What's a cubit?

What’s a cubic inch?  (What’s a cubit?).  It is a measure of the size of a piston engine.  Cubic inch displacement is the volume of a cylinder, measured from top dead center to bottom dead center (stroke). Another way of phasing it is displacement of a single cylinder is the cylinder’s stroke times the piston’s area.  And naturally for a multiple cylinder engine, which most of them are, the displacement of the entire engine is the displacement of one cylinder times the number of cylinders. 

   The larger the engine’s displacement, the more power it can produce.  Power comes from burning fuel.  The bigger the displacement the more fuel the engine can burn.  Rule of thumb used to be, that a well designed engine could produce one horsepower per cubic inch of displacement.  Now a days I see plenty of new cars with advertised horsepower considerable larger than one horsepower per cubic inch.  I am not sure I believe those numbers. 

   In recent times the car industry has begun to rate displacement in liters instead of cubic inches.  Handy conversion factor, there are 63 cubic inches to the liter.  A liter is a tad more than a quart.

   Car engines only have to produce full rated horsepower for short periods of time, say the time between when the traffic light goes green until the car reaches the speed limit (or perhaps a little bit more).  Then the throttle is eased back to probably a quarter or less of full rated power.  It doesn’t take much power to keep a car rolling at a steady speed.  If a car engine were operated at full rated power continuously it would break down after a few minutes.  Engines for aircraft and boats need to produce substantial power to keep the aircraft or boat moving.  Air or water drag is far greater than road drag in a car. 

Advice for Joe Biden

 Joe,  You don't ever tell the Russians, or any of our other enemies, that we are not planning military action.  You let them guess what we might do.  They might, or might not, fear US military action, but you want to leave 'em guessing.  We might just scare them off if we kept our mouth shut.  

Note:  If you want to get Putin's attention, transfer a US armored division into the Ukraine.  We do have an extra armored division don't we?

Capitalism vs Communism

 “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”  Winston Churchill said this. 

 

We used to call it communism, but the Russians blackened the name of communism so thoroughly that lefties now call themselves socialists instead of communists. What ever you call it, it goes back to Karl Marx, writing in the 1850s and 1860s, very early in the industrial revolution.  Things were rougher back in those early days. Marx observed that the capitalists, those who owned the businesses, took home a lot more money than the ordinary workers did.  Marx called this unjust (and a bunch of other things too) and proposed his solution.  Private ownership of nearly everything would be made illegal.  Government ownership of “the means of production” would pay everyone in the enterprise the same wages. 

    This sounded pretty good, and the Russians, the North Koreans, the Cubans, and the Columbians, and some others too, fell for it.  The results were not good.  “The means of production” were operated by government bureaucrats, who are never very good at anything, especially something difficult like management.  Lacking anyone to cut deals with suppliers, and truckers, hire and fire, and take risks, the businesses languished, lost money, did layoffs, or went out of business.  Government wages were skimpy at best.  Production fell off.  Plenty of misery was created.  “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”. 

    Capitalism has incentives.  The capitalists are strongly motivated to make the business a success, mostly because they wanted the money, and partly because they wanted the fame that came to successful capitalists. The more valuable workers get pay raises to keep them working for the business, as opposed to quitting and going to work for a competitor.   With everyone in the business motivated to make it a success, it will succeed.  That is why they say the streets in America are paved with gold.   

December 7th, the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

    A most important event in World War II.  When World War II broke out, with the German invasion of Poland, the United States made a very firm resolution to stay out of this new European War.  We had suffered serious casualties in World War I and had gotten little to nothing for it.  Part of little to nothing was the Senate, led by Senator Lodge, refused to ratify the League of Nations treaty that Wilson brought home from Paris.  Be that as it may, the Americans were NOT going to join another European war, no matter what.  The American establishment, starting with President Franklin Roosevelt and working down, saw Hitler as an existential threat and wanted to deal with him.  But the voters were dead set against that idea, and Roosevelt, probably the strongest 20^th century president, was unable to change voter’s minds.

   Pearl Harbor changed all that, overnight.  The word that the Japanese had sunk our battle fleet, with 2400 casualties, in time of peace, with out a declaration of war, was infuriating.  The country went from isolationism to “let’s fix the Japanese” in less than a day.   

   In actual fact, it took a very stupid Japanese government to do Pearl Harbor.  There was plenty of stuff they could pick up, cut off European colonies that had plenty of oil to keep Japan running.  We would have sent some nasty grams about this, but before Pearl Harbor there was no way we would have done anything more than nasty grams about Japanese aggression.  After Pearl Harbor we were mad and wanted revenge.  We got it. 

   At the time, the United States was the most powerful country in the world.  We had an educated loyal population of maybe 120 million, a continental territory, plenty of natural resources, a huge industrial base, and a Navy about as big as Japan’s.  In short we were an 800 pound gorilla, and the Japanese kicked us in the teeth.  Not smart. 

