Obama and Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

On a slow news day Obama knows how to get our attention. He declared a recent act of Congress, the Defense of Marriage Act, unconstitutional. He distracts the newsie's attention from his weirdo responses to Egypt and Libya by bringing up a hot button topic, (a wedge issue) that his left wing base will love, and perhaps the independents will not be offended by.
As a matter of process, Obama is way out in left field by declaring an act of Congress to be un constitutional all. The standard procedure is to propose new legislation to Congress, rather than declaring existing legislation unconstitutional.
As a practical matter, Obama will solidify his left liberal base, attract a lot of press coverage, and outrage the Republicans. Where the vast mass of independents really stands is unknown, clearly Obama thinks this will rally them to his banner. I hope he is wrong but you never know, Obama was clever enough to get elected president, so you cannot write him off as a dunderhead.

The American Revolution

It's a DVD I borrowed from the Franconia town library. It's good. It's a four DVD set of lectures on the revolution by Allen Guelzo of Gettysburg College. I've watched the first two DVD's, some 12 lectures. Professor Guelzo clearly knows his subject backwards and forwards. He speaks at length without notes. The format is the classic college course lecture, Professor Guelzo stands at a podium and delivers a lecture. There are some audio visual aids, maps, portraits of revolutionary war participants, the sort of thing a professor might use in a real college.
This guy is good. I watched all 12 lectures in the first set of DVD's and stayed wide awake. He presents the generally accepted history of the revolution, in plain and clear speech, no jargon. No conspiracy theories, no politically correct deviations, professor Guelzo tells the story straight, with lots of detail.
If you have a child looking for a college, consider Gettysburg College. If they have one guy this good on the faculty, they probably have more.

What's Boeing to do?

Boeing's best selling product is the plain vanilla 737 single aisle jet liner. It's a good plane, it's been in production for a long time, it has orders that will take years to fill.
But, arch rival Airbus has announced a "New Engine Option" (NEO) for it's bread and butter airliner, the A320, direct competitor with Boeing's 737. Airbus will put Pratt & Whitney's new geared turbofan engine on the A320. Airbus publicity claims a 5% fuel savings. It is already beginning to gather orders, dispite the fact that it won't be delivered for years.
Question for Boeing. Should Boeing start design on a 737 replacement? Downside is enormous costs, embarrassing delays, an engineering department still tied up in knots with the long delayed 787 program. Plus the Boeing engineers can't come up with a plane that would be much better than the existing 737. Plus, as soon as a 737 replacement is announced, customers will delay orders, waiting for the new model to become available.
Driving Boeing toward a new design is the fear that the new Airbus plane will be decisively superior to the long-in-the-tooth 737 and capture the market. The 737 is the market, or at least the largest part of the market. Boeing sells ten 737's for every other model they sell.
As of now, Boeing hasn't said what they plan to do.

Language Drift

I've noticed a change in the meaning of "pistol". Used to be, pistol meant the same as handgun, and came in two flavors, revolvers and automatic pistols. Recent usage in the trade seems to use "pistol" to mean "automatic pistol" and not revolver. Handgun is now the generic word that includes revolvers and automatic pistols.
This change has filtered thru to the dictionary. A great big 1967 dictionary defines pistol to be the same as handgun, a firearm designed to be fired with one hand. A newer 1997 dictionary drops the "fired with one hand" bit and defines pistol as a handgun with a single chamber, which rules out revolvers.
Part of the change comes from Charles Weaver, who taught us all the two hand hold for combat shooting. Weaver had something. I was taught to shoot single handed. Only after I switched over to Weaver's two hand grip did I win an Air Force sharpshooter ribbon. And if you watch TV, the cops now always grab their guns with two hands, which kinda makes the "designed to be fired with one hand" definition passe.

Bahrain, a strategic American ally?

