Pope Francis, I wish him well

I will admit that I never heard of him before they made him pope.  I wish him, and the Catholic Church, and the whole of Christendom well.  We all need it. 

Cannon Mt. Ski Weather

We got another inch of powder last night and it stayed cold.  What with the 6 inches we got yesterday and this dusting we are in good shape. 

Whither the aircraft carrier?

Wired had a piece here.  It make some good points.  The United States (richest nation on earth) can only afford 10 or 11  full sized carriers.  Should enemy subs or missiles or mines or land based aircraft get lucky, then the US is out of seapower for all the years it takes to build new carriers.  There is much to be said for cheaper vessels, of which we can afford lots of. 
   The Wired writer doesn't understand a number of things.  Steam catapults need a steam power plant to furnish the necessary steam.  It takes a lot of steam to hurl a 20 ton loaded aircraft fast enough to make it fly.  Smaller lower cost ships tend to have gas turbines or even diesels rather than expensive steam plants.  A low cost carrier cannot have a steam catapult and remain low cost. 
   In addition to the catapult, aircraft carriers must steam at full speed into the wind when launching aircraft to generate enough wind over the deck to get heavily loaded aircraft into the air.  The big carriers can all do better than 30 knots which takes a huge engine plant.  Again, a low cost carrier (they called them escort carriers in WWII) cannot have that kind of engines and remain low cost. 
  So, the low cost carrier cannot support the high performance jet fighters needed to keep enemy aircraft away.  They will be limited to helicopters, jump jets, and some yet-to-be built propeller aircraft.  They will depend upon land based air or full sized carriers, or missiles for protection against enemy air attack.  Still, such a ship can be very useful.  In fact the Navy has built a number of them, they are called helicopter carriers. 
  One other thing the Wired writer doesn't understand.  Subs, especially nuclear subs, are terribly expensive.  A sub costs five to ten times what a surface vessel costs.  Building subs just to carry Tomahawk cruise missiles is expensive.  The US Navy only has such subs because it found itself with a bunch of big ballistic missile subs left over from the Cold War.  They weren't needed anymore to deter the Soviets, they were too new and too expensive to just scrap, so they loaded them up with Tomahawks.   They did this because they had the subs, all built and paid for, not because it was economical.  In fact, Tomahawk missiles cost $1 million apiece, there are few targets out there worth $1 million. 

Old Winter Driving Trick

Which seems to be forgotten these days.  
In winter, always BACK into the driveway.
Why you ask?
Simple, when it snows and you get plowed in, your odds of ramming out thru the snowdrift are much better going forward as opposed to backing up. 
Secondary reason.  Should your car fail to start, and need a jump start, it's a whole bunch easier then the hood is on the street side.

First we had the electric wheelchairs

   You must have seen the TV ads showing a happy grandmother whirring around the kitchen, while the voiceover claims the "Medicare and your insurance will pay for this goodie".
   Now we have electric breast milk pumps.  Obamacare, that all purpose tax hike/medical insurance/death panel law requires health insurers support breast feeding.  Which means supplying breast milk pumps for free to nursing mothers.
   Now, someone has invented an electric breast milk pump.  The simple $35 all plastic manual type, is no longer good enough.  Obamacare will pay for the $300 electric models. 
   Helping to push health care costs ever higher. 
   Ex wife breast fed all three of our children using the manual model.  If she could do it, so can anyone else. 

Cannon Mt Ski Weather

It started snowing yesterday afternoon and kept at it all night.  We got a good six inches of nice light powder.  It stayed cold, it's 25 right now.   Skiing is excellent and barring a rainstorm, oughta stay that way for the weekend.

NHPR celebrates 10th anniversery of Iraq War

Perhaps celebrate is too strong.  They ran pieces about how tough women soldiers had it on deployment, especially the single mothers.  Heartbreaking story about heartless teen age kids giving Mom a hard time over her deployment.  Followed up with other stories explaining why we should not have gone to Iraq and how little the war achieved.  Good heartwarming stuff, just what I like to hear in the morning.  Thanks NHPR.