TurboTax recommends Adobe Acrobat

Me, I don't e-file my taxes.  E-file means the Infernal Revenue Service can feed your return straight into their computers for audit.  I know I won't be getting a refund, so I'm in no hurry to have the IRS computers scanning my returns.  I print out a paper copy and mail it in.  Turbo Tax kindly informs me that the IRS has been complaining about the scannability of forms printed by anything other than Adobe Reader.  Groovy.  Should IRS contact me and bitch that they cannot scan my paper 1040, my reply to them will be "Get a better scan program" and "I plan to hand scribe my return next year. Get used to it."

My lawn is melted out but the Cannon ski trails are still white

Spring is making an attempt up here.  It is in the forties temp wise.  My lawn is free of snow and the winter shocked grass is attempting to green up.  But the ski trails up on Cannon Mountain are still white.  This comes from all the snow making over the winter, combined with both skiers and snow grooming machines packing the trails down into ice.  They run the groomers ever night during ski season, I can see their lights running up and down the trails in the dark. 

We need some new pronouns

We need a unisex pronoun for cases where the person could be either male or female.  Right now I write "he/she".  This comes up in discussions of literature.  Say I am discussing the protagonist.  That's a $5 word that means hero or heroine.   Writing "he/she" seems sort of odd.  For that matter I find myself writing "him/her" more often than is good.  The new pronouns I want do not declare the person to be transgender, They just would be for use in cases where the person might be of either sex.

The Food Supply Chain is breaking down

Today I ran some errands.  First off, a dump run.  Stuff has been piling up for two weeks and I can smell the kitchen trash can.  It's time.  Two weeks ago the Franconia dump was on emergency Corona virus mode and they were only taking the big Pay-as-you-throw bags.  Which left me with a trunk still full of bottles and cans.  Today we have a new plan, we gave up on recycling.  I just pitched my pay-as-you-throw bag and all the bottles, cans, old magazines, and mixed paper into the industrial strength trash masher we have down at the dump.  And so my trunk is empty for the first time in two weeks. 
   Then a quick stop at Walmarts for a 40 can carton of canned catfood.  Place was not too busy.  The Dunkin donuts concession is not operating.  No glazed donuts for breakfast.  Maybe a quarter of the customer were wearing  face masks.  A guy asked me how I got my "1" license plate.  Turns out he is a constituent.  I gave him my card, told him I was standing for re-election.
  Then I did Shaws.  Again not too busy and a quarter of the customers wearing face masks.  They are running out of a lotta stuff.  I was seeing a lot of strange brands of stuff that I never saw before.  I'm thinking they sold out of the good old brands we all recognize and buy, and to fill the shelves they put out the strange branded stuff.  I'm thinking we all need to go back to work before we run out of food. 

Discuss a book with the kids.

After they read a book (or see a movie or a stage play) you can discuss the book with them. Good leading questions about a work of fiction might be

1.  Who is the hero/heroine (protagonist is a unisex word that covers both sexes).  What motivates the protagonist?  What does the protagonist do?  Is it successful?

2. Who is the view point character?  (Dr. Watson is the classic fictional view point character).  Often the protagonist is the view point character.

3.  Who is the villain?  What makes him/her evil? 

4.  Does this story follow the classic story outline?  

   Protagonist is faced with a challenge of some sort.  He/she attempts to deal with the challenge.  The first (and perhaps some later challenges) overwhelm the protagonist.  At the climax of the story the protagonist makes one last do of die effort to deal with his challenge.  He/She either wins or looses, winning is customary but not necessary.  All after the climax is anti-climax.  Is the anti-climax (if present) necessary?  When do we readers learn what the challenge is?  And what might the challenge be?  How much does the outcome depend upon the protagonist's skill and cunning?  And how much upon pure good luck?  What is the anti-climax (if there is one) and is it necessary to the story.  

5.  Is it one of those modern stories where the protagonist merely serves as a punching bag thru out the story?  Like Catcher in the Rye.

6.  Is the protagonist believable and realistic?

7.  What shelf in the bookstore does this book belong on?  Romances?  Mysteries? Science fiction and fantasy?  Historical novels?  The everything else shelf? 

Let's Reform the Federal Income Tax Code

I thought I had finished up my taxes.  I fed all the returns into TurboTax, ran the return checker, printed out the return, found envelopes and addressed them, wrote the checks.  Whew.  So I go and get the mail.  Damn, another K1 form in today’s mail.  I will have to punch that in and then reprint to whole return.

We could make the whole tax scene better with a go thorough tax reform. 

1. Repeal the entire tax code.  And get rid of the huge stack of court rulings supporting the existing code.
2. New tax code must be less than 100 pages.
3. The tax code exists to raise the money the Feds need to operate.  It is not to encourage electric cars, windmills, solar roofs, home ownership, teaching school, or greenie plans to throw us back to the Stone Age.
4. Income is money you made.  Doesn’t matter how you made it, or where you made it.  Income is income.  We scrap capital gains which exists to give stock holders a break.  You make some money trading stocks, that’s income.
5. Foreign companies get treated the same as domestic companies.  Get rid of the K1 schedule and have them file a 1099 just like domestic companies.
6. No deductions for anything except charitable giving.  Contributions to the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the NRA are deductible. 
7. We have three tax brackets, one for the truly poor, one for the really rich, and one for average working stiffs.  Tax rate for the truly poor is 5%; they have to pay something to teach them how much taxes hurt.  Tax rate for the average working stiff is 17%.  I have been doing taxes for 60 years, and every year when the 1040 is ready to file I wind up paying 17%.  And tax rate for the really rich ought to be double that, 34%.  Congress must reset the breakpoints (how much income puts you in which class) every 4 years.
8. No more “foundations” which allow the really rich to dodge a lot of taxes.