   Winston Churchill had been working his hardest to persuade the Americans to come and help him deal with Hitler.  Churchill could be very persuasive, he had established a good working relationship with Roosevelt, he was well known thru his writings, but until Pearl Harbor he had not been able to talk the Americans into joining Britain in the war against Hitler.  Churchill heard the news of Pearl Harbor over a regular radio broadcast.  He immediately called Roosevelt, expressed his sympathies, and offered a declaration of war against Japan that very day.   He ended his day convinced that the United States would get into the war against Hitler and supply the combat power needed to defeat the Nazis.  Churchill wrote in The Grand Alliance “Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

Breaking the line

   Crossing the Tee did not work in sailing ship days, partly because sailing ships could not sail into the wind.  At best a square rigged sailing warship might point up 35 degrees into the wind, leaving 55 degrees to go before being head to wind.  In short, there was 110 degrees of course where sailing fleets could not sail, out of 360 degrees for a full circle.  Whereas a later steam fleet could steam any course the admiral desired.

   Sailing fleets sailed and fought in line ahead, at least after the British took out the Spanish Armada back in Queen Elizabeth’s time.  In fact the British Fighting Instructions to its captains were very firm, not to say fierce about staying in line, not breaking out the line for any reason whatsoever, on pain of court martial.  If my fleet is in line ahead I can do the enemy a lot more damage because all of my guns bear on the enemy.  Not only that, I will take less damage from enemy fire hitting my sides, which are stout and nearly shot proof, than a single broadside delivered to the vulnerable stern, one of which can knock all the fight out of a ship. 

    Sailing ship actions depended upon the wind.  The British preferred to hold the weather gauge, (to be to windward of the enemy)  This permitted them to control the action, they could engage when they felt the time was ripe, or not engage but keep the enemy at battle stations for days.  The French preferred to hold the lee gauge (to be down wind of the enemy).  This permitted a French admiral, who saw his fleet getting beat, to order a turn downwind, a square rigger’s best point of sailing, and get away. 

   If both sides stayed in line ahead and fired on each other, in many cases neither side could do much harm to the enemy.  Lot of powder got burned, lot of victory claims were made, but nothing was decided.

   Nelson understood this before Trafalgar.  He decided to try “breaking” the enemy line, having a lot of his ships get thru the enemy line and then bring two broadsides to bear on each enemy ship, the broadside of the ships that broke thru the line and the ships that didn’t.  This was totally against Fighting Instructions, hence Nelson’s famous comment    “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”  At Trafalgar Nelson in 100 gun Victory broke the French line in one place and Cuthbert Collingwood, his second in command broke the French line in another place. The result was annihilation of the French fleet, handing control of the sea to the British for the rest of the Napoleonic wars.

Handguns inapropriate for teen agers

 The Crumbley parents are facing involuntarily manslaughter charges, probably because Mr. Crumbley bought the handgun his kid used to murder four classmates and wound a lot more.  The story I get is Mr. Crumbley went shopping for the handgun with his son.  

   I don't think teenagers need or should be allowed to have handguns.  Want to teach the kid to shoot?  Get a .22 rifle, preferably a bolt action or a lever action rather than semi auto.  Or a .410 shotgun. 

Crossing the Tee.

A century ago crossing the Tee was the battle winning naval maneuver.   Warships, (battleships mostly) traveled in line ahead, each ship followed the ship ahead of it.  Full firepower was available to both sides, the guns were all mounted in turrets that could traverse 180 degrees.  Dead ahead, not so good.  Only the lead ship could fire dead ahead.  The ship behind the lead ship could fire somewhat to port or to starboard, but could not fire dead ahead lest it hit the ship leading the line ahead.   

   To cross the enemy's Tee you brought your line ahead fleet in front of, and at right angles to, the enemy.  Then was all of your guns could fire on the enemy and only the few forward guns of the enemy lead ship, four or maybe six, could return fire.  

The classic maneuver was used at Jutland, the first and only head to head clash of modern battleship fleets.  Canny old admiral Jellicoe, commanding the British fleet, managed to cross the German's Tee twice that day.  Crossing the Tee remained an important maneuver up and thru World War II when the aircraft carrier became the important capital ship.  Carriers were expected to stay well out of gun range of an enemy fleet and let her aircraft do the work. 

Why movie soundtracks have gotten so bad.

 Lengthy rant worth reading is here:

 https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-dialogue-has-gotten-more-difficult-to-understand-and-three-ways-to-fix-it/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

It was Charlie Wilson's War that started the current trend of garbled movie sound tracks.  It is NOT my hearing going on me.  The sound tracks on my classic movies from the '50's and '60's are clear as a bell.  I can hear every word on my TV, it is only the new movie sound tracks that are garbled.  Curse of the sound man I call it.

There are some things any sound man can do.  First you gotta mute the score and the sound effects when the actors are speaking.  Second the actors have to speak up and not mumble. Finally you have to place the mikes in the right places. 

Mandates, Corona virus type.

   Democrats are pressing for “mandates”; laws that would require everyone to get the Corona virus vaccine whether they want it or not.  Industry is responding that the necessary firings of unvaccinated workers would cripple their productivity. 

   Don’t get me wrong, I think the vaccines work, are better than 99.9% effective, and are safe.  I got my first two vaccinations back in February and March, and got my booster shot yesterday.  I think people who don’t want to get vaccinated are wrong headed and I would try to talk them into getting vaccinated.

