Museum pieces

We (son and I) did the Smithsonian Museum of American History. The air conditioning is nice. They had a lot of neat old things like antique vacuum cleaners, early electric motors and generators, steam engines, cars. No planes, those are all over at Air and Space. The curators must be on a super greenie tear. No lights in a lot of cases making it impossible to see the stuff in the case and/or read the tags. Surely the US of A can afford the electricity to light museum cases.
The curators also have a bit of trouble writing tags. They have a groovy old telescope hanging from the ceiling. It's all polished hardwood and brass, about 15 feet long. The tag talks about Maria somebody-or-other famous woman astronomer who used this gadget at Vassar and is credited with discovering a comet. Didn't bother to say if the telescope was a reflector or a refractor, how big the mirror or lens was, how it was aimed and tracked, whether it could do photography. We learned a lot about lady astronomer Dr. Maria somebody-or-other of Vasser but little about the telescope hanging from the ceiling. Maybe they should have had her hanging from the ceiling, properly stuffed of course.
Then it can make you feel old. In the electric gadget display they had a pair of electric socks. I can remember when my father gave my mother just such a set of battery powered socks. In the GM sponsored automobile display they had some classics, including our old family car, an '88 Dodge Caravan. 22 year old son commented that it made him feel old to see the family car in a museum.

When he got there the conductor told him

One more nickel. Charlie couldn't get offa that train. Had to use the super modern electronic fare systems on both the New York and the DC subway. What a pain. The machines don't make change, they have a tendency to take your money and not issue a ticket, they break down a lot causing long lines.
And, they keep the change. I had to feed the machine with a $5 each time. The actual fare is supposed to be $4.50, but the system keeps the fifty cent change. I don't get it back. Nice little fare hike.

Back on the air?

Blogger just suffered another whoopsie. I have not been able to log in to post to my blog since Tuesday. One of the blogger support sites http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif said they were working on it. After waiting a day or two I did some more web surfing and it was suggested to clear my cookies. Which I did from within Firefox. Try Tools->Options->Privacy and do clear all cookies. That let me log into blogger.
I would have dug into the matter earlier, except that Blogger died earlier this month and it took some days before it came back to life. I figured this was more of the same. Plus I'm traveling and don't get to blog all the time. Anyhow I'm thinking about getting my very own URL and blogging from there. I've been using blogger 'cause it's easy to get going, and it used to be reliable. After two outages in one month, Blogger is looking much less reliable.

Becoming a Veteran Parent

With the college graduation of my youngest child yesterday, I become a true veteran parent, one who has raised 'em,loved 'em, and gotten 'em all thru college. I done my duty and now I can relax. Whew.
Graduation from Brooklyn Poly Tech was not held on campus, instead we subwayed down to the Lincoln center at 66th street, an hour ride each way. And very few seats. We only got two tickets, so Mom and Dad went; siblings, uncles, and aunts had to watch it on U-Tube.
The graduates at this engineering school all had names like Gupta, Patel, Wang, Lee,and Nguyen. Very few Smiths, Jones, Clarks, or Johnsons. Operation of America's industry will be in the hands of the children of recent immigrants. Children of the older Anglo Saxon families are not bothering to learn engineering. Let's hope they can find jobs in this economy.

So here I am in Brooklyn

Youngest son is graduating tommorrow from Brooklyn Polytech. I drove down. Spring has just barely taken hold in the up country, but down in the lust lowlands, it has arrived. I took in the Connecticut Trolley Museum on the way, to break the 7 hour drive. The Trolley's have a parking problem, the place was all parked up and people were parked up and down the road. The local cops were running around threatening to tow every single car. I wound up parked at a strip mall a mile away and took a shuttle bus. The Trolleys had one vintage open seat car in like new condition, varnished wood gleaming, brass polished, paint bright, and giving rides. And a half a dozen fixer-uppers in the car barn. I took some pix and then pressed on. Gas is $4.25 in Connecticut, up from $3.89 in the northwoods. Took the Hutchison River Pkwy all the way to the Whitestone bridge. Traffic backed up on the Whitestone tolls and remained back all the way to Brooklyn. One good reason to retire to New Hampshire.

The Massey Mine explosion

Massey Energy Company's big branch mine in West Virginia suffered a massive explosion that killed more than 20 miners and destroyed the entire mine. This was about a year ago. Massive finger pointing ensued. Miners, the union, and the mine regulators blamed the company, the company claimed it was an unforeseen act of God.
Yesterday a blue ribbon panel appointed by the state governor issued a report. NHPR offered an unsatisfactory summary, a few sound bites, and no meat. We want to know what specific act[s] of omission or commission caused the disaster, and the NHPR summary said nothing substantive. I did a bit of web searching and was unable to find much better.
There ought to be regulations about gas alarms and mine ventilation. Was Massey in compliance with those regulations? Are the existing regulations stiff enough? Inquiring minds want to know.
Statements like "The company put production ahead of safety" tell us nothing, they are just partisan sound bites.

"Dialogue"

Obama was giving his daily speech, this time at the State Department. He explained that the entire secret of fixing the Bahrain problem was "dialogue". The audience of cookie pushers gave him a big hand for that one.
Too bad so many people believe in "dialogue". Talking only works when the two sides have something in common that they wish to preserve. When the sides hate each other's guts, and have like or nothing in common, remember old Otto von Bismarck.
"Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood."