Middle school was getting bad back then

I wrote this for Youngest Son back when he was doing middle school some ten years ago.  I wonder if things in school are still this bad.


1.  Never say the word "gun" (or shoot or fire or kill or bang-bang or...) 
2.  Never take any thing that looks like, sounds like, or might be accused of being, a gun to school.    Same goes for any kind of knife, even a butter knife.  Don't bite your food into gun shapes.  Don't point a finger, or anything else at anyone.  No toy soldiers, no Lego guns, no books about guns or with illustrations of guns, or people carrying guns (cowboy stories, Johnnie Tremain, Last of the Mohigans, anything like that).
3.  Never say anything angry about anyone or anything.  If something or someone angers you don't say anything about it.  Hold it inside yourself until you get home.  Never threaten anything. 
4.  No touching, no hitting, no hugging. Keep your distance.
5.  They are always watching you and listening to you.  Especially on the bus, at recess and on the Internet.

Forget any of these rules and they will throw you out of school, for good.

School was easier to survive when I was a kid. 

The Battle of Britain

Decisive WWII action.  Had the British lost, Hitler would have invaded Britain and that would have changed everything, for the worse.  In the spring of 1940 Hitler looked invincible.  He had conquered and occupied Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, France (a great power) and driven the British (the other great power) into the sea at Dunkirk.  Although the British had managed to rescue most of their soldiers, they abandoned all their tanks, trucks, artillery, tents, rations, and ammunition. Only a few troops retained their rifles.  Had Hitler been able to put a few divisions ashore in England in the summer of 1940, it would have been all over for the Brits.

   Only the Royal Navy stood in the way.  Had the Germans set out for England in their fleet of Rhine River barges, the Brits would have steamed up along side in destroyers and blown the Germans out of the water.  The Brits had better than 100 destroyers backed up by 30 odd cruisers and a dozen battleships. They had sunk Graf Spee and Bismarck.  The actions off Norway had wiped out most of the German destroyers.  Those river barges would have been on their own crossing the channel. 

   The German Luftwaffe might have been able to drive the Royal Navy away and safe guard the crossing.  For this to work, the Luftwaffe had to establish air superiority.  You cannot be attacking RN destroyers with Spitfires on your tail.  This means shooting down RAF fighters in the air and bombing RAF bases out of operation. 

   The Brits knew what was coming.  They had invented and installed the first modern air defense system.  We were still using the idea in USAF in the 1960s.  It consisted of ground radar, linked by telephone to “sector stations” which scrambled the fighters and gave them vectors and altitudes to fly for interception. 

Without the radar Luftwaffe strikes would have surprised the RAF on the ground unless the RAF flew reconnaissance sorties to spot the Germans at a distance.  The number of recon sorties would have huge.  A fighter unit can only put up so many sorties a day.  To waste all those sorties just flying around looking for the enemy would have meant the end for the British.  With the radar, the British fighters could stay on their fields, all fueled and armed, ready to scramble, and count on intercepting the Germans on pretty much every sortie.  No sorties wasted flying recon.

   Had the Germans figured things out, they could have bombed the radar stations.  There were easy to find, being right on the coast and having 300 foot high antennas marking their positions.  And they could have bombed out the sector stations by homing in on their radio transmissions.   But, the Germans never figured out what was going on and let the radars and the sector stations operate undisturbed.  They counted on shooting down the Hurricanes and Spitfires in the air, and bombing their fields.  This didn’t work out because the British planes and pilots were as good as the Luftwaffe planes and pilots, and the British cranked up their aircraft factories and were building more planes than the Germans were shooting down. 

  Why do we care?  England was a Great Power; she had 50 odd million population.  Not too shabby even compared to our 100 odd million back then. And England could count on solid support from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India.  India put up many of the troops that beat Rommel in North Africa, and later beat the Japanese at Imphal and drove them out of Burma.  And, England was the base for the air war on Germany and for launching D-Day.  Many of the craft that landed in Normandy were open landing craft.  They could cross the Channel in good weather but they would never survive crossing the North Atlantic even in summer.  In short England was key strategic terrain.  Had the Germans taken it in 1940 it is difficult to imagine how we would ever have been able to beat Hitler.

