Thunder & Lightning harmful to cats

At least that's what my cat thinks. We had a really spectacular thunderstorm last night.  Continuous lightning flashes, rolling thunder, heavy rain.   Cat burrowed under the bed covers, deep under, and stayed there all night.  Apparently being under the covers is superior to being under the bed.

We had our biggest and best Tea Party meeting

There is life in the old Tea Party up here.  Lots of people showed up.  There will be some heavy duty political action this fall. 

Government Issue Zip Gun

  It was 1942, a low point in WWII  for us.  Following pleas for arms from European resistance movements, the Americans designed and manufactured a million zip guns.  They were incredibly crude, single shot, made of sheet stampings by the GM Guidelamp division.  The barrel was a piece of steel tubing, unrifled.  It was built to fire 45 caliber pistol rounds, which gave it some punch.  The pistol only cost $2.10 in WWII money.
    Contract for 1 million pistols was let in May, Guidelamp tooled up and started production in June and delivered the 1 millionth pistol in late August.  That's lightning quick.
    Reception of the "Liberator" pistol by Army field commanders (Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Stilwell) was chilly.  They were opposed to airdropping the weapons to the resistance.  Reasons were not given, but can be imagined.  No Army general is going to like the idea of  firearms in the hands of civilians, for fear of friendly fire accidents during invasion, and fear of Nazi reprisals against resistance fighters.  Only a few reached European hands.  The guns sat piled up in warehouses until the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of CIA, got a hold of them.  The weapons were shipped to the Pacific theater passed out to Chinese and Filipino resistance groups fighting the Japanese.
    Although the Liberator was nothing much, when viewed as a firearm, it did work, and it was a better arm than a switchblade knife or a walking stick.  The design was ingenious to get the price down so low and manufacture so simple as to permit  stamping out a million of 'em in merely ten weeks. 
 

Luxury Pizzeria?

Real Estate ad in the Economist.  "A Tuscan Dream, 800 Years in the making.. Beautiful apartments, traditional farmhouses, new build villas... 27 hole golf course...boutique hotel... restaurants... pizzeria...
Pizzeria? 
They may be high class in Italy, but Jeez, we got pizza just about everywhere here in the US.  They even deliver. 

Dark Knight Rises

Went to see it last night.  It opened at the Jax Jr last midnight, so Friday night was the first showing for ordinary people, as opposed to true fans who stayed up to see it at midnight.  Place was full.  There was a line at the ticket window an hour before showtime. 
   It's long (2.5 hours).  It's loud, Dolby 7.1.  The villain's voice was amped up and reached every corner of the theater.  Lots of explosions, car chases, fist fights and fireworks.  Poor Batman, a lot of very bad things happen to him during the movie.  Lot of bad things happen to Gotham too.  The movie is a duel to the death between Batman and Bane, a big beefy weight lifter type villain who carries automatic weapons and does little other than straight forward violence against every body and every thing.   No subtle plots or clever humor in Bane, he is into bashing, pure and simple.  He is so dangerous that it looks like he is winning, right up to the very end, despite the strong comic book tradition of  "the good guys win in the end"
   The movie picks up where the last one (the one with Heath Ledger as the Joker)  left off.  Harvey Dent has been made into a hero, Batman is blamed for Harvey's crimes.  We have a very nice Catwoman, an attractive New York cop named Blake, some adorable orphans.  Michael Caine is back as Alfred. 
  It was OK, but unless you are a true fan, like my children, you could wait for it to come out on DVD.  The awful things that happen to Batman and Gotham are depressing downers.

Obama writes Wall St Journal Op-Ed

And, having found this extra bully pulpit, what does Obama have to say?  Does he reveal the secret to end Great  Depression 2.0?  Pay the nation's bills? Heal the sick?  Reboot the housing market?  Prevent California from sliding into the sea? Save the Euro? Fend off the Rapture?  Prevent cellulite?
   No.  He goes on and on about Cybersecurity and the need to pass another Cybersecurity act.  That's worthy, I suppose, but pretty far down on my list of priorities.  Where is it on yours?

Adult Fiction Ebooks outsell hardcovers

Reuters had this piece.  But what does Reuters (the Brits) mean by "adult fiction"  Over here adult fiction means porn.  But it outsells hardcovers?  Do they have hardcover porn in the UK?  Or does Reuters mean fiction aimed at grownups as opposed to children and "young adults"?   And what about paperbacks?  Seldom do I pay hardback prices when I can wait a while and get it for paperback prices.  And even paperback prices are outrageous. 

Microsoft Office 2013, fatter than ever

According to Slashdot, the new release of Microsoft Office won't run on Windows XP, and will require 1 Gbyte of RAM and 3 Gbytes of hard drive space.  Oink Oink. 

