A 1:87 size American icon falls.

Back in the depression racked 1930's, Irv Athearn started a small company to make model trains. Athearn survived the depression, squeaked thru the material shortages of WWII and blossomed in the post war years. The signature product was a series of kits. For a couple of dollars (way less than the cost of a single piece of Lionel) you got a kit that assembled into a very decent HO car. These kits stayed in production from 1950 right up until a few days ago. Generations of railroad hobbyists had bought zillions of the "Blue Box" kits and enjoyed them.
Last Friday Athearn called it quits. I got an email from them announcing end of production. No more $5 kits, from now on all you get is $18 fully assembled (ready-to-run they call it) . Irv Athearn died years ago, the company was sold to "Horizon Hobbies" and a new bunch of suits (managers) first moved production to China and then decided they would make more money selling $18 ready-to-run rather than $5 kits. Athearn kits were always easy to assemble, we used to call them "shake-the-box" kits (shake the box hard enough and the kit will fall together). The suits figure they can have a few pennies worth of Chinese labor put the kits together and raise the product price by a factor of three. Nice plan if it works.
Somehow, I don't think it's going to pan out that way. Hobbies are the ultimate discretionary purchase. People, kids especially, have only so much money to spend on a hobby. I think the Athearn suits are gong to find that their revenues stay about the same, as people buy fewer ready-to-runs at $18 than they did of kits at $5.
As the fond owner of a vast fleet of Athearn models, I decided to buy up a few more kits before they were all gone. It was a beautiful sunny day, the leaves are still pretty bright (although past peak now) and I drove out US 302, up thru Crawford Notch and down to Hartmann's RR hobby shop just north of North Conway. US 302 had smooth black new asphalt, NH has been aggressive in getting and spending Porkulus money. $49 later I had 6 new Athearn kits for building later this winter.

Health Care bill grows again. 1500 pages now.

Can nothing stop it? At 1000 pages last month no one could read it. Now its grown another 50% just to make sure no one can read it. Story here.

Wood Lathe

Finally got this baby turning wood. It's cool. Craig's list led me to this fifty year old Craftsman for only $50. Had to borrow a pickup truck to get him home. He spend a few weeks on the garage floor but the coming of winter added incentive to get the project moving, so I could get the car into the garage and out of the snow.
Step 2 was to build the bench you see under it. I am too old to grovel around on the floor working on stuff and I didn't want to tie up my only workbench for however long the restore might take.
Step 3 was to scrounge up a motor and buy a pulley for it. The motor was free but the damn pulley was $25 over the 'net. Also was able to locate a set of chisels, a set of brass punches to take it apart with, and the missing tool rest on the 'net.
Step 4 came after first power up. It ran but was making a really dreadful noise. The "I am a bad bearing" kind of noise. I pulled the bearings out of the headstock and ordered new ones from good old Accurate Bearing Co. The nice lady at Accurate apologized for only having Chinese made bearings. I said they would do and she put them right in the mail. USPS got them to me inside of two business days.
Yesterday it all came together. New bearings purred like kittens, chisels dug right in and presto, I have something round. Next to get some better looking wood than old two by fours and turn something decorative.
Just to add to the feeling of honest self satisfaction, the mail man dropped off the woodworking magazine with a cover story "Four Mini Lathes for your shop". These groovy little machines cost $600-$800 each (new) and don't have a half the capacity of my $50 antique.

The Wall St Journal blinks

Back in August I found out the Journal wanted $375 to renew my subscription for one year. Wow!. The WSJ is a fine paper but it ain't that fine. I called their subscription department. How about a discount 'cause I'm a senior, a veteran, a republican, retired, a New Hampster? No deals. Pay up or else.
New subscribers can get the Journal for $134 a year but renewal is $375. So I let the subscription run out.
Then the Journal capitulated by mail. I received an invitation to renew for $134 a year in the mail. Sent in the check yesterday.

Slate's science needs to go back to highschool

This article on Slate claims the invention of an artificial black hole. Too bad that the device described is really a "black body" rather than a "black hole". A black body is a device that is a perfect absorber of radiation, no radiation is reflected, it is all absorbed. In principle an ideal flat black paint would form a black body. In practice an opening into a box, whose interior is painted black will be even blacker than the paint alone.
A black hole is a gravity field so strong that the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light.
And Slate doesn't know the difference. Typical poorly educated newsies.

Banks have come into money again

I just received no fewer than three letters from my credit card companies with those free checks inside. Just cash one or two or three with a limit of some thousands of dollars. Sort of like free money only you have to pay it back.
They gave up on this promotion during the dark days of 08 and 09 presumably cause they were all going broke. Looks like their balance sheets have improved and they are now pushing consumer loans again.

Why all the RINO news coverage?

Yesterday the Senate finance committee passed its health care bill (there are others in other committees) by 14 to 10. All the news coverage centered on RINO Olympia Snow of Maine voting for the bill. All the other Republicans on the committee voted against it. If Snow had voted against it, it still would have passed 13 to 11. So what is the big deal about Snow's vote?
Could it be that the democrats, and their media, want a Republican stamp of approval on the bill, so that when it becomes a disaster, the democrats can say it must be OK, the Republicans voted for it too?
I hear the "bipartisan" word thrown around a lot these days. Actually, in real two party democracy the two parties are supposed to advocate different policies and are under no obligation to support the opposition's policies. The intense desire of the democrats to get a bi partisan Republican OK on their health care bill is not real two party democracy in action. Not quite sure what it is, but I am not sure I like it.
The Republicans ought to have figured out that Obamacare is a disaster that will bankrupt the country. When that happens, it should be clear to all voters that the democrats brought the disaster upon us and they could get relief by voting in Republicans.
When RINO's like Snow buy into Obamacare then it gets harder to point the finger of blame at the guilty party.