We need to get the country back to work.

We need to get the country back to work.  Every day we all consume food, fuel, clothing, shelter and any one of a zillion different necessities of life.  We are running out of stuff.  We have to get back to work and grow, manufacture, mine, frack, transport raw materials to factories, and transport finished goods to stores.  The whole country has been out of work for eight weeks now.  We are running out of stuff.  You can see it when you go grocery shopping.  Empty shelves, missing product, lack of toilet paper, paper towels, whole milk, beef, pork, and chicken at the butcher’s counter. 

   And most of us need our paychecks.  And business needs workers.  The governor allowed hair salons and barber shops to open this week in New Hampshire.  I made an appointment with Mane St Styles to get my hair cut.   The proprietor greeted me at the door, gave me a new mask to replace the daughter-in-law made one I was wearing, took my temperature with one of those high tech IR gadgets, and greeted me warmly.  All the staff were overjoyed to back to work.  And it did feel good to get my hair off my neck after two months.

   Naturally as soon as we do get back to work, people are going to catch COVID-19.  Staying at home we are fairly safe.  Getting out into the world exposes us to the virus and some of us will catch it.  Some of us will die from it.  And the medics and the media will cry that we are killing people.  Until we have a vaccine, and that is a year away according to the TV, there is some risk involved.  But that risk is the same tomorrow, next week, next month, until we have a vaccine.  Can we keep the country shut down for a year waiting on a vaccine?  I don’t think so.  I am in the high risk group.  But I will risk it just to eat at a restaurant.  I am tired of eating my own cooking.

   And, to get the country back to work we need to protect our businesses from COVID-19 lawsuits.  We cannot allow lawyers to sue every business in sight every time someone comes down with COVID-19.  People come down with COVID-19 because the Chinese released the virus into the world.  If we give the lawyers their head, they will sue all our small businesses clean out of business.  Small businesses don’t have lawyers on staff, they cannot afford lawyers, and just the threat of unending lawsuits will kill them all. 

   By all accounts if you are under 50 and in decent health, your odds are pretty good; say 0.1% chance of dying.  If you are over 70 (like me) and your health is not so good, your odds are a lot worse, say 10% chance of dying.  We should let people make their own choices; we should not force people in fear of their lives to go back to work.  Likewise we should not prevent people who want to get back to work from doing so.  

Canned Catfood. Pate vs Shreds & Glop

I prefer pate. It is less messy to handle.  Cat prefers shreds & glop.  How can I tell?  She doesn't eat much pate, but she will have all the shreds and glop eaten within the hour. 

Barrows

I was watching a U-tube lecture on European archeology.  They excavated a huge barrow in England.  Built back in prehistoric times, before writing, all we know about then comes from archeology.  It was a big structure, half underground, half above ground.  These things are often described as graves.  On this barrow, they excavated and found the bones of forty individuals.  Forty?  Not many for a barrow that big.  The place was big enough to hold a 1000 graves.  Especially when you think how difficult it must have been to build such a place in the stone age.  Few workers, a poor hunter gatherer economy, no metal tools, not even shovels.  It must have required powerful motivations to build those barrows.
   Barrows are traditional described as grave sites.  That U-Tube lecture makes me think that the barrows served other purposes. Tribal gathering places, sacred places where shamans asked the god for good weather, good hunting and good luck.  Places where seers predicted the future.  We cannot know at this remove in time.  I.m thinking those few graves were the graves of a few exceptional individuals, priests, kings, shamans, mighty warriors, buried in the barrow to bring good luck, bring a friendly spirit, and make a sacred place more sacred.  We still do this.  Look at Westminster where the British bury their kings and scientists and soldiers. 

Boeing's Number 1 Problem.

