The Questions Sucked

It went on for three whole hours. "So and so said this about you, Take 60 seconds and trash him back." was the question, asked over and over again.  Boring.   There were a few amusing moments such as young Florida tourist bumps up against Tony Soprano from New Jersey.  Bush got in a solid hit on The Donald about eminent domain. 
   Questions that did not get asked but should have.  How far will you go to wipe out ISIS?  How large are the American armed forces today and how large would you make them?  What will you do to get GNP growth back up to 3.5% from this quarter's 0.7%.  What kind of fortifications will you build along the Mexican border and how much would it cost?  What is "net neutrality" and where do you stand on the issue? Will you reform patent and copyright law?  And if so, how?  What deductions and exemptions will you remove from the personal income tax?  Mortgage interest?  EITC?  Charitable givings?  Marriage and children exemptions?  What will you do to take Wall St out of the casino and back to financing economic growth? 
   Any how, that is the last presidential debate I am going to watch.  And I still have not decided who I will vote for the coming Tuesday.

Democrats stand for Free Stuff, Republicans stand for good jobs

The Bern is offering the most free stuff.  He wants free healthcare, free college, and doubtless other stuff as well.  Hillary is behind The Bern, but she wants free contraception.
   No amount of free stuff  beats a decent job.  If you have a decent job you don't need free stuff, you can buy what you need with real money.  And your company pays for good healthcare, far better than Obamacare.  Republicans want economic growth which we have to have to offer jobs.  The working age population grows every year, unless the economy grows to match it, people are out of work.  Democrats have managed to bring US economic growth down to less than 1%, which is pitiful.  Economic growth ought to be 3 or 4 percent.
   One reason for pitiful economic growth is all the  lefty greenies out there who raise a stink every time anyone suggests building anything.  Northern Pass, and Keystone XL both come to mind.  I heard some Democrat on TV calling for closing all federal lands to oil exploration just the other day.

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

After a whole lot of "winter storm warning" and other theatrics from TV weathermen, we got an inch. It's still cold and the mountain is making snow. 

Our Heroin Problem

By all accounts we have a problem.  Deaths from overdoses are way up.  And so, our gallant legislature passed three bills to address the problem.  One will set up "drug courts", type and jurisdiction un specified.  You would think any real judge sitting in a real court, could recognize druggies and when appropriate, sentence them to rehab.  I don't see why we need to establish a special set of courts to do this. 
   Of course, we don't have much, if any rehab in NH, so the real judges sentence druggies to jail rather than letting them run around loose.  And our gallant legislature doesn't seem to be doing anything about the lack of drug rehab.
   Then they passed some more funding for law enforcement and called it anti drug legislation.   I can't remember what the third one was, but it didn't sound like it would do diddly about hard drugs.
   I believe that with enough of the right sort of drug rehab, we can get a lot of druggies off the stuff.  I'm not a real expert, so I might not have this right, but there ought to be some numbers (number of druggies entered into rehab, number druggies later rearrested for possession). I would expect some treatment programs work better than others.  We should copy the more successful programs.
   We also need to get the word out to our young folk.  We need to make sure they know that heroin and the other hard drugs will ruin their reputations, get them fired from their jobs, get them divorced, get them jailed, and kill them.  Schools, churches, and all social organizations should feel a responsibility for getting the word out.  Things like Facebook should at least prevent the sale of drugs on their sites, and blackball users who advocate drug use. 

Icebreakers $1 billion each?

Op ed in the WSJ this morning, a couple of retired general officers explaining the need for more US icebreakers.  Makes sense, especially if we are gonna have off shore oil exploration in the Arctic.  If they have an emergency on an Arctic oil platform, icebreakers can get up there for a rescue. 
   The OpEd claims that new icebreakers will cost $1 billion  apiece.  That sounds too high by  a lot.  An icebreaker is just a merchant steamer with a very strong hull, a specially shaped bow, and extra powerful engines.  You'd think you could buy one for 10-20% over the price of a standard merchant steamer.  Unless Pentagon weinies gold plate the specifications.  Which they have a lot of practice doing.  I think you can buy a supertanker for $200 million, you ought to be able to get an icebreaker for about that kind of money.
   Then the Op-ed veers off into the merits of leasing icebreakers instead of buying them out right.  This does not compute.  The only reason for leasing anything is you don't have the up front cash to buy it outright.  Uncle Sam has all the upfront cash in the world, and he can print more if he runs short.  The lessor has to make all his expenses plus some profit, His expenses include interest on the money he has to borrow to buy or build the ship.  A lease deal will cost the taxpayers more than an outright buy.  Especially as icebreakers are very specialized and I don't think there are any for sale, you need an icebreaker, you have to build it special. 

