A boy playing Little League baseball was struck in the chest by a ball. The impact stopped the boy's heart and serious brain damage occurred before emergency treatment restarted the heart and saved the boy's life. The parents are suing the maker of the bat, claiming that metal bats are dangerous. They claim that metal bats drive balls faster than wooden bats and thus caused the injury to their son. And the maker is liable.
The case made Fox News this morning, and the Fox commentators seemed to agree that the parents have a case and the bat maker should pay.
How is this? The bat maker manufactured a standard product, which worked as designed, and is authorized for Little League play. In baseball everything is regulated by the league, the composition of the ball , the gloves, the size of the field, the amount of spit allowed on a pitcher's hands, everything. Metal bats are league authorized, and so the bat maker is making a legitimate piece of sports equipment that met Little League requirements. How does that make him liable for anything?
I understand the parents have suffered a terrible loss and deserve sympathy and support. But does that entitle them to endanger the existance of the sporting equipment company that made the bat, possibly driving them out of business and putting all their employees out in the street? Just defending against a law suit is fantastically expensive, and paying off a damage award is just as bad. Just because the parents are suffering, should they impose more suffering upon totally innocent parties?
You can also bet that the lawyers looked at the other parties that might be liable, the Little League, the owner of the ball field, the sponsors of the Little League teams, whoever, and decided that none of them had any money worth suing for. The sports equipment maker at least has enough money to meet payroll.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Are Polar Bears Democratic?
The global warming folk are attempting to get polar bears declared an endangered species. By doing this, they hope to have judges place restrictions upon oil exploration in the Arctic, and perhaps even impose CO2 emissions quotas upon US industry and citizens.
They are pursuing this path toward their objectives because they lack the votes in Congress to pass their program by legislation. They hope a green thinking judge will bypass the elected Congress and impose their policies by judicial fiat.
This is profoundly undemocratic. Under democracy, new laws are passed only by the will of the majority. Right now, a majority for restricting oil exploration and imposing CO2 limits does not exist. In short, the greens don't have the votes to impose their will upon the country. So they try an end run around the Congress thru the courts.
They are pursuing this path toward their objectives because they lack the votes in Congress to pass their program by legislation. They hope a green thinking judge will bypass the elected Congress and impose their policies by judicial fiat.
This is profoundly undemocratic. Under democracy, new laws are passed only by the will of the majority. Right now, a majority for restricting oil exploration and imposing CO2 limits does not exist. In short, the greens don't have the votes to impose their will upon the country. So they try an end run around the Congress thru the courts.
Windows sluggishness, Icon variety
Today my computer came down with the icon slows. The desktop would open after boot but all the desktop icons were trash for a minute or two, and then would slowly paint one by one. Open an explorer window to view your files on disk, and again, the icons for each file painted one by one and slowly.
How does Windows paint all those icons, a different one for each program? The simple way is to put up a temporary icon, and then find the program to which the short cut points, open it, extract the icon pixels and paint them on the screen. This is slow. So, windows keeps a "shell icon cache" file, containing all the icons, so it only has to open one file, in a known place, to fetch every icon. Windows, being Windows, occasionally manages to mess up its own icon cache file. The messed up file do longer works, and so Windows reverts to the old slow "find each icon in the program file" process.
Fix. Run the CCleaner program. This is freeware/shareware which Google will find for you on the net. To fix just icons, select "Start Menu Shortcuts" and "Window size/Location Cache" and click on "Run Cleaner".
CCleaner is a general purpose cleaner upper, and can remove all sorts of un needed files. A CCleaner run can easily free up 100 megabytes of disk space. The program has two modes of operation. Analyze, which finds un wanted files and displays them to you, and "Run Cleaner" which finds unwanted files and deletes them. The cautious user will first analyze and carefully inspect the displayed files just to make sure they really are unwanted.
Some applications choose bad file name extensions which make CCleaner think the files are unwanted when they are indeed wanted. I remember ClearCase (a very expensive professional software source control system) which used the extension ".tmp" for its working files. Disk cleanup people and programs will always delete anything with "tmp" or "temp" in its name.
How does Windows paint all those icons, a different one for each program? The simple way is to put up a temporary icon, and then find the program to which the short cut points, open it, extract the icon pixels and paint them on the screen. This is slow. So, windows keeps a "shell icon cache" file, containing all the icons, so it only has to open one file, in a known place, to fetch every icon. Windows, being Windows, occasionally manages to mess up its own icon cache file. The messed up file do longer works, and so Windows reverts to the old slow "find each icon in the program file" process.
