Confronting the Civil War.

  We fought it.  It was the worst war we ever fought.  Casualties in the Civil War were higher than casualties from all our other wars all put together.  It took the South 100 years to recover from the physical and psychic damage of the Civil War.  Down there, south of the Mason Dixon line, they still  called it the War of Northern Aggression when I was going to school.  It was fought for a noble cause, ending slavery.  It succeeded in that.  There were other reasons, but ending slavery, goal of the Abolitionists, was the real driver, without that cause, the North-South differences would not have come to war.  Civil War is a formative event in American history; you cannot understand how America got to where it is today without knowing about the Civil War. 

   It has been over for 150 years since Appomattox, but every single New England town still has a Civil War memorial on the town common listing the names of all the fallen.  If we northerners can do that, I think it is OK for southerners to put up statues to Civil War figures like Lee and Jackson and Jefferson Davis. I do remember visiting the Texas capitol years ago and walking up to the building past a solid line of Confederate statues.  I think we ought to leave them in peace to remind future generations just what happened back in 1860.  I don’t like Nancy Pelosi’s call to remove Confederate statures from the US Capitol.  I think President Trump has it right saying that places like Fort Bragg have their own history and should be left alone.  Once a place gets a name it ought to stick. 

   Somehow we managed to patch over the wounds of the Civil War back in the 1800’s.  By WWI time the old South was as loyal a part of the country as any other.  Naming some US Army bases after Confederate officers had something to do with this.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  Let’s leave it that way. 

So what do we do about "CHAZ" out in Seattle?

A what do we call them (a gang? terrorists? rebels?)  has taken over a dozen blocks in downtown Seattle and is thumbing its nose at Seattle city government and the state of Washington.  And they are shaking down businesses in the CHAZ  (acronym for the 12 block area) for protection money. The Seattle police have withdrawn or been driven out of the CHAZ area.  Neither the mayor of Seattle nor governor of Washington wants to tangle with the gang.  They fear attempts to drive them out by force, police or National Guard, could be bloody.  Which would make them look bad.  President Trump is on TV making noises about cleaning the place up using federal troops.  He hasn't actually moved any troops into place and he is probably hoping that some threats and some pressure will cause the CHAZ group to break up and disappear.  Like the mayor and the governor, Trump probably fears that moving in on the CHAZ could  lead to bloody street fighting, lots of people getting hurt, and generating endless unfavorable TV coverage.  Certainly all the TV people are anti Trump and would do their best to paint the whole scene in the mot unfavorable light possible.

  Stay tuned for film at 11.

Speech

When did our ancestors begin speaking?  Myself, I always think in words.  Thinking about how to fix this device, or where is the game lurking or how to exert leadership of a hunting band, or how to chip flint, or how do I fell this tree without dropping on top of my dwelling or how do I get across that river short of swimming it, all these things I think of in words.  Raw emotion, love, fear, hatred, awe, does not need words, but thoughts such as “why is this engine running rough” or “How do a fix this bug” I always do in words.  I assume most other people do too. 

    Thinking is our magic wand.  Looking at the fossil record we see brain size increasing as time goes on.  This was a successful evolutionary strategy that has made homo sapiens master of the planet.  Would increasing brain size do us any good without words to put our thoughts into?  I always think in words.  If I didn’t have words, I could not think.  Does this mean that our earliest ancestors could speak too?  Without speech would our larger brains do us any good? 

This is all pure speculation of course.  I am not aware of any evidence one way or the other.  And I cannot imagine finding speech in the fossil record. 

 

D-Day

D-day was an incredible Allied achievement that hastened victory over Nazi Germany.  American officers were unanimous in their belief that only a huge army, landed as close as possible to the German border, to drive on Berlin, and hang Hitler from a sour apple tree, would bring victory.  Americans, backed by a large and loyal population, endless fertile farmlands, plentiful natural resources, and the world’s largest industrial base, felt that this was possible,  If German resistance was stiffer than anticipated, it could be crushed by sending more troops and tanks and guns, of which America had a goodly supply. 

   The Brits, who put up many of the troops for D-day and much of the airpower and shipping and naval support, had been fighting Hitler for five long years.  They had learned, first hand and to their sorrow, how effective the German army was.  Norway, Dunkirk, Tobruk, and The Blitz were not happy memories for the Brits.  They counseled caution and thought the Americans were reckless in their outlook. 

   By 1944 the Allies had accomplished two major successes, both of which wee absolutely vital to the success of D-day.  First they had solved the U-boat problem.  In the “happy days” of 1941 and 1942, the U-boats were sinking hundreds of merchantmen every year.  But in the winter of 1943 the Allies got their act together and drove the U-boats out of the Atlantic.  They had allocated just a few B24 bombers, with extra fuel tanks in their bomb bays, to close the Atlantic air gap, the black pit the merchant seamen called it.  The B24’s could supply good air cover to convoys all the way across the Atlantic.  And all the destroyers had been equipped with good radar, Talk-Between-Ships (TBS) radio, and High Frequency Direction Finders (Huff-Duff) which gave a vector pointing right at any U-boat that used its radio.  And two years experience at sea had trained up the escort vessels to a high pitch of effectiveness.  A couple of vicious convoy battles in the winter of 1943 resulted in the Allies sinking more U-boats than the U-boats sank merchant vessels.  For the rest of the war U-boat sinkings remained heavy.   This victory allowed the Americans to build up a huge army on the British Isles.  Had the U-boats sunk half of this traffic on the way across, D-day would have been impossible. 

   The second victory was the extermination of the Luftwaffe.  This was done by the P-51 long range escort fighters that accompanied the bombers all the way to the target and shot down the Luftwaffe fighters that rose to attack the bombers.  There is a scene in “The Longest Day” where a Luftwaffe fighter pilot complains that his was the only sortie flown against the Normandy beaches.  Had the Luftwaffe been strong, the JU-88’s would have been dropping 500 pound bombs into the open landing craft as they approached the beaches, and on the Allied destroyers.  For larger naval targets the Luftwaffe had Fritz-X, an early model smart bomb that had put an American cruiser out of action at Salerno and sunk an Italian battleship in the Mediterranean.  But due to the RAF and USAF actions the Luftwaffe no longer had the planes, or the pilots, or the gasoline to oppose the D-day landings. 

