Slow News Day

Friday's Wall St Journal.  Front page color photo.  Heartwarming shot of  Senator Tammy Duckworth bringing her new born baby into the Senate chamber for a vote on something.  All the adults in the photo have fond smiles, everyone likes small children. 
   It's cute and all that, but is this the most important thing happening the world on this Friday?

Probably a bad idea.

Florida Republican Rep Ron DeSantis, and ten colleagues sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff  Sessions asking for criminal investigation of Obama people Loretta Lynch, James Comey, Hillary Clinton, and Andrew McCabe. 
   Much as all these low lives deserve some criminal investigation, trial and jail time, doing so is a bad idea for the country.  We don't want to criminalize loosing an election.  If politicians understand that loosing the election will put them in jail, they will fight all the harder, and use even dirtier tricks to stay in office.  Even the Russians let Krushchev retire to a dasha on the Black Sea and write his memoirs, rather than executing him they way they did Beria, Trotsky, and perhaps Stalin. 
   American politics is so difficult, demanding and dangerous that few first rate people go in for it.  First rate people go into business, high tech, the military, doctoring, Hollywood, lawyering, and professional sports, rather than politics.  If we make politics even less attractive by adding the risk of going to jail when you loose the election, even fewer decent people will go out for it. 
   It's best for the country in the long run to let those who are defeated in the election go on about their lives in peace. 

Civilization[s]

New PBS TV show.  Kind of a remake of the Kenneth Clark show of a similar name from back in the late 1960's.  This one goes way further back in time, this first episode starts off with cave paintings.  They showed some cave art that was new to me, and a lovely ivory figurine that I had never seen before.  The voiceover commentary was less than satisfactory.  They didn't show where these and other like works where from.  They did opine about the age of the pieces, but did not mention the type of dating used, the uncertainty of the method, or recent  revisions of carbon 14 datings of great age. 
   Then they went globe trotting, to some ancient recently discovered bronzes in China, to the Mayans, couple  of other places.
   Not as good as the original Kenneth Clark show, but watchable. 

Junk Science

Headline of op ed in Tuesday's Wall St Journal, "How bad is the Government's Science?"  It speaks to the reproducibility crisis in science, where a large number of published scientific papers simply cannot be reproduced by other workers.  Which says that the published paper was just plain wrong.  A 2015 study estimated that $28 billion a year was spent on wrong science.  Which is a terrible waste of both money and the time of scarce and hard to train scientists. 
   I ran into the reproducibility problem myself back when I was developing a portable heart monitor.  I needed a way to compress the sampled EKG so that the device could store more EKG data in its limited memory.  I researched the literature, and bingo, I found a paper discussing compression of EKG and offering a method that claimed much higher performance than the standard technique.  I read the article thru, and then programmed the new algorithm into our prototype monitor.  It worked, it did compress the data, and the decompressed EKG was of good quality, but, I could only obtain one half the amount of compression that the author claimed.  I troubleshot and debugged and finally telephoned the author to ask for help.  The author rather sheepishly, admitted that he had left out a key factor in his paper, and that yes, the compression obtained would be only half of what he had claimed.  I managed not to express my dismay over the waste of two weeks of the project's time. 
   One thing legislators could do about this.  Require that all government financed researchers publish all their raw data.  Right now, a lot of researchers keep their data private, hoping to either use it for another publication, or to prevent skeptics from going over it looking for faults.  Far as I am concerned, if the taxpayers are paying the freight,  the taxpayers own the results.  This policy would go far to squelch the likes of leftie greenie "climate scientist" Michael Moore, inventor of the global warming hockey stick. 
  Another thing, someone ought to keep score.  Any scientist who publishes unreproducible results should be barred from future government research grant money.  That will make them a bit more careful. 

Friction? Would you believe real hostility?

Front page of Monday's Wall St Journal.  "Friction between the president and Comey resurfaced after details from the former FBI director's new book reopened the debate over his firing. "
  If that's "friction" I'd hate to see real hostility.

Graduation from College, and College Guidance Councilors

You can graduate High School by merely attending classes until you make it thru 12th grade.  College is trickier.  You have to have enough course credits to get your degree.  Just attending classes for four years isn't enough.  You have to have all the required credits in the required courses.  Missing just a single credit in physical education can deny you a diploma.  And tie you up for another year, and another year of tuition payments.  Nobody wants this.
   The number and type of credits you need depend upon your major.  At my Alma Mater, engineering majors required about 15% more credits than education majors or liberal arts majors.  And each major required different course credits for graduation.  So, you need to pick your major early on, like freshman year.  Early in freshman year.  Before Christmas for sure.
   To pick your major, you have to have some idea of what your want to do with your life after you make it thru college.  You need a major that makes you employable in your chosen field.  Don't have a chosen field?  Do some serious thinking, talk to your parents, friends, relatives, get some advice, cause this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life.   Colleges offer a fair number of interesting sounding majors that are totally worthless when you go job hunting.  Avoid them.  Gender studies, ethnic studies, anything studies, art history, sociology, anthropology, and some others won't get you a job anywhere.
   Then, get the college catalog, and make a list of all the courses you need to take for your chosen major.  The senior level courses will all require you take some lower level courses, prerequisites they are called.  Make a spreadsheet, enter all the courses, in the order you have to take them.  Add up all the credits and see if it is enough.  Check for booby traps, like courses that are only offered one semester.  Miss getting into that class when it is offered, and you can loose a whole year.  Neaten up the spreadsheet and print it out. 
   Now you are ready to meet your college guidance councilor.  He will be a junior faculty member, who has about a hundred other students assigned to him, and courses to teach, research to do, and papers to grade.  He cannot afford you much time.  He views the job of his department as training new professors to teach in his department.  When discussing majors, he will probably push you toward majoring in his department.  Listen politely, but you don't have to take his advice.  Show him your spreadsheet and  ask him if it looks correct.  If he offers suggestions or criticism, take notes.  Check your notes against the college catalog.  Make sure you have the current version of the catalog.
   One further thing you have to do, namely get into the courses you need.  Popular courses are mobbed and not everyone gets in.  The college has a day when course registration opens for each semester.  Know that day.  Get down to registration first thing on the first day and you improve your chances of getting into the courses you need. 

