How to advertise cars on TV

Just a few pointers for the ad guys who know nothing about cars, car buyers, or TV.
First remember that you are selling a car, you are not selling pretty girls, hunky guys, exotic vacation spots, or open road. The video should concentrate on the car. And guys, we all have color TV's now. In fact we have all had color TV since the 1980's. Show us the car in color, not black and white. I know black and white is arty and cool, but the cars look better in color. Give us a good side view, front view, rear view and interior view. Show the car moving. For extra credit show us the engine.
Second. Give us the name of the car at the beginning of the commercial. The ad is worthless if us TV viewers don't know which car it is. Remember, it's the 21st century and cars all look alike now. Name the car, on the screen and in the voiceover at the beginning. The car logo isn't enough. Many of us can't keep Chevy bowties and Ford blue ovals straight in our heads, let alone the smaller brands.
Third. Tell us what makes this car desirable and worth laying out big bucks for. It might be performance, or luxury, or carrying capacity, or greenness, or off road handling, or something. No car can be all things to all customers, so figure out what this car is and let us know it.
Fourth. Show the price in the ad. Price is the most important single specification of cars, (or anything for that matter). If you don't show us the price, we TV viewers figure it's too expensive for us, and the ad is wasted.

F for NBC Olympic coverage

Watching the ski racing. At the end of the race, NBC is too brain dead to show the racer's time to us TV viewers. Ski racers are all good, all fast, and the difference between a gold and last place is a fraction of a second. After watching the skier hurtle down hill we want to know how well he did, namely his time.
NBC sometimes displayed a stopwatch on screen but it was broken, showing 2 minutes and some seconds as the skier leaves the start house, where it should read zero. It also would stop and start erratically during the run. They never displayed the skiers time and name, not at the start, not during the run, and not after the run. BOO.

Constituent Service, Scott Brown version

Newly elected Senator Scott Brown sent me nice thank-you letter, for my modest (very modest) campaign contribution last month. I'm suitably impressed. Clearly a man who understands ordinary politeness and makes sure it happens. I wish him well.

Cost Cutting, Health Care version

Doctors buy malpractice insurance to protect themselves against lawyers. The insurance can run as much as $100,000 a year. That's a helova lot of money. If the doctor works 50 weeks a year, 40 hours a week that's 2000 hours. $100,000 / 2000 hours equals $50/hr. The doctor has to charge $50 an hour for his time just to pay his malpractice insurance.
That's one of the reasons that medical care is so expensive. We could cut this down a lot.
1. Cap on awards. Surely $300,000 dollars is enough compensation for pain and suffering. In fact it's generous for individuals. But it's too low to feed a lawyer. Malpractice lawyers work on contingency fees, they take the lion's share of any court awards in lieu of fees. A couple of million dollar jackpots covers the expenses of the suits they loose. Lower the awards and a lot of lawyers will find more profitable lines of work.
2. Demand expert witnesses be real practicing doctors, not hired mouths. An expert witness should be required to show that he personally treated a round dozen cases like the case before the court. Right now any joker with a medical degree is an expert witness. Most of them do no medicine, they just testify in court, for pay. Real practicing doctors have real experience, and are reluctant to point fingers at colleagues. The hired mouths will say anything they are paid to say.
3. Adopt a "loser pays" rule. Losing side pays all the court costs. That will drive off the weaker suits.
4. Forbid lawyers to advertise for plaintiffs. Used to be it was unethical for lawyers to advertise at all. Now Fox TV runs hourly ads from lawyers looking for plaintiffs to give them some standing to sue.
5. Proscribing FDA approved drugs and medical equipment is NEVER malpractice. Even if the FDA later changes its mind and pulls the drug off the market. The FDA is so conservative in granting approval for the sale of drugs, that any reasonable person is justified in believing approved drugs are safe. Doctors, hospitals and drug companies should not get sued for proscribing, administering and manufacturing FDA approved drugs.

Snooping by laptop

You must have heard about the school district that issued laptops to the students and then remotely turned on the built in video cameras and sneaked photographs of the students at home?
Takeaways:
1. That school district had more money than brains to issue student laptops. No way would my district be so profligate. Students learn by studying, not by computering. Plus the students all have computers already. Why spend public money to give 'em a backup computer?
2. If a computer illiterate public school can turn a laptop into a video snoop camera, so can anyone else. A piece of duct tape over the camera lens (and perhaps another piece over the built in microphone) is your only guarantee of privacy. Good thing my antique 3 Gigahz desktop lacks cameras and microphones.
3. That school board has to be stuck on stupid. They can look forward to getting voted out of office next election time.

America is ungovernable?

I hear the Democrats whining this whine now that Obamacare seems to be dead. Probably true. I don't like being governed (bossed around) any more than the next American. America doesn't need or want governance. We like leadership instead. We don't like Obamacare, and we were able to resist the Democratic attempt to stuff it down our throats. I like that kind of ungovernable.
By the way, Obamacare is kinda like a snake. You can't depend upon a snake being dead until it's cut up into six inch lengths. I don't see Obamacare as being that kind of dead, yet. It's lying on the floor and not moving much, but it might come back to life and bite.

Why the Love Gene in cats?