  Best selling 737 Max has been grounded for more than a year.  This is the brand new airliner that suffered two fatal crashes within a few months of each other.  The autopilot in both crashes failed, seized control of the plane and dove it into the ground, killing all on board.  After a year, the cause of the autopilot failure is known, fixes have been made, but the aircraft (and Boeing’s very survival) are still grounded.  The 737 MAX is Boeing’s bread and butter aircraft.  It’s the single aisle jetliner that does most of the flying. They were cranking out 57 a month ($100 mil apiece).  Production of all of Boeing’s other aircraft was only 20 per month. 

   FAA is still paralyzed with fear of another 737 MAX crash which would reflect badly upon them, and so they are slow walking all the paperwork.  The Corona virus epidemic has caused meetings to be replaced by teleconferences slowing matters still more.  Much more of this, and Boeing will have to declare bankruptcy. 

British history via U-tube.

  I watched a couple of decent, lengthy U-Tube presentations by “The Histocrat”.  The first one talks about humans moving into Britain a million years ago.  Over the last million years Britain has suffered several ice ages severe enough to drive all the humans out of Britain, and as many interglacial periods were the forests and the game and the humans came back.  With both the ice ages and the interglacials lasting 10,000 years or more.  Used to be, they only wrote about humans settling in Britain after the last ice age went out 10,000 years ago.  Apparently they have discovered a couple of sites in Britain that are much older since the last book I read was written.  They failed to describe just how these older sites were dated.  Carbon 14 dating only works back 30-40 thousand years.  A million years is too old for carbon 14 dating. 

   They did discuss the seas breaking thru the straits of Dover, creating the English Channel and cutting Britain off from the Continent.  And sinking Doggerland.  They were a little vague on just when this happened, and after it happened how did humans get across the Channel and onto English soil?  No discussion of when early humans, especially Heidelberg man and Neanderthal man might have developed boats.  It doesn’t take much of a boat; the Channel is only twenty miles wide and can be crossed in a birch bark canoe in good weather. 

   The second one, which started up automatically after the first one finished, picks up the story around 8000 BC with the Beaker Folk.  It claimed that DNA evidence shows a turnover in British population with the appearance of Beaker Folk graves.  They fail to describe how this DNA testing works and how many samples of DNA going back before 8000 BC they have.  Some discussion of introduction of copper and bronze into a flint using late Neolithic Britain.  The author clearly knows little about metal work, he describes bronze as “hard”.  It isn’t very hard.  Flint is much harder than bronze.  Bronze is tougher than flint; you can make a bronze sword that works.  You cannot make a flint sword; flint is brittle as glass and would break the first time you struck anything with it.  The author makes a big deal over copper versus bronze.  I don’t see that, bronze is a straight forward alloy of copper with 10% tin which gives a metal much tougher than plain copper.  But other than adding the tin, bronze works the same way as copper does.  You can cast it and sharpen it the same way as copper.  A copper smith doesn’t have to learn much to become a bronze smith.  The author discusses smelting copper from the ore (oxides or sulfides of copper).  Actually copper working got started with native copper.  There used to be nuggets of pure copper just lying around to be picked up.  They are mostly gone by now, but they were important back in the day.  The native copper can be hammered into shape, or melted and cast into shape, much simpler that figuring out how to smelt copper from ores.      

8 1/2 inches of fresh global warming in May

 8 1/2 inches of fresh global warming fell on my deck last night.  May is late in the season for snow like this.  It ought to push back leaf day if the trees have any common sense.

Cops and Courts should handle Campus Sexual Harrassment

Betsy DeVos, Trump's education secretary , has just released new federal guidance to the nation's colleges and universities.  Hence forth they have to allow accused students a little bit of due process before expelling them.  Good first step.  BUT...
Rape is a serious crime.  Used to be a death penalty offense.  We have backed off on the death penalty, but it is still a serious crime.  I don't like students getting judged by a bunch of college admins for serious offenses like rape.  That's what we have police and courts for.  And American courts are pretty good on due process, far more so than lefty college admins.  When someone complains to the college of campus rape or sexual harassment, the college should offer her (or him) a ride to the police station, and a ride back.

Train buffs for Trump.

