University of Delaware takes heat

Follow up. University of Delaware (my old Alma Mater) had been conducting an offensive and gross student indoctrination. White students were told they were racist just for being white and scheduled for mandatory sensitivity training. Students were asked "When did you discover your sexual identity?", which sounds more like a sexual proposition than a serious question. This caused a furore in the blogosphere and seems to have spread. My mother heard about it somewhere (she doesn't read blogs) and gave me Xerox of the F.I.R.E handout on the subject. This widespread bad publicity might have had something to do with the University's public back down on the program.
Even after canceling the program, you have to wonder how many of the wonderful left thinking folks who set it up are still in the U of D administration, planning a comeback when the heat lets up.

We need some car company ro build a "micro hauler"?

Trouble with nice green small sedans. They won't haul stuff (other than passengers). You can't go to the lumber yard or the second hand furniture store with a Toyota Corolla, cause the stuff just won't fit into the car. Which is why a lot of families buy pickup trucks and SUVs.
We need a small car that somehow accommodates 4*8 sheets of plywood or sheetrock, or a yard sale bureau. Maybe a factory roof rack? Since the stylists declared war on rain gutters many years ago the only roof rack that fits is the ultra pricey Thule rack. I musta dropped $400 on Thule rack and adapter pads over the years. Just trading up from a 85 to a 99 minivan and I had to buy new adapter pads. Surely a factory roof rack (removable) wouldn't be that hard.
Or how about a hatchback with removable seats? Or a lift off roof? or both? Or something else.
What we need is a small 4 passenger sedan, about Corolla size, that lets you haul lumber or furniture occasionally. I'd be OK with leaving the hatchback or truck lid open and keeping the speed down on the way home, just so long as I could do it at all.

Is Detroit adjusting to $3 a gallon gasoline?

Well, lets see here. Just picked up the mail and we have a flyer from Crosstown Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep, "Model Year-End Closeout". On the cover we have a pair of full size crew cab pickups, 4.7L Magnum V8 or a 6.7L Cummins turbo-diesel. Thrifty those are. Open the flyer up and we have another pickup truck, an SUV, a crossover SUV, another SUV. Finally we get down to a four passenger sedan. For extra fuel economy it's got a slush box and factory air. You need that air conditioning up here in northern NH. At the bottom of the page we have a Chrysler 300, with a hemi (you NEED a hemi to get to work) . MSRP on the 300 is $41850 , the same as a new Cadillac DeVille. Dreams of glory by the Mopar suits, our luxury sedan is as prestigious as a Cadillac.
Looks like the same line of gas hogs they were selling before Katrina pushed up gasoline prices.
No wonder Daimler dumped Chrysler.

Dovetail joints by hand

Dovetail, the coolest joint in Western woodworking. Actually, Chinese/Japanese woodworking has even fancier joints, but I'll ignore them for the time being. After 40 odd years of home hobbyshopping, I got around to doing some. After passing up a router jig at a yard sale for $50, I decided to try the all manual technique. I laid the four pieces out on the bench and turned them over and over again, looking to put the nicest side out where it shows, and then penciled 1,2,3,and 4 on each joint, so as to get things to fit right. I laid a "How2DoIt" book out on the workbench open to a fine color picture of a joint, just to avoid getting the tails confused with the pins. Laid out all four tails with a sharp pencil, a square and a carpenter's bevel. I made the tails roughly square for best strength. Laid out one tail in the center of the board and worked sideways from center to edge to get a symmetrical layout. Be sure to mark the waste from the tails, otherwise you can make a terrible mistake.
Cut in from the end of the board with a small back saw. Was able to stay on the pencil marks without great difficulty. Then used a coping saw to cut out the bottoms. Cut all four tails and then went back and shaved them out with my sharpest chisel. In fact, sharpened the chisel before starting and a couple of times before the job was done. Was able to shave across the grain of the poplar wood without using a hammer on the chisel.
Then I used the cut and trimmed tails to mark the pins on each matching piece. Since this is hand work, each piece comes out slightly different. I made a point of using the proper tail to mark each pin. A handscrew held the two boards together at right angles, so I could pencil the pins without anything slipping. Keep pencil needle sharp. I have a yard sale electric pencil sharpener in the shop for just this purpose.
Hallelujah, just rough cut, the joints were close to fitting together. I shaved down the bottoms of the tails and pins until the top of the joint went together flush. Only after getting the depth right did I trim the sides of the pins and tails. After maybe 10 minutes of shave, try fit, shave again each joint goes together with just a tap from a mallet.
Still got a number of things to do, but the tricky joints all fit and look quite good. A most satisfying afternoon in the shop. And accomplished all this goodness with just ordinary hand tools, no pricey gee whiz power tools.

Blogosphere heat applied to University of Delaware

I was depressed when I saw my old alma mater, the University of Delaware had fallen to the forces of political correctness, accused the entire student body of thought crime, and ordered mandatory re-education for all. I graduated in 1972 when U 0f D was a gracious and civilized place with a wonderful faculty. It saddened me to read that the lefties had taken over and remade the place along the lines of Mordor.
The policy received wide publicity in the blogosphere, and the heat has done some good. The university adminstration Backs off . Go blogosphere.

Newborn Screening yields 90% false postives (WSJ)

New born genetic screening, now required in all 50 states, has a false positive rate up to 90% For each case of an infant genetic disorder identified early and treated, nine other parents are scared out of their wits when the doctor says "There is something wrong with your baby's blood". Speaking as a practicing parent , I can tell you that the fear of a congenital defect in your child is the worst of parent's nightmares. The nine months of pregnancy are plenty of time for fear of congenital defects to grow in both father and mother.
Each false positive screening result will trigger a frantic round of test and retest, treatment, doctor's visits, special diets, special this and that. A newborn child is the most precious thing parents possess and they will do anything to preserve its life. Cost is no object when a newborn's life and health are at stake. The fear, sorrow , and uncertainty put the parents thru a psychological hell.
Yet another advance in medical technology puts nine parents thru hell for each newborn actually aided. And we wonder why 14% of GNP goes into health care. A test with a 90% false positive rate is not the responsible practice of medicine.

Getting tight with lraqi local goverment

We Americans have been trashing the Iraqi national government for ineffectiveness, corruption, sectarianism and halitosis. Plus spitting on the sidewalk and walking on the grass. But government here, and in Iraq is not all national, we have state and local, the Iraqis have tribal sheiks. When the national government is bollixed up, the sheiks seem to be able to make things happen. The Americans are figuring this out and getting in tight with these influencial Iraqis. This article by Michael Yon relates comments by Sheik Omar Jabouri, of Tribe Jabouri on the progress of the war. More interesting is the attention and respect paid to Sheik Omar by US Army commanders. I'm thinking the sheiks represent some lower level of Iraqi government, equivalent to US state or local government. which is effective, and joining our side. US Army officers are quite pragmatic and will deal with anyone who can get the job done. Maybe the key to getting the job done in Iraq is to get tight with the effective local leadership who seem to be tribal sheiks.