have most of your air force grounded for maintenance. 

Captain America, Civil War, 2016, I caught it on the tube last night

It was long.  Ran three hours what with the usual heavy load of commercials.  The camera man turned on the lights of the set BEFORE filming.  Give him points for that.  None of those black on black scenes that Game of Thrones likes so much, and I find totally annoying.  Give them credit for doing a good job rather than being arty.  The sound man was barely adequate, I had to turn up the volume, and boost the treble before I could catch all the dialog.  I had no trouble hearing all the dialog in the commercials, which means the sound man could do a lot better.  
   The movie has Captain Steve (America) Rodgers, Iron Man/ Tony Stark, a new young actor playing Peter Parker/Spiderman.  The Spiderman costume totally covers the face, and so even as Spiderman gets a good share of screentime, it's hard to relate to a superhero with out a face.  And a lot of Marvel Comics characters that are new to me.  I stopped reading comic books a long long time ago so I am not up to date on Marvel Comics Universe. Since nobody ever addresses anybody by name on screen, it is tough to figure out who is who. 
   There was a lot of hand to hand combat, jumping out of tenth story windows and bouncing when hitting the ground, and fantastic but fun to watch moves with that shield.  There wasn't much of a plot, or at least I never did catch on to what Captain America was trying to do to save the world this time.  They split the Avengers into two warring factions which resulted in a lot of hand to hand fist fighting between Steve Rogers and Ironman.  Somehow, no matter how hard Steve Rogers hit, Ironman's iron suit soaked up the blows.  Funny about that
  It was fun to watch, I stayed awake to the bitter end at 11PM.  Far past my usual bedtime. 

New Supreme Court Justice

Lot's and lots of yak on the TV about this.  Much of it phoney.  They talk about a tremendous floor flight.  Not very likely.  Either the Republicans have all their ducks in a row, and their mavericks and RINO's under control, or they don't.  Even with McCain out with brain cancer, they still have a one vote majority in the Senate, and a Republican vice president as a tie breaker.  If they don't have all their members on board, they won't bring the matter up until they do. 
   I don't know the names on Trump's picklist, but I assume they are all guys like Gorsuch, who has worked out well and is generally respected.  This kind of guy will believe in "stare decisus", Latin for "Let it Stand".  The doctrine that when in doubt, it is justice to rule the same way previous judges have ruled on the issue.  Which makes all the talk about over turning Roe vs Wade just scare talk.  Roe vs Wade has been the law of the land for nearly 50 years, a half century.  Stare decisus means stick with Roe, because it is the way things have been done for 50 years.  I don't think Roe vs Wade is in any danger from anyone Trump might nominate. 

Franconia NH, Old Home Day Parade

Franconia does Old Home Day on Saturday, as close to the 4th as they can get.  So I went.  Spent 6 hours smoothing with voters, asking them to vote for me.  A lot of people were out of state tourists, worthy folk who help keep NH green but cannot vote for me.  And a lot were voters in my district.  All were perfectly happy to say hello and shake hands.  Weather was ideal, cool, sunny, clear skies.  A good time was had by all.

Pocahontas Is Racially Charged???

The Hill was trashing back at President Trump yesterday.   The President is famous for calling Senator Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" in response to Warren's claims of Indian ancestry.  The Hill called the nickname "racially charged".
   Really?  Back when my kids were doing elementary school, Pocahontas lunch boxes were all the rage.  Pocahontas beat out My Little Pony for most popular kids lunchbox.  Back when I was doing elementary school myself (long before the Disney movie) we knew of Pocahontas as a beautiful, romantic Indian princess, who had a thing going with John Smith, later married John Rolf, went to England were she was treated as if she was British nobility.  Pocahontas was cool, everybody knew that. 
   Dunno where The Hill comes up with "racially charged". 