Knives

The knives were getting dull, so I pulled out the oilstone (a two sided, two grit silicon carbide stone, none of this Arkansas or waterstone stuff for me) and a bottle of 3 in 1 oil and set to it.  Started with an 8 inch stainless chef's knife from J.A. Henkel which I got maybe ten years ago.  It was so dull it wouldn't cut a tomato. Set to work with the coarse side of the stone until I could see bright metal going right out to the edge on both sides.  Then followed up with the fine side of the stone to flatten the scratches left by the coarse grit.  When done, it would slice a piece of newspaper, a mark of decently sharp, but not as sharp as a razor.  I don't do the "shave the hair off your arm test"
   Moved on to old reliable, an 8 inch carbon steel chef's knife I bought new at a restaurant supply house in Duluth Minnesota nearly 50 years ago for $3.25.  Over the years the dishwasher destroyed the wooden handle and I bought the special brass rivets and made a new handle from poplar.  The carbon steel will take an edge and hold it better than stainless and old reliable was still sharp enough to slice paper.  I touched him up with the fine side of t he stone on general principles. 
   Then we get to my pair of Gerber knives that I picked up at a yard sale a few years ago.  They look like Gerber knives, they are marked as Gerber knives,  but some times I wonder if they are not counterfeit.  Both steel blades are flawed.  On the ground edge you can see little pits and  fissures in the steel.  They don't hold an edge long, and the edge rusts.  Stainless ain't supposed to do that.
   Then I tried to put an edge on a little Japanese stainless paring knife that must have come from my mother.  It had never been more than butter knife sharp.  Look at the edge and I could see a long flat strip of metal rather than a knife edge.  So much work on the coarse side and it's a little better, but it is never gonna be  my favorite knife. 
  Finished up doing my Swiss Army pocket knife and a little folding knife, both of which are mostly used to open junk mail.  When sharp, they slice the envelope open in one smooth swish. 
  So there we are, seven sharp knives laid out on the kitchen table.  Time for Happy Hour.

Bob Beckel, my favorite punching bag

Old Bob was sounding off on Fox New's "Five" last night, displaying his deep ignorance. Bob was defending Obama's claim that government support was behind every successful enterpreneur.  So he says "Bill Gates claimed the space program made the first micro computer possible." 
  Not true Bob.  What made the microcomputer, the Altairs, the Ithaca Intersysterms, the Cromemcos, the Commodore PETs, the Apple IIs and the Radio Shack TRS-80s possible was the microprocessor, a single 40 pin dual inline package  that does the thinking that makes a computer compute. 
   The first micro processor was designed by Intel, for a Japanese customer making desktop calculating machines.  The Japanese company, BubCom, wanted to make an exceptionally powerful product that could do square roots.  The Intel designers were inspired by the PDP-8, the first minicomputer, which had an elegantly simple design and astonishing power.  Intel designed a CPU chip for BubCom which became the Intel 4004.  To make the CPU become a desktop calculator Intel wrote a program, stored in a ROM chip to make the CPU recognize the keys in the keyboard, do the arithmetic and drive the display. The 4004 was nearly as powerful as the much bigger contemporary PDP-8 minicomputer.
   The PDP-8 motherboard, designed before microprocessors existed, used ordinary TTL logic gates to do it's thinking.  That mother board was some 17 inches square, contained some 200 odd chips.  The entire PDP-8 machine cost $7000 in 1969, weighed 50 pounds, and mounted in a 19 inch relay rack.  Took up a foot of rack space.  The Intel 4004 chip was nearly as powerful, cost $20 (then)  and didn't weigh an ounce.  This microprocessor chip made the microcomputers possible. 
   No government funds, projects, spinoffs, regulators, tax men involved.  It was a straight commercial deal brought to us by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, no government involvement what so ever.

Beat the heat

The morning radio was predicting 100 degree temps in southern NH and 90 degrees up here.  Well, we dodged that bullet.  The good ole Cannon Cloud was right out there bring us a gentle cooling rain.  Temp was 71 all morning.  Good old Ken King's crew kept right on mowing the grass in the rain.  Sun finally burned off  the cloud and it's up to 80, but that beats 90 any day. Plus we have some breeze.

Berets

Been following, and chuckling about the US Olympic team uniform fracas.  Chuckie the Schumer is outraged that the uniforms are made in China.
  As for me, I just don't like the style.  Americans walking in the opening parade ought to be wearing something really American, like cowboy hats and blue jeans.  Every other country sends their athletics out wearing native dress, why not us too?
  AND,  berets are not American.  They are French.  Or Special Forces.   Sending our athletes out in berets is too close to sending them out wearing Army helmets.  Wrong image. 