Cats, at least modern house cats, love their humans. Nothing else explains why cats demand petting, sleep on favored human's beds, sit in laps, and purr when picked up and stroked. They get terribly lonely when left alone. But what is the evolutionary origin of this gene? Cats are solitary hunters, not pack animals. Before hooking up with humans back in Egyptian times, what good would a gene to love humans do for a cat? I have read of small African wild cats that cannot be tamed even today. Presumably that breed of cat lacks the love gene.
After hooking up with humans, the love gene is obviously a good thing. Compare well fed and sleek house cats with skinny, dirty, and miserable looking alley cats. It interacts successfully with the love animals gene in humans.
Perhaps the cat love gene is a mutation or only occurs in small numbers of cats in the wild. The love animals gene in humans prompts them to adopt kittens. Perhaps the adoptions proceeded unsuccessfully until some human got lucky and adopted a kitten carrying the love gene. Once settled in with humans the cats with the love gene would flourish and the cats that lacked it would go back to the wild.
Does this account for a origin of the species of affectionate cats?

Words of the Weasel Part XIV

"The aircraft was on final approach to Heathrow from Beijing when an uncommanded power reduction occurred in both engines."
We used to call that engine failure.
The aircraft augered in 984 feet short of the runway. Gotta watch them uncommanded power reductions.

Blame Shifting

On the radio (NHPR) this morning. The terrible Belgian train accident is blamed on lack of new technology automatic train brakes.
Wow!
Brakes won't save you in a head on collision. Something went wrong and put two trains on the the same track going opposite directions. A signal failed, an engineer ran a red signal, a dispatcher gave the wrong orders, or a turnout was thrown the wrong way. Once that happens you have two trains barreling right at each other. It takes a mile or more to stop a train, automatic brakes or no automatic brakes. The engineers cannot see that far ahead ahead. Blam.
The radio story went on to quote various Europeans pointing fingers at each other. The Belgians blamed the EU for failure to standardize automatic brake requirements. The EU blamed the Belgians for not installing automatic brakes anyhow. Money was mentioned, like 200,000 Euros per train and 25,000 Euros per mile of track.
This story is a smoke screen behind which the true culprits are escaping.

Archival Quality (photographic)

My fiftieth high school reunion is coming up this year. Old classmates are agitating for photos. So I though I might look thru my pile of slide trays, looking for high school photos.
Step 1. Fix the slide projector. A beefy Basch & Lomb at least 50 years old itself. At least it is fixable, it all came apart, with ordinary hand tools, and with a liberal anointment of 3-in-1 oil it started to cycle the slides in and out. The slide advance electric switch was broken and no replacement available. But there is a plug for a remote control switch. I made a remote control switch from scratch, and had a working projector. Good thing I had a lathe, bandsaw, drill press and radial arm saw in the basement, I used them all for this little DIY project.
Step 2. Try to read the labels on the slide trays. That didn't work. What ever it was had faded over the years and was unreadable. Note to self. Use black India ink to label anything you care about. Damn felt tips fade in less than five years.
Step 3. Show the slides. Got some real oldies here. Recognized the old family house that we moved out of in 1957. Shots inside the ski chalet that I am currently retired too. Some shots of relatives, now deceased.
Step 4. Agonize over the generally low quality of the slides. Out of focus, under exposed, over exposed. My low end point&shoot digital makes much better pictures.
I wonder if the digital photos will be viewable fifty years from now>

Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenburg

Cool story about software development at a silicon valley startup. Mitch Kapor, the man who created Lotus 1-2-3 years ago, decided to do another killer app. Rented office space, small team of experienced programmers, self financed by Mitch. The author, who is not a software guy, hung around the operation for it's first three years and wrote a book about it.
Software development hasn't changed much. Three years into the project and they had little to show for it, despite all the experience on the team, leadership by a silicon valley legend, and a booming economy.
Rosenburg gives a good layman's account of the various fads in software engineering, going back to the 1960's. Each new fad was supposed to create great software on time and on budget. Well, that hasn't happened yet.
The project was to create a super personal information manager that would hold contact information, to-do lists, appointments, photographs, and anything else, keep the home computer updated with the work computer, allow sharing with everyone and anyone, and perhaps travel faster than light as well.
Rosenburg, a non programmer, doesn't understand what specifications are for. He mentions that the project lacks specs. He doesn't understand that a spec is a trial run at the real program. If the programmer cannot explain what he is doing to other humans in his native tongue, he won't be able to explain it to a non sentient computer using a complex programming language. And, specs allow the others on the project to know what the program is going to do, and if it will fit into the rest of the project.
This project didn't understand "the minimum working set". Until code is running, you have nothing. To get the code running, you select the absolute minimum amount of code needed to make the program do something, even if something isn't very much. Get the minimum working set running and then add in the rest of the project, piece by piece. This project did "release" early versions, but it was a pro forma activity, the early releases crashed continuously and didn't do anything.
Anyhow, good to learn that software development hasn't changed since I retired.

NHPR spins the gambling focus group

NHPR did a piece on the gambling focus groups this morning. Their spin is pro gambling, and they implied that all the good citizens attending the focus group were pro gambling too. Or at least not anti gambling.
That's not the way it was at the Littleton focus group. The attendees were luke warm at best and mostly hostile to more gambling.
All the news that fits we print...

Another Spending Cut

The Security and Exchange Commission was created after Great Depression 1.0 with a mission to regulate the stock market and prevent Great Depression 2.0. Remember that Great Depression 1.0 was triggered by the stock market crash of 1929. The Roosevelt administration wanted a watchdog agency to prevent practices like margin selling that had toppled the market in 1929.
Same agency is still in business, with a $1 billion dollar budget. They failed to prevent Great Depression 2.0. Clearly they are a waste of money. Let's shut them down and apply that $1 billion to deficit reduction.