   However, America is a free country (at least it used to be).  People walking around unvaccinated don’t bother me, I am vaccinated and that protects me.  I see no reason to force the firing of all people who don’t get themselves vaccinated, except for the unholy desire to boss people around just for the fun of it.  I think everyone ought to get vaccinated, but I don’t think we should force it by law.   

Those that worry about catching Corona virus from the unvaccinated should get themselves vaccinated.

I got Boosted this morning.

 My doctor recommended it.  So I did it.  Other than a needle stick in the arm, didn't hurt a bit.

Will Corona virus be around forever?

 

TV people are talking about Corona virus will be with us forever.  Historically this is not true.  The Black Death killed something between a quarter and a half the population of Europe back in the 1340’s.  It came back at least once, maybe twice, and killed a lot more.  The Black Death makes Corona virus look like a bad cold.  Over the years, the Black Death lost its power to kill.  It hasn’t been around in centuries.  Partly this come from the survivors passing on what ever it was that made them survivors to their children, and partly the Black Death mutated in the direction of being less lethal.  After all, if the virus kills its host before it has time to infect other people, it is going to die out with its unfortunate hosts. 

   At any rate, a lethal disease that nearly depopulated Europe 6-7 hundred years ago is not a problem today. 

New Strain of Corona virus

 Omichron I think they call it.  The only way we can identify it is by decoding its genetic material in the lab.  It has a lot (25-30?) mutations in the working part of the virus.  Which makes all the medics suspect (but they lack real evidence) it can do all sorts of bad things.  There are a lot of people, newsies, health bureaucrats, big pharma, and others, who are profiting from the Corona virus pandemic.  These people are overjoyed to find and excuse to keep the pandemic going, and keeping the money flowing their way. 

As far as I can tell from listening to the TV, there is no documented clinical difference between the Omichron variant and the parent virus.  Patients get sick, in the same way as the old style virus.  I have not heard any clinical evidence that the Omichron strain is better or worse than  the "standard" strain.  Other than getting that booster shot this week, I will just watch the circus on TV.  Beat the Press had Fauci on this morning.  Fauci claims the booster shot improves your antibody levels by a yuge amount.  No numbers on how yuge is yuge, no description of the experiments that yielded this encouraging info.  This is the talk of a medical bureaucrat rather than a working MD who treats live patients. 

Seven Inches of snow in Franconia Notch

 This all fell last night.  Although we had snow flurries all day yesterday there was no buildup until later.  It was cold, 24F at my place early this morning.  That gave us nice slight and fluffy powder snow, the best kind for skiing.  No wind, so the snow stays on the Cannon trails rather than blowing into the woods.

Went to the Grocery Store today (Black Friday)

 Shaw's in Littleton.  Looks like Shaws  beat up on their supply chain and got a lot of stock in for Thanksgiving.  They were offering it on sale today.  Big 20 pound turkey went for $46 before Thanksgiving.  It was marked down to $13 day after thanksgiving.  Some things were still expensive.  Nice Ribeye beefsteak $15 a pound.  Lot of strange brandnames on stuff, brandnames I had never heard of before.

I heard a reason for the growth of skinless, boneless, tasteless chicken parts.  Apparently the skin and bones are chopped up really fine and used to make chicken nuggets.  Remind me to stick to recognizable parts of chickens, like thigh, and breast. 

Jefferson’s words have taken on a broader meaning over the years.

 

“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness--- 

When Jefferson wrote this he was thinking of contemporary England, which supported a heredity nobility.  Birth into a noble British family, duke, earl, marquis, knight, granted all sorts of privileges denied to commoners. 

   In 1776, in America, Jefferson was saying that there would be no American nobility; every American would have the same rights at law, the same advantages in seeking government jobs and military commissions as everyone else. 

   Move forward in time to 1865, with the Civil War won by the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation made to stick by the Civil War victory, and “All Men are created equal” was expanded to include blacks.      

   Move forward in time again to 1920, when woman’s suffrage was legalized by Constitutional amendment, and “All Men” is restored to it’s meaning of “all mankind both men AND women”, which it bore in Jefferson’s time. 

   Writing about this in 2021 it is clear to me that the meaning of “All Men are created equal” is much broader today, then when Jefferson wrote it.  This broadening is all to the good. 

Having Thanksgiving a few days early

 Daughter and Youngest Son decided to have Thanksgiving dinner with Mother.  But they came an visited me in Mittersill Sunday thru Wednesday.  We (the children actually) threw a before Thanksgiving family dinner up at the chalet.  We had John and Maggie, Carol and Zach, and all the kids.  Youngest Son wanted to do Tandoori chicken, which came out tasty, although a bit spicy.  Despite outside temperatures near freezing, and snow flurries the big Weber grill was pulled out from the garage and fired up on the deck.  The freed up the 24 inch kitchen stove for side dishes, basmati rice, cucumber salad, hot groovy bread. 

  A good time was had by all.

It's all Paid for. Yeah Right.