Background on the 2nd Amendment

Let your mind run back in time, to 1789, the year the constitution was adopted.  The United States possessed an enormous territory, stretching 2000 miles from Maine to Georgia and inland for a thousand miles.  It was thinly settled in those days.  France and England were the super powers of the late eighteen century and everyone understood that one or both of  them would want to expand their power by taking over parts of the brand new United States. Nearly every settled place had seen Indian raids, banditry, pirates, French, Spanish, and lastly Redcoats.  No way the infant federal government could protect  this huge vulnerable territory with regular army soldiers.  They lacked the money, the supplies, the roads, and the shipping, to get regular army troops into position to protect the civilians from all the potential attackers.
   The Americans had just finished the Revolutionary War, where American militia had driven Redcoat regulars into flight from Concord, slaughtered them en masse at Bunker Hill, forced "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne to surrender an entire British army, and served with distinction on hundreds of battlefields.  In those days everyone knew the militia was needed for, and adequate for, protection of American civilians, anywhere up and down the length and breadth of the land.  We would raise a small regular army, but for defense of the homeland, we would rely upon the militia.
   This was the thinking behind the clause "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State...".   Militia was a bring your own gun (BYOG) thing.  In those days no state or federal government had the money to provide arms to the militia.  And it was also known in those days that plenty of land owners, patroons, and other colonial big shots were in favor of taking guns away from "the rabble" who might use them to cause trouble.  Hence "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." 
   And this worked for many years.  As late as 1940 Japanese admiral Yamamoto said "To invade the United States is impossible.  There would be a rifleman behind every blade of grass. "   America is no longer a shaky new found country clinging to the coast of a continental wilderness.  We are now the strongest country on earth with regular armed forces surely strong enough to defend the homeland. 
   But for all our modern improvements we still have reasons for citizens to want firearms.  For instance, I have black bears strolling up and down my driveway, especially during beechnut season.  Plenty of Americans live in far more dangerous places than I, and I don't see any reason to deny them firearms.   Plenty of robberies have been thwarted with the help of a gun in the cash drawer.  So have plenty of home invasions, muggings, and car jackings.
   The recent appalling  murders of school children and innocent spectators happens because we allow homicidal maniacs to run around loose until they commit an awful crime.  We used to have mental hospitals in which we confined those of unsound mind.  Unfortunately the civil rights movement of the 1960's forced their closure, and turned the inmates out into the street, where many of them still live. 

Woodsville NH 4th of July Parade.

Unloading antique farm tractor

Becca Bailey getting the truck ready.

Groovy old Woodsville building that I need to model for my HO railroad.

Last float turns around and heads for home.

I marched ( drove actually, I am getting old)  in the great Woodsville 4th of July parade.  Above are my photos.  I finally manage to get Blogger's photo uploader to work.  It was warm, 86 F according to the big thermometer on the bank.  A good time was had by all.  We had a lot more Republican candidates than we did Democrat. 

US Health care is too darned expensive

American spends 19% of GNP on healthcare.  That is twice as much as any other country in the world.  That means that American products are 19% more expensive than they might be, just to pay the workers health care. No wonder we face such a massive trade deficit with China, and nearly ever other place in the world.  Our products are too darned expensive.  And American health care costs drive up the price of our products.
Here is my list of things we ought to do about the health care cost crisis.
1.  Drug companies are ripping us off with ridiculous drug prices.  We could fix this overnight.  Simply allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, like Canada, the EU, Japan.  Many US rip off priced drugs can be bought overseas from half the US prices.  This is a federal issue.  Nothing a NH state senator can do about it. 
2.  Clamp down on the malpractice racket.  The lawyers turn every adverse outcome into a river of cash for themselves.  NH has done some good work here with the malpractice court.  We could do more.  We could pass a law stating that prescription, manufacture, and administration of any FDA approved drug or device is never malpractice, even if the FDA later withdraws their approval.  We could crack down on lawyer approved malarkey testimony in malpractice cases.  We could require that "expert" witnesses must be practicing MD's who have treated more than ten similar cases within the past year.   A lot of "expert" witness no longer practice medicine, they just travel from trial to trial testifying to whatever the lawyer wants in malpractice cases.  This is a state issue.
3.  Clamp down in ridiculous regulations.  For instance, Dartmouth Hitchcock, down in Lebanon, has the roof lined up from side to side with humongous air conditioner units.  That's because some regulator demands that the air conditioners hold hospital temperature to plus or minus 1 degree F.  That's ridiculous.  I used to run an Air Force Precision Measurement Equipment Lab  (PMEL we called it).  We got all over Base Civil Engineers because the PMEL air conditioner could not keep PMEL temperature below 95F on a hot summer day.  In actual fact, this hospital regulation is totally unnecessary.  As long as air conditioning holds the temperature down enough to prevent patient suffering, they will get well. Some of the mickey mouse regs are federal, some are state.
4.  Stop prescribing so many opioids.  The Wall St Journal says that 80% of Medicaid patients in West Virginia and Kentucky are getting prescriptions for pricey opioids.  Which gets the patients onto heroin when the opioid prescription runs out. This is a mixed issue, part federal, part state, part medical profession.
5.  Stop doing so much heroic treatment on elderly patients who are at end of life.  No matter what the diagnosis, there is always some expensive procedure (a CAT scan for instance) or operation that might extend the patient's life by a few weeks.  In many cases, the elderly patient would be happier to just go home and die quietly in bed. This is a tough issue, but we could help by enlisting the elderly patient's family in decisions to do expensive things on very elderly patients.  My mother felt strongly about this, and was glad to have her two grown sons take her to the hospital and then back home.  She managed to die quietly at home at age 91.  

