The mystique of winter driving

Just thought I'd share some simple things about getting around in New England winters. First of all, always back into your parking spot. Why? Well, if it snows over night, and/or you get plowed in, you have a better chance of ramming your car out if you are going forwards. Plus, if your car should fail to start on a cold morning, it's a lot easier to jump start it, if the hood is facing the curb, rather than the trunk.
Have a snow shovel in the trunk. Also jumper cables. One dark morning, I get off the red eye and find the car, which was parked on the roof of the Logan garage, was completely buried in snow drifts. With the snow shovel it was 10 minutes of brisk exercise, and I was in the car on the way home. Without that shovel, no telling how long it would have taken to get the Logan workers to dig me out.
If you have a garage, take the trouble to put the car into the garage. Just an unheated garage will be 20 degrees warmer than outside. When it's 20 below, the garage will be at zero, and your chances of the car starting are a whole bunch better at zero than at 20 below.
Leave plenty of space between you and the car ahead of you. That clown ahead of you can spin out and block both lanes at anytime. A little extra distance improves your chances of getting stopped before you smash into him.
Keep your speed up climbing a hill. The momentum will carry the car over an icy patch. Without the momentum, the icy patch wins, you are stuck, and so are all the cars behind you.
After a snowfall, take the kitchen broom out and sweep the snow off the car. The car will warm up in the sun, if the sun can play on the bare metal. The snow is a mirror, reflecting all the sunlight and keeping the car stone cold. Again, just a 10 or 20 degree warming vastly improves the chances of the car starting from cold. Additional bennie, you won't have to chip ice off the windshield.
In real cold weather, you only have one start's worth of juice in the battery. Don't waste it by starting the car any more than you need to. Try to schedule engine start from the warmest part of the day, say 2:30 in the afternoon, that improves the odds of the car starting. Once you get her running, keep her running til the battery is fully charged again. Say 45 minutes of running. Another consideration, when the engine is stone cold, combustion gases blow by the rings into a stone cold crankcase. Where they condense and mix into your engine oil. The condensate from combustion is not nice stuff, water, acids, ugly corrosives, this stuff does your engine no good at all. You want to run the engine until the temp gauge reads good and hot, the heat will evaporate the condensates and keep your oil clean.
Happy motoring, and come up skiing. We need the business.

John Carter, the movie

It's coming next month. After being "in production" for nearly ten years this time, and after a failed attempt to make the movie back in the 1930's.
It's based upon Edgar Rice Burroughs very first novel, published just before WWI. Burroughs had not even invented Tarzan yet, so this is the Ur-Burroughs adventure story. I read it as a child, and it goes even farther back. I read it in hardback Grosset and Dunlap volumes that had belonged to my father.
John Carter is an American civil war veteran prospecting for gold in the Arizona desert. By some not well explained mystical means he is transported from the Wild West to Mars, a living Mars with breathable air, plant life, animal life, green Martians (10 feet tall, six limbs, nasty dispositions), and red Martians (just like Earthmen except for red pigmented skin). John Carter meets and falls in love with Dejah Thoris, a stunningly beautiful red Martian princess. The rest of the book is filled with rip roaring adventures and in the end, John Carter's strong right arm and keen Martian long sword win the day and he and Dejah Thoris marry and live happily ever after.
As a child I thought the Mars stories were even cooler than the Tarzan stories. Everyone went around well armed (longsword, short sword, radium revolver) at all times. There were exotic riding animals, radium powered flyers, deserts covered with red ocher moss, and vast cities, some living and some dead. Burroughs books served as inspiration for three generations of science fiction novels and movies. Star War's Princess Leia owes a lot to Dejah Thoris.
Anyhow I will go and see the movie when it comes out next month. I hope they do it right.

After much sound & fury, 3.5 inches of snow

We had a Winter Storm Watch, hourly, in fact half hourly dire predictions of snow on the radio. It did start falling, about 24 hours later than predicted, and we got a light snowfall.

They are forecasting snow.

Six inches forecast for Northern NH. It hasn't started yet. Let's see how much we really get.

Corporate tax rate set by who cooks the books

Corporate taxes are levied upon corporate profits, not revenue. Profit is the money "left over" after expenses have been paid out of revenue. There are easily understandable expenses like payroll, rent, heat, light, advertising and so on.
Then we have depreciation, a biggy. And adjustable to suit the guy doing the books. What is depreciation? Suppose a company owns an expensive machine, say a blast furnace or a locomotive, or a CNC machine. These things have a definite service life, they wear out with use. Wise companies prepare for the day when an expensive replacement must be paid for, by setting aside some money each year so that there will be enough money to pay for the replacement. Otherwise the company will go out of business when the key machine wears out.
This set aside money, called depreciation, reduces profit. Set aside a million dollars, and reported profit goes down by a million dollars. So how much to set aside? Depends upon who I show the books to. When showing the books on Wall Street, I want to convince investors that my company is making lots of money, so I depreciate as little as I dare. When showing the books to the taxman, I want to show little profit to reduce my taxes.
Incidently, we would be better off if taxes were levied upon the books shown to Wall Street. Right now the IRS permits depreciation that the SEC does not. The books would be more honest if the desire to show a high profit on the street was balanced by the desire to show poverty to the taxman.
Obama released his corporate tax reform plan the other day. He is going to reduce the rate, (Hurrah) AND, in dozens of pages of obfustication, he is going to change the rules for depreciation. I read thru some of it. You gotta be a better lawyer and accountant than I am (I'm an engineer) to figure out if corporate taxes are going up or going down.
The economy would grow more, if taxes were predictable, and understandable. Obama's changes make taxes less predictable and un computable. After your expert and expensive tax accountant does the company's taxes, some IRS bureaucrat will demand more money. And he will point to some obscure paragraph in the 10,000 page tax code to support his claims. And the company will pay up because going to court is too expensive and too risky to be worth it.
Visualize a would be entrepreneur brainstorming his new idea. "And how much will our taxes be?" some one asks. "Who knows?" is the correct answer. "Is this business plan going to make any money?" someone asks. "Who knows." is the reply.
Question: is that startup company going to launch?

Under the smoking Koran

The riots in Afghanistan are not about a burned Koran. Those riots tell us that the Afghans hate our guts. Which makes any kind of nation building over there pretty much impossible. It's hard to win their hearts and minds when they really don't like us at all.
The only reason to keep the Army over there any longer is to prevent Al Quada from taking the place over.

Obama does NOT believe in Drill, Baby, Drill

I heard Obama on NPR just now. He was saying that drilling for more oil doesn't work. Instead we need to "use alternate energy". Yeah Right.
Tell me about running my oil burner on sunlight. Or wind.
Tell me about putting alternate energy into my car.
Tell me why we won't build Keystone XL.