Drug Pushing Robo Callers and the Opioid Crisis

I am getting a phone call every other day now.  It's a robocaller who starts out asking if I am feeling any pain, and goes on to point me toward a pain clinic that will prescribe any kind of happy pill I might want.  I wonder how many opioid addicts get started by such drug pushing robocallers.  For that matter how many opioid addicts get started at those pain clinics, like the one that opened up here in Littleton a year or so ago?  Anyone have any numbers on this?

Near Money and the federal deficit.

Money goes back to King Croesus of Lydia, 595-547 BC.   In his time money was precious metals (gold or silver, sometimes copper) stamped into coins of uniform size and purity.  Coins made commerce easier, you could do a deal by simply counting the coins,  prior to that,  you had to find a balance and a set of trusted weights and weigh the gold or silver in order to do the deal. 
   In those days there was not much that could be done to alter the money supply, short of a silver or gold strike.  The Athenian fleet that crushed the Persians at Salamis was built with the proceeds of a rich silver strike on Athenian soil.  More commonly kings would debase the coinage by adding lead to the silver or copper to the gold.  But they could not debase the coinage so far that the coins looked funny, which was probably in the order of 50%, which is the same as doubling the money supply.
   Paper money was invented in the middle ages, after Gutenberg invented printing.   The obvious benefit was there was no shortage of paper and the king could print as much money as he needed to meet payroll when times were tight.  The drawback to paper money is a lot of people distrust [ed] it.  As late as the American Revolution the printing of Continental dollars to finance the war was controversial and there is language in the Constitution forbidding the states to "make Anything but Gold and Silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts"
   Paper money finally won, certainly because huge amounts of money were needed to run the huge new economies that came out of the Industrial Revolution.  There just isn't enough gold and silver to make the vast modern economies work.  We also learned that printing too much money reduces it's buying power.  When I was a child ice cream cones were 5 cents, comic books were 10 cents, and gasoline was 28 cents.  Now ice cream cones are $2.50, comic books are $4-$5, and gasoline is $2.80.  In short the buying power of the US dollar has gone down by a factor of ten over my lifetime. Any money in bank accounts is only worth a tenth of what it was worth 60 years ago. 
    Now we come to my college economics course,  using Samuelson as a text,   Samuelson wrote about "near money" by which he meant government bonds.  He wrote that issuing a bond was just about the same as printing new dollar bills.  Consider the US T-bill.  It is backed by the full faith and credence of the United States, the most powerful nation on earth with an enviable record of never welshing on its debts.  There is a bond market, where the bond can be converted into real cash on any working day,  Holding a bond is nearly as good as holding cash, plus you earn interest on the bond.  So Samuelson called government bonds "near money". 
   Now we get the point.  When the federal government is short on money, ("runs a deficit") it sells bonds  to raise the cash to meet its bills.  Which is just about the same as printing dollar bills.  It's inflationary,  Printing money is why the value of the US dollar has dropped to a tenth of what it was when I was a child.  Printing "near money: works about the same. 
  So far, despite humongous deficits run up by Obama, and the humongous bond sales to make payroll, the inflation rate has remained under 2%.  Dunno how that  happens, but is has. 

"Technology" in place of a real wall

We tried that once.  I was in Thailand back during the war.  We tried to close the Ho Chi Minh trail.  It was a real foot path, running from North Viet Nam, down thru Laos, to South Viet Nam.  The Viet Cong got all their supplies back packed down the trail.  It took a lotta comrades with back packs to equal what we brought to our troops using a single Army truck.   The trail ran under triple canopy jungle all the way.  You could not see it from the air.  The jungle canopy was so thick that when we dropped 1000 pound bombs we could not see the leaves even ripple when they exploded on the ground. 
   So, we dropped sensors up and down the trail where we thought it ran.  We brought in a squadron of big four engine C121 Super Constellation  recon aircraft to fly up and down the trail reading all the sensors, which were mostly microphones.  The plan was to have the Connies call in air strikes when ever they detected anything on the trail.  All they ever picked up was some monkeys, screaming at each other, and some water buffalo crashing thru the underbrush.  Never detected any comrades for us to bomb. 
   Now I am hearing Democrats on TV saying that "technology" is better to secure the southern border than a plain old wall.  Every time I hear that it reminds me of closing the Ho Chi Minh trail with "technology". 

Beat the Press goes up against the Shutdown

Host Chuck Todd spent much of his hour ait time wailing about the government shutdown.  Strange.  They have been shut down for two weeks and I haven't missed them at all.  My mail is getting delivered.  I don't expect a refund check from the IRS, so they can stay shut down forever far as I am concerned.  I don't fly much so I don't care about the TSA. 
   Far as I can see, things are working with some 800,000 civil servants off the job.  Maybe we could keep on that way and save some taxpayer money.  These people get paid far better than they would in the private sector, far better than most of my constituents in Coos county, they have first class medical benefits, first class pensions, and they are all democrats.  My sympathy for them is limited.  If they run out of money they can go out and get a real job in the private economy. 
   And, if the Congress had done their duty earlier this year, and passed the federal funding bills like they are supposed to, the government would be open right now. 

The Last Kingdom 2015

It is a TV series for 2015.  I netflixed the first disk.  It is a historical drama, Vikings vs Saxons in 900 AD England.  I watched episode 1.  I don't think I will bother with the rest of them.
   They hired the worthless cameraman from Game of Thrones, the one who turns the lights out on set before filming.  Some black on black scenes, and all the scenes so poorly lit I could not tell one character from another.  Plus everyone dressed alike,  identical outfits of furs and grey homespun.  We see the protagonist start off as a 12 year old Saxon heir to an important Saxon noble family.  He gets captured by and raised by the Vikings.  We see him as a 12 year old, and suddenly a time jump and he is a young man.  Uhtred serves more as a target for abuse, both from his Saxon family and his Viking adoptive family than a real protagonist.  If Uhtred has a mission to accomplish, or a quest to go on, you couldn't prove it by me.   His relationship with a girlfriend is pretty tentative, we never hear the girlfriend's name.   