Abolish ICE?

Democrats, led by their newly elected New York rep Ocasio-Cortez, are calling to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  
Plan A:  replace the current ICE with a newly raised border control force.  This plan just costs money, it won't change anything much
Plan B:  Abolish ICE, lay off all their personnel, sell all their vehicles, office equipment and buildings.  Don't replace them with anything.  Create open borders, anyone can enter the US, bringing in anything they please, drugs, weapons, bombs, cute young sex slaves for sale,  nuclear material, anything.  Everyone all over the world would love to live in the United States, we have made it a very attractive, pleasant, prosperous, comfortable, free place to live. After we have built it, they will come.  En masse.  Will our country remain the United States we know and love after 50 million foreigners move in, settle down, take jobs, and vote in our elections? 

College didn't used to be so darned expensive

Way back in 1968 I got out of the Air Force and went to University of Delaware.  I got an electrical engineering degree that served me well for forty years.  At the time, my veteran's benefits were enough to pay all my tuition.  Tuition was so cheap that some semesters I paid more for textbooks than I did for tuition.  They hadn't invented student loans back then. And Delaware was a good school.  I never had an employer sniff at my Delaware degree over my forty years in the workforce.  
   Now a days I wound up paying $13K a year to put youngest son thru Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  I hear that any decent public university wants $8K a year.  This is about ten times what it cost me to get thru Delaware fifty years ago.  
   I think the drastic inflation of college costs was caused by student loans.  If there is plenty of loan money to be had, the students will sign up for anything, even being deep in debt for twenty years after graduation.  All the extra money has gone into really nice college buildings, and lots of college administrators, who don't teach, they just draw their pay.

Looking after their own, NEA

Word seems to get around.  I have been a candidate for NH Senate for a little more than a week.  Today I got a letter from the National Education Association (NEA), asking me where I stand on a number of issues.  Of the five questions on their questionaire, three of them concerned teachers pay and benefits, rights to unionize, and how I felt about charter schools, a long time teacher's union bete noire. 
   Clearly NEA doesn't care about teaching children, they only care about teacher's union rights, teacher's union dues and teacher pay and benefits. 
   After working out a decent answer, I consulted with an experienced friend.  The friend suggested I just not answer the NEA questionaire, since NEA is nothing but Democrats, who will twist anything I might write to use against a Republican candidate like me.

Strict Construction versus the living Constitution

The late Supreme Court Justice Scalia was famous for his belief that cases should be decided upon the original intent of the founders.   Since the founding occurred way back in 1789, it requires some research, some history, to understand the intent of men who lived better than 200 years ago.  There have been changes in the language over that much time, but the founders intent is discoverable with only a modest effort.
   Strict constructionists feel the duty of the courts is to judge cases according to existing law, not to make new law from the bench.  If new laws are needed it is the duty of the elected legislature to vote them in, not for single judges, or small groups of judges to make up new law out of whole cloth.
   Living Constitution people say that things have changed since 1789 (true enough) which requires changes in the way we interpret the Constitution to bring it up to date.  And these changes should be made by the courts.  This view is popular with people who have not been able to muster the votes to get their changes passed by the legislature[s].  It is also popular with judges, since it puts them in the driver's seat.  And it is popular with law schools and legal pundits because it makes legal history more interesting.  In modern times it has been easier to sell new ideas to the nine justices of the Supreme Court than to sell new ideas to the general public or  to the elected legislatures.
   I hope President Trump nominates a strict constructionist to fill retiring Justice Kennedy's seat on the Supreme Court.   I don't want to live under a dictatorship of the bench.

