Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin Shouting Match

They were discussing matters in Mexico, the drug wars, immigration, and the new president-elect.  Eleanor mentioned  "The recent discovery of oil has helped Mexico."  Recent?  The Mexicans have been pumping oil for the last hundred years.  They created Pemex in 1938.  That's recent?
   Of course Eleanor works for Newsweek magazine, which is doing so well that they decided to stop printing the magazine, merge with The Daily Beast and become a pure web site.  Real commercial success that is.  I wonder how much Eleanor's learned writing had to do with that.
  

Anne Kuster on WMUR this morning

She is telling whoppers on TV.  She says seniors are repelled by the Ryan medicare plan.  Really?  Especially as the Ryan plan calls for seniors, (55 and up) to receive current medicare, no changes.  Where as Obamacare takes $716 billion away from medicare and gives it to newly entitled Obamacare recipients.
  Then she slams her Republican opponent, Charlie Bass, for accepting oil company money and voting in an oil company tax break.  Of course she never mentions just which oil companies are doing the contributing and never mentions just what act of Congress gave the oil companies their tax break.  Come to think of it, somebody has been running the same attack ad on the Internet.
   The WMUR host never did ask Kuster about out of state PAC money paying for those attack ads on Charlie Bass. 

Pill prices decline

Went down to Walmart's yesterday to refill my various prescriptions.  Best news, Plavex is down to $7.68 for 90 days worth.  A year ago it was $150.  Let's hear it for coming off patent. 

The Economist doesn't like Romney much

Just finished this week's Economist.  They have a couple of full page articles on Romney where they explain how he has flip flopped on issues, failed to express himself clearly, and is having trouble collecting the conservative Republicans.  Then they do an electoral vote projection with a map.   Their projections are based on polls, or the Real Clear Politics average of polls.  And they call states for Obama or for Romney with a lead in the polls of only a couple of percent.  To me, a couple of percent in August polls really means "too close to call".   And, I think the Gallup and Rasmussen polls by them selves are better than the Real Clear Politics average of all the polls. 
  At least they call New Hampshire "dead even", whereas other pundits think we are "strongly Obama".

Why does the FBI have its own Air Force?

Republicans are bashing Attorney General Holder over taking joy rides in FBI aircraft.  Which is a a legitimate zinger, but more interesting is the fact that the FBI has its own aircraft.  Why?  Why cannot FBI agents fly commercial, stand in security lines and get groped by TSA just like the rest of us?   Aircraft are ultra expensive to own and operate.  Corporations are thinning out their aircraft under stock holder pressure.  As far as stockholders are concerned, corporate aircraft just suck up money that could otherwise go to dividends.  As far as this tax payer is concerned, FBI aircraft just suck up money, they don't stop crime.   Yet another place to do a little sequestration. 

What's good for General Motors?

According to a Wall St Journal op-ed, retreating from the car market and specializing in SUV's and pickup trucks is the way to go.  Going head to head with Toyota, Honda, and Ford with the Chevy Malibu is a bad idea.  Or so says Holman W. Jenkins Jr in a Wednesday op-ed.
  I disagree.  GM is a huge company; it once commanded better than 50% of the entire US car market.  To remain a big company, you have to make a mass market product, selling in the millions, to stay in business.  Right now the high volume car product is a smallish four door sedan.  GM cannot survive on niche products like Corvette.  There simply are not enough guys with Corvette money to keep the lights on at a behemoth like GM.  There are more enough people who just need a plain old car to get to work, bring home the groceries and take the kids to school.  Like a Malibu, or (the competition) a Camry, an Accord, or a Fusion. 
   GM needs to make a Malibu that is just plain better than the competition.  They can do it.  They did it in the good old days.  In the '50s and '60s GM owned 50% of the market because their cars were better looking, better handling, and more dependable than Ford, Chrysler, or American Motors.
   They could start with better styling.  The 2012 Malibu is bland, with bulbous front and rear ends.  Then they could find a car salesman to redo the marketing on the web site.  To attract customers GM lists desirable features of the Malibu.  These turn out to be 33 mpg (fair), fancy sound  system (do I care when I have an Ipod?) , a computerized backseat driver with "Turn by turn" voice navigation, and Bluetooth.  None of which I care about either.
  What about engine power, trunk room, interior size (how many kids can I fit into the back seat?) brakes, cornering, roof racks for skis and bikes, transmission options, miles between oil changes, front or rear wheel drive, you know, those car things.  GM is trying to sell the car on MPG and vehicle electronics alone.  They don't seem to care about making a decent car, which can take the curse off a day long drive with kids on board.