Beware *.mov files

A new piece of malware places files with names like AB1234.mov on your hard drive.  They are badness, and clicking on them, to see what is in them, crashes my XP computer.  A quick search with Explorer found 11 of them.  I zapped them all.

Aquaman 2018

Saw it down in Lincoln last night.  It's long.  2 & 1/4 hours.  It doesn't move very fast.  Lots of really pretty CGI work creating Atlantis under water.  Lots of combat, chases, smashing and crashing.  Much of the movie is underwater down in Atlantis.  The underwater bit is convincing, the actor's hair waves gently in water currents, they float in the water, feet not touching the floor.  Lots of battle scenes, actors riding huge unlikely sea beasts.  When the sea beasts take enough hits from energy weapons they burst into flames, under water, which is a little confusing.  There is a plot,  Aquaman must retrieve a lost magical trident.  We only learn this halfway thru the movie.  Aquaman's girlfriend Mera has really outstanding bright red hair.  Brighter and redder than anything I ever saw on stage or in real life.  I kept wondering how they did that.  Was it a superior hair dresser?  A wig?  Digital retouching  with a professional movie maker's version of Photoshop?  It was striking no matter how they did it.  Nicole Kidman played Aquaman's mother, starting by falling in love with Somebody-or-Other Curry, a Maine light house keeper.  She is as cute as Mera.  Nobody addresses anyone by name in the movie, I had to go to IMDB to find the stage names. 
   The camera man did turn the lights on, and all the scenes were watchable, no black on black mystery scenes.  Sound man was adequate but not great.  The guy who did Spiderman was better, but I caught most of the dialog.
    Lots of hand to hand combat, fighters tossed each other tremendous distances, landing with a hard crash that ought to have killed an elephant, but everybody bounces right up and goes for another fall.  Atlantians (except Aquaman) wore armor and carried energy weapons.  Aquaman was into tridents and the bare chest look. 

Beat The Press does global warming today

Host Scott Todd started off the Sunday show by saying, "We are not goi9ng to discuss the science (that is settled) or give deniers a voice"  Translation "Ye shall believe in Global Warming and why are you not sacrificing to it?"  Well, I believe in thermometer readings.  Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS for short)  maintains a database of every temperature reading going right back to the invention of the thermometer.  I downloaded the whole schmeer.  It was old fashioned, data in fixed length 80 byte records, no separators, clearly a file going back to punch card times.  I wrote a simple data swabber in C to convert the old GISS data into comma separated variable format acceptable to Excel.  Plotted in Excel, the data shows that global warming leveled off 19 years ago.  Not a peep since 1999.  So, no I don't believe in global warming since it doesn't show up to thermometers.  I am an engineer, I believe in instrument readings. 
   The show went on.  They gave Governor Moonbeam a lot of air time. He spent it ranting against Republicans who fail to sacrifice to global warming.  The gist of the show, we need a good stiff "Carbon tax" to curb the burning of fuels.  And politicians who fail to vote to tax their constituents to support the holy cause are sinners.

HIding "Libraries" in Win 10

Micro$oft decided to clutter up Explorer with the concept of "Libraries".  They musta had a lot of software weenies hanging with nothing to do.  A library shows up in Explorer and looks pretty much like a file folder.  Win 10 comes with four built in libraries, Documents, Videos, Pictures and one other.  Although a "Library" looks like a file folder, it is not really a file folder, it's a collection of shortcuts.   If there is any use for "libraries" I have yet to discover it. 
I was able to clean up my explorer display by going to "View" and then "Navigation Pane" (far left and lower down)  Uncheck "Libraries" and bingo, most, maybe all of the duplicate file entries go away.  Making it much easier to find files.  Since Micro$oft assigns ALL your files to one of the four "libraries" it blesses you with, then ALL your files show up TWICE in Explorer, a PITA.

Now, if I could find a way to make Explorer search the ENTIRE hard drive, I might really have something.

Game of Thrones Season 7

I think this show is wearing out.  Too bad, it has been fun.  They killed off too many of the interesting characters.  About all we have left are Denarys and Arya.  The camera man is still on his turn-the-lights-out kick, producing totally black scenes, and a lot of scenes so poorly lit I cannot identify the characters in the scene.  The sound man isn't doing very well.  I cannot catch a lot of the dialog.  They would do much better with the soundman from the newest Spiderman flick,  I could understand every line of dialog  the spidermen spoke.  Why cannot Game of Thrones do as well?  So far in season 7 they are bracing for the attack of the White Walkers from north of the wall.  John Snow is trying to cut some kinda deal with Denarys and her dragons.  Some great scenes of flying dragons spouting fire on enemy infantry and barbecuing them all.   We don't see much of Denarys' Dothraki horde, although she has finally gotten them to Westeros. I got a couple of more episodes to watch, but so far nothing much has happened.  Things move slowly.  

Half the history books look like political rants

I am Christmas shopping at Gibson's bookstore in Concord NH.  They have been in business a long time, and now occupy a fine big new building right on Main St.  Good stock.  Lots of books.  I am browsing the history shelf.  It struck me that at least half the books called history had titles and dust jackets suggesting either a political rant or a strong lefty slant.  I wonder where the schools are going for textbooks these days.  No sign of Morison and Commager, the college level go to US history book when I went to college.   Or Bruce Catton.  Or Shelby Foote.  Or Winston Churchill.