The year of A size post cards

We get a blizzard of ads in the mail these days.  New this year is the A sized post card.  Used to be a post card was 3 by 5 and got a cheaper postage than regular letters.  Now they are 8.5 by 11 (full typing paper size) and made of fine heavy paper.  And I get a lot of 'em.  I was able to light the fire on nothing but the A size post cards that came in over the last couple of days. 
   A size?  Engineering or draftsman jargon for a drawing the size of a piece of typing paper.  We had B size, C size, D size and more. 

Shannara: TV Show

So I watched it again last night.  Not bad.  The cast is good looking and can act.  Sets and costumes are right up to snuff.  However, nobody ever called anyone by name in the whole one hour show.  So I still don't know the stage names of any characters.  I suppose I could look them up on IMDB but I'm thinking the script writers could do better.  They have two decent warrior princesses, but I cannot tell them apart.  They both have long dark hair, wear the same dark leather outfits,  carry swords and ride horses.  
   And it is better than Galavant.

Flint's water. How about some scalps?

Every one knows, at least any one who has done plumbing or taken high school chemistry, that acid eats metals,  turning solid metal into invisible ions dissolved in the acid, like salt dissolving into water. All water pipes installed before the 1980's are metal.  The plastic pipe now used didn't come on the market til the late 1970's.   You cannot allow the city water to become acid, 'cause it will eat the pipes all over the city.  Standard procedures for city water  works is to add enough lye (sodium hydroxide) to acid water to neutralize it.  This has been standard practice for a hundred years or more.  This ain't rocket science. 
   According to the newsies, when Flint switched over to using acidic river water which, for some reason, most likely a screwup somewhere, this was not done, and acidic water flowed all thru the city's water pipes, eating out the metal.  All copper plumbing is fastened together with tin-lead solder and older pipes are pure lead.  Our word "plumber" comes from the old Latin word for lead (plumbum). So, the lead content of Flint water soared up and up.
    Anyhow the newsies were on NHPR this morning wailing about the Flint water situation.  What needs to be done is find the persons who failed to add the lye to neutralize the acid, and prosecute them.  We ought to take at least three scalps, one from the Michigan environmental pollution agency, one from the federal environmental pollution agency, an one from the city of Flint water department. 

Coin Toss? Fair? 64:1 odds of winning 6 out of 6 coin tosses

TV reports that six close Iowa races between Hillary and The Bern were settled by coin tosses.  Hillary won all six.  Is she just lucky or was the fix in?  
Odds of winning one coin toss is 1:2, we all know that.  Odds of winning two out of two coin tosses is 1/2*1/2 or 1/4.  Odds of winning 6 out of 6 coin tosses is 1:2**6 or 1:64.  How lucky do you think Hillary is, really?

And then there were three

Iowa caucus has finally happened.  Ted Cruz in first 28%, The Donald second 24%, and Marco Rubio only 1 percentage point behind the Donald.   Hillary and the Bern split the vote 50-50.  
   Well, at least the Donald didn't win, if he had, and did he win in NH next week, he would have been unstoppable.  He is still there, still formidable, but he is beatable. 
   And I think Iowa narrows the Republican field down to three.   Which needed to be done, and sooner is better than later.

Sentencing reform

Used to be, back in the dim past, say the 1960's, judges had broad discretion in sentencing.  Some judges abused this discretion and let perps off with a slap on the wrist when the community thought the death penalty was warrented.  So over the last 50 years, legislatures have tightened things up with mandatory sentencing guideline laws, which called for very tough sentencing indeed.  The result, the US has more people in jail than every other place on earth.  And more prisons, and more unionized prison guards. 
  We ought to do something about this.  We could start with pot.  We should not be incarcerating people for mere possession of pot.  Although pot isn't good for you, it's no worse than tobacco which is legal in every state of the union.  Up here most adults view pot as a charge of convenience which the cops use to hassle teenagers. 
   Then we ought to remove lying to the cops or the FBI as felonies.  If they want to get you, all they have to do is keep on grilling you, and sooner or later you will say something that does not check out. Bingo, felony charge.  Far as I am concerned, it's up to the cops to get evidence of a real crime, not to cross up the suspect with repeated trick questions. 
   And conspiracy.  That's a vague lawyer's word for hanging out with criminals.  Let's eliminate conspiracy as a crime.  If the perp was doing a crime, fine bag 'em.  But if all you have is that the perp hung out with bad guys, tough, it's a free country.
   And I bet if a bunch of fair minded citizens reviewed all the felonies now on the books, they could recommend dropping half of them.