Feel free to post your favorite tax reforms.

Have your kids change a tire.

This is for kids old enough to drive.  That's 16 in most places.  Have them find the spare tire in the family car.  (Is it in the trunk? is it slung underneath the minivan? Is it on the rear hatchback? Where could a Detroit yo-yo hide the spare this year?)  And find the jack and the lug wrench.  Note to parents, if your car doesn't have a jack and a lug wrench you ought to go out and get them.  Town dump and auto junk yards ought to have old ones.  Get the kid[s] to set the parking brake before jacking up the car.  Pop the hub cap off.  Have them loosen the lug nuts while the weight of the car is on the flat wheel.  After the car is up on the jack, the necessary heave-ho needed to break the lug nuts loose may throw the car off the jack.  Loosen means less than one quarter turn.  A small can of penetrating oil will help with rusty and stuck lug nuts.  With the car jacked up, back off  all the lug nuts, put them in the hubcap, and pull the flat wheel off.  Put the spare on.  Put the lug nuts back on, tighten lightly, don't knock the car off the jack.  Lower the jack and then tighten all the lug nuts.  Put the hubcap back on.  Check the air pressure in the spare.  It has been aging in the trunk for years and it might have a slow leak and be close to flat itself.  If the spare isn't too flat, drive down to the nearest gas station that has air and pump it up.  This part is easier if you have a tire pressure gauge in the car.  They are only a few dollars at the auto parts store.  For extra credit get the kid[s] to stow the flat wheel, the jack, and the lug wrench so that they won't rattle when you hit a bump. 

British Labor Party gets new leadership

The US TV has not had a word about it, but an email reached me from the American Jewish Congress.  It congratulates the new leader of the Labor party, Ken Starmer opon his election.  The old Labor party leader, leftie Jeremy Corbyn, was outspokenly anti-Semitic,  anti-American, and an all around PITA for the Brits and for us.  Good riddance to Corbyn.  Ken Starmer is a new name to me, I never heard of him before, and I have no idea where he is coming from. 
   Surprising that the MSM has said nothing about this fairly serious change in British leadership.

Google is going wild. 1318 page views today.

Used to be blogger would show a few pageviews a day, if that.  Then I had an 800 page view day, a lull abd 1318 pageviews today.  Looks like the Google software weenies messed something up.

There are a lot of brain dead manufacturers out there

Those are the ones who fail to put their company name on their product.  If they had two brain cells firing they would always put their name and Made in USA on everything they make.  It's good for sales.  It's the best advertising they can get.
   We consumers ought to understand that products that are not marked Made in USA are probably made in China.

Why I don’t trust computer models.

A computer model is nothing more than a computer program that computes how something will change over time, Global warming, Corona virus, you name it, is going to work out.  I have written and tested plenty of computer models over a long career in R&D and programming.  When you start programming a computer model, you already have a clear idea of what you want the model to say.  If the model doesn’t say what you want it to say, you start fixing the code.  Work hard enough and the model will say what you want it to say if especially if you are willing to cheat.  One greenie climate change program had a line of code that read “If date younger than 1945 add a few degrees.  If date younger than 1955 add a few more.”  This bit of code came from the Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) and created Mann’s “hockey stick” plot of world temperature. 

   Any how a model (or two or other models) predicted massive infection rates of Corona virus world wide.  It is beginning to look like that model’s frightening predictions of infection, need for hospital beds, ventilators, and what ever, are not true, and the Corona virus epidemic is not as bad as the model predicted.  It is still pretty bad, but not as bad as the model predicted.

Mail in balloting is voter fraud.

What with Corona virus keeping everybody indoors, the Democrats are calling for mail in voting.  They figure the massive voter fraud this would cause will help the Democrats.  In this day and age of Xerox machines, PC's with very decent ink jet and laser printers, digital camera's everywhere to photograph any real paperwork (ballots, ID's what ever) needed to vote.  A simple program running on a  PC can crank out authentic looking ballots for every registered voter in the state.  And print address labels, or even envelopes with return addresses up in the left hand corner for them.  Add some stamps,  or go business reply mail, and you can swamp the electoral commissions with truck loads of good looking, but fake  ballots.  God help the voting commission when some one, appearing in person, demands to vote, and the town clerk refuses because the mail in ballot box stuffers have already voted that voter by mail. 
   Far as I am concerned, voters ought to brave the Corona virus infected streets, get to the polls, show their NH drivers licenses to poll workers who know everybody in town by sight,  and fill out an official ballot in a secure voting booth.  And get checked off on the voter rolls one by one. And personally drop their ballot into a ballot box.  Up here we still use antique wooden ballot boxes. 

Trump's daily Corona virus updates preempt Fox News

Used to be Brett Bauer and Britt Hume came on at 6 PM with the news of the day.  Now Trump comes on  a little of 6 PM, and briefs on the virus, zaps obnoxious lefty reporters, and takes hostile questions for about an hour.  Fox news doesn't get a shot at the audience until Trump is finished close to 7 PM.