Gaming Gambling focus group

At the invitation of a friend, I went out to the Littleton Area Learning Center, actually the old Littleton Coin Co building, out Union St past LaHoute's. There were maybe 25 people, including a number of political folk of my acquaintance. Under the guidance of facilitators, we discussed increasing legal gambling in NH. There is some legal betting at the racetrack, the discussion was about increasing it, opening Vegas style casinos, and allowing slot machines. After a whole day of gently facilitated discussion, the sense of the meeting was this. The downside of legal gambling, such as changing the tone of NH to a Las Vegas tone, facilitating compulsive gamblers into ruining themselves, the tacky nature of casinos, casino people and casino customers, far outweighed the possibility of increased public revenue from casino taxes. The projected revenue wasn't very big, and we assumed the projections were optimistic. Real world revenue will likely be less than projected.
Under the gentle facilitation, we never quite wrote all this down. Presumably the facilitators will write things up to suit themselves afterward. The whole thing was done by UNH people with state funding, maybe $30K of funding. They bought coffee and donuts and a sandwich lunch. It was an interesting day, but as a method of determining public policy it's kinda flaky. The UNH people have a free hand interpreting what was said, the people attending were by no means a representative group of citizens, we were all political people with various agenda's. Many of us started the session with a fairly neutral viewpoint and by the end of the session we had a much more negative viewpoint about legalizing more gambling.
Interesting euphemisms turned up. It's "gaming" not "gambling". It's "video gaming terminal" rather than slot machine. It's "racino" rather than race track.
For those more interested, Senate Bill 489 (SB498) is before the NH senate right now and can be seen online with a bit of googling.

What's the difference between Tea Party and Republican Party?

Simple. The Tea Party doesn't talk about "social" issues (aka wedge issues). I haven't heard a peep about gay rights, gay marriage, abortion, and drugs out of the Tea Party. Tea Party is about taxes, spending, and deficits.
The Republicans should take lessons.

Whither NASA?

The Space Shuttle is coming to end-of-life. NASA plans to stop operating it this year. This decision had two drivers,
1. The Shuttle is dangerous to fly.
2. The Shuttle is very expensive, even when it doesn't fly.

NASA originally planned to replace the shuttle with a step backwards, to expendable boosters and capsules that re entered by parachute. splashed down and got picked up by the Navy. To this end, NASA started development of a rocket, Ares I, and a big five man capsule (Orion). Ares I got as far as a test launch last October. Last week the money ran out, Obama decided to cut NASA funding.
NASA could have saved all the Ares I rocket development money by simply purchasing off-the-shelf Delta V rockets from Boeing. Delta V is in production, development and testing is complete and paid for, and it launches commercial satellites on a weekly basis. Delta is just as powerful as Aries I and can fly any mission Aries I could.
NASA argued that the Delta V wasn't "man rated". "Man-rated" means the builder has done a lot of extra paperwork showing how safe the rocket is. Then NASA argued that the Aries (never flown) would be safer than Delta V (been flying for years). This arguement is unconvincing to anyone with actual flightline experience, like me.
In actual fact, the satellites launched by Delta cost billions of dollars and a launch failure is a company wrecking catastrophe. Every thing that can be done to insure a successful launch has been done, Delta is as safe a rocket as can be built. It benefits from years of flight experience that allows the engineers to improve weak points. It's a mature design with all the bugs worked out. Ares was a dirty sheet of paper design (it reused Shuttle engines) with countless bugs yet to be discovered and fixed.
In real life, the NASA people wanted the challenge, the fun, and the funding, of a new hardware design. So they didn't do the economical and conservative thing, buy off the shelf, they started up a new rocket program and hoped the funding would appear. Well, the finding didn't appear and US astronauts will be riding Russian capsules to the International Space Station for years, perhaps forever.

A Russian ticket to the ISS costs $50 million dollars. I wonder what a Delta V launch, with a 5 man Orion capsule would cost.

Cut spending to avoid deficit disaster

The Obama budget with $2 trillion dollar deficits isn't going to work. Obama has jacked federal spending up to 25% of GNP. That's way way up from the historical average of 19% going back to WWII. And it's way way short of tax revenues which have sunk to 14% of GNP due to Great Depression 2.0. The deficit (difference between spending and tax revenues) come out to 11% of GNP.
The only way to survive is to cut the spending. Not freeze it, cut it back to 19% of GNP, or farther. This is hard, 'cause those receiving our tax money will fight like tigers to keep receiving it. The general taxpayers don't get as motivated as the feeders from the federal trough do. Perhaps the Tea Party can help out here.
What to cut? Answer, anything you can.
Start with farm subsidies. There aren't very many farmers in the country, we ought to be able to out vote them.
Turn off the federal highway program. We built the Interstate system in the '60's and 70's. It's finished, done. we have superb highways to every corner of the nation. Let the states do the maintainance and stop rebuilding them.
Close down EPA. They were created to clean up smog over the cities. That's done, air over Boston, NYC, DC and Philly is clear and blue, not the yellow muckiness we had in 1970.
Close down OSHA. The real work of safety inspection is done by the insurance companies. Every business carries insurance, and those insurance companies hate paying out for injured workers. So they inspect, and tell management to make safety improvements or loose their insurance. OSHA just gets in the way.
All of the above is to show that we are serious. The real budget busters are Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. They are taking up 75% of federal outlays, and to cut spending, we have to cut these sacred cows.
For Medicare/caid we have to reduce the costs. Start with malpractice reform. Allow interstate sale of health insurance, that's competition and competition always lowers costs. Allow duty free import of drugs from any first world country (Canada!) to bring the price of drugs down out of the stratosphere. Getting these three simple changes thru would make a big improvement. There is a lot more that can be done, but lets make a start.
Social Security is harder. We have paid in all our working life and planned our retirement on the basis of social security income. About all that can be done is raise the retirement age. When Social Security was started, the retirement age was set at 65, and the life expectancy was only 65. In 2010 the retirement age is still 65 but life expectancy has soared up into the 80's. Surely we could arrange to move increase the retirement age, slowly, up to 68 or 70.

