I dunno just how I got on their mailing list, but I did. They have great brochures, beautiful photographs of beautiful European locations. They run one and two week river cruises in big (450 ft) brand new modern river boats. Pricey too, $7K to $14K. The new boats are advertised to have super green hybrid engines and even an organic herb garden.
Before these brochures started popping up in my mailbox, I had no idea that Europe was so well watered. They run these big cruise boats to nearly every city in Europe. They run from Amsterdam to Bucharest, with stops along the way at Cologne, Nuremburg, Regensburg, Vienna, Budapest, and Belgrade. As well as Basel in Switzerland. And others.
This good water communications must have had something to do with medieval Europe's progress into the most advanced place on Earth by 1700. River transportation is as good as having a steam railroad, and a lot cheaper. You don't have to buy iron rail and lay track. That sort of bulk freight capacity has gotta be good for economic growth back in medieval times.
Friday, August 2, 2013
The Snowden Surprise?
The Russians gave NSA leaker Snowden a one year visa to stay in Russia, avoiding extradition to the US. Which doesn't make the US or the Obama adminstration happy. The Administration has been whining that the Russians gave them no warning. It was obvious to the dimmest bulb in the house that the Russians were considering granting Snowden asylum ever since Snowden failed to make his plane to South America a couple of months ago. He has been camping out in the Moscow Airport ever since. If that isn't enough warning, I don't know what is.
Trouble is, there isn't much we can do about it. The Russians don't buy much from us, we don't buy much from them. We have no international interests in common. Other than sending them nastygrams, we are pretty much stuck with it. Russia isn't Pakistan, doing an Osama style helicopter raid won't work in Moscow.
Trouble is, there isn't much we can do about it. The Russians don't buy much from us, we don't buy much from them. We have no international interests in common. Other than sending them nastygrams, we are pretty much stuck with it. Russia isn't Pakistan, doing an Osama style helicopter raid won't work in Moscow.
How the vacuum found its suck
I changed the dirt bag on my aging all plastic Hoover upright yesterday. Put in a new bag from Lowes. Man oh man what a difference. With the new empty dirt bag the aging machine came back to life. It sucked hard enough to lift the linoleum up off the kitchen floor. I don't remember it sucking this hard when it was new, 10 years ago.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Arn, Knight Templar
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.
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.
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.
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