Distractions. Nutrition labels on booze

The Feds are talking up a plan to require nutrition labels on booze, (beer, wine, liquor).  Right, that will solve the obesity crisis.  Everyone knows that alcohol is fattening, and not nutritious.  Beer is beer, wine is wine, and liquor is liquor.   There is no difference between brands, it's the alcohol that does the fattening.  Alcohol is a fine fuel, lots of calories. Tasty too.
   I figure this is a ploy to distract the newsies from things like IRS and Benghazi. 

Whitey Bulger.

A witness in the Whitey Bulger trial turned up dead out in Lincoln.  What is a Southie guy doing out in Lincoln?  Lincoln is a tony, pricey, white bread suburb far outside Rte 128.  The T doesn't run there.  You gotta drive to get to Lincoln.  Mobsters don't retire to Lincoln after they have made their pile.  They settle in places like Melrose and Malden. 
   So if this stiff drove out to Lincoln and died of natural causes, or suicide, where is his car?  If he drove out to Lincoln in a friend's car, surely a friend would not just dump the body by the side of the road.  At least anyone who would do that ain't much of a friend. 
   One the other hand,  friends of Whitey's might take the dead man for a ride, and  Lincoln is as good a place to dump a body as anywhere. 
  Color this death highly suspicious. 

House Fly Day

Dunno why, but the house flies have been popping up all over the house.  They are big and fat, and slow enough to hand swat.  But it got so bad I resorted to chemical warfare.  This resulted in a shower of dead flies all across the kitchen floor.  I swept up a whole dust pan worth of flies, and an hour later I had to sweep the kitchen floor a second time and filled the dust pan again. 

Asiana 214 Has Automation Trumped Airmanship?

Asiana 214,  the 777 that crashed at San Francisco last week, came in too low and too slow, and hit the seawall at the end of the runway.  Apparently the crew had set the autothrottle to hold the proper airspeed (137 knots) and for some reason the autothrottle allowed the airspeed to slack off too much.   The crew didn't notice until it was too late.
    They haven't said if the autothrottle failed, or wasn't set correctly, or for some software reason decided not to hold the setting.  The Aviation Week article goes into some detail about the various modes of the autothrottle, in some modes, it doesn't work the throttles, and it can change modes on its own without notifying the pilot.
   Autothrottle is a new fangled luxury.  Back in my day, only the C141 jet transport had autothrottle, and that was part of the All Weather Landing System, unique to the C141.  All the other aircraft had a plain old throttle lever, the engine power stayed where it was set by hand.  And they all managed to land in one piece.

    Speed on landing approach is critical.  You want to come in as slow as possible.  Slow makes it easier to get the wheels on the runway (as opposed to in the weeds), easier to get the plane stopped before running off the far end of the runway, and  lessens the shock on gear and airframe.  Too much shock breaks things and blows tires.
  On the other hand, go too slow and the wing stalls, stops producing lift, and the aircraft falls like a stone.  All control is lost.  There is little difference between proper landing speed and stall speed.
   It's hard to understand how the crew failed to check their approach speed, and notice that the autothrottle was playing them false.  For that matter it's hard to understand why they used autothrottle at all.  Was it me, with few hours in the 777, I'd  tend to do things by hand, the old fashioned way, rather than find out what nasty bugs might lurk in a tricky newfangled autothrottle.
 

Stand your ground protects us against criminal justice crazies

Eric Holder is on a tear about stand your ground laws in the aftermath of the dreadful Martin-Zimmerman case.  He is claiming they promote violence.
Not true.  Stand your ground laws were enacted to curb abusive prosecutors, like Holder.  When they started to prosecute home owners who shot home invaders, motorists who shot car jackers, and store keepers who shot robbers,  the public took alarm and passed stand your ground laws to put a stop to this atrocious behavior by the criminal justice system. 
  The laws usually read something like this.  Use of deadly force is legitimate in defense of your home, your motor vehicle, your place of business, and any other place your have a right to be.  The last clause was added to prevent weasel lawyers from  twisting words and limiting the definition of home to exclude such things as rental property.  You know how it is with weasels.
  Stand your ground had nothing to do with the Martin-Zimmerman trial.  When your opponent has you flat on your back and is pounding your head into the cement, retreat is impossible. 

The Senate Comprehensive Immigration Bill

The newsies have been going out of their way to avoid talking about what's in this bill.  They are mostly in favor of it, but they ain't telling us what's in it.  Here is my understanding of the contents.

1.  Those 11 million or so illegal immigrants inside the country all become "Registered Provisional Immigrants" right off the bat.  Before any border security measures.  Nobody is talking about just what "registered provisional immigrant" means, but it probably gives them the right to stay in the country and the right to hold a job.  And if you have that, who needs a green card?  Let alone US citizenship?
   Secondary issue, there will be a cut off date.  You have to be inside the US before the cutoff date to become a registered provisional immigrant.  Expect a huge rush into the country before the cutoff date.  Expect everyone who comes in after the cutoff date to claim that they got in before the cutoff date.

2.  Registered provisional immigrants can become real US citizens if they are willing pay serious money and put up with a lot of paperwork and mickey mouse over a lot of years.  This is the "path to citizenship".   It sounds sufficiently obnoxious as to discourage all but the most motivated.  Besides, being a plain registered provisional immigrant is probably good enough for a lot of them.

3.  We let in a lot more computer programmers and engineers on the "H1B"  visas.  High tech companies like this.  We let in a lot more temporary unskilled workers to pick crops.  Agri business likes this. 

4.  We hammer employers harder for hiring illegals.  Unions like this.  Unresolved issue, if every one inside the country is now a "registered provisional immigrant"  will not the E-verify system say they are OK to hire?

5.  We appropriate a wad of money for border fences, more border patrolmen, and some high tech welfare for surveillance camera's and drones.  Maybe Obama spends the money on security and maybe he doesn't.

6.  Maybe we revise the legal immigration system to favor the  well educated, the young, over aged grandparents.

Poor Boeing

After the notorious lithium battery fires in the 787,  trouble struck again.  A parked 787 at Heathrow started smoking and the fire department was called to put it out.  Nobody was on board at the time.  Nobody has been talking about the cause of the fire.  There is now a scorch mark on the top of the fuselage back toward the tail.   The notorious lithium batteries are located elsewhere in the plane.  This unfortunate accident was largely ignored by the US media in favor of covering the verdict on the Trayvon Martin trial.
   Boeing is surely hoping that it turns out to be human error, such as the crew left the galley stove running after the last flight.  The Brits are cooperating by not making any statements to the media.  Rolls Royce makes the engines.   Clearly everyone wants the 787 to succeed and they are doing the best they can to help the plane along in the face of terrible publicity.