Of snow that is. After a build up worthy of the blizzard of '78, it did actually snow, a little. Between this couple of inches and last week's 3.5 inches, that's more snow than we have had since October last year.
Skiing should be great.
New England skiing is best in March. (Old ski country marketing slogan).
Friday, March 2, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
We must be doing something right.
This NH Journal article got picked up and posted on Glenn Reynold's Instapundit blog. I surely do remember all the NH democrats wailing about heartless budget cuts, widows and orphans pitched out in the snow, and similar malarkey. And now we have a balanced budget, spending down 11% from its; democratic peak, and the wailing has died down. I haven't seen a widow or an orphan standing on the curb yet.
The Monkee's
I remember them. Used to watch them on Saturday morning TV back in the day. The airwaves are full of the obit for Davy Jones, an old Monkee. It brings back memories of a really great line from the show.
They are doing a Wild West skit. A Monkee is getting ready for the classic gun fight, you know, walk down the center of a dirt main street, draw the big .45 Colt, and blow the bad guy away. The Monkees are getting their man ready.
"Give me my lucky holster." says the designated shooter Monkee.
"Which one is that?" asks the number two Monkee.
"The one with the gun in it." replies the designated shooter.
They are doing a Wild West skit. A Monkee is getting ready for the classic gun fight, you know, walk down the center of a dirt main street, draw the big .45 Colt, and blow the bad guy away. The Monkees are getting their man ready.
"Give me my lucky holster." says the designated shooter Monkee.
"Which one is that?" asks the number two Monkee.
"The one with the gun in it." replies the designated shooter.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Snow is forecast
They can't just forecast snow any more, they have to do this "Winter Storm Watch" thing. They are predicting 4-10 inches in the White Mt's which is where I am. We shall see if we get so much as a single flake.
Manhatten
The Wall St Journal Weekend edition had one of those lifestyle articles on nifty things to drink. This time it was the Manhatten. Sounded tasty, and easy to mix, and I decided to bring some class to my 5 o'clock happy hour routine. So I picked up a bottle of sweet red vermouth, and a bottle of Angostura bitters. When I started to mix the first one, I found I was out of Maraschino cherries. Damn, back to plain whiskey & soda. And back to Mac's Market next day for cherries.
With all ingredients on hand, it mixes easily. Two shots bourbon, a shot of sweet red vermouth, 6 dashes of bitters, and a cherry. Pour all the stuff into a short glass and add all the ice that will fit. It's very smooth. Resist the temptation to mix a second one, you will never make it to dinner after two of these babies.
Remember that American cocktails were invented during Prohibition to cover up the truly awful tasting booze served in those days. The Manhatten is effective at that. Slides down the throat with nary a tickle.
With all ingredients on hand, it mixes easily. Two shots bourbon, a shot of sweet red vermouth, 6 dashes of bitters, and a cherry. Pour all the stuff into a short glass and add all the ice that will fit. It's very smooth. Resist the temptation to mix a second one, you will never make it to dinner after two of these babies.
Remember that American cocktails were invented during Prohibition to cover up the truly awful tasting booze served in those days. The Manhatten is effective at that. Slides down the throat with nary a tickle.
They are tracking you
Couple of days ago Instapundit posted about a sale on watches at Amazon. Being in a window shopping mood, I followed the link and looked at a huge sport watch chronometer. It looked so cool I did some web surfing for it and looked at a few other watch sites.
Well the trackers picked up on that, and for days and days moving flashing blinking ads for sport watches from overstock.com popped up all over my Firefox screens. I finally got tired of them and told Firefox to zap all my cookies.
That worked, I'm back to less offensive static ads, no moving blinking or flashing.
Well the trackers picked up on that, and for days and days moving flashing blinking ads for sport watches from overstock.com popped up all over my Firefox screens. I finally got tired of them and told Firefox to zap all my cookies.
That worked, I'm back to less offensive static ads, no moving blinking or flashing.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Un extravagant bomber
USAF is wishing for a new bomber. They built a humungous fleet of B-52's back in the 50's. About 200 of them are still flying, 60 years later. According to Popular Mechanics, the Air Force plans yet more upgrades to keep 'em flying until 2040. The B-52 will be the first aircraft of any type to remain in service for 90 years. Clearly a successful design. It's big, has a long range, and a long loiter time and a big payload. It's dead meat against enemy fighters, but we have a lot of enemies that don't have fighters.
Subsequent bomber designs haven't been as successful. There was the supersonic B-58. It was quick, but short ranged, and a small payload. They have all been scrapped. There was the B-70, of which only a couple of prototypes were built. I don't remember the details, but it failed to get funded. Then there was the supersonic B-1. B-1 had better range and payload than the B-58, but it still could not match the B-52, and it was expensive and not many were built. And finally, the invisible-to-radar B-2. If the radar can't see you, the fighters can't find you. B-2 has reasonable range and payload, but cost $2 billion apiece. We only built 20 of them.
So what do we do for an encore? USAF chief of staff Norton Schwartz wants a plane for intelligence gathering, electronic warfare, linking to offboard sensors. No mention of delivering bombs and missiles on the target. Retired Gen. John Corley wants a lot of them. "How creditable is a force if you only have a handful of assets? " Good point.
Rebecca Grant, a Washington think tank thinker, must read a lot of science fiction, she wants laser weapons. She also wants supersonic. Supersonic sucks fuel like a sewer pipe, shortening range to the point of unusability. Plus, a big bomber is never going to outrun the fighters.
No discussion of what missions a new bomber needs to fly. The chances of carrying nukes into anywhere is low. We don't nuke people anymore. The B-52's are useful for carpet bombing places like Khe Sangh and backing up ground troops with smart bombs laid on key spots, like bridges. The B-2's were responsive enough to pour an avalanche of iron bombs into a Baghdad restaurant just a few minutes after a spy reported that the Saddam Hussein family was having dinner there. What should a new bomber do?
I don't think USAF will get the funding until we have a good answer to that question.
Subsequent bomber designs haven't been as successful. There was the supersonic B-58. It was quick, but short ranged, and a small payload. They have all been scrapped. There was the B-70, of which only a couple of prototypes were built. I don't remember the details, but it failed to get funded. Then there was the supersonic B-1. B-1 had better range and payload than the B-58, but it still could not match the B-52, and it was expensive and not many were built. And finally, the invisible-to-radar B-2. If the radar can't see you, the fighters can't find you. B-2 has reasonable range and payload, but cost $2 billion apiece. We only built 20 of them.
So what do we do for an encore? USAF chief of staff Norton Schwartz wants a plane for intelligence gathering, electronic warfare, linking to offboard sensors. No mention of delivering bombs and missiles on the target. Retired Gen. John Corley wants a lot of them. "How creditable is a force if you only have a handful of assets? " Good point.
Rebecca Grant, a Washington think tank thinker, must read a lot of science fiction, she wants laser weapons. She also wants supersonic. Supersonic sucks fuel like a sewer pipe, shortening range to the point of unusability. Plus, a big bomber is never going to outrun the fighters.
No discussion of what missions a new bomber needs to fly. The chances of carrying nukes into anywhere is low. We don't nuke people anymore. The B-52's are useful for carpet bombing places like Khe Sangh and backing up ground troops with smart bombs laid on key spots, like bridges. The B-2's were responsive enough to pour an avalanche of iron bombs into a Baghdad restaurant just a few minutes after a spy reported that the Saddam Hussein family was having dinner there. What should a new bomber do?
I don't think USAF will get the funding until we have a good answer to that question.
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