  

Today’s campaign mailing offered a real electric model train, all painted up as a Trump campaign train. It looked kinda cool.  I like Trump and I like trains.  I have an HO train layout running around the walls of the down stairs guest room.  I guessed this trophy model train was HO scale.  The picture showed HO style couplers.  A lot of looking did turn up “HO” in an obscure place in the mailing.  I sort of expected a deal for the train like this “Make a sizable campaign contribution and we will send you this cool troy.”  No such luck.  After reading and re-readng the offer, I think if you send in the paper work they will bill you and if you sent the toy train operator (not the Trump campaign!) a check, they will send you the locomotive.  Send them two more checks and they will send you the two passenger cars that make up the full train.  No where did it say how much each check had to be. 

   After all the reading and re-reading of the mailer, I decided NO Sale, and put the mailer into File 13.

Terminator Dark Fate 2019

    It’s been a long time (36 years) since the first Terminator movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton.  Terminator Dark Fate still has Arnold and Linda Hamilton.  Linda has aged, nearly as much at Carrie Fisher aged in the last Star Wars flick.  We have a large cast but none of the other actors names mean anything to me.  Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis is a human with superpowers rather than a cyborg, Dani Ramos played by Natalia Reyes has Sarah Connor’s old role from the first Terminator movie.  They both do good jobs; this movie ought to help both of their careers. This flick got an R rating, mostly over a few F-bombs dropped here and there.  The plot is familiar, a super being, Grace, is sent back from the future to guard a good looking young chick, Dani Ramos, from an unstoppable Terminator sent back from the future to kill her.  .The movie starts out in Spanish, with English subtitles, which was a little off putting.  There is a lot of combat thru out the movie.  It is so violent that it is hard to believe that the characters can survive all the banging around.  There are some plot holes, such as the time they are riding on the top of a freight train, headed toward the US border, and suddenly, poof, they are in a nice clean new white pickup truck. 

   They spent $185 million to make this and it has made $261 million world wide since it was released in November last year.  Somebody goofed on the publicity, I never heard of it before seeing it on Netflix.  If I had known there was another Terminator movie in the theaters I probably would have gone and seen it.

   The cyborgs are no longer the bright shiny liquid metal from Terminator 2; rather they are made from soft and squishy black tar.  Yuck.  I liked the liquid metal better.

    Overall this was a meh movie, nowhere as entertaining as Terminator 2 was 30 years ago.   No good one liners.  No romance, neither Grace nor Dani gets a guy.  Sarah Connor wants to kill Arnold’s T800 character.  I remember Sarah saying nice things about the T-800’s fatherly relationship with young John Connor toward the end of Terminator 2.  She must have had some attitude adjustment for the worse in the two (or more?) Terminator flicks between this one and Terminator 2.

Take the kids to a battlefield

We have some around here.  Bunker Hill, Concord, Lexington, Bennington, Ticonderoga, Saratoga, gotta be some more but I can't think of them right now.  To make it really educational, get a book about the battle and have the kids read it.  Bring the book on the trip.  They usually have a walking trail with sign posts.  Have the kids read each sign post aloud.  If there is a guide, join up with him and listen to what he has to say.  Observe the terrain.  Point out the importance of the high ground.  Find the high ground.  Find the places our side defended against Redcoat attacks.  Pace out a fair musket shot, about 150 paces is extreme range for a smooth bore flintlock musket.  Pace out the distance required to see the whites of their eyes.  That's so short a range that nobody can miss.  From Concord, follow the road the Redcoats used to retreat back to Boston after the shoot out.  Point out that patriots fired upon the retreating Redcoats all the way.  In Wales, England, Carnavon Castle, a famous Redcoat regiment has their home and museum.  That regiment (Cold Stream Guards? can't remember for sure) was at Concord in 1775 and made the retreat to Boston.  The diary of the regimental surgeon is in the museum, open to the page for Concord.  It reads some thing like , "Oh the colonials were beastly that day.  Unsporting.  Fired upon us from behind stone walls."    

