Terrorism or Treason?

Lot of talk on the TV about that Major Hasan, the Ft Hood shooter. Is he a terrorist? Who knows, and what's a terrorist anyhow. Skip that. He is a traitor though.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, providing them aid and comfort." US Constitution, Article III section 3.
I'd say shooting 30 or 40 US soldiers, on an Army post, is levying war against the United States. It's treason for a plain civilian, and it's infinitely worse when the shooter is a commissioned officer of the US Army.
And it is also premeditated murder.
So what to charge Major Hasan with? Let's not grant this awful man the glory of political martyrdom. Let's charge him with plain old murder, which still carries the death penalty in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Let him plead the insanity defense. Better to have him proclaim to the world that he is a maniac rather than a glorious martyred jihadi.
Our enemies are trying to make Major Hasad into a hero of Jihad. Let's not help them.

Compact Fluorescents go blue

In order to bring light to the shaving mirror, a four bulb (60 W per bulb) fixture was installed over the medicine cabinet many years ago. Couple of years ago I replaced the 240 watts worth of plain old light bulbs with those curly que compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). After 3 years of service one of the CFL's died. So I did the ordinary thing, bought a new CFL down at Franconia hardware.
Put the new bulb in service, turned on the juice, everything lit up. But WOW. New CFL shines a bright blue along side the three old bulbs which glow a cheery pink. Put the cover on the fixture an it does look odd, a bright blue spot in the midst of cheery pink.
Looks like the CFL maker in China decided to save a few pennies on phosphors. Phosphors for blue and green are cheap and bright. Red phosphors are expensive and not so bright. The old line fluorescent lamps were done in "Cool White" a very blue mix popular for years that was cheap but threw an unpleasant shade of light. Which is why fluorescent lamps never made much headway in the home, the light was just plain ugly and made rugs and furnishings look ugly.
When the CFL bulbs first came out, they had the more expensive red rich phosphor mixes and the light looked pretty good, for a fluorescent. Looks like that's going away now that the CFL's have caught on. Back to cool white ugliness.

Massacre at Ft Hood

The terrible news from Ft Hood dominated the TV news yesterday. At this point it seems that one man, an Army major and psychiatrist, named Nidal Malik Hassan is the sole murderer. He was shot resisting arrest but is alive and may recover to stand trial.
My heart goes out to the victims and their loved ones.
One unasked question. How did this weirdo stay in the Army long enough to make major without anyone noticing that he was homicidal? Doctors come in as captains, to be a major this guy had to have been on active duty for at least 18 months. He was supposed to have a superior officer write an Officers Effectiveness Report (OER) on him once a year. I wonder what those OER's say. For that matter, how did he get thru med school ?

"V" rerun on SciFi (SyFy) channel

V was a TV miniseries way way back in the early '80s. Aliens come to earth in mile wide flying saucers. They look just like humans and after the humunguous saucers hover over all major cities, alien ambassadors establish friendly diplomatic relations with earth. Some earthlings go for this, but the doubts grow. Gradually, over several episodes, it is revealed that the aliens are green and scaly, wear "human suits" to sooth the earthling suspicions, and have repulsive table manners. A resistance movement forms and the war is on. There are some good scenes. Such as alien antigravity shuttlecraft parked on a California street. An innocent looking little old lady walks past, extracts a Molotov cocktail from her shopping bag, lights it with a Zippo, and flips it thru an open cockpit window, producing a most satisfactory explosion. Or, a resistance camp is under air attack from alien shuttlecraft. Reinforcements come roaring up in a trash packer truck, the truck's rear hatch pops open, and the resistance fighters pass out M-16's and shoulder fired missiles. We see a couple of alien shuttles crash after taking missile hits.
The series has everything, dedicated resistance fighters, cynical mercenaries, quislings, traitors, scumbag alien enemies as well as honorable aliens. Every cold war hawk vs dove hot button (except nuclear weapons) is pushed at least once.
I saw this thing just once back when it first came out on over-the-air TV. To my knowledge it never went into reruns. Saturday's airing of all episodes (some 12 hours worth) was the first time I'd seen it since the '80s. Apparently ABC is planning to revive or remake the series on TV, and the SyFy channel piggybacked on the ABC publicity. It will be fun to see if the new series can push as many hot buttons as the old one.
The old series shows hawks as heroes and doves as race traitors. I figure that slant was a turnoff to TV people and the reason it never went into reruns until now.