 

Have we arrested any Antifa members? Yet?

The Administration was saying that Antifa was organizing and leading the riots.  Have we arrested any Antifa members connected with any of the riots?  Perhaps someone who attended Antifa meetings and paid Antifa dues?  I am perfectly happy to believe that all the rioting and property destruction is caused be some evil and secret organization.  But how about some proof, some evidence, some Antifa members arrested for doing bad somewhere.  Any one caught carrying an Antifa membership card?  Like the commies were thought to do back in the day? 

  I have no trouble believing that the riots started the old fashioned way.  A lot of people gather somewhere in town.  A bunch of our lawless citizens join the mob.  Shop windows get smashed, stores get looted, fires get set, stuff gets thrown at the cops.  No evil secret organization required. 

   The cops ought to move in and arrest everyone they can catch looting and burning.  And people arrested should be kept in custody until all the paperwork is completed.  That might take a week, or even longer, you know how it is with paperwork.

40 Million Out of work. Probably free to go to a riot.

This week’s riots were probably made worse by 40 million out of work people who need some entertainment after a couple of months on lockdown at home.  That 40 million is out of work because of state government orders closing down their employers. 

Many of our citizens are law abiding.  I don’t have any numbers, I hope that the law abiding are the majority.  A large number of citizens are lawless.  Again, I lack numbers but I sincerely hope we have more law abiding than lawless citizens.  The most lawless have close encounters of the cop kind and wind up in jail.  The medium lawless will take advantage of a riot to pick up a new TV or a new computer, but usually don’t engage in burglary and shop lifting for fear of getting caught.  Only the police and the courts keep the lawless citizens in check.  I am hearing calls from the left to abolish the police.  God help us if that ever happens.  The lawless will over run the country.  We need police and courts to keep the lawless in check.

   The police have a strong sense of comradeship.  They stick together.  It is extremely hard for a police department to lower the boom on misbehaving cops, because the department is made up of cops and all cops feel they need to protect and defend fellow cops from hostile citizens groups.  I’m thinking every department has a few, one or two, maybe more, bad cops who ought to be off the force.  But they don’t get the boot like they should because of the feelings of solidarity with everyone on the force.

  The only fix for this problem is an independent group of non-cops running an agency that finds bad cops and indicts them and pushes the paperwork thru to get them kicked off the force.  Maybe a federal agency like the anti-trust lawyers group at the Justice department. 

  Or we could use the Cambridge solution.  Cambridge MA, better than twenty years ago, had a very offensive Officer De Luca.  He patrolled the public housing projects in Cambridge and was a real pain in the ass to project residents.  One fine day Officer De Luca’s cruiser became stuck in Cambridge traffic.  Suddenly the doors of his cruiser were yanked open, Officer De Luca was pulled out of the cruiser, and the locals beat the stuffing out of him.  It was noticed that Officer De Luca’s behavior in the projects improved greatly after that.

Words of the Weasel Part 55

We should not call them looters, we should call them "protesters who just happen to carry stuff out of a store".  That's the AP style guidelines this week.  Wow!  For that matter the TV people don't use the word "riot" or "rioter".   Nor have they carried stories of shop owners shooting looters.  I know some shop owners who would put a bullet into a looter without even thinking twice about it.  There has gotta be a bunch more out there. 

Peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government…

 

For a redress of grievances.  First amendment.  We are talking about people carrying flags and signs and posters.  Marching in daylight, down routes coordinated with local authorities.  Singing and chanting.  Making speeches.  Listening to speeches.  Dispersing and going home when the demo is over.  That’s peaceable assembly.

Riots are something else.  Breaking shop windows, looting, setting fires, throwing stuff at cops.   We citizens expect law enforcement to break them up, suppress them.  Surround them; arrest a bunch of ‘em.  Use fire hoses and tear gas on em.  Keep them from destroying our livelihoods.   Authorities that permit, or worse encourage, law enforcement to shirk their duty should be turned out of office at the next election.  Or impeached immediately.

The Radial Arm Saw (RAS)

 

Back in the 50’s, when I was a kid, all the other kids’ fathers had shops, in the garage, in the basement, somewhere.  And at least half of them had a radial arm saw in their shop.  It was clear to all us kids that the RAS was the wave of the future and table saws were for old fuddy-duddies.  My father had a table saw, inherited from my grandfather. The radial arm saw remained popular with do-it-yourselfers up thru the 80’s, maybe the 90’s.   Then the safety freaks struck.  They declared the radial arm saw to be dangerous, that using a standard blade was dangerous, that making rip cuts was even more dangerous, and the blade guard didn’t cover enough of the blade.  The wood shop magazines carried the safety freak stories and stopped doing stories about using and buying radial arm saws.   Today, in 2020 there are hardly any new ones for sale, and the price of used ones has sunk down to 50-100 bucks.  You cannot buy a skilsaw for that little. 

   Me, I bought a radial arm saw back in the 70’s and I still have it.  I never did get a table saw.  I still have all my fingers too.  Major benefit of the radial arm saw is it saves space in the shop.  You can push it up against a wall and it works just fine.  The table saw needs clearance all around it to handle big work pieces.  The radial arm saw will make all the cuts a table saw can except for one not too important one.  It will make all the cuts a chop saw can make and in addition it will rip, which the chop saw will not.  You can also use your radial arm saw as a horizontal boring machine, a disc or drum sander, a shaper, a surface planer, and even as a bench grinder to keep your chisels sharp. 

   You do want to be careful.  The tool is dangerous.  The blade on a RAS or a table saw will sever any body part that comes in contact with it.  I keep my hands three inches away from the blade at all times.  If the work piece is too small to allow for three inches clearance, I throw it in the scrap box and find a bigger piece. 

   When ripping I first tilt the blade guard down on the in feed side to allow just enough room for the work to go into the blade but not any fingers that might be sliding or riding along the top of the work.  Then I always set the anti kickback fingers to dig in and prevent the blade from throwing the work back at me.  And I use a wooden shop made push stick for that last bit of push right next to the blade.  If the piece is too narrow to safely push it thru the blade, I throw it in the scrap box and get a bigger piece.  For tricky or difficult rip cuts I will clamp a feather board to the RAS table to keep the work pressed up against the fence. 