Galavant: The TV Show

So I watched it.  ABC Sunday night at 8 PM, a really good time slot.  The ABC suits must think it will catch on.  It's strange.  It's a swords and sorcery spoof.  It opens with the kinda ragged looking good guys army confronting the bigger and properly uniformed bad guys army.  For openers a jester, clad in motley, does a song and dance routine in the no man's land between the two armies.   Then we have the warrior princess leading the good guys give a rousing pre battle speech to her troops.  Only the words aren't her's they are the words Aragorn used to inspire his troops before the final battle at the gates of Mordor.  It goes on like this, one gag after another.  Some of them are fairly funny, others fall flat. 
   I think I will watch Supergirl next Sunday.

The Great Springfield Model Train Show

It's the biggest show except for maybe Timonium down in Maryland.  The Amhearst model railroad club puts it on at the Eastern States Fairground in West Springfield MA.  It's big, the train show filled all four of the very big exhibition halls at Eastern States.  It pulls in the fans, they can charge $5 parking and $14 admission and get it.  I saw license plates from as far away as Maryland and Ontario.  Traffic trying to get into the fairgrounds at 9 AM Saturday was fierce.  I'm guessing we had 10,000 people for Saturday, and the show runs thru today.
   Took me three hours to drive down from Franconia.  It was still dark when I got on I91 and I rolled right along.  I did try and keep it below 80 mph.
   The crowd looked older than it did last time I went to Springfield.  Mostly guys, mostly old enough to be retired.  Some small grandchildren who were fascinated by the moving model trains.  Very few middle and high school kids who would be old enough to build their own model railroads.  Not many working age folk.  This is clearly an old guy's hobby.
   They had dozens of operating layouts on the floor.  Big ones.  All modular, all take apart and load in a trailer deals.  They were all put together and looking very good. They had all the vendors in the world.  I bought some decals, some well used rolling stock to serve as projects, and some hard to find detail parts. 

Black Socks

Front page story in this morning's WSJ.  Army will now allow troops to wear black socks with gym outfits.  Lotta talk about why.  They didn't say how white gym socks look nerdy with nearly everything.  Then the story mentioned that the Army has a 57 page uniform regulation and a 287 page uniform guide.  Good lord.  How many field grade officers does it take to create 287 pages on what to wear?  Or was it GS12's?    That's a lotta paperwork.   Maybe we could do some cost cutting here?
   I spent six years on active duty in USAF and I cannot ever remember seeing, let alone reading, a uniform regulation.  I was able to look sharp and look regulation in front of my troops without a 287 page uniform guide. 

So I watched the Republican debate last night

Everybody looked good and sounded good.  I could vote for any of them.  Except Rand Paul who is an isolationist.  Nobody committed any lethal gaffes.  Nobody missed The Donald.  Any one of these guys ought to have no trouble beating Hillary. 
   And Megan Kelly seems to have a new hairdo, quite becoming.

Men's fashion from the WSJ

Half page story, with picture of "Next in Men's Fashion".  Shows five scruffy looking male models, wearing clothes I'd never be caught dead wearing.  We have one in a bright yellow turtle neck, grass green jacket, purple pants, and loafers without socks.  The other four are wearing mud color outfits.  The story called the color "brown" and said "It's the new black".   We have one "suit" (matching jacket and slacks) in a really loud hounds tooth check, with tailoring by Omar the tent maker, accessorized with a dark bead necklace.   And the next model is wearing a leather jacket, only it has white furry cuffs and white furry edging.  And the guy wearing a "military inspired" jacket that looks like jackets my grandmothers used to wear, black shiny slacks, and white gym socks under his loafers.
   The story claimed a 29 billion Euro market for global luxury ready to wear.   Maybe Euro males buy this stuff?

Shannara, TV show

Caught it last night.  It's a Game of Thrones wanna be show, comes on at 10 PM which is a bit late for me, but it was worth staying up for.  It is "based" upon the Shannara fantasy novels by Terry Brooks.  I read the first one many years ago and was sufficiently un impressed that I never read any more of them.  So I cannot intelligently comment upon how well the TV show tracks the books. 
   It's swords and sorcery with handsome young sword swinging heroes and some very pretty, leather clad heroines.  There is some vast undefined struggle between men and elves (both good looking) and some really ugly demons.  Dialog is mediocre.  For instance I never did catch the names of any of the handsome heroes or pretty heroines or the ugly demons.
   Still it was OK and I will make an effort to catch the next episode next Tuesday night.