Fix. Run the CCleaner program. This is freeware/shareware which Google will find for you on the net. To fix just icons, select "Start Menu Shortcuts" and "Window size/Location Cache" and click on "Run Cleaner".
CCleaner is a general purpose cleaner upper, and can remove all sorts of un needed files. A CCleaner run can easily free up 100 megabytes of disk space. The program has two modes of operation. Analyze, which finds un wanted files and displays them to you, and "Run Cleaner" which finds unwanted files and deletes them. The cautious user will first analyze and carefully inspect the displayed files just to make sure they really are unwanted.
Some applications choose bad file name extensions which make CCleaner think the files are unwanted when they are indeed wanted. I remember ClearCase (a very expensive professional software source control system) which used the extension ".tmp" for its working files. Disk cleanup people and programs will always delete anything with "tmp" or "temp" in its name.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
So how expensive is a nuclear power plant?
Wall St Journal reports that utility companies (electric companies) are cringing from the $5 to $12 billion dollar quotes on new nuclear plants. The article goes on to say that the existing nuclear plants built in the 60's and 70's cost about $3 billion. Hmm. There's been a bit of inflation since the '70s. In the '70's a new Caddy went for $10K. A 2008 Caddy goes for $43K. If the cost of a nuclear plant is only up from $3 to $12 billion, that's no big surprise to me, and it shouldn't be a surprise to electric companies or the WSJ.
Second, you gotta wonder how much gold plating has been done on the designs. The word "nuclear" raises the cost of things. For instance, the mess tables on nuclear aircraft carriers cost more than the mess tables on oil fired carriers. What with the current population of ambulance chasing lawyers, to say nothing of skittish insurance companies, every conceivable safety device will be incorporated whether it does any good or not. Nuclear safety people make Alice in Wonderland look rational. As you may remember Alice once met a white knight. The knight's horse had spiked steel anklets on all four legs. When Alice inquired about them, she was told that the spikes protected the horse against shark bites. Alice asked how often the knight's horse had been attacked by sharks. The knight replied the horse had never been bitten which meant the spiked anklets were doing their job. I'm sure the new nuclear designs have plenty of expensive spiked anklets protecting against shark bite.
If the plant cost $10 billion, it will take a long time to pay itself off. I pay $0.10 per kilowatt hour, of which half goes to the generating company and the other half goes to PSNH who owns the power poles, transformers and electric meters. A nuclear plant will generate 1000 megawatts. Run the plant for an hour, and you bill $0.05 times 1,000,000 kilowatt/hours, or $50,000 an hour. $10 billion divided by $50,000 an hour means 200,000 hours (about 22 years) to pay off the construction costs. That's a long time, and this back of the envelope calculation ignores operating costs, fuel costs, taxes, and interest on the debt, all of which would stretch out the repayment time. Better go for the low end $5 billion dollar plant.
Second, you gotta wonder how much gold plating has been done on the designs. The word "nuclear" raises the cost of things. For instance, the mess tables on nuclear aircraft carriers cost more than the mess tables on oil fired carriers. What with the current population of ambulance chasing lawyers, to say nothing of skittish insurance companies, every conceivable safety device will be incorporated whether it does any good or not. Nuclear safety people make Alice in Wonderland look rational. As you may remember Alice once met a white knight. The knight's horse had spiked steel anklets on all four legs. When Alice inquired about them, she was told that the spikes protected the horse against shark bites. Alice asked how often the knight's horse had been attacked by sharks. The knight replied the horse had never been bitten which meant the spiked anklets were doing their job. I'm sure the new nuclear designs have plenty of expensive spiked anklets protecting against shark bite.
If the plant cost $10 billion, it will take a long time to pay itself off. I pay $0.10 per kilowatt hour, of which half goes to the generating company and the other half goes to PSNH who owns the power poles, transformers and electric meters. A nuclear plant will generate 1000 megawatts. Run the plant for an hour, and you bill $0.05 times 1,000,000 kilowatt/hours, or $50,000 an hour. $10 billion divided by $50,000 an hour means 200,000 hours (about 22 years) to pay off the construction costs. That's a long time, and this back of the envelope calculation ignores operating costs, fuel costs, taxes, and interest on the debt, all of which would stretch out the repayment time. Better go for the low end $5 billion dollar plant.
Why vote Republican this year?
There is one big difference between Republican John McCain and the Democratic yet to be named candidate. The Democrats promise to recall our troops from Iraq as soon as possible (ASAP) where as McCain promises to prosecute the war until victory is achieved. Election day promises don't come much clearer than that.