   In short I don’t see the RAS as more dangerous than the table saw.  Both machines will take off fingers with the greatest of ease.  You just have to be careful using them.  Right now, a used RAS can be so cheap that you cannot go wrong buying it.  Craigslist is your friend.  If you are starting up a wood shop a RAS makes a fine start. 

Cannon Ski trails are finally green

Ski trails on Cannon have been white with snow up until yesterday.  They make snow on the trails all winter and pack it down with fancy snow grooming machines every night.  By the end of ski season there is a LOT of snow on the trails.  Takes time for the warm weather to melt it all.

George Floyd Killing and Burning down Minneapolis

The George Floyd killing I saw on TV is outrageous. Floyd, handcuffed, prone on the ground, under a police car, had a uniformed officer stand on his throat until he died.  That officer should be prosecuted for murder.  Minnesota had better find some decent lawyers to prosecute, try and convict the officer.

   The looting and burning of Minneapolis is also outrageous.  Each looted store, each burned building is the work of many people over many years destroyed in a few minutes.  Plenty of small business people have lost all they owned, thru no fault of their own.  Some newsies have tried to paint this riot as a protest against the George Floyd killing.  First amendment protects the right to "peaceably to assemble and to petition for a redress of grievances".  Looting and burning is not peaceable, it's a riot. 

   The newsies do not have any stories of police or National Guard making arrests, using fire hoses or tear gas, or breaking up the riot.  Far as I can tell, the cops and the Guard fled the area.  Back trouble, a big yellow stripe. 

Regulating social media.

Trump declared something about regulating social media on TV yesterday.  I did not understand just what Trump means; I have not researched the relevant laws.  All I have to go on is the TV people’s opinions, which can be ignorant and anti Trump.  So let’s just consider what ought to be done.

   Right now anyone with an IQ above room temperature can log on to Facebook or Twitter or U-tube or the rest of them and post any damn thing he pleases.  And it goes world wide.  A bunch of Islamic terrorists have claimed they were recruited sheerly thru watching terrorist propaganda on Facebook and U-tube. 

   The owners of the platforms are the only ones who know how to delete posts, cancel log in privileges, and post comments.  We have to trust them, or shut their platforms down.  I think the platform owners right along have been deleting material that is clearly offensive, pornography, nudity, sex acts, snuff videos, pedophilia, BDSM, Islamic terrorist propaganda, KKK propaganda and worse.  They ought to keep on doing it.  Maybe step it up some.

   Then we come to individual posters who post all sorts of poppycock, anti Semitic, white supremacy, Nazi, alien invasion, and other weirdo ideas.  I think maybe we ought to just leave them alone.  Much of it is so weird that no body pays it attention.  The offensive stuff can be replied to by those who have been offended.

   And then we come to posters who are elected officials.  Since they got themselves elected they have support from a majority of their constituents.  That’s a lot of people who think they are OK.  Same goes for opposition politicos from the major parties.  As a platform owner, I myself would be extremely reluctant to censor an elected official for fear of offending a lot of people and inviting retaliation.  I think the Twitter people are crazy to censor the President of the US.  He has brought them all sorts of viewers/readers/tweeters.  If Twitter doesn’t like what Trump tweets, surely they can find some anti trump tweeters to respond to the Donald.

   If we are really unhappy with the platform owners, then we can get the anti Trust lawyers to break them up.  Facebook is clearly a monopoly.  We would be better off with two sites competing for viewers/readers/pageviewers. 

  

 

 

Venezuela crashes and burns

Venezuela has fallen from the richest South American country with the biggest oil reserves in the world to accepting charity tanker shipments of crude oil from Iran.  Hugo Chavez and socialism managed this underwhelming feat.  And I read that half of American young people believe in socialism.  If true, we are in deep doo-doo.

Blogger new version

Blogger has been pushing a new version for some months now. Yesterday they said "you better switch over to the new version or we will do it for you. So I tried it out. Clearly the Blogger software weenies have had a fine time changing the looks of the Blogger page is unimportant ways. And I checked out "comments" where I found half a dozen comments from verious people caught in the comments page awaiting my OK to post them. Some dated back to the beginning of the year. None of had showed in the old version of Blogger. So I OKed them all to print except one really nasty one from a troll. Sorry about that. Anyhow I will keep using the new version of Blogger. I am so glad Blogger has so many software weenies with nothing better to do. They never did fix the 100 pageview burst every midnight.

FISA court takes Flak

As well it should.  FISA is a pure rubber stamp.  Every single time the intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI and the rest of 'em) want a warrant to snoop anyone, US citizen or Russian diplomat, they go to the FISA court which OK's every snooping request.  So when the FBI wanted to snoop the Trump campaign in 2016, the FISA court rubber stamped the request.  Which is wrong.  FISA allowed a partisan FBI to interfere in a political campaign, which should never happen.  The House passed a FISA funding bill a few months ago.  The Senate was thinking about it bu Trump tweeted this evening that he would veto the bill.  Good for the Donald.  We ought to shut the FISA court scam down for good.

If the intelligence agencies want a warrant to snoop, they can go to a  real court, the kind that meets 5 days a week and tries cases every day.

