They haven't figured out what the mission is, or what the thing will look like, or what they are gonna call it, but they have decided on the price. They have decided that it will be sub sonic (good call). Well at least it's less than the $2 billion for the B-2. This price declaration means that it will cost at least $550 million. Once you say how much you are willing to pay, count on the bids coming in right at that number.
The Aviation Week article is full of skeptical observations about USAF's terrible track record on contract costs, starting with the F-35 which was estimated at $35million back when the program started 20 years ago, and is $80 million now. And the tanker disaster, and the lightweight fighter fiasco. Certainly my old service has done more major bungles than successes over the last 20 years.
And there was a lot of wailing from subcontractors about how the cost target would be achieved by leaving off all their gold plated "systems". Unfair they say, leaving all this stuff off the bomber will mean other aircraft have to carry out those missions. Me, I don't have a problem with that. If the "low cost" bomber can destroy its targets, and live to tell the tale, it's done good. It doesn't need to do reconnaissance mapping, or serve as an airborne Internet relay station, or as VIP transport, or do electronic eavesdropping. It just needs to penetrate enemy defenses and hit the target. For extra credit it can get its crew back to base alive.
It's sort of too bad that the greatest penetration aid of all is unusable in the post cold war environment. The nuclear tipped Short Range Attack Missile (SRAM) could reach out 100 miles and vaporize those pesky fighter bases, radars and SAM sites. The B-52's carried lots of them in rotary launchers. Unfortunately we don't use nukes in the 21st century, and plain old TNT doesn't pack enough punch to do much of a job.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
A Strong Majority
That's what Obama said on TV. He was saying that the Supremes should not overturn Obamacare "because it passed the Congress with a strong majority".
Yeah Right. Every one knows that Obamacare just squeaked by with a bare handful of votes. When Obama calls that a "strong majority" I, and a lot of other people, think he is telling a falsehood. Very uncool to have a president that tells falsehoods.
Plus, unconstitutional is unconstitutional, doesn't matter how many Congresscritters liked it. The Supremes have overturned plenty of laws since Marbury vs Madison, all of which passed Congress with a much greater majority than Obamacare had.
Which ever way the Supremes go, I hope they can do better than 5 to 4. When the nine top lawyers in the country cannot agree on what the law really is, and the four losers write opinions calling the five winners idiots, it doesn't breed respect for the law or for the Supremes among the citizenry. And that's a bad thing.
Yeah Right. Every one knows that Obamacare just squeaked by with a bare handful of votes. When Obama calls that a "strong majority" I, and a lot of other people, think he is telling a falsehood. Very uncool to have a president that tells falsehoods.
Plus, unconstitutional is unconstitutional, doesn't matter how many Congresscritters liked it. The Supremes have overturned plenty of laws since Marbury vs Madison, all of which passed Congress with a much greater majority than Obamacare had.
Which ever way the Supremes go, I hope they can do better than 5 to 4. When the nine top lawyers in the country cannot agree on what the law really is, and the four losers write opinions calling the five winners idiots, it doesn't breed respect for the law or for the Supremes among the citizenry. And that's a bad thing.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Every age rewrites history to its own liking
I'm reading "The Isles, a History" by Norman Davis. He is something of a fruitcake, and spends a lot of words discussing how the mean old English oppressed the noble "Celtic" races, Welsh, Scots, and Irish, going right back to the beginnings of history. But he has some modern myths to propagate as well as serving as a scourge of the Sassenach.
Davis is discussing the Vikings and their impact on England. Which was considerable, at its high point the "Danelaw" covered half the country. There is the interesting question of why the Viking appeared so suddenly out of nowhere. They first struck the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793. Prior to 793 nobody in England had heard of them. Davis says,
"The central puzzle... is to know why, after an age of passive isolation...The answer obviously has something to do with a serious ecological imbalance....Historians refer to changes in climate..."
How PC of Davis, it's all due to global warming, Viking cook fires added to the CO2 level in the atmosphere. Yeah, Right.
