WIMP detector WIMPS out

The search for WIMPS was returned a negative.  Big new WIMP detector buried deep underground failed to detect any WIMPS.  Either the detector has a problem, or there are no WIMPS.  Stay tuned for future developments.  Perhaps MACHO's are the real answer?


DarkMatterEludesLUXdetector

Engineering.com

Bring the deck chairs in, it's snowing

I'd left the deck chairs out, hoping for some more weather warm enough to sit out.  No such luck.  Deck chairs are now safely stowed in the cellar, not to be seen for six months. 

Republicans don't have alternatives 'cause of special interests

As Obamacare takes on water, and a heavy list to port, the national punditry has been zinging the Republicans for failure to come up with an alternative to Obamacare. 
   That alternative is simple.  We need measures to bring down the sky high costs of US healthcare.  The US spending 19% of GNP on healthcare.  That's twice as much as every other country in the world.  And, as measured by infant mortality rates and life expectancy, US health is no better than, and in fact, not quite as good as, health in any other first world country.  For example  Canada, Britain, Germany,. Japan, France, Israel, Scandinavia, South Korea and others.   In short we are paying twice what we ought to.  If we could bring costs down by half, things would be a lot easier.  The uninsured could take a sick child to the doctor without entering bankruptcy. 
   Measures to bring down costs are well known.  It's just that well heeled special interest groups are dead set against 'em.  They like things the way they are.
   First off, we need to bring down the malpractice costs.  Malpractice insurance, which every MD has to carry, runs $100,000 a year in premiums.  At this point, any unfavorable outcome is malpractice. Any time the patient fails to recover, the doctor gets sued. The lawyers advertise on TV for plaintiffs.  We could adopt the English rule (loser pays court costs).  We could do what New Hampshire did, implement a special medical malpractice  court, we could forbid suits over FDA approved drugs.  We could forbid advertising for plaintiffs.  But, the lawyers are dead set against anything that cuts into their profits.  Most politicians are lawyers, which makes 'em shills or at best highly sympathetic to the lawyers arguments.
  Second, we need to bring down drug costs.  Big Pharma whips out scads of wonderful new curealls, and charges $100 a pill for 'em.  We ought to allow import of drugs from places like Canada, where the national health care system has forced the prices down out of the stratosphere.  Big Pharma is dead set against it.  Obama got their support (and kept Harry and Louise quiet) by promising Big Pharma, no imports.  In fact the government won't even bargain for better drug prices.  Allowing import of drugs would drop US drug prices by half.
   Third we could allow sale of health insurance across state lines.  Up here in New Hampshire, we only have ONE health insurance company, Anthem.  And guess what our rates are?  Anthem just told a third of the hospitals in the state to go out of business, 'cause Anthem won't do business with them any more.  Ought to be, that I can buy health insurance from any US company, no matter what state they are located in.  Naturally the insurance companies are dead set against this idea. 
  In short, special interests have forced up the cost of health care, and the Republicans lack the stones to work against them. 
 

Women's vote beats Cuccinelli in VA

The VA government election was close, closer than the polls were predicting.  McAuliffe only won by a couple of percent over all. 
  But, according to the TV news today, McAuliffe won the women's vote by 10% over Cuccinelli.  That's margin of victory right there.  If Cuccinelli had carried the women's vote, he would be governor right now. 
Same thing happened to Romney last year.  He lost the women's vote by 10% to Obama. Romney would be president today if he have carried the woman's vote.
    What is it with us Republicans that we turn off the chicks? 
    Is it time to get off the anti abortion thing?  Most chicks remember a scary time when they were single, in school, and feared they were pregnant, and feared not being able to find a safe and confidential abortion.  This memory is unlikely to make them vote for Republicans who campaign on anti abortion platforms. 

Obamacare website is fixed when they say it is

Obama administration is claiming that all will be fixed on the website by the end of the month.  Yeah right.  So what do we mean by "fixed"?   That it can process five individuals at once without crashing more than once a day?   Or that it stays up for days at a time while processing 100,000 individuals at once?  Wanna bet, no matter how flaky the website is, the Obamanauts will declare it fixed? 

Newsies cannot count

NHPR was giving yesterday's election results this morning.  They reported on NH, VA, NYC, CO, WA elctions.  Not once did they give a vote count.  Win by a landslide, win by a hair, it's all the same to NHPR.  Or, their staff has difficulty with numbers too large to count on their fingers. 
   Then, to distract us from the Obamacare meltdown, they offered a couple of blue meat stories.  You know, you throw out red meat to excite conservatives, and blue meat to excite liberals. First was a hassle in upstate New York over opening town meeting with a prayer.  Really important story there. 
   Then they had an election finance story.  Some activist was urging the IRS to be even more difficult about granting tax exempt status to 501(c) yadda-yadda organizations lest they use the money for politicking.  Real people are all ready outraged about IRS harassment of conservative organizations, and this idiot wants more of the same.  

Congress fiddles while the country burns

Bring out more violins.  Congress has failed to pass any appropriations bills, we have NSA angering the entire world, they failed to deal with the debt limit, Iran is getting nukes, the Middle East is burning down. Obamacare has paralyzed the economy.
So what does Congress do?
  They pass a special interest bill for gays and lesbians.  I'm sure it will gain the members a few gay and lesbian votes, but really, we have have plenty of non-discrimination laws on the books, we don't really need another. 
   Congress critters ought to spend their time on things  that benefit the entire nation, not dealing out favors to special interest groups. 

It's Halloween for taxpayers.