$75 million worth of cruise missiles.

That's just the replacement cost of the ordinance expended.  About 100 cruise missiles at $750,000 apiece.  Does not count fuel costs, dollars per flying hour, pay for the troops, operating costs of all the warships used, etc. etc.
Let's hope the Syrians get the message better than they did the last time we did this.
We cannot make idle threats.  Once we make a threat (draw a redline) we have to mean it, and carry out the threat.  If we are not prepared to back up our threats, we should not make them.  The Syrians used poison gas, and so we had to follow thru on the threats we made the last time the Syrians used poison gas. 
  

Isolationism caused WWII

In between the two world wars, America went isolationist.  We came to believe that the first world war was a big mistake, we should never have entered it, and we should never again get sucked into a European war.  America withdrew from Europe. 

    And then Hitler came on the scene.  He gained control of Germany in 1932, and by 1936 he felt strong enough to start causing trouble in the international scene.  All of Europe, even including Germany, was still in shell shock from World War I.  Both the British and the French feared to oppose Hitler in the early days when he could have been deposed fairly easily.  Without Hitler, Germany might have thrown her weight around for a few years, but she would not have started WWII.  Nobody in Europe wanted to go thru another world war, they had had enough of that in the First World War. 

   If France and Britain had at the very first, the Rhineland takeover in 1932, mobilized their armies, and marched into Germany, they could have easily defeated the 100,000 man army which was all the Versailles Treaty allowed Germany, occupied the country, deposed Hitler and put him on trial for crimes against humanity.  But, neither the French nor the Britons did anything, partly thru fear of kicking off another world war, partly from fear that they would loose, and partly from domestic political problems.  If, America,  by this time a Great Power, had told the British and the French that the US was 1000% behind them, and had dispatched troops to Europe, a division or two would have made the point,  and had stood forth in the League of Nations and  condemned German violation of the Versailles Treaty, then something might have been possible. 

   Well, that didn't happen.  American isolationists forced the US to put on the turtle act, don't move, retract head and feet into shell, and do nothing.  With no US backing, the British and the French lacked the stones to take on Hitler when they could have beaten him with ease. 

     We can see and hear isolationists coming back to life today.  Last time they caused a world wide catastrophe.  What can they do this time?

We are gonna miss Paul Ryan

He is one of the very very few Congresscritters who was well educated, well informed, and had a good store of commonsense. He studied the issues and worked to get his issues passed into law, as opposed to the ordinary chucklehead Congresscritter who is only good at bad mouthing his opponents in he press. In short Paul Ryan had his head screwed on, nose to the front. 
  We are gonna miss him. 

Zuckerberg does OK on TV yesterday

He managed to avoid a pissing match with anyone.  Getting into a pissing match always makes you look petty.  He was glib, never at a loss for words.  He sounded reasonable.
   He mostly managed to avoid saying anything of substance.  Lot of those "use-up-airtime-and-say-nothing" phrases.  He said he would be OK with regulation but never said just what sort in regulation he would favor.  He did put on coat and tie for the TV hearings.  He got full time live coverage on Fox, he was on for hours, without any of those network voice overs calling him a crumb bum.  He avoided making any yes or no answers.
   My assessment.  Zuckerberg is slick.  Made a few mea culpea's.   Avoided getting pinned down on anything.  Probably plans on keeping Facebook on the same path it has been on.  And his stock is up 4%.
   I plan to continues to limit my Facebook posts to pictures of my cat, pictures of my children and grandchildren, pictures of snow storms, comments about the weather.  When I get the urge to make a political rant, I'll do it on this blog.  

Regulating Facebook???

Supposing that our noble Congresscritters could agree on a bill, and that Trump would sign it, how would that work?  Facebook's data resides on Facebook's computers, under the control of Facebook IT people.  Even if they gave the regulators the run of their server farm, how would the regulators be able to find anything, change anything, or even figure out was was happening?   Inquiring minds want to know.
   Me, I don't think it can happen.  Who gets to see how much of Facebook's data trove is solely under Facebook's control, and Facebook can keep all transactions secret.   Pass all the laws you like, hire as many well paid regulators as you like, and Facebook is still running the show, the way it wants to run it. 
   If I knew of a competing website that offered the chit chat and picture posting opportunities that Facebook does, I'd switch, and talk all my facebook friends into following me.  Instagram perhaps? However, at this time, building up a competitor against Facebook' s market dominance would be tough.  

Light machine guns of the world

Modern infantry tactics are based on the squad, a dozen men with one light machine gun.  In action the squad moves forward until resistance is encountered.  At which time the machine gun is set up, and under  cover of its fire, the riflemen advanced to the next likely piece of cover.  Then the riflemen provided covering fire while the machine gun is moved up to the new position.  By WWII, the old close order tactics, which go back as far as the Greeks at Marathon,  had given way in all armies to the modern tactic.
   The light machine guns in question varied from army to army.  But they all fired the standard rifle round of the period, which was 30 caliber (7.62 mm) and a lot more powerful than modern military rounds such used by weapons like the US M16. The weapons all fired from the open bolt, a machine gun design feature that leaves the breech open after firing stops, allowing air to circulate thru the hot gun barrel for cooling.  It also avoids leaving a live round in a red hot chamber where it might cook off from the heat.  The down side to the open bolt design is the slight jar when the bolt goes forward and chambers a  round which can throw the gun slightly off target, a minor concern, only of importance when firing single rounds, sniper fashion. 
  Since the LMG was back packed into action, light weight was very important.  The American Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was the lightest at 15.5 pounds (unloaded).  Figure another pound and a half for a loaded 20 round magazine.  The heaviest was the Russian DPM at 26.9 pounds., with the German MG42 right behind at 25 pounds. 
    Most of them (BAR, BREN, and DPM)  fired at 500-600 rounds per minute, which was considered the optimum rate of fire by authorities of the period.  Those authorities felt higher rates of fire merely wasted ammunition.  The exception was the German MG42 which fired at double that, 1200 rounds per minute, which gave the German gun a unique and scary sound. 
   The BAR with a 20 round magazine, held the least ammunition.  The BAR magazine was located on the bottom of the weapon which made swapping magazines somewhat awkward.  The British BREN gun had a 30 round magazine on top of the gun, making magazine swaps easier.  The Russian DPM had a 47 round drum magazine on top.  The German MG42 was belt fed,  allowing long sustained bursts of automatic fire. 

