GDPR Notice on my blog

The blogger people tell me that they have posted some kind of message on the overseas versions of my blog, to comply with the new European data privacy law.  I cannot see this message.  I have no idea what it says.  It's a message from the blogger people, not me. 
   All I can say is that my posts, and your comments, stay on the blog pretty much for ever, and are visible to anyone who visits the blog. 

Do the players and/or the owners understand?

Understand the real issue that is.  The real issue is that we fans don't like players dissing the US flag and/or the American national anthem.  It irritates us down deep.  I will avoid the more descriptive words for our feelings because they are a little too vulgar for my blog.   And when we fans get irritated, we stop buying game tickets and we stop watching games on TV.  Which is bad for business.   Any fool ought to understand this by now. 
   Apparently there are a bunch of fools out there.  I have heard one bunch  claim that President Trump's disapproval was divisive with the owners.  Nonsense,  the president is just one guy.  It's the masses of football fans who have been turned off to the game that matter.
   Another bunch of fools say dissing the flag and the anthem is free speech.  Maybe it is, but just because speech is free doesn't mean we fans have to like it.  We don't.   That sort of free speech has taken a solid hit on TV viewership.  A little more such free speech and NFL football will be down there with European soccer matches.  And only available on U-Tube.
   Good luck NFL.  Maybe common sense will penetrate before it's too late.  

US has been getting hostages released

Let's see, those three from North Korea, now one from Venezuela.  Neither country is a friend of America.  But they released their hostage[s].  Either out of fear of what we might do to them, or a desire to butter up the Yankees to get something from us.  Either way, we get our people back.  Which is a good thing.

Keep the banks from going broke

Great Depression 2.0, back in 2008, was caused by big banks and insurance companies going broke.  They went broke by making loans to flaky borrowers (Greece, Puerto Rico) and flaky deals (mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps), not keeping enough cash on hand to cover losses.  As the smoke cleared, and we launched into an 8 year depression, the Democrats passed a bunch of regulations (Dodd Frank) , and failed to prosecute anyone who was running the failed firms.
   I say we could have a more dependable financial sector if the people running it, CEO's and the like, had a real fear of personal retribution when they drove their companies onto the rocks.  Start with more aggressive prosecution under existing laws.  Pass a law making financial executives personally liable for failure of their firms.  Enlist that army of unemployed lawyers to sure to socks off  anyone who bankrupts his bank.
    In short, scrap the regulations.  Bring on the ambulance chasing lawyers.

The NORKs, on again, off again, maybe on again?

At least President Trump understands that his mission is to obtain a deal helpful to the United States, rather than just obtain a deal that looks good in the democratic MSM, like Obama did.  We want the NORKs denuclearized.  We offered the NORKs an end to the embargo, a signed peace treaty to end the Korean War, a guarantee of survival of Kim and of his government, and maybe some investment to spiff up their disastrous economy.  Apparently this ain't enough to get Kim to give up his nukes.  I assume Kim feels that a good dozen working nukes is a better guarantee of his and his regime's survival than any amount of Yankee promises.  Can't say that I disagree with Kim on this.
   So, the NORKs made noises about keeping their nukes.  And President Trump replied by cancelling the summit.  Probably the right move.  As of this morning the NORKs are making back off noises, and making  lets do the summit anyhow noises. 
  Say tuned for further developments. 

Words of the Weasel Part 52

Informant vs Spy.  In real life these two nouns mean exactly the same thing.  But in today's strange politics the democrats seem to think that "informant" sounds better than "spy".  They are calling the spy planted upon the Trump campaign in 2016 was really only an informant, which sounds so much nicer than spy.
   I will admit that "informant" is used in law enforcement stories whereas "spy" is used in military and international stories, but they both work the same.  A harmless looking individual is planted on the enemy and passes useful/damaging information to the other side. 
   If the spy/informant planted on the Trump campaign story holds up, it will cause a furore, probably as big as Watergate. 