Season 8 Game of Thrones

Meh.  So far I have watched the first three episodes.  First episode opens with Jaime Lannister on trial at Winterfell, before Sansa Stark and Danaris Targarien, neither of whom like him very much.  Jaime is explaining that although his sister Cercei is reneging on her promise to send troops to defend Winterfell against the invasion of the White Walkers, he feels he must come and join the fight.  After that opening not much else in the episode.  Episode 2 the army of the White Walkers has surrounded Winterfell and far outnumbers the defenders. Everyone knows that battle starts in the morning.  They gather round and do some serious drinking.  Lighting is so bad that I could only identify who was who by listening for distinctive tones of voice.  Best short part, perennial tomboy Arya decides that since she will probably die in battle tomorrow she might as well get laid for the first time this evening.  She hooks up with former king Robert Baratheon’s bastard son, good looking young guy who is into black smithery.  They kiss, clothes come off, and they get into bed.  The scene ends before we can hear any pillow talk between them.  Episode 3 is the actual day of battle and is remarkable for having absolutely no lines of dialog between any characters, for the entire hour long episode.  Attack begins at 0’dark thirty, and the sun never does come up.  It is too dark to figure out what is going on, except for a couple of short scenes of dragons swooping down and doing the flame thrower thing on the enemy.

   Not sure if I have the energy to watch the rest of the season.

Toy Boat Woodshop for the Kids.

    Running out of things to keep the kids interested?  Teach them some wood shop.  Make some toy boats.  Make the hull from a board, or even a bit of 2 by 4, what ever you have.  Cut a bow.  Mark the middle of the board.  Lay a square (any kind, T-square, combination square, Speed square, what ever you have) across the hull, some inches back from the bow end, and draw a pencil line clean across the hull.  They draw diagonal lines to mark the bow from the middle of the end back to the square line.  That will give a symmetrical bow when you saw both sides of it.  You can cut the bow with any kind of hand saw, cross cut, miter, hack, coping; use what ever you have.  You can leave the stern square, or you can make a pair of 45 degree cuts to round it off a bit.  You can use a plane or a spoke shave to smooth and round the hull. 

   You need a cabin, a piece of wood nailed on lengthwise.  You need a bridge that is a short piece of wood, atop the cabin and cross wise up front.  You ought to have a smoke stack, although we left that detail off a lot of toy boats we built in the distant past.  For a stack you need something round, a bit of dowel, a bit of broomstick, a bit of PVC pipe, whatever.  Drill a hole in the cabin top.  Secure it with glue, white glue of yellow carpenters glue for wood, epoxy or superglue for PVC pipe.  The glue will bond better to PVC if you clean it with hot water and soap, or solvent (alcohol, paint thinner, acetone, lacquer thinner). 

Do I believe Corona virus numbers coming out of China???

I ought to say "No" but lets just say I am deeply suspicious.  I think the communist government has total control of the news coming out of China, and I suspect that they make up what ever Corona virus numbers they think makes China look good.   If you are making up world statistics, like how many cases or how many deaths world wide, I would be tempted to simply leave out the numbers from China. 

What is the Corona virus death rate?

Death rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the number of cases, and multiplying the resulting fraction by 100 to make it into percent.  So far so good.  We are pretty sure that we don't know the true number of cases of Corona virus (COVID-19).  We only call it a case when some brand new test comes back positive.  We are no where near to testing everybody.  At a guess (wild ass guess, WAG) there are two or three times as many cases out there than the ones we know about.  We expect that as we do more testing, we will find more cases, which reduces the death rate.  Right now, using the numbers we have, the death rate from Corona virus is somewhere between  1 or 2 percent. 
  Listening to the TV this morning I hear about people who look healthy, feel good, show no symptoms. are testing positive for Corona virus.  This might be something wrong with the test (it's brand new and we haven't had time to check everything), or it might be these people have a good strong immune system, or the grace of God, or something that keeps them healthy.  We don't know if these people are infectious.  Maybe they are, maybe they are not.  Should these people be counted as cases of the disease?  Is it reasonable to call healthy people sick just because a test comes back positive? 

Spring snow. I have two inches down on the deck

And it is still falling.  Stupid Beast wanted out, even though it was snowing.  So I let her out, it was only a degree or two above freezing.  I left the door unlatched.  She understands that she can get back in by just pushing on the door.  She never closes the door behind her, but that is cats for you.  Spring must have missed her plane. 

What do the medics and the newsies want? Really?

The medics on TV seem more concerned with studies and papers about Corona virus than they do with curing patients.  They seem to be saying that by curing patients you upset their statistical studies of the disease.  I believe that doctors ought to be curing patients, not collecting statistics and doing studies. 

    Back in sailing ship days a British ship’s doctor came up with a cure for scurvy.  He proved his cure worked with a double blind experiment.  Half the patients got his cure and the other half got a fake (a placebo).  Neither the patient nor the doctor knew which was which to prevent preconceptions from influencing the reported results.  It was feared that the doctor writing up the patient’s progress would be tempted to report that patients receiving the real stuff were doing better than patients getting the placebo.  Hence keeping the doctor ignorant (blind) improved the objectivity of the experiment.  It’s good science, but it’s hard on the patients given the placebo. This "double blind" technique is still considered the proper way to test drugs and treatments now in the 21st century.

   Anyhow, the medics pontificating on TV about Corona virus seem more interested in good science rather than curing patients.  And the TV personalities seem more interested in trashing President Trump for his favorable comments on hydroxyl chloroquine than discussing how well it works. 

