Would you buy a used COD from this man?

Carrier on board delivery aircraft that is.  An unexciting but vital aircraft.  COD flies high priority cargo from land bases out to carriers at sea.  Back in the day, I well remember LogAir, who flew a big turboprop Argosy transport into our base in Minnesota every day, loaded with spare parts for our fighters.  Plenty of times we would tell Maintenance Control that we would have fighter so-and-so back in commission as soon as LogAir came in.  That was on a stateside Air Force base in peacetime.  I dare say the spare parts situation is worse at sea. 
   Anyhow, the existing fleet of C-2 Greyhounds, after many years of service, is in need of replacement or refurbishment.  The Navy has a bid from Grumman to rebuild the weary Greyhounds, and a bid from Bell-Boeing to furnish V22 Osprey tiltrotors.
  And now, Lockheed Martin is proposing to pull 