Difference between investment and gambling

I think there is one.  Investment means taking good real money and lending it to business enterprises to build factories,power stations, and pipelines, purchase machinery, aircraft, motor vehicles, and ships, to buy inventory,  stuff that grows the business.  Gambling is fun, but the money doesn't go to finance business, it goes back and forth between players.  To keep the economy growing we need to encourage investment and discourage gambling with laws, regulation, and taxes.  
    The stock market makes investment in stocks attractive, mostly because investors can sell their stock for cash, anytime.  And quickly, call your broker, and the sale will go thru that day or the next, and the cash will be in your checking account in another day or so.  That's liquidity, and it vastly increases the desirability of stocks as an investment.  And companies can issue and sell stock, raising cash for merely printing a stock certificate.  If you are starting a company, the ability to issue company stock to raise money is a real boon.
   And then we have those things that are mostly gambling.  The morning NPR news regularly reports "Dow futures are up (or down)".  I don't really know just how Dow futures work, but I seriously doubt that any of the money that changes hands gets to businesses for investment.  I think  the money just goes back and forth between financial players.  Pure gambling.   Same goes for "derivatives"  another poorly understood (at least I don't really understand them)  financial deal which just passes money around among players. 
   We always need more investment and less gambling. 

Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Elliot Morison

This is American history as it ought to be written.  Morison starts with pre Columbian America and takes the story right up to the present day (in Morison's case 1965).   Morison is a fine writer, his text reads as well as anything by Bruce Catton  or Shelby Foote.  He covers everyone of any interest, and every political thought that occurred in America.  He leaves nothing out. And he make it all interesting.  The book is massive, 1150 pages.
   Morison is an fascinating guy.  He was a Harvard professor.  He held a commission in the Navy reserve.  When WWII broke out, Morison became the Navy's historian.  He went to sea, pretty much for the duration.  He was at the Torch landings in North Africa, he was at Midway.  After the war he single handedly wrote the Navy's history of World War II, in  fifteen volumes, The History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II.   And he collaborated with Henry Steele Commager to write Growth of the American Republic, (usually known as Morison and Commager) which was the standard college US history text for decades.  They don't make Harvard professors like that anymore. 
   It's a fine read by one of the best American historians ever. 

Give all the teachers a 40% raise

That's what an op ed in Tuesday's Wall St Journal calls for.  The writer seems to feel that teachers ought to get paid more, to bring their salaries in line with say civil engineers.  OK, nice thought and all.  But.
   I'm still a believer in capitalist free market theory.  You pay enough to attract the people you need, and no more.  The modest wages paid to teachers are a signal to young people that we have a goodly supply of teachers and you could do better and make more money in other lines of work.  That's what the market is supposed to do, issue price signals to workers and suppliers, when there is a shortage of something, be it Hershey bars or school teachers, the price goes up, more people take up teaching, or candy companies make more candy bars.  It's a system that has served us well, allocated labor and capital intelligently, and given us fantastic prosperity.  The Soviets tried to operate without the market and they only lasted 70 years. 
   The same op ed did note that teachers of math and science, who are always in short supply, get paid more than the average teacher.  Hint to aspiring teachers, do a math or science major in college rather than the ed major.
   I guess my other problem with the mare 'em more idea is that we have poured more and more money into public schools.  The vast funding increase has not improved our children's education, at least by objective measures like test scores.  They have remained flat over the decades while school funding has doubled. 

Why was Prince Harry wearing a black uniform?

I thought Harry had served in the British Army, you know, the Redcoats.  He was wearing a black uniform, with his pilot's wings and some ribbons, at his wedding yesterday.  

Hair Products popular with Black Women may contain harmful chemicals

Thus saith UnScientific American on their website.  They go on at some length, listing a whole bunch of organic chemicals that I am unfamiliar with.  I never took organic chem.  On the other hand, they failed to mention, anywhere, ever, just HOW MUCH of these allegedly harmful chemicals were present in the hair products.  Modern chemical analysis is so sensitive that it can detect small amounts of anything, just about anywhere.  The article failed to let us readers know if these harmful chemicals  were present in just tiny trace amounts, or in amounts large enough to matter.  

The Economics Profession ain't diverse enough

Thus saith The Economist.  They been running the occasional think piece about economics.  This week they ran the last of the series.  And all they had to talk about was the lack of diversity, women and blacks, in economics faculties.  It's a worthy thought, I think.
   But I'm more interested in whether economics as a "science" gets it right or not.  Actually I consider economics as much as an art as a science, sorta like history.  In fact economics could call itself economic history.  Since you cannot run experiments in economics, at least not on the scale of a national economy, the people object, the best economists can do is gather observations,  like they do in geology and astronomy.  So although economists use a lot of mathematics ('cause a page of equations looks so cool in a paper) it isn't really a full science like physics and chemistry.  It's scientific, sometimes.
   But the real question is do the economists really know what they are doing? 