Ivanhoe, 1982 version

The old 1952 version, with Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor has been a favorite movie ever since I saw it as a child in the old Cinema at Shopper's World in Framingham MA better than 60 years ago.  So, when I saw the 1982 remake on Netflix I ordered it, thinking it wouldn't measure up to the old classic.
Well, surprise.  It was pretty good.  It has James Mason as Isaac of York, John Rhys-Davies as Front de Boeuf, and Anthony Andrews as Ivanhoe himself.  Andrews is a good looking hunk.  "Production values" are first rate, costumes, sets, locations.  Sound is good, I could hear all the dialog.  The cameraman used a tripod, no annoying shake the camera shots, and he turned on the lights for filming. They used a real medieval castle for Torquilstone.  In this version, Rowena comes off a very cute, just as cute as Rebecca of York.  The story gets changed around some from the 1952 version, but it doesn't seem to hurt anything.  I read the book once, but that was a long time ago and I don't remember anymore just  how the book went.  Plus, movies are a different medium than books, and some changes are often required to make a good movie from a book.
   It's far better than a BBC remake of some years ago.  The BBC got on a medieval realism kick.  Everyone's costume was homespun brown or butternut, making it extremely difficult to tell who was who.  Except for Isaac of York's silly looking straw hat, costumes for this one were convincing enough for me.  I'm not an expert on medieval fashions, so I'm not the last word, but I say they were plenty good enough for the purposes of a movie.  
    They changed Ivanhoe's final duel with Bois Gilbert.  In the 1952 flick, Bois Gilbert used mace and chain, Ivanhoe used an axe (from horseback no less)  When the duel was over, my younger brother said, very seriously, "The guy with the axe always wins."  In this version, both fighters use swords, and we see that Ivanhoe is not fully recovered from wounds received from tournament.  Bois Gilbert nearly kills him, but Ivanhoe gets lucky and pulls out a win at the last minute.
   Anyhow, if you are into medieval romantic movies, with lots of action, Ivanhoe is good, either the original 1952 flick or the 1982 remake for TV flick.

CAFE Clash

Can you pass a law that will make cars get 50 mpg?  Well yes, but don't expect the cars to comply.  The only thing that will do 50 mpg is a motorcycle.  And, much as I like bikes, I owned one for years, I don't want to ride a bike to work in a New England snow storm.  Or bring the groceries home on one. Or take the kids to youth league soccer on one.  Or bring anything home from the lumber yard on a bike.  Once you get married, you need a vehicle big enough to hold you, the wife, the kids, the luggage, the picnic lunch, and the skis.  And a real vehicle like that is never gonna do 50 mpg.  You are doing well if you can get 25 out of it.
   The Greenies, and the lefties, are crying a lot of tears now that Trump's EPA is gonna dump the magical 50 mpg by 2025 rule.  It's magical because only magic will produce such a vehicle.  In fact, even the EPA understood that nobody could reach that mileage in the real world.  They offered incentives like giving all your cars a sizeable boost in mileage rating if they would run on alcohol.  It was such a juicy bennie, that was I running a car company I'd tell production to make 100% of my vehicles run on alcohol.   It isn't hard, all you have to do is select fuel system hoses and gaskets and such (elastomers) that can withstand alcohol.  And add some code to the engine microprocessor programming to richen up the mixture when running on alcohol since alcohol  doesn't provide nearly as much heat energy as gasoline does.  And presto, magic happens, the EPA says my vehicle fleet, my CAFE, gets a substantial boost. 
   In actual fact, the car companies have plenty of market incentive to build the best fuel economy they can.  It sells.  Good fuel economy is as important as styling to customers.  We ought to shut down the whole CAFE bureaucracy, lay off all the bureaucrats, save a little money, and get on with it. 

Does your Firefox have a memory leak?

Mine does.  I'm running V52.7.3  Firefox on Win XP.  Start up Firefox and check Task Manager, and Firefox will be using 168K of RAM.  Let it run for a while, visit some websites, do whatever, and notice that it starts running slower.  Takes longer to open a new site, to switch from tab to tab.  Check Task Manager and find Firefox is using 500K and more of RAM. 
   Something like Firefox which needs large and unpredictable amounts of RAM, is built to acquire the needed RAM from Windows, making system calls to get it.  And when finished, Firefox is supposed to return the borrowed RAM to Windows.  Common coding error, program forgets to return no longer needed RAM.  This is called a memory leak.  I think Firefox has one.  At least in the 32 bit XP version.  I have a newer computer running Win10 that doesn't seem to have the problem. 

We need the Line Item Veto

But we are unlikely to ever get it.  The line item veto would allow the president to go thru pork laden spending bills and veto individual items without killing the whole thing.  The "everything including the kitchen sink" policies of our Congress make the line item veto necessary.   Congress allows absolutely anything and everything to be included in any bill, whether it has any logical connection with the bill's purpose or not.  For instance they tried (and failed) to tack an immigration reform (DACA) onto the omnibus funding bill.  Since the omnibus funding bill was a "must pass" bill (the government shuts down if they don't pass it) evry Congresscritter made sure to add his pet piece of pork (federal spending in his district) to the bill.  Result, a lot of wasteful spending.  If the president could go thru the omnibus spending bill and veto the more offensive pieces of pork, we could reduce federal spending by a lot. 
   Line item veto is unlikely to ever happen.  Congresscritters love their pork.  The thought that a president could veto a bit of pork they had worked hard to get into the funding bill just frosts Congresscritters.  Since a line item veto requires at least an act of Congress, and perhaps a constitutional amendment, the Congresscritters can stop it by simply voting against it, should it ever come up for a vote.  And Congress has plenty of file 13's entomb unwanted legislation, killing it with out having to go on record by voting against it.