Buck passing, finger pointing, and Gov'mint shutdown

Congress is supposed to fund the federal government by passing appropriation bills, one for each department (defense, state, treasury, HHS, etc).  Congress did manage to pass a few appropriation bills this year, but appropriation bills for a lot of paper pushing departments never got passed.  And so they are furloughing their civil servants just in time for Christmas. 
   Let's blame that on footdragging by the Democrats and obstructionism by right wing Republicans.  But if Congress had done its duty, we would not be having a shutdown right now.  The Democrats like to wait til the last minute and then pass a "continuing resolution", one giant bill funding the whole federal government.  The one giant funding bill is so big that nobody understands it, anything goes into it,  and there are plenty of hiding places for juicy pieces of pork.  Where as an appropriation bill for just one department can be understood (with a lot of study) and once understood, can be changed to give Congress some control over what each department can do.
   This time the TV tells me that 75% of the government has been funded, and thus stays open.  Only 25% is shutting down.  The list of shutting down departments they flash on the TV screen seems to be mostly departments that don't do anything for citizens, and which we could do without, for ever.  It's a little tough on the civil servants who are gonna miss a pay check at Christmas time.  On the other hand, civil service jobs pay better and have better benefits and retirement than private sector jobs.  And civil servants are mostly Democrats. 

Congress lacks the stones to vote to keep the government open

Both House and Senate, facing important votes to keep the government running and fund President Trump's border wall, have failed to vote on the bill[s].  Instead they have been conducting meaningless "procedural" votes.   The one in the Senate has been stalled, killing any Senate business for 4 hours now.  A real vote is a vote to pass or kill the bill on the floor.  Procedural votes don't do that, they soak up time, they give legislators the opportunity to vote one way on the "procedural" vote and the other way on the real vote, so they can tell their constituents  both yes and no, I voted for it on the procedural vote and against it on the real vote. 
  If the government shuts down, blame it on totally opaque Congressional procedures that failed to bring the needed legislation to a real up or down floor vote.   Lack of stones.

Wall Street Wails over 2.5% interest rate from the Fed.

The Fed bumped interest rates up by 0.25% to 2.5% overall.  The Dow Jones dropped 400 points and every pundit is crying that the Fed is killing the recovery and throwing the country back into Great Depression 2.0.  Right.
   6% has been considered a proper interest rate, going back to  medieval times.  I remember my first house mortgage at 7 and 1/8th, way back in the 1970's,  thinking at the time that I had a pretty decent mortgage rate.   Far as I am concerned all the weeping and wailing  over 2.5% is coming from modern snowflakes.    Bring on that global warming and melt those crybaby snowflakes. 

Spiderman, the Spiderverse

Saw this yesterday in Lincoln with youngest son.  Its long.  It moves slowly.  The animation and art  work is good, fine images.  Give the video folks a few more years and we will not be able to tell live actors from CGI actors.  Aunt May is very convincing, in a few more years they will be able to slip her into a live action movie and we could not tell that she was not acted by a human.  Sound man does good, I could understand all the lines.  Camera man (CGI artists?) done good, all the scenes are properly lighted.  It's animation all the way, no live actors at all.  
    Miles some-thing-or-other, is the teen age protagonist.  He is drawn as black or Hispanic.  He serves mostly as a punching bag thru out the film.  He doesn't seem to have a mission, he doesn't do much, he gets dumped on, he seldom  acts for himself.  He has an impenetrable relation with his father (a cop) and an uncle who alternates between family member and masked villain.  The artist doing Miles should have made him cuter, more like the ultra cute but nameless Spider girl.
   Plot is strange.  Some kinda inter dimensional door opens and Spidermen (and girls) from a dozen strange dimension turn up, including Peter Porker.  
   Only diehard Spiderman fans need to see this flick.  It's too long and slow moving for  kids.

Bimbo payoffs are now campaign finance violations???

Paying off a bimbo to keep her mouth shut is kinda slimey, and NOT an indicator of good moral character, but it ain't a campaign finance violation.  Even  Alan Dershowitz  agrees with me on this point.  Why this Cohen character, former fixer for Donald Trump, is pleading guilty to a campaign finance violation 'cause he cut the check[s] to one or two bimbos is a mystery to me.  You would think an experienced lawyer/fixer would put up more of a fight in court.  And for that matter,  I'd expect Donald Trump to do more than he has to keep an old buddy/fixer out of jail. 

Congressional Hearing on Google reveals smart phones report your position, every minute

Scary,  Testimony in front of Congress this morning claims that Android cell phones report their ( and their owners) position about once a minute.  I only carry a cheap dumb phone.  I wonder what it is reporting, and to whom it reports to.    The idea that the government, the cops, NSA, FBI and who knows who else can know where I am, minute by minute, is scary.  I certainly am not gonna update to a smart phone. 

NH Senate Organization Day

Second day on the job.   Left the house at 7 AM.  Got to Concord a little past 8 8AM.  Since they had not assigned me a State House parking space, I parked in the shopping mall and walked up.  It's only a couple of blocks. 

   We met in the newly refurbished Senate chamber.  Lovely corner room, with lots of nice big windows on two walls.  Lots of sunlight.  All the elaborate wood work had a fresh new coat of cream colored paint, new carpet,  half the murals had been cleaned.  Governor Sununu swore us all in. First order of business was to elect Donna Soucy of Manchester as the new Senate president.  She was nominated and then we did a voice vote.  All aye's, no nays.   Then we re-elected Tammy Wright as Senate clerk, same procedure  just one nomination followed by a unanimous voice vote.