Eradicating Polio

  A piece on NHPR the other morning talked about eradicating polio in Pakistan.  The Pakistani's mounted a massive vaccination campaign, thousands of workers, going every where, and vaccinating every child they found.  The case rate dropped from several hundred polio cases a year down to this year, just one case so far. 
   Trouble is, the vaccination program is encountering Pakistani parents who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated. The one polio case this year was a child whose parents refused vaccination, several times.  Vaccination program workers are reporting resistance and threats of violence. 
   I gotta wonder about a culture so poisonous that it prefers to see their young children die of a horrible disease rather than give them a life saving vaccine.  I remember back when the polio vaccine was first invented.  They set up tables outside in the Saxonville School yard, and in one day, they vaccinated every single kid in Saxonville including me.  Parents supported it 100%.
    

Driving back from DC.

It took me 11 and 1/2 hours this time, from DC motel to Mac's Market in Franconia.  It was pouring down rain in DC when I left at 7 AM.  It was heavy enough to create that road fog, a mix of falling rain, real fog, and spray thrown up by tires, that hangs over the roadway obscuring vision.  It was so thick I could not see an unlighted vehicle at all, and even the lighted ones were hard to see until I was right on their rear bumper.  The rain lightened up by the time I got to Delaware, and was pretty much dry at New York.  The sun was out by the time I reached Vermont.
   Pretty much every thing moving up and down the East Coast has to get thru, or get to, New York.  I tried the George Washington bridge this time, right around 12 noon.  A mistake, traffic is terrible, long periods of just plain stuck in traffic.   I think Tappan Zee bridge is a better deal.  They have the new Tappan Zee span open to traffic, and they are taking the old span down.
   The other touchy spot is Philadelphia, the last break in I95.  Coming up from the south on I95 in Delaware, you want to take the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  Don't follow the I95 signs to Philadelphia, you will get dumped off on city streets in North Philadelphia, or pushed onto I295 going the wrong way.  Looks like they never will finish I95 thru Philadelphia.   Stick with the Jersey Turnpike. 
   

Win 10 makes posting photos a pain

Used to be, back in the last decent Windows, Windows XP, you could hit photo upload in say Facebook, and you would get a set of snapshots of each photo in the directory.  Which made it pretty easy to click the photo you wanted to post.   Not too shabby.
  Well, the Micro$ofties managed to break that in Win 10.   Aren't we glad that Micro$oft has such a large programming staff with time to break stuff.  In Win 10 all you get is a bunch of  faceless icons, all alike, and you have to guess which one is the one you want to post.
Good Work Micro$ofties.

Driving down to DC, surveying the traffic

After posting about Ford getting out of the car business, at least the small econobox car business. I took note of what was on the road on the way down from Franconia to DC.  It does seem like fewer econoboxes, more pickups, more SUV's and the smaller SUVs that the car people call "crossovers".   About half the pickup trucks had company names painted on their doors, but the other half looked to be be privately owned. 
   And lots and lots of heavy trucks, 18 wheelers.  I figure that's a sign of a good economy, all those 18 wheelers on the road are either hauling some company's product to the customer, or going empty to pick up a load.  Lots and lots of heavy trucks on the interstates is a good sign.

Notes to Architects of Hotel/Motel[s]

I've on a trip to DC and have stayed in two pretty new hotels or motels on the way.  Used to be hotel was a multi story city building where you carried your bags in the front door and up to your room, and a motel was a one or two story building, each room with an exterior door, and you parked in front of you room door and carried your bags in  These two places were sorta hybrids.  You entered thru the front door, they were only a few stories tall  On points I should call them hotels.  But somehow that seems pretentious for what these places were, so I think of them as motels.  

   Improvement number 1 would be to find a floor covering that is not slippery as ice when wet.   Bathroom floors were glossy ceramic tile.  Stepping out of the shower was just asking for a fall.  Surely there is a tile product with a little grit in it to give some traction to a wet foot.  One place had a nice looking asphalt tile with a wood grain pattern to it in the bedroom.  Looked OK, but was slippery as all hell when wet.   Place had big sliding glass windows, that leaked when it rained, giving puddles on the bedroom floor.  Nearly broke my neck getting up to go to the bathroom at night. 