Representative Government

The ancient Greeks invented democracy.  In those days all the citizens of the city state would meet and vote on public issues.  This was clumsy, did not scale well, (what works for a city-state, won't work for the entire Roman empire), and led to some really disastrous decisions (the Athenian Syracuse expedition for example). 
   The solution was representative democracy, pioneered by the British parliament and championed by the United States.   Individuals are selected as representatives of their district and they meet to pass laws.  This works, as long as the representatives remember that they are supposed to represent.  In today's US Congress we have a horrific example of representatives failing to vote as their district wants and getting totally wrapped up in petty feuds and back stabbing.  At the rate the Congresscritters are going, I doubt that they will be able pass anything for the next 10 years.  They will draw their pay however.
   Look at today.  Polls show that 70% of Americans want us to do something for the "DACA" people, immigrants brought to the US illegally as small children and who grew up in America.  The third try to pass a DACA bill failed a few hours ago.  In short, all the Congresscritters are failing to pass a law that 70% of the population want passed.  That ain't representative democracy.
   We voters do have a remedy coming up in November.  We could vote all the current Congresscritters out.  

Chevy Equinox

I had to leave the Buick at the dealer for some heavy duty and super expensive repair work.  The dealer loaned me a brand new (2018 1880 miles) Chevy Equinox.  It's quite a car.  Actually I would call it a minivan but I dare say Chevy calls it an SUV, or a crossover (car industry jargon for small SUV).  Minivan is too closely associated with soccer moms to be a good name for a product these days.  SUV  sounds much cooler.  And the Equinox has four regular car doors rather than the one big side sliding door that was the mark of Dodge and Plymouth minivans.  It only seats two in front and two more in back.  The Dodge and Plymouth minivans would seat two in front and five in back.  
   It's got plenty of power.  It charged right up three mile hill without pausing for breath.  It's lost the ignition key.  You have a clever radio gizmo in your pocket, and if the car detects the gizmo, then the "Start" button works.  Press it to crank and run.  Press it again to turn the engine off.  It doesn't have AM_FM radio, it has satellite radio.  Which is cool, but last time I checked you have to pay the satellite company cash money to keep the satellite radio working.  This satellite radio only picked up half a dozen channels.  It lost the parking brake.  Either I could not find it, or it is all automatic.  It's got rear view mirrors AND a snappy color rear view TV camera that comes on when you put the tranny in reverse.
   The owner's manual was not in the glove compartment, so I could not figure out how a lot of stuff works.  Chevy must figure owners are illiterate.  All the dash board controls have cute little pictograms instead of real English language labels.  Lot of the pictograms meant nothing to me.  
   Any how all this fanciness makes my 2003 Buick feel like a Model A.  Only $36K.  Back when I was driving minivans, (80's and 90's)  I got them new for $12K.  If you got kids, then each kid can have his/her own seat, a blessing on long trips  I didn't measure to be sure, but it looks like it would take 4 by 8 sheet goods, or modest sized furniture in the wayback.
  Further update.  The Equinox does have a parking brake, it's a tiny shiny ring on the transmission shifter housing. It's a power operated parking brake.  It also has radio controls hidden underneath the steering wheel.  You can change channels and work the volume without taking your hands off the wheel.   The windshield wiper control acts oddly, but it does work after you figure it out. 