Elect a Democrat and the troops pull out. Then Al Quada or Iran takes over Iraq, all the Iraqis who have worked with the Americans are murdered, the country dissolves into a Sunni Shia civil war. The entire Arab world gets an object lesson in what happens to anyone who co operates with the Americans, namely the Americans will go home and leave you twisting in the breeze. This will demoralize even the Israelis, let alone any Sunni Arab government. Iran brings their nuclear weapons program to fruition, and pressures all the middle east countries to knuckle under to them. Think oil is expensive today? Wait til Iran shows up at the next OPEC meeting, armed with nuclear weapons, the Americans totally discredited, and demands cutting production and hiking the price. The Saudi's wouldn't dare oppose Iran in those circumstances. If that isn't bad enough, think about where we go if the Iranians carry thru on their pledge to nuke Israel out of existence.
On the other hand, sticking it out in Iraq will deal Bin Ladin's Islamo Fascist movement a mortal blow. Just this last month the Iraqi government finally gained the strength to confront its enemies, the militias and gangsters still holding out. The Iraqi government is the first real democracy in the Arab world. If it survives, Iraq will become the most desirable place to live in all the Middle East. A peaceful and prosperous democratic Iraq would set a powerful example to the entire Arab world. So powerful that the Arab dictatorships (every other Arab country is a dictatorship) would be under enormous pressure to emulate Iraq's democracy.
Elect a Democrat and the troops pull out. Then Al Quada or Iran takes over Iraq, all the Iraqis who have worked with the Americans are murdered, the country dissolves into a Sunni Shia civil war. The entire Arab world gets an object lesson in what happens to anyone who co operates with the Americans, namely the Americans will go home and leave you twisting in the breeze. This will demoralize even the Israelis, let alone any Sunni Arab government. Iran brings their nuclear weapons program to fruition, and pressures all the middle east countries to knuckle under to them. Think oil is expensive today? Wait til Iran shows up at the next OPEC meeting, armed with nuclear weapons, the Americans totally discredited, and demands cutting production and hiking the price. The Saudi's wouldn't dare oppose Iran in those circumstances. If that isn't bad enough, think about where we go if the Iranians carry thru on their pledge to nuke Israel out of existence.
On the other hand, sticking it out in Iraq will deal Bin Ladin's Islamo Fascist movement a mortal blow. Just this last month the Iraqi government finally gained the strength to confront its enemies, the militias and gangsters still holding out. The Iraqi government is the first real democracy in the Arab world. If it survives, Iraq will become the most desirable place to live in all the Middle East. A peaceful and prosperous democratic Iraq would set a powerful example to the entire Arab world. So powerful that the Arab dictatorships (every other Arab country is a dictatorship) would be under enormous pressure to emulate Iraq's democracy.
Full Scale is the best scale for drawings
I did a 1 inch to the foot set of drawings for the coming HO train layout. Took my time, did several trial drawings, copied the best one over on a clean piece of paper. Used squared paper, compass, architect's scale and the resulting A size drawing was nice and neat.
Next step, draw the track work out full scale in the actual layout table. Bought a dozen sheets of white poster board and covered the layout with them. Tacked the poster board down to the foam with drafting tacks and started drawing the track plan out full size. Used a trammel (long piece of board with holes for pencils) to swing the 22 inch, 20 inch and 18 inch curves. The centers of most of the curves are off the bench work out in mid air. I used a yard sale photographic tripod to give me a center to swing the trammel on for the airborne centers.
Partway into all this layout work, I began to change the plan. All sorts of things that looked great on the scale drawing, began to look less than great at full scale. So, out with the powered eraser, and change things around. Lesson learned, always mockup things up full sized.
Next step, draw the track work out full scale in the actual layout table. Bought a dozen sheets of white poster board and covered the layout with them. Tacked the poster board down to the foam with drafting tacks and started drawing the track plan out full size. Used a trammel (long piece of board with holes for pencils) to swing the 22 inch, 20 inch and 18 inch curves. The centers of most of the curves are off the bench work out in mid air. I used a yard sale photographic tripod to give me a center to swing the trammel on for the airborne centers.
Partway into all this layout work, I began to change the plan. All sorts of things that looked great on the scale drawing, began to look less than great at full scale. So, out with the powered eraser, and change things around. Lesson learned, always mockup things up full sized.
Monday, May 12, 2008
A single USAF relief plane lands in Burma
The Burmese junta really doesn't want US aid for its uncounted hurricane victims. The hurricane was a week ago, and only now, does the junta allow a single USAF relief plane to land. Reports of 27,000 dead and 41,000 missing should require a Berlin Airlift kind of response. A single C-130 (medium sized turbo prop) isn't going to do much for a disaster on this scale. The junta is clearly doesn't care much for its citizens.
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