Steam Engines, beloved in song and story

Tootle, The Little Engine That Could, Tom Thumb, Hogwarts Express, Polar Express, Oriente Express, Broadway Limited, Thomas,we still love them.  Diesel locomotives replaced the steamers by 1957 or so but never got into literature or the movies much. Among railroad people steam locomotives were always described by the number of the locomotive's wheels, pilot wheels, driving wheels, trailing wheels.  The standard 19th century steamer was a 4-4-0, four pilot wheels, four driving wheels, no trailing wheels. 
   The earliest steam engines, Tom Thumb is still on display at the Baltimore and Ohio museum.  The design is straightforward, firebox on the bottom, a fire tube boiler mounted  atop the firebox and a stack on top of the boiler.  Flames rose up thru the firetubes, boiled the water, and rose up the stack creating draft to keep the wood fire burning brightly.  Just four driving wheels.  Tom Thumb never went fast enough to need the steadying effect of pilot wheels.  This design was successful and quite a few were built.  But the design does not scale well.  A bigger locomotive needs a bigger taller boiler and the taller boiler won't fit under bridges. 
   New design, that lasted until the end of steam, laid the firetube boiler on it's side, placed the firebox at the rear, where the fireman could reach into the tender for wood, or later coal, and the stack at the front.  Flames from the firebox were led forward thru the firetubes and then up the stack.  Waste steam from the cylinders was vented up the stack to increase the draft and creating that distinctive choo-choo sound. This arrangement needed a pilot truck the carry the weight of cylinders, stack , and the front half of the boiler. 
   In my childhood all small boys knew that you could tell a passenger locomotive from a freight locomotive by looking at the number of pilot wheels.  Freight ran fairly slowly, say 30 mph and a two wheel pilot truck was enough to steady them.  Passenger trains reached 100 mph by 1900 and needed much more weight on the pilot truck to lead the locomotive into switches and curves.  The extra weight needed four wheels to support it. 
    The older smaller 19th century engines located the firebox just over the rear set of drivers.  This worked, but it limited the width of the firebox to 4 foot, eight and a half inches, the track gauge.  Larger locomotives built after 1900 moved the firebox clean aft of the drive wheels and widened it out to 10 feet, the widest it could be without hitting station platforms.  And a pair, sometime two pair of trailing wheels were added under the firebox. 

Toilet Paper is back in stock!!!

Did the week's grocery shopping.  Demand has pulled forth supply.  The empty shelves are now filled with both paper towels and toilet paper.  About time.  They are asking $3 a pound for chicken.  Still showing a lot of strange house brands.  Signature is Shaw's favorite now.  I bought a load of Signature white bread last shopping run.  Not good.  Worse than Wonderbread, mushy, a slight off taste.  Everybody wore a mask.  We all thanked the cashiers.

They ain't including return envelopes in bills

Four of my suppliers did not include a return envelope in their bill this month.  I had to hand scribe a return envelope for each of them. PITA.  A new cost cutting measure?  I'm not talking about a stamped return envelope, just a window envelope that lets the company's billing address on the payment slip show thru.

Middle school was getting bad back then

I wrote this for Youngest Son back when he was doing middle school some ten years ago.  I wonder if things in school are still this bad.


1.  Never say the word "gun" (or shoot or fire or kill or bang-bang or...) 
2.  Never take any thing that looks like, sounds like, or might be accused of being, a gun to school.    Same goes for any kind of knife, even a butter knife.  Don't bite your food into gun shapes.  Don't point a finger, or anything else at anyone.  No toy soldiers, no Lego guns, no books about guns or with illustrations of guns, or people carrying guns (cowboy stories, Johnnie Tremain, Last of the Mohigans, anything like that).
3.  Never say anything angry about anyone or anything.  If something or someone angers you don't say anything about it.  Hold it inside yourself until you get home.  Never threaten anything. 
4.  No touching, no hitting, no hugging. Keep your distance.
5.  They are always watching you and listening to you.  Especially on the bus, at recess and on the Internet.

Forget any of these rules and they will throw you out of school, for good.

School was easier to survive when I was a kid. 

The Battle of Britain

Decisive WWII action.  Had the British lost, Hitler would have invaded Britain and that would have changed everything, for the worse.  In the spring of 1940 Hitler looked invincible.  He had conquered and occupied Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, France (a great power) and driven the British (the other great power) into the sea at Dunkirk.  Although the British had managed to rescue most of their soldiers, they abandoned all their tanks, trucks, artillery, tents, rations, and ammunition. Only a few troops retained their rifles.  Had Hitler been able to put a few divisions ashore in England in the summer of 1940, it would have been all over for the Brits.

   Only the Royal Navy stood in the way.  Had the Germans set out for England in their fleet of Rhine River barges, the Brits would have steamed up along side in destroyers and blown the Germans out of the water.  The Brits had better than 100 destroyers backed up by 30 odd cruisers and a dozen battleships. They had sunk Graf Spee and Bismarck.  The actions off Norway had wiped out most of the German destroyers.  Those river barges would have been on their own crossing the channel. 

   The German Luftwaffe might have been able to drive the Royal Navy away and safe guard the crossing.  For this to work, the Luftwaffe had to establish air superiority.  You cannot be attacking RN destroyers with Spitfires on your tail.  This means shooting down RAF fighters in the air and bombing RAF bases out of operation. 

   The Brits knew what was coming.  They had invented and installed the first modern air defense system.  We were still using the idea in USAF in the 1960s.  It consisted of ground radar, linked by telephone to “sector stations” which scrambled the fighters and gave them vectors and altitudes to fly for interception. 

Without the radar Luftwaffe strikes would have surprised the RAF on the ground unless the RAF flew reconnaissance sorties to spot the Germans at a distance.  The number of recon sorties would have huge.  A fighter unit can only put up so many sorties a day.  To waste all those sorties just flying around looking for the enemy would have meant the end for the British.  With the radar, the British fighters could stay on their fields, all fueled and armed, ready to scramble, and count on intercepting the Germans on pretty much every sortie.  No sorties wasted flying recon.

   Had the Germans figured things out, they could have bombed the radar stations.  There were easy to find, being right on the coast and having 300 foot high antennas marking their positions.  And they could have bombed out the sector stations by homing in on their radio transmissions.   But, the Germans never figured out what was going on and let the radars and the sector stations operate undisturbed.  They counted on shooting down the Hurricanes and Spitfires in the air, and bombing their fields.  This didn’t work out because the British planes and pilots were as good as the Luftwaffe planes and pilots, and the British cranked up their aircraft factories and were building more planes than the Germans were shooting down. 

  Why do we care?  England was a Great Power; she had 50 odd million population.  Not too shabby even compared to our 100 odd million back then. And England could count on solid support from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India.  India put up many of the troops that beat Rommel in North Africa, and later beat the Japanese at Imphal and drove them out of Burma.  And, England was the base for the air war on Germany and for launching D-Day.  Many of the craft that landed in Normandy were open landing craft.  They could cross the Channel in good weather but they would never survive crossing the North Atlantic even in summer.  In short England was key strategic terrain.  Had the Germans taken it in 1940 it is difficult to imagine how we would ever have been able to beat Hitler.

We need to get the country back to work.