The US House just gave the banks a big green rustling handshake.  It passed the "Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act"  HR 992 on 30 October this year by a vote of 292 to 122.  A Halloween special.  All Republicans and 70 Democrats, including my Democratic rep Annie Kuster, voted for passage.
   What's going on here?  First we have to understand what "swaps" are.  Swaps are a high stakes gambling vehicle which crashed Wall St back in 2008 and  kicked off Great Depression 2.0.  A "swap" is a deal between two banks, or a bank and a brokerage house, or an insurance company and  a brokerage house, or any mix.  Only two can play.  the deal goes thus. "If  certain bonds that you hold default, I will pay them off for you.  You are relieved of all risk.  In return you pay me a modest fee, in advance."   It amounts to bond insurance against default.  In 2008, big insurance company AIG sold credit default swaps on a whole bunch of shaky bonds.  When the market crashed, all the AIG swapped bonds defaulted.  AIG, big as it was, didn't have the money to pay off on the swaps.  It went broke and we the taxpayers paid off all of AIG's $140 billion worth of swaps.  The resulting market turmoil crashed Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, and others, and kicked off Great Depression 2.0, which is still with us, five years later.
   Clearly "swaps" are dangerous.  And, "swaps" do not promote any kind of economic development.  All the money goes back and forth between Wall St players, none it goes to building new factories, buying airliners, financing inventory, or other useful purposes, it all stays on the Street.  Swaps are a high stakes gambling deal.
    Anyone in their right mind wants to forbid the sale of swaps, 'cause they are so dangerous, and they don't do anything worthwhile.  Anyone, except a banker who enjoys playing bet-the-company games.  And so, the Dodd Frank Act tried to limit swaps playing by forbidding the use of  Federally guaranteed (FDIC) funds to play the swaps market.   Which is a good idea.  A better idea would be to outlaw swaps completely, but they didn't go that far.
    And so, banks and bankers, who really enjoy playing bet-the-company games,  introduced a bill to repeal all the Dodd Frank restrictions on "swaps".  Spin the roulette wheel, the casino is open.  And the House passed it last Wednesday.  One of the Republicans finest hours.   
   And another triumph for the media.  They concealed the existence of this odious bill until four days after passage. 

Time Warner Internet Access Croaks, again

I was ready to make the preceding post a couple of hours ago, but Time Warner flaked out on me.  I could not connection with any web site at all.  They fixed what every it was a few minutes ago, but they are having maintenance problems.  For instance, TV channels 2 thru 12 have a severe herringbone interference pattern on screen.  Channels 15 and16 (Cspan) have been dead for months. 

HIgh Speed Rail for Merrie Old England.

The Brits call it  "HS2", a high speed rail line from London to Manchester and Leeds. For a mere $69 billion, a little less in Euro's.  Network Rail, which does the tracks thruout Britain loves the idea, and so does the Dept of Transport. 
  But, Manchester and Leeds are only 150 miles from London, closer than New York is to Boston.  Conventional rail can do 60 mph on decent track, and 100 mph with a little work on the track.  The New York Central was running passenger trains at 100 mph, under steam, way back in the late 1800's.  Properly operated conventional rail ought to make the London-Manchester run in three hours, fast enough to beat airline time.  To fly, you gotta get to the airport an hour before takeoff, and wait for ever to recover your bags after landing.  On the NYC-Boston run, Amtrak takes nearly four hours, running on conventional track laid 100 years ago,  but it's faster than flying.  Conventional British Rail ought to be able to beat airline time on the relatively short London-Manchester run. 
   So I wish our British brothers well, but I think they are pouring money down a black hole to do "high speed rail" over such a short distance. 
   P.S.  Good luck California. 

WIMPS and MACHOS

The Universe is not heavy enough.  This finding comes from watching galaxies rotate.  They are rotating faster than they ought to be.  Speed of rotation is something Newton worked out, and it's taught in sophomore physics.  Using Newton's math, one can observe the period and diameter of a satellite's orbit, and compute the mass of the primary quite exactly. The stronger the gravitational field, the faster an object has to move, to create enough centrifugal force to keep from falling. 
   They figured the mass of  galaxies by counting the stars in them on the assumption that the mass is all/mostly stars, which shine by their own light and can been seen at great distances.  Assume the astronomers took a few short cuts, like counting the stars in a tiny patch of galaxy and extrapolating the total number of stars in that galaxy. When they computed the mass required to account for the observed rotation speed, they came up short.  The needed mass was two, three, and more times the observed (luminous) mass of the galaxy.  And so, everyone, astronomers, physicists, science writers and so on, accept that there is a LOT of dark (non luminous) matter in the universe.  Like more dark matter than luminous matter. Most of the universe is dark matter.
   The obvious question " What is this dark matter?"  came up with two possibilities.  The universe could be rich in an as yet undiscovered particle. Something as hard to detect as a neutrino but with mass like a proton. These were dubbed Weakly Interacting Massive Particles" or WIMPS for short.  The physicists loved WIMPS,. It gave them a new particle to hunt for.  Now that the Higg's Boson  has been claimed, there are a lot of accelerators and accelerator physicists looking for something else to do.
  The other possibility is simply ordinary matter that is not stars.  Like the earth, or Jupiter.  Jupiter is an interesting case.  It is a near star, it's pure hydrogen, and it radiates more heat than it absorbs from the Sun.  Jupiter must be running low level nuclear fusion way down at its core.  If Jupiter had been a little larger, it would be a star and shine by its own light, and we would live in a binary solar system.  Binary systems are pretty common out there in the galaxy, say 10% or more.
   Stars are formed by a not yet well understood process of gravitational attraction.  Plenty of stars large enough to shine were formed.  You can see them in the night sky.  But, if the process can yield large stars, why can it not yield a lot of small ones like Jupiter? Ones too small to shine.
  This is the Massive Compact Halo Object, or MACHO.   And, this year, somebody detected one.  It turned up in the search for extraterrestrial planets.  It was a Jupiter sized object, way out in deep space, all by itself.
   Right now, WIMPS are ahead, at least they get a lot of good press, and MACHO's are not talked about much.  Me, I kinda like the MACHO idea.  It's perfectly plausible and it doesn't require new invisible and undetectable particles.      

Put a tax black box in your car?

Some states are talking about it.  They want to collect a mileage tax on everyone's car, so they propose to put a tax black box in every car to record (and tax) every mile driven. 
  Dumb idea.  That's what the gasoline tax does.  And every gas station's pumps are set up to collect gas tax already.  There has been some talk about how better gas mileage on new cars has reduced the take from the gas tax.  Malarkey.  What little improvement in mileage is because more of us are driving cheap econo-boxes now instead of decent six passenger sedans.  And, with Great Depression 2.0 still in effect, fewer of us are driving to work anymore. 
   Many have decried the tax black boxes as unwarranted gov'mint snooping on private business.  They suggest that the tax black boxes will be GPS boxes that will report everywhere we drive to.  That's overkill, just recording mileage off the odometer would do the trick as far as the taxman is concerned. 
   And, it's not widely known, but the computer in all new cars records speed, throttle setting, brake application, miles driven, gear selected, and a lot of other stuff that you would just as soon not have fall into the hands of the cops after an accident.  So far only the car companies know how to read this stuff out.  Wait til the ambulance chasers figure it out.   