Apple Computer is biggest company in history

As measured by market capitalization, the number of shares outstanding times the price per share.  Apple is worth $623.52 billion on Monday.  That's way ahead of Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, IBM, GE, and all others.  It's  a long way from Wozniak and Jobs making the Apple I (just a mother board, no casework) in a garage.  A lot of that growth comes from Mackintoshes, Ipods, and Ipads, new products created by Steve Jobs.
   With a few more guys like Steve Jobs doing new product development, and we could grow our way out of Great Depression 2.0.

You know Detroit is dead

When your college age offspring cannot tell the difference between a Mercury and a Mercedes.

Where have all the giblets gone?

Beats me.  But the last two whole chickens I bought didn't have giblets.  Remember them?  The liver, the neck the gizzard and the heart, all packed in a little paper bag inside the bird?  The liver, sauted, did good things for the stuffing.  The rest of it made the gravy.  Boil them all for as long as the chicken needs to oven roast with some Bell's Poultry seasoning added to the water.  Pick the neck meat, chop the others, and add 'em to the gravy.  Use the broth in the gravy too.
   Cannot understand what's happened here.  Packing the giblets with the bird allows the store to sell offal at chicken prices.  I cannot imagine anyone else who would pay $1.29 a pound for chicken necks and gizzards.

Social Security stocks up on Ammo

According to CBS news, the Social Security Administration placed an order for 174,000 rounds of .357 pistol ammunition.  Damn, that's a lot.
The article goes on to say that Social Security employs 295 special agents who have arrest powers and work armed.
   Social Security should not have armed agents.  If they need to have someone arrested, they can call the cops, just like everyone (nearly everyone) else does. 
   Looks like another good place for a little sequestration to happen. 

Chronicle

A 2012 movie.  Three American high school boys are featured.  They are an unattractive lot when the movie opens.  Loud, rude, given to hooting like chimpanzees.  Somehow (pure magic?) they are endowed with real Superman type superpowers.  They can fly, leap tall buildings with a single bound, are bullet proof, everything.  Way cool.
   But nothing comes of it. They remain unattractive anti social jerks. They fail to rise to the occasion and slay dragons, rescue pretty maidens, save the world, or even get a decent suit of clothing. 
  Depressing movie.  Clearly the gift of superpowers does not uplift jerks into defenders of truth justice and the American way.  Which may be true, but I like the DC comics legend better.
    None of the names in the cast mean anything to me.  Camera work is mediocre to poor.  Lots of "shake-the-camera" shots.  Sound is adequate, you can understand most of the dialogue.

Ballast shipped all the way to Mars

Curiosity depended upon dropping ballast weights to maintain it's attitude during re-entry (entry?) to the Martian atmosphere.  The amount of ballast is surprising.   Two heavier weights were dropped to bring the nose up and allow aerodynamic maneuvering.  Then six more 55 pound ballast weights were dropped to level the craft off.  Six times 55 pounds is 330 pounds of ballast.  That's a lot, considering the entire lander only weighed 1924 pounds. 
   I hate to Monday morning quarterback a successful mission, but you would think they would have used some kind of steering fins sticking out in the airstream.  That's a lot of dead weight to blast all the way to Mars.