The passing game

Super Bowl puts on one helova show. Both sides played a passing game. The quarterbacks were incredibly accurate, it seems like every pass connected, every receiver was covered, the quarterback was always protected. Each pass gained ten yards and first down. Possession of the ball was retained, the teams marched down the field and touchdown.
The passing didn't used to work so well. Used to be a running game, where fast and powerful ball carriers attempted to jam themselves and the ball right thru the defensive line. Not last night, it was all airborne work.
Halftime was spectacular as usual, the singers (the Who) kept their clothes on. The Who is one of my favorites, and were in fine voice last night. Although I did wonder why a band that old was the best pick for Superbowl halftime. Aren't there any newer bands that people like?

Financial regulation, need there fore

Great Depression 2.0 was caused in part by Wall St bank high stakes gambling. We ought to cool the market down by regulating the things that banks are allowed to invest/speculate in. Real banks take deposits and have taxpayer backed FDIC insurance. If the government guarantees the bank's deposits, then the government had the right to limit the kind of risks the bank can run. In my view banks should not invest/speculate in common stocks, secondary mortgages, mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, and commodities, including gold. These things are very risky, and do nothing to finance real economic growth or jobs. The purpose of banks is to finance real estate and loan to business and individuals. We ought to write a bank regulation law to forbid bank speculation in risky and unproductive things.
There are a lot of other things out there that look like banks, talk like banks, but don't have deposits and FDIC insurance. They are fake banks. They can speculate to their heart's content, but the government should make absolutely clear that it will never bail them out.
In fact, we should require display of a fake bank sign on the offices of fake banks. Something like "Deposits are NOT insured"

Miracle Health Food, Chicken Soup

At least all Jewish mothers proclaim the value of chicken soup to cure nearly anything. Homemade is easy.
Take a soup pot with lid. Add about a pound of uncooked chicken. Fill pot with water, and bring to a boil. Back off the heat and add some Bell's Poultry Seasoning. Simmer just at the boiling point for a couple of hours. Add veggies. Celery, onion, and carrots are mandatory. Then anything else you like. Peas, mushrooms, parsnip, green beans, rice, just about anything. Cook another hour or so until the veggies and rice are tender. It's good.
Occasionally Mac's has a sale on chicken trimmings for $0.50 a pound, which makes a pot of chicken soup ridiculously cheap.

Don't weep for me, Toyota

Poor Toyota. Getting slammed by recalls, Transportation secretaries, lawsuits, and endless terrible publicity, shutting down production.
One big question.
What's wrong with turning off the ignition and taking the car out of gear if the engine runs away?
Is this "Sudden Acceleration" thing really all that bad?

AIG bonuses

The Federal salary master was on TV yesterday explaining that he couldn't do anything about AIG paying $100 million in bonuses. There was a contract to pay the AIG turkeys who ran the company into the ground he claimed and contracts are unbreakable.
Got news for him.
1. Contracts have to be enforced in court. AIG should refuse to pay and let the fat cats sue for their ill gotten gains.
2. Publish the names and contact information of all bonus recipients.
3. Find and prosecute the people who wrote such foolish contracts. Bonuses should never be paid if the company is losing money, and AIG has lost more money than God. Paying bonuses when the company is broke, and worse, paying them to the folk who caused the disaster, should NEVER be part of any employment contract, ever.
4. Tell AIG no more bailout money if they pay any bonus to anyone until ALL $150 billion taxpayer bailout is repaid.

Another $2 trillion in the hole

The US House just raised the federal debt limit by another $2 trillion. And it's all Bush's fault. We are heading for a crash. Pretty soon, the Treasury won't be able to borrow the extra money, plus borrow enough to roll over the T-bills that are expiring.

Obama Comes to NH

A friend called up the other day and talked me into going down to Nashua to see the show. So, yesterday morning we loaded Tea Party signs, American flags, heavy sweaters, gloves, hats, a picnic lunch, thermos of hot coffee, another one of hot tea, and a point&shoot camera into the Caddy and roared off down I93 for Nashua. Following email directions we found an easy parking spot, even though Nashua had plastered Broad St with temporary no parking signs.
It was below freezing, but SmartWool socks inside good lace up boots, good gloves and ski parka's kept us warm enough. The affair was held at the Nashua North High School even though school was in session. Long line of people with tickets formed up to wait for the doors to open. Five heavy duty TV trucks with satellite dishes raised. We got interviewed and photographed by the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Lawrence Eagle, The Boston Herald, CNN, and a couple of very nice young students.
About 1 PM the Nashua cops chivvied us back from the front door of the school and back out the the rotary on Broad St. By this time we had a modest crowd of a few hundred demonstrators with signs and such. The cops then amused themselves by herding the demonstrators around and around the rotary. By 2:15 the cops had all the streets blocked off and the Obama caravan swept thru. Long line of cop cars, vans, the White House black stretch SUV, and an ambulance swept thru the rotary and off the the school auditorium. Must have been 75 people or more in the whole shebang. Seems like a lotta pencil pushers for just another "support your local rep" campaign stop. We heard that the White House had overbooked the event and the ticker holders at the end of the line didn't get in, and got sore about that.
Then we went to a Republican town hall in the nearby by CourtYard Marriot. They threw three ball rooms together into one vast hall, which was packed. I saw Kelly Ayotte, Jack Kimball, Jennifer Horne, Karen Testerman, and Ovide Lamontaigne. After a number of warm up speakers we got down to the main event Stephan Moore of the Wall St Journal. Steve was good, he had the audience on their feet and cheering. Lotta good Republican spirit was raised.
We got home too late to catch anything on TV.