   Another strange thing.  Various bureaucrats, FDA, CDC, and others, seem to think that doctors may not proscribe “off-label” uses of drugs without their bureaucratic permission.  Me, I think the decision should lie with the doctor and patient, which means mostly with the doctor.  Most patients cheerfully accept anything their doctor says is good for them.  “You are the doctor” is the usual cliché.”  As it is, doctors are reluctant to discuss off label drug uses for fear of professional or bureaucratic retaliation.  

Networking Windows 10

Used to be, back when Windows XP ruled the land, that you could connect two computers and move files between them.  Somehow (Micro$oft programming weenies probably) that capability has been lost.  I have a desktop and a laptop, both running Windows 10.  They both talk to my wifi router; they both are connected to the internet.  I would like to back up a bunch of files on the desktop to the laptop.  So far I cannot do it.  Neither machine can see the other machine, let alone transfer files. 

   There oughta be a way, but so far I have not found it. 

What's a Samaritan?

It was winter, many years ago.  It was snowing.  I was driving Cindy and my kids home.  Cindy was maybe 15, old enough to baby sit my kids.  We are in the parking lot behind the supermarket in Melrose.  I see a woman a few parking spots over cannot get her car started.  I think of helping her, then I think of a car full of kids who really need to get home.  I make an idle remark to Cindy that I don't think I will be a good Samaritan this afternoon.  Cindy comes back to me "What's a Samaritan?"  This from a girl whose family made it to First Congregational Church  in Melrose every Sunday.  I know Cindy had done several years of Sunday School at FCC.
   Anyhow, it is perfectly OK to read the Bible to your children now that they are home for Corona virus.  Regardless of your personal religious views, I think every child ought to know the good old bible stories, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, a gospel, David and Goliath, Exodus and Moses, Joshua and the battle of Jericho, and more.  The oldest stories from Genesis go back 3500 years or more to Mesopotamia, the beginning of civilization.
   The King James version is the best version in English.  Long time ago I started reading to my children from a bible we had kicking around the house.  I get to the story of Joseph and his brothers.  In this low speed bible version Joseph's coat of many colors has been down graded to a robe with long sleeves.  We can all understand that a fancy coat of many colors might arouse his brother's jealousy.  Who cares about a robe with long sleeves?  I got a closet full of 'em.  Anyhow next evening, I stopped at a bookstore and purchased a King James version.

So I went grocery shopping today

The weather people are forecasting snow for tomorrow, so I thought I would go to the Littleton Coop today.  Some customers were wearing masks. Not much of a crowd for a Sunday.  We have a lot of empty shelves and a lot of little signs saying "Please only take two.  Leave some for others." Toilet paper is all gone.  I got the last roll of paper towels, an off brand, brown, which I never saw before. Butcher counter was closed, sign saying they could not get any beef delivered.  No pork sausages, just chicken sausages, pork is all gone.  They were asking $8.59 for a pound of bacon.  I will go to Shaw's next time and see if things are any better. 
   Either the supply chain is breaking down because everybody is hunkered down at home, or they have had some really heavy panic buying.   We might need to get folks back to work just to keep us all eating. 
 

Have the kids measure the value of Pi.

Have them draw as big a circle as possible.  Measure the circumference.  Measure the diameter.  Divide circumference by diameter.  Quotient ought to come out 3.14159.  Small errors are probably due to crude measurement methods.  Large errors are some kind of blunder.  Repeat the exercise on other circles just to make it clear that Pi is the same for all circles.  This will give some practice using the calculator and give a real feeling for the size of Pi and what it means.  To draw big circles you can use a pencil stuck on the end of a yardstick and pivot the yardstick off a nail.  Or tie the pencil to a string. 

Writing is the other half of English.

 Best way to teach children to write is to have them write.  Now-a-days with rubout keys that really work, Word for Windows with spell and grammar check, writing is easier than in the bad old days of pen and ink on lined paper, or typewriters.   And now-a-days I think every kid needs to touch type.  For young children learning touch typing there are programs that teach it.  Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is the one our family used.  I don’t know if Mavis is still in business but Google will tell you, as well as find other programs, and reviews of typing programs.

  Back in the old days I had to write a lot of book reports for school.  I am not convinced that squeezing a several hundred page book down to a one or two page book report is a learning experience.  Better exercise is to write the classic five paragraph essay.  First paragraph gives an overview “tell ‘em what you are going to say”.  Three body paragraphs (main idea and two supporting ideas) explain what you are trying to say, and a final paragraph summarizes what you have said.  Subjects for essays can be how to do something (cooking, fixing something, fishing, camping, kite flying), what happened at some time in history, how something works, political ideas (best for older children).  Parent can help their children to find a good subject.  An essay ought to about a page long and should not take more than 45 minutes to write. If writing an essay is taking too long the kid needs some help. 

   And, more fun than essays is posting something on line.  As parent you might want to have your children show you their posts before they post them.  And you might want to point out trolls, rants, hate speech, flame wars, and fake news as it appears and suggest that they never reply to such.  And the need for privacy, which means never post their contact information (home address, phone number, email address).  In fact you don’t have to reveal your name, post using a pen name.  Posts ought to be short; half a page is long for a post.  Witty is good.  Mean is bad.  Limit posts to a single idea.  If you have more than one idea make more than one post.

Fox News is giving New York Governor Cuomo a lot of air time

What can I  say?  Cuomo has little to say of worth, but Fox is putting him on the air, a lot.