  Improvement Number 2, go with US standard light switches.  Both places had groovy Euro style switches, that were hard to see, even by day, and didn't feel like light switches in the dark, when you need to turn the lights on. 

   And while we are at it, lets go with water faucets clearly marked for hot and cold water.  At least colored red for hot and blue for cold.  A single tiny color dot isn't enough.

   One place had high definition TV cabled into all the rooms.  The working channels did show nice video.  About half the channels showed just error messages suggesting I check the antenna connections.  Some channels flicked off and then on.  Changing channels was slow, it took the high def TV 10-15 seconds to lock onto the high def digital signal and show a picture.  The TV would not remember it's channel settings, so turning it on in the morning meant you had to go looking for a watchable channel all over again. 

   And signage.  The Holiday Inn folk had the right idea back in the '60s, big sign, bright lights, make sure every one can see the place.  The place in DC had a tiny little sign, hidden by the brighter lights of a gas station, that I missed in the dark.   

Glad to see three American's freed from North Korea

At least they got out of Kim's jails with their health, unlike poor Otto Warmbier.  All three of them are obviously of Korean ancestry, but the press has uniformly called them Americans, which is a good thing.  And the fact that Kim let them go indicates that Kim wants something from the Americans and he thought letting these guys go would put the Americans into a better frame of mind. 

Note to foreign governments

To make a deal with the United States you have to push thru a treaty, ratified by the Senate.  Otherwise you don't have a deal.  As the Iranians are finding out.  Obama knew he could never get the Senate to agree to the Iranian deal, so he never sent to to the Senate for ratification, which means it is not a deal binding upon the United States.  And probably Obama knew that the Iranians would never agree to the kind of terms that the Senate would ratify.  So Obama settled for a not-treaty scrap of paper that was only good as long as Obama remained President.  The ever sucking up newsies gave Obama the same good publicity as if he had gotten a real treaty, which was all Obama really cared about. 
   Anyhow, if you don't get a treaty ratified by the Senate, you don't have a binding deal.
   The real trick will be to get the Europeans and Boeing to forgo all those sales to Iran.  The Iranians have good money from crude oil sales to buy a lotta stuff.  They want to buy a flock of jetliners from Boeing (many $billion in sales) and about the same number from Airbus.  Plus a lot of other stuff.  It's gonna be hard to get everyone to forgo all that Iranian money.  

Turning point in history 1782

The American Revolution is just won.  The British have capitulated and will sign a peace treaty giving the Americans just about everything they fought for. 
   Thirteen Colonies, now thirteen independent sovereign states.  Each one possesses a state government, state courts, a state code of law, an army, a navy, a state establishment that runs things to their liking and wants to keep it that way.  They all have conflicting claims to western lands, their original charters tended to claim all the land clear out to the Pacific Ocean.   Each new state, born in battle, has plenty of reasons to want to retain every scrap of their hard won liberty.  Each new state was plenty big enough by the standards of the 18th century to be an self sufficient independent nation. 
   How did these thirteen independent states manage to bury their various hatchets and form the Union?  It helped that they all spoke the same language, and had fought side by side against the British.  It also helped that they all correctly viewed Britain as a super power, who was just itching to get even for loosing the Revolutionary War, and the slightest sign of American disunity would bring the Redcoats back in force.
   As it was, each American state had to give up important pieces of sovereignty, like the right to have armies and navies, to negotiate with foreign powers, to levy tariffs against each other,  and accept laws passed by the new Federal government.  Somehow, they managed to come up with a long lasting deal, the US Constitution, that they all bought into, and which has lasted to this day.  They could have so easily got into a large variety of petty squabbles or not so petty squabbles like slavery, and all gone home mad and determined to go it alone.  Which would have seriously changed history.  

Gina Haspell for CIA director

She is Mike Pompeo's choice to replace himself.  She is a new name to me.  Apparently she is an old CIA hand, been with the agency for 30 plus years.  Actually worked in the field, collecting intelligence, rather than being a paper shuffling desk weenie back at Langley.
   Democrats have been trashing her because some of the intelligence she gathered came from vigorous interrogation of,(possibly waterboarding of) Al Quada prisoners back right after 9/11.   I'm perfectly OK with this, it shows she was actually gathering intelligence rather than opining without facts.  Or leaking to the NY Times.
  If I was going to criticize Ms Haspell, I would ask her about her views on past CIA disasters, such as the failure to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, their prediction that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, their prediction that the Iranians had stopped  their nuclear weapons program, the Valerie Plame case, and leaking the story of Bin Laden's satellite phone to the New York Times.  Bin Laden must read the Times too, after the satellite phone story broke, Bin Laden got rid of his  phone and ran Al Quada by messengers.  This probably extended his life by five years. 