Democratic Socialism, what is it?

The newsies occasionally ask a Democrat what the difference is between democratic and socialism.  You don't have to look far for an answer.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) set up for business in 1917 and lasted until 1989.  That was the biggest, longest lived, and most miserable socialist government in history.   Although the country styled itself as "socialist", the ruling oligarchy styled themselves as communist.  Communists and socialists believe in the same things except that communists believe they need a revolution to take power, whereas socialists think they can win power thru elections.  Otherwise they stand for seizing control of all economic activity (pretty much everything) and running it to suit themselves.  The Russians suffered thru 70 years of grinding poverty brought on by their socialist system. 
    The Bern undoubtedly claims that his socialism is different from the Soviet type.  You can believe as much of that as you like. 

Conservative, Smervative

The Republican candidates are on TV bashing each other.  Favorite bash, "He's not a true conservative".  Well, I don't really care if he is, or ain't, conservative.  I want a candidate who will make an effective president.  For openers we need someone who can win the general election. Which means getting the independents to vote for him.  Independents are centrist in their thinking, the ones who are lefties join the Democrats, the righties join the Republicans, what is left (43% of the electorate) is middle of the road.  Come out too strong for some favorite conservative causes, the gold standard, pro life, isolationism, tax relief for the 1%, and others,  you loose the independents. 
   We need someone who can lead, i.e. present a program and convince a majority of the citizens (and their Congresscritters) to support the program.  A candidate who insults the other side is going to have trouble getting the other side to go along with his program.  
   We need someone willing and able to accept advice.  As a subset, we need someone who can judge which advisers know what they are talking about and which ones don't.   Nobody knows everything, any president needs to accept good advice from qualified experts.  And ignore bad advice from know-it-alls.

The Economist thinks low oil prices are bad

It's the cover story.  Cute cover cartoon showing a pumpjack with a demon's head, all in black.  They do admit that low oil prices are good for consumers, but then they go on and on about the hardships visited upon oil producers, and banks who financed oil production.  Woe to banks, woe to producers.
Well, sorry about that banks and producers, there are a whole lot more people benefiting from low fuel prices than there are producers.  As to banks who may not get their loans paid back, time to wise up.  Don't loan money unless you (and your own figures) can show that the borrower will make enough to pay you back.  And don't expect any more government bailouts. 

Faster than light

I think I heard this story before.  Like last year.  If memory serves, the faster-than-light results went away after some cables on the apparatus were reseated. 

So how much snow is everyone getting really?

TV newsies have been ranting about snow all day.  How bad is it where you are?  Up here we don't have a flake and the forecasts are for no snow on Cannon. 

US classification system is changing

Back when I was in the service, there were just three levels of classification, confidential, secret, and top secret.  The story I was told, goes like this. Congress passed this into law with the intent of preventing bureaucrats from refusing to show classified to Congressmen on the excuse that the stuff was classified too high for Congressmen to see.  Congressmen don't like being told they cannot see stuff and took steps to insure that they would not be locked out of juicy stuff. 
    Well, even way back then, three levels of classification wasn't enough.  We had all sorts of top-secret nimbus, and top secret nuclear, and so on.  This was done to implement need-to-know.  Set up a classification with a weird name, and then restrict access to those holding a weird name clearance.  This worked, and everyone understood that you didn't want to ruffle any Congressional feathers by being stuffy about their clearances. 
   Fast forward to now.  They are raking Hillary over the coals for possessing "Top Secret SAP" classified on her server.  And the TV newsies are claiming that Top Secret SAP is so secret that Congressmen are not allowed to see it.  Ohh.  We never would have said that back in the day.  USAF policy used to be, treat Congressmen right, and that includes showing them anything they want to see.  Most we would do is try to impress them with the need for keeping their lips buttoned.

Low oil prices are good

Most of us consume oil and the lower the price the better for us.  I'll grant that people in the oil business, and who have loaned money to oil companies are hurting.  But there are a lot more oil consumers than oil producers.  And low prices are good for consumers.  Greatest good for the greatest number. 