Corona virus gets Congress to actually pass a law

I had pretty much given up on meaningful federal legislation.  Meaningful as in more important than renaming a Post Office.   I cannot remember the last useful law the Congress passed.  it was many years ago.  Since then CongressCritters occupied their time calling each other names, bad mouthing president Trump, and promising support for motherhood and apple pie. 
   Then we are hit with Corona virus.  And, lo and behold, the CongressCritters manage to pass a $2.2 trillion relief and recovery bill.  Hallelujah.  Too bad it takes a repeat visit from the Black Death to get them to do anything.  

Let's get back to work

Should we end the current economic shut down in New Hampshire?  We have everyone hunkered down at home and while we stay at home we probably won’t catch COVID-19.  But how long can we keep it up?  I already see signs that the food supply chain is breaking down.  We are going to start running out of a lot of things pretty soon. 

    Speaking as someone old enough to be in the high risk group, I don’t see much difference in my odds of catching COVID-19 next week or next month or next year.  Things won’t change much until we have a vaccine and the TV says that is a year away.  Can we stay shut down and live off inventory for a whole year waiting on a vaccine?  I don’t think so.  Already we are running out of food.  Check the empty shelves in the grocery stores.

    Going back to work ought to voluntary.  Those that want to go back to work should be allowed to.  Those that don’t should be free to stay at home.  When ever we go back to work, some people are going to catch it.  Some of them will die.  The medics and the media will cry loudly that we are killing people.  But are we?  It doesn’t make much difference to me whether I catch it next week or next month or next year. 

Better late than never. HP power button works right.

Some years ago I bought an HP Pavilion laptop.  It had (still has) a power button to turn it on.  That worked fine for months.  Then we had a Micro$oft patch oh maybe two-three years ago.  That broke the power button.  Shut the laptop down thru Windows, and next morning, the power button would not start up up again.  PITA.   One clue, the LED in the power  button no longer turned off when I shut the laptop down thru Windows.  I found I could hold the power button down for the count of nine and the LED would turn off.  And then, pressing the  power button would make the laptop start up like it ought to.
   I googled on this bug, never found anything about it on the net. I lived with the PITA for years.  Then the Micro$oft patch day came on last Friday.  And it fixed the power button.  Hoorah.

Terrible Timer (kitchen timer that is)

It was cheap, $3 and a skosh at Wally Mart.  It ain't loud enough.  The all metal sixty year old timer it replaced, had a good loud single "ding" loud enough to be heard all over the living room.  This new cheap all plastic wonder timer just ain't loud enough.  I have burned half a dozen things to a crisp because I failed to hear the too soft, too short, buzz the new plastic one makes. 
   The maker was ashamed of his product and failed to put his name on it.  It does have "Made in China" stamped in the inside.  It's all white, about 3 inches wide by 3 inches high, half round top.  If we ever get the stores open again I will look for something better. 

Teach the kids the US Constitution

At the end of the American Revolution there were 13 independent colonies.  Each colony had its own legislature to make laws, a governor to execute them, courts to enforce them, an army, a navy, a diplomatic corps, taxes, and an establishment that ran things.  In short everything you need to become an independent nation.  And the people who were the colonial establishment, the colonial legislature, the administration and the courts, wanted to keep their jobs, their influence, and their position.  They all feared a Continental government would usurp their powers, position and livelihood. 
   On the other hand they all feared the British would be back for round two. They all knew that none of them were strong enough to stand off the Redcoats single handed.  They knew they needed to present a united front to a hostile world.  They also knew that the existing Articles of Confederation were not working.  The Confederation lacked even the power to levy its own taxes. 
   So, when the call to a Constitutional Convention went out over George Washington's signature, all the colonies sent a delegation.  All the delegations were intent upon setting up a federal government to handle foreign affairs and national defense  but not one that took over their jobs back home.  Hence a lot of careful language in the Constitution outlining just what powers the new federal government might have, and those powers it would not have. 
   Kids ought to understand the separation of powers into the three branches of the Federal government.  Article 1 creates the Congress to make the laws.  Article 2 sets up the Executive branch to execute existing law but without power to make new law.  Article 3 sets up the federal courts and defines their jurisdiction.  Note that the state courts existing at the time handled ordinary criminal and civil matters and the federal courts were restricted to matters of federal law.  They cannot try a defendant for murder, murder is a state crime, not a federal one. 
   The Constitution had a lot of compromises and on the whole was a very successful document.  It still controls the United States today, with a mere 27 amendments over 230 years.   Of those 27, ten were applied right after the adoption of the Constitution and should really be considered part of the original deal.  That leaves a mere 17 amendments over the course of 230 years, a pretty good record for stability. 