Facebook's New "feature"

In the last few days, Facebook began placing tags on news articles that they force onto your Facebook feed.  Click on the tag and you get a short writeup containing the name of the source  of the article (useful) and Facebook's opinion of that source.  For Breitbart News, their opinion went on for two lines calling Breitbart right wing extremists and screwballs.  Neutral it was not.
  Question for Facebook.  If you think Breitbart is alt right trash, why do you push Breitbart articles onto my Facebook feed?

Ford wants to drop out of the car business

Ford announced this change of course last week.  They are going to concentrate on pickup trucks, SUVs, crossovers and similar stuff.  They will keep making Mustangs and one new sedan design.  But Fiesta, Focus, Taurus, and a couple of other econoboxes will be dropped. 
   Ford didn't give reasons for their plan.  At a guess, they like the higher margin in pickups and SUVs as opposed to the close to zero margins in the little econoboxes.  At the time, I thought it was short sighted to abandon the bulk of the car market to the Japanese.  I think the big boys, Ford, GM, and Chrysler/Fiat need to compete head on for a share of the biggest part of the car market.  Driving to work, or anywhere, the bulk of the vehicles I see on the road in my part of the USA are little econoboxes.  There may be be much margin in econoboxes, but there is real volume.
   Now this week some new info comes to light.  According to the Wall St Journal, both Honda and Toyota are having trouble moving their Accords and Camrys, despite new redesigns on both models, and excellent reputations going back many years.   And on Saturday, an article speculating that the sedan as a product is going away for ever, just like the station wagon did. 
   Hmm.  Maybe Ford is onto something? 

$130K Bimbo Hush Money

Did anyone, for even a minute, think that Trump's lawyer paid off Stormy Daniels out of his own pocket?  $130K may be pocket change to billionaires like Trump, but for ordinary folk like New York lawyers, $130K is real money, far too much to just kick in out of friendship. 
   Apparently it's a big surprise to the TV newsies.  They have been talking about little else ever since Rudi Guliani said that Trump reembursed the lawyer for it yesterday.  I mean, what else did you think happened?  

Speed up your computer. Uninstall Avast

Computer had been getting sluggish and flaky.  So bad that I dared to run ComboFix, world's most aggressive anti virus.  Combo Fix didn't find much, but it did demand I shut down Avast's active virus scanner, 'cause it was interfering with ComboFix.  The only way I could find to shut down Avast was to uninstall it.  The Avast uninstaller whined a lot and took forever, but it did get Avast off the machine. 
   After killing off Avast, Trusty Desktop is perceptibly more lively.  He is an older machine, but he has a 2.19 gigahertz processor and nearly a gigabyte of RAM, not too shabby, even today.  He is still running XP, which is leaner and meaner than the later Micro$oft offerings. 
   These virus scanners hook onto the network port, and inspect every packet, in coming and out going,  which slows your internet a lot.  It was really showing up running Firefox.  Downloads were flaky, and Firefox would freeze for long enough to irritate the bejesus out of me.  Getting rid of Avast cleaned up a lot of that.

Those questions for President Trump

The ever clueful  New York Times is the source for the list.  It might have been leaked from the Mueller investigators (doubtful)  or Trump's people (somewhat more likely) or just invented out of clear blue sky by the NY Times people (highly likely).  I notice a senior Times editor just left the Times, could it be over inventing fake news?
   The questions that I saw are kinda awful.  Totally vague, which allows the prosecutors to bear down and take the interview anywhere they want.  Lots of "what did you think" questions,  which is fishing for a thought crime.  Covering vast stretches of time, which makes it hard for the target to remember everything he said or did going back 10 and 20 years.  And opens the target up for perjury charges should he misstate or misremember any picayune detail. 
   Was I Trump, I'd hold out for written questions, asked in writing and replied to in writing.  And I get some very clever lawyers to go over each answer with a fine toothed comb to weed out any booby trap answers.  

I don't believe in thought crimes

Crimes, that get you hauled into court, ought to be things you did, not thoughts you had.  To be a free country, like we claim to be, one should be free to think anything they like.  Only actions can be criminalized. 
And not too many actions either.  I believe Moses got the number just about right, and Moses lived and died thousands of years ago.  

