A foreign flick. Scandinavian actors. The director was into language authenticity, the Swedes speak Swedish, the Saracens speak Arabic, all with subtitles. Really good sets and costumes. Handsome young Arn and beautiful Cecillia have an affair. The parents, the village elders, the church and the aristocracy combine to sentence Arn to serve on Crusade in the Holy Land and Cecillia to a nasty convent. In the Holy Land, Arn survives the disaster at the Horns of Hattin and makes his way home, just in time. He and Cecillia are reunited, they settle down to homestead a nice farm in the Swedish backwoods. At the last minute, Arn raises up a vast army of humble people to defend Sweden from rapicious neighbors.
Strange flick. It moves pretty slowly, and it telegraphs its punches. You could tell what was gonna happen next, five minutes before it happened. The movie didn't rely much on dialogue, which since it was largely in subtitles, was probably good. Slowly as it moved, it was compelling, I was unable to turn it off, I had to see the ending.
Netflix is good.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Pipelines need few workers to operate
We have Barack Obama bad mouthing Keystone XL pipeline project because, once built, it won't employ all that many people to run it. News Flash, that's why we lay pipelines. They get the product to market cheaply. Cheaply means a small number of workers.
We need Keystone XL to furnish a generous supply of vital fuel and chemical feedstock to Gulf refineries. With supplies from Keystone, those refineries will stay in production and their thousands of workers will remain employed. With out the pipeline, they have only the dwindling Texas fields and the offshore gulf wells to supply crude. When those run dry, bye-bye refineries, bye bye refinery jobs. That's why we need that pipeline. Obama apparently doesn't understand this. Neither does our well educated, journalism majoring media.
Looking past just refinery jobs, fuel and chemical feedstock form the basis of the US economy. Without dependable supplies, industry dries up and blows away.
Every day that Obama holds up Keystone XL brings us one day closer to bankruptcy.
We need Keystone XL to furnish a generous supply of vital fuel and chemical feedstock to Gulf refineries. With supplies from Keystone, those refineries will stay in production and their thousands of workers will remain employed. With out the pipeline, they have only the dwindling Texas fields and the offshore gulf wells to supply crude. When those run dry, bye-bye refineries, bye bye refinery jobs. That's why we need that pipeline. Obama apparently doesn't understand this. Neither does our well educated, journalism majoring media.
Looking past just refinery jobs, fuel and chemical feedstock form the basis of the US economy. Without dependable supplies, industry dries up and blows away.
Every day that Obama holds up Keystone XL brings us one day closer to bankruptcy.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Next Gen succumbs to budget cuts.
Next Gen is the FAA's plan to completely redo the national air traffic control system. Under Next Gen, each aircraft would be required to carry a GPS receiver, and upon interrogation from ground radar the aircraft would report it's position according to GPS.
Next Gen would require every aircraft to be equipped with a $25,000 GPS box, at the owner's expense. Benefit is better accuracy. GPS is accurate to a few feet. Ground radar is accurate to only a few miles. Knowing that the radar positions are only accurate to a few miles, air traffic controllers keep planes spaced apart in the sky by ten miles or more. It is claimed that Next Gen would permit closer spacing, making more room in the sky to absorb the ever increasing load of air traffic. And the equipment manufacturers are more than pleased with the thought of selling all those expensive GPS boxes.
And now, according to Aviation Week, all this goodness is on hold because Congressional austerity programs won't pay for Next Gen. Oh woe.
In actual fact, there is plenty of sky for any amount of aircraft using today's tried and true radars. The bottleneck is at the airports. We only have about 50 big airports into which ALL the scheduled air traffic goes. These airports can only handle 60 planes an hour. That limit is set by common sense. You want the plane that landed to slow down and turn off the active runway before you allow the plane behind him to land. Just in case the landing aircraft blows a tire, skids off the runway, or worse (Asiana 214 anyone?) . That takes about a minute.
Likewise you want the plane taking off to make it safely into the air before you allow the plane behind to start his takeoff roll. This takes about a minute. So the airports are the limit to air traffic, not a lack of sky to hold the planes. No amount of pricey Next Gen GPS will do anything to let the airports handle more traffic than they do now.
Next Gen would require every aircraft to be equipped with a $25,000 GPS box, at the owner's expense. Benefit is better accuracy. GPS is accurate to a few feet. Ground radar is accurate to only a few miles. Knowing that the radar positions are only accurate to a few miles, air traffic controllers keep planes spaced apart in the sky by ten miles or more. It is claimed that Next Gen would permit closer spacing, making more room in the sky to absorb the ever increasing load of air traffic. And the equipment manufacturers are more than pleased with the thought of selling all those expensive GPS boxes.
And now, according to Aviation Week, all this goodness is on hold because Congressional austerity programs won't pay for Next Gen. Oh woe.