More likely, the Viking shipwrights didn't learn how to build a ship seaworthy enough to cross the North Sea until 793. Heh, there is a first time for everything. There is a lot of art in building a sailing vessel that can reach across the wind and beat up into the wind. You need enough keel to keep the ship from sliding sideways under the press of sail. You need a sail that can be trimmed in to fore and aft, and you need the mast placed just right. Too far forward and the force of the wind pushes the ship's bow down wind overpowering the rudder. The far aft, and the opposite happens. The Vikings built the hull from long planks (strakes) and they overlapped the planks and riveted them together. This sophisticated construction ( we call it monocoque today) gave an immensely strong and light hull, but required a lot of hand made iron rivets and a set of really big clamps to force the planks tightly together so they could be riveted.
We have a few ship finds from before the Viking age, (Sutton Hoo for instance) and it is clear that these vessels were pure rowboats, no keel, no mast or mast step. They might have been good enough to cross the English Channel in nice summer weather, but crossing the North Sea is much harder.
As late as 1066, Duke William's invasion fleet had to wait months for a south wind to carry them to England. Translation, the Duke's hastily built ships (we can see them abuilding in the Bayeux Tapistry) were only fit to run before the wind. Tubs like that would never hack it in a North Sea storm.
Davis is discussing the Vikings and their impact on England. Which was considerable, at its high point the "Danelaw" covered half the country. There is the interesting question of why the Viking appeared so suddenly out of nowhere. They first struck the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793. Prior to 793 nobody in England had heard of them. Davis says,
"The central puzzle... is to know why, after an age of passive isolation...The answer obviously has something to do with a serious ecological imbalance....Historians refer to changes in climate..."
How PC of Davis, it's all due to global warming, Viking cook fires added to the CO2 level in the atmosphere. Yeah, Right.
More likely, the Viking shipwrights didn't learn how to build a ship seaworthy enough to cross the North Sea until 793. Heh, there is a first time for everything. There is a lot of art in building a sailing vessel that can reach across the wind and beat up into the wind. You need enough keel to keep the ship from sliding sideways under the press of sail. You need a sail that can be trimmed in to fore and aft, and you need the mast placed just right. Too far forward and the force of the wind pushes the ship's bow down wind overpowering the rudder. The far aft, and the opposite happens. The Vikings built the hull from long planks (strakes) and they overlapped the planks and riveted them together. This sophisticated construction ( we call it monocoque today) gave an immensely strong and light hull, but required a lot of hand made iron rivets and a set of really big clamps to force the planks tightly together so they could be riveted.
We have a few ship finds from before the Viking age, (Sutton Hoo for instance) and it is clear that these vessels were pure rowboats, no keel, no mast or mast step. They might have been good enough to cross the English Channel in nice summer weather, but crossing the North Sea is much harder.
As late as 1066, Duke William's invasion fleet had to wait months for a south wind to carry them to England. Translation, the Duke's hastily built ships (we can see them abuilding in the Bayeux Tapistry) were only fit to run before the wind. Tubs like that would never hack it in a North Sea storm.
We got two inches. Most since October's 8 inches
Heavy, very heavy. It looked so wintery last night that I lit the fireplace. And it's April. We ain't supposed to get snow in April.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Let's hear it for CD burners
A videographer backed up all his stuff on the net, using MegaUpload as his backer upper site. A day or two before the Feds shut down MegaUpload at the behest of MPAA for streaming copyrighted movies, this guy had his hard disk crash, wiping out all his videos. He is suing to get his backups back off MegaUpload and onto his new hard drive so he can use them. For this "service" he paid $107.
He would have done better to back up to CD's on his own computer. For real security, he should have stashed the backup CD's "off site", say at his folks place, just in case he suffered a house fire.
He would have done better to back up to CD's on his own computer. For real security, he should have stashed the backup CD's "off site", say at his folks place, just in case he suffered a house fire.
It's Snowing for April Fools Day
No fooling. It was 50 degrees and sunny this morning. Now it's snowing hard and down into the 30's.
Suppose the Supremes kill Obamacare?