Testing Corona virus to death

Tests don't cure disease.  For a doctor treating a patient, results of a Corona virus test are useful, and can guide his treatment.  Numbers I saw yesterday showed we have nearly one million Corona virus cases and we have conducted five million Corona virus tests.  Sounds to me like we have tested all, and more than all, the patients that doctors are treating.  
   But on TV I see various talking heads,  the network kind and the medical kind and the political kind, calling for more and more testing and claiming that we cannot let people get back to work until we have tested more and more people.
  Why?  If we are testing all the patients, what good does testing everyone in the country do?  Especially when the test is suspicious.  Testing comes back positive on a lot of people who are in good health and show no symptoms.  The medics all say these individuals are "asymptomatic" which is true but doesn't tell us much.  We more practical people might say the test shows a lot of false positives.  With such a test, more testing will make the Corona virus epidemic look worse.   The political and network talking heads are fine with that, they think news of worse Corona virus infection hurts Trump, and they are all dyed in the wool anti-Trumpers.
   Me, I think we need to get the country back to work before we run out of stuff, like food, fuel, clothing, personal protective equipment, prescription drugs, toilet paper and a zillion other things. You can see the shortages in every grocery store, lots of  empty shelves.

Teach kids The Declaration of Independence

It offers a fine educational opportunity for kids of all ages.  Obtain a printed copy or download it and print it out.  Have the kids read parts of it aloud.  Start with the second paragraph of the Declaration, the one that starts off "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,..."  If you have daughters you might point out that "Men" as well as "Mankind" meant (and still means) the whole human race, women and men together.  That usage persists until the rise of feminism.  Tolkien, writing in the 1950's would write of "races of Elves and Dwarves, and Men".  You can also point out to both sons and daughters that this clause prohibits titles of nobility (Duke, Earl, Marquis, Baron, etc) in America and to Americans.  This occurred at a time when the Great Powers, England, Spain, Russia, and France, all had hereditary nobles.  The first part of the Declaration is still alive and meaningful.  Jefferson's later list of specific grievances against the British Crown are of lesser importance today.  The grievances are political grievances from 250 years ago and their time has largely passed.  In 1776 they were important.  The Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of war against the British Crown, and Jefferson wanted to rally as many Americans to the patriot cause as he could.

Should US States be able to declare bankruptcy?

Been some discussion of this on the TV news.  We have some states that are pretty deep underwater.  They keep themselves running by borrowing from banks and Gawd-knows-who.  Right now I believe the states are considered “sovereign risk”, which means they will never go bankrupt and can always pay back the loan by raising taxes.  So it is perfectly legal to loan states more money, all the money they want.  And if the state looks flaky, charge them a good stiff interest rate. 

   Should there be a state bankruptcy option, some deep under water states will take it, and the banks will loose money big time.  Which ought to make the banks more wary lending to states that will never be able to pay them back.  Sucker banks in New York loaned Puerto Rico $80 billion over the years.  Puerto Rico is never going to be able to pay that off, so they just got a special act of Congress allowing them to declare bankruptcy.  The sucker banks will have to kiss off $80 billion, which is enough to hurt even the big banks.  Puerto Rico is going to have to tighten its belt, because nobody in their right mind is going to loan them a dime for many many years. 

   It is reasonable for a state to borrow money for a long term capital project like new school buildings, new bridges, and new flood control projects.  It is not reasonable for a state to borrow money for ordinary operating expenses such as paying state workers salaries or pensions, plowing the roads, or fixing potholes.   If states could declare bankruptcy the banks would be more cautious lenders.  States that do declare bankruptcy will find that nobody will loan to them, which ought to be incentive enough to avoid doing bankruptcy.