    Then we got down to a substantive vote for the Secretary of State.  We moved into the house chamber, they had seats for us in front.   Bill Gardener  is the incumbent, has been for better than 40 years.  He has kept NH scandal free, no Florida style disasters.  He favors the use of paper ballots, which I agree is a good idea.  They cannot hack  paper ballots over the internet.  Colin Van Osten  was the challenger.  A lot of democrats like Van Osten because he looks likely to enfranchise a bunch of democrat leaning voters that Gardener won't.  After nominating speeches, followed by seconding speeches,   we voted by paper ballot.  When those were counted, we had 208 votes for Gardener, and 207 for Van Osten.   That caused a tizzy, the Speaker declared the margin too thin and we would have to vote again.  This set off  an hour of  motions and speeches  and citing of  "rules".  Then we did a second paper ballot  and Gardener squeaked by 209 to 205.

    By then it was 4 in the afternoon and getting dark.  The bankers threw a free beer and munchies event across the street at Tandy's.  Naturally I stopped in, I never turn down free beer.  Spent about an hour, chatting with a whole bunch of people.  Got on the road home at 5 PM.  It was pitch dark by then.  Traffic going north on I93 was heavy, but it kept moving right along at 70 mph.  Got home a little after 6PM.  Cat was overjoyed to see her human back safe and sound. 

Ivanhoe 1952 Taylor and Taylor

Too bad Hollywood has forgotten how to make movies as good as this one.   It stars a young Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca of York.  The movie is a love triangle with Joan Fountaine (Rowena) and Elizabeth Taylor (Rebecca) competing for the attentions of Robert Taylor (Wilfred of Ivanhoe).  Elizabeth Taylor is ultra cute, has good lines, speaks them well, and nearly snags Ivanhoe away from Rowena.  Robert Taylor plays a fine knight, brave, chivalrous, and a stout fighter. The movie is based on a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, published way back when, sometime in the 19th century.  It is set in the 12th century and revolves around ransoming King Richard Lion Heart from the Austrians and preventing his brother John from taking over England.  The history isn't bad, a few names have been changed but most of the stuff in the movie really did happen.  Richard's minstrel Blondell did actually go from castle to castle looking for Richard.  In the movie Ivanhoe gets Blondell's job, but heh it's a movie, a little poetic license is perfectly legitimate.  We have real jousting, on horseback and with long lances.  The knights wear period correct chain mail rather than gleaming plate armor which didn't come in until a couple of hundred years later. We have a castle stormed and taken by Robin Hood and his merry men.   We have King Richard returning in time to save the day in the last reel.  It's in Technicolor which always gives the best red rendition and good color saturation.  The costumes are good looking, and everyone wears a different color, so we can keep track of who is who.  Sound is excellent, I can understand every line.  In it's day Ivanhoe won three Oscars, and was nominated for four more. 
    Netflix has it.  Enjoy.

TV Newsies starting the 2020 presidential campaign right now.

I'm watching Beat the Press on NBC with Chuck Todd.  He said some nice words about President Bush, now deceased, and then moved on to prognosticating about 2020.  First of all, I am tired of election horse race talk, we have had too much of it for the last two years.  Second of all, nobody knows what's gonna happen in 2020.  Pure speculation, and I am tired of that. 
   Surely something real happened somewhere in the world worth a little air time?  

I don't understand all the Manaport and Cohen talk

The TV newsies are all excited about it.  Even Fox News who ought to know better. Me, I don't understand what either of them are accused of doing, I don't know if what they are accused of is a real crime, and I don't understand how this relates to Trump, other than both of them used to work for Trump.   Back in 2016, before Trump got elected, it isn't illegal to do a real estate deal in Moscow.  Might be stupid, because you cannot take Russian real estate out of the country, and inside Russia there are no courts that can protect your investment from seizure by the government.   But it ain't illegal for Americans to do business in Russia. 

What costs $1 million a pound?

Answer,  the Insight Mars Lander.  The lander weighs 850 pounds.  The Insight program cost $829 million.  How much of all that money went into engineering and manufacturing Insight and how much went into NASA paper pushing?

Orientation Day for new NH legislators.

First day on the job as NH senator. Tuesday was on-the-job training day at the Statehouse. Due to winter storm warnings, snowmageddon stories and general excitement on the TV I left for Concord half and hour earlier than I usually do. I swept about 2 inches of snow off the car. I93 was nice and clear, well plowed. Just a few slippery spots. All the flashing light signs were flashing "Slow Down" and "Speed limit 45". Traffic was moving at 70 all the way to Concord. Heaviest snow, maybe 6 inches, was south around Franklin and Tilton.  Heavy wet snow, it was bending the trees in U shapes with the treetops touching the ground.  I got to the Statehouse a half an hour early, Joe Burke, chief of security, was standing outside in the rain to wave me into a parking spot in the statehouse garage, real luxury.

The program for the day was lectures on legislative process, ethics over view, a walking tour of the statehouse, pitches by the council of state governments, and then the national conference of state legislatures, a nice lunch, how a committee works, media relationships.

I finished off the day by meeting with a guy from the NH homebuilders association in the restaurant across the street.

Drove home, got their after dark. Driveway unplowed, although one of Ken King's people came by this morning and shoveled out the car.

Do the Brits understand Brexit?

