Newsies love conventions

How else can you explain all the coverage of the DNC in North Carolina before the convention even starts?  They are inside the convention hall, giving us video of empty seats, stage hands putting up giant TV screens, but no politicians.  The thing hasn't started yet, but the newsies are so eager to do convention coverage that they are interviewing empty chairs.
   Surely, something more interesting is happening somewhere in the world.

Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS)

As opposed to a development program for a new weapons system.  Development programs take forever, cost like crazy, and deliver late.  Pentagon cost savers are claiming that COTS procurement will save money.
   So the Navy, needing a replacement for the P3 Orion antisubmarine planes  (The Orions have been flying since the 1960's), purchased Boeing 737s.  Not a bad idea, the 737 has been flying for years and years.  If you flew on a single aisle airliner, it was probably a 737.  Southwest loves the 737 and flies nothing else. Good well proven plane.  Just take out the seats and put in the antisubmarice electronics.  Hang some torpedoes under the wings.  Piece of cake.
  But then the Navy has flown a few test flights.  Just a few.  3000 hours worth of test flying.  That's 125 DAYS , 24 hour days, in the air.  At $10,000 an hour. 
  When Boeing builds a commercial 737, they give it one, just one test flight, and turn it over to the customer.  Who proceeds to fly passengers in it. 
   The Navy, buying the same plane,  does 3000 hours of test flying.   Time for a little sequestration here.
 

Zombie Attack ads

Not quite sure what has stimulated them, but we have them, all over TV.  There is that one where the hand grenade drops into the roll basket and the who ever he is flees the explosion and winds up chased by Zombies.  That one was for Time Warner Cable. 
  Then we have the Jackie Cilley ad (Jackie is running for governor in the democratic primary).  Evil Zombies push in thru her window.  The Zombies represent "The Pledge" which Jackie is refusing to take.  The ad was good enough to get mentioned this morning on WMUR's "Closeup" pundit show.

Do Conventions still matter?

Well, not like they did back in the New Stone Age.  Back before primary elections, the conventions actually chose the party candidates.  That doesn't happen anymore, the primaries do that now.  But we still do conventions.  Pollster Scott Rasmussen thinks conventions are passe. 
  I differ.  The conventions are now pep rally and TV event.  But lotta people watch them.  I watched the RNC, two nights out of three.  Mostly to see with my own eyes how well (or poorly) various speakers do. 
   I am not alone.  I went to an Ovide Lamontagne event on Friday. Everybody attending had watched the RNC.  Granted the people there were all Republicans and all politically active, but still, the Romney people had them watching, and attitudes had been effected.  Not too shabby for a media event. 

Clint Eastwood is getting old.

Watched Clint at the Republican National Convention last night.  He is looking old (he is 82) and his voice was getting shaky.  His speech was good, and the audience ate it up.  Me too.  I have been enjoying Clint's movies since A Fistful of Dollars came out, nearly 50 years ago.  It's good fun to watch Dirty Harry Calahan dissing democrats.
   The sad part, is that I now fear for Clint's health.  He may not be with us for much longer.  He will be missed.

JSOW, Smart Pigs

Actually JSOW is "Joint Standoff Weapon".  It's getting smarter.  Aviation Week has a picture of the thing plunging into a container laden container ship.  Lots of text about net work centric weapons and the coolness thereof.  Seems like this JSOW was launched off an F/A 18 aimed at one target ship from 50 miles away.  A second F/A 18 took over control of the glide bomb in flight and retargeted it onto the containership. 
   Do we really want this?  I like missiles that hit the target they are aimed at.  If we can retarget the thing in flight, so can the enemy.  If  you have two targets, bring two missiles and get 'em both.
   Looks like yet another program that could be sequestered without hurting anything (except the contractor, Raytheon in this case).

54.5 Miles per Gallon. Oh Really

Obama just announced the final mpg rule.  Sometime in the future (after 2016) new cars will have to obtain 54.5 miles per gallon fuel economy.
  Does anything think this is real?  Motor cycles might get to 55 mpg, but no kind of car anyone would like to drive will ever get that sort of fuel mileage.  And attempts to get there are expensive.  Like hybrids.  A hybrid costs $10,000 more than the same car with just a plain old gasoline engine.  And hybrids don't get 54.5 mpg either. 
  I see two possibilities here.  Either they soften up the rules to permit continued manufacture of usable cars, OR they load the cars up with so much expensive stuff that people cannot afford them.  In which case, the car business becomes the used car business.  Sorta like Castro's Cuba where they keep a fleet of 1950's Detroit iron running. 
   Technological progress isn't gonna give us a breakthru on the gas mileage front.  The miles per gallon is set by laws of thermodynamics which won't change just cause we want them to.  We know these laws, and there is no way around them.