Battle of the River Plate

Goldie Oldie British flick from 1956.  A docudrama about the sinking of the Graf Spee at the beginning of WWII.  From the Rank people, whose opening trademark was a giant brass gong being struck with a mallet in the hands of a beefy guy with his shirt off.  It's in Techicolor and Vistavision (wide screen process like Cinemascope).  It came from Netflix.  A period piece from the era of good WWII British war movies.
   They used real ships, including one survivor of the 1939 battle, so the sea scenes are good, not model work.  The real thing, was treated as a tremendous victory by the British, who were yearning for some good news after a disastrous string of German victories.  Graf Spee was an extremely heavy German cruiser armed with 11 inch guns, far more powerful that the 6 or 8 inch armament of contemporary cruisers.  The British, remembering the damage done to them by ultra heavy American frigates in the War of 1812.  In that war much weaker British frigates felt honor bound to engage the Americans, who promptly used their heavier guns and bigger ships to blow the Brits out of the water.  To prevent this sort of foolishness, the Brits dubbed Graf Spee a "pocket battleship", which enabled British cruiser captains to put up their helm and run for it, rather than getting sunk engaging a much stronger vessel.
  Three British cruisers caught up with Graf Spee off South America and closed for a furious gun battle.  None of the ships carried enough armor to keep out the enemy's shells and all ships took quite a bit of damage.  Graf Spee broke off the action and took refuge in Montevideo harbor in neutral Uruguay.  International law forbade neutrals to harbor belligerent warships and so after a couple of days Graf Spee weighed anchor and came out to face the British.  Only she scuttled, blew herself up, rather than engage the three battered British cruisers lying in wait for here off Montevideo.   The British treated their victory as the sinking of battleship rather than a mere cruiser.
   The movie treatment of the Germans is sympathetic.  But they omit a scene where  German skipper Langsdorf gets a chance to explain why he decided to scuttle instead of fight.  They do have scene where the British officers speculate on what Langsdorf might do, they all think Langsdorf will come out and fight.  The action scenes could have been better.  For a sea fight we want to see the guns firing, and then we want to see whether they hit or missed.  The director didn't bother, we see the ships closing, but it is unclear who is hitting and who is missing.
   Anyhow, it's a good sea flick, enjoyable as a period piece.
 

How deep does the sequester cut?

Pretty deep. At least according to Aviation Week.


                                                   US Military Power
                             1988                    Today                  After Sequester 2021

Army Divisions       20                        10                       6
Air Force Fighters  2788                     1493                  1157
Navy Ships             588                       275                    228

In 1988 we had 20 Army divisions.  Today we have 10. After a bit more sequestering we will be down to 6.  That's not enough to do Iraq again.  A division is 15,000 men.  Six divisions is 90,000 men.  We put 130,000 men into Iraq, without pulling our 50,000 troops out of Korea or Germany.  With only 6 divisions, we could no longer deal with regional threats like Iran.
    I feel less worried about the Air Force.  A thousand fighters is a lot, especially now that they all carry smart bombs.  One sortie with smart bombs, that hit the target, is worth hundreds of sorties with iron bombs that mostly miss. 
    Dunno what to say about the Navy.  Now that the Soviets are gone, we don't have any enemies with fleets.  But the Chinese are clearly interested in building up a real navy. 

Red Sox Win the World Series!

Hurrah.  Everyone in Boston, and in the Boston States (most of New England) is overflowing with joy.  A fine time was had by all.
  It's impressive that we can derive so much fun and joy from such a simple low tech event.  The game hasn't changed in any important way since the Civil War.  Especially as most kids are brought up playing soccer instead of Little League baseball. 
   Go Sox

Grilling Sibelius

Congressional hearing with Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sibelius as witness.  Big house committee with lots of members, each one waiting for his moment of fame on TV.  Sibelius was evasive, and ducked and weaved.  She was clearly attempting to reveal as little as possible.  Democratic reps spend the morning thinking up softball questions to give her a break.  Republicans were unable to stay on topic long enough to really nail her down on anything.  The Democrats are totally into Obamacare and are defending it to the death.  A lot of Republicans opened their remarks by reading letters of insurance cancellation from their constituents.  There is a lot of that going around, Humana cancelled my Medicare Advantage last week. Sibelius did admit that a full up system security test had never been run.  That's scary.  Figure everything you put into Healthcare.gov is available to every hacker, including your social security number, your address, home phone, and medical history.   They got under Sibelius' skin when they asked why she, the head of Obamacare, was NOT on Obamacare herself.  Good question.  Apparently we did manage to force the Congress onto Obamacare, but the executive has skated, and stayed with their cushy gov'mint health insurance. 
   Anyhow everyone had a good time yelling at each other.  Little real information came out of it.  

Why the Obamacare Website is flaky

Because Sibelius's HHS bureaucrats decided that they could play system integrator.  System integration is a VERY difficult task, its taking pieces of code from different programmers and getting them to play nicely with each other, and testing the entire system to make sure it  works, doesn't crash, and gives the right answers.  I have done this in my past life.  It's the trickiest part of getting a software product running. 
  Commercial practice is to have the system engineer of the prime contractor to do this.  Until the system passes system acceptance test, the prime contractor doesn't get paid.
   HHS decided to play the prime contractor role themselves.  A job which they are totally unfitted for.  You need programming experience and leadership experience on at least a couple of big software jobs to gain the necessary experience to integrate even a kid's game program, let alone something as as big and tricky as Obamacare. 
   They should have selected a competent contractor (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, someone with a national rep) to serve as prime.  Selection should have been by sealed bid.  Lowest bidder gets the job.  With the government retaining the right to disqualify bidders who clearly don't have the right stuff.  The winning prime contractor gets to select what ever subcontractors he likes.  The prime doesn't get paid until the system passes system acceptance test, so he will be careful to select sub contractors who know what they are doing. 
   HHS bureaucrats probably selected subcontractors from a list of Obama supporters. 

The Problem with NSA

It's not that they tapped Angela Merkel's phone, it's that they couldn't keep it secret.  America has long profited from  snooping.  H.O. Yardley's black chamber decrypted everyone' diplomatic cables from the Washington Naval Conference in the 1920's.  The American delegates, armed with Yardley's decrypts, were able to make the conference come out favorable to US and British interests, not so favorable to the Japanese.  Breaking the Japanese "purple" cypher in WWII led to decisive victory at Midway, and the killing of Japanese admiral Yamamoto. 
  But we were able to keep these deals secret.
  Today, NSA issues clearances to flakes like Snowden, and when they flake out and spill all, it hurts.  It's not all about technology.  People count too.
   It's also about need-to-know.  Snowden was given access to a whole bunch of stuff that he had no business seeing.  So was Bradley Manning. 