 Biden's $2 TRILLION dollar (or is it $4 TRILLION?) Freebie and climate spending bill (super porkulus bill) squeaked past the house.  Democrats are saying "It won't hurt, it is all paid for".  Yeah right.  The bill authorizes the federal government to spend $2-$4 trillion dollars, which means handing out cash, or writing checks, or doing electronic funds transfers.  Right now, before the super Porkulus, federal taxes cover about 60% of federal expenses and federal borrowing covers the other 40%.  Adding $2-$4 TRILLION in federal spending will require either a solid federal tax hike (unlikely) or a lot more borrowing.   The Feds borrow money by printing and selling Treasury bonds,  T-bills, which are nearly the same as money.  Samuelson, author of the standard economics text when I was in college, called T-bills "near money".   There is a 5 day a week, 8 hours a day bond market.  Anyone can sell their T-bills for cash and get paid in two or three business days.  For the feds to borrow more, is the same as printing more dollar bills.  Inflationary that is.  So the Biden people's claim that "It's all paid for" is false, us taxpayers will have to cough up the money sooner or later.  

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

 I have my children coming up, so I did some spiffing around the old place this Saturday.  The place was built in 1962, so it ain't new, and many would call it old.  I started out to clean the oven.  This oven is a son-of-a-gun to clean.  The lower heating element makes it impossible to clean the oven floor, unless it is removed.  So I get my set of spintites to unscrew the heating element.  Got the screws out, pulled the element forward and drew an impressive zap.  I had forgotten that one end of the heating element was always hot, even with the oven turned off.  So down to the basement to pull the stove circuit breakers.  Juice off, I tried to disconnect the two wires leading from the stove to the oven heating element.  One came off, the other refused to come off no matter what.  Best I could do is tape the heating element up out of the way.  

   So I started to clean the oven grates.  Part way thru this I noticed a lot of water building up under the kitchen sink.  Some inspection revealed a broken hold down nut-thingy under the sink.  So it's Saturday, Franconia Hardware is open, and down three mile hill I go.  Mike has the right parts, Mike has the right parts for everything.  Back up three mile hill I go.  Install the new U bend.  It leaks,  I tighten the nut-thingies with a wrench.  That manages to break the downspout.  Back down to Mike's I go.  He has a new down spout.  It's getting dark by the time I get the kitchen sink drain back together.  Then I have to finish up cleaning the oven and get the heating element back in place.  I manage, by which time it is 5 o'clock.  So I feed the cat and make myself a good stiff drink.  

Long day.

Kyle Rittenhouse trial is OVER. Thank Goodness.

 The jury acquitted Kyle on all counts.  From what I saw on TV, it did look like the people Kyle shot were really attacking him, and he shot them in self defense.  The jury saw it that way and they spent more time looking at video of the riot than I did.  Good thing for Kyle the jury was able to acquit on all charges.  Weasel juries will try to split the difference, convicting on some charges and acquitting on others.  That weasel makes the defendant guilty but the jury can point to the charges they acquitted and claim they were doing the right thing.  In Kyle's case, the jury did the right thing and acquitted him on all charges.

In this case a white teenager shoots three white rioters.  I don't see how anyone can call Kyle, or anyone else in the case a racist.    

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial was in Wisconsin.  Bill de Blasio and Mario Cuomo (New Yorkers both of 'em) had comments on the case.  What do a couple of New Yorkers know about a trial in Wisconsin??

Technological advances: the rifled musket.

 Some things move slowly.  The British Army issued a smooth bore flintlock musket, Brown Bess it was called, for nearly 100 years.  Infantry tactics were worked out.  You have your men load their muskets and fix bayonets.  You close with the enemy, very close.  Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes was the order given at Bunker Hill.  That's probably 20 feet, so close you cannot miss even with a smooth bore.  After firing on the enemy  you went at them with bayonet and gun butt.  Nobody got a chance to reload.  This state of affairs lasted up thru the Napoleonic wars.

   Come forward to the American Civil War.  All the new Army officers, recently pulled from civilian life, are furiously reading Jomini, Napoleon's biographer/historian.  Both Civil War armies, Union and Confederate figured Napoleon knew land warfare, he won a number of striking victories.  The Americans figured if it worked for Napoleon it ought to work for them.

There had been one important technological change since Napoleon's time.  The muskets were now rifled. The troops could open fire at 200 yards (600 feet) and get hits.  Rifling had been around for a couple of hundred years, problem was, using a round ball in a muzzle loader, it was quite difficult to force the ball down the barrel.  The ball had to be big enough to take the rifling, which meant the rifling had to cut grooves in the lead ball.  So, rifled guns were made, were used, but they were so slow to load that armies issued faster loading smooth bores.  

   The French solved the problem with the invention of the Minie ball, a lead slug with a hollow at the back.  The explosion of the gunpowder forced the hollow rear end of the bullet to expand and take the rifling.  The Minie balls were cast small enough to just drop down the muzzle, just like a smooth bore.  So now we have a rifled musket, that loads as fast as the old Brown Bess smooth bore.  And it is in mass production, issued to most of the troops at the start of the Civil War and issued to all troops by the end of the Civil War. 

    So now we consider the effect on infantry tactics.  The defender, standing his ground, can open fire when the attackers are 200 yards away.  By the time the attacker has charged 200 yards, the defenders have time to reload, at least once, and give 'em another volley.  The defenders get at least two shots for each man.  The attackers only get one.  Muzzle loaders cannot be reloaded on the run, you have to stop, stand still, to get the powder, the Minie ball, and the wad down the barrel, to say nothing of getting the percussion cap on right.