English for Home Schooling

Learning English is half reading and the other half is writing.  Reading is terribly important.  Reading swiftly and well is one of the secrets to getting thru high school and college.  Any book cool enough to get a child to read it on their own time is a good book.  Doesn’t have to be the kind of book that school teachers approve of.  Just reading improves the child’s ability to read; even it is just a comic book. If the child has seen the movie, reading the book is not all that important, movies are vivid and the child will pick up and retain much of them.  If the child wants to read the book, even after seeing the movie, more power to her/him. Don’t discourage a reading of love.  The books my children were assigned from school were mostly terrible.  Dystopias that made 1984 look like summer camp.  Novels where the protagonist never did anything other than play the victim for 200 pages.  Riding the Bus with my Sister, where after 150 pages she marries the bus driver.  Or age inappropriate like Of Mice and Men in middle school.  For that matter my schools were not much better.  I never did appreciate Jane Austin or Thomas Hardy of which we had a lot.  In case you are short of ideas about good books to suggest, here is a short list of books that I enjoyed reading back in grade school and junior high school.  I didn’t bother to list the better known modern books like Harry Potter on the theory that everyone knows about them. 

The Thirteen Clocks James Thurber

Tom Sawyer Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Mark Twain

Mr. Lincoln’s Army Bruce Catton plus all of Bruce Catton’s other books

Aku-Aku Thor Heyerdahl  

A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens also A Christmas Carol

Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson

Stuart Little E.B. White

The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

The Borrowers Mary Norton

The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury

Lest Darkness Fall L. Sprague De Camp

Lord Kalvan of Other When H. Beam Piper

The Last Planet Andre Norton

Mission of Gravity Hal Clement

The Battles that Changed History Fletcher Pratt

Run Silent, Run Deep Edward L. Beach

All Creatures Great and Small James Herriot

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis

Three Hearts and Three Lions Poul Anderson

Have Spacesuit Will Travel Robert A. Heinlein plus all the other Heinlein books

The Long Ships Franz Gunnar Bengtson

Dune Frank Herbert

Robin Hood Howard Pyle

We cannot keep the country shut down forever

The Corona virus is going to be with us for years, perhaps forever. We cannot keep everyone hunkered down at home for years.  We have to farm the land, plant the crops, bring in the harvest. Process the food, turning oats into Quaker Oats and corn into Kellogg's Corn Flakes.  Distributing it to the markets.  Providing furnace oil and motor gasoline and diesel fuel and jet fuel.  Clothing, shelter, rail transportation, medicine, electric power, fresh water, and a zillion other life essential things.  We can shut down for a few weeks and live off inventory, but very shortly inventory will run out and we have to get back to work and grow and make stuff.
   And time doesn't make much difference.  Corona virus is pretty infectious, if we go out, we are liable to catch it.  It will be the same a year from now.  Only a vaccine will  solve the problem and everyone says a vaccine is at least a year away.   I am thinking that we have to accept our losses (deaths) from Corona virus and get on with running the country, and we might as well do it in a week. 

Corona virus strikes the town dump

Oh sorry "transfer station", dump is pejorative.  I went down to the Franconia "transfer station" with two weeks worth of trash.  And, the "transfer station" only has one guy on duty and he tells me they are only taking garbage, no recycling (cans, bottles, magazines, paper).  So I got rid of my last full pay-as -you-throw bag, bought a new roll of bags ($17 for 10) and went home with a trunk still full of cans and bottles. 
  And this evening, to add to my joy, it is snowing.  Forecast is for maybe six inches.  So I shall lit the fire. 

Senate Democrats kill "Phase 3" Corona virus relief bill today

The Republicans are lacking five senators who are self quarantined with Corona virus, including Rand Paul.  This weakened their hand,  The Democrats were demanding that the multi trillion bill be made yet more expensive by including all sorts of greenie demands, and union demands.  So our gallant US Senate hung the bill out to dry on a "procedural" vote.  They didn't have the stones to make it a vote on the bill itself.  Let's hear it for senate democrats.  They have the needs of us constituents close to their hearts.  Yeah. Right.

Show your kids how to use a hand calculator

Let's assume a simple four function calculator.  Show 'em how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.  For really young children see if they understand what these functions mean in the real world.  Add they probably know.  As in I have two baskets of apples.  How many apples do I have total. Subtract is not too hard, I have a dozen apples.  We eat 5 apples, how many are left?
   Multiply is a little more abstract.  Try this.  Each man eats three Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) a day.  We are going out on a seven day patrol. There are 29 men in the squad.  How many MREs do I draw out from supply?
   For divide consider a 40 foot long railroad car, a gondola say.  How many shipping containers 8 foot square can I load into the gondola?  Then try them on 7 foot shipping containers, which gets into remainders.  Then try them on miles per gallon. 
   Then show 'em how to add up a long column of numbers.  You clear the accumulator and punch in the numbers one by one.  Hit + after each number.  Hit = to add them all up.
   Then show them how to take a percent.  For extra credit show 'em how to convert a fraction into a decimal.
   Get thru all that and you have done something good. 

Heard another good one on TV. "Liquidity Facility"

"Liquidity Facility".  Part of the "Phase 3"  bailout bill going thru Congress.  What a nice name for a bailout bucket. 

