Lets Not Go There Dept.

Out at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland the Army and DHS have a collection of airliner fuselages.  For bomb testing.   Where can a terrorist's bomb explode with the best chance of the aircraft surviving the event?  Plans are to issue airline crews instructions, if a bomb is found, move it here, the Least Risk  Bomb Location (LRBL for short) and maybe you won't crash when it goes off.  So they are going to explode test bombs inside old junked airliners to see what happens. 
    Your guv'mint is concerned about the bad PR such testing might be for airlines.  Seeing a Southwest or American fuselage go poof has got to bad for the airline image.  The requests for proposals to aircraft junkyards the Army requested that "Distinctive paint schemes or logos on the fuselages must be removed before testing to eliminate any public recognition that aircraft was previously owned or operated".  How very thoughtful. 
   The whole project is chilling to think about. 

"Obama goes Troll Hunting " says the Economist

Medium length article in the Economist saying that Obama is cracking down on patent trolls.  But is he really?  They mention the "America Invents Act" passed  back in 2011.  Now the Economist says new anti troll policies will allow courts to zap the filers of "frivolous" patent suits, demand that the name of the real owner of the patent be revealed in court, and to demand more documentation from plaintiffs upon filing suit.
    Obama can do some of this by executive order, but he will need some acts of Congress (which he doesn't have) to impliment most of it.
  Plus, this isn't going to work.  The patent problem is caused by a patent office that allows incredible numbers of  things that should never be eligible for a patent to obtain one.  They allow patents upon "business methods" which has created a massive lawsuit over "one-click or two-click".  They allowed someone to patent the idea of putting a web purchase into a web shopping cart with a single mouse click.  Which is ridiculous.  It is an obvious idea that will come immediately to the mind of anyone "skilled in the art".  They allow patents on software, which they didn't use to do.  They allow patents on arbitrary arrangements of information, such as the QWERTY  keyboard layout, and the ASCII code.  Yesterday's patent fight between Apple and Samsung revolved around patents upon arbitrary codes and protocols used in wireless networking.  In order for devices to talk to each other, there has to be some agreement about codes, languages and protocols,  Without such agreement, the devices won't understand each other . Right now we allow trolls to rip off companies for using the agreed upon codes, languages and protocols.
   Right now the patent troll situation is so bad that companies assume they will be sued by a troll as soon as they make enough money to be worth suing.  They estimate the legal costs in right along with research and development costs and marketing costs.  This tax upon the creative by the lawyers slows the pace of innovation and only makes the lawyers rich. It doesn't help inventors.  It punishes startups and favors the big companies.
  We need to make it harder to get patents.  Before granting a patent there should be a comment period where anyone can submit objections to granting it.  There ought to be a review board that can toss out BS patents.  We should no longer allow business methods patents or software patents, and we should invalidate all such patents currently standing.  Patents should only be granted to individuals, never companies.
  

The big Seven Oh

Did a bang up 70th birthday party up here.  All three children flew in from all over the country.  Weather was acceptable (no rain) for doing some grilling on the deck.  A dozen birthday cards were received, lots of friends came, a good time was had by all.  What with house guests all weekend, blogging has been a little light.  Stupid Beast is still in shock from having all those strangers is the house, to say nothing of That Beagle and all Those Toddlers. 
   With luck I can do this again in ten years. 

787's all fixed and flying

Boeing announced that the fireproof battery box modification has been accomplished on all 50 787's and that they are all flying. 

Kathleen Sibelius, wicked witch of the west

You gotta wonder about Sibelius.  We have a 10 year old child dying of cystic fibrosis.  The parents appeal to Sibelius to get the 10 year old a lung transplant.  She brushes the parents off with some bureaucratic baffle gab.  Which convinces everyone in the country that she is a hard hearted nogoodnick who runs a death panel.  She has to be dumber than a stone not to see that. 
  The parents don't give up, they get a court order to put the kid on the list  for a transplant.  Which makes Sibelius look incompetent as well as a hard hearted nogoodnick.
  She is clearly spending too much time shaking down companies for Obama care money that Congress has refused to authorize.
  Typical Obama appointee.

Bean counters are loading the dice (beans)

The Pentagon has a problem.  Cost of the new F-35 fighter is so high that overseas customers are backing off.  It's a nice airplane everyone agrees, but they just cannot afford it.  One of the budget busters, after paying the list price for a new fighter, is the cost to fly it, Cost Per Flying Hour.
   Despite their best efforts at cooking the books, it looks like the F-35 will cost $24,000 per flying hour.  Which adds up quick. And you have to fly it if you want it to do any good.  Pilots need about 10 hours a month to stay competent in such a high performance, complicated machine.  Figure to have maybe two, maybe three pilots per aircraft, and you get to 360 flying hours a year, or $8.6 million dollars a year per airplane.  It doesn't take many years for operating costs to exceed the purchase price.  And any experienced person will figure the $24,000 per hour to be a lowball estimate.
  So, to make things look a little less bad,  the Pentagon is inflating the cost per flying hour of the current workhorse fighter, the F-16.  This is also a good airplane, everyone, including the cost-no-objective Americans, flies it.  The Aviation Week article did not give the before and after F-16 estimates, but they did quote several people expressing surprise that such a thing would be changed.  The F-16 has been flying for over 20 years, we have real numbers going back a long time, and altering them comes pretty close to lying. 

Why does the US media get the big stories wrong?

The Atlantic has a long sad story about it.  I have a simplier explaination.  The media is staffed with crusaders, zealous fanatics who see them selves as prophets come to save  the world.  Woodward and Burnstein "All the President's Men" is their self image.  They could care less about truth, informing their readers, all they want to do is win.  And they will do a lot a shady (not quite outright lying, but close) stuff to win. 
   These people float thru college doing journalism majors and learning nothing of substance.  No American history, no European history, no math, no physics, no chemistry, no statistics, no Shakespeare, no foreign language, no philosophy, no biology.  No practical skills such as carpentry, auto mechanics, hunting, fishing, farming, or even light bulb changing.  They come out of college shallow and ignorant.  They may be fairly good at slinging BS, but they don't know nothing.  Naturally the stories they write are largely a waste of the reader's time.