   That's what happened to Pickett's Charge.  Union infantry shot Pickett's men down before they got close enough to use the bayonet.  And something similar happened at all the Civil War battles.  Defenders always defeated attackers.  This was not supposed to happen if you had read your Jomini.

Malwarebytes vs Word vs Win 10

 

Word for Windows choked up when I tried to print. Drew an error message from malwarebytes about an exploit. Uninstalled malwarebytes and Word can print again.

Death and Taxes

 My telephone bill, just plain old telephone service, was $26.95.  Of this, $15.30, better than half, was federal tax.  It's not one tax, it is seven different taxes, designed to disguise how much Uncle is nailing me for. 

Movie the Golden Compass. 2007

 Based on a fantasy trilogy by Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass,  The books were good, they are young adult (YA) which I read as more interesting and better written than Adult Fiction.  The movie was pretty good.  Dakota Blue Richards does a fine job of playing Lyra, the main protagonist, even though she was only 13 years old at the time.  I thought she did more for the movie than Nicole Kidman or Daniel Craig.

   It is too bad that they never made movies from the other two books of the trilogy.  It could have been mediocre earnings from the Golden Compass.  From a budget if $180 million, they only made $70 million in the US and Canada.  Worldwide earnings were better, $370 million, so they should have made a fair amount of money on the Golden Compass. 

Abolition:

 Way back when, long before the US Civil War of 1860, slavery was confined to the Southern colonies which would form the confederacy for the Civil War.  The North was into small farms owned and operated by free men.  The big slave worked plantations were a Southern phenomenon.  And the two systems did not interact much. 

   Starting back in the early 1700’s a feeling began to grow in the North that slavery was unfair, cruel, and close to a mortal sin.  Abolition it was called later.  For the Revolution, this feeling was submerged, all hands North and South, understood that to beat the Redcoats we Americans needed unity in the face of the enemy and we could not afford the political strains that abolition would bring, at least not until we had won the Revolution. 

After the Revolution abolition grew apace.  A lot of protestant preachers spoke in favor.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe became a best seller, selling nearly as many copies as the Bible.  The Republican Party was created to push abolition.  When the Republicans elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Southern states seceded from the Union.  When the South fired upon Fort Sumter the Civil War was on.  If the south had just let Major Andersen’s Fort Sumter garrison continue manning their guns, the North might well have let the South secede in peace.  But after the South fired on the Union flag, the North sprang to arms,  It took 600,000 casualties, more that all we suffered in all the other wars we ever fought to win the Civil War and free all the slaves. 

   We didn't fight the Civil War for white supremacy.  We fought it for freedom and liberty. 

DISH. Slow and a little flaky

 I got tired of Spectrum's endless price hiking and switched to DISH.  DISH works, most of the time.  The data rate is plenty fast enough for me.  What is slow is switching from one web site to another.  I fear this works by your system transmitting a request for change up to the satellite, and waiting for the satellite to respond.  Since every DISH owner in North America is transmitting requests up to the poor over burdened satellites, it is not surprising that some of the requests get lost and have to be re-transmitted.  When two requests to the satellite arrive at the same time, they jam each other and other requests must be re-transmitted.  Net result, it takes DISH noticeable longer to switch to a new web site than cable modem Spectrum.  

Disk comes with a massive video box which has instructions so complex I have not mastered them yet.  And the video box ("Hopper") occasionally dies.  If I cycle power and wait long enough (several hours last night) the video comes back.  

Is a Lush Beard a Signal of Having More Testosterone?

 Title of a piece on the Web.  Actually since many (most?) guys shave their faces every morning, it is hard to believe that a beard is attractive to chicks, or anyone else.  If they were, more guys would grow beards. Or that a beard is a mark of better genes or more testosterone or anything else other than being a guy.  And I have never heard a Darwinian (or any other science based argument) about why guys grow beards and chicks don't.

2 1/4 inches of snow in the Notch

First real snow of this winter.  It ain't enough to open Cannon, but it helps.

Dark Matter could be Macho's rather than WIMPs

Astronomers discovered a free planet, some 100 light years away.  It's a sizeable beast, several times the size of Jupiter and way out in free space, no star anywhere close.  Free planets are very hard to see since they lack a sun to light them up.  This one was detected by its infra red emissions.  

Are free planets the "Massive Halo Objects" (Macho's) of the missing mass discussion?  We are pretty such that the universe needs more mass, a lot more mass, than we can see glowing in the night sky.   This bit of knowledge comes from watching galaxies rotate.  Speed of rotation depends upon mass of the galaxy.  Heavier galaxies have to rotation faster to create enough centrifugal force to prevent the stars from getting sucked down into the galaxy center.  This bit of physics comes to us from Isaac Newton and is taught in freshman college physics.  That is where I learned it. 

   The mass of the galaxies was estimated by counting all the stars in the galaxy and assuming that the stars were of average mass.  Doing this came up short of mass, a lot short, say one or two times the observed (luminous) mass.  Two solutions were suggested.  There might be a new sub atomic particle with mass like a proton but as hard to detect as a neutrino.  This was dubbing Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (wimp for short).  This came up shortly after the Higgs boson was discovered, leaving a lot of particle accelerators and accelerator physicists looking for something to do.  The other idea was a "Massive Halo Object" (Macho for short).  