We need to get the country back to work.  Every day we all consume food, fuel, clothing, shelter and any one of a zillion different necessities of life.  We are running out of stuff.  We have to get back to work and grow, manufacture, mine, frack, transport raw materials to factories, and transport finished goods to stores.  The whole country has been out of work for eight weeks now.  We are running out of stuff.  You can see it when you go grocery shopping.  Empty shelves, missing product, lack of toilet paper, paper towels, whole milk, beef, pork, and chicken at the butcher’s counter. 

   And most of us need our paychecks.  And business needs workers.  The governor allowed hair salons and barber shops to open this week in New Hampshire.  I made an appointment with Mane St Styles to get my hair cut.   The proprietor greeted me at the door, gave me a new mask to replace the daughter-in-law made one I was wearing, took my temperature with one of those high tech IR gadgets, and greeted me warmly.  All the staff were overjoyed to back to work.  And it did feel good to get my hair off my neck after two months.

   Naturally as soon as we do get back to work, people are going to catch COVID-19.  Staying at home we are fairly safe.  Getting out into the world exposes us to the virus and some of us will catch it.  Some of us will die from it.  And the medics and the media will cry that we are killing people.  Until we have a vaccine, and that is a year away according to the TV, there is some risk involved.  But that risk is the same tomorrow, next week, next month, until we have a vaccine.  Can we keep the country shut down for a year waiting on a vaccine?  I don’t think so.  I am in the high risk group.  But I will risk it just to eat at a restaurant.  I am tired of eating my own cooking.

   And, to get the country back to work we need to protect our businesses from COVID-19 lawsuits.  We cannot allow lawyers to sue every business in sight every time someone comes down with COVID-19.  People come down with COVID-19 because the Chinese released the virus into the world.  If we give the lawyers their head, they will sue all our small businesses clean out of business.  Small businesses don’t have lawyers on staff, they cannot afford lawyers, and just the threat of unending lawsuits will kill them all. 

   By all accounts if you are under 50 and in decent health, your odds are pretty good; say 0.1% chance of dying.  If you are over 70 (like me) and your health is not so good, your odds are a lot worse, say 10% chance of dying.  We should let people make their own choices; we should not force people in fear of their lives to go back to work.  Likewise we should not prevent people who want to get back to work from doing so.  

Canned Catfood. Pate vs Shreds & Glop

I prefer pate. It is less messy to handle.  Cat prefers shreds & glop.  How can I tell?  She doesn't eat much pate, but she will have all the shreds and glop eaten within the hour. 

Barrows

I was watching a U-tube lecture on European archeology.  They excavated a huge barrow in England.  Built back in prehistoric times, before writing, all we know about then comes from archeology.  It was a big structure, half underground, half above ground.  These things are often described as graves.  On this barrow, they excavated and found the bones of forty individuals.  Forty?  Not many for a barrow that big.  The place was big enough to hold a 1000 graves.  Especially when you think how difficult it must have been to build such a place in the stone age.  Few workers, a poor hunter gatherer economy, no metal tools, not even shovels.  It must have required powerful motivations to build those barrows.
   Barrows are traditional described as grave sites.  That U-Tube lecture makes me think that the barrows served other purposes. Tribal gathering places, sacred places where shamans asked the god for good weather, good hunting and good luck.  Places where seers predicted the future.  We cannot know at this remove in time.  I.m thinking those few graves were the graves of a few exceptional individuals, priests, kings, shamans, mighty warriors, buried in the barrow to bring good luck, bring a friendly spirit, and make a sacred place more sacred.  We still do this.  Look at Westminster where the British bury their kings and scientists and soldiers. 

Boeing's Number 1 Problem.

  Best selling 737 Max has been grounded for more than a year.  This is the brand new airliner that suffered two fatal crashes within a few months of each other.  The autopilot in both crashes failed, seized control of the plane and dove it into the ground, killing all on board.  After a year, the cause of the autopilot failure is known, fixes have been made, but the aircraft (and Boeing’s very survival) are still grounded.  The 737 MAX is Boeing’s bread and butter aircraft.  It’s the single aisle jetliner that does most of the flying. They were cranking out 57 a month ($100 mil apiece).  Production of all of Boeing’s other aircraft was only 20 per month. 

   FAA is still paralyzed with fear of another 737 MAX crash which would reflect badly upon them, and so they are slow walking all the paperwork.  The Corona virus epidemic has caused meetings to be replaced by teleconferences slowing matters still more.  Much more of this, and Boeing will have to declare bankruptcy. 

British history via U-tube.

  I watched a couple of decent, lengthy U-Tube presentations by “The Histocrat”.  The first one talks about humans moving into Britain a million years ago.  Over the last million years Britain has suffered several ice ages severe enough to drive all the humans out of Britain, and as many interglacial periods were the forests and the game and the humans came back.  With both the ice ages and the interglacials lasting 10,000 years or more.  Used to be, they only wrote about humans settling in Britain after the last ice age went out 10,000 years ago.  Apparently they have discovered a couple of sites in Britain that are much older since the last book I read was written.  They failed to describe just how these older sites were dated.  Carbon 14 dating only works back 30-40 thousand years.  A million years is too old for carbon 14 dating. 

   They did discuss the seas breaking thru the straits of Dover, creating the English Channel and cutting Britain off from the Continent.  And sinking Doggerland.  They were a little vague on just when this happened, and after it happened how did humans get across the Channel and onto English soil?  No discussion of when early humans, especially Heidelberg man and Neanderthal man might have developed boats.  It doesn’t take much of a boat; the Channel is only twenty miles wide and can be crossed in a birch bark canoe in good weather. 

   The second one, which started up automatically after the first one finished, picks up the story around 8000 BC with the Beaker Folk.  It claimed that DNA evidence shows a turnover in British population with the appearance of Beaker Folk graves.  They fail to describe how this DNA testing works and how many samples of DNA going back before 8000 BC they have.  Some discussion of introduction of copper and bronze into a flint using late Neolithic Britain.  The author clearly knows little about metal work, he describes bronze as “hard”.  It isn’t very hard.  Flint is much harder than bronze.  Bronze is tougher than flint; you can make a bronze sword that works.  You cannot make a flint sword; flint is brittle as glass and would break the first time you struck anything with it.  The author makes a big deal over copper versus bronze.  I don’t see that, bronze is a straight forward alloy of copper with 10% tin which gives a metal much tougher than plain copper.  But other than adding the tin, bronze works the same way as copper does.  You can cast it and sharpen it the same way as copper.  A copper smith doesn’t have to learn much to become a bronze smith.  The author discusses smelting copper from the ore (oxides or sulfides of copper).  Actually copper working got started with native copper.  There used to be nuggets of pure copper just lying around to be picked up.  They are mostly gone by now, but they were important back in the day.  The native copper can be hammered into shape, or melted and cast into shape, much simpler that figuring out how to smelt copper from ores.      