Coming from behind

Someone in Missouri is doing a web poll on the most famous Missourian.  This morning, some MD who invented "osteopathy" was on top.  This afternoon Robert A. Heinlein has pulled ahead, partly from a mention on Instapundit.   Anyhow, now is the time for all you Heinlein fans to go to the Missouri website and vote for the Grand Master. 

Hacking your electric company

National Geographic will air a TV docudrama where in enemy hackers cause electric power failures nationwide.  With the juice out, water systems stop delivering water, cell phones stop celling, gasoline pumps won't pump, freezers thaw out, the Internet goes off the air, along with TV and radio.  Wired phones may last longer, but don't count on it.  In short, Western Civilization crumbles.
   One simple rule would prevent this.  No control signals of any kind may be transmitted over the public internet or the plain old telephone system (POTS).  Companies must be required to string private wires, preferably optical fibers for all remote control and monitoring. 
    Reason.  Connect anything to the public internet, and every hacker on the planet has access to it.  All the hacker needs is to learn the control codes and he can order the remote controled machinery to do anything he likes, go off line, shut down, blow up, you name it.  Whereas  with a private line, the hacker has to get a ladder and climb a pole to tap into it.  Fiber optic is even better, you cannot tap fiber optics, you would have to cut the fiber, insert a splitter, and then rejoin the cut fiber.  Few hackers will climb a pole, let alone splice optical fiber.  And you have to be there, you cannot climb an American pole from your basement in Lower Slobbovia. 
    Companies won't like this, it's expensive.  Using the public internet or POTS is free, where as a private line costs you, for installation and maintenance.  The power companies won't  comply unless the public utility commissions demand it. 
   If they don't,  better check out your backup generator. 

Regulation of Diet Supplements

Must be a slow news Saturday.  Fox News ran a long piece on this.  Not a product that I ever buy. But the Fox news chick felt they were terribly important.  She dumped out two shopping bags of empty bottles, making a pile two feet high, and then said this was her monthly usage, and she paid $1400 a month for it.  Wow.  I don't spend that much on groceries. Must be powerful stuff.
   Anyhow the FDA wants to regulate them like prescription drugs, require doctor's prescriptions and all that.  The diet supplement people said regulation would skyrocket the cost and kill the industry.
   Since they have been selling this stuff for a long time, and it doesn't seem to hurt anyone, I don't see a need to give the FDA another field to grow fat bureaucrats in. 

So what's so wrong with the Gerrymander?

We hear pundits of both the left and the right claiming that Washington's dysfunction is all because of gerrymandered election districts.  They wax eloquent about the evils of districts controled by the other side.  Districts controlled by their side are clean and virtuous, districts controlled by the other side are dark and evil.
   The gerrymander was invented by Elbridge Gerry, a governor of Massachusetts back in the Federal period.  Gerry was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a signer of the Articles of Confederation, and was present at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia.  He refused to sign the original Constitution because it lacked the Bill of Rights.  This resume makes Gerry as American as apple pie.  Maybe not quite in George Washington's class, but plenty respectable enough.
   While Gerry was governor of Massachuetts after the Revolution, the commonwealth redistricted.  (Massachusetts is not a state, it's a commonwealth, ask any native) One of the new districts came out looking like a salamander, kinda long and thin, and curvy.  Gerry's political opponents called it a gerrymander and the name has stuck to this day.
   When redistricting, which happens every ten years, sometime after the federal census,  the party in power gets to draw the new district lines.  Principles are simple.  For "my" districts, include only enough of "my" voters to win the district.  For "their" districts, pack in as many of "their" voters as possible.  There is only one seat to be won in each district .  A district of 90% "their" voters only wins one seat.  The same district redrawn to move a lot of "their" voters into "my" districts might win lots more seats.  Anyhow, an experienced politician can come up with new district lines that give his party an edge.  The edge is probably in the order of 10%, which is enough to win a lotta elections. 
   The real objection to gerrymandered districts is loss of control of elected representatives.  A compact district, where the voters know each other from face-to-face contact, can rally behind some issue and tell their rep which way to vote.  If the district is all stretched out and fifty miles long, it's harder for the voters to get together on issues.  I mean, how many people do you know who live fifty miles away, as opposed to next door neighbors.  The rep from a real gerrymander district has a much freer hand than the rep from a compact district.
   If we the voters, really wanted to end gerrymanders, we could with one simple law.  Require a 2:1 aspect ratio, or less for all districts.  By this we mean the longest distance across the district shall not exceed twice the shortest distance across the district.  Of course, the politicians don't want this, and we the voters don't really care that much, so it hasn't happened yet.
   My own district in the back woods, used to be just two neighboring towns.  Then my good friend Paul Mirsky, in charge of the 2011 redistrictings, gerrymandered it.  My district now is five towns, running from here to the Vermont border, some 30 miles away.  Paul thought that the new district would return a Republican rep.  Did not happen, we are currently represented by Rebecca Brown, a Democrat.  Door to door campaigning is easier to do on your home turf than in a rural town 30 miles away. 
    
  

Questions they ought to ask, but didn't

  Washington is grilling the Obamacare software contractors today.  Medium rare at least.  Someone should have asked about the specifications for the job. 
When was the final signed off specification released to the programmers?  Was the website user load specified?  Who signed off for the government?  How many change orders were issued AFTER the specification was released to the programmers?  Who signed off on the change orders?  How long was the specification?  Fifty pages is about right.  By the time you get to a hundred pages nobody understands it.  Who wrote the spec, government or the contractors?  What kind of contract was it, firm fixed fee, cost plus incentive fee, or plain old cost plus?  How many programmers did your company have on the job?  When did they start?  How much has your company been paid?  What milestones were set for payment?  What testing was required? Did the program pass those tests before Oct 1? How many lines of code were delivered?  Does the program run on Windows? 