This newly discovered free planet is a Massive Halo Object.  There might be more, they are hard to detect so there might be a lot more.  Question:  How many free planets would there have to be to furnish the missing mass?  Is it a reasonable number?  Or is the required number so high that we would have noticed free planets zipping by the earth already?

Wind blew hard all night. Leaves are gone

 As late as yesterday we still had  fine crop of colorful leaves on the trees.  The wind blew hard all last night, and this morning the leaves are mostly gone, blowing across the road and my lawn in flurries.  We are into the bare tree winter look. 

Veteran's Day

 The TV (at least Fox News) is making a bigger deal out of Veteran's day than they used to.  I'm a veteran, so this is just fine by me. 

Kyle Rittenouse Trial on TV

 What I see on TV is bad, bad, bad.  Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager, 17 years back than, 18 now was at the Kinosha riot.  Wound up shooting three rioters with his AR-15.  He is on trial for murder.  He is naturally claiming self defense.  To me, the prosecution wants to be proving that Kyle shot three innocent bystanders.  Instead the prosecutors have been talking about Kyle obtaining the rifle when state law requires you to be 18 to buy a rifle, (a misdemeanor, where as murder is far more serious).  And a discussion about bullets, full metal jacket versus soft nose bullets.  To which the proper answer (which Kyle did not think of) is "all bullets are deadly", rather than a gun magazine discussion of the merits of various bullet types.  And today a long discussion about video imaging techniques, what happens when a video image is enlarged.  To which the proper answer (which was NOT giver) is "Video imaging technology changes, a lot, from month to month and I have no idea what technology was used on this particular image. 

Way to stay in office. Have a scary bad vice president.

 

Every time anyone thinks about impeaching Biden, they immediately think of Kamala Harris succeeding Biden. Everyone thinks that bad as Biden is, Harris is worse. So nobody talks about impeaching Biden. So we just grin and bear it. We might be able to elect a good solid republican majority in the House and the Senate next year. Let's hope American voters are up for voting in Republicans.

Road Runner bites the dust.

 

My email account got deleted and all the posts there in are gone.  If you have sent me an email in the last ten days, I have not seen it.  If it is important, could you please resend it.  Roadrunner, my ex-email provider of some 15 years offered no reasons for deleting my email account. 

Anyhow, I have a new email provider, yahoo.com.  Which makes my email address dstarrboston@yahoo.com.  I would be obliged if you all could update your email lists.  Thanks in advance.  Sorry about the inconvenience.  And I will not be using road runner for anything ever again.

Govt Bond swings burn Wall St Investors

 Front page headline from the Monday Wall St Journal.  Turning to page A2, we have a couple of graphs for yields on 2 year and 10 year bonds.  The 2 year bond yield peaks out at 0.6%.  What is a Wall St investor doing messing around with a 0.6% yielding security.  Just about any stock will yield 6 %, ten times as much over a year.  I'd say those Wall St investors got burned by intense stupidity rather than bond market swings. 

Let's elect some Republicans to Congress

 We have seen the democrat party give us Joe Biden.  He has not been a good president, in fact he is a disaster.  New Hampshire right now has all four of its Congressional seats filled by democrats.  They have cast votes that hurt their constituents, such as voting down the Keystone XL pipeline which would bring economical crude oil from a friendly country (Canada) to American refineries to be turned into gasoline and heating oil.  Killing Keystone XL has contributed to $3.40 a gallon for gasoline, and worse for heating oil.  

New Hampshire could elect 2 Republicans to the House, which would cut Pelosi's vote margin down from five to three.  We could elect a Republican senator who by himself (herself) , give the Republicans control of the Senate.  

What is keeping us???

Cell Phone Battery Life

 I try to carry my cell phone everywhere, in case I fall down, or the car breaks down stranding me on I93, or you name the disaster.  My children all informed me that venturing out of the house, or even out of bed without a cell phone was a life risking activity.  It's a low end Sam Sung, model AM01.  I bought it after Tracfone announced that they would no longer support the even lower end Tracfone I had been using.  I got into the habit of plugging the SamSung into the charger when I went to bed in the evening.  Smart phone would give a chirp and display battery charge, 80-90%, in short, using up 10-20% of battery power for just sitting in my shirt pocket, not making any calls.  

   The charger ran into trouble and stopped charging.  I noticed the battery charge going down, reaching 7%.  I messed around on the keyboard, settings has a "battery" option now (it did not back when I got the phone)  and it offered a "max battery saving" option, which I took.  I also had a good look at the charger, which has a strange internal connector which had become disconnected.  Plugged the charger back together and it started to charge again. 

After a day or so I noticed that the battery was at 100% when I plugged it into the charger in the evening.  "Max battery saving" was doing some good,  the phone was claiming 8 days and a few hours worth of battery charge. That is a goodness.  I have had some lengthy power outages up here, but the worst was only six days.  That was back before cell phones.  So, on "max battery save" my cell phone ought to ride out the worst power failures I will ever suffer up here.  The max battery save mode gains much of its saving from doing the screen white letters on a black background, instead of vice versa. That way the battery only has to light the few pixels in the letters, rather than every pixel on the whole screen.  I find the screen easier to read the white on black background mode.  It also claims to have shut down some applications doing who knows what behind my back.  Anyhow, if you are running a low end Samsung phone, try the max battery save option. 