Would you tell the Census you are an illegal alien?

Probably not.  I'd figure the Border Patrol would be on my case if I told them I was an illegal.  And gave them my name and address on the Census form.   
   I figure the illegals will  either lie, claiming to be citizens, (exposing themselves to prosecution for lying to the Census Bureau), or just not return the Census forms at all, or leave the question blank (which is as good as confessing to being illegal).
   I certainly would not believe any statistics based upon responses to the citizenship question.  

Out in California they are gunning for a President McKinley statue

Damn.  McKinley has been dead for better than 100 years.  Some anarchist shot him in the back, shortly after he got elected president.  He didn't live long enough as president to do much that got into the history books.  But the California SJW's are agitating to pull his stature down.   They must be out of  things to do. 

Capitalism or Communism?

Winston Churchill once said "The vice of capitalism is that it stands for  unequal sharing of blessings; whereas the virtue of socialism is that it stands for the equal sharing of misery."   Socialism being a politer word for communism.  Why is this? 
    Communism was invented to "level the playing field" by taking everything and dividing it equally and sharing it equally among all the people.  The biggest down side of  Communism, why even the Russians gave it up in 1989, is it gives no incentive to anyone to work hard.  Why work hard when you get paid the same for slacking off?  Other downsides come when ordinary fallible people take up the divide and share business.  Being fallible, these people skim plenty off the top for themselves before  doing any sharing.  Since nobody works very hard, there isn't much to share in the first place. 
  Under capitalism, people are allowed to own stuff (land, houses, factories, everything) and to keep the proceeds.  By hard work, or genius, it is possible to become wealthy, powerful, and important.  This motivates a lot of people to work really hard, take risks, invent stuff.  The overall result is a never ending fountain of material wealth, food and drink, clothing, shelter, toys for children and grownups, all at decent prices, and vast quantities.  Aided by capitalism's law of supply and demand which efficiently matches production with demand.  The entrepreneurs who create all this goodness get to keep a goodly share of it, but there is enough that everybody gets some.  Compare the standard of living for ordinary people in communist places like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, with the standard of living in the United States.  This is why the United States has an illegal alien problem whereas the Communist countries have long lists of people wanting to leave, and not permitted to.
    This is what the Cold War was about, the Russians wanted to convert the entire world to Communism and we wanted to keep the entire world capitalist.  We won, and the wonder of our victory is that we managed it without touching off the Last War with the Soviets.   

It's the Post Office's problem

President Trump was bashing Amazon the other day. Among other things, he said the US Post Office is losing $1.50 on every parcel Amazon sends by mail.  And it's all Amazon's fault.
I beg to disagree. 
   If the Post Office is losing money on Amazon's business, it's up to the Post Office to either improve efficiency, or raise prices.  It isn't Amazon's duty. 
   As a matter of fact, back in the 19th century, when Congress authorized the Post Office to offer Parcel Post,  the original legislation demanded the Post Office set rates high enough to cover costs.  Probably because Congress didn't want to subsidize the big mail order companies of the day, Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck.   Sixty years later some business writer commented that the Post Office would never offer much competition to Fedex and UPS because of it's inefficiencies and high wages.   

I'd like to be just a plain American

All those questionaires that want you to classify yourself as white, black, Asian-American, hispanic, purple with polka dots, are offensive to me.  I want to check off an "American" box.  All those other categories are just fodder to fuel divisive identity politics.  I don't want to be classified as one or another identity group.  I am an American, and my sympathies lie with my country, not my narrow identity group. 
   And, while the Democrats are busy finding new identity groups, and talking them up, they don't actually promise these identity groups anything while campaigning.  No promises of  special treatment, special tax breaks, extra funding for pet projects, nothing.  I don't see any reason for the identity groups to vote for the Dems, there is nothing in it for them. 
   Trump on the other hand has lowered black unemployment to the lowest level on record.  That oughta be good for something. 

Vermont wants to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Sounds cool.  But what the newsies call "AI" is really just well programmed computers.  In the programming world, "AI" is a flexible sort of programming, where decisions (if-then branching) can be done with less than 100% positivity of the evidence.  And "AI" can be written to find it's goals by looking at data, which is more flexible than having the programs goals written into it by the programmers. 
  But when you get right down to it, what they are calling "AI" is really just programs running in microprocessors.  Modern programming is more flexible than the early FORTRAN programs that handled well understood problems like printing up the payroll checks.
    Long talk on Vermont public radio about the wonders of a Vermont state program to regulate "AI".  They don't have it yet, but this program was pushing the idea.  Since "AI" is really any programming, we are talking about regulating every product with a microprocessor in it.  Which is just about everything these days.  Your microwave, your automobile, your cell phone, your TV,  your FM radio, just about everything that uses electricity.  Do you really want to give a state commission the power to regulate just about everything?  I don't. 
   The free market is perfectly capable of controlling computer programs on the market.  Look at what's happening to Facebook over some data breaches.  Same thing will happen to any product or company that offends the broader market place. 