A newsie writes about engineering history

Saturday's Wall St Journal had book review of Richard Rhodes "Energy a Human History".  The reviewer was Charles R. Morris.  Reading Morris's review made it clear to me that Mr. Morris is one of those "cannot change a light bulb" newsies.  For instance, Morris is describing early steam engine operation.  Morris says " Steam was pumped into the piston".  Not so.  The piston is a round metal part that moves back and forth. No where for steam to go into.  The piston moves inside the cylinder, into which steam can go.  Any motor head, like me, knows the difference between pistons and cylinders. Apparently Mr. Morris does not.  Plus, you don't pump steam into anything.  Just open the intake valve and steam under boiler pressure will flow in freely.  No pump required.
   Then Mr Morris writes "Franklin's famous wet-kite experiment demonstrated that ordinary static electricity and the same stuff as lightening by capturing its charges in Leyden jars, primitive batteries."  Not so.  The Leyden jar was an early version of a capacitor, not a battery.  Improved versions of the Leyden jar were called condensers up until the 1950's when the name capacitor was introduced.  All your electronics, TV, stereo, smart phone, desktop, whatever, contain lots and lots of capacitors. 
   And then we read "DC systems drew their power from low-voltage battery storage."  "DC was dependent on battery charging, it had limited range, only a half mile or so."   Not so.  Both DC and AC systems obtained their power from steam driven DC generators or AC alternators.  Edison's first commercial power station at Pearl St in New York city  had a generator.  So did all the later power stations, both AC and DC.  It isn't right to say that DC has limited range.  The right thing to say is that there was/is  no way to change the voltage of DC.  For transmission over distance, you want to set the voltage as high as you dare, thousands of volts, to reduce line losses.  Once the electricity gets to where is was going, you want to reduce the voltage.  Nobody wants thousands of volts in their lamp sockets and wall outlets.  A hundred volts or so is plenty running around your house.  With AC, transformers can change the voltage up for transmission and and then down again for use.  Transformers only work on AC.  Which accounts for the universal use of AC by today's electric companies. 
  "the disgraceful story of leaded gas-its toxicity especially on the brains of children."  Not the problem with leaded gas.  When we got serious about cleaning up the smog problem we put catalytic converters on all our cars.  Leaded gas poisoned the catalyst rendering the converters inoperative.  So the industry switched over to unleaded gas some time in the late 60's to early 70's.  They put smaller fill pipes on cars requiring unleaded so the standard leaded gas nozzles would not fit, and put smaller nozzles on the unleaded gas pumps. 
   I was surprised that the usually dependable Wall St Journal would publish a piece with so many glaring errors.

Smartphone required for parking meters in Cambridge MA

So I find a legal street parking space in Harvard Square.  I park, get out, and face up to the parking meter.  The meter has a plaque on it directing me to download a "Pay Cambridge Parking Meters" app.  I guess the city fathers of Cambridge figure that all their citizens, or at least all Harvard students have smartphones.  I'm behind the times, I just have a dumbphone.  I finally wind up in a public parking garage that charges $16 an hour. 

Farewell Charles Krauthammer

The cancer got him yesterday.  He will be missed.  His commentary on current events was inspired, intelligent, and at times very witty.  The Fox people have been eulogizing him since last night.  NPR hasn't even mentioned his death.  They don't call it National Progressive Radio for nothing. 

United States Space Force (USSF)

President Trump is now pushing this.  As an old Air Force veteran I am luke warm to the idea.  I assume he is talking about creating a Department of the Space Force, with a separate Congressionally approved budget, and moving all the Air Force people and facilities working on space projects over to the new service, creating a new uniform, titles of rank, and regulations for the Space Force, in short setting it up like they did the Air Force back in 1947.  
   One objection to the idea.  The existing armed services actually engage in real combat, the kind where people get killed.  I don't see the Space Force mission as involving combat.  Launching missiles from an underground command center is pretty risk free.  Much of the morale that makes the current armed services so effective comes from membership in an elite fighting force.   In my Air Force units the enlisted men never fired a shot in anger or flew into enemy airspace, but they took great pride in keeping their fighter planes in the air, and combat ready.  Plus, the enlisted men bore the title of "Airman", until they made sergeant.  How would the Space Force enlisted men feel about bearing the title of "Spaceman"?
   The United States presently relies upon a whole lot of satellites, recon sats, comm sats, GPS sats, and others.  These satellites are not that far up, and in wartime the enemy could shoot them down, or jam their transmissions.  It would be nice to defend them somehow.  But I don't really see how this might be done.  All the enemy needs to do is lob something, with a little maneuvering fuel and an IR sensor, up as high as the target.  The target satellite is moving at 18,000 mph, and when it runs anything at that speed it is blown into dust.  Bright flash, easily seen from the ground.  Short of equipping all the satellites with a battery of anti-missiles, or nuking the enemy launch sites, I don't see any way to stop it. 
   If the independent Space Force could be freed of the existing Department of Defense (DoD) procurement regulations, it could achieve faster, cheaper, and better procurement, especially of expensive, custom built flight hardware.  Current procurement regulations slow everything down, jack up cost, and deliver inferior flaky hardware.  Getting out from under them would be a big improvement.  But, since the new Department of the Space Force would be under DoD, I don't see this as very likely. 