Surely the Economist (a Brit publication if there ever was one) seems pretty clueless.  They ran a 4 page piece in the current issue about "no-deal" Brexit.   The deal that Theras May has gotten thru her cabinet and was approved by the EU according to this morning's Wall St Journal, was a pretty mild Brexit.  Britain would retain her current membership in the EU customs union, which I think means she retains duty free access to the rest of Continent.   She would have to abide by a lot of EU regulations about labeling and  lead free solder and safety and radio frequency emissions and the like, she would have to pay up some $50 billion of previous committments, and a lot of other stuff.  She get to keep duty free entrance to the EU.  The Economist is all in favor.  A lot, nobody knows just how many, members of parliament don't like it, they think it is Remain disguised as Brexit. 
   Numbers I have seen show 30% of Britain's economy is exports to the EU.  If all those British exports have to pay the going EU tariff of 10%, a lot of that business would go to continental suppliers.  The Economist dosn't talk about this at all. 
   They do kvetch about Parliament rejecting the Theresa May deal in favor of a "no deal" Brexit.  They wrote about all sorts of unlikely problems, like banning of air service to the continent,  problems with electric power exports or imports, a Northern Ireland customs border, lotta other stuff, all of which seemed sorta second rate to me.  The Economist piece never talked about the effect of 10% EU tariffs on British exports to the continent, which to my way of thinking is the major problem with the "no-deal" option of Brexit.

Turkey day travel

Drove from Franconia to Bowie Maryland on Friday.  Took 11 hours.  I left Franconia at 6 AM after brushing an inch of snow off the car.  Did the backwoods shortcut to North Haverill and then took I93, to I84, to Tappan Zee bridge.  Rpads were clear.  Hit the New York border and then encountered my first potholes, on an interstate no less, and then my first traffic jam.  Good work New York State.  Found the old Blue Colony diner at I84 exit 10.  In the old days the Blue Colony had signs up and down I84 for fifty miles in either direction.  Those are gone now, but exit 10 looked familiar, and when I pulled off, there she was.  So I had brunch, coffee and a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. 
   Looks like the American sedan is going extinct.  I saw a lot of econoboes, pickup trucks, cross over SUV's and 18 wheelers.  very few sedans.  Ford said they were going to stop making them. 
   New York signage is as bad as ever.  I only saw three signs for the Tappen Zee bridge.  I also saw three signs for the Mario Cuomo Memorial Bridge.  I guess the guv'nor wants to rename a landmark bridge after himself.  That will confuse the tourists but good.
   I started off with the car heater set to full hot.  Every 100 miles or so I would set it a couple of notches toward cool.  But the time I got to Delaware I turned of the heater and set "Vent" forfresh air.  A couple of printed Google maps got me to Bowie and onto my daughters street, but I had to use the celery phone to call and find her house. 

That Brexit deal

Lotta talk about it.  None of the talk I hear talks about the really important issue.  Right now, British exports (like one third of GNP) go to the Continent duty free.  Come March, that might go away.  If British exports have to face full EU tariffs, that will hurt the Brits a lot.  The Continent has ridiculous unemployment, which means plenty of Continental suppliers will be happy to step in to replace British suppliers.   So, what kind of tariff deal will the Brits get after Brexit?  More of the current duty free deal?  Full EU tariffs?  something inbetween? 
   The newsies are not talking, either  they don't understand, or they don't know, or perhaps both.

So who is reporting the narrative?

California governor Jerry Brown is blaming the wild fires on global warming.  President Trump blames the fires on poor forest management, failure to log off dead trees.  Several people on Face book  support that view.  The MSM haven't said boo about forest management.  Certainly, back here in NH,  we know that wood lands need some logging to take out the dead and fully grown trees to remove fuel and open up the leaf canopy to let in some sunlight and encourage new growth.  I haven't been in California for thirty years, and I never got out in the California woods to see how things were, and I am not enough of a forester to tell a well tended forest from a poorly tended one.  We get a lot more rain in NH than they do out in  California, which surely reduces our fire hazard.  Nevertheless I find President Trump's position, poor forest management,  fairly convincing. 

Hillary to run again in 2020

That's what the TV newsies and the internet are saying this morning.  The never ending presidential campaign rolls on.  Speaking as a Republican, I hope she does run again.  She is as weak a candidate as you can find.  In 2016 she had no platform, she brought a whole railway car full of ugly baggage, she made no campaign promises, and she never spoke about anything except in that neutral campaign speak tone that pols use when they wish to conceal their true thoughts.  If the Democrats are misguided enough to nominate her, again, Trump will have no trouble beating her handily, again. 

World War I ended 100 years ago today

World War I ended just 100 years ago today.  It was a terrible war.  It lasted four awful years.  The war wrecked Europe.  It created Soviet Communism, a menace to civilization that would not be defeated for 70 years.  Before the war, Europe had ruled the world.  After the war Europe could barely feed itself. 

    The tragedy is that no one in Europe knew why they were fighting.  Woodrow Wilson had to create the 14 points to explain to Americans what their war aims were and why we should join the fighting.  The Europeans didn't have a clue as to why they were pouring out their blood and treasure. 

    The spark that set off WWI was a Serbian terrorist assassinating the heir to the throne of the Austro Hungarian empire.  Naturally the Austrians wanted to retaliate and kick some Serbian tail.  Serbia was a small backwards 3rd or 4th class power, and what should have happened was a short "police action" where the Austrian army occupied Serbia, hanged a few more terrorists, and incorporated  Serbia into the Austro Hungarian empire as a province.  Unfortunately the Russians, for reasons that have never been explained, decided they would protect Serbia from Austrian aggression.  The Austrians looked to their German ally for support, and they got it.  "I'm 1000% behind Austria" was the tone of the German reply.   Germany was run by a nincompoop emperor in those days.  A more developed state would have a foreign office, an effective parliament, and various other institutions of government, that would prevent a single klutz from leading the entire nation into war, especially a war over a worthless piece of real estate like Serbia.  