Infrastructure/Pork bill passed the House.

 The bill is now trimmed down to a mere $1TRILLION.  It started out at $2.5 TRILLION.  So at least some trimming happened.  I think half of it is actually infrastructure and the other half pork and freebies.  Thirteen House Republicans (RINOs) voted to pass this democrat bill.  We ought to find out their names and districts and make sure they have opponents in the primary.  It's not clear to me if this bill needs to go to the Senate, or go right to Biden for signature and become law immediately.  

   And Congress has a second bill for $3.5 TRILLION or perhaps more, that is all pork and freebies to be voted upon this month.

USS Connecticut, Seawolf Class Nuclear Sub collides with sea mount

 Accident happened in the South China Sea back on 2 October this year (2021).  The sea mount was described as "uncharted".  The Navy relieved the captain, the executive officer and the chief of the boat. Amount of damage is undetermined, at least by civilians like me.  Must have been pretty bad, 11 crewmen were hurt (not seriously) and Connecticut traveled from the collision site to Guam on the surface.  There is talk about returning her to Bremerton Washington for repairs that might take a year or more.  

   This is the first I heard of this.  Chalk another one up for the MSM.  I came across it websurfing at the US Naval Institute site.  USNI has been around for 60 years that I know of, and probably a lot more, and I consider them highly reliable.  They were the publishing house that published Tom Clancy's first best seller, Hunt for Red October, after all the regular publishers refused to touch Clancy's masterpiece.  Sea Wolf was the last cold war nuclear sub design, so advanced that it was considered worth two or three ordinary nuclear attack subs.  They are expensive, we only built three of them since the Cold War ended.  They got named USS Sea Wolf, USS Jimmy Carter and USS Connecticut.  Dunno how the Navy got the Jimmy Carter name thru Congress.  Surely these Sea Wolf class nuclear attack subs would be VERY useful for stopping a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.  Well we have one less of them now. 

   Just how Connecticut managed to clip that sea mount is unclear.  How deep was the South China Sea at the point and how deep was Connecticut running?  Was it me, I would allow a thousand feet or more between my sub and the bottom, at least for peace time exercises, and in a poorly charted place like the South China Sea.

Buying at retail for this Christmas.

 I did it.  Last few Christmases I ordered everyone's Christmas present off the Internet.  This Christmas I went to LaHoute's ski shop in Littleton and came way with gloves, hats, and shirts.  Then I did the Little Book Store on Main St and came away with toys for grand neices and grand nephews.  I had a Christmas wrap session and I am now ready for Christmas.  Bring it on St Nick.

Biden is reported to have nothings to say about the Virginia election

 Jeez, What can he say?  His party took a big loss in Virginia.  What is there that any Democrat can say about it that sounds half way intelligent?

Virginia

 Glenn Youngkin has claimed victory just a little after midnight.  And the Republicans have won the lieutenant governor and attorney general races.  Margin of victory was thin, 2 or 3 %, but better than nothing in a long time democrat state.  I wish the new Republican government of Virginia all the best luck in the world.  This Republican win will certainly strike fear into the hearts of democrats about the 2022 midterm elections. 

Self Driving Cars

 All the car manufacturers are working on this product, some claim to have one that works already. Question:  Would you buy a self driving car?  Would you feel safe riding in one?  Me, I would not trust a microprocessor to handle Rte 128 rush hour traffic.  Especially when it snows. 

Booster shots?

 

Booster shots? I got my two vaccinations with the Moderna vaccine back in February and March of this year. The TV has been talking about booster shots for people like me. (I am well over 65) The talk was that CDC or FDA was looking into it and would let us know what was what. Some time has gone by and our ever vigilant and hard working bureaucrats have done nothing yet. My doctor was reluctant to recommend something that had not approved the the government. A proper attitude for doctors and just about anyone else. Anyhow I have not heard of FDA or CDC approving Moderna booster shots. I might have missed it, but I have been looking for it.

If the government OKed Moderna booster shots and my doctor said they would be good for me, I would go out and get one. Otherwise, wait and see.

Virginia Election

 Fox gave good long interviews to both McAuliffe and Youngkin.  I call it even steven, even though Fox is a Republican media.  Youngkin sounded really good, talked about concrete things he would do, starting with throwing critical race theory out of the public schools.  McAuliffe not so good, he used a lot of political bafflegab, and then started trashing his opponent, calling him a racist, a Trump stooge, and I forget what else, but it was not complimentary, or fair.  Polls are indecisive, one poll puts Youngkin 8 points ahead, another poll puts the election even.  We will know something in a couple of days.

So how do those containership ports work?

 Surely those big steel containers don't have paperwork showing where they need to go on the outside of the container somewhere.  Would not a few rough seas wash such paperwork overboard, or at least get it so wet as to be unreadable?  How do the crane operators, truckers, and railroad crews know where to send each container?  Clever computer programs that display the bill of lading for just entering the container serial number?  Do containers have serial numbers painted on the outside?  You would think they do, but I have never gotten close enough to see them. 