Sarah Palin endorses The Donald

This is going to help The Donald.  Sarah has nearly universal name recognition, everybody knows who she is.  She is controversial and polarizing.   Lotta women detest her.  But a lotta plain ordinary people like her and find her progress from soccer mom to state governor to vice presidential candidate inspiring.  If she can do it, I can do it.   Anyhow, Sarah's endorsement counts for a lot, in fact it's hard to think of anyone except perhaps the Pope whose endorsement carries as much weight as Sarah's.
   I wish Sarah had endorsed Ted Cruz, but she didn't. 

99 Restaurant decorates with local photos

The good old 99 restaurant in Littleton went to the trouble of taking and framing and hanging in the dining room, a bunch of good local photographs, things like Littleton Main St, the Opera House, the Pollyanna stature at the library. 
   Nice touch for a chain restaurant. 

Over Processing of food

You can barely find whole chickens in the market anymore.  Lots of chicken parts, breasts, drumsticks, thighs, tenders, and such, all of which require someone to cut up whole chickens, where as a whole chicken, good for stuffing and roasting, and also can be readily cut up into parts by any halfway cook, are scare.  Why do the foodstores go to all this cutting up?
   For that matter, whole fresh mushrooms are loosing out to fresh sliced mushrooms.  Why?  the whole mushrooms last longer than they do after slicing. 

Is your router finking on you?

The Wall St Journal ran a cover story yesterday claiming that many of our routers, those little $50 boxes that allow more than one computer to use a single internet modem, have unfixed security bugs in their firmware.  Bug that allow hackers to get into your computer, suck everything off the hard drive, get all your passwords, and turn your machine into a zombie that follows secret orders from bot net masters. 
   Me, I didn't even realize that I could update or patch the code running in my router.  Things to do, dig into the closet under the stairs where my router is stashed, find the model number of my router, and Google for software updates.   And figure out how to insert said software update into the router.

Job Growth

Every so often, the Commerce Dept reports the number of new jobs "created" in the US.  Last time they were claiming 292,000 "new" jobs. 
  I wonder where that "new jobs" number comes from.  Probably the bigger companies report the number of new hires to the guvmint.  Do they likewise report layoffs?  Suppose a company lays off 292,000 employees and replaces them by hiring 292,000 troubled teenagers.  Does this count as 292,000 "new jobs"? 
   Is the "new jobs" number any more realistic than the "unemployment rate" which only counts people drawing unemployment benefits?  As unemployment benefits run out, the unemployment rate drops. 

My condolences to Space-X

They had a perfect launch, inserted the payload of satellites into orbit, and almost managed to softland the booster for reuse.  They came very very close to success, the booster autopilot managed to slow the booster assent,  fly it back to the designated landing spot, keep the booster upright, engines pointed down, and land within 1.3 meters, call it four feet, of the desired landed spot.  But every little thing has to be just right.   One of three landing legs failed under load (or failed to lock into the down position), and with only two legs to stand upon, the booster toppled over and burst into flames. 
   Which all the newsies are treating as a failure to Space-X.  I see it as a good launch and a near miss on landing the booster.  Next time, I bet all three legs work perfectly.
   Ad Astra. 

Feeling the Bern, Bernie on gun control

Bernie was on Meet the Press yesterday morning.  He came right out in favor of an "assault weapons" ban and a ban on "armor piercing bullets".   This isn't going to improve his vote in NH, where  most of us believe you ought to have a piece in the house, just in case.  He must think his lead in NH is strong enough to beat Hillary and it's worth it to gain support among the lefties in the larger democratic party.
  Amusingly enough, the Bern is raving against imaginary objects.  "Assault rifles" are the same as deer rifles in anyway that you can measure.  Except deer rifles are usually chambered for more powerful cartridges.  My ancient Marlin 30-30 lever action hits harder than the 223 round of the AR15. 
   Any bullet will pierce armor if it is going fast enough.  Real rifles (say 30-06) will pierce any armor light enough for a man to carry.  For that matter 223 assault rifles will pierce quarter inch mild steel, although they won't pierce a quarter inch of armor steel.  Standard bullets come with a full copper jacket over the lead slug which holds the bullet together as it hits the target.  Standard full jacketed bullets are the right choice to defeat body armor.  The other type of bullet has a soft nose and is supposed to expand when it hits, making a bigger wound.  These are sold for hunting, although a Geneva convention from the 19th century outlaws their use in warfare.  All US military ammunition is full jacketed to be in compliance with that convention. 
  So when Bernie comes out  against "armor piercing bullets" he is really talking about all standard ammunition.   Which might be his point. 

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

It's snowing right now.  Started last night and I have 4 inches down already (8:30). It's still falling.  Temperature is good, 20F.  It ought to keep on snowing for a while.  The weathermen think it will last until 1 PM, another 4 hours  or so.