Red Dawn Remake

The original Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, came out in 1984.  Ill omened year that.  It was gripping, and carried a strong message of patriotism and American exceptionalism.  In fact so strong that my lefty Protestant minister preached a sermon against the movie one Sunday in 1984.  I'm assuming everybody saw it back in the '80s, or later on TV.  The actors, unknowns except for Patrick Swaze, did good, camera work and sound was good. 
  So, 20 years later, Hollywood does a remake.  Remakes are easy.  It's easy to get funding, and easy to do the screenplay and do the plot.  And so, just to check up on 'em, I netflixed it last night. 
   Big mistake.  It was a terrible remake.  Camerawork sucked.  Interior shots were so dark you couldn't recognize the characters.  Few of the grand panorama shots of western mountain scenery.  John Ford made his rep with movies set in super scenic Monument Valley.  None of that kind of camerawork in remade Red Dawn.
  Actors mumbled their lines.  At least the sound man didn't let the score override the dialog. The dialog omitted character names, every one wore pretty much the same costumes (urban grunge mixed with combat fatigues)  making it hard to tell one character from the other.  The relationship between brothers Jed and Matt was confused.  In the original, Jed and Matt were quite close, in the last scene we see Jed carrying a wounded Matt in his arms off an urban battlefield, thru a heavy snowstorm, back into the hills.  In the remake, Matt is not much of a team player and Jed does a lot of snarling at Matt about it. In the original the characters make it clear that this guerrilla warfare thing is scary, as well as cold, lonely and hungry.  Very little of that in the remake. 
   Props were disappointing.  The enemy shows up driving Humvees, whereas we expect the enemy to drive enemy manufactured vehicles.  No horses, everyone gets round in cars and pickup trucks.  No sign of the big ivory handled six gun that Jed used to shoot down the nasty enemy colonel in the original.  The Wolverines fight with popgun assault rifles, no 12 gauge pump shotguns, no Model 70 scoped rifles, just full automatic popguns.  No scary enemy helicopters either.    
   Era is sort of blurry.  We see Obama and Hillary Clinton on TV in some of the opening atmospheric shots, that makes it after 2008.  Then we see the Wolverines escaping an enemy ambush in a Detroit station wagon.  I haven't seen a station wagon on the road for 15-20 years.  Every drives SUV's now. 
   The cast all seemed too old to be in high school.  In the original, everyone looked like real high schoolers, in the remake. everyone looked old enough to have graduated college.   
  Anyhow, Hollywood has lost it's touch.  They can't even do a decent remake. 

Would you buy a used jet fighter from this nation?

The Israelis are offering used, but refurbished, Kfir  fighters.  $20 million apiece.  Mach 2+,  Datalink compatible with NATO standards.  Phased array radar, missiles.  Guaranteed for 8000 more flying hours. Air to air refueling.   " The Kfir was designed to be a tough fighter jet. well-built and 'young in spirit'.  The Kfirs we are selecting for refurbishment logged only a few hundred flight hours , their structure is intact, without cracks or fatigue," says Yosef Melamed, general manager of Israeli Aircraft Industry's Lahav division. The aircraft were retired by the Israeli Air Force in the late 90's and stored in the Negev Desert, where it's dry and doesn't rain often.  The Israelis claim the refurbished Kfirs are as good as any other 4th generation fighter. 
   Compared to used F16's at $51 million, or used Tornados for even more, the price is right. 
   Owned by a little old lady and driven only on Sundays.
   Such a deal.

    

USB to solve the energy crisis

Or so thinks The Economist.  I don't think so myself.  Universal Serial Bus was added to computers  not so long ago, claiming to replace the multitude of special connectors (keyboard, mouse, printer port, RS232 serial port, mike and speaker plug) with one size to fit all USB connector.  It's done fairly well on the computer front, all computers have some now.   As a side effect, USB will furnish very modest amounts of low voltage DC power so the low draw things like mice can omit the customary "wall wart" power supply.
   Cell phone makers have started offering USB cables to allow recharging of cell phones off computers.  Which makes a certain amount of sense, computers are everywhere, and with USB you can recharge on the road and only have to carry a cord, rather than a heavy little wall wart. 
   Groovy and all.  The Economist hails this development as a major break thru in energy conservation, claiming that the hi tech power supply of the PC saves juice compared to the "always on" wall wart left plugged in all day.  
  Not really.  At least not in the real world.  We are talking about nit noy amounts of power here.  USB only supplies 10 watts.  Compared to the current draw of air conditioners, stoves, water heaters, clothes driers, oil burners, and TV sets, 10 watts is nothing.  Ten watts left on for an entire month is only 7 kilowatts hours.  My clothes drier uses  that much juice to dry just ONE load of wash.
   Methinks The Economist needs to consult a real electrician.  

Five million lines of code

Fox News just reported that the Obamacare website contains five million lines of code.  Wow.  Old rule of thumb, a programmer can produce 10 lines of code a day.  So, five million lines of code, is 500,000 mandays, or 2000 man years.  ie, one man for 2000 years, 2000 men for one year, or any combination in between.  Wow.  We know they only spent a year or so on the job.  Which means a 1000 man project at least, which is a night mare.  To get any good out of 1000 programmers, you have to divvy up the job into 1000 pieces, and give each man one piece to code.  In order for the 1000 pieces to work together, you have to write a spec for the inputs and outputs of each piece.  That's a 1000 specs.  And then someone (a small army actually) has to make sure that the output specs all match the input specs and vice versa.
  Let's see, a manyear costs at least $100,000 for experienced programmers, so 2000 manyears is only $200 million.  The TV news says Obama spent $632 million on the job.  I wonder where the other $400 and some million went. 
   Incidentally, five million lines of code sounds awfully high.  Like maybe made up by newsies.  Just as an off-the-wall guesstimate, ( my day job used to be estimating this kinda thing ) I would think 100,000 lines of code would be plenty to do health insurance signup.

Europeans can over regulate with the best of 'em

According to The Economist, the EU has regulations limiting/forbidding subsidies to airports from local/national governments.  You have to wonder why.  If  cities/provinces/countries want to spend taxpayer money on airports, why not?  What business is this of the EU? 
   The urge to get an airport is understandable.  No business is going to locate in a place without air service.  You need air service to get your salesman out to customers, your customers in to your plant, your servicemen out to customer sites, and overnight air parcel delivery for crucial spare parts.  Manchester Regional Airport NH is a good example, a vast network of businesses in New Hampshire depend upon flying out of Manchester.  In fact the place had the chutzpah to re name itself Manchester-Boston Regional a little while ago.  I don't know just how much taxpayer money went into that airport, but that new exit for the airport we put on I93 last year wasn't cheap. 
   Anyhow, the urge to get airports is understandable.  And I don't see any reason to regulate it.
   But, read on.  The subsidized airports have lower landing fees, which attracts low cost carriers like RyanAir.  The European legacy carriers mostly fly the big airports, and they see the low cost carriers eating into their business, "stealing passengers" from them. 
   So, the EU regulations are really crony capitalism, the big boys attempting to squash the upstart newcomers. 
   I'm sure the Obama administration is watching this one. 
  