   None of the leaders of the time had any understanding of how the industrial revolution had increased the populations, the economies,  and the will to fight all over Europe.  The European great powers were able to field million man armies, where as the last serious war, the US Civil War,  General Grant only had 100,000 men under his command at Appomattox.  Ten times the manpower, and armed with small arms so good we still use them today.  After the war, all the surviving leaders of 1914 said that if they had known how bad the war would be, they never would have allowed it to break out.

We need more nutcase control, not more gun control

Many, more than half, of the dreadful mass shooting are done by deranged people, people who every one, friends, family, police, school teachers, pastors, neighbors, knew had heavy duty mental illness.   These deranged people should have been committed to a mental hospital long before they cut loose and kill a dozen or more innocent people.   It's not the guns, it's the nut cases pulling the triggers.  Put the nut cases away and we will have less mass shootings.
   This needs very careful safeguards to prevent abuse.  We are talking about committing some one against their will, someone who has not committed a crime, yet.  The Soviets used to put their political opponents away in mental hospitals on flimsy evidence.  There ought to be some kind of board, with an experienced cop, a psychiatrist or two,  an experienced teacher, a priest and a minister, and perhaps more.  In each case they should take testimony from the accused nut case, his parents, siblings, friends, teachers,  and others.  The accused should be able to call witnesses in his behalf.  There ought to be some review. 
   Short of this, authorities, police, schools, should be more pro active when they encounter one of these nut cases.  Right now the authorities tend to just dismiss the matter to save  themselves a lot of paperwork.  They ought to take an interest, do some checking around, do a little surveillance, with an eye to prosecution.

It's snowing up in Franconia Notch

It's full dark so I cannot see much, but I have a lotta snow in the deck light.

Why I think the Mueller investigation is a crock

Mueller is trying to prove that the Russians tried to get Trump to win in 2016 by doing something, nobody knows what, to help Trump and hinder Hillary. 
   This is a crock because the Russians wanted Hillary as the new US president.  Benghazi showed that Hillary had no stomach for retaliation for destruction of a consulate and killing four of her people.  She isn't very brave, she isn't very smart, and she would not give Putin any trouble as he invaded various small countries around the Russian borders.   Trump on the other hand was an unknown quantity,  who might be belligerent, who would oppose Russian takeovers along their border, and might do almost anything. 
   Putin is an old KGB hand, he has good intel, and I am sure he understood the differences between Hillary and Trump back in 2016.  He probably expected Hillary to win in 2016 because the entire US mainstream media thought that Hillary would win. 
   I think the whole "collusion" (what ever that means) and Russian interference in the US election is a Democrat idea to give Trump some flak and conceal Democrat corruption of US intelligence agencies, especially the FBI.

New Hampshire, a red wave? or a red ripple?

Despite a good economy, low unemployment, rising wages, all the things a good economy brings, New Hampshire voters went Democrat.  They elected enough legislators to give the Democrats control of both houses and the executive council.  Democrats claimed both US representative seats.  Chris Sununu, the Republican governor survived with about a 5% margin over Democrat Molly Kelly.  Kelly is mostly known for her desire to raise taxes, all kinds of taxes.   I won the District 1 seat in the NH Senate, with no support from radio, TV, or print press.  This happened partly due to placing yard signs all over the district, and partly due to my Democrat opponent's indictment on charges of domestic violence back in August. 
   Why did all the voters go Democrat despite excellent economy and a balanced state budget?  All I can think of is a LOT of voters have been turned off by President Trump.  Despite excellent numbers on the economy (GNP growth is up, unemployment is down, stock market is up, taxes are down) Trump's personal style is offensive to many. 

TV newsies say the election is close, everywhere.

So, tomorrow I vote, I poll stand, and then I go home and watch the results on TV.  From what the newsies are saying, anything could happen. 

Everybody ought to go out and vote on Tuesday

It is the duty of all citizens of a democracy to vote.  Voting sets the course the country will follow. We need all our rational citizens to vote to keep our country on a rational course of action.  Even  if you don't like either candidate, one candidate will be better than the other.  Your duty as a citizen  is to vote for the lesser of two evils.   And your vote counts. 
   I remember dragging youngest son to a school board meeting at which the vote was to pass a serious (big bucks) bond issue to construct a new building for the school youngest son had just graduated from.  That bond issue passed by ONE vote.  On the way home I told youngest son that I never wanted to hear him bitch that his vote would not count.  It was his vote that got us a new school building.  

Micro$oft breaks Win 10, Again

Back in Windows XP, you were protected against accidentally copying a old version of a file over the latest version of the file.  Wind 10 no longer protects against this.  There I am backing up Trusty Desktop onto Flatbeast my laptop.  On Trusty Desktop I copy my recent files, such as my checkbook, my list of books, my medications, a bunch of photos, and other stuff onto a flash drive.  I carry the flash drive over to Flatbeast  and start copying the latest versions of the files off the flash drive onto Flatbeast's hard drive.  Of course,  I have done this in the past, and Flatbeast's hard drive already contains old versions of these files.
  Back in the good old days of Win XP, you would get a message box saking "Do you  REALLY want to overwrite file such-and-such date such and such with  same file name, date somthingelse?"   And you would look at the file dates, and most often you would say "Go for it" if you were overwriting an older file with a newer one.
   Now we are stuck with Win 10 and we get a similar message box, EXCEPT,   one of the file dates comes up as "Unknown".  So the question now reads "Do you REALLY want of overwrite file such-and-such date such-and-such with same file name, file date UNKNOWN?  
   Of course you don't want to do that.  Do you?  So maybe you don't back up your files, maybe you say "Press on regardless", maybe you do some double checking.  But on Win 10 you have a lotta ways of messing up in file back up which good old Win XP handled correctly.
   Looks like the  Micro$sofies have been spending programming effort in breaking things that used to work.