Election Predictions from the NRA

Ya gotta hand it to the NRA, they are effective.  They have a large and committed membership that votes, and the national organization is very effective at getting out the word to the member ship.  They are good at what they do. 
   Yesterday a piece of election "information" drifted into my mailbox.  It has a map of the US, with the states colored red or blue.  The old confederacy, the mid west and west are solid red.  The coasts are solid blue.  The few tossup states are left white.  They count 206 electoral votes for the Repuyblican who ever that may be, 217 electoral votes for Hillary, and 115 tossup electoral votes.  Who ever wins the tossup votes wins the election. 
    BTW, they show New England and New York solid blue EXCEPT New Hampshire.  We are a tossup.

The Thursday night Republican debate

I didn't watch it live, 9 o'clock is my  bedtime these days.  Plus I figured I would get plenty of instant replay and bloviation on TV over the next few days or weeks.  So far  I have not been disappointed.  All the TV people (New Yorkers all) have decried Cruz's slam on New York.  They think it is dreadful. I'm not so sure, certainly a lot of unpleasant and destructive thoughts and words come out of New York.  Dunno about how they feel about New York out in Iowa, but up here in NH there is no love lost on New York City.
   The pundits all think the Republican field has narrowed to Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.  I wonder about that.  Christy still has a good standing in the NH polls.  And the results from Iowa and NH will change everything.  And I don't think the polls are really telling us anything we can trust about Iowa and NH.  Up here lotta people just haven't made up their minds.  Enough people to tip the primary any old which way.

Baltimore wants to demolish 7000 city houses

But why?  I've been to Baltimore.  The city houses are all solid brick two story row houses.  Decent city living.  Don't demolish them, sell them.  Somebody will buy if the price is right.  And fix 'em up.  And pay taxes on them. 
   Probably democrats behind this.

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

It just started to snow.  No much down yet, but it's still falling.  Temperature is high, 32F.  Up to 8 inches is FORECAST.  We will see what we get.  No use of the R-word on the forecasts.

Obama wants to spend $4 billion on self-driving cars??

Why?  Private industry has already developed self driving cars using private money.  Why throw in taxpayer money?  What do we taxpayers get out of it?  According to the Union Leader, Obama thinks self driving cars will eliminate traffic accidents.  Let's hear it for the microprocessors.  They never screw up.  Right. 
   The only role I can see for guvmint in the self driving car thing is establishing uniform nation wide rules for how capable a self driving car has to be in order to be allowed to drive on the public roads.  Say a driving test, the self driving car has to negotiate the test with out bending any fenders or hitting anything.  Such a test would have to have some real traffic to avoid, some ice and snow, some cross winds, potholes, soft shoulders, some night driving, and what else?

Glass-Steagall

After the Great Depression was kicked off by the 1929 stock market crash Congress passed some laws intended to prevent a recurrance, ever again.  One of the contributing factors to the 1929 crash was big banks playing the stock market, with depositors money.   And in the 1930's Congress passed a law preventing banks for buying and selling stocks.  This was the Glass-Steagall act and it remained the law of the land for 60 years. Banks hated Glass-Steagall 'cause there is a lot of easy money to be made in the stock market, particularly if you have a lot of money to invest. It took the banks 60 years of solid lobbying and "campaign contributions" to finally repeal Glass-Steagall some time during the Clinton administration. 
   And now after Great Depression 2.0, kicked off by banks making dumb ass mortgages, people are calling for some regulation to curb big and brain dead banks from crashing the economy.  Bernie Sanders is calling for reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.   Actually this is a fairly good idea.  Banks primary purpose is to finance construction and house sales, and finance business activity.  Buying and selling stocks just soaks up bank assets and does not contribute to economic growth. 
   The other thing banking needs is some incentives to write decent mortgages.  The "Ninja" mortgages (No income, No job or assets)  caused the crash of 2007.  A mortgage must not exceed the real market value of the property, in fact the buyer ought to put up 10% or so of his own money to buy the place.  And the bank needs to see that the borrower is gainfully employed and is making enough to make his monthly mortgage payments.
   One way to make this happen is to require that the bank that issues the mortgage must hold that mortgage to maturity.  If the bank knows that it will b holding the bad should the borrower default, they will be fairly careful not to write mortgages for untrustworthy borrowers. 

Where was their air cover??