The History Channel and the Crystal Skull

I saw the movie, actually Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.  Fun flick with some good scenes, like Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf riding a Harley thru the Yale library reading room.  Later they discover an alien crystal skull which becomes a clue that leads them to lost cities and so on.  Great movie prop.  I had never heard of crystal skulls before and I assumed it was a product of  Spielburg's fertile imagination.
   So the other night I am channel surfing and on The History Channel I find a "serious" documentary on crystal skulls.  Ten of them are known, the show had some pictures, and claimed that one had been scientifically analysed.  Groovy.
   Of course the show didn't say whether these skulls had been discovered before or after the Spielburg movie.  Nor did it say what the "scientific analysis" had discovered.  For openers, what was it made of?  Quartz? Glass? Calcite?  Rock salt?  Lucite?  The History Channel was less convincing than the Spielburg movie.

Airbus wins Japan Airlines Order

Japan Airlines just signed a deal to buy 31 A350 airliners from Airbus.  At $200 million each, this is $12 billon in sales, quite a chunk of change.  The A350 is so new it just made it's first test flight this summer and has a year or two of testing and certification before it can be delivered.  It's carbon fiber (fiberglass) construction, intended to compete with Boeing's 787.   Boeing could have had this sale, if their 787 had not been so late, and if it hadn't had those battery fires.   Up until now, Japanese airlines were all Boeing fleets, Boeing and the Japanese industry had numerous joint ventures and cross sales arrangements.  Now that JAL has bought Airbus, the other Japanese carriers are expected to follow suit.
   Aviation Week credits the Airbus sale to effective work by top Airbus executives, Leahy (no first name given) Head of Sales, and Fabrice Bregier, CEO.  They also mention JAL's new chairman, Kazuo Inamori saying that an airline as big as JAL ought to have more than one supplier.  Which is true.
  Also interesting is the backlog of Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 orders.  Although Boeing has 979 orders for 787's, Airbus is running hard with 725 orders for the A350.  Each backlog represents about $2 trillion dollars worth of business.  Staggering.

Obamacare computer crashes

Putting up a website that can handle the load of  every family in the country is difficult.  The way to make it happen is let the contract to a company that has done such a website before.  Anyone, except perhaps community organizers should know this. 
  Apparently Obama didn't know this, and gave the contract to some crony that has no industry rep.  And, surprise, surprise, it doesn't work.  That's the thing about contracting.  You never know if the contractor is competent.  But competent or incompetent, the contractor will spend all the money. 
   They should have given the job to someone like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook.  But they didn't.

Main Stream Media, do we care?

Everyone agrees,. the mainstream media is in the tank for Obama and the Democrats.  But really?  Sure, the NY Times , the WashPost, the traditional TV networks, the AP, and a lot of others are Democratic house organs. But, Fox News, the Wall St Journal, talk radio, and the blogosphere are Obama hostile.  Fox News owns the airwaves (cable waves now-a-days),  The Journal is distributed coast to coast and outsells the NY Times by 4:1.   Rush Limbaugh still has a huge listener base.  The blogosphere is rising in influence and importance.  Obama was railing against "lobbyists and bloggers" just the other day.  As a blogger I'm flattered to get a mention, and scared that Obama may sick the IRS (or worse) on me.
   The Democrats  have mass, but the Republicans  hold the quality edge. 

Congressional rules

We can all agree that Congress isn't getting anywhere these days.  They cannot even vote appropriations to run the government. 
  Each House conducts business under an ancient, complicated, and little understood set of rules.  In the house it is so bad that before each bill is voted on, they hold a separate vote on the rules to be used this time.  That is rediculous, the rules ought to be the same everytime.  The Senate conducts votes to decide whether a super majority is needed this time.  Most of the votes taken are "procedural" votes, not votes on business.  For every real vote cast to pass or reject a bill, they do dozens of "procedural" votes (nothing votes).
   All this rules and procedure business serves to disguise what's really happening from the citizens.  A day of  motions and procedural votes and the real voter has no idea whether his rep is doing good or doing evil, or doing anything.  It's gotten so bad my TV cable provider doesn't bother to carry C-span anymore.  And nobody misses it. 
   At this rate, the Congress critters have escaped from voter control.  They can do all sorts of things that the voters disapprove of (like shutdown) and the voter cannot figure out where his rep stood on any issue.  Come election time,  there is no voting record for the citizen to consult to decide if congressman So-and-So ought to be re elected. 
  So, let's clear the smoke and mirrors away.  Here are my rules.

1.  No procedural votes.  Each bill gets one up or down vote.  That's it.
2.  No riders.  A rider is a low speed bill that gets attached to a high speed bill.  Pass the high speed bill and the rider passes.  It's like hitching a ride on a freight train.  No more.  Your low speed bill needs to get votes on it own merits, no drafting.
3. Every bill treats ONE thing, that thing being in the title of the bill. No kitchen sink bills.

4. Every bill much be printed (ink on paper) and distributed to the press, the public and the Congress one week before a vote may be taken.  No amendments, no extra pork rations, no nothing between printing and voting.  
5.  Every member gets to speak, once, on every bill.  House members get five minutes plus what ever extra time the Speaker will grant them.  Senators get one hour, no more.
6.  Every member is entitled to file as many bills as he likes, and they all must come to the floor for a vote.

Internet Problems? Selective outage?

Cannot contact some favorite websites, Instapundit and Photobucket for two.  Other sites are up and running.  Is this a selective internet outage?  NSA shutting down some enemies?  Sites down for weekend maintenance? 

A lawyer to run Homeland Security

Obama has nominated Jeh Johnson to be Secretary of Homeland Security.  Johnson has served as the Pentagon's top lawyer.  AN official said that during his tenure at the Defense Department, Johnson exhibited "sound judgment" and provided "prior legal review and approval of every military operation approved by the president and secretary of Defense."
  A Combat lawyer.  Just what we need.
  Sorry, but I want a soldier or a cop to run Homeland Security.  Someone who thinks about security rather than thinking about ways to get guilty defendants off.  

Shutdown Scorecard. Who won?