8 1/2 inches of fresh global warming in May

 8 1/2 inches of fresh global warming fell on my deck last night.  May is late in the season for snow like this.  It ought to push back leaf day if the trees have any common sense.

Cops and Courts should handle Campus Sexual Harrassment

Betsy DeVos, Trump's education secretary , has just released new federal guidance to the nation's colleges and universities.  Hence forth they have to allow accused students a little bit of due process before expelling them.  Good first step.  BUT...
Rape is a serious crime.  Used to be a death penalty offense.  We have backed off on the death penalty, but it is still a serious crime.  I don't like students getting judged by a bunch of college admins for serious offenses like rape.  That's what we have police and courts for.  And American courts are pretty good on due process, far more so than lefty college admins.  When someone complains to the college of campus rape or sexual harassment, the college should offer her (or him) a ride to the police station, and a ride back.

Train buffs for Trump.

  

Today’s campaign mailing offered a real electric model train, all painted up as a Trump campaign train. It looked kinda cool.  I like Trump and I like trains.  I have an HO train layout running around the walls of the down stairs guest room.  I guessed this trophy model train was HO scale.  The picture showed HO style couplers.  A lot of looking did turn up “HO” in an obscure place in the mailing.  I sort of expected a deal for the train like this “Make a sizable campaign contribution and we will send you this cool troy.”  No such luck.  After reading and re-readng the offer, I think if you send in the paper work they will bill you and if you sent the toy train operator (not the Trump campaign!) a check, they will send you the locomotive.  Send them two more checks and they will send you the two passenger cars that make up the full train.  No where did it say how much each check had to be. 

   After all the reading and re-reading of the mailer, I decided NO Sale, and put the mailer into File 13.

Terminator Dark Fate 2019

    It’s been a long time (36 years) since the first Terminator movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton.  Terminator Dark Fate still has Arnold and Linda Hamilton.  Linda has aged, nearly as much at Carrie Fisher aged in the last Star Wars flick.  We have a large cast but none of the other actors names mean anything to me.  Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis is a human with superpowers rather than a cyborg, Dani Ramos played by Natalia Reyes has Sarah Connor’s old role from the first Terminator movie.  They both do good jobs; this movie ought to help both of their careers. This flick got an R rating, mostly over a few F-bombs dropped here and there.  The plot is familiar, a super being, Grace, is sent back from the future to guard a good looking young chick, Dani Ramos, from an unstoppable Terminator sent back from the future to kill her.  .The movie starts out in Spanish, with English subtitles, which was a little off putting.  There is a lot of combat thru out the movie.  It is so violent that it is hard to believe that the characters can survive all the banging around.  There are some plot holes, such as the time they are riding on the top of a freight train, headed toward the US border, and suddenly, poof, they are in a nice clean new white pickup truck. 

   They spent $185 million to make this and it has made $261 million world wide since it was released in November last year.  Somebody goofed on the publicity, I never heard of it before seeing it on Netflix.  If I had known there was another Terminator movie in the theaters I probably would have gone and seen it.

   The cyborgs are no longer the bright shiny liquid metal from Terminator 2; rather they are made from soft and squishy black tar.  Yuck.  I liked the liquid metal better.

    Overall this was a meh movie, nowhere as entertaining as Terminator 2 was 30 years ago.   No good one liners.  No romance, neither Grace nor Dani gets a guy.  Sarah Connor wants to kill Arnold’s T800 character.  I remember Sarah saying nice things about the T-800’s fatherly relationship with young John Connor toward the end of Terminator 2.  She must have had some attitude adjustment for the worse in the two (or more?) Terminator flicks between this one and Terminator 2.

Take the kids to a battlefield

We have some around here.  Bunker Hill, Concord, Lexington, Bennington, Ticonderoga, Saratoga, gotta be some more but I can't think of them right now.  To make it really educational, get a book about the battle and have the kids read it.  Bring the book on the trip.  They usually have a walking trail with sign posts.  Have the kids read each sign post aloud.  If there is a guide, join up with him and listen to what he has to say.  Observe the terrain.  Point out the importance of the high ground.  Find the high ground.  Find the places our side defended against Redcoat attacks.  Pace out a fair musket shot, about 150 paces is extreme range for a smooth bore flintlock musket.  Pace out the distance required to see the whites of their eyes.  That's so short a range that nobody can miss.  From Concord, follow the road the Redcoats used to retreat back to Boston after the shoot out.  Point out that patriots fired upon the retreating Redcoats all the way.  In Wales, England, Carnavon Castle, a famous Redcoat regiment has their home and museum.  That regiment (Cold Stream Guards? can't remember for sure) was at Concord in 1775 and made the retreat to Boston.  The diary of the regimental surgeon is in the museum, open to the page for Concord.  It reads some thing like , "Oh the colonials were beastly that day.  Unsporting.  Fired upon us from behind stone walls."    

Corona virus gets Congress to actually pass a law

I had pretty much given up on meaningful federal legislation.  Meaningful as in more important than renaming a Post Office.   I cannot remember the last useful law the Congress passed.  it was many years ago.  Since then CongressCritters occupied their time calling each other names, bad mouthing president Trump, and promising support for motherhood and apple pie. 
   Then we are hit with Corona virus.  And, lo and behold, the CongressCritters manage to pass a $2.2 trillion relief and recovery bill.  Hallelujah.  Too bad it takes a repeat visit from the Black Death to get them to do anything.  

Let's get back to work

Should we end the current economic shut down in New Hampshire?  We have everyone hunkered down at home and while we stay at home we probably won’t catch COVID-19.  But how long can we keep it up?  I already see signs that the food supply chain is breaking down.  We are going to start running out of a lot of things pretty soon. 

