"The Iranians aren't building the bomb". Yeah, Right. They are busy enriching uranium, and that is the hard part of building a nuke. It may be that they haven't fabricated a bomb yet, but they will, as soon as the enrichment program furnishes enough weapons grade (90% U-235) uranium.
The ever clueful NYT befuddles the issue here.
It's probably true that the Iranians haven't fabricated the sub critical masses for a gun-type fission bomb yet, but so what? The only reason to enrich uranium is to build a bomb. So long as they are enriching, they are building a bomb in my book. Just 'cause they haven't performed the very last step in the process doesn't mean they are not building a bomb.
The NYT offers some silly talk, "The Iranians want the capability but not a stockpile." That's how Saddam Hussein got the Americans to do a regime change on his ass. Thanks to CIA, we really thought Hussein had, or was close to having, nukes. And we took steps. Unless the Iranian mullahs are dumb as rocks, they will understand that the same thing might happen to them. Until you actually have a nuke, you are vulnerable to invasion. The mullahs watched the US Army chew up Saddam Hussein in a few weeks. They know we could do the same thing to them.
Only when the Iranians can threaten to nuke our invasion force, and/or nuke Israel, can they feel safe from an American imposed regime change. They don't dare sit around on a stockpile of weapons grade fissionables without making a fission bomb.
Monday, February 27, 2012
What makes Manufacturing so special?
We have Rick Santorum out there plumping for extra special good tax breaks for "manufacturing". We already have a 9% tax break in the the federal corporate tax for "manufacturing" companies. Under that law, oil drilling counts as manufacturing. Obama was on the warpath about that a few months ago, calling it an unwarranted tax break for the oil industry.
There are a raft of crucial-to-the-economy businesses which are not manufacturing. To name a few, airlines, railroads, farms, mines, telecommunications, broadcasting,construction, electric power, and shipping.
Why should manufacturing get a tax break that these industries don't? Better is to treat all businesses alike.
Remember that free market is better at allocating money than central planners. Moscow central planning used to allocate the Soviet Union's economic resources, so much to heavy industry, so much to collective farms, so much to this and so much to that. How well did that work out for the Russians?
Free market means that if there isn't enough of something, the price rises. When the price rises people make more of it. When there is too much of something, the price falls, and people produce less of it. This system works. It's produced the largest and most advanced economy in the world, with the highest standard of living in the world.
Let's not mess it up.
Corporate taxes should be a level playing field, not special tax breaks for those with the best lobbyists.
There are a raft of crucial-to-the-economy businesses which are not manufacturing. To name a few, airlines, railroads, farms, mines, telecommunications, broadcasting,construction, electric power, and shipping.
Why should manufacturing get a tax break that these industries don't? Better is to treat all businesses alike.
Remember that free market is better at allocating money than central planners. Moscow central planning used to allocate the Soviet Union's economic resources, so much to heavy industry, so much to collective farms, so much to this and so much to that. How well did that work out for the Russians?
Free market means that if there isn't enough of something, the price rises. When the price rises people make more of it. When there is too much of something, the price falls, and people produce less of it. This system works. It's produced the largest and most advanced economy in the world, with the highest standard of living in the world.
Let's not mess it up.
Corporate taxes should be a level playing field, not special tax breaks for those with the best lobbyists.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
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.
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.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, February 24, 2012
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?
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?
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