Hard to tell.  I haven't seen any real post shutdown polls yet.  Democrats say the Republicans lost, Republicans say the Democrats lost.  Objectively they kicked the can down the road two or three months.  Right now, the Republicans re opened the government with a two month time limit and boosted the debt ceiling enough to get thru Christmas.  The budget was referred to a committee, standard Washington ploy to sweep something under the rug.   The Republicans didn't get any relief on Obamacare.  So for this round, the Republicans didn't get anything and the Democrats didn't give up anything.
   Will the fight continue after  Christmas?  Who knows.  The Republicans certainly are not satisfied with the status quo.  The Democrats like things just the way they are.  The real issue is next year's election.  This whole shutdown/debt ceiling brouhaha was run off in order to influence the voters for next year.  And Obama wanted it just as much as the Republicans.  If either side thinks renewing the fight will do 'em good in the election, they will. If both sides  figure the public is sick of the squabbling, they won't. 
   Obama certainly looked ineffective.  Congress did all the headline grabbing.  By crying "Default" Obama spooked the international currency markets and weakened T-bills.  He did this because without a debt ceiling hike, he would have to chop $1 trillion a year out of federal spending.  A lot of people are feeding off the federal gravy train, and shutting off the flow of gravy would cause a lot of angry takers, who would mostly blame Obama. 
   The shutdown didn't have much effect outside the Beltway.  Up here we hardly noticed.  Son reports North Dakota did just fine.  Thoughtful taxpayers ought to be wondering if we could solve the spending problem by just closing stuff down.  Thoughtful civil servants ought to be scared. The monument closings were an attempt to make the shutdown more painful, so people would care more about re opening government.  It sparked outrage and civil disobedience, but not much political support.
   I'm beginning to think the only group hurt by the shutdown were the civil servants who missed paychecks.  And they are all democrats anyhow.  And they will get back pay for 16 days off.  The government contractors will probably play catchup as they accomplish the work that didn't get done for 16 days. 
   The other thing, we managed to convince the Europeans and the rest of the world that the United States is coming unglued.  That is a bad thing. 

Advanced countries, jet airliner production.

Jet airliners,  70 seats and up.  Anything less is a puddlejumper.  Listing of production forecasts from Aviation Week.

Country                  Company                           Total                      Aircraft models

United States           Boeing                              7395 total airliners.  737, 787, 777,747 767

France/Germany     Airbus                                6949 total airliners   A319.320,321,330-,340,350 380

Brazil                     Embraer                              973 total airliners    170 175 190 195

Russia                    Antonov, Ilyushin, Sukhoi    438 total airliners    100, IL-96 MS21

Canada                  Bombardier                         376 total airliners     CRJ

China                     Comac Xian                        297 total airliners    MA60, ARJ21, C919

Japan                     Mitsubishi                            285 total airliners    MRJ


Boeing is ahead of Airbus by a nose, and not much more.  Both Boeing and Airbus are miles ahead of everyone else.  Brazil plans to build twice as many airliners as Russia.  Canada plans to out produce China. The lower end producers are building smaller (100 seat) planes, where as the two leaders make a broad selection with top end aircraft seating 400 and up.   

  Viewed as an index of industrial and technological advancement, Brazil and Canada are higher up the food chain than one would expect.  Britain sold out it's stake in Airbus and so doesn't appear at all, although Rolls Royce remains an important maker of jet engines. 

Grafton County Republican fund raiser/get-together

We had the annual party dinner last night.  I must still be fairly active, at this point I know nearly everyone who shows up at these things.  We had candidates, looking to recruit supporters, and all the Grafton County regulars, the people who do the emails, do the sphagetti dinners,  watch the polls, politick from door to door, in short the party workers. 
  We now have two candidates for Jean Shaheen's US Senate seat, Karen Testermann and Jim Rubins. We have a candidate for Anne Kuster's US house seat,  Gary Lambert.  We gave each candidate a mere TWO minutes of floor time to make a pitch.  These guys (and gal) are all old New Hampshire state government pols.  If elected, I'm sure they could all do a fine job in DC.  I'm not so sure that they have the name recognition, the charisma, the telegenic good looks, and the luck, to carry the election.  Fortunately, the Democratic incumbents are pretty unexciting.
    Senator Kelly Ayotte sent regrets, she is in DC, wrangling over the debt ceiling.  State chairman Jenifer Horn sent regrets.  AND,  Ray Burton, the north country legend was not there.  I hope he is OK, he underwent chemo for prostate cancer this year, and it took some starch out of him. 
    Consensus of  opinion.  Obama might indeed be stupid enough to default if he doesn't get his debt ceiling hike.  That's depressing.

Sports are ruining our Schools

This was on the cover of the Atlantic magazine.  I saw it yesterday on the magazine rack at Mac's Market.  It caught my eye, but not enough to make me buy the Atlantic.  Instead it made me wonder about the mental balance of the Atlantic's editors. 
    Sports are good.  They get a lot of kids, the average kids with couch potato genes, off the couch and out of doors getting some exercise.  Partly 'cause it's an opportunity to hang out with friends, partly 'cause there is still some social status to be had, and partly to get out of the house, a lot of kids will go out for sports, if there are any sports to go out for. 
  Dunno what the Atlantic has agin 'em, as I said I didn't bother to buy the mag and read it.  

Has the "Shutdown" hurt you, or anyone you know?

Things like laid off, or still working but not getting paid.  Or some essential paperwork not getting done.  Passports, drilling permits, visas, etc.  Or something  is closed that you need, or just want to get into. Some service no longer available that you need?
  I figure the shutdown will continue until the level of pain gets high enough to force a settlement.  How much pain are we feeling? really?  Could the "shutdown" go on for ever?  Comments are open.
   If I hear nothing, I'll figure the level of pain is low. 

Obamacare strikes home

Humana  says they will cancel my Medicare Advantage health insurance policy, effective in December.  Wonderful.

How the Republicans lost in 2012

There are a lot of reasons, but number one reason is women voted for Obama 55% to 45%.  That's a ten percent edge, a land slide.  And women are one half the electorate.   Let's not get sidetracked onto Hispanics or blacks or gays.  None of those groups, worthy as they may be, are 50 % of the votes.  Let's concentrate on the main issue.
   I have not seen any polling since the election that tells why women voted so heavily Obama and Democrat.  If the Republicans hope to go anywhere, they have to find out why, especially after suffering thru Great Depression 2.0 for all of Obama's first term, women voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2012.

   Is it just Obama, a slender sexy guy who dresses well, has good name recognition, and has a good speaking voice? 
   Is it the desire for free contraceptives and federally funded abortion?
   Is it a desire for more food stamps, more health care, more daycare, more welfare, more free stuff?
   Is it (was it) Romney?  Was Romney too much a married family man, to obviously religious, and ineffectual on the campaign trail?
   Is it a feeling that Democrats are better equal opportunity employers than Republicans?
   Is it a distaste for Republican defense spending?
   Do women care that men have been losing their jobs ever since Obama took office?
   Does the Republican stance on abortion drive women away?
   Are women actually in favor of legalizing pot?  And repelled by Republican support for the war on drugs?
   Are there other issues important to women?