Silence gives assent

If you don't reply to an attack, but remain silent, the voters begin to think it's true.  Obama is attacking Romney's record at Bain capital, accusing him of being an asset stripping corporate raider.  Romney ain't replying.  Romney ought to be saying "We put money into these winning companies, and today they employ umpteen zillion people".  I haven't heard him say that yet. 
  Us voters just watch TV.  If Obama's accusations are false, we expect Romney to tell us so.  If he remains silent, when he ought to defend himself, we begin to think  there might be something in the accusations.
  Dukakis demonstrated this to perfection many years ago.  The Bush campaign ran a series of TV attack ads accusing Dukakis of endangering public safety by releasing dangerous murderer and sex offender ,Willie Horton, on parole.  Dukakis never replied and the mud stuck to him. 

Amtrak: $151 billion for NE Corridor

Hmm . $151 billion to create a High Speed Rail line running Boston to Washington.  Nice, but $151 billion is a lot of money.  Actually, when my family travels Boston to New York, they take the Fung Wah bus, $15 one way, four hours.  Amtrak's Acela is closer to $100, and takes nearly as long.  I've taken Acela, it's cool, but only when traveling on a company expense account.  It's too pricey for what it offers for me to ride it on my own time and my own money.  Go Fung Wah bus. 
   When we talk about the full Boston- Washington run, Southwest Airlines is only $75 one way, and flight time is only one hour. 
   And, if I need a car while in New York or DC,  I drive.  Four hours to NYC (fast as Acela) and 7 hours to DC, (again, fast as Acela). 
    I'm a long time train buff, I love train travel, but is this a wise use of $151 billion?

Bye-Bye WMUR (Channel 9)

Time Warner cable dropped WMUR, the voice of New Hampshire.  It's just another ABC channel, but it's been transmitting from Manchester since the 1950's  and always had good local (NH) news and stuff.  Apparently the blackout comes from a price squabble between Time Warner and ABC.   I'm north of Franconia Notch which means no way will an antenna bring in channel 9 , too much granite mountain between me and the transmitter.

Das Boote

Untersee Boote (U-boat) that is.  Watched it the other night.  Opened the DVD box.  Found TWO discs inside.  Labeled Disc 1 and Disc 2.  So we loaded Disc 1 and watched.  It went on and on and very little happened.  We saw how miserable conditions aboard were, wet and drippy, crowded, raging seas breaking over the conning tower, air attacks and a depth charging. They did a lot of griping.   Never got to see them launch torpedoes at anything.  They were still at sea when it became time to load Disc 2.  We decided that it was so sluggish that we didn't bother. 
  Would have been a much better movie with some rigorous editing. 

Polarized

Been doing some political phone banking.  People's minds are made up, they know who they are voting for, nobody is undecided.  And there are a LOT of ardent Democrats out there who are gonna vote Obama no matter what.  You can tell from the tone of voice.  Romney has to keep working hard, it might not go the right way, no matter how bad the economy is.

Captain Sir B. H. Liddell-Hart

This is a name I have known of for many years.  He is a British writer on military affairs, widely read, and mentioned by nearly every writer on the Second World War.  So when I saw his " History of the Second World War" at the town yard sale I picked it up. 
     Interesting reading, as much for the quirks of the author, as anything else.  In his descriptions of battles he pays good attention to the numbers of men and tanks deployed by each side.  Men are just men, but all the tanks are described as "gun-tanks".  This odd phrase suggests the existence of "no-gun-tanks" but who in their right mind would bring such a vehicle to a battle?  He might be an old artillery man, to whom only pieces with long barrels are "guns", anything with a short barrel is a "howitzer".  There were a lot of tanks armed with really stubby sawed off main guns in those days.  He might be attempting to discount a large number of very light armored vehicles that only carried machine guns.  But "gun-tank" is a Liddell-Hart phrase, I never encountered it elsewhere.  Nor does he ever explain why he uses the phrase.
   He also is a great believer in establishments.  Every unit in an army has a piece of paper (the establishment) which lists the number of men, tanks, guns, and other equipment the unit is supposed to have.   After some hard fighting few units retained their "establishment', t hey took casulties and were under strength.  It's clear that Liddell-Hart thought committing a unit to battle without it's full establishment was military malpractice.  Well, when push comes to shove, units are ordered out to fight whether they are up to strength on not. 
   Quirky he may be, but it's worth reading him just to know what he said, rather than what his detractors (which are many) had to say about him.

I'd LIKE to believe this, but is it real?