Birth right Citizenship

Amendment 14.  Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the Stte wherein they reside."    I am not a lawyer, my degrees are in history and electrical engineering.  Lawyers have odd ways of reading and writing.  "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in ordinary English means citizen, legal alien, green card holder, and at a stretch, tourist visa holder.
  So to an ordinary reading of the 14th Amendment, there is no requirement to grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.  Newsies who claim that a constitutional amendment is needed are just plain wrong.
   Trump could stop Birth Right Citizenship by executive order.  Politically it would be better to get an act of Congress on the matter.  Any such change will be opposed in court, and the courts give a lot more deference to acts of Congress than they do to executive orders.
   In all the talk about process and legality and constitutional change, we haven't heard much about the real issue here, namely does our current policy of birthright citizenship cause real harm to us.  And what might that harm be?  As it is, travel agencies in China make arrangements for Chinese mothers to fly to the US to give birth here so that their children will have US citizenship.   Which is kinda flattering to us that people would spend all that money, and be away from friends and family for the birth of a child.  They really care about having US citizenship.  And the Chinese are already citizens of China, an important country, which speaks their language and embodies Chinese culture.  We Americans have created a good thing here if so many people want to come here.

   

Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS)

The Wall St Journal floated a trial balloon today.  The plan would have Uncle Sam calculate a "fair" price for drugs, based on overseas drug prices, and then tell Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of 'em to only pay the drug companies the computed fair price.
   The price of American made drugs sold overseas is a lot lower, like half the price, of the same drug sold in the US.  This happens because  the US health agencies are forbidden to bargain over drug prices.  Overseas the health agencies do bargain over prices and generally get a price one half the US price, or better.  
   I have a better fix for the problem.  America passes a law permitting duty free drug imports from all reasonable first world countries (Canada, Britain, the EU, Japan, maybe a few more).  This is a free market fix, no bureau crats computing prices, Health agencies just go out for bids and buy from the lowest bidder.  No flimflam over "list" prices, discount prices, special prices, what ever.  Lowest bidder gets the sale. 
   This would have to be a federal government fix, the state of New Hampshire doesn't get to set US import duties. Peaking as a candidate for the NH legislature I won't have much to say about this issue, other than to root for it, should I be elected.

They caught them alive. They are both nutcases

And the evidence against them looks strong from here.  The Florida mail bomber left a fingerprint on one of the bombs which is pretty solid evidence against him.  The synagogue shooter was taken alive, gun in hand, at the scene of the crime. From what I see on TV (highly reliable source that) both criminals are nut cases, with social media postings and vehicle stickers to prove it.  Various TV newsies have blamed President Trump or Democrat politicians for inciting them to violence.  I don't buy that.  These two guys are nutcases.  We allow nutcases to run around loose until they kill someone.  We ought to change that policy.
  Let's hope our legal profession has the stones to convict and execute these two murderers, and do it within a year. 

Driving people out of restaurants is disgusting

And trying to kill them with pipe bombs in the mail is worse.  I hope law enforcement will catch the bombers and do it quickly. 

Canceling nuclear disarmament treaties

Trump and John Bolton are talking about doing it.  I don't remember just what the Intermediate Range Forces agreement called for.  There has been some vague talk on TV about restrictions on short range nuclear missiles.  Consider the fact that long range missiles can hit short range targets.  About all I can think of is that short range missiles are small enough to be road mobile, which makes it easier to disperse them and make it hard for counterforce strikes to take them out.
   There hasn't been much talk about disarmament treaties in many years, actually since the Soviet Union collapsed in way back in 1989.  And, what's in it for us?  Do we, owners of the largest air force in the world, really want or need yet another nuclear missile system?  Especially one that has to be based in the EU in order to hit the Russians?  Do we believe that the Russians really want to nuke the EU?  As opposed to taking it over piece by piece?
   And, just what have the dead broke Russians been doing that we think is against the treaty?
   In short, I don't understand why the Trump administration is threatening to pull out of an international treaty that has been around for like 30 years, and doesn't seem to be doing any harm.  Unless they think they can browbeat the Russians into signing a better (in our view) treaty, just to keep the disarmament thing running. 

Bye Bye local politics

Every day this election season I get mail from congressmen and governors from all the 50 states, you know the usual "dear voter please make a campaign contribution" sort of letter.  Also robo calls.  For me, I will support my local NH candidates, my state wide NH candidates, and presidential candidates.  I don't have either the money or the inclination to support candidates running for office in the Carolina's, California, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Montana, or any other state.  But I still get the out of state letters.  Many of them franked (send for free by congressmen who enjoy free mailing privileges). 
   How do the rest of you feel?

The Saudi's are an important American ally

Saudi Arabia is Sunni, contains the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, has the respect of its Arab neighbors, has a working relationship (abet under the table) with Israel, and has both oil and oil money running out its ears.  All good Moslems are supposed to make a journey to Mecca (the Hadj) in Saudi at least once in a lifetime.  All in all, having the Saudi's on our side helps us dealing with all the other players in the middle east. 
   The disappearance, most likely murder, of Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, may well break up our good relations with Saudi.  The TV news is saying that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate at Istanbul.  I'm never all the sure that the TV news has it right, but today it's all I have to go on.  If the TV newsies have it right, we have a problem.  Much as we might like to continue our good relationships with the Saudi's, it will become politically difficult-to-impossible to ignore the outrage among the American electorate and Congressmen.  This outrage will likely force us to take action against the Saudi's.  And things will go down hill from there. 
  I have to think that the Saudi's have really botched this one.  Offing a political enemy, on foreign soil, is so provocative as to make me wonder it the Saudi's have there heads screwed on right.