Words of the Weasel Part 27

"The fiscal effort becomes more difficult because the cyclical contraction is more challenging compared with the base line macro economic scenario of the second [bailout] program."  said Nikos Magginas, an economist at the Nation Bank of Greece.
And this means  what, exactly?

Grexit

Financial world shorthand for "Greek exit from the Euro".  The Economist was doing a long piece about this, listing pros and cons.  They point out that the Greek have borrowed hundreds of billions of Euros and in the event of Grexit, the lenders won't get paid back. And so it might be worth giving the Greeks another 100 billion Euro's or so to keep them running a while longer, and prevent (or stave off for a while) realizing those hefty losses.  True enough.
    What the Economist fails to talk about is the simple fact that the Greeks cannot and will not pay off those loans.  They just don't have the money, and no way they can they get the money,  not before Hell freezes over.
   So we are really talking about when the lenders to Greece have to admit how much money they lost (how stupid they have been).  Surely the lenders (banks mostly)  would like to put off that day of reckoning as long as possible, but aside from some bank officials having to reveal their stupidity in public, it doesn't make much difference.  The money is gone and won't be coming back.  

Water

I received a two page spread from the Mittersill water dept about the purity of my tap water.  There are ten different contaminants listed, levels thereof, limits, and "goals".   Goals are apparently an opening gambit to lower the limits.  My tap water meets all the limits, and in fact, all the goals.  Lotta fancy lab work measuring a few micrograms per liter, or parts per billion.  Paid for with my water bill.  Welfare for somebody or other.
   Then some things, copper and lead, are "calculated" by NHDES whatever that means.  I believe in measurements made using properly calibrated instruments. I don't believe calculations and computer models. They tell you what ever the calculator or modeler wants them to say.  Apparently NHDES thinks we don't have a problem with lead or copper.  I wonder why they think that way.
   My tap water comes from the same place it has for the last fifty years.  Wells, located up the side of a mountain, in uninhabited national forest.  They haven't changed much since the house was built fifty years ago.  Only real change in water quality is the water dept is now adding enough chlorine to make the coffee taste bad.  But money is spent every year for lab work to confirm what we have known for fifty years.
    Dunno how the Pilgrims survived over here, drinking plain old water without all these fancy tests. 

The Coop is so hippy dippy I can hardly stand it

I had to cycle around the veggie section twice to find plain old carrots, as opposed to organic carrots for $5 a bag.  Plain old Molson's Canadian beer is $8 a sixpack, as opposed to $5.50 at Mac's market. Aisles filled with groovy products I've never heard of, all making health claims I have trouble believing. 

Brits fighting above their weight

The Olympics are over, and the scorekeepers are counting medals won, and which nations are ahead.  Seems like us Americans came away with the most medals, followed by the Chinese, then the Russians.  The superpowers.  Britain came in number four, right behind the Russians.  Damn good.  Britain is much smaller than the three biggies, giving it a smaller talent pool to draw upon. Granted they did have a home field advantage, but still, coming in ahead of nearly every other country in the whole world is a damn good show. Rule Britannia. 

Sunday Pundit

We had David Axelrod, Obama's adviser, on Meet the Press with David Gregory this morning.  Axelrod said "We need policies that help the middle class."   I beg to disagree, we need policies that help the economy as a whole.  And the citizens as a whole, not just special classes of the citizens.
  Then Axelrod waxed indignant about Romney ads accusing Obama of cutting the work requirements from welfare. Claimed that Obama had done no such thing.  Trouble is, it was widely reported in both sides of media  that Obama had done exactly that. 
   The Clinton welfare reform had fairly stiff work requirements.  That was passed 20 odd years ago, and worked wonderfully well, number of people on welfare dropped a lot, and the entire divisive welfare issue solved itself and dropped out of normal political discourse.  Obama is messing with success, and given his reverse Midas touch, that's a bad thing.
  Anyhow, Axelrod was saying it never happened, when we all know it did.  Gregory let  him get  away with it, too.