Article in "Nature Climate Change" (who ever they may be, I never heard of 'em before) claims that tree ring width measurements from present day back to Roman times show a persistent global cooling has been going on for the last two thousand years.  I'd like to believe this.
   Trouble is, tree ring width is determined by rainfall.  Trees love moisture and on wet years they lay down thicker layers of new wood. Temperature doesn't effect ring growth much. 
  The authors attempt to meet this criticism by comparing tree ring widths to measured temperatures in modern (post-thermometer-invention) times.  They claim a correlation of 0.77 which is better than random, but far short of the standards used in the real sciences.  For instance the Higgs Boson discoverers demanded a correlation of 0.999 or better before they made their claim.  So I am not sold on tree ring width as a proxy measurement of temperature. 
   The title of the article suggests that the temperature changes are a result of  changes in Earth's orbit.  It has been known for hundreds of years that earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, is it a plump elipse, close to a circle but there is a perihelion (closest to the sun point) and aphelion (farthest from the sun point).  The differences are not great, a percent or so.  Plus the earth's axial tilt (which causes seasons) drifts around some, which means some times Northern Hemisphere summer happens at perihelion, giving warmer summers.  Some times Northern summer happens at aphelion giving cooler summers.  The whole effect cycles around with a period of 25,000 years.  The cycle is called the Drayson cycle, it has been known for centuries, and numerous attempts have been made to connect Draysonianism with the coming and going of the ice ages.  None of these attempts have convinced the bulk of the scientific community to believe them.
    The title suggests another attempt at selling Draysonianism as a cause for global cooling is under way.  Trouble is, they don't have the data to make the case.  Their tree-ring/temperature data only covers 2000 years, a Drayson cycle is 25000 years. To show that we have a 25000 year global cooling cycle driven by the 25000 year Drayson cycle, you need 25000 years worth of temperature data, which they don't have.
   So , a nice article, which I want to believe, but  their case is shaky, at best.

Tax Hikes. Political Death Wish?

We got Obama and NPR (the Diane Whines show) plumping federal income tax hikes "on the millionaires and billionaires only."  Do they really think this is a winning strategy in this election year?  I mean who likes tax hikes?  Independents?  
   They are talking about how we just have to have the extra revenue to balance the budget.  Me, and a lot of voters say, "Cut the spending first, just to prove that you can do it.  AFTER some real spending cuts, and we get the economy working again, then MAYBE we can talk tax hikes.  But if we do a tax hike first we won't ever get any spending cuts."

Clever new junk mail

Most junk mail goes into the fireplace unopened.  But then every so often some so attention begging turns up.  This was a plain white business sized envelope with an tony script return address printed on it.  And a bulge.  Something of substance, or at least thickness.  So I opened it.  The bulge was a plastic keychain sort of gizmo stuck to the pitch letter with stickum.  "Pull tab to win a new 2012 Suzuki".  So I pulled the tab and the magic number lit up and glowed in purple. Cool.  And it matched the winning number !!  Wow. 
  So I pitched everything except the glowing number goodie.  That's still glowing on my desk.  I want to see how much battery it has.  Will it glow all day?  Over night? Who knows?

Is there a liberal tone of voice?

Hmm. When the clock radio comes on in the AM,  I can tell the political slant of the NPR pieces by the tone of the announcers voice before I wake up enough to actually comprehend what is being said. 

LIBOR for fun and profit

Barclay's Bank is in hot water over attempts to manipulate the "London Interbank Offered Rate" (LIBOR) to their advantage.  US and Brit regulators got the goods on Barclay's strong enough to make them cough up nearly $500 million in fines, and have their three top officers resign.  Apparently the published LIBOR is put together by averaging reports from all the big banks on how much interest they had to pay to borrow money from other banks.  LIBOR is used to set interest rates on all sort of loans.
  L:IBOR is a new comer.  Back in the day we used the "prime rate", which was alleged to be the interest rate big banks charged their best customers.  Back then General Motors was considered a best customer, so we are talking about a long time ago.  Somehow the financial world stopped using (and reporting on the news) the prime rate in favor of LIBOR.  I have no idea how  that transition happened. 
  Of course you have to wonder about LIBOR.  It's an interest rate one bank charges another bank on a loan between two banks.
  Banks are supposed to raise money and make loans to finance business and construction.  That makes economies grow.  Making loans to other banks just swaps the money around but doesn't  do a thing for economic development.  At least the "prime rate" was a measure of how well banks were doing at their primary job.

Old Home Day / 4th of July

Franconia put on the usual parade.  Old Home Day is always on Saturday, the Saturday closest to the 4th of July.  Every body comes to the event.