  Take that newsie's Watergate Wail, "What did he know and when did he know it?"  That's a cry to pursue a thought crime.  "Knowing" is pure thought.  It's perfectly legal to know damn near anything.  Why do the newsies go about siccing cops and courts on people just for knowing something?  A far better question is "What did he do, and when did he do it?"  

   A lot of places have passed new laws penalizing "hate crimes".  These are things already crimes, they just added some extra jail time if the crime is motivated by prejudice against minorities.  I don't hold with that.  The law should punish actions, crimes, the same way no matter what the perp was thinking, before during, or after committing the crime.  Murder is murder, doesn't matter why the accused committed murder. 

Cultural Appropriation

The social justice warriors are attacking a good looking young woman for wearing a prom dress with some Chinese style to it.  Despicable.  Its a good looking dress, makes her look good.  You ought to be able to select your prom dress on how it looks on you, not whether SJW fanatics will dump on you for your choice.
   Western civilization has been very effective over the centuries at adopting important technical ideas from other cultures.  Magnetic compass, which vastly improved the odds of your ship returning safely, came from China, and only appears in Western literature in the time of King Richard the Lionheart.  Gunpowder also came from China, although the idea of putting it into cannon is probably a western idea. Some early cannon were taken to the battle of Agincourt in 1415.
   I am in favor of cultural appropriation.  If other cultures have good ideas, or well styled garments, or well cooked food (chili, pizza,bleu cheese,lots of other goodies)  we ought to adopt them.   

Trump vs the NORKs

Hard to tell how things are going.  According to the newsies, Kim Jong whats-his-face has offered to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.  Assuming that's what Kim really said, and not an overly wishful translation by peacenik newsies, it's good.  That's more and better  than any NORK offer since 1953.   Granted we have some well founded trust issues with the NORKS, i.e. we think they are liars, it's still good to have them making the denuclearization offer.
   And certainly we have one idea of what denuclearization means and the NORKs have another, and we may not be able to come up with a compromise acceptable to both sides,  there is still a possibility of success  We ought to go for it.
    Big question.  Why is Kim making nice now?  Possibly the US led trade embargo is beginning to bite?  Possibly the Chinese are worried about American tariffs on their goods killing their economy, and so have decided to make nice with the Americans by leaning on Kim?  My sources say that the NORKs are totally dependent upon imports of fuel and food from China.  Perhaps the Chinese are telling Kim to cool it with the Yankees or face a cutoff of vital imports. Although the Chinese like having the NORKs around as a buffer state between them and the pushy American allied South Koreans, and as an attack dog who they can sic on the Americans any time they want to , they cannot be happy with the idea of a nuclear armed North Korea.  And both we and the Chinese have doubts about the stability of Kim's government.  If  revolution breaks out in the North,  the Chinese fear that the South will take over all of Korea, the way West Germany took over all of Germany.  Bye-bye buffer state and attack dog.  So the Chinese may be reining Kim in to prevent him from over stressing his hold on power in the North.
   Who knows? 
   If things work out right, President Trump ought to get a Nobel Peace Prize. 

The Economist discovers a new Greenhouse Gas

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has been the greenie's favorite greenhouse gas.  Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are blamed for global warming.  These are gases that are transparent to visible light and near visible light (short infrared and some ultraviolet) and opaque to long wave infrared.  Solar heat comes to the earth and warms it as visible light.  The warmed earthly objects, rocks, soil, vegetation, everything, throws off heat by radiating long wave infrared.  On the night side of earth, the long wave infrared goes up into space carrying heat with it.  Overall earthly temperature is believed to be the result of a balance between incoming Solar heat on the day side, and outgoing infrared radiation on the night side.  Increased levels of greenhouse gas block the long wave infrared and are believed to increase the average temperature of the earth. 
   Now the Economist has a long piece about the evils of methane in the atmosphere.  It's dreadful.  Methane is the bulk of natural gas, and flatulence.  It comes from leaks in natural gas pipelines and gas wells, as well as flatulence among cows, of which there are lot on the earth.
  Only one little problem with the methane scare story.  The Economist shows a graph starting in 1984 and going to 2018.  Methane in the atmosphere has increased from 1650 parts per BILLION, to 1850 parts per BILLION. 
Rescale from parts per billion to the more widely used parts per million, and the methane levels become 1.65 PPM and 1.85 PPM. 
   We have good laboratory data going back about 100 years on carbon dioxide levels.  They used to be 350 some PPM, and now are getting close to 400 PPM. 
  Somehow I don't think less than 2 PPM of methane will ever make much difference against 400 PPM of carbon dioxide.
   And for that matter, plain old water vapor is as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide or methane, and the atmosphere contains about 10000 PPM of water vapor.  It varies from time to time, the weathermen call it humidity and report it on the nightly news.  As I write this, it's raining outside, which means 100% relative humidity.   Since there is about 25 times more water vapor in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, I don't worry much about carbon dioxide.  Compared to the water vapor, there just isn't enough carbon dioxide to worry about.  And the water vapor is better than 1000 times more plentiful than methane. 
   On a planet that is three quarters ocean, nothing is going to reduce the water vapor content of the atmosphere.  Plus the water vapor comes down as rain, which most places need more of. 