Lets save some money

There are multi billions of dollars left in the $750 billion TARP bailout fund. We ought to apply all that money to deficit reduction. There is maybe $500 billion unspent in the $787 billion Porkulus appropriation. Since a. Porkulus didn't work, or b. Porkulus spending got GNP growth up to boom time 5.7%, (take your pick), lets cancel the rest of the Porkulus spending to reduce the deficit. If we did these two things, we could cut this year's budget deficit down from $1.8 trillion to a "mere" $1 trillion. Put $500 billion of unspent Porkulus together with $300 billion left in TARP and that's a significant bite out of this year's horrifying deficit.

Citizens Against Government Waste

This bit of political (junk?) mail showed up the other day. Since it bore John McCain's name on the envelope, I opened it. The letter was full of indignation about wasting money, but, when you read it thru, there wasn't all that much money involved. There was a list of six questionable programs, but all put together it only came to $42 million, which is peanuts out of a $500 billion defense budget. Less than the cost of single military aircraft. Nothing's perfect, and if we are only wasting .00084% of the defense budget, the republic is well served.
Then there was a rubarb about purchasing 262 more C-130 transport aircraft than the Pentagon had requested. Maybe, but the old C-130 is one helova useful aircraft, capable of getting tons of troops and material into short dirt runways anywhere in the world. C-130's are essential in any kind of war, guerrilla war, full scale first world war, insurgency, Haitian relief, inserting special forces behind enemy lines, you name it and C-130's will do. It's as general purpose as pickup truck or a jeep. So I don't get upset about buying another 262 C-130's, I see it as money well spent on a versatile and reliable workhorse.
I dare say there is a good deal of waste fraud and abuse in the defense budget. I don't think Citizens Against Government Waste has found enough of it to get excited about. They need to look harder.

Is Bipartisanship a sellout?

Bipartisanship, a word beloved of today's democrats. When uttered, it means they want Republicans to vote for Obamacare, Cap & Tax, union card check, Porkulus, earmarks, and plump budgets. Republican support for any of these odious bills would give the Democrats enough votes to pass them, and prevent Republicans for using the bills as campaign issues in the 2010 election. Said election is already gathering steam.
So far, the Republicans have been pretty good at holding the line. The total lack of Republican votes shows the bills as questionable public policy. When all the Republicans refuse to vote for a bill it sends a message to the voting public. I think the Congressional republicans have been showing some backbone in their united opposition to awful bills.

Catcher in the Rye

The death of the author, J.D. Salinger, brought the book back to mind. I first read it in high school, on my own time, 'cause of the buzz it was getting. The book was new then. Like Holden Caulfield, I was attending boarding school, in fact a boarding school within 75 miles of Holden's fictional school. I could relate to Holden's desire to go to New York, to get served, and then get laid.

Unlike truly well written books, Catcher required real effort to keep reading. About three quarters of the way thru, where Holden starts obsessing about hairs in his roommate's razor, I decided Holden was a nut case and I was wasting my time reading about him. Forty odd years later, my son is required to read Catcher for school. So I borrowed his copy and read it thru, so I could discuss it with some authority.
On the second reading, I was struck by how Holden goes around with a kick-me sign on his back and then wonders why he isn't very popular at school. Early on Holden manages to loose the fencing teams equipment on the way to a match. It never occurs to him that his team mates are going think he is a jerk for that play. He takes advantage of his younger sister who adores him and lacks the courage to actually get sexual with a prostitute. With a more adult viewpoint, I could see that Holden, in addition to being a nut case, was a loser to boot. This time I got to the end and see Holden incarcerated in a booby hatch. At last, there is justice in the world I thought.
Son was unimpressed with Catcher. Teachers all love it.

5.7 % GNP growth. Do I believe it?

Yesterday the TV announced the US gross national product (GNP) had grown 5/7% in the last quarter of 2009.
Wow. Normal GNP growth is 3%, that number holds good all the way back to WWII. 5.7% is a boom.
Why does not the country feel like boom times? Could the figures be off or fudged? How can the country raise output of goods and services 5.7% with 10% of the workforce laid off? Surely it requires workers to turn out the goods.
On the other hand, if the number is real, Great Depression 2.0 is easing off. Lets hope.

Commentary on Avatar

Commentary, a conservative high brow magazine of politics and the arts, did a piece on Avatar. Not remarkable, it's only the top grossing movie of all time and thus worthy of a writeup. Stephen Hunter does the review and gets sucked into a search for the deep inner meaning of the flick. Trouble is, there is no deep inner meaning. The plot is shallow, as shallow as a Western or a Bond movie. Focusing on the light weight plot doesn't do much for his readers, most of whom have seen the movie by now. We know the plot was so light weight as to float. We enjoyed the scenery, the fighting, the flying, and exploring the lush jungle of Pandora.
A more perceptive review would have explored just what made this movie the all time best seller/top grosser despite the light weight plot, cardboard characters, and good guy bad guy role reversal.
Especially as Avatar is a "see once" movie, unlike Star Wars which racked up money from awe struck fans seeing it two, three, and four times.