Suppose that intelligence breaks out over the Supremes and they rule Obamacare totally unconstitutional and null and void? What happens next?
There will be a great hue and cry for Congress to "do something". OK, so what should Congress do?
We ought to address the real health care crisis, wild and crazy spending that's bankrupting the country. The US spends 19% of GNP on healthcare, which is TWICE what any other country in the world spends. For this torrent of money, the country does not get better health than the rest of the world. Real numbers, like life expectancy and infant mortality don't show any benefits from all the money poured down the drain. A good dozen countries have better numbers than the US and spend way way less. If we could bring the price down out of the stratosphere, it would be easier to pay our doctor bills. Let's try the following
1. Interstate competition in health insurance. We ought to allow any licensed insurance company based in any state to sell policies in every other state. Up here we only have TWO insurance companies to choose from, and both of them are expensive. If we had more choices we would get better prices. The insurance companies hate this idea, but we ought to do it anyhow. The commerce clause was intended to give Congress the power to do exactly this sort of thing.
2. Allow and encourage purchase of drugs from any first world country, say Canada. Also England, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Holland. US made drugs are sold overseas for a fraction of the price that US citizens have to pay in this country. If we could legally import any foreign drugs it would cut the price of pills a lot. The drug companies hate this, but we ought to do it.
3. Reform the FDA's approval process. Right now the FDA bureaucrats can jerk drug and device makers around, demand ever more expensive clinical trials, and make the cost of getting a drug or device approved for use prohibitive. The FDA should only test for safety, NOT effectiveness. Doctors and insurance companies will weed out ineffective things far faster than FDA bureaucrats. No ethical doctor will proscribe things that don't work, and no insurance company will pay for such treatment.
4. Protect doctors from the lawyers. No lawyer should be able to sue a doctor who proscribed FDA approved medicine, EVEN IF the FDA later revokes that approval (Vioxx). Lawyers should not be allowed to advertise for plaintiffs on TV (or anywhere else) . Malpractice is a creation of state law, so the states need to do the heavy lifting here. Lawyers hate this idea, and most politicians are lawyers.
There will be a great hue and cry for Congress to "do something". OK, so what should Congress do?
We ought to address the real health care crisis, wild and crazy spending that's bankrupting the country. The US spends 19% of GNP on healthcare, which is TWICE what any other country in the world spends. For this torrent of money, the country does not get better health than the rest of the world. Real numbers, like life expectancy and infant mortality don't show any benefits from all the money poured down the drain. A good dozen countries have better numbers than the US and spend way way less. If we could bring the price down out of the stratosphere, it would be easier to pay our doctor bills. Let's try the following
1. Interstate competition in health insurance. We ought to allow any licensed insurance company based in any state to sell policies in every other state. Up here we only have TWO insurance companies to choose from, and both of them are expensive. If we had more choices we would get better prices. The insurance companies hate this idea, but we ought to do it anyhow. The commerce clause was intended to give Congress the power to do exactly this sort of thing.
2. Allow and encourage purchase of drugs from any first world country, say Canada. Also England, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Holland. US made drugs are sold overseas for a fraction of the price that US citizens have to pay in this country. If we could legally import any foreign drugs it would cut the price of pills a lot. The drug companies hate this, but we ought to do it.
3. Reform the FDA's approval process. Right now the FDA bureaucrats can jerk drug and device makers around, demand ever more expensive clinical trials, and make the cost of getting a drug or device approved for use prohibitive. The FDA should only test for safety, NOT effectiveness. Doctors and insurance companies will weed out ineffective things far faster than FDA bureaucrats. No ethical doctor will proscribe things that don't work, and no insurance company will pay for such treatment.
4. Protect doctors from the lawyers. No lawyer should be able to sue a doctor who proscribed FDA approved medicine, EVEN IF the FDA later revokes that approval (Vioxx). Lawyers should not be allowed to advertise for plaintiffs on TV (or anywhere else) . Malpractice is a creation of state law, so the states need to do the heavy lifting here. Lawyers hate this idea, and most politicians are lawyers.
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