I'm running for Senate!

The phone rang the other day.  It was Bruce Perlo of the NH Republican Party asking if I would stand for election to the NH senate.  I was flattered, and honored, and so I said “yes”.  Filing for the September primary closed last Friday and since no one had filed, the party is entitled to submit a name.  My name came up. 

   It’s the NH first senate district.  The district is Coos and Grafton counties.  It starts at the Canadian border and reaches down a bit south of Franconia Notch. The current incumbent is Jeff Woodburn, a democrat.  It’s the biggest NH senate district, at least in land area.  It’s thinly populated, but that doesn’t make driving around the district any easier. 

   I got down to the Secretary of State’s office in Concord yesterday and filed the necessary paperwork.  It was $10 to file, I had the cash on me, and I got a receipt.  Chuck Morse, Senate President wanted to meet me.  We had a nice talk.  I should have worn coat and tie, but Jeanie Forester had assured me that it wasn’t necessary. 

   What can you do to help me run?  First, just tell everyone you know that I am running, and I am a good guy.  I’m not a household name up here, especially in Coos County.  Next time you have a party or a cookout, invite me.  I don’t eat much, and I am a fairly entertaining speaker.  I’ll say “Please vote for me” and give reasons, and tell a few war stories.

Combined arms operations. Test of the officer corps

The German army in WWII showed the world the power of combined arms, infantry, with artillery support, tank support, air support.  It was potent enough to crush the French, largest army in Europe in 1940, an army that had stood off German attacks for four years just twenty years earlier.  The Anglo Americans needed a year of combat experience in North Africa to learn how to do it. 
   Doing combined arms operations is complicated.  To order a single infantry or tank unit into action is simple, give them the objective, and the time and date.  Then it's up to the unit commander to bring his men into action.  Not too hard. 
   Now consider doing an operation with artillery support.  You want the guns to shell  enemy positions until your men reach them.  Then you want to "lift" the barrage to strike enemy rear areas while your men assault the front line positions.  You have to order the artillery units into position, and make arrangements to get tons and tons of shells up to the guns.  You have to coordinate with the artillery, make sure that both artillery and infantry are using the same maps of the action.  You have to make sure that both the artillery and the infantry know just where the attack is going in, and especially when the attack goes in.  Before the introduction of walkie talkies in WWII, the timing was the Achilles heel.  The attack usually was late, for any one of a number of reasons, and there was no way for the artillery to know this.  So they would lift the barrage as scheduled, even if the infantry was hours from making contact with the enemy.  Once the infantry had walkie talkies to control the artillery things got a lot better. 
   Tank support was not as complicated as artillery.  Order the tank unit[s] to attack at the same time as the infantry.   Make sure the infantry is knows the tanks are friendly tanks, lest they start pot shotting them with bazookas. 
   Air support can be tricky.  The aviators, especially single seat fighters, are never all the sure where they are.  It's real easy to get confused and bomb your own forces.  This happened repeatedly.  The best of coordination, aerial photos of the target area, special marking on friendly vehicles, and forward air controllers will improve things. 
   Getting all this stuff right is what you have officers for.  If they don't get it right, they are apt to loose the battle. A division commander who could put all this together and get it right was a rare asset. 

That FBI Inspector General Report

The report includes numerous emails and text messages showing ridiculous amounts of anti Trump bias on the part of FBI personnel, but the report writers claim that this appalling attitude did not affect their actions.
   I say that is Bulls**t.  People displaying that sort attitude, in writing no less, will do whatever they can to tip the election their way. Leaking of uncomplimentary material, spying, politically motivated prosecution, intimidation, and more. 
   Surely Comey's work in the Hilary Clinton email scandal, first declaring it to be un prosecutable, then declaring that the Anthony Weiner laptop information required re opening the case is heavy duty interfering the in the 2016 election.  Fortunately it damaged Hilary's chances more than it hurt Trump's chances.  Comey was never a very smart guy, he thought he was helping Hilary when in actual fact he was damaging her.