State of the Union (SOTU for short)

I stayed up and watched it. It was unsatisfying. It ran forever. It was mostly bafflegab, motherhood and apple pie. Obama isn't changing direction, at least not much. The speech had no overall unity, it was a collection of political sound bites, one after the other, each one so vague as to be meaningless. It certainly didn't call the democrats to arms in the face of the Scott Brown threat, or state broad principles that drive his administration. No rousing lines to match "We shall fight them on the beaches,... " or "Ask not what your country can do for you..."
A few surprises. Obama admitted that his health care is not politically popular. This provoked a nervous titter of laughter. Then he said they ought to pass it anyhow. A real democrat here. Clearly Obama has gone far beyond believing that politicians are supposed to represent the voters. Obama still believes in global warming and still wants the job destroying cap & trade bill. He mentioned foreign trade and Columbia, South Korea, and somewhere else, but he did not advocate passing the free trade treaties for those countries bottled up in Congress.
He attacked the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned McCain-Feingold and allows unions, corporations large and small, and other organizations to, print and televise their viewpoints about political matters. Freedom of speech for unions and corporations. Obama is against it, although he didn't state what he wanted to do about it.
One good thing, he did speak up in favor of nuclear power and domestic oil and gas production. That was the only good thing in an hour and a half.

Who caused Great Depression 2.0?

Actually, it's like Murder on the Oriente Express, they all did it. But, one major villain is Elliot Spitzer, New York Attorney General and later Governor. While Attorney General, Spitzer targeted Hank Greenburg, president of AIG. Spitzer made such a stink that Greenburg stepped down as president. He never actually brought charges against Greenburg, but he made blood curdling threats which panicked AIG's board.
AIG was Greenburg's personal creation. He had assembled company after company into the biggest insurance company in the world. Greenburg was the only man competent to run AIG. He was a difficult man to work for, and so all the competent people in the organization had left for greener pastures, leaving a corporation staffed with narrow gauge yes men. With Greenburg gone, AIG began to slide down hill. The surviving management began gambling in the "credit default swap" market to make a quick buck.
Credit default swaps are insurance under a silly name. The deal goes like this. The seller, for a small fee, promises to insure some other company's debt against default. They became immensely popular with traders in risky bonds and securities. Give AIG a small cut, and take the rest of the income risk free. What's not to like?
When the market collapsed in September, AIG suddenly had to pay off zillions and it didn't have the money. Eventually we taxpayers paid off $140 billion of AIG's bad bets, making the buyers (Goldman Sachs, Lehman, Merrill Lynch & company) whole. We probably should have flushed the buyers down the drain, but at the time responsible officials (Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed chairman Bernanke) thought that was just too dangerous. They only flushed Lehman and paid off the others.
If savvy old Hank Greenburg had still been running AIG, this probably would not have happened. Elliot Spitzer drove the man with his finger in the dike away and sure enough, the dike failed.

All the data that is fit to print

Is the world getting warmer? How do you tell? One way is to look at temperature readings from the past. NOAA has collected thermometer readings going back to 1701 and posted them on line.
One would think, that you just average all the temperature readings over one year, and you have the average temperature for that year.
Other clever folks have been looking at the raw data and finding discrepancies in it. Jogs up and down, missing data, "urban heat island effect", and other stuff. The clever folk advocate "correcting" the data to "eliminate errors". Trouble is, the "correctors" seldom explain the basis of the "corrections". Worse, some of them work for NOAA and have been "correcting" the raw data files. The "hockey stick" graph was produced by "correcting" the data.
Years ago Scientific American did an article on historical temperature. They gathered up all sorts of records and them "corrected" the data for all sorts of effects. Scientific American, to its credit, did explain their corrections. After doing all the correction, the author declared a small amount of global warmin was visible. However, the amount of warming was smaller than the corrections applied.
Moral of the story. Stick with raw data. Corrections are untrustworthy.

Doing Osama's propaganda for him,

An audio tape surfaced, alleged to be from Bin Ladin. As usual, our brain dead CIA is doing voice analysis and will pronounce the tape authentic.
Why do we do this? Bin Laden audiotapes are bin Laden propaganda. Every time we "authenticate" Bin Laden's propaganda we make it more effective. Lots of people have doubts about these audiotapes. But after his enemies, the American CIA, pronounce them real, many will believe them.
Let Bin Laden do the heavy lifting to convince the followers (including the MSM) that his propaganda is coming from him, rather than imposters.

The power of the mouth

On Meet the Press this morning:

Anchorman David Gregory: "What will President Obama do to improve the economy?"

White House staffer Valerie Jarrett : "He will give a State of the Union Address..."

Highly effective that.

Full body scanners == Electronic Strip Search

In reaction to the serious screwup that allowed the crotch bomber to board the aircraft, the TSA has ordered 150 "full body scanners" essentially small radar sets that see thru clothes. The scanner images are black and white, a little fuzzy, but embarrassing. If they were a bit less fuzzy you could peddle them as pornography. I sure wouldn't want anyone to see my full body scan.

Instead of harassing passengers, we ought to be looking for the bureaucrat[s] who failed to react to the bright red flag warnings the crotch bomber was waving furiously as he boarded. Single male, paid cash at the airport for his ticket, no luggage for a trans continental trip. He should have been marked for extra scrutiny just for that. The Amsterdam airport should have asked him to step aside, patted him down, and interviewed him. If the bureaucrats had been really efficient, a computer search would have turned up the father's warning that the son was turning radical. These things didn't happen. Let's find the negligent bureaucrats and hang them out to dry.

And please lay off us poor passengers.

Brown was elected by independents

Us Republicans need to keep that in mind. Massachusetts Republicans are only 12% of registered voters. Independents are 52%. Brown won by 52%. Assuming every registered Republican voted for Brown, that means the other 40% came from independents and democrats.
Independents tend to be fiscal conservatives and social liberals. Republicans need to concentrate on fiscal issues and stop worrying about the social issues.