Pacific Rim, (a movie)

Youngest Son was up for the weekend.  He wanted to see it.  I had never heard of it before.  This was the opening weekend. So after skiing on Saturday, we went to the matinee in the mighty metropolis of Lincoln NH.  It was playing, but by the time the end was reached and the credits rolled, we were the only two people in the theater.  It must have done better somewhere, the Wall St Journal mentioned it in their weekend movie box office piece. 
   It's a giant robot movie.   Same  general idea as the Godzilla movies, except it's robots stamping on the high rises in down town Tokyo instead of Godzilla.  The robots, who got much of the screen time, looked like CGI, rather than modelwork, and  they were pretty good, they moved smoothly,  they even had facial expressions (on robots no less). The robots were big enough to have two man control rooms inside them.  The crew made the robot move by moving their arms and legs.  When the human crew ran inplace in the control room, the robot would run down a Tokyo street.  What was left unsaid is how the two man crew coordinated between them selves.  Like what happens if one crew member swerves left and the other swerves right?    The movie opens with a lot of robot on robot violence.   The robots are all painted the same color, and don't have national insignia painted on their chests, so it's hard to tell the good robot from the bad robot.  About the best I could do was assume the robot that walked away after the fight was the good robot and the one that lay broken on the ground was the bad robot.  Later a bunch of sea monsters surfaced in the harbor and all the robots fought against them.
   None of the cast was anyone I had ever heard of before.   There was a little love interest, a very young chick, assigned as co pilot to the leading man's robot.  I never did catch any of their names.  What little dialog ensued between young chick and  leading man was of the "Keep a stiff upper lip" sort.  What ever sort of relationship they might or might not have enjoyed, it wasn't a lovey dovey one.   Two good points, the camera man kept the camera on the tripod, no shake the camera shots, and he put the lights on, no pure black scenes.  And the soundman did a decent job, most of the dialog was audible and understandable. 
   According to Youngest Son,  this was a sequel to a previous version that had been wildly successful in China.  So that made a sequel, hoping to rake in a bit more money.  Far as I can see, it was aimed at 12-14 year old boys. 
  If this is the future of Hollywood movies, it's gonna be a tough year at the box office. 

Personna Non Grata (PNG)

The US and its allies are getting some press coverage by kicking Russian "diplomats"  (intelligence agents actually)  out of the country over the poisoning of a retired Russian spy and his daughter in England last week.  We used to do this pretty often during the cold war.  I assume the Russians will retaliate shortly, probably by kicking a bunch of  allied diplomats out of Russia. And, after the shouting dies down, both sides will replace the expelled diplomats/intelligence agents with new people. 
   Back before electrical communications (telegraph, telephone, radio, and such)  the whole system of diplomacy, ambassadors, diplomatic immunity, extraterritoriality of embassies, the diplomatic pouch, and so on was developed.  A country's ambassador, knowing that communication with his national capital takes weeks, acted on his own say-so in matters such as declaring support or opposition to host country's military moves, (invading or being invaded),  hiking tariffs, arresting your nationals, fitting out warships for use by a rebel movement, anything.  Nowadays, the ambassador doesn't do anything until his home government sends him a cable.  We keep the diplomatic system up partly from habit and largely for the intelligence it can gather.  There is a lot of very valuable legal intelligence that can be gathered simply be reading the local press, and buying maps and books. 

The Facebook API interface

Face book has a lot of data, gathered over the years, on its computers.  According to youngest son, there was an undocumented, but not secret, interface to the public internet.  He say he used it himself to conduct searches for stuff that interested him (space travel, fusion power).  He tells me this is the interface Cambridge Analytics used to access those fifty million Facebook user's data.  He says that Facebook wised up and closed that interface quite recently.  As well they might, Facebook's business model is built around selling their data, not giving it away free to savvy hackers. 
    There has been talk about regulating Facebook and its ilk.  I frankly cannot think of  any simple enforceable regulations that would do anything useful.  Far as I am concerned, the free enterprise system is perfectly capable of shaping up Facebook.  If Facebook offends enough users, who then leave Facebook, Facebook will loose money.  They won't be able to charge as much for ads and data.  That oughta be enough incentive to shape 'em up. 
   I use Facebook, but only to exchange chit chat with old school friends, family,  and the neighbors, and to post photo's of my children, grandchildren, the scenery, the weather, my model railroad, and my cat.  I expect that only my Facebook friends can see my posts, but it doesn't bother me much that anybody can see them.  They are all fairly good photos, they are lovable children, and its a very nice cat.

California Pot Growers

Saturday's Wall St Journal had an editorial headlined "Marijuana Supply-Siders".  They stated that there are 68150 pot growers in California.  They say the number comes from the California Growers Association.  I wonder how many growers decided not to register with the Growers Association for fear that the narcs or the DEA or the cops would get on their case.  I know if I was growing weed in California I'd try to keep it secret. 
  And, that's a lot of pot farmers.  About one pot farmer for every 587 citizens of California.   Take a guess that only 10% of Californians smoke weed.  That's one pot farmer for every 58 smokers.  The article did mention that a lot of California pot is exported from California.

Beat the Press

They were on, Channel 10, just this morning.  For the week's Trump bashing they talked about hiring and firing at the White House, presumably the lawyer who quit, the firing of the secretary of state, and his replacement with John Bolton.  All the talking heads agreed that this was termoil at the White House and all sorts of bad.
   They did not talk about Trump's tax bill, his proposed and nearly in effect tariffs, foreign policy vs the NORKS,  3% GNP growth, 4% unemployment, squeezing ISIS, cutting federal regulations, DACA, that omnibus budget blowout bill, in short anything of substance.  Must mean that the MSM (democrats all) see nothing in all Trump's actions to bash him with.  Must mean they like what Trump does, but despise him personally.  Good mature attitude there.

Words of the Weasel Part 50

The MSM and the gun control people have been using "gun violence" rather than the older and truer word, murder.  It's a disgraceful attempt to be non judgemental, to blame a tool for the sins of an evil person.  Murder has been a crime ever since Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mt Sinai.  Gun violence only made the TV since the Portland school shooting. 

Bimbo Hush Money is now illegal campaign contribution???