NY 23rd, Why did Hoffmann loose?

Hard to say, since the media gave little-to-no coverage of the candidates. There was one very short clip of Hoffmann speaking and it didn't go well. He sounded inarticulate and tongue tied. I wonder if the real situation was like the situation up here, lack of decent candidates. It's hard to find intelligent articulate candidates who are willing to put up with the abuse and the long hours of running for public office.
From what I hear, Scozzafava was the choice of the Republican party leadership in the district, but didn't appeal to the voters much. That happens, as a very narrow gauge Republican leader myself, I like to think I know what Republican voters want, but I can easily be wrong. I can visulize a dozen guys, part timers, getting together to find a candidate, and settling on Scozzafava as the only experienced politician willing to run. They are all good old boys, and a daresay Scozzafava was a good old girl, and well known to them, whereas Hoffmann was a total amateur, new to the district, and so they didn't consider him.
Net result, the Republicans nominate a weak candidate. A third party candidate comes out of nowhere and blows her away. But that third party guy, Hoffmann, isn't all that strong a candidate himself, and the Democrat wins the election.
So, rather than a Republican electorate moving to the right, we really have a Republican party unable to come up with strong candidates.
As I said, I don't really know all this, but based on personal experience, that's the way it might have been. Too bad we don't have any real reporters up there in NY 23 to tell us what really did happen.

Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes (1995)

This turned up at the Franconia library booksale. It's a long thick history of the development of nuclear weapons, starting back before the Mahattan project. We see the physicists, the spies, the politicians. Rhodes is not a very technical guy so the coverage of the technology, the great industrial efforts, and the military efforts is a little thin. He does have a fascinating look at the Soviet nuclear program. The Soviets couldn't spare the resources for atomic weapons until after WWII, but they had a lot of good scientists, who working from a limited industrial base, and aided by brilliant Soviet espionage, acheived a bomb very early.
It's a good read. Could have been better if the author had been more sympathetic to the subject. He clearly feels the entire nuclear weapons effort was misguided and only the grace of God prevented destruction of the world. Writing in the safety of the mid 1990's, after the Soviets collapsed, (and before 9/11) it isn't hard to make the quest for the hydrogen bomb seem foolish. But as one who lived thru the cold war, that forty year faceoff with a nuclear armed super power, the desire for thermonuclear weapons (and an Air Force to deliver them) seems perfectly rational.
Rhodes tells the story of the nuclear spies, Fuchs, the Greenglasses, the Rosenburgs, Burgess and McClain, Philby, Harry Gold, and the rest. There is plenty of detail, we learn of nearly every dead drop and brushpass. Rhodes skims over the most interesting part of the spy story, the motivations. What made these people risk their lives to give the secret of the atomic bomb to Stalin? Rhodes doesn't even speculate.
Rhodes has it in for General Curt LeMay. He accuses LeMay of empire building, disrespect of superiors, unauthorized provocative actions, and offering bad advice to Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. He fails to mention the famous Kennedy quote, "If we had a war tomorrow I'd want Le May in the lead bomber. But other than that, he's a wild man".
All in all, interesting. Could have been better, but it's still pleny OK.

Health Care according to Democrats

Fox News interviewed a Democratic Congressman this morning. This fellow claimed that the $1 trillion 2000 page health care bill would save money. "Well, yes costs do go up, but it would be worse without the bill. " Then he says "Health care costs inevitably rise".
Actually, US health care costs are twice the costs of ANY OTHER country in the world. They could be reduced by half and we would still spend as much as anyone. Two steps toward reducing costs. Medical malpractice reform ought to save 10% or more. Allowing health insurance companies to sell insurance thruout the United States would bring real competition to many places.
Far as anyone can tell (with 2000 pages to read, who knows anything really) Obamacare does not do either thing.