    Speaking as someone old enough to be in the high risk group, I don’t see much difference in my odds of catching COVID-19 next week or next month or next year.  Things won’t change much until we have a vaccine and the TV says that is a year away.  Can we stay shut down and live off inventory for a whole year waiting on a vaccine?  I don’t think so.  Already we are running out of food.  Check the empty shelves in the grocery stores.

    Going back to work ought to voluntary.  Those that want to go back to work should be allowed to.  Those that don’t should be free to stay at home.  When ever we go back to work, some people are going to catch it.  Some of them will die.  The medics and the media will cry loudly that we are killing people.  But are we?  It doesn’t make much difference to me whether I catch it next week or next month or next year. 

Better late than never. HP power button works right.

Some years ago I bought an HP Pavilion laptop.  It had (still has) a power button to turn it on.  That worked fine for months.  Then we had a Micro$oft patch oh maybe two-three years ago.  That broke the power button.  Shut the laptop down thru Windows, and next morning, the power button would not start up up again.  PITA.   One clue, the LED in the power  button no longer turned off when I shut the laptop down thru Windows.  I found I could hold the power button down for the count of nine and the LED would turn off.  And then, pressing the  power button would make the laptop start up like it ought to.
   I googled on this bug, never found anything about it on the net. I lived with the PITA for years.  Then the Micro$oft patch day came on last Friday.  And it fixed the power button.  Hoorah.

Terrible Timer (kitchen timer that is)

It was cheap, $3 and a skosh at Wally Mart.  It ain't loud enough.  The all metal sixty year old timer it replaced, had a good loud single "ding" loud enough to be heard all over the living room.  This new cheap all plastic wonder timer just ain't loud enough.  I have burned half a dozen things to a crisp because I failed to hear the too soft, too short, buzz the new plastic one makes. 
   The maker was ashamed of his product and failed to put his name on it.  It does have "Made in China" stamped in the inside.  It's all white, about 3 inches wide by 3 inches high, half round top.  If we ever get the stores open again I will look for something better. 

Teach the kids the US Constitution

At the end of the American Revolution there were 13 independent colonies.  Each colony had its own legislature to make laws, a governor to execute them, courts to enforce them, an army, a navy, a diplomatic corps, taxes, and an establishment that ran things.  In short everything you need to become an independent nation.  And the people who were the colonial establishment, the colonial legislature, the administration and the courts, wanted to keep their jobs, their influence, and their position.  They all feared a Continental government would usurp their powers, position and livelihood. 
   On the other hand they all feared the British would be back for round two. They all knew that none of them were strong enough to stand off the Redcoats single handed.  They knew they needed to present a united front to a hostile world.  They also knew that the existing Articles of Confederation were not working.  The Confederation lacked even the power to levy its own taxes. 
   So, when the call to a Constitutional Convention went out over George Washington's signature, all the colonies sent a delegation.  All the delegations were intent upon setting up a federal government to handle foreign affairs and national defense  but not one that took over their jobs back home.  Hence a lot of careful language in the Constitution outlining just what powers the new federal government might have, and those powers it would not have. 
   Kids ought to understand the separation of powers into the three branches of the Federal government.  Article 1 creates the Congress to make the laws.  Article 2 sets up the Executive branch to execute existing law but without power to make new law.  Article 3 sets up the federal courts and defines their jurisdiction.  Note that the state courts existing at the time handled ordinary criminal and civil matters and the federal courts were restricted to matters of federal law.  They cannot try a defendant for murder, murder is a state crime, not a federal one. 
   The Constitution had a lot of compromises and on the whole was a very successful document.  It still controls the United States today, with a mere 27 amendments over 230 years.   Of those 27, ten were applied right after the adoption of the Constitution and should really be considered part of the original deal.  That leaves a mere 17 amendments over the course of 230 years, a pretty good record for stability. 

Testing Corona virus to death

Tests don't cure disease.  For a doctor treating a patient, results of a Corona virus test are useful, and can guide his treatment.  Numbers I saw yesterday showed we have nearly one million Corona virus cases and we have conducted five million Corona virus tests.  Sounds to me like we have tested all, and more than all, the patients that doctors are treating.  
   But on TV I see various talking heads,  the network kind and the medical kind and the political kind, calling for more and more testing and claiming that we cannot let people get back to work until we have tested more and more people.
  Why?  If we are testing all the patients, what good does testing everyone in the country do?  Especially when the test is suspicious.  Testing comes back positive on a lot of people who are in good health and show no symptoms.  The medics all say these individuals are "asymptomatic" which is true but doesn't tell us much.  We more practical people might say the test shows a lot of false positives.  With such a test, more testing will make the Corona virus epidemic look worse.   The political and network talking heads are fine with that, they think news of worse Corona virus infection hurts Trump, and they are all dyed in the wool anti-Trumpers.
   Me, I think we need to get the country back to work before we run out of stuff, like food, fuel, clothing, personal protective equipment, prescription drugs, toilet paper and a zillion other things. You can see the shortages in every grocery store, lots of  empty shelves.

Teach kids The Declaration of Independence

It offers a fine educational opportunity for kids of all ages.  Obtain a printed copy or download it and print it out.  Have the kids read parts of it aloud.  Start with the second paragraph of the Declaration, the one that starts off "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,..."  If you have daughters you might point out that "Men" as well as "Mankind" meant (and still means) the whole human race, women and men together.  That usage persists until the rise of feminism.  Tolkien, writing in the 1950's would write of "races of Elves and Dwarves, and Men".  You can also point out to both sons and daughters that this clause prohibits titles of nobility (Duke, Earl, Marquis, Baron, etc) in America and to Americans.  This occurred at a time when the Great Powers, England, Spain, Russia, and France, all had hereditary nobles.  The first part of the Declaration is still alive and meaningful.  Jefferson's later list of specific grievances against the British Crown are of lesser importance today.  The grievances are political grievances from 250 years ago and their time has largely passed.  In 1776 they were important.  The Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of war against the British Crown, and Jefferson wanted to rally as many Americans to the patriot cause as he could.

Should US States be able to declare bankruptcy?

Been some discussion of this on the TV news.  We have some states that are pretty deep underwater.  They keep themselves running by borrowing from banks and Gawd-knows-who.  Right now I believe the states are considered “sovereign risk”, which means they will never go bankrupt and can always pay back the loan by raising taxes.  So it is perfectly legal to loan states more money, all the money they want.  And if the state looks flaky, charge them a good stiff interest rate. 