Here we have Ray Burton, North Country politician extraordinaire arriving in his trade mark Olds Delta 88. Ray is executive councilor and country commissioner.  It's said that where ever three people get together in Grafton County one of them will be Ray Burton.

Then we have all sorts of classic cars.  Like this baby.  They don't make 'em like this anymore.

The Tea Party is still boiling mad up here.

 Marching down Main St.  That's Mt Lafayette in the background.  The weather held up, we didn't get rained upon.  When the whole thing was over, the political people all  went to a big GOP phone banking event at the Littleton GOP headquarters. 

Who cares if it's a tax?

It's money out of my pocket, I don't care if you call it a tax or a penalty, it's still money taken away from me.  I don't like that no matter what you call it.
  Newsies and other twitterati get all excited about "precedent", claiming that a "precedent" might win a future court case.  Yeah right, but we lost this one now and we lost it big.  No amount of "precedent" can make up for that.  Plus the courts rule any old way they want to.  They don't pay attention to "precedent" in real life, although they claim they do.
  So let's drop the "is it a tax or is it a penalty" talk.  Every time I hear the TV start in on it again, I reach for the remote control. 

F-35 fighters sold to Japan for $129 Million apiece

Nice plane and all, but $129 million for a single seat fighter?  The Japanese could only afford four of them.

Jackie Cilley ad. Stop the Pledge

Jackie Cilley is a democratic candidate for governor of NH.  "The Pledge" in full reads "I Pledge to never ever allow a state income tax in NH".  The pledge has been required of all politicians in NH for decades.  Ms Cilley's ad popped up on my facebook page this morning.  I hope this rather lame ad means Ms Cilley is defeatable by Republicans.
   I would not run an election ad that reads "I want to sock you with an income tax." even phrased in north country code words, if I was looking to attract votes around here.  Maybe she thinks it will work down south along the border where Massachusetts democrats have been infiltrating New Hampshire.

Disney/Pixar Bride

Went to see it last night at the Jax Jr.  Enjoyable.  The tale is set in McBeth-land with a touch of Viking (sort of medieval Scotland with Scandinavian touches).  Gloomy stone castle on a commanding height, deep woods.  Beautiful tomboy daughter of the local king is being groomed for a dynastic marriage by her mother.  She has very impressive long red wavy hair which the computers lovingly render strand by strand and frame by frame.  Needless to say she is deeply into archery and horseback riding, and given the set of clods for suitors that Pixar gives her, no wonder. 
   The Pixar animation is up to it's usual standards.  Sound is good.  It's in 3-D which is something of a pain and doesn't help the movie at all.  There are some holes in the plot and the characterizations, but it remains a good flick.  Go see it if you haven't already. 

So how much per truck?

Fox News reports that the US and Pakistan have patched up some differences.  In return for some kind of regrets about blowing a Paki border post away (with 20 odd troops inside it at the time) the Pakis will open up the Kyber Pass to US supply trucks, hauling supplies to US troops in Afghanistan.  Sounds good.  Fox failed to tell us about the baksheeh (money) involved.
  Before the Paki's shut down the Kyber Pass, about 6 months ago, they had been getting $100 a truck in bribes, tolls, squeeze, and payoffs.  We heard demands of $1000 a truck after the pass was to reopen.  The Fox piece made no mention whatsoever of baksheesh. How much are we paying the Pakis to get supplies thru to our men in Afghanistan?  Somebody knows, but they aren't telling us.

Care for the small lawn

The small lawn, what you get with a starter house, or perhaps a condo. Say 8000 square feet or less.  Actually, grass is easy to grow, tolerates sun, shade, cruddy soil, drought, benign neglect.  It will start from grass seed and be tall enough to mow in 4-5 weeks.  Unless you want that hayfield look, it does need to be mowed 'bout once a week during grass season.  If the mower whacks off too much it shocks the grass.  Cutting it down an inch or so is fine, whacking off a foot a a time will make the grass dizzy. I set the mower high, 3 of 4 inches up, to allow the grass a decent length of green to do the photosynthesis thing and feed the roots.  Let the clippings just fall into the lawn, they sift in and disappear, they help hold moisture, and help hold the soil against the rain.  Plus the grass takes something out of the soil to do all that growing; if you bag the clippings and haul 'em away, the soil will run out of that something.
    There is a lot to be said for a hand mower over a power mower.  The power mover is as hard to push as the hand type, it requires hearing protection, it will fling rocks out the discharge chute at bullet speeds.  Power mowers never start after wintering in the garage.  Remember, we are talking small lawns here, not the five acre spread.
    Normal grass grows so fast that it will crowd out the average low powered weed.  Hand pluckery will control the higher powered dandelions and plantains.  Plucking is easiest the day after a rain, the soil will be soft and the weeds will come up by the roots. I don't use herbicide or "weed & feed", 'cause the active ingredient is Agent Orange which has a nasty rep going back to the Viet Nam war. 
   For fertilizing, I rely upon the contents of my cat box.  Just walk about and spread the stuff widely,  That evil odor is ammonia (fixed nitrogen) which plants find tasty.  The Kitty Litter is fine and light and will improve  the quality of your soil.  If you don't have a pet, commercial nitrogen fertilizer works too.  Up here in New England, the soil is acid, pretty much everywhere, so a light spread of powdered lime will help sweeten it, which makes grass happy.  Fireplace ashes are good too, but make sure they are finely and  thinly spread.  A concentrated clump will burn the grass.