Unless the Republicans get back in the good graces of women, they face a grim future.

EOF (end of fall) (Time to put the Weber away)

Gotta do it , lessen I want to leave the poor thing out in the snow on the deck all winter.   Some how I have TWO grills for it and both of them thick with grease/soot/crud.  Thankfully I live alone, so I can use the big kitchen sink to clean 'em.  No woman would allow that.  So, between the grill scraper thingie and a lot of brillo, they are now sorta clean.  Clean as I am gonna get 'em.  Pulled the Weber out into the driveway, dumped the unburned charcoal and ash into the woods, and hosed it down.  I'll let it dry, give it a shot of WD-40 to discourage the rust, and stash it in the garage.
   Then I will have an end of fall drink.  EOF?  That actually is a C programming name that means End of File.  I haven't done anything in C for some years, so now it is End of Fall  

Such a deal

The few people who have gotten thru to the Obamacare websites are reporting policies costing several hundred dollars a month, with deductibles of $4000 and up.   Such a deal.  If you are in good health, which most of us are, you won't rack up $4000 in doctor's bills inside a year.  So what are you buying insurance against?  You still have to pay out of pocket for everything under $4000. 
   Support you get unlucky and actually need an operation?  Those go for $20,000.  So you pay $4000 and the insurance pays off the rest.  Big deal.  How many of us have $4000 just lying around?  Damn few. 
   Most young single guys won't fall for deal like that. 

NHPR covers the "app" industry in NH

"App" as in "applicaton".  We used to call 'em programs,  now they are "apps".  NHPR did a 3 or four part series on the app business.  A fair number of small companies that write apps have sprung up in New Hampshire.  They are apparently doing well.  As an old software guy, I listened to the whole thing, just to see what going down.  NHPR  skipped over the business model, like who buys apps (as opposed to downloading free ones), owner ship of the completed app, startup money.  Also no talk about software development tools, compilers, loaders, libraries, like can you just buy them, or do you have to sign non disclosure agreements to keep every thing in the smart phone secret from hackers?
  Last installment talked about education, a computer science degree from UNH is pretty much mandatory to get into the app writing business.  Then NHPR revealed the great challenge to the educators, namely getting more girls to major in computer science.  It's just terrible, the computer science major is only 10% female.  Must be someone's fault.  NHPR put more passion into the gender equality bit than anything else in the series.
   Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that boys are deeper in love with computer games than girls.  A major leading to a career in computer games is just naturally going to be more attractive to boys than to girls.   

Is Obama dumb enough to default?

First let's define terms.  Default means failure to pay interest upon the national debt.  Which is treasury bills. T-bills for short.  Default does not mean failure to pay social security, pay the bureaucrats, pay the troops, make home loans, open the national parks, pay medicare, or do all the other things the Federal government does.  It just means failure to pay off the T-bills, or pay interest on the T-bills. 
   Right now American T-bills are the safest investment on the planet.  America has always paid off on bonds, and this goes way back, like back to the Revolution.  T-bills are issued by the strongest government on the planet, backed by the strongest economy on the planet, protected by the strongest armed forces on the planet.  As a result, we can raise money anytime we please by printing up some more T-bills and selling them.  People give us real cash money and we give them paper T-bills.  And we don't even promise them very much interest.  This is VERY useful to us.  It's a national credit rating of 1000, the best you can get. 
   Default, will screw this up for ever.  Default means we stop paying interest on T-bills and refuse to redeem them for cash when they mature.  Do this just once, and  the trust is broken.  We will have to pay much higher interest rates to borrow, and we face the prospect of not being able to sell T-bills when we need to. 
   Any man of even marginal intelligence would know that we ought to pay off on the national debt BEFORE we pay anything else. 
   Is Obama a man of even marginal intelligence?  To hear him talk, no.  He has been threatening default for weeks.  What if he carries thru on his threats? 
   Judging by the way he has made the "shutdown" as painful as possible, he is a man who enjoys inflicting pain on his citizenry.   Is he dumb enough to default just to inflict more pain on his citizens? 

  

Warthog Fan Club

The Warthog, more formally the A10, is a close support aircraft.  It isn't a supersonic fighter, it's a jet version of the Stuka.  Which is why ground troops love it and the Air Force wants to retire it.  With a 30 millimeter (inch and a quarter) Gatling gun it is tank buster supreme.  What the rotary cannon cannot deal with, bombs and rockets slung under the wings can.  But, with a top speed of less than 500 mph, it's dead meat against enemy fighters.  The Air Force, run by fighter pilots,  wants to fly air to air against enemy fighters.  You don't make ace no matter how many tanks you bust.
   Any how, there is now a Save-the-A10 Facebook page with 2722 likes, and any number of after dinner speakers supporting the old Warthog. 

Redskins, Washington type

I'd be more excited about this issue, if I thought the team name offended real American Indians.  I know it offends paleface liberals,  but hey, what's new?  Paleface liberals are so easily offended.

Weather

That line of windstorms that showed up on TV got to NH yesterday. It blew really hard up here, trees were whipping around, leaves were flying thru the air. At 6 PM a tree somewhere let go of the ground, fell, and took out the power line. I broke out the propane camping lantern and settled down for some reading. I found out what propane lanterns do as the propane runs out.  They just get dimmer and dimmer.  So I turned it off, let it cool (they get HOT) and put on the backup propane can.  She lit right up. 

 Electric lights came back at 9 PM.

Bookstores. Need to stock the FIRST of a series

More and more light fiction comes in series.  Once an author gets something published, it's easy to publish sequels, unending sequels, leading to a whole series of books.  Cool and all that, plus doing a sequel is easier on the writer, and the publisher is more likely to make an advance on a known property than take a flier on something new.  So far, so good.
   But, when I am book shopping, the stores don't stock all the books in the series, and even worse, don't stock  the first book of the series. 
  This is a serious turnoff for this reader.  Even if the series has an attractive title, and an intriguing cover illustration and a good blurb, I probably won't buy it if the cover says "Book N is the exciting Yada Yada series". 
  Why?  Simple, authors writing sequels assume the read has read the previous book [s], and save time and work by skipping  (or failing to repeat) essential development material.  In the sequels characters appear, do something, and move on, with never a word about who they are, what side they are on, who they are involved with. 
  Anyhow, you book store operators, you could boost sales by making an effort to keep the first book of the series in stock.