Ideally the crane operator would pull a container off the ship and drop it on a truck or a train and get it out of the port right then and there.  If they pile the containers on the ground in the port that slows things down.  The containers piled on the ground have to be picked up and loaded on trucks or trains sooner or later.  Which takes as much crane time as unloading them from the ship in the first place.  Faster is to unload the containers off the ship right onto trucks or trains and get the containers clean out of the port right then and there.   

I am thinking that a long train of double stack flat cars, pulling slowly along side the ship as the crane unloads is the way to go.  Only drawback is the train only goes to one place, so all the containers wind up somewhere like Salt Lake City from which they get sorted out and shipped to their owners.

And despite what union leaders say, the port can move more containers if it runs three shifts and operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

After Biden How can any American vote for the democrats?

 It has been only 10 months since Biden took office.  In that time he turned Afghanistan over to Islamic crazies, failed to get our non combatants and our Afghan friends to safety before pulling our troops out, hiked the price of gasoline from $2.10 to $3.40, clogged up the ports of LA and Long Beach, crushed GNP growth down to 2%, thrown a lot of people out of work with his vaccine mandates, and more bad stuff that I could think of if I took some more time.  This is just the stuff on the top of my head.

Not only is Biden a disaster, from whom we may never recover, the democratic party nominated him when there were a bunch of much better democrats (just about any democrat is better than Biden).  I say decent Americans ought to vote Republican to save our country, like the Republicans did back in 1860.

Wall St Journal is catching up

The mail person delivered the Journals for Tuesday, Wednesday and today.  No Thursday.  I started reading them.  The Tuesday edition has a long piece abput how ready the Taiwan armed forces are to repel an invasion from the communist mainland.  The piece concluded  that Taiwan's military was not very ready.  Not a word about navies.  Can the US Navy sink the communist invasion force while it is crossing the Taiwan Strait?  Does Biden have the stones to order our navy into action?  Is the US Navy, widely known for collisions  with merchant vessels (good seamanship there), competent enough to defeat the Chinese navy which will surely have orders to protect Chinese troop ships at all costs. 

That giant freebie bill

The Democrats seem to be having trouble rounding up the votes to pass their $3.5 Trillion (or $6 Trillion or $1.75 Trillion versions).  Strange that the Democrats don’t have a name for this bill, other than its cost.  Seem to me that the Democrats packed every social welfare freebie scheme there ever was into the original version.  Trouble is, although there are Democrats who like this freebie or that freebie, there are no Democrats that like all the freebies.  And each such Democrat thinks they can get the price of the bill down by dropping the freebies that they don’t like.  I believe this is how they got the bill down to $1.75 Trillion from $3.5 Trillion.  How low can you go?

   Answer, you can go to zero.  The country has gotten along without any of the freebies in this bill since 1789.  We can get along just fine without this bill just about for ever. 

   It would have been more straight forward to propose a separate bill for each freebie and try and pass it.  Instead they jammed all the freebies into one gigantic bill on the theory that the more popular freebies would pull the less popular freebies thru.  With luck, we can defeat the whole d**n thing and save ourselves from a humongous tax hike.

My Wall St Journal didn't make it.

 Second day in a row.  Many of my posts are inspired by pieces in the Journal.  Best thing to arrive in the mail was Rail Model Craftsman.  The model railroad hobby is shrinking.  The hobby no longer attracts young boys.  Partly because the real railroads don't run in a lot of places, plenty of boys can grow up and never see a real train. Partly because the models have gotten very expensive.  There was a time you could buy a kid a complete HO train set for $39.95.  Now it is $139.95.  A single freight car model kit used to be $3.  Now they go for $30 and more.  

  It is too bad.  Model railroading taught electricity, carpentry, metal work, use of air brush, photography, track work, and model building. 

Taiwan

 Taiwan is a sizable country, with a lot of high tech industry, that is friendly to the United States.  It is an island, off the coast of China, and China thinks it ought to be part of China, under the control of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Taiwan used to be part of China until 1947 when the communists took over China.  The Chinese nationalists, Chiang Kai-shek's party, retreated to Taiwan (Formosa it was called in those days).  China has wanted to regain control of Taiwan ever since 1947.  Only in the last few years has China become strong enough to make that a possibility.  

When Nixon and Kissinger did the opening to China back in the 1960's, one part of the deal that the Chinese insisted upon was for the United States to stop promising to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack. We have kept our promise to the Chinese on that subject.  Our state department called this policy "strategic ambiguity", we would not say we would  defend Taiwan but we would not say we would not defend Taiwan.  

The strait of Taiwan is 120 miles wide and deep enough to float aircraft carriers.  To defend Taiwan our navy has to move into the strait and sink all the landing craft loaded with Peoples Liberation Army soldiers.  The Chinese will use their navy to defend their troop ships and landing craft.  As of right now the Chinese have as many ships in their navy as we have in ours.  We need to build some more navy ships in order to have a bigger navy than China does.  

Biden just came right out and said we would defend Taiwan, which is the right thing to say, we need Taiwan.  To back up those words we need a navy strong enough to prevent the Chinese from landing troops on Taiwan.