Two US Navy small craft some where in the Persian Gulf (the Obama administration won't say exactly where) where captured by the Iranians.  Where was US air cover?  There were two boats, each one ought to have had a working radio.  The Gulf isn't very big.  Jet aircraft can be anywhere in the Gulf in a matter of minutes.  Some aircraft ought to be on five minute alert in such a near-to-war zone.  My fighter unit kept two fighters on five minute alert 24/7, and that was back in heart of the US, namely the state of Minnesota. 
   Those two boats should have radioed for air cover as soon as the Iranians hove into sight, and they should have had air cover within 15-20 minutes of making the radio call. 
   Let's guess, Obama didn't want to upset the Iranians and he refused to allow the jets to take off. 

Nevada wises up

Nevada state government decided to cut back on the goodies offered to the home solar cell freeloaders.  About time, and NH ought to follow suit.  The current deal offers to buy all the electricity the home owner produces, at full retail rate, for ever.  Home owners use their sales earning to pay their electric bills.  Since solar cells produce no electricity after sunset, all solar cell owners are connected to the regular electric grid and use utility provided juice to keep their lights on, their TV's playing, and their oil burners burning.   Up here a practical sized home solar panel can reduce the home owner's electric bill to zero in the summer, and make a worthwhile dent in it in the winter. 
   Net result, solar cell owners get a free ride from the ordinary rate payers.  The cost of providing grid power is mostly in paying off the generators, the transmission lines, the local wires and poles.  The  utility workers spend most of their time fixing stuff that storms tear down. Very little money goes to fuel.  Compared to paying off the enormous loans that built the system, the cost of fuel is negligible.  All the home solar cells do for the utility is save a little bit of fuel.  The utility still has to build and maintain a physical plant big enough to serve all the customers at night and on cloudy days.  Home solar cells don't save the utility a nickel when it comes to their major costs. 
Which is why all solar installations require subsidy from rate payers and tax payers.
   Anyhow, the two solar cell companies operating in Nevada are crying and threatening to hold their breath (actually to stop selling solar in Nevada).

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

We got three inches of powder snow last night.  Not all that much, but better than nothing.  It's cold, 16F, good for snow making. 

Power grows out of the chimney of a factory

To paraphrase Mao TseTung.  The pollsters (they telephone me every day) are asking about the most important issue in the upcoming election.  "Jobs and the economy" and "national security" are the two serious choices.   I say that if we have jobs and the economy then we can build or buy all the national security we need.  A thriving economy pays taxes that the government can spend on troops, rations, ammunition, uniforms, fuel, fancy $200 helmets for the troops, outrageously expensive warplanes and warships.  It will pay for overseas missionary efforts, foreign aid, bribes to friendly governments, propaganda, Doctors without Borders.  It will pay for US imports which are life to third world countries. It will pay for research and development efforts that result in better weapons for our forces.  A good  economy allows us to take in immigrants who will grow the economy even further.

Cannon Mountain Ski weather

We got a dusting of snow yesterday, not enough to stick a ruler in to measure, but better than rain.  It's cold again, 17F this morning, so the mountain is making snow.   The weatherman is promising one to three inches this afternoon. 

Gallup says 43% of voters are registered independents

And registered Democrats slightly out number registered Republicans. 29 to 23 per cent. 
Which means the Republican candidate needs better than HALF of the independent votes to win.  Which means we in the stupid party MUST nominate someone acceptable to independents.  Else we get Hillary keeping all of Obama's stuff in place for another four years, maybe eight. 
Is The Donald the man to attract better then half of the independents???

No way is Obama's justice department gonna indict Hillary

Doesn't matter what the FBI finds.  Indicting Hillary will go a long way to electing a Republican president, who will undo as much of Obama's work as he can.  Obama cannot want that.  The Fox newsies are talking up FBI work on Hillary's secret emails on the private server. Now they are talking about corruption charges to go along with the classified flap.  Ain't gonna happend, Obama won't let it.

Chinese pressure on the NORKs

I hear TV newsies talking about this.  The question is what can we do about the NORK nuclear weapons program.  The answer from a number of newsies is to get the Chinese to apply pressure on the Kim regime to back off on the nuclear program.  Sounds good. 
  But it won't work.  The Chinese don't dare apply any serious pressure, such as cutting off their economic support.  North Korea is in such tough shape that only shipments of fuel and food from China keep it running.  The Chinese fear that cutting the shipments would destabilize the Kim regime, leading to a total collapse.  North Korean agriculture is so screwed up that it cannot feed their people, and their industry is so feeble that they have invited the South Korean to set up maquiladoras in the north to employ some of their people.  The only things keeping the Kim regime in power are the secret police and the army.  Should either of these fail in a clutch,  North Korea comes undone.
   The Chinese don't want this.  They would loose their buffer state between China and bustling prosperous and pro American South Korea.  They fear that the South Koreans would subvert Chinese citizens away from communism and the one true way of Mao Tsetung.  Plus giving the Americans listening posts and air bases right on their border rather than way off down south on the 38th parallel.
   I cannot see China risking the loss of the Kim regime just to make the Americans happy. 