That's what NPR was telling me this morning.  That $130,000 hush money that Trump's lawyer[s] paid "Stormy Daniels"  is an illegal campaign contribution and the special prosecutor should investigate.  Somehow this does not compute.  Campaign contributions are money given to a candidate.  Hush money given to a bimbo is distasteful, and a PR disaster, but I don't think it is a campaign contribution.  But good old NPR can find lawyers to say anything they want said.  NPR is part of the deep state trying to push Trump out of the presidency. I am so glad my tax money goes to subsidize NPR.

Congress does it again. 2300 Page Omnibus Spending Bill

No Congressman, except for maybe Paul Ryan, has any idea of what all is in it.  At best they know that their pet spending got in, along with every one else's pet spending.  Which is why the Federal deficit is so bad.  Nobody can read 23,000 pages of Congressional gobble-de-gook, even if given a year to do it.  Probably a few congressional staffers, like the one's who wrote this thing, have a general idea, and that's about it.
  This  disgrace is caused by the Senate.  The House wrote, debated and passed 12 spending bills, one for each major Federal department.  The Senate failed to even bring them up for debate, let alone pass them.  Let's hear it for Senate Rules.  Bulwark of democracy they are.
   So the end result, a few anonymous congressional staffers control all the spending of the Federal government. 
   Senators let this happen because it allows them to avoid voting on anything that their constituents might object to.   And who might write them nasty letters, or threaten to vote against them.  So they allow staffers to pack all the spending decisions into one vast unreadable swamp.  Since nobody, constituents, political opponents, the MSM, bloggers know what's in there, they cannot got on Senator Phogbound's case about  what he voted for. 

Safe guard the voters lists from hackers

Been a lotta talk on the 'Net and on the tube about Russians hacking the 2016 election, and what we oughta do about it.  Step one is to dump the voting machines and go back to paper ballots.  A voting machine is just a desktop computer running a special ballot program.  It is subject to all the hacks that ordinary computers are subject to, which is too damn many. 
Step two is safeguarding the voter lists.  You know those lists they have at the polls and upon which they check off your name as you vote.  And if your name isn't on the list you either have to do some extra paperwork, or you don't get to vote.  Suppose the other side had used a program to go thru the voter's list and erase 10% of your party's voters?  Or I can think of worse.
   Best security would be to go back to keeping the voter's list with pen and ink.  Barring that, if you just gotta have the list on computer, best would be not to use Windows.   Windows is totally and irredeemably security compromised.  It's Swiss cheese, fulla holes.  Use a Mac, use Linux, use anything except Windows.  Only allow one computer for updating the list, printing it out, and making backups.  Keep that machine in a locked room to which only a very few have a key.  DO NOT allow that machine to connect to any other machine, the public internet, the telephone network, anything.  Do not allow anyone to insert flash drives, floppy disks,  CD's or other media into the machine.   Periodically do a backup of the voter list to CD-ROM.  Store one copy of the backup CD-ROM off site so it will be available in the event of fire or flood at Town Hall.  Periodically compare the master voter's list on the computer to the most recent backup and decide if the changes, and the amount of change is reasonable. 

You gotta wonder about that FBI

Jeff Sessions just fired the FBI's number two man, Antony McCabe, based upon the FBI inspector general's written recommendation.  Just to make it hurt a little more, McCabe was within hours of retirement, with a full pension.  Getting fired means no pension, a pretty harsh penalty. 
   Question, if McCabe was such a crumb bum, how did he rise so far in the FBI?  I assume McCabe joined the FBI twenty years ago as a junior agent, or what ever the FBI calls new troops.  Since over twenty years, he got himself promoted up to number two at the Bureau, he must have had a lot of supervisors writing good performance reports on him over the years.  Is it a case of a good guy turning bad in his later years? Or is it case of a lot of McCabe's supervisors thinking McCabe's way of doing things was good?  That in fact a lot of the Bureau's supervision is just like McCabe?  And that maybe some more weeding out is in order?

Don't Fire Mueller

The lefties have been drum beating for Trump to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller.   If Trump were so foolish as to do so, it would convince an awful lot of voters that Trump has something to hide.  That he is dirty. 
   I like to think that Trump understands this and that he is smart enough to avoid shooting himself in the foot.  Let's hope.

Beat the Press

They were at it again this morning.  Lotta talk about firing that FBI guy, Tony something-or-other.  More talk about Trump's tweets, investigations into Russian collusion, and that Pittsburgh special election that the Democrats won by a hair. 
  No talk about dealing with the NORKS,  Trump's tax bill, the steel and aluminum tariffs, dealing with the Russians. Does this mean that the Democrats think these subjects make Trump look good?  So they don't talk about them? 

Puerto Rican bonds are hot on Wall St this year

Cannot understand why.  Puerto Rico is broke.  They will never have enough revenue to pay off their bonds.  In fact they have declared bankruptcy, after getting a special act of Congress allowing them to do so, and a bankruptcy judge will decide how much (how little) the bond holders might get paid, if Puerto Rico ever comes up with some cash.  Which they probably cannot do.
   So why does a Puerto Rican bond have any value what so ever on the Street?  Inquiring minds want to know.  

The New Hampshire Death Penalty

Concord is all hot and bothered about repealing the death penalty.  I wonder why.  NH hasn't executed anyone since 1939, nearly eighty years ago.  We have one cop killer on death row right now. He has been there for ten years, with lawyers billing the state for ten years of appeals and foo for raw. 
   Could it be that our gallant state reps and senators have found a headline grabbing issue, that doesn't require any funding, and are playing it for publicity? 

That Miami bridge collapse

It got a lot of TV coverage yesterday and the TV newsies are still going on about it today.  I gather that the bridge was a prefab and newly installed.  No mention of the installing contractor's name.  Far as I am concerned the guys who installed it are liable if it falls down within a week.  Also no mention of the company that made the prefab bridge.  When sued, the installer will claim his people did everything right but the prefab bridge was defective in design or manufacture. 
   Either the TV newsies are so ignorant as not to understand the liability issues here, or they are being paid off to keep it quiet.  Trust worthy those newsies are. 