Are Yard Sales over?

Did my usual Saturday morning circuit looking for yard sales.  Up US 3 to to US 302, take a left thru Bethlehem, down the Brooks Road, into Littleton on Union St, and back thru Franconia.  One, just one yard sale, way back off the main road and very small.  Used to be I'd hit a round dozen yard sales on the circuit, at least any day it wasn't pouring down rain. 
   One thing that slowed yard sales down.  The local paper (Littleton Courier) used to run free classified ads for local yard sales.  Then they started charging $35 and people stopped advertising in the Courier.  And I stopped buying it regular. 
   Any how the yard sales are getting scarcer.

Picking Ryan sends us a message

Romney's pick of Paul Ryan for VP tells us something good.  Ryan stands for balancing the budget by cutting spending.  He even has a plan to cut Medicare spending.  By picking Ryan, Romney is telling us that he wants to cut spending and balance the budget.  Which is a good thing, that up until now, Romney had not been really clear about.  Romney is a nice guy, and his election will be 100% better for the country than Obama, but he hasn't been very clear about just what a  Romney administration will do if elected.  Now we have a better idea.  With Paul Ryan in the administration, there will be spending cuts, medicare reform, and budget balancing.   I'm all in favor.  We cannot get the economy growing again until we get the federal budget balanced.  Right now Uncle borrows 40 cents of every dollar spent.  Our yearly deficit is better than 10% of GNP.  We may not truly balance the budget (get the deficit down to zero) but getting it down to 1% of GNP would be a tremendous improvement.

Free pills more important than jobs?

That's what Obama thinks.  He's offering free contraception pills.  He is hoping that women voters will vote for him to get free pills, at the risk of losing their jobs, and the risk of their husbands losing their jobs.  Is this gonna work for Obama?  I'd like to think American women are too smart to fall for a simple ploy like that.

Gallup says 54% of Americans are OK with TSA

I saw this one both Instapundit and Slashdot.  Why do I have trouble believing it?

100 Best YA novels according to NPR

There is a long list, some good, some I never heard of.  Some old favorites are missing.  Like the C.S. Lewis Narnia stories. Nothing by Andre Norton. No Montgomery Atwater stories.  No Poul Anderson.  The Borrowers are missing. Nothing by Edgar Rice Burroughs. No Jules Verne.  No Three Musketeers. 
   Then it does have some awful distopias, Lord of the Flies and The Giver.  I suppose they made it in because English teachers like distopias and assign them as required reading. 
   Then the ranking is odd.  Harry Potter comes in as #1, with Lord of the Rings pushed down to #7.  Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is #8, but his much better Martian Chronicles is missing all together.   Just how the list was put together is not given, apparently there was some editorial weeding out, and some listener voting, but just how good a list it is, is unclear.  It might reflect the likings of NPR staff, or just NPR listeners, or it might be more broadbased. 

Life Extension Program for Nuclear Weapons

The B-61 nuclear weapon, a plain old gravity bomb, entered service in the early 1970's.  A large number (hundreds for sure, perhaps thousands, its classified) were built and are still in service.  B-61 featured "dial-a-yield" by which the bomb can be adjusted from city-smashing size down to a nuclear cherry bomb. 
Although it has never been used in action, some forty years in service  ought to indicate that it is fairly satisfactory, and they are all built and paid for.
   In Washington there is a move afoot to spend another $10 billion dollars on the B-61's.  The Air Force wants to add a guidance system to improve accuracy.  We really need that.  These are nukes, with a total destruction radius measured in miles.  Get the bomb with a mile or so of the aim point, and that target is vaporized.  World War II mechanical bomb sights were good enough for that. 
   Then they want to "consolidate" the various flavors of the B-61.  Naturally over a production run of forty years, changes were introduced, and the experts recognize half a dozen varients of the B-61.  Money would be spent to make them all the same.  Not a bad idea mind you, but hardly necessary. 
   Anyhow they want to spent $10 billion on modifications to a perfectly serviceable weapon.  Sounds like a good place to do a little sequestration. 