Inferno, World at War 1939-1945, Max Hastings 2011

A worm's eye view of WWII.  It's 700 pages.  It covers the European War and the far eastern war.  It dwells on killings, casualties, cruelties, concentration camps, civilian hardships, prisoners of war, Gestapo atrocities, anti semetism,  ship sinkings, the holocaust, and every other horrible event the occured in the period.  Little discussion of the causes of the war, the failing of the west to stand up to Hitler, the reasons for the astonishing German victories of 1940, the means the allies used to finally crush Hitler.  In short, a lot of colorful, if miserable, stories of little people getting stomped on, little discussion of how the war was fought and won, little discussion of the future effects of WWII.
   The author, Max Hastings, has written a fair number of other books on politics and military history.  Some of them are less down beat than this one.   

Annie the Kuster has a new TV ad

The ad claims that Annie passed a new law to reduce opioid smuggling into New Hampshire.  Since she is a US congressional rep presumably this was a federal law.  Strange, I don't remember ever hearing or reading about this before Annie started running this election commercial just the other day.  I wonder what the number of her bill was.  I wonder what her bill really says. 

New Hampshire Greenies release a new state energy plan

I heard about this on NHPR yesterday.  The greenie's plan calls for 100% renewable energy state wide by 2040.  Sounds great, but...  They did not describe just what they mean by "renewable".  At a guess they are talking about wind and solar.  Usually the greenies don't consider hydro to be renewable, even though it rains a lot and refills the reservoirs.
   They did not explain how we keep the lights on since solar doesn't produce any electricity after the sun goes down.  Even up here in the White Mountains, we have long calm spells of no wind.  How do the greenies plan to keep the lights on after dark on a calm night?  This is important.  My furnace doesn't work when the power goes out.  That means my pipes freeze in winter.  I am not the only electricity user who needs dependable 24/7 electricity. 

Some advice for Google Maps software weenies

1. Fix the bug that causes a blank sheet of expensive paper wasted before getting down to the business of printing the real map. 
2.  Remember that white is free, other colors consume expensive inkjet ink.  Make the background of the printed map white.  The road map people had this figured out long ago.  Don't make the roads white, they don't show up against the grey background.  Roads should be bright primary colors.  Color ought to indicate the quality of the  road, from interstate down to dirt. 
3.  Make the printed map fill the page.  Most of us have inkjet or laser printers that handle A size paper (8 1/2 by 11).  That gives you a target to shoot for. 
4.  Once you get it working, if you are smart enough to program it, don't change it.  Remember, in software there are NO HARMLESS CHANGES. 

Archiving all the TV newsbroadcasts

I listened to this piece on NPR yesterday.  There is an organization that has been archiving all TV news broadcasts going back to he 1960s.  Cool.  They went on to describe various obsolete technologies, used on the older archive, videotape, VHS, and how they had transcribed everything to DVD's.  And, they plan to move the entire archive to "the cloud" real soon now. 
  Me, I have serious doubts about the reliability of "the cloud", especially after natural disasters or war.  I'd feel better with racks of tapes or DVD's, and the machines to play them, in a nice deep underground site that I owned, outright.  A site on high ground and away from city centers. 
   For that matter, I have never read anything about the life of a home burned DVD.  Are they truly permanent? Or does the data fade away after ten years or so?  The old floppy disks would become unreadable after a few years in a desk drawer. 

Kavanaugh squeaks by the Senate. TV Newsies still talking about it

I was hoping, after the full Senate voted to approve Justice Kavanaugh yesterday that the newsies would move on.  Surely there are other things of interest  happening somewhere in the wider USA or the wider world.   The TV newsies are still talking about the Kavanaugh appointment.  Is that all they know about? 

It's all about compression ratio

Compression ratio is the number that sets fuel economy and power output for internal combustion engines.  More is better.   Inside the engine, the fuel air mixture lights off at top dead center.  The piston goes down, expanding the hot combustion gases, cooling them, and converting the heat energy from the burning fuel into mechanical work.  Ideally we would keep the piston moving down, expanding the cylinder volumn until the combustion gases had been cooled down to room temperature, extracting all possible mechanical work from the fuel burn. 
   In real engines, the piston cannot keep going down forever.  The piston gets to bottom dead center.  Which is about 4 inches in a typical car engine.  At which point the exhaust valve opens and the still blazing hot combustion gases go out the tailpipe.  At night, running a short straight exhaust pipe, no muffler, you can see the exhaust gas glowing blue-white.  That's a lot of heat energy that didn't get converted into useful work. 
   Compression ratio is the ratio of cylinder volume with the piston at top dead center (as small as it gets) to the cylinder volume with the piston at bottom dead center (as big as it gets).  The higher the compression ratio, the more of the heat energy of the fuel gets converted into mechanical work.  Gasoline engines in cars have compression ratios as low as 8:1, 10:1 in good engines like the Cadillac Northstar, and 13:1 in outright racing engines. 
   Why not use a higher compression ratio and get more efficiency?  In gasoline engines we put a combustable fuel air mixture into the cylinder at bottom dead center and compress it as the piston goes up to top dead center.  As the mixture is compressed, it gets hotter.  When it gets too hot,  it catches fire and burns before the piston is at top dead center, and tries to drive the engine backwards.  You can hear this happening, it is a pinging noise (knocking) from the engine.  Good fuel  (high octane rating fuel) will suppress knocking for a while, but there is a limit.  Call it 10:1 for a "street" engine. 
   And this is the benefit of the diesel engine.  Diesels have just pure air in the cylinder for the compression stroke.  Fuel is injected into the cylinder at top dead center. Diesels cannot knock.  Which means that diesels can run compression ratios as high as 20:1.  Which is why diesels have better gas mileage than gasoline engines.