I've heard both left wing (NPR) and right wing (Fox) newsies call it that. "A strategic naval base", "important ally", and some other vague phrases. This talk has sprung up in the past few days after anti government protests started happening in Bahrain. The US Navy does have arrangements with Bahrain for docking ships in the harbor.
Bahrain may be a nice place, but it's too small and too far up the Persian Gulf to be a "crucial ally" or "strategic partner". Bahrain is a smallish island (290 square miles) a few miles off the coast of Saudi Arabia. That makes it only a few minutes flying time from Iran, not a clever place to keep expensive Navy warships. A Pearl Harbor style air strike from Iran could be launching Exocet missiles before even the fastest computers could respond. The Persian Gulf is a bottle, with a very narrow neck at the Straits of Hormuz. Iranian artillery and missiles can shoot clear across the straits, giving the Iranians the option of becoming very unpleasant should the mood strike them. The Gulf is not the place to station ships for operations against Somalia or pirates.
Bahrain is a fairly prosperous place. They have a population of only 738,000, some oil, same industry built with oil revenues, a lot of tourists and a GNP of $7.8 billion. That comes out to $10,000 a head, not too shabby, even by US standards.
It is a nice enough place to attract Michael Jackson as a permanent resident.
Nice place and all, it's not a crucial interest to the United States, not like Eygpt or Israel is. Too bad the newsies don't understand that.
And, it's a good bet that the political unrest will settle out with a reasonably pro-American regime in charge. The Bahrain tourist trade is too important to drive off the well paying American tourists.

Robin Hood with Russell Crowe & Cate Blanchette

Some how I missed this one when it was in theaters. The DVD turned up in the Franconia library, so I borrowed it. After watching it I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in the theater. The movie is devoid of plot. There's a lot of riding and fighting, and shouting matches, but the movie never gets anywhere. This is a Robin Hood movie, and we expect to see Robin accomplish something, you know, raise King Richard's ransom, marry Maid Marion, outwit the Sheriff of Nottingham, steal from the rich and give to the poor, that sort of stuff. In this movie, Robin doesn't do squat, in the course of nearly three hours of film.
You know the plot is in trouble right from reel 1. Robin starts off as an archer in King Richard's army besieging a minor castle in Aquitaine. A castle defender gets lucky with a crossbow and puts a bolt thru Richard, who dies shortly afterward. Right there the movie is in trouble, in Robin Hood movies King Richard is supposed to return from crusade in the nick of time to save the day. That's not gonna happen here.
After Richard's death, Robin somehow gets the job of bringing Richard's gold crown back to England. Lot of riding, lots of fighting, and Robin finally gets to hand the crown to Queen Eleanor at the Tower of London. It's just like dropping your shirts off at the laundry, Robin hands the crown over and then rides out the main gate. Into another 90 minutes of movie. He meets Maid Marion, but the relationship is too complicated to describe here. There is a scene of a French invasion of England. It looks like D-Day, with medieval LST's, complete with square drop ramp bows being rowed to the beach. What happens to the French invaders is never made clear. At the close of the movie Robin turns to Marion and says "I love you Marion." Then they roll the credits.
I guess the last Hollywood script writer died before this flick was filmed.

The Right to Repair

Pushed by EPA, new car's computers are wired into every part of the car. When you take the car in for an inspection sticker, they don't measure the emissions anymore, they plug into the car's on board computers and ask the car if it's burning clean. If the microprocessor thinks the car is clean you get a sticker. If the microprocessor thinks the car smokes to much, no sticker.
When your car's microprocessor give you thumbs down, fixing it can be tough. The mechanic asks the microprocessor what's wrong. The microprocessor replies with a bunch of code numbers. You have to have a code book to figure out what's what.
The car companies only make the full code book available to their dealers. Independent mechanics are left looking at a bunch of numbers. Nothing they can do without the code book, which the car companies won't give them. Gotta take it to the dealer. As a car owner, you know that taking the car into the dealer is gonna cost you heavily.
The independent mechanics are supporting a "Right To Repair" law that would force the car companies to publish the full code book. Car companies and their dealers (dealers can be a potent political force) are dead set against it.
Me, I take my car to a good independent mechanic, and he takes good care of it. I think he, and all the other independent mechanics should have access to all the codes. My car will run better after Bob Warden fixes it than it will after any dealer mechanic works on it. And for less money.