Beat the Press was in fine form this morning

Of course all they talked about was the Corona virus epi/pan demic.  Chuck Todd opened with 10 minutes of just plain bashing of President Trump.  Helpful that is.  Then he gave Bill DeBlasio, the nutcase NYC mayor, a lot of air time.  DeBlasio wailed and cried that the government wasn't doing enough to help NYC.  He never got into specifics, except that he wants the US Army to send all its medical people to New York to help out. 
   And them we get to interviewing Pat Toomey, Republican senator from Pennsylvania.  "We have an important PROCEDURAL vote coming up this afternoon and then we will know..."  Good old US senate, the plague is sweeping the land and they cannot bring themselves to vote on a real issue, like passing the "phase 3" economic repair bill.  Procedural votes are just time wasters. 

Do a nature walk with the children

You would think every kid ought to be able to tell the difference between and an oak and a maple, a spruce and pine, and put a name to at least some of the wildflowers out there.  For this to happen, the kids have to see the trees and wildflowers in question.  Of course, either you have to be a fairly decent naturalist yourself, or you need a field guide to trees and wild flowers.  With the field guide the kids can find flowers and trees and you look them up in the field guide.  The weather is warming, snow is mostly gone, a;; the wildflowers are coming up as buds right now. 

The Incredibles II.

The first Incredible flick from Pixar was cute. The sequel is meh.  Not quite sure just what makes the difference, but the second one is not as cute, or as funny, as the first one. 

Try your library for educational videos

Franconia's library is about as small as they come, but they had/have a really dynamite video about the American revolution.  It was mostly lectures by a Gettysburg College history professor.  He was good, spoke well and clearly.  He had a few visual aids, a map or two, some paintings, but mostly just spoke standing behind a lectern.  No History Channel style CGI.  I watched the whole thing and enjoyed it.  He told the story straight, the accepted story, no Charles and Mary Beard Economic Interpretation of the Constitution stuff.  Although it was a college level course, I am sure that middle school kids and up would get a lot out of it.  I am sure there are a lot of other gems like this in your local library. 

Introduce your kids to Shakespeare

Yet another home school project to fill in the time while the public schools are closed for COVID-19.  Shakespeare is something everyone should know.  Reading Shakespeare is difficult, you  are reading just the dialog of a play not a novel.  Far better is to watch the play acted out by good actors.  Netflix has good productions of a lot of the Shakespeare plays.  Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Henry the Fifth, Merchant of Venice, and more. Watch them with your children and then discuss them.  Talk about motives, who is a good guy, who is a bad guy.  Who did a good thing and who did a bad thing.  Who is REALLY in love with who. 

Things you can teach your children now that schools are closed

All this lesson needs is an ordinary ruler.  Let 'em hold it.  Get them to understand that it is a one foot rule.  Show them that each foot contains 12 (a dozen) inches.  Show them the fractional inch marks.  Get them to recognize the differences between, and names of, halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths.  Have 'em measure some things accurate to a sixteenth.  Get 'em to find the center of things, boards, blocks, tin cans, whatever.  They do this by measuring to width of the item and then dividing the width in half.  Show 'em the trick of  halving a fraction by merely doubling the denominator (the downstairs part of the fraction).  Show 'em the trick of laying the ruler slant wise so the width measures out to an even number of inches and the center is the center of the ruler reading. 
   Once upon a time I taught an evening wood shop class for middle school kids.  Not one of 'em could read a ruler, let alone use it to find the center of a board. 

Is CDC dragging its feet over a COVID-19 vaccine?

The TV showed a brave volunteer taking the experimental COVID-19 vaccine.  She was taking a risk, that risk being that the experimental vaccine might actually infect her rather than granting immunity.  Hoist a glass to her, let's admire her courage. 
The TV is also saying that it might take a year to get the vaccine approved, assuming it works and is safe.  Some testing is obviously in order, but a year's worth??  Or is that the time CDC and FDA and who knows who want to go over the paperwork?  They ought to be talking about streamlining the paperwork, and cutting the testing down as far as they dare. 
   How come we ain't hearing that kind of talk out of CDC and the rest of 'em???

Operation Torch, WWII turning point

Operation Torch, the North African landings was a fantastic operation.  New green American troops boarded ship in Norfolk Virginia, steamed across the U boat infested South Atlantic, landed on beaches all around North Africa, and with General Patton in command, smashed the Nazi forces.  We caught the Germans in between the British 8th army coming west from Egypt, and the Americans coming east from Casablanca.  Eventually the Germans surrendered and we took 250,000 prisoners, nearly as many as the Russians took at Stalingrad a few months earlier.
   Torch only happened because of Winston Churchill.  Right after Pearl Harbor the US Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed on "Germany First" as strategy and it was obvious that only a huge army landed as close to Germany as possible (Northern France) would do the job.  The Chiefs wanted to concentrate everything on building up the huge army needed, which would take a couple of years, and not engage in wasteful side shows.  In short ask the entire country to stand around, enduring war time shortages and hardships, while nothing much happened. 
   Churchill recognized that the Allies had to do something, anything would do, right now, in 1942, in order to maintain domestic support, both in Britain and in the US, for the war.  Torch was doable, in 1942.  The Germans didn't have all that many troops in North Africa, and  the Allied navies were strong enough to hold off the U boats and lay serious naval gunfire on anything ashore that was giving trouble.  Churchill managed to talk Franklin Roosevelt around to his way of thinking.  Roosevelt turned around and ordered the US Joint Chiefs to do North Africa and do it now, and no quibbling. 
   After crushing German resistance in North Africa, one thing led to another.  Sicily was not that far away and so it was invaded next.  And with Sicily in hand, Italy was the obvious next step.   That didn't work out as well as we had hoped but it gave a lot of green troops some combat experience before doing D-day in 1944. 