The many names of a house cat

Cat came to me from my daughter.  It had been her college cat.  She graduated, and signed up for a hitch with the Peace Corps.  She said something like "Aw Dad, you will take care of the cat.  Won't you?"  And since I am very fond of daughter, and it was a decent cat, the deal was done.  The cat bore the name of Hecate, which seemed like a pretty pretentious name for just a house cat.  After a couple of highly amusing goofs on the cat's part, I began to call her Stupid Beast.  For a while I could stand out on the deck and call "Stupid Beast" and the cat would actually come home. 
   In warm weather, cat would sprawl out flat on the floor, spread out to lose as much heat as possible.  I began to call her "Flat Beast"   This lead to "Fat Beast" and "RAF", short for Round and Flat.  Along with Her Flatness, and Fatress.  And often I just call her Cat, as in "Hello Cat" when she greets my return from a store run. 

Cannon Mt ski weather

Heaviest snow of the winter.  Started yesterday at 9:30.  This morning I have 13 inches piled up on my deck. And it's still coming down, lightly.  Nice light powder.  No wind so the snow stays on the trails instead of blowing away into the woods.  This is on top of a good eight inches late last week.  Mountain is a fantastic shape.

Trump nominates old CIA hand to run agency

Thie morning's US gov shakeup.  Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State.  Mike Pompano from CIA is nominated as new Secretary of State.  Gina Haspel nominated to run CIA.
   The newsies are all atwitter about Gina Haspel, first woman CIA director, ever.  Cool.  But she is an old CIA hand, been working at the agency since the 1980's.  CIA has a poisonous corporate culture.  Specializing in  gross intelligence failures, damaging leaks to the NYT,  attempts to destabilize all Republican administrations, disastrously wrong predictions. 
   Not a promising background.

Win 10 shows phantom files and folders

Back in the real versions of Windows, (95,98,NT,2000,XP), Explorer showed a straight forward picture of your hard drive.  Each file of folder showed as a single icon, in it's proper place in the hierarchy.  You could move, rename, delete, execute, display and change file properties.  This worked.
   Micro$oftware weenies couldn't leave stuff that worked alone.  For Win10 we get an Explorer that displays a single folder icon or file icon multiple times, at different locations.  Some of the icons cause error messages when clicked upon.  Some icons can be deleted without deleting the real disk file that the icon stands for. 
   It's irritating, in fact so irritating that I am thinking about upgrading this laptop to Linux.

Greenies snooker US Navy

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/03/08/the-us-navy-is-cancelling-a-program-to-turn-gas-guzzling-destroyers-into-hybrids/

US Navy allowed greenies to start up a hybrid propulsion program for destroyers.  Musta been a bunch of pure USN desk weenies to fall for this scam.  No real sea officer would have fallen for it.  Hybrid propulsion sort of works in cars because a car only needs full power for a few seconds to accelerate to speed.  Once at speed, the power demand on a car engine drops way way down.  Hybrid cars have small engines, just enough to keep the car moving at speed and charge the battery.  To accelerate a hybrid car uses battery power.  Hybrids get slightly better fuel economy than straight gasoline powered cars, at the expense of carrying essentially twice as much propulsion machinery.  And costing $10k more than a straight gasoline powered car.  It is doubtful that the small fuel saving of a hybrid will pay off the extra $10K cost over the life of the car.
  This doesn't work in ships.  The water drag is so high all the time that the engines must produce serious power all the time to keep the ship moving.  In fact a ship's top speed occurs when the water drag matches or exceeds engine thrust.  The engines never get a break  during which they can charge batteries.   Since a ship's engines never get a chance to loaf at part throttle, carrying extra electrical equipment, generators and motors, just adds weight, it doesn't save any fuel. 
  You gotta wonder about the Navy officers who fell for this scam.  Were they Annapolis grads?  Does not Annapolis teach engineering anymore? 

Summit Meeting with the NORKS

This ought to keep the newsies busy for a long long time.  Mostly it's a propaganda exercise between Donald Trump and Little Rocket Man.  The winner is the one who convinces the world press that he is a reasonable man and the the other guy is a loon.  Donald Trump has a lot of experience in this area.  And he speaks English, the world wide language.   Does Little Rocket Man speak English? 
   If any agreements are reached, I suspect that the NORKS will violate them, just as they have violated past agreements. 
   Churchill once said "Jaw, jaw is better than war war."  Of course he said this back before nuclear weapons were invented.    Starting up the Korean War again is a bad thing.  On the other hand leaving the NORKS with nuclear tipped ICBM's is a bad thing too. 
   Let's hope that gaining a propaganda victory in the summit meeting does not allow the NORKs to continue with their nuclear missile program. 

Big Brother Facebook is getting pretty snoopy

So I'm checking Facebook this morning to see what my friends might have posted overnight.  And bingo, a message from Facebook itself.  Saying something like this. "We have detected a friend request from someone you don't know.  If you decide that this request is from a fake personality you can report it to us be clicking here and here." 
Wow.  They really are checking closely.
 So I check my friend requests, and sure enough, there is a new one.  A gorgeous woman judging from her photo.  No mutual friends.  No friends at all.  No photos.  Looks like a fake personality sure enough. 
  And thinking I might report this I click back to my "home" only to find the provocative post from Facebook has disappeared.  So I let it slide. 
   Take away.  Big Brother Facebook is really watching you.  Beware of what you do.

NPR blathering

Yesterday I had NPR on my car  radio.  They started out discussing a report that Lyndon Johnson had authorized after riots in Detroit and Newark in the later 1960's.   The report picked up the name "Kerner Commission Report" after the name of the commission chairman.  The report blamed the riots in Detroit and Newark on "white racism".  That was fifty years ago. 
   NPR ran on talking about the Kerner Report for a good hour.  All the speakers said that white racism was terrible.  Nobody gave specific examples of said white racism, naming names and dates.  Nobody suggested ways to improve the situation, new laws, regulations, prayers, education policies, anything.  For an hour of airtime all we learned was the NPR and their on-air guests were against white racism.  Groovy, I'm against it myself.  But to serve as useful public discourse, rather than just feel-good BS, you have to suggest courses of action, not just a dislike. 