In actual fact, there is plenty of sky for any amount of aircraft using today's tried and true radars. The bottleneck is at the airports. We only have about 50 big airports into which ALL the scheduled air traffic goes. These airports can only handle 60 planes an hour. That limit is set by common sense. You want the plane that landed to slow down and turn off the active runway before you allow the plane behind him to land. Just in case the landing aircraft blows a tire, skids off the runway, or worse (Asiana 214 anyone?) . That takes about a minute.
Likewise you want the plane taking off to make it safely into the air before you allow the plane behind to start his takeoff roll. This takes about a minute. So the airports are the limit to air traffic, not a lack of sky to hold the planes. No amount of pricey Next Gen GPS will do anything to let the airports handle more traffic than they do now.
Car Hacking
NPR and Fox have been running stories about car hackers. The hackers claim to be able to take control of the victim automobile, blow the horn, work the steering, work the brakes and accelerator, change stations on the radio, just about everything.
This is the stuff of Hollywood movies. I can see it now, black clad villain, laughing maniacally, fingers a radio control box and causes the hero's car to dive off the cliff, pull out in front of a freight train, swerve into a bridge abutment.
For this to work, the victim car has to cooperate. It has to have motors or actuators to move the steering, the brakes, the throttle. And, no decent car ought to have that kind of automation. The trusty '57 Chevy drove just fine without any of this junk. It wouldn't parallel park itself, but I learned how to parallel park a long long time ago and I still do it by hand.
There might be a market for cars proof against hacking. As it is, I plan to keep my trusty Mercury Grand Marquis running as long as I can, just in case.
While they are at it, they could market a car without that black box speed recorder that can ruin your day in court after the accident.
This is the stuff of Hollywood movies. I can see it now, black clad villain, laughing maniacally, fingers a radio control box and causes the hero's car to dive off the cliff, pull out in front of a freight train, swerve into a bridge abutment.
For this to work, the victim car has to cooperate. It has to have motors or actuators to move the steering, the brakes, the throttle. And, no decent car ought to have that kind of automation. The trusty '57 Chevy drove just fine without any of this junk. It wouldn't parallel park itself, but I learned how to parallel park a long long time ago and I still do it by hand.
There might be a market for cars proof against hacking. As it is, I plan to keep my trusty Mercury Grand Marquis running as long as I can, just in case.
While they are at it, they could market a car without that black box speed recorder that can ruin your day in court after the accident.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Why the Democratic establishment wants Weiner to resign
The TV has been cluttered with top national democrats urging Anthony, can't-keep-it-zipped Weiner to pull out of the NYC mayoral race. Apparently they don't trust the voters to reject Wiener. Maybe they have something there, after all the voters re-elected Obama after four years of wrecking the economy and throwing them out of work.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Thought Crimes and uniform regulations
According to the TV news the case against Bradley Manning, the Wikileaks leaker, revolves around Manning's intent. If Manning meant to harm the US, long jail term. If he thought he was a whistle blower he gets off.
This isn't right. Manning revealed classified documents to people who lacked clearances, who lacked a need to know, and who were not service members, who were not even US citizens. That's illegal and ought to be enough to punish him good and hard. The case should not revolve around intent. Intent is thought. We should not be trying thought crimes, where the defendant can be found guilty for thinking the wrong thoughts. Crime must consist of actions, not thoughts.
Watching Manning of TV, I see that the Army has revised the Class A uniform. It's now dark, almost black, with silver piping on the epaulets, like the Nazis used to do. Goes with the retro Civil War style shoulder straps on the officer's uniforms.
This isn't right. Manning revealed classified documents to people who lacked clearances, who lacked a need to know, and who were not service members, who were not even US citizens. That's illegal and ought to be enough to punish him good and hard. The case should not revolve around intent. Intent is thought. We should not be trying thought crimes, where the defendant can be found guilty for thinking the wrong thoughts. Crime must consist of actions, not thoughts.
Watching Manning of TV, I see that the Army has revised the Class A uniform. It's now dark, almost black, with silver piping on the epaulets, like the Nazis used to do. Goes with the retro Civil War style shoulder straps on the officer's uniforms.
Who killed the Western?
The Atlantic runs a long sad commentary here that doesn't say much. They never mention the real Western killer, Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles. That came out in 1974, when the Western was getting long in the tooth, and many of us figured Westerns were for kids. Blazing Saddles drove this point home so hard, that no Westerns were attempted for 10 years, and the couple that were tried 10 years later flopped despite decent casts and screen writing.
I liked Westerns, the good guys won, the bad guys were beaten, the scenery was cool, tough guys acting tough, lots of action, what's not to like? But after Blazing Saddles trashed the genre so thoroughly, it was impossible to take them seriously ever again.
I liked Westerns, the good guys won, the bad guys were beaten, the scenery was cool, tough guys acting tough, lots of action, what's not to like? But after Blazing Saddles trashed the genre so thoroughly, it was impossible to take them seriously ever again.
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