I remember the Asian Flu of 1957

I was in boarding school  (10th grade) at the time.  Every kid in the school caught it.  Fortunately we didn't all catch it at once.  The first victims were recovering by the time the last victims caught it.  Things were so tight you had to show a temperature over 100F to get admitted to the infirmary.  My room mate and I spent several low key days in our dorm room, telling stories, reading Playboy, and sipping hard cider.  Back then the farmers sold unpasteurized apple cider.  Put a gallon jug of it in your closet, wait 4 maybe 5 days and it became nice fizzy hard cider.  Not too much of a kick to it, but better than nothing.  You did have to take care to loosen the cap, lest fermentation generate enough CO2 pressure to burst the jug.  That happened to one kid, made one helova mess in his closet. 
   But, they kept playing baseball, going to school, running the trains.  No runs on toilet paper, or anything else.  Today we panic (largely egged on by the media who want to sell papers and attract viewers) and we are shutting down the entire country. 

So how bad is Corona virus a week later

It's got a new name COVID-19.  Death rate is now worse, about 2 or 3 % compared to 0.5% last week.  Tests are getting out in the field and that has raised the number of cases in the US to 3 thousand or so, a big up since last week where it was 244.  That's probably the result of testing.  A week ago the tests were not out there, and we were not calling COVID-19 infection unless we had tested for it.  Now that we have more tests, we are finding more cases.  So far New Hampshire is doing OK, only 6 cases so far.
    Apparently people under 50 can mostly shake it off, death rate for them is way less than 1%.  For old fogies like myself, the death rate can be as bad as 10%.  Youngest son called today and urged me to be careful.  If things keep getting worse, they may cancel Senate sessions down in Concord, at which point I can just sit back, relax, and  work on my HO train layout here at the house.  My old school has just canceled Alumni Day coming up in May.  Too bad, I was going, it would have been my 60th high school reunion. 

So how bad is that Corona Virus?

Hard to tell.  Today's TV news listed 244 known cases in the US with 12 deaths.  That yields a death rate of 0.5%.  That may change.  In patients, the Corona virus looks like plain old flu.  The only way to tell that the patient has Corona virus is a blood test, which up until the other day was only done by CDC in Atlanta.  Only patients with recent travel to China or other hot spots, or had contact with other Corona virus cases got tested.  Those 244 know cases represent the few patients who have been tested.  That's getting fixed, as I write this.  As of maybe Monday test kits will be widely distributed, and the number of tests will soar.  Expect the number of cases to climb, a lot.  That will reduce the computed death rate, a lot. 
   My sources tell me that the test coming out is pretty good at detecting Corona, but it also gives positives for a number of other common viruses (virii).  These false positives will further increase the number of cases, again reducing the death rate.  Some experts expect the final death rate for Corona will come out lower than for plain old ordinary flu. 
   The TV news has been yammering about Corona cases popping up in people with no travel and no contact with known Corona virus patients.  A likely explanation is some people are mostly immune to Corona and although infected, they don't show symptoms, and don't feel bad.  So they are out there, going about their business.  But they can infect other people.  I expect wide spread testing will find these people (if they exist). 
   And, based on the mere 244 cases that we know about today, we have been doing a pretty fair job keeping Corona virus out of the US.  The Democrats ought to get off Trump's case.  On the evidence he is doing a pretty good job keeping Corona out of the country.

I wonder where their voters will go. The Bern? Uncle Joe?

Been some thinning out over in the Democrat party.  Buttigieg, Steyer, and Klobuchar  have all thrown in the towel.  They all had some voter support.  Those voters will now move over to one of the surviving Democrat contenders.  Where will they go and are there enough of 'em to make a difference on Super Tuesday, which is upon us, polls ought to open in about four hours.  I'd expect these freshly orphaned voters would go for either The Bern, or Uncle Joe.  Somehow Mike Bloomberg doesn't look all that attractive.  Elizabeth Warren is coming from the same place as The Bern but she doesn't look as electable as The Bern.  There must be a couple of others still in the race but I cannot think of their names right now.

USAF tanker boodoggle[s]

Air refueling tankers are a range extender.  The KC 135's were purchased way back during the Eisenhower administration to refuel the B-52's.  The B-52's and their nuclear weapons were kept on US stateside bases for security reasons.  To bomb Moscow, the B-52s would be refueled somewhere over Europe before pressing on to Moscow.  And refueled a second time on the way back.  In Viet Nam the KC135s refueled our F105s just before they penetrated North Viet Nam air defenses, and a second time on the way home.  Without the tankers, the Thuds simply could not reach Hanoi from our bases in Thailand.  I expect that we will need the tankers to strike just about any foe we may encounter. 
   USAF has been trying to buy a new tanker to replace the 60-70 year old KC135s.  The KC135 is a good plane but 60-70 years of hard flying is asking a lot from it.  It's time for a new one.  And, a new tanker is a straight forward job, pick a jet liner in mass production for civil airlines.  Buy a bunch of 'em, take out the seats and the galley, put in fuel tanks and a refueling boom.  After  couple of bidding catastrophes, USAF managed to get a contract with Boeing to do just that.  They would take a Boeing 757 or 767 (can't remember which) and call it KC-46.  Except, USAF (or perhaps Boeing, they love gold plate as much as anyone)  speced a fancy TV system to allow the boom operator to sit up front with the rest of the crew and steer the boom out to meet the customer aircraft by TV.  The TV system has been unsatisfactory, (and unacceptable to USAF).  Last year they bitched about low contrast when the camera was looking into the sun.  This year they are bitching about "the rubber sheet effect" some kind of distortion of the image.  The Air Force is refusing to fly the plane.  Boeing is delivering them, USAF is withholding $8 or $12 million from the price of each KC46 until the TV system is satisfactory.  Aviation Week has a big color photo of  five finished KC46's parked on the ramp, canvas covers over the engines to keep out the rain. 
   This entire boondoggle could have been avoided by putting the boom operator in the tail and giving him a nice big window, glass or plexiglas, no moving parts, no contrast or "rubber sheet" distortion.  This worked just fine on the old KC135, and the much newer KC10.  But that was beyond USAF and Boeing, so we have Boeing loosing $8-$12 mil per aircraft, and they are just cluttering up a ramp somewhere, not flying missions.  Aviation Week has the story in the 24 Feb issue.