I'm so glad my tax money goes to support this kind of broadcasting. 

Farewell to Radio Shack

I needed a one ohm resistor, fairly high wattage, to use to measure current draw on a DeWalt thickness planer.  The planer had been blowing circuit breakers.  I was about to set off for the Radio Shack in St Johnsbury until I decided to check it's location on Google Maps, it has been some time since I last visited it.  Surprise.  Google Maps showed the St Johnsbury Radio Shack as "closed".  In fact it showed a whole bunch of New Hampshire Radio Shacks as closed.   Closest one still open was all the way up in Colebrook. 
   Well it was a nice sunny day, the car needed a little exercise anyhow, so I drove up.  And they had the needed resistor, and I bought some other hardware too.  Poor old Radio Shack stopped selling, or lost, or something, the high value high margin product you need to make enough money to stay alive.  Back in the old days, Radio Shack sold stereo equipment under their own Realistic brand name.  And ham gear and TV sets, and they pioneered the personal computer business with the TRS-80.  Back in the day, the Trash-80 sold as well as Apple II.  Somehow all the decent high margin products went away and Radio Sack was left with hardware bits and pieces, batteries, cables.  Low value stuff.  And now they are closing up.  Too bad. 

  

deer rifles vs assault rifles

There are no objective differences (objective means things you can measure with a ruler, or with fancier instruments).   Both deer rifles and assault rifles are chambered for center fire cartridges firing bullets from 0.22 inches up to 0.44 inches at muzzle velocities in the ball park of 2800 foot per second.  They have barrels ranging in length from 18 inches out to maybe 28 inches.  They can be self loaders, or lever action or bolt action.  Neither can be fully automatic (fully automatic is a machine gun).  Fully automatic guns were made illegal back in Al Capone's time.  
   The main differences between deer rifles and assault rifles are matters of styling.  Deer rifles are usually fitted with nicely finished walnut stocks and the metal is blued.  Assault rifles have black plastic stocks, and the metal is given a variety of military finishes that look black and non reflective in daylight. 
   Which means the current hue and cry for "an assault weapons ban" is really a call to ban all firearms ownership.  The anti gun crowd has taken the Parkland Florida massacre as an excuse to soap box for a ban on all gun ownership.  
   The Parkland shooter should have been identified as a homicidal maniac long ago and placed in a mental hospital.  If we allow guys like that to run around loose, they will find a way to do evil even if they cannot purchase a gun over the counter at a gun store.  
  

Why cannot American Steel and Aluminum compete?

President Trump wants to slap a 25% tariff in imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum.  He claims that foreign competition is so fierce that we need good stiff tariffs to preserve the American industry.  That American steel and aluminum companies will be driven out of business by the foreign competition.
  I'd like to know, just why the American industries cannot compete with the foreigners.  Is it the worker's wages? cost of raw materials, obsolete plant and equipment, outrageous pollution regulations, high taxes, stock buybacks, overly plump dividend payments, outrageous CEO pay, or what?  How plump were the last union contracts? Used to be, American industry was far more efficient than anywhere else on the globe.  What happened? Why do the US metals companies "need" tariff protection.  Protection that costs us consumers dearly.
   Another good question.  What gives the president the authority to raise tariffs on just his say-so.  I thought US tariffs were acts of Congress, not executive orders.
   The Journal and Fox News are running pieces against the tariff, but none of the MSM have investigated the national security ploy being used to justify a really stiff tax hike on everyone except the steel and aluminum industries.  

Thinking about going to college

It's that season, at least for high school seniors.  College is expensive as all get out.  A four year degree can cost $100,000.  Uncle Sam will loan you all that money, but you have to pay it back.  Declaring personal bankruptcy won't get you out of your college loan.  Most of us go to college to get a degree that leads to a good job.  This only works if you graduate.  If you don't graduate, you get nothing, except debts. 
    Time to ask yourself, do I have the stick-to-it-tivness to make it all the way to graduation?   How do you feel about schoolwork, really?  Does doing a term paper seem like fun?  Or a hateful torment?  Is reading a good history book fun? Or utterly boring?  How is your high school academic record?  College work is about like high school work.  If you are just scraping by in high school, college will be four more years of the same.
     Instead of launching into a doubtful college experience right after high school, think about doing something else after high school and then doing college later.  Think about enlisting in the armed services.  You will learn a lot of useful stuff, the GI benefits after I left the service paid for my electrical engineering degree, and employers like to hire veterans.  Think about getting a job, just about any kind of job.  After doing kindergarten followed by grades 1 thru 12 schoolwork can get old.  Try a change of pace by working.
   For that matter think about skilled jobs, welder, electrician, plumber, CNC operator, electronics tech, machinist, long haul trucker, lineman, heavy equipment operator.  They all pay well, as well as most college degree jobs.  If working with your hands in appealing to you,  give it a try. 

Senior Peacenik leaving the State Dept

The Wall St Journal calls Joseph Yun "Top U.S. Envoy for Pyongyang".   Sources are muddled on this story, but the Journal's take is that Joseph Yun is leaving the State Dept because he cannot get any support for negotiations with the NORKs.  They say his entire career at State was involved with relations and negotiations with Pyongyang.  
   Some how this guy manages to believe that the NORKS can be talked out of their nukes.  And he is miffed that the Trump Administration doesn't want to play the talks game.  As for me, I don't believe anything, talks, bribes, economic pressure, propaganda, even military action will get the NORKs to give up their nukes. 
   I wonder why we paid this delusional peacenik for so many years.  He clearly doesn't understand the situation.  But he drew his pay for many years.