Apple goes after Samsung

Apple is suing Samsung for patent infringement; they are claiming that the Samsung smart phone infringes on patented features of the Iphone.  They are in court now, and getting solid coverage in the Wall St Journal.  Lots of chit and chat about the lawyers on each side, and revelations on the Apple product development process, including marketing budgets at Apple.
  No talk at all about what was patented, and where Samsung's phone infringed it.
  Your patent office at work, making it easier for high tech businesses.

Re-Arranging deck chairs on the Titanic

In DC we have Congresscritters re arranging statues in town.   Eleanor Holmes Norton (the non voting DC representative in the House)  wants to move a statue of Frederick Douglass from it's current location (1 Judiciary  Square) to some place inside the Capitol. 
   Douglass is an inspiring American from the Civil War era, and fully deserves a statue.  I'm not knocking Douglass.  But I'd just as soon have his statue out in the open where I can see it, rather than stuck away inside the Capitol where I cannot.  They don't let citizens inside the Capitol building  anymore. 
  Plus, we have lots of serious issues that Congress is neglecting.  But they have time to re arrange the statues while headed full speed for that iceberg.

Revenge of the Nerds

Small Wall St stock brokerage Knight Capital  turned on their brand new computer trading program Wednesday.  Something went wrong and the computer managed to loose $440 million dollars by quitting time.  This nearly put Knight out of business.  They only had $365 million cash on hand.  According to the Wall St Journal, Knight did a lot of telephoning and a lot of hands and knees work and Goldman Sachs bailed them out.  Sort of.  As of Friday night Knight was still scrambling to borrow enough money to stay in business.
   Wow!  Pretty good work for a mere computer program.  And what are those programmers doing right now? They ought to be going underground and fleeing the country.  There has gotta be one humungous lawsuit coming out of this fiasco.
   It's not clear just what the program was doing.  The Journal describes the program as something cooked up by, or at least with the support of, the New York Stock Exchange.  It was supposed to allow trades to be executed with prices in fractions of a penny.   Just why anyone would want to do that is unclear.  A penny ain't worth much and a fraction of a penny is pretty close to worthless.  Unless you are trading millions of shares.
   The program probably was doing, and bungling, "high speed trading".  This exercise in capital allocation looks at stock prices and buys rising stocks and sells falling stocks.  It's fast enough to detect the instant a rising stock starts to fall and bang out sell orders faster than a plain old human broker.
 

Cyber Security thru lawyers

Bloomberg has a long article on a cyber security bill before Congress.  It appears the bill won't pass, or will be so watered down as to be useless.  On the other hand this bill proposed giving federal bureaucrats significant power over utility companies.  Power to decide how much security  must be paid for is the power to wreck a utility.  I don't believe federal bureaucrats are wise enough to be intrusted with that kind of power.
    Cyber attack means hostile hackers gain control of the computers that run our electric generators, our gas holders, our transformer banks, our transmission lines, and the rest of our physical plant and make them do bad things, such as another great blackout, fires and explosions. 
   Better would be to let the utility companies know that we have an army of hungry nasty tort lawyers just looking for work.  If the utilities let the lights go out, we start a class action suit for gross negligence and triple damages and legal fees and court costs.  And the scalps of the CEO and all the directors.
   Back this up with insurance companies.  All utilities carry insurance  to pay off that  army of tort lawyers.  Pretty soon the insurance company inspectors will be saying things like "If you don't fix this gaping loophole and that horrible weakness, we won't insure you."  
   The dickering over cyber security requirements between professionals, insurance men, utility engineers and lawyers will get more protection for less cost than empowering federal bureaucrats.  Federal bureaucrats are all liberal arts majors who have difficulty changing a light bulb and who work for politicians.  They certainly cannot improve reliability of  utility company operations, they are too ignorant and too politically motivated.
   