   In short, allowing states to declare bankruptcy will save tax payers money, save the banks money, and cut down on “waste, fraud, and abuse” by the states.

Consumer Reports is all about foreign cars, Detroit is dead

I picked up the New Cars version of Consumer Reports, big thick one topic special magazine.  I'm an old car buff, I thought I would see what CR thinks about the current crop of cars.  You never know, I might need to replace my fifteen year old Buick sometime.
   They wrote 57 pages comparing cars, best cconobox, best minivan, best this, best that, and so forth.  Virtually every single car they listed was a foreign car, Japan, Korea, Germany, and others.  A few, very few, US cars listed.  Chevy scored occasionally, so did Ford.  Very occasionally Dodge, Buick, and Cadillac.  Poor old Caddy was down to a single listing.  But 95% of all the listings were for foreign cars.  Better sell your Detroit motor stocks.  Detroit is doomed.
  One problem Detroit has is brand dilution,  Chevy is offering 16 different models, 7 SUV's or SUV wannabe', 4 sedans, 2 hot rods, 2 pickup trucks, and some odd balls.  That's too many.  Seven of 'em were things I had never heard of or seen before.  And I am a car buff and pay attention such things.  Average car buyer is less informed than I am.  If we have never heard of it, it ain't gonna sell.
  One problem is Chevy doesn't advertise on TV anymore. And the car rags like Road and Track, Car and Driver, Motor Trend, and their ilk are dying out.
   Another problem is Chevy isn't really serious about the econobox market.  The bulk of the cars on the road these days are little cheap econoboxes.  Chevy's offerings ain't cheap ($13K and $16 K) for Sonic (Sonic is a hedgehog and Beretta is an Italian handgun) and Spark (Spark suggests electrical trouble). Good names there.  Behemoths like GM need to sell into the high volume market.  There ain't enough guys with Corvette money to keep GM alive.

A New Windows loophole?

Got a kind of scary email this morning.  The From address was the password I use to log into my home desktop.  Dunno how he got that.  Windows has so many loopholes, he must have found another one.  I don't use that password for anything other than logging into the desktop.  The email claimed to have captured all my porn watching, and made an obscene movie of me and threatened to email both to all sorts of people.  I doubt the obscene movie part since the desktop lacks a camera and I have a piece of masking tape over the camera in the laptop.
   Any how I changed my password and started running anti virus programs. 

I went Grocery shopping today

Depressing.  Most everybody, including yours truly, was wearing face masks.  More empty shelves.  Higher prices.  Hamburger up to $6.99 a pound.  Beef running between $10 and $20 a pound.  The only chicken was 4 packs of skinless boneless tasteless breasts $3 a pound.  Far more than I can eat before it goes bad.  Consumer Reports magazine $13.  Supply chain is breaking down.
   Only good sight was gasoline at Exxon Mobil for only $1.84 a gallon. 

Thinking of purchasing your first firearm?

If you are new to firearms, you need to know the basic safety rules

1. Always treat every gun as loaded.
2. Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to kill
3. Keep your finger off the trigger and outside of the trigger guard until you are ready to fire.
4. After picking up a firearm make sure it is unloaded.  Always open the chamber and make sure no cartridge is lurking therein.

Guns are made that shoot various different cartridges of vastly different powers, starting with .22 Long Rifle and working up to Dirty Harry’s 44 magnum and .223 and 30-30 and 30-06 and .308 Winchester and 12 gauge shotgun.  I can recommend firing the more potent cartridges before buying a gun chambered for them.  You may find that the report and recoil of the more potent cartridges is so bad that you cannot shoot them well.  In which case buy a gun chambered for a lesser cartridge that you can shoot well. 