   Should there be a state bankruptcy option, some deep under water states will take it, and the banks will loose money big time.  Which ought to make the banks more wary lending to states that will never be able to pay them back.  Sucker banks in New York loaned Puerto Rico $80 billion over the years.  Puerto Rico is never going to be able to pay that off, so they just got a special act of Congress allowing them to declare bankruptcy.  The sucker banks will have to kiss off $80 billion, which is enough to hurt even the big banks.  Puerto Rico is going to have to tighten its belt, because nobody in their right mind is going to loan them a dime for many many years. 

   It is reasonable for a state to borrow money for a long term capital project like new school buildings, new bridges, and new flood control projects.  It is not reasonable for a state to borrow money for ordinary operating expenses such as paying state workers salaries or pensions, plowing the roads, or fixing potholes.   If states could declare bankruptcy the banks would be more cautious lenders.  States that do declare bankruptcy will find that nobody will loan to them, which ought to be incentive enough to avoid doing bankruptcy.

   In short, allowing states to declare bankruptcy will save tax payers money, save the banks money, and cut down on “waste, fraud, and abuse” by the states.

Consumer Reports is all about foreign cars, Detroit is dead

I picked up the New Cars version of Consumer Reports, big thick one topic special magazine.  I'm an old car buff, I thought I would see what CR thinks about the current crop of cars.  You never know, I might need to replace my fifteen year old Buick sometime.
   They wrote 57 pages comparing cars, best cconobox, best minivan, best this, best that, and so forth.  Virtually every single car they listed was a foreign car, Japan, Korea, Germany, and others.  A few, very few, US cars listed.  Chevy scored occasionally, so did Ford.  Very occasionally Dodge, Buick, and Cadillac.  Poor old Caddy was down to a single listing.  But 95% of all the listings were for foreign cars.  Better sell your Detroit motor stocks.  Detroit is doomed.
  One problem Detroit has is brand dilution,  Chevy is offering 16 different models, 7 SUV's or SUV wannabe', 4 sedans, 2 hot rods, 2 pickup trucks, and some odd balls.  That's too many.  Seven of 'em were things I had never heard of or seen before.  And I am a car buff and pay attention such things.  Average car buyer is less informed than I am.  If we have never heard of it, it ain't gonna sell.
  One problem is Chevy doesn't advertise on TV anymore. And the car rags like Road and Track, Car and Driver, Motor Trend, and their ilk are dying out.
   Another problem is Chevy isn't really serious about the econobox market.  The bulk of the cars on the road these days are little cheap econoboxes.  Chevy's offerings ain't cheap ($13K and $16 K) for Sonic (Sonic is a hedgehog and Beretta is an Italian handgun) and Spark (Spark suggests electrical trouble). Good names there.  Behemoths like GM need to sell into the high volume market.  There ain't enough guys with Corvette money to keep GM alive.

A New Windows loophole?

Got a kind of scary email this morning.  The From address was the password I use to log into my home desktop.  Dunno how he got that.  Windows has so many loopholes, he must have found another one.  I don't use that password for anything other than logging into the desktop.  The email claimed to have captured all my porn watching, and made an obscene movie of me and threatened to email both to all sorts of people.  I doubt the obscene movie part since the desktop lacks a camera and I have a piece of masking tape over the camera in the laptop.
   Any how I changed my password and started running anti virus programs. 

I went Grocery shopping today

Depressing.  Most everybody, including yours truly, was wearing face masks.  More empty shelves.  Higher prices.  Hamburger up to $6.99 a pound.  Beef running between $10 and $20 a pound.  The only chicken was 4 packs of skinless boneless tasteless breasts $3 a pound.  Far more than I can eat before it goes bad.  Consumer Reports magazine $13.  Supply chain is breaking down.
   Only good sight was gasoline at Exxon Mobil for only $1.84 a gallon. 

Thinking of purchasing your first firearm?

If you are new to firearms, you need to know the basic safety rules

1. Always treat every gun as loaded.
2. Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to kill
3. Keep your finger off the trigger and outside of the trigger guard until you are ready to fire.
4. After picking up a firearm make sure it is unloaded.  Always open the chamber and make sure no cartridge is lurking therein.

Guns are made that shoot various different cartridges of vastly different powers, starting with .22 Long Rifle and working up to Dirty Harry’s 44 magnum and .223 and 30-30 and 30-06 and .308 Winchester and 12 gauge shotgun.  I can recommend firing the more potent cartridges before buying a gun chambered for them.  You may find that the report and recoil of the more potent cartridges is so bad that you cannot shoot them well.  In which case buy a gun chambered for a lesser cartridge that you can shoot well. 

    Guns need to fit you.  It’s like buying clothing.  Long guns want to have the correct length of stock, so that your trigger hand can reach the trigger comfortably.  Hand guns are pickier about feel.  I learned hand guns in the Air Force.  At the time, the Air Force issue handgun was a .38 caliber revolver of the sort the police used in those days.  That was one miserable gun to shoot.  The grip was too small, the grips were old and soaked in gun oil and slippery.  The piece would twist in my hand with each shot, making the second and third shots harder.  About that time I acquired an Army .45 automatic.  That was a joy to shoot; the grip filled my hand nicely, and was at the right angle to push straight back rather than twisting.  The piece was always just right in my hand for the next shot.  I strongly recommend getting to a range and shooting off a box of ammunition in the handgun you want to buy before laying out the money to buy it.  Long guns are not so critical; if the stock feels right in the store you will most likely be happy with it.   Little pocket pistols chambered for full house cartridges lack the weight to soak up the recoil and the short barrel creates an ear shattering report.   Full sized service pistols will serve you better with the full house cartridges.

   Once you have the gun, you need to shoot it if you expect to hit anything with it.  Once a month is good, a couple of times a year is the bare minimum.   Buy a pair of ear defenders and wear them.  Other wise the recoil and the report will shock you into a flinch that ruins your chances of hitting much of anything.  Use both hands to shoot a hand gun.  Before firing take a half breath and hold it.  Center the front sight on the target bullseye; line the front sight up in the rear sight. notch. Squeeze the trigger slowly and gently.  It should be a surprise when the gun fires.