Too bad about Bill Cosby

I remember Bill Cosby in "I Spy" on Philadelphia TV in the 1950's.  I once owned the "200 Miles an Hour" LP record.  "Mother Jugs and Speed" was hilarious.  "Fat Albert" livened up Saturday morning cartoon time. He did the Doc Huxtable gig well.  I never met the guy, all I know him by is his entertainments, which were entertaining.
  I am sorry to hear that he has been convicted of sexual some-thing-other committed 14 years ago.  We used to call it rape, but apparently simple four letter words are too much for lawyers and the political correct now a days.
   Too bad such an good comedian turned out to be a rapist.  
   
  

New Hampshire must be doing something right

Thursday's Wall St Journal had a bar chart, showing growth of personal income in all the New England states.  New Hampshire is best in show, with 3.5 % income growth for last year, 2017.  Better than Massachusetts (3.3%) , better than the US average (3.1%).  Way better than Connecticut which only managed 1.5%.    The purpose of the editorial was to trash Connecticut's performance and blame it on state government's tax hikes, deficit spending and driving GE to move to Massachusetts.  It didn't say anything about what pushed New Hampshire to the top, but Governor Sununu ought to use this chart in his next campaign for governor.  

Farewell to Heat and Eats

They aren't the greatest, they aren't the worst, and they do heat up and serve just one, which is nice for us who live alone.  But now, it looks like heat and eats are off my menu.
  Reason?  More and more heat and eats now say "Microwave only" and "Do not heat in conventional oven or toaster oven".  I don't have a microwave, my kitchen is very small and I just don't have any counter space to put a microwave.   And I don't plan on remodeling my kitchen just so I can microwave heat and eats.
   I wonder why the heat and eat makers only want us to microwave their product?

How Hollywood can improve its product

Let's start with the actors.  Actors must speak up.  Mumbling, or whispering means we the audience don't hear your lines. Do enough of that and we loose interest in the movie.  And in the same vein, sound men need to take especial care to place the microphones in just the right places.  And when editing the sound track, mixing in the score and the sound effects, don't obscure the dialogue.  Mute both score and sound effects when the actors are speaking. 
   First rule for camera men.  Put the camera on a tripod and leave it there.  Those arty shake the camera shots which were are the rage a few years ago are just plain annoying to us in the audience.  And turn the lights on set ON, before starting to film.  Don't do those black on black shots, with all the lights out.  Game of Thrones, season 6 is a prominent offender in this respect. 
   Directors need to help us in the audience by putting different costumes on the various actors to help us tell one from another.  Don't have everyone wear the same costume, or even worse, same uniform.  They used to have the good guys wear white hats and the bad guys wear black hats.  That was a good idea, and should be kept up. 
   A movie needs a protagonist ($2 word meaning hero or heroine) with whom we can identify, and like.  Don't show us scumbag protagonists, we won't like them, or the movie.  Female protagonists are fine,  Katniss Everdeen and Rey did just fine.  Protagonist needs a challenge to overcome.  And we in the audience need to know what that challenge is, early on, it helps us understand what is going on.  Tolkien handled this in the second chapter of Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf tells Frodo about the ring and what has to be done with it.  For the rest of the trilogy, it was clear to us readers what was going on.  Build the movie to a climax, where the protagonist faces his/her challenge and either defeats it or suffers defeat him/herself.  We like movies where the good guy[s] win, but we will put up with a tragedy if it's well done.
  And we have enough comic book movies.  If you lack the originality to do your own story, there are plenty of good books that have not yet been used as the basis for movies. 