Creepy, Your ebook is reading you.

The Kindles and Nooks report back to their makers, things like what books you buy, how fast you read them, any marginal notes you might make.  All this goes to the publishers for data mining to help discover (or make) the next best seller.  And all this data can be used against you in court.  For instance, was I prosecuting an Islamic terrorist, I'd be sure the jury knows he reads about explosives and weapons. Used to be, libraries refused to divulge what books a person checked out.  Kindles and Nooks just squeal on you.
  I wonder if the "read-kindle-ebook-on-your-laptop" programs are as nosy.  

News Domination

That Roberts court sure knows how to take over the news.  It's been nothing but talk about the Obamacare decision since Thursday.  Needless to say, I was disappointed that we are still stuck with Obamacare with just a slight watering down.  I had been hoping the Supremes would save us from our own folly.  No such luck.
  We will have to do it the old fashioned way, at the ballot box in November.  If that doesn't work, the US of A goes down the same drain Greece is going down today.  So far Obama care has jacked up everyone's insurance costs and  has kept un employment high thru classic FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) tactics.
   All I can figure is Roberts feared the uproar that Obamacare repeal would cause, and rather than be subjected to the storm of criticism, he found a face saving out that leaves Obamacare still at large in the land.  Good courageous lawyering at work.

Inconspicuous Consumption vs Great Depression 2.0

They used to rave on and on about unchecked consumerism. Vance Packard with The Wastemakers.  My mother used to grumble about how commercial Christmas had become. Keeping up with the Joneses.  Buying a new Detroit car every three years.  Well, that unchecked consumerism used to provide 70% of the American  Gross National Product.
    Fast forward to the 2010's.  That new Detroit car will last to 150,000 miles and is still looking pretty nice and new after 6 years on the road.  My father used to trade every 3 years just before the rust came thru the rocker panels.  I can remember all of those family cars after all these years.  Me, I still bought new, but kept them for 6 years.  Modern galvanized rocker panels don't rust out.  Yearly auto sales peaked at 17 million back in '05 and have dropped off to 10 million today.   Not even teenagers buy new clothes anymore.  Take a look at your high school students.  Urban grunge is the style today.  The baggy layered look helps conceal the muffin tops.  Two of my three children don't even own cars. 
    In short, Americans are consuming less, durable goods are more durable,  the hot new electronic toys are fairly cheap and as consumer demand drops off,  so does employment. 

Winter's Bone

After seeing  Hunger Games, I  netflixed this one 'cause it had Jennifer Lawrence starring in it.  I watched the first half hour or so and then I couldn't take anymore.  The poverty and misery in which Ree is living is just too deep for me to suffer thru it.  I couldn't watch another hour or so of this kind of misery.  I turned it off and went to bed.
   I'm sure Jennifer did a fine job of acting but I watch movies for entertainment and relaxation, not to have all the misery of the world played out in my living room.  That is neither entertaining nor relaxing.
 

Chucklehead

They are discussing the few congressional democrats who are going to vote Holder in contempt of Congress. Bob Beckel (on Fox Five) opines that these democrats are deserting their party only because their districts are full of Republicans and NRA members.  True blue democrats would never yield to threats from their voters.  Caving to the will of the district is despicable.
    I got news for you Bob baby.  Those districts elected those guys and the districts have every right to to expect their reps to vote their way.  That's what reps are supposed to do, represent their districts.  That's democracy.  Party loyalty is never supposed to over ride the duty to your own voters.