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

In a word, bad.  It's raining and the temperature is up to 40F.

The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. Van Vogt

Classic science fiction published in the early 1950's,  say 65 years ago.  The Weapons Shops sold fabuluous firearms, which among their other miraclous properties, would only fire when held by their rightful owner.  That was science fiction.
  Today we have Obama calling for the invention and production of such weapons.   But would anyone buy them? Most people, myself included, want a firearm that will reliably go bang when the trigger is pressed.  We don't even trust safeties, every shooter can remember the time he missed a shot because the safety was still on.  Which accounts for the popularity of the Glock handgun, it has no safeties. 
   If we don't trust simple mechanical safeties, who is gonna trust some micro processor based system that has to recognize who is holding the gun and prevent it from firing if it is in the wrong hands?  Not me. 
   I suppose such  Weapons Shop magic might work off a finger print sensor on the grip or an RFID tag carried by the rightful owner.  All of which stops working when the battery runs down.  To say nothing of gloves foiling the fingerprint sensor, or the owner forgetting to have the RFID tag on his person, plus a bunch of other Murphy's law failures.  
   I'm surprised that a president of the US can call for science fiction devices and nobody laughs at him.

Cars, Cars, and more cars

NPR this morning said that 17.5 million new cars had been sold in 2015.  Damn, that's a lotta wheels.  There was a time, back in the 60s, when a 5 million car year was considered good.  And consider that a car easily lasts 10 years these days.  Keep up a 17.5 million a year sales rate for 10 years, and you have 175 million cars on the road.  For a population of 300 and some million.  That's a car for every two citizens. 
   Then the NPR greenies went on to wail about the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE).  The sales figure are "cars and light trucks" and light trucks are selling well.  The light trucks (SUVs count as light trucks), get about 20 mpg at best, the little econobox cars might get 35.  Obama wants 50 mpg in a few years.  I got news for him.  We won't ever have a 50 mpg CAFE except by lying.  We do some of that already, flex fuel (gasoline or alcohol) cars give the CAFE a big boost just by bureaucratic fiat. 
   Was I Detroit, I'd make all my production "flex fuel" because it's easy and cheap to do, and I get all sorts of CAFE improvement for every flex fuel vehicle produced.  Just a little attention to gasket materials in the fuel system, using only gaskets that are alcohol proof, a bit more code in the microprocessor to recognize the fuel and for alcohol program the injectors to throw in a good deal more than for gasoline, and presto chango, I have a flex fuel vehicle.  Good for a 20 mph bump in my CAFE. 

Particles: Nova's story of the Higgs Boson and Large Hadron Collider

Nova on NPR ran this show.  The subject matter is fascinating, the mysterious "God Particle", the biggest particle accelerator ever built.  Claims to discover the basis of "the standard model" or the fundamentals of space time. 
   The TV show had a lot of shots of physicists and bigwigs partying and drinking champagne to celebrate major milestones.  Some cool shots of big pipes running down endless tunnels.  Shots of physicists bicycling to and from work. 
   It did not explain what the Higgs boson is, or why we expected it to exist.  No mention of the boson's mass, electric charge, spin, lifetime, or how we would detect one, should one form.  No discussion of the accelerator, what keeps the particle beam on course running down the pipes.  No discussion of what fields are used to accelerate the particles down the 50 mile radius particle racetrace.  No mention of how close to the speed of light the particle speed reached.  No mention of  how the accelerator compensated for the growth of particle mass as the speed of light is approached. No mention of what particles were accelerated, I assume protons, but it would be nice to know.  CERN had a serious accident in the early days, the particle beam came off the track and burned a hole thru the wall of the vacuum chamber.  They didn't bother to show the damaged piece of pipe up close. The camera swept over a stack of pipes, one of them was burned black on the outside, but that was it.
    They interviewed a number of the physicists, but they all talked about metaphysics, what it means, what it might mean, the goodness of doing it.  That ain't science.  Science is observations and measurements tied together with theory.  Nobody talked science.
   Really too bad.  I guess the TV show producers know little science themselves , and don't care much about it.