Cherry Pie (recipe)

Comes out very tasty. Very simple. Make the crust (2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tablespoon baking powder, some sugar, one stick of margarine, 1/4 cup cold water). Sift dry ingredients together. Toss in the margarine and use a pair of table knives to chop the margarine up into pieces the size of a baked bean. Add the water. Dust your hands with flour to prevent sticking and knead the dough into a single mass. Adjust the consistency of the dough by adding water til the dough all sticks together and soft enough to roll. Divide pie dough into two parts, one for top crust one for bottom crust. Dust rolling surface and rolling pin with flour. Lacking a rolling pin, use a bottle. Grease the 9" pie pan by rubbing it with the margarine wrapping paper. Put the bottom crust in the pie pan.
Fill the pie with cherry pie filling. Or make your own filling from two cans of cherries. 1/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons corn starch and the juice from ONE can of cherries. Cook on low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens. Remove from heat and add two drained cans of cherries. Pour into pie crust. Add top crust and bake at 375 for 40 minutes or so. Pie is done when filling is bubbling hot and crust is browned. A cookie sheet under the pie pan will catch any leaks before they bake themselves onto the oven floor.

Popguns

This month's American Rifleman (the NRA mag) has a review of nine little automatic pistols, the pocket sort. They are all good looking and chambered for low powered 380 ACP cartridge. Prices range from $318 to $1150. Each gun gets a picture and a writeup.
The striking thing about the writeups. All, except but one, experienced "malfunctions" during the test shooting. We used to call them stoppages or jams. One pistol maker recommended shooting in the gun with 200 rounds before carrying it for real.
Where as a plain old .38 Special snub nosed revolver never jams, always works, and .38 Special will do a bunch more damage than 380 ACP. If you are going to carry a gun best to carry one that works.
Used to be Americans believed in revolvers, powerful and reliable, and distrusted automatic pistols as jam prone and apt to let you down in an emergency. Dirty Harry carried a revolver. That was then
Now all the cops carry Glocks, and private citizens are carrying 380 automatics. At least those who read American Rifleman. Me, I don't carry, but if I did, it would be a revolver.

Nice Guys can win

I watched Scott Brown's victory speech last night. He was good. He thanked all the proper people, and congratulated his opponent for running a good race (she didn't but Scott said the right thing). He was funny. He teased his daughters, made jokes about the pickup truck, did a good standup routine. He came across as a nice guy, witty, likeable, who likes people.
In short, Scott Brown showed as a helova good candidate, where as Martha Coakley is stiff and formal, doesn't like people much, doesn't campaign hard, and isn't very likeable. Plus she carried some formidable baggage from the Amiralt Malden daycare case and the Woodward infant death case. There's gonna be gallons of electrons and ink spilled over "why Scott won" in the near future. Maybe it is just a nice guy who happens to be an effective candidate, beat a not-so-nice woman who was a poor candidate.

Scott Brown Wins. Coakley concedes

With 83% of the vote in, Scott Brown has 52% and Martha Coakley has 47%. Coakley has formally conceded. Scott Brown will be the next Senator from Massachusetts and the 41st Republican Senator. 41 votes is enough to block action (like passing Obamacare) in the Senate.
Let the avalanche begin.
Hallelujah.

CAn Brown do it?

Who knows? There will be no exit polling so we won't know diddly til the polls close and the precincts report in. Polls stay open til 8 PM. Many, perhaps most Massachusetts towns have updated to electronic ballot boxes which give vote totals instantly. I'm planning to stay up and watch the results come in. I have a bottle of $5 Andre champagne to drink when Brown wins. I have a bottle of scotch bet with daughter.

Tankers for USAF

The Air Force tanker fleet are still largely the old KC-135 which has been flying for fifty years. That's damn good service life for anything, let alone a jet aircraft. The tanker fleet is as important as the fighters, bombers, and transports flown by USAF. The fighters and bombers nearly always need air-to-air refueling to reach their targets. The F105's from my wing used to tank twice, once on the way in and a second time on the way out on missions into North Viet Nam. Without the KC135's, the Thuds didn't have the range to get to Hanoi. The B2 missions to Iraq all needed tanker support. Without the tankers there are a lot of targets the Air Force cannot reach. So we really need to place an order for new tankers. Remember, years go by between placing the order and delivery of aircraft.
USAF has made two tries to order new tankers and bungled both of them. A third try is in the works. Technologically speaking, the tanker is dead simple, buy a commercial airliner, take out the seats and install fuel tanks. The existing KC135 tankers are Boeing 707's in USAF markings.
Money is the issue. As in who gets the money (Boeing or Airbus the only makers of big jet airliners) and how much money goes for each airplane. Speaking as a taxpayer, either aircraft will do the mission and we should buy the cheaper of the two. The Airbus uses American jet engines which are 1/3rd or more of the final cost. Buy Airbus and US engine makers get a good deal of the money.
There are some smoke screen issues. Boeing accuses Airbus of accepting government subsidies. We are supposed to forget that fifty years ago US government money for KC-135 tankers helped mightily in the launch of the 707 airliner. Is there a stature of limitations on subsidies? This issue doesn't matter to us taxpayers. If the EU governments want to make tankers cheaper for USAF, more power to 'em.
Airbus is quibbling about specifications and threatening to no-bid the job. Specifications ought to be "standard A320". Period. The gold platers infesting the Pentagon will fancy up the aircraft with military avionics and all sorts of expensive gadgets if you let them. The standard commercial avionics and gadgets are good enough, and a helova lot cheaper than any special design military stuff. The commercial airliners are in production, the bugs have been worked out of them, they work, and that's what USAF needs, a reliable airplane that flies when asked to, rather than a finicky special design bird that ground aborts at the slightest excuse. Same goes for Boeing. Standard 767 (or 777), no modifications. Last time Boeing was proposing a "special" 767 with stretched fuselage, extra flaps, longer wing, damn near a whole new airplane. And taxpayer money for all the engineering required.
Ignore the whines from the paperwork people. "Oh preparing a bid is so expensive". "We have to refine our requirements." All the Air Force has to say is how many aircraft, how many spare parts, and how long to deliver them all. All the bidder has to say is how much.
This is a $40 billion program. Lot more economic stimulus in a $40 billion aircraft buy than we are getting from the $700 and something billion porkulus.