Game of Thrones

Well, I got to the end of Season I, including the last episode where the 'net buzz has it that they used a George W. Bush head on a spike in place of Lord Eddart Stark (Sean Bean).  I watched closely but I didn't think the head on the spike looked much like anybody, not Bush, not Sean Bean.  I enjoyed it.  Lots of cool costumes and neat sets.  Lots of scantily clad women.  Good thing we got cable now.  The FCC would have had a conniption over several juicy scenes. 
   It's dark.  There are a lot of really rotten bad guys, and none of them have gotten their just deserts yet.  Good guys have taken some hits.  Young Bran Stark pushed out a 5th floor window by Jaime Lannister.  Sansa Stark  has her pet dire wolf killed and winds up a captive at the mercy of boy king Joffrey "Baratheon" (actually Joffrey is a Lannister bastard.  Eddart Stark beheaded for treason in the public square. Grim stuff. 
   Guess I have to wait a while before Season 2 makes it to Netflix.  My cable doesn't carry HBO.

Strange...

Going to the national convention always used to be a big deal.  Everyone wants to go.  Hell, even my mother got to go to the national Republican convention one year. 
Now we are hearing that a number of heavy duty democrats are NOT going to the convention in Charlotte.  Claire McCaskell from Missouri is the latest "I'm not going" announcement.
Hmm.  Not a good sign for Obama when politicians avoid his convention.

The Diane Whines Show

Listened to Diane Rahm on NPR  on the way back from Concord yesterday.  The guests were bewailing the terrible trials of parents, the difficulty of finding daycare, the difficulties of after school care, the unfairness of spending time to care for their children instead of advancing their careers, the difficulties of covering children during spring vacations, and on and on.  All guests agreed that more government assistance was needed to protect the family.  And wasn't it terrible how those Republicans refused to provide for all these deserving  parents.
   Well, speaking as a veteran parent, we experienced all those difficulties, and we coped, one way or another. Improvise, adapt, overcome, it works for parenting as well as for the Marines. We didn't expect government assistance, we expected child rearing to call for some sacrifices on our part.  The emotional rewards of raising a family more than compensated for those sacrifices.
   More government subsidies not required.
  

Gunwalking for Fun and Profit

The Congressional drive to get the documents on Fast and Furious is perfectly legitimate.  We, the voters, thru our Congressmen want to know a few simple things.  Like who set up Fast & Furious, who ran it, and who approved it. 
   After we have the names, we want these idiots fired, black listed and prosecuted.  So far this has not happened.  Then we put their names in US history books, right next to Benedict Arnold.
   That's the best we can do to make sure it never happens again.  
   Giving guns to Mexican drug gangs is :
1. Stupid.
2. Illegal
3. Dangerous. 
  
  

Nutrition Nanny, British style

The Economist is bewailing the effect of Great Depression 2.0 on the British diet.  Sales of organic food is down, sales of fresh meat and fish is down.  Sales of heat-n-eats (TV dinners) are up.  Oh woe is Merry Old England.  Even lower than pub grub is a TV dinner. 
   According to the Economist, many Brits actually like TV dinners, which makes them doubly sinful.  How can we keep all those upper lips stiff eating food that actually tastes good (or at least reasonably OK)?  You have to wonder have well connected the Economist really is.  In America only kids really like TV dinners.  Grownups will eat them, but are less than enthusiastic about them.  I would have thought the Brits would work the same way.

Veep

Lotta names been floated on TV for Romney's Veep.  All the names are Republican senators, governors, and US reps.  It would be a shame to waste a good solid vote getting Republican on the office of the vice president.  For instance US rep Ryan does us more good as chairman of the House budget committee than he (or anyone else) could do as VP.  Likewise Sen Marco Rubio, Gov Chris Christy, Gov Bobby Jindal,  are key Republican politicians filling critical offices.  If one of 'em gets pushed into the VP slot, we have opened up that critical office to a democrat, or at best, a less effective Republican. 
    VP isn't all that important (unless the president dies in office).  Let's find some reasonable and competent  second stringer for VP.  Leave the Republican stars in the critical offices they have already.

Advertisement_Yuck #2

Guy pulls up in front of a house in a VW.  Gets out of the car and slams the driver's door.  About 20 kid's toys fall out of the curbside tree and bounce on the sidewalk.  Just to verify things, the guy slams the VW door a second time.  More stuff falls out of the tree, including an orange cat which lands on the VW roof, meows, and scurries away.

Advertisement_Yuck #1

The Geico Gecko meets the Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote.  Geico must have had to pay some serious licencing money, but the result is very funny, at least for old Roadrunner fans.

The Hipping point

Last night I had the FM radio on.  Playing "The Notch" FM 106.something-or-other. They must have call letters but they never bother to say them over the air.  The announcer tells me that I am listening to "The Hippy Radio Show".  Then he says "The situation has reached a Tipping Point."
Tipping Point?  on the Hippy Radio Show.  That oughta be a Hipping Point, if we are remaining true to our themes.
  Of course it's been 50 years since we had any real hip hippies around.  Which goes to show how up-to-date FM radio is way up here in the mountains.

