Cross Country skiing in April

The cross country skiing has been really good this week. It's close the house, and more fun than going to the gym. The Notchway trail runs up from rt 141 to Echo lake. I start at the down hill end, makes it easier on the way back to the car. I go in for a half an hour and then turn around. Going downhill takes only 20 minutes so I get 50 minutes of good exercise. My usual gym routine lasts about that long and isn't as much work. Skiing takes more wind than working the elliptical machine.

CAFE and flex fuel vehicles

Would you believe a full sized V8 pickup truck gets 30 mpg? Not in the real world, or on the highway, but in the the US government Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) calculations.
How does this happen? Well the CAFE people wanted to promote ethanol burning cars. So, any car or truck that will run on ethanol gets its real MPG doubled for the CAFE number. Which is how Detroit is planning to meet the 40 mpg CAFE requirement that is coming at them.
Vehicles that can run on ethanol are referred to as "flex fuel" vehicles. They will run on pure alcohol, pure gasoline, or any mixture of the two fuels. Actually, they aren't hard to make. You have to pay attention to the materials used for gaskets, hoses and seals in the fuel system. Alcohol attacks some commonly used elastomers, but materials that can stand up to both alcohol and gasoline are available. And the fuel injectors (nobody uses carburetors anymore) have to automatically richen the mixture as the alcohol content rises. This isn't hard for microprocessors to do. In short, it is easy to make any production vehicle into a flex fuel vehicle. Cheap too.
Right now, all the vehicles sold in Brazil are flex fuel, and somewhere around 20% of Detroit production is flex fuel.
Of course, you have to believe in ethanol for all this to make sense. Farmers love ethanol for obvious reasons, but it is not clear that ethanol production saves on oil consumption, the tractor fuel, the synthetic fertilizer, the transportation fuel, and the fuel to heat the still makes ethanol a questionable product. Energy gain from ethanol is low, perhaps less than one. Nobody claims more than 1.3 for best energy gain. Plus ethanol amounts to burning food to drive our cars. Have you noticed the prices at the grocery store lately? Burn enough food and the price goes up.
Without hefty subsidies from us taxpayers, ethanol would go out of business. Could this be one small way to balance the federal budget?

Airplanes last forever.

It must be whine day on NHPR. We have people whining about flying older jetliners on the Diane Rhams (sp?) show. One lady guest advocated a "sunset law" for airliners, scrap 'em after 5 years in the air.
After that frightening accident on Southwest, where a portion of the cabin roof blew out, some of this is perhaps natural. But unnecessary.
Speaking as an old flight line maintenance type, I can assure you that airplanes last forever. Unless the plane is in perfect shape, the crew won't take off in it. Everything gets replaced or rebuilt upon reaching its service life. Everything about the plane can be removed and replaced. A seventy year old DC-3 is a good as the day it rolled out of the Douglas factory. Probably better.
The Southwest accident was a surprise. Small cracks developed in the fuselage skin, in a place you cannot see on the ground without going up in cherry picker. And hard to see unless you know just where to look and what to look for. And unexpected, so the area had not been carefully inspected in the past. Now that we know where to look, we found a couple of more airplanes needing repair.
The Southwest accident will result in more inspections, and replacement of sheet metal where cracks are found. Boeing will make some changes to the maintenance manual, and the plane will continue flying as before.

Numbers, Nobody knows any numbers

NHPR is running a morning special decrying the republican NH budget. They go on and on praising this program and that program. Decrying "cuts" and "significant cuts" as heartless and counter productive.
Not once does anyone mention a real number, like how much money was appropriated last year and how much will be appropriated this year. Their cup runneth over with woe, but none of 'em talk about how much money is involved. Maybe they don't know? Surely they don't think the listeners don't care? Everybody cares about money.

WMUR-TV vs Right-to-Work

The NH Right to work bill came up before the Senate today. Big demonstrations, lots of union guys there to express disapproval. WMUR did the usual man-on-the-street interviews, taking care to only air the anti right to work man-on-the-street interviews. They didn't mention the real reason to pass right to work, which is to attact new industry. Industry likes right to work states and locates new plants, and all the jobs that come with new plants, in right to work states. NH could become a right to work state and reap the benefits. The union people are dead set against that.

Packaging, Arrgh

Stopped in at Staples to buy a USB wireless modem for elderly laptop. It takes a while to find the networking section and even longer to find the needed device on the shelf. Three shelves of boxes marked "Netgear". Teeny tiny little letters, much smaller that "Netgear", said "N150 Wireless USB Adapter". Gotta get down on hand and knees to read it. Same shelf is piled high with Netgear routers, octopus cables, PCI modems, power supplies, and other stuff, all in the same colored boxes, all with vague names. How is a customer, even a savvy customer, supposed to find the device he needs?
The same trend toward vague labels continued on the blank DVD shelf. Square packs marked "DVD-R" full of jewel cases. Are these packs of DVDs with jewel cases or just empty jewel cases? Who knows? Certainly not the Staples staff. Packs of DVD's labeled "printable", what ever that means. The packaging didn't say.
Looks like we have a bunch of clueless marketing droids on the loose.

Gonna try 'em at Guantanamo

The TV news is full of talk about the administration's decision to try 'em at Guantanamo, by military commission. Lots of talk from Atty Gen. Eric Holder about how this is wrong, they oughta be tried in Federal court in NYC, and it's all Congress's fault for cutting off funding for a new clink, and various commentators gloating over the administration's about face on the issue. In short a lot of political point scoring. Nothing said about the real problem.
9-11 happened ten years ago. We should have tried 'em ten years ago when the crime was fresh and tempers were hot. The purpose of a public trial is to convince the public that these are really bad guys and they deserve every bit of what we are gonna give 'em. Plus deter anyone contemplating doing the same. Now its ten years too late, everyone's mind is made up, and the trial won't change anything. We aren't gonna deter anyone either, we have shown the world that you can kill 3000 Americans and get away with it.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Even terrorist scum deserve a speedy trial. Which they didn't get.