Silence gives assent

If you don't reply to an attack, but remain silent, the voters begin to think it's true.  Obama is attacking Romney's record at Bain capital, accusing him of being an asset stripping corporate raider.  Romney ain't replying.  Romney ought to be saying "We put money into these winning companies, and today they employ umpteen zillion people".  I haven't heard him say that yet. 
  Us voters just watch TV.  If Obama's accusations are false, we expect Romney to tell us so.  If he remains silent, when he ought to defend himself, we begin to think  there might be something in the accusations.
  Dukakis demonstrated this to perfection many years ago.  The Bush campaign ran a series of TV attack ads accusing Dukakis of endangering public safety by releasing dangerous murderer and sex offender ,Willie Horton, on parole.  Dukakis never replied and the mud stuck to him. 

Amtrak: $151 billion for NE Corridor

Hmm . $151 billion to create a High Speed Rail line running Boston to Washington.  Nice, but $151 billion is a lot of money.  Actually, when my family travels Boston to New York, they take the Fung Wah bus, $15 one way, four hours.  Amtrak's Acela is closer to $100, and takes nearly as long.  I've taken Acela, it's cool, but only when traveling on a company expense account.  It's too pricey for what it offers for me to ride it on my own time and my own money.  Go Fung Wah bus. 
   When we talk about the full Boston- Washington run, Southwest Airlines is only $75 one way, and flight time is only one hour. 
   And, if I need a car while in New York or DC,  I drive.  Four hours to NYC (fast as Acela) and 7 hours to DC, (again, fast as Acela). 
    I'm a long time train buff, I love train travel, but is this a wise use of $151 billion?

Bye-Bye WMUR (Channel 9)

Time Warner cable dropped WMUR, the voice of New Hampshire.  It's just another ABC channel, but it's been transmitting from Manchester since the 1950's  and always had good local (NH) news and stuff.  Apparently the blackout comes from a price squabble between Time Warner and ABC.   I'm north of Franconia Notch which means no way will an antenna bring in channel 9 , too much granite mountain between me and the transmitter.

Das Boote

Untersee Boote (U-boat) that is.  Watched it the other night.  Opened the DVD box.  Found TWO discs inside.  Labeled Disc 1 and Disc 2.  So we loaded Disc 1 and watched.  It went on and on and very little happened.  We saw how miserable conditions aboard were, wet and drippy, crowded, raging seas breaking over the conning tower, air attacks and a depth charging. They did a lot of griping.   Never got to see them launch torpedoes at anything.  They were still at sea when it became time to load Disc 2.  We decided that it was so sluggish that we didn't bother. 
  Would have been a much better movie with some rigorous editing. 

Polarized

Been doing some political phone banking.  People's minds are made up, they know who they are voting for, nobody is undecided.  And there are a LOT of ardent Democrats out there who are gonna vote Obama no matter what.  You can tell from the tone of voice.  Romney has to keep working hard, it might not go the right way, no matter how bad the economy is.

Captain Sir B. H. Liddell-Hart

This is a name I have known of for many years.  He is a British writer on military affairs, widely read, and mentioned by nearly every writer on the Second World War.  So when I saw his " History of the Second World War" at the town yard sale I picked it up. 
     Interesting reading, as much for the quirks of the author, as anything else.  In his descriptions of battles he pays good attention to the numbers of men and tanks deployed by each side.  Men are just men, but all the tanks are described as "gun-tanks".  This odd phrase suggests the existence of "no-gun-tanks" but who in their right mind would bring such a vehicle to a battle?  He might be an old artillery man, to whom only pieces with long barrels are "guns", anything with a short barrel is a "howitzer".  There were a lot of tanks armed with really stubby sawed off main guns in those days.  He might be attempting to discount a large number of very light armored vehicles that only carried machine guns.  But "gun-tank" is a Liddell-Hart phrase, I never encountered it elsewhere.  Nor does he ever explain why he uses the phrase.
   He also is a great believer in establishments.  Every unit in an army has a piece of paper (the establishment) which lists the number of men, tanks, guns, and other equipment the unit is supposed to have.   After some hard fighting few units retained their "establishment', t hey took casulties and were under strength.  It's clear that Liddell-Hart thought committing a unit to battle without it's full establishment was military malpractice.  Well, when push comes to shove, units are ordered out to fight whether they are up to strength on not. 
   Quirky he may be, but it's worth reading him just to know what he said, rather than what his detractors (which are many) had to say about him.

I'd LIKE to believe this, but is it real?

Article in "Nature Climate Change" (who ever they may be, I never heard of 'em before) claims that tree ring width measurements from present day back to Roman times show a persistent global cooling has been going on for the last two thousand years.  I'd like to believe this.
   Trouble is, tree ring width is determined by rainfall.  Trees love moisture and on wet years they lay down thicker layers of new wood. Temperature doesn't effect ring growth much. 
  The authors attempt to meet this criticism by comparing tree ring widths to measured temperatures in modern (post-thermometer-invention) times.  They claim a correlation of 0.77 which is better than random, but far short of the standards used in the real sciences.  For instance the Higgs Boson discoverers demanded a correlation of 0.999 or better before they made their claim.  So I am not sold on tree ring width as a proxy measurement of temperature. 
   The title of the article suggests that the temperature changes are a result of  changes in Earth's orbit.  It has been known for hundreds of years that earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, is it a plump elipse, close to a circle but there is a perihelion (closest to the sun point) and aphelion (farthest from the sun point).  The differences are not great, a percent or so.  Plus the earth's axial tilt (which causes seasons) drifts around some, which means some times Northern Hemisphere summer happens at perihelion, giving warmer summers.  Some times Northern summer happens at aphelion giving cooler summers.  The whole effect cycles around with a period of 25,000 years.  The cycle is called the Drayson cycle, it has been known for centuries, and numerous attempts have been made to connect Draysonianism with the coming and going of the ice ages.  None of these attempts have convinced the bulk of the scientific community to believe them.
    The title suggests another attempt at selling Draysonianism as a cause for global cooling is under way.  Trouble is, they don't have the data to make the case.  Their tree-ring/temperature data only covers 2000 years, a Drayson cycle is 25000 years. To show that we have a 25000 year global cooling cycle driven by the 25000 year Drayson cycle, you need 25000 years worth of temperature data, which they don't have.
   So , a nice article, which I want to believe, but  their case is shaky, at best.