Wonderful new word

Ensuckification.   That's what Stephan Greene calls Facebook's new layout.  He's got a point.  And that's a great word, just looking for some more things to describe

Hang it out to dry

Here is The Plant, a birthday gift fresh from the nursery.  So far I have just watered it every day except on days when it rains a lot.  It takes a full pitcher of water (one quart) each time.  Which seems like a lot, but it all get soaked up somewhere and no water ever runs out the bottom of the pot.

Here it is 8 weeks later.  Not so lush but still alive.  It is currently attracting hummingbirds so it is in pretty good shape.  It had one bad night when high winds blew it off its nail and it feel on its head in the driveway some twenty feet below. 

NHPR can be really offensive

I'm listening to the Olympics on NHPR as I drive up to Whitefield.  An American girl has just won a gold medal.  But then NHPR has to tell me that she is black, (African-American is the word they used). Then they explain how being black makes her different and how she has all sorts of special responsibilities.  Then they  relate Facebook gossip criticizing her hairstyle.  Arrgh. 
   That girl is an American.  Winning an Olympic gold medal makes her the best in the world at what she does.   She had to work like a dog for years to get that good.  She makes me proud to be an American, and to know that our beloved country can produce citizens like her who are the best in the world.
   I'm offended to hear this American hero described by her skin color.  She's an American, plain and simple.

 

Linkage

Should taxes and spending be linked in Congress?   We hear endless talk about "offsets" and "pay as you go"  every time budgets and authorization bills come up.  Some favored constituencies get a tax dedicated to just one thing.  The gasoline tax is dedicated to (earmarked for) road building, so the road builders don't have to fight for funding every year. It's nice to be a road builder. 
   May it not be better to consider taxes and spending separately?  Taxes need to be low enough to keep the economy running and tamp down political unhappiness that leads to votings out, civil insurrection and other unpleasantness.  Most of the time this means that taxes cannot be raised much without serious consequences.  Certainly Obama's call for a tax hike on "millionaires and billionaires" isn't exciting the broader electorate.
   Expenditures rise to meet income  (Parkenson's law).  There is an infinite amount of worthy causes that can suck up all the money in the world.  But nobody is that rich.  Effective government spends money on the absolutely necessary things and stops after that.  Otherwise they go broke.  Witness Europe, Greece, Spain, Iceland, Ireland and the US.  
  So the common thing heard today "If we pass your appropriation, then you have to pass our tax hike to pay for it."  is just another way of saying "No". 

How much Defense do we Have? Do we Need?

Sequester!  It's out there in the dark, waiting to take dollars away from defense.  Fox had Sen Lindsey Graham on this morning talking against sequester.  He harked back to the early days of WWII when our troops had to drill with broomsticks, before the country got tooled up for war. 
   I want to hear about how much real strength we have today and how much we really need.  Anyone know where I could find the number of combat soldiers, tanks, artillery pieces, Navy warships, fighter planes, aircraft carriers, helicopters and transport aircraft the US military owns today?   And how many it would own under sequester?
   Then we could have a public debate over how much we ought to have.   After fixing the amount of arms and armed men we ought to have, then appropriate enough money to pay for it. 
   The Congresscritters  are debating how many dollars to pour into defense, not how much defense we ought to have.  Many of them are thinking about how much nice defense money will fall into their districts.
   Dollars don't bear arms. 

Undecideds? Who is still undecided?

I'm listening to TV newsies talking about the huge number of undecided voters out there.  Yeah right.  All the voters I reach when phone banking are decided.  Mind is made up, and you can tell from tone of voice that they ain't gonna change their minds either. 
  When you hear a newsie talking about undecided voters  this year, you know he/she is clueless.