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

Sob.  No snow all night.  All we got was and inch maybe an inch and a half from yesterday.  It helps, mountain ought to be quite skiable.  But we were anticipating a lot more snow. 

Cannon Moutain Ski Weather

Today (Thursday) started out raining.  Cannon decided it was too miserable to open.  It has cooled down, we are now (3 PM) below freezing.  We have had two serious snow flurries, between the two they laid down an inch, maybe inch and a half.  More snow is forecast for tonight.  Cannon was hoping for 4 to 8 more inches.  I will post again tomorrow when we know what happened.  The weather forecasters are talking about more snow in the White Mountains tonight.  Lets see if they know what they are talking about.

FISA court is a rubber stamp. Let's stamp it out.

The TV news is jubilating over Justice Department news/leaks about "improper" FBI testimony to the FISA court that caused said court to OK snooping on the Trump campaign during the election.  Bear in mind that of the thousands of requests to snoop on American citizens only a dozen are rejected.  99.9% of all requests to snoop are approved.  This is a rubber stamp.  What's worse, the FISA court is secret.  We don't know who the judge[s] are, where and when it meets, where it's records are kept, nothing.  A FISA judge can rule any old which way and we citizens will never know.  And they have rubber stamped a helova lot of snooping over the years.
  We ought to shut the whole FISA court thing down.  Intelligence and police agencies wanting to snoop will have to get their warrants from a real judge in a real court, one that tries cases and is open for business 9/5  five days a week. 

Democratic Debate. A lot of bashing.

Politicians usually don't bash or trash each other, the thinking being that they might need the guy for something in the future.  But at the last debate before the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday they figured their only chance of winning was to convince the voters not to vote for The Bern.  So The Bern had a lot lotta stuff dumped on his head this time.  A lot of it was old old old.  Some of it I didn't believe.  I'm a Republican, I don't have to vote for any of 'em.  Just between thee and me, I would love for the Democrats to select a candidate that would be easy meat for Donald Trump.  The Bern will do just fine.  Actually all of 'em look highly defeatable. 

Is India a member of the Anglosphere?

The Anglosphere is an informal interest group that goes way back, back as far as WWI, perhaps further.  Originally the Anglosphere was Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.  All English speaking British colonies or former colonies.  There is no treaty creating the Anglosphere.  As one might imagine, Great Britain and the United States are the biggest and strongest members, but the Anglosphere takes care not to trample on the smaller members.  Much of this is arranged in informal settings.  Since all the members share culture and history, they all tend to think alike and that makes for smooth and easy negotiations.

The Anglosphere fought WWII; they crushed the Nazis (with a lot of help from the Soviets) and set up the post war world.  The Anglosphere leaned pretty hard on the Soviets to keep them in line and contain communism.  They fought several small wars, Korea, Viet Nam, and Singapore. 

   Tonight I am watching the Indians putting on a show for President Trump’s visit.  They are doing it right.  The red carpet leading out of Air Force One has a band and dancers, all wearing colorful native garb, and belting out the tunes.  A fleet of shiny black SUVs and limousines.  I wonder if they are manufactured in India.  India has a decent sized auto industry. I could see the maker’s badge on the grilles but I didn’t recognize it.  It wasn’t a Caddy badge.  Indian Prime Minister Modi was on hand.  They did a motorcade, heading for either the Taj Mahal or Gandhi’s place, both were mentioned.  The streets were lined with cheering Indians.  Clearly a warm and enthusiastic for President Trump. 

   Can we admit India to the Anglosphere?  The British ran the place for a couple of hundred years and did a lot of Anglicization during that time.  We certainly have more in common with, and good feelings about, India than we do toward China or Russia.  Since the Anglosphere is informal, we would have to watch and see what happens.  If India supports the Anglosphere, and the other members talk with the Indians and gain their support before doing things then India is a working member.  Which would be good, India is an important country.  Indian science and industry are strong enough to launch a Mars orbiter.  India is a big place both in land area and population.  Many Indians speak English.  They have a lot of good engineers, many of whom work in US firms.  They have a fine national cuisine. 

Nevada can count. We have prelim results.

Looks like they know how to count in Nevada. The TV is giving early returns at 5 PM. Say 20 % of the vote is in. Saunders is doing well, 45%, with Biden trailing at maybe 19%. Not bad Nevada. Here in NH we don't give results until after the polls close at 7 PM. If this keeps up, Saunders has it knocked.