WWI, or how to wreck a civilization

Blurb for "The Lions of July" by William Janner. A "Guns of August" kind of history book.
"In the days before World War I all of the Princes of Europe, all its nobles, all its educated and cultural elites saw a storm on the horizon. A storm that could lay all they had built low. Yet not one of them, not one, could muster the strength or the courage to do anything other than what they had always done before and what had brought them all to the brink of disaster. "

Tom Clancy had a character express similar feelings in "Debt of Honor".

I don't buy it. WWI occurred because the Austrians wanted it to. Austria was a poly-national empire, full of unhappy subjects (like Serbs) who wanted out of the empire. The Austrians, who ran the place, wanted a nice brisk little war to show the imperial subjects that bad things would happen to them if they jumped ship. The Austrians feared breakup of the empire and loss of their privileged position unless they cracked the whip, hard.
What should have happened, is the Austrian's major ally, Germany, should have told the Austrians to cool it. Only Germany was run by an incompetent loser with a withered arm, who told the Austrians he was 1000% behind them. With that kind of support, the Austrians pushed and kept on pushing, and got their war. The other players tried to put a damper on things, but lacked the power to stop the German backed Austrians.
The terrible disaster could have been avoided with a little luck. If the German Kaiser had been a reasonable man, or, had Germany evolved it's government beyond one man rule WWI would not have happened. Germany was a brand new country, just got put together in 1870, so it was only 40 odd years old in 1914. They hadn't had the time to work out systems of government and checks and balances to prevent one highly placed turkey from driving their country over a cliff. Or, if the Germans had won the first Battle of the Marne, France would have sued for peace in the fall of 1914. Would have been rough on France, but the civilization wrecking war would not have happened.

An Attaboy for Stupid Beast

Or perhaps an attabeast. Stupid Beast is a city apartment raised cat suddenly transported to the wilds of northern NH. She started out flinching from everything, but soon the genetic hunting instincts came to the fore. She learned to catch field mice and the smaller and slower birds. She would trot proudly into the house, limp prey dangling from her mouth, and receive praise from her humans.
Soon her technique improved, and was able to catch the larger and speedier chipmunks. Unfortunately, the chipmunks could play dead to perfection. Several came back to life inside the house and led a Chinese fire drill until they dived under major appliances. Stupid Beast spent quite some time patrolling the washing machine and the refrigerator. Her humans stopped praising her, and in fact refused to let her in doors with hunting trophies.
Worse, Stupid Beast used to devour her kills. Unfortunately she ate them too fast, upset her digestion, and would barf on the rug. He humans began to ban her from the house for a half an hour or more after a kill and a chow down.
Stupid Beast's confidence has been crushed. Last night she caught a fine fat chipmunk and didn't even bring it onto the deck. She left the body on the side lawn. I discovered it while mowing the grass today. This negative response to hunting trophies by the humans has made her stop bringing trophies home at all.

Forbes Magazine concerned about NSA surveillance

NSA's internet surveillance program bothers Forbes too. I posted about this problem not too long ago right here.

Ed Markey opines on the BP spill

Ed Markey, D-Mass, was on NPR this morning. He was castigating BP for "non transparency" and low ball oil spill estimates. He didn't say a word about BP's manager aboard the drill rig who ordered skipping the leak tests which caused the well to blow in the first place. If you are gonna trash BP, trash 'em for causing the well to blow out. That was the bad thing they did wrong. Don't waste airtime whining about poor public relations after the blowout.
Speaking of which. We really ought to issue BP one attaboy for plugging the leak. Lotta BP people out on the water worked really hard to get that cap in place.

US Military Procurement

So what's wrong with US military procurement? How about a 8819 page bid on the USAF tanker job? That's the size of the Airbus bid. Who could read 8819 pages of government gobbledegook without loosing their mind? Let's hope Airbus used computers to shovel on the boilerplate, the avoid cruel and inhuman treatment of engineers.
Far as I am concerned, the bid should fit a single page. Number of aircraft, delivery date[s], price. A description of the aircraft ("standard A320-whatever, fully equipped, less airliner interior and with xxxx gallons fuel tankage, refueling boom, and drogues.").
Spare parts policy: "Spares shall be furnished thru commercial channels at market prices".
That's all that's necessary. We could save a lot of manhours and dollars if we gave up on 8819 page bids.

Silence gives assent

Karl Rove in yesterday's Wall St Journal admitted to finally learning this one. The occasion came when no WMD were found in Iraq. One of the reasons for doing Iraq was, do Iraq before Saddam gets nukes, cause doing regime change on a nuclear power is much more dangerous than doing it on a third world cesspool.
When no nuke were found, democrats accused the Bush Administration of lying to the public and starting the war under false pretenses. In the op ed Rove confesses to urging the Administration to just ignore the charges rather than confront them head on. The "Bush lied, people died" sound bite did great damage to the administration.
Welcome to the real world Mr. Rove. Silence gives assent. If the the accused does not deny the accusations, people tend to think they must be true. We the people expect the accused to deny all charges, 'cause we have seen so many clearly guilty bums deny they did anything wrong. If someone doesn't even bother to deny charges, he must be guilty, 'cause an innocent man would have denied them vigorously.
Want another example? Mike Dukakis failed to respond to the Willie Horton ads. Willie Horton, as you may remember was a Massachusetts convict that Dukakis paroled. Willie committed some awful crime while out on parole. The republicans ran a TV ad showing a big ugly convict, and a revolving door and a voice over accusing Dukakis of being soft on crime. Dukakis didn't respond at all. There were a lot of things Dukakis could have said, but he just didn't bother, hoping the thing would blow over. It didn't and Dukakis lost the presidency.
I'm surprised the political mastermind Karl Rove is just wising up to this fact of life now in 2010.

Duh. Electric cars don't use gasoline.

And if they don't use gasoline, they get infinite miles per gallon. If the car has serious battery capacity like the Chevy Volt, it can get you to work and back on pure battery power. You recharge and off you go the next day.
As a publicity stunt, Chevy ran the Volt (or a computer simulation of the Volt) thru the EPA mileage test, and reported that the Volt was good for 230 mpg (pretty damn close to infinite compared to the 20 mpg a minivan gets). The number attracted attention, and then denunciation. As a publicity stunt it was good.
Now, comes a long serious discussion about how to assign an mpg rating to electric or hybrid gas/electric cars.
The real answer is, it depends. Depends upon how long a trip you are talking about. Short trips, where the battery can make the entire trip show infinite gas mileage. Longer trips beyond the range of the battery will show about anything you like. A trip of twice battery range will use less gas than a trip of 4 times battery range. The real answer, is miles per gallon doesn't mean much for electric cars, or at least electric cars with serious battery capacity.
The current hybrids have tiny batteries, just large enough to hold the energy created by braking and feed it back upon acceleration. The "pure battery range" is a few hundred feet or less. For reasonable trips of miles, the car is running on engine power nearly all the time and mpg has some meaning. But for future electrics with serious battery capacity, that can do a daily commute on battery power, mpg doesn't mean much.