Blowing in the the Wind.

Drove out Tenny Mountain Highway (NH Rt 25 going west from Plymouth).  The wind farmers have been active, we now have shiny new windmills all along the ridge.  This is new, so new that not all of them are turning yet.  They are eye catching.  Probably not as ugly as a power line, but I wouldn't say they improve the view.
  And they raise my electric rate.  PSNH pays outrageous prices for "renewable energy".  And they get serious tax breaks.  And since you cannot count on the wind blowing, PSNH has to build real power plants to handle their load.  Which is the major cost of electricity, the cost of the generating plant.  Fuel cost is small compared to paying off the generators. 

Lying on TV

NY senator Chuckie the Schumer was on Meet the Press this morning.  Chuckie claimed credit for $1.4 trillion in "cuts".   In actual fact the Feds plan to spend more money this coming year than they spent last year  That's not a cut, that's a hike.  To have a US senator call it a cut on national TV is an outright lie. How can voters make intelligent choices amid a thicket of lies?

Talking the talk. Not walking much

The talk is about getting the president to "reduce spending"  and the Senate to "pass a budget".  Neither of these activities means much to us taxpayers.   Congress used to pass appropriations bills, one for each major department.  Such a bill  reads "the so-and-so department may spend so many billion dollars in this fiscal year".  The way to "reduce spending" is to appropriate less money.  So far no talk about appropriations bills at all, let alone reducing their size. 
  In fact, passing appropriations bills got so difficult in years past that Congress gave up attempting it.  Each bill would trigger a big time fight between those who wanted more money for their pet programs and those who wanted to cut spending.  The fights got so bad that the fiscal year would be over and no appropriations bills passed. 
   In order the keep the government running, it became customary to pass "continuing resolutions", bills reading "Your department may continue spending at last year's level." 
   In order to actually cut spending, Congress, not the president, must pass appropriations bills or continuing resolutions reading "your depart gets less money that it got last year".  That's the walk.  So far it's all talk, no walk.
  The Republicans in Congress are as bad as the Democrats in just talking the talk
  Think about voting a straight Tea Party ticket.

787 batteries smaller than my car battery

Wall St Journal showed a picture of a well toasted 787 battery out of the 787 that had a fire sitting on the ramp at Logan.  Case was warped out of shape, top was gone, insides were all black.  Looked plenty capable of setting the entire plane on fire.  Not good. 
   Physically the battery looked to be less than one half the size of my car battery.  The Journal said it had an electrical rating of "63 amperes per hour".  Sounds like the Journal reporter knows nothing about batteries.  That should have been "63 ampere-hours" which means the battery can furnish 63 amperes for one hour or one ampere for 63 hours  or any thing in between.  That's not much.  My Mercury Gran Marquis battery is rated at 80 ampere-hours.  You would think a big jetliner would need more than a Detroit sedan.  The plane needs enough battery energy to keep the cockpit instruments and the radio alive  long enough for the crew to do an emergency landing in the event of total generator failure, or both engines failing.  I wonder if the 787 has an emergency ram air turbine generator like we had on Air Force fighters.   

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

It's very cold today, bright sun, no snow.  They are making snow.  The radio is forecasting snow for tomorrow but it's just a plain forecast, no "winter storm watch" stuff. 

A-Team

I didn't bother to see it in theaters a couple of years ago, so when it came on cable the other night I had to watch it.  It's a shoot-em-up that never stops shooting.  It would have been better if the sound man had been better.  Much of the dialog was lost thru mumbling by the actors, or letting the score and the sound effects over ride the dialog, which is totally under control of the sound man.  And there was too damn much pointless yelling as the sh-- hit the fan, which it did in every scene. 
   The camera man wasn't much better.  He seldom gave you a good look at the actor's faces.  There was too much of guys sneaking around in the dark and the audience wondering who that guy was, good guy or bad guy.   Lots of car chases, explosions, gun fights, swinging thru the air on ropes, and suchlike eye candy.  Toward the end of the movie I totally lost track of the plot, who was on first, and who was a bad guy.  I just watched the bang-bang. 
   Too bad, it could have been a good fun action flick. 

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.