How did those refugees get on the train roofs??

TV has been talking up a caravan of central American refugees, traveling up thru Mexico, riding on the roofs of boxcars, heading for the US border.  Hoping to be granted refugee status in America.
Question.  How did all those people get up on the roofs of the boxcars?  In America, the Federal Railway Administration decided that allowing railroad workers on top of cars was just too dangerous.  They ordered the roofwalks and the ladders removed.  Back in the dawn of time, before the invention of the Westinghouse air brake, railroad brake men used to run along the tops of the cars, tightening up the handbrake wheels when the engineer whistled for brakes on.  This hasn't been necessary for the last hundred and something years, the engineer now pulls a brake lever in the engine cab, and compressed air puts the brakes on, thruout the length of the train.
    Anyhow, about 1970, on American railroads, new cars were purchased without roofwalks or ladders giving access to the roof.  By now, no freight cars in the US have easy access to the roof.  I assume the Mexican railroads follow US practices since they interchange cars with US roads, and vice versa.
   I assume that an athletic 20 something can climb up on top of a boxcar without ladders.  But what about women and children?  Surely not all of those refugees are athletic 20 somethings? 

Is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans?

It's hard to tell by listening to the politicians.  They mostly bland down their words until they really don't mean anything.  They have learned that speaking out on one side of any substantive issue just looses them votes.  The voters that don't like what they hear will remember and make a point to vote against them, where as the voters that like what they hear don't care enough to get to the polls on election day.  So the professional politicians practice saying as little as possible while sounding good.  Hence all the happy talk about motherhood and apple pie.  Donald Trump is an exception to this rule and it hasn't killed him, yet.
  But there are real differences between the parties.  Consider the matter of helping the poor.  Republicans believe the real solution to poverty is plenty of decent jobs. Which means they favor things that help business because business creates those decent jobs. Democrats believe the real solution to poverty is government handouts, welfare, food stamps, single payer health care and such.  Paid for by confiscating (taxing) wealth from the wealthy and giving it to the poor.  With some nice fat skimming off  the top for deserving friends of the party.
   Modern Republicans believe that America, as the largest and strongest country in the world, needs to take action to oppose foreign tyranny, obnoxious ideologies, nuclear proliferation, and out right banditry.  Modern Democrats are isolationists and peaceniks.  They don't believe that anything outside our borders deserves our attention.  This is a reversal of the party positions from the early years of the 20th century. 
   Republicans are respectful of Christianity and organized religion.  Democrats favor removing religious symbols (creches) from just about everywhere, and punishing anyone who offers prayer in public.
  

Is Fiction Really Dead?

Every Saturday the Wall Street Journal publishes a best seller list.  They break it down into hardcover fiction, ebook fiction, hardcover non ficition, ebook nonfiction and business titles.  Often as not, best sellers in hardcover fiction will be Dr. Suess, or Shel Silverstein.  Both of these are classic children's books, every child has, or ought to have, a copy.  Parents, grandparents and grown up friends and relatives buy these classics for birthdays and Christmas presents.  There is a steady market, proportional the the number of small children in the country.  When one of these steady sellers makes it to the top of the best seller list, it really means that no other author has been able to sell all that many copies of their work.  The last real best seller fiction were the Harry Potter stories, that J.K. Rowling fed into the market every other year or so.  I can remember riding the Boston subway to and from work where a quarter of the riders in the subway car would be reading the latest hardback Harry Potter yarn.  That's a best seller.  We don't seem to have any best sellers of that magnitude any more.
   Partly the dropoff in best seller fiction is the fault of the big publishers.  They won't look at any new fiction unless the author has acquired an agent.  There aren't all that many agents in the world and the ones that are out there, are swamped with clients.  They won't take on a new author.  They are too busy.
   Even best selling author Tom Clancy had to go all around Robin Hood's barn to get into print back in the 1980's.  His best seller, Hunt for Red October , was finally published by the Naval Institute Press,  a specialty house for technical works for Navy officers.  After  the smash hit success of his first book, Tom had no trouble getting his second best seller, Red Storm Rising, published by GP Putnam.
   What this means, is as the established authors die off,  (for example Clancy died quite recently) there is nobody in the pipeline to replace them. 

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.