Gotta keep all them drones on the payroll

The new, not yet  sworn in, government of Greece has announced that they will not be doing the big layoffs of government  workers that their EU lenders/bailer-outers have demanded.  Good call that.  With the treasury empty and running a serious deficit and nobody will loan them money, it is essential to the life of the Greek republic that we keep every single bureaucrat on the payroll.  The Parthenon would crumble with out every single paper pusher drawing his pay.  And benefits, and pension.
    I haven't heard any response from Angela Merkel.  She is smart enough to understand that getting into a shouting match with Greeks just makes Germany look mean to the rest of the Euros.  There is a lot of Euro ill will toward Germany left over from the 1940's.  
    Wanna bet the next hand out to the Greeks gets delayed some how?

Mountain Heat Wave

It's so warm up here that I can leave the windows open all night.  Got up to 80 these last two days.  I hear it got warmer down in the flatlands.

Hewlett Packard DVD+R

I bought a stack of fifty of these babies.   I've burned a lot of them, and had to pitch about five 'cause DeepBurner claimed they were defective and didn't burn right.  That's 10% duds.  Strange, HP has a good rep for  making reliable stuff, and that rep goes back 50 years.  Apparently the suits at HP don't care anymore, and the next pack of DVD's I buy will be from someone else.  Probably Sony.

Foot Shooting for Dummies

Operation Fast and Furious, where BATF allowed better than 1000 guns to walk into Mexico was just a medium duty administration scandal until today.  Congress  subpoenaed  100,000 documents from Dept of Justice and DOJ has been stalling on delivering them.
   Today Obama invoked "Executive Privilege"  to keep those documents secret.  Executive Privilege is a way of keeping information given to the president secret on the theory that the president needs to hear unvarnished truth from his advisers.  If every thing said to the president will appear in the public press, a whole bunch of stuff will never be discussed because it will look bad in the papers.
   So far so good.  But by invoking executive privilege, Obama is saying that he knew about Fast and Furious, something that he has been denying.  Plus, the last president to invoke Executive Privilege in a big way was Richard Nixon in Watergate.  We oldsters remember Watergate, and we remember that Nixon's use of executive privilege was fraudulent.  As soon as Obama tries it, we think Obama is fraudulent too.
   The documents in question are probably embarrassing, they probably will tell which DOJ chucklehead started Fast and Furious, and why.  But even if the disputed documents incriminated Eric Holder, AND showed that Fast and Furious was an attempt to discredit the 2nd Amendment,  Obama could have just thrown Holder under the bus along with Rev. Wright and pressed on.
   Now Obama has told us all that he was in on it, from the beginning.  Not smart.

Windows Speed Tweaks - Zap Indexing Services

Windows XP comes with a resource hogging "Indexing Services".  This sluggish CPU hog builds "indexes" of file contents to speed up searches.  It never sped up anything for me.  To keep the indexes up to date, indexing services constantly "sniffs" the hard drive, looking in files and updating the indexes. I have seen Indexing Services sucking up as much as 25% of CPU time. Your computer will run faster if you kill Indexing Services.
   This can be done from "Add | Remove Programs", a Microsoft applet on the Control Panel.  You get to Control Panel from the Start button.  Do Start, then Settings then Control Panel.
   Add | Remove Programs makes you wait while it builds a list of what's installed.  Once it comes back to life, click on "Add|Remove Windows Components.  This will display a list of  optional Windows bits and pieces.  Uncheck "Indexing Services" and he will be gone.
  While you are in here, any other Windows bit or piece you don't need can be unchecked.  This machine (Antique Laptop) has Fax Services, Management and Monitoring Tools,MSN Explorer, Other Network File and Print Services and Outlook Express unchecked and he runs just fine.  Even if you don't use Internet  Exploder for your browser, you want to keep him around.  Microsoft update (which brings you the latest Windows patches)  only works with Exploder.  No Exploder, no patches.

Selling Natural Gas Powered Cars

That's what the Wall St Journal was doing yesterday.   They mentioned lightly the major problem with the idea, namely the size of the gas tank.  Compressed natural gas (CNG) is less energy dense than gasoline, so the tank will have to be bigger, a lot bigger.  Imagine a 55 gallon oil drum.  And this is holding pressurized gas so the tank has to be a cylinder, none of those tricky shapes that fit into odd nooks and crannies.   I suppose the stylists will be able to do something, but I'm betting a CNG powered car will look odd, with that big cylindrical tank sticking out somewhere.