Coakley came into money today.

Coakley is running back to back attack ads against Scott Brown in New England Cable News (NECN). This is new. I wonder who gave her all the last minute money. There are Brown ads, but nearly as many. Brown is doing straight forward "vote-for-me" ads rather than attack ads.

Tax on big banks?

Obama is pushing for a tax on the fifty biggest banks on the country. The banks are wailing, Republicans are opposing, but actually, it's not a bad idea in my book. The fifty big Wall St banks bear a lot of responsibility for Great Depression 2.0. The "too-big-to-fail" banks made risky loans on the theory that when they pay off, you get rich, when they don't pay off, the taxpayer (ME!) bails you out.
Since the too-big-to-fail banks enjoy taxpayer support, they might as well pay for it. If they find the tax too heavy, they can always spin off parts and become smaller. Which is a fine idea. That makes them small enough to fail. Which is good, they will be more careful.
Plus, the big Wall St banks don't do a thing for me. They don't do car loans, they don't do mortgages, they don't lend to companies, they don't do venture capital. Far as I can see they just do deals with each other. So tax the bejeezus out of them.

You don't have to be crazy, but it helps

Tina Brown reviews the "Game Change" book here. This is the book that quoted Harry Reid saying "Light skinned" and "no Negro accent". Tina goes on at length describing one gaffe after another. She gives a number of unscripted Hillary moments but fails to mention the one unscripted moment that allowed her to beat Obama in the NH primary. It was one of those "man on the street" interviews, actually a woman at the diner counter, and just once, Hillary choked up a little bit. There was a catch in her voice, and for about 10 seconds Hillary looked like a real person with strong emotions. It was her most effective TV appearance of the whole NH campaign, and yet Tina doesn't mention it at all, instead dwelling on other less important incidents.

Body Language

Obama is delivering a Haiti speech. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are standing on either side. But why do Biden and Clinton have such sour expressions on their faces?

Airheads in California

According to this, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has time and money for yet more foolishness. They will require mandatory tire inflation tests with jail sentences for non compliance.
If California ever wants to get serious about cutting state spending, I know just where they can start. Close down CARB, fire all the employees, and burn the files.
Good thing NH is too intelligent to fall for something this dumb. We are, aren't we?

Excessive Wall St Skimming

Wall Street exists to route society's capital into economic development. They haven't done a very good job lately, and in fact, stupid Wall St moves are largely responsible for Great Depression 2.0.
Right now, while the wounds are still fresh, we ought to outlaw, or at least tax the bejeezus out of, risky Wall St speculation scams that do not yield economic growth, or create vast surpluses. The "credit default swaps" don't invest money in the real economy, they are just a cover your ass maneuver. Underlings can make risky investments and tell their bosses "It's safe, I bought a credit default swap to insure it". When all the investments went bad at the same time, AIG couldn't pay off, we taxpayers had to cover AIG's bad bets.
Resale of mortgages and the "mortgage backed security" are scams that allow unscrupulous operators to sell mortgages that should never have been written and dump them on more gullible investors before the junk mortgage goes into repossession.
Credit rating agencies were paid to put AAA ratings on junk, and gullible investors bought the junk. We don't need that kind of credit rating agency. Actually, any broker worth his salt should do his own rating. We would do our selves a favor by taxing the credit rating agencies like Moody's right out of business.
We need to create some corporate governance. Right now the management runs the banks pretty much the way they like. The pay them selves and their buds outrageous salaries with money that by rights belongs to the stockholders. We need to give the stockholders and the boards of directors more say over company operations. For instance top management salaries ought to require a majority vote from the stockholders. Big moves ought to require board of directors say-so.
Then we need to clean up the accounting business. American "Generally Accepted Principles of Accounting" allow companies to carry purely imaginary assets on the books, allow ordinary running expenses to be "capitalized", and allow "sales" to be credited as income before the money comes in. Plus a bunch of other unsavory stuff.

We ought to demand Wall St reform from our Congress critters.

Meeting the NH State Republicans

The NH State Republican Committee had a meeting in Concord last night. I caught a ride down with Bruce Perlo. It was pitch dark when we left and it got no lighter. The meeting was chaired by JOhn Sununu, former governor and current Republican state chairman. John spoke of the Scott Brown campaign in Massachusetts and said Brown was very close in the polls, give or take 5% he said, and getting better day by day. He urged us all to give Scott a hand over the next week to the special election. Sununu feels the NH democrats are on the defensive over the LLC tax (a 5% income tax on small business owners) the state budget problem, brought on by a 24% increase in state spending over the last two years, and the $? trillion Obamacare. Sununu feels that this year will be the best year ever for Republicans. If Republicans cannot win this November, they will never win.