"A Fire Brand Departs From GM"

Headline in yesterday's Wall St Journal.  From the headline one can see that the Journal is not in favor.  The firebrand in question, Joel Ewanick, was GM's global marketing chief.   He had a $4.5 billion dollar ad buying budget at GM, which is not chicken feed.  According to a GM press release, he "resigned".  GM claims that Mr. Ewanick "failed to properly vet financial details of a European soccer sponsorship deal."
   Sounds like office politics stabs again.  Mr. Ewanick was lured to join GM only two years ago.  GM managed to hire him away from top marketing job with Nissan North America, a job he held for only 6 weeks.
    Looks like bankruptcy hasn't taught GM's suits much.  They still don't have any cars that people want to buy, customers deride them as "Govt Motors",  their sales are down, and  their stock is in the tank  But they have plenty of time for back biting.
  

WMUR is back on Time Warner cable

Apparently the suits got their act together and I can now watch channel 9 on cable.  Only took 'em a couple of weeks to figure out that carrying WMUR is beneficial to both parties, the TV station and the cable company. 

Mists of Avalon

It's an Arthurian fantasy, with the title from a novel of the same name by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a well known science fiction and fantasy author.  It tells the story thru the eyes of Morgen le Fay, who is Arthur's sister in this version of the King Arthur tale.  The priestesses of Avalon, supporters of an ancient goddess, are dueling with the Christians for control of Britain's destiny.  Arthur is but one tool in their tool kit.  We see a lot of Vivienne (high priestess) Igraine, (Arthur's mother) Morgause (all purpose troublemaker) all thru the viewpoint character Morgen.    Poor Morgen is merely carried from scene to scene like a TV camera on a dolly, she never gets to do much under her own power.  Lot of nice camera work, galloping horses, small boats pushing thru the mists of Avalon.  The plot is complex and not really understandable.  None of the cast are familiar to me. 

Face the Nation foot in mouth

Face the Nation was stirring the Penn State pot yet again.  They were fricasseeing the University president over the Jerry Sandusky affair.  The moderator asks the Penn State guy "Do you think this whole affair was the fault of to great an emphasis on football?" 
   Well, actual no I don't.  Penn State hired a child molester, that was mistake #1.  And when the crimes came to light, the molester's boss (Joe Paterno) didn't report them to the police and covered things up.  That was mistake #2.  These mistakes could have been made in every department of Penn State, or any other university.  It happened that the athletic department is guilty this time, but that's just bad luck, it could have been any other department.   

Olympic Uniforms

The opening ceremonies went on so long that I went to bed before all the athletics marched in. So this morning I looked at still pix on the USAToday site.   The US uniforms, berets and all, were excessively undistinguished.  So was the rest of the outfit.  However there were worse.  The Brits turned up with the girls wearing Mother Hubbards...  The US Olympic committee needs to find a fashion designer with a sense of fashion. 

Class Action suit against NetFlix

Someone sent me an email about this.  According to the email, Netflix was keeping records of who watched what movies.  Didn't say Netflix was selling said records to telemarketers (yet) but surely that was coming.  Assuming this is real, and not a scam to get me to click on virus spreading  URL's,  it's breaking news to me.  I'll have to check around the web to see what's what. 
    If someone has huge amounts of time, and nothing better to do, and they review my movie watching habits, I should be OK.  Other than a taste for children's movies, my movie picks are depressingly ordinary, westerns, soap opera's, action and adventure, plain old Hollywood flicks.  I did watch a couple of Shakespeare plays this year.
   The email didn't say what happened to Netflix  "suggest a movie" features, which were supposed to suggest movies to watch based upon your stated preferences and viewing history, not that it ever worked very well.

Photos from WWII

I'm looking thru the photos in a coffee table book "The DC-3".  I'm struck by the number of photos from WWII, showing DC-3's at a variety of Podunk airports, loading or discharging passengers.  Somehow, in the depths of an existential war, the American economy can produce civilian air service into tiny burgs way out in the Great Plains. And do it with modern state-of-the-art aircraft too.  No beat up biplanes or wrinkly Ford tri-motors,  the Douglas DC-3 was top of the line in 1942.

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.