    Guns need to fit you.  It’s like buying clothing.  Long guns want to have the correct length of stock, so that your trigger hand can reach the trigger comfortably.  Hand guns are pickier about feel.  I learned hand guns in the Air Force.  At the time, the Air Force issue handgun was a .38 caliber revolver of the sort the police used in those days.  That was one miserable gun to shoot.  The grip was too small, the grips were old and soaked in gun oil and slippery.  The piece would twist in my hand with each shot, making the second and third shots harder.  About that time I acquired an Army .45 automatic.  That was a joy to shoot; the grip filled my hand nicely, and was at the right angle to push straight back rather than twisting.  The piece was always just right in my hand for the next shot.  I strongly recommend getting to a range and shooting off a box of ammunition in the handgun you want to buy before laying out the money to buy it.  Long guns are not so critical; if the stock feels right in the store you will most likely be happy with it.   Little pocket pistols chambered for full house cartridges lack the weight to soak up the recoil and the short barrel creates an ear shattering report.   Full sized service pistols will serve you better with the full house cartridges.

   Once you have the gun, you need to shoot it if you expect to hit anything with it.  Once a month is good, a couple of times a year is the bare minimum.   Buy a pair of ear defenders and wear them.  Other wise the recoil and the report will shock you into a flinch that ruins your chances of hitting much of anything.  Use both hands to shoot a hand gun.  Before firing take a half breath and hold it.  Center the front sight on the target bullseye; line the front sight up in the rear sight. notch. Squeeze the trigger slowly and gently.  It should be a surprise when the gun fires. 

That digital TV cable is noisy

The sound is full of clicks and pops and just roaring sounds and musical score leaking in from other channels.  To say nothing of ringing telephones, furniture moving noises and emergency vehicle sirens.  From the sound of it they have a fire truck, an ambulance, or police cruiser zipping by every few minutes.  They need to move the studio to a quieter part of town and keep telephones out of the studio.  And get maintenance to track down and eliminate those annoying electronical noises in their sound channel. 

Closing Northern Vermont University (NVU) Lyndon Campus

Front page, above the fold, story in this weekend’s Caledonian Record. UVM Chancellor Jeb Spaulding called for closing the Lyndon campus (and some other places too) Needless to say the caused a hue and cry from alumni, students, and local business people. All duly reported on in the Record.
As a New Hampshire resident, the doings over the border in Vermont are only of academic interest. But they did publish some figures on NVU employment that makes me wonder. NVU Lyndon has nearly 1000 students. It also has 700 employees. That’s a pretty plump student faculty ratio. Only 43 employees are full time faculty. I have to wonder what the other 657 employees do, other than draw their pay. And, they pay their faculty peanuts. Assistant professors only make $50,518. A full professor makes $66,000. Electrical engineering pays a lot better than that.
Far as I am concerned, a student faculty ratio of 20 is about right. That would be 50 professors. Nobody else on the payroll. The students mow the grass, shovel the snow, sweep the halls, wash the dishes, and do all the janitorial chores. We did this at my old high school; it only took an hour a day of student time. No paper pushers or administrators at all. Faculty does necessary paperwork, mostly grading papers and writing report cards. Unnecessary paperwork (most of it) just goes into file 13.
Let’s see, 50 faculty at $66,000 each a year is $3.3 million. 1000 students paying $ 11,250 tuition is $11.25 million. You would think that they could make ends meet. Maybe even afford a couple of maintenance guys to fix stuff.

I filled the car up for $1.88 a gallon

Cheap, Cheap.  I was paying $2.80 not so long ago. 

"We are NOT running out of food." Say many Web posts.

Why do I have trouble believing that?  With most of the country out of work, we have to be loosing food production, food processing, and food distributing.  Most of us can see the empty shelves in the food stores.   I don't believe this is caused by panic buying.  This Corona virus thing has been going on for a month, plenty of time for the buying panic to die down and for the food supply chain to fill up the empty shelves.  The shelves are still empty which makes me think the food supply chain is breaking down. 
   The medics and the media are all in favor of keeping the country shut down forever, or at least until a vaccine becomes available, which the TV says will take a year, which is forever if you are an empty grocery shelf.  Hence the trickle of "We are NOT running out of food" Web posts.