Lithium Ion batteries setting 787's on fire

Lithium ion, stores lots of juice, very high voltage, great batteries.  Boeing used them on the 787 to save weight and space.  Looks like Boeing didn't see that U-Tube video of a laptop bursting into flame right on a conference room table.  Now they have customer's grounding their brand new 787's 'cause the lithium ion batteries are bursting into flame.  Aircrew and passengers take a dim view of in flight fires.

Cannon Mt Ski Weather

We got maybe two inches of nice powder today.  Unfortunately the thaw earlier this week did a lot of damage to the snow cover. They been making snow, but the thaw hurt. 

NPR pushes gun control

They (FM 91.9) have been on it all day.  Just one advocate for more gun control after another.  All day long.  Impartial they are.  Public funded they are. 

Russians discover socks.

According to the Wall St. Journal, the Russian army will issue socks to the troops for the first time.  Peter the Great's army began to issue portyanki,  squares of cloth, to the soldiers, who wrapped their feet in them before pulling on their boots.  Portyanki remained standard Russian Army issue thru the Napoleonic wars, the Crimean War, and the World Wars.
   Only now, as the number of city bred recruits, used to socks, rises and the number of country boys declines,  complaints about the lack of socks has caused the army to start up a sock issue.
    You gotta wonder about an outfit that only discovered socks in the 21st century.

How about a Republican Immigration Bill?

TV news reports that Obama wants to pass a "comprehensive" immigration bill.  Comprehensive means a huge stack of paper with all sorts of pork and special favors buried inside.  Britt Hume says the White House figures it's a win-win situation for them.  If  it passes the Hispanics will love them.  If it doesn't pass they can blame it on the Republicans. 
   Republicans ought to offer one or more short and sweet immigration bills of the sort no one can dislike.  For instance, anyone who served in the armed forces should receive US citizenship.  This ought to pass no sweat.  Or, anyone who was brought into the country as a child should be eligible for citizenship.  Who can be against children? 
   You get as much political credit for passing something small and limited as you do for passing something vast and "comprehensive".

Ya just can't win

On NPR this morning a piece telling that coffee drinking is up among college students.  Coffee houses are packed in the evenings.
  But then, they switch to the dark side, the evils of coffee.  It ruins your sleep, turning good virtuous hivalue REM sleep into unhealthy Starbucks sleep.  Coffee drinking leads to sleep deprivation, a serious problem among college students.  NPR raved along on this line for several minutes. 
  Damn.  We have college students drinking something fairly innocuous, and NPR is nagging about it.  Coffee won't get you into the kind of trouble that beer or pot can. 
Then for an encore, NPR switches to a piece about how the University of Vermont is saving the planet by banning bottled water. 

How to balance the NH budget

We do it the old fashioned way, we estimate more revenue than we are gonna collect.  That way we can spend more.  All it takes is estimates, not real money, just estimated money. 
   The state Democrats are pushing to put estimated revenues from gambling into the budget.  Doesn't matter that we haven't passed the necessary laws to open the casino's. It doesn't matter that last time they tried, the law failed to pass the House and the Senate.  It doesn't matter that the estimated revenue from gambling is about ten times what is likely to happen.  Only thing that is different this time is new governor Maggie Hassan says she will sign an expanded gambling bill.  Previous governor Lynch had promised to veto it. 
   But the Democrats want to include hypothetical revenue from as yet illegal gambling operations in this year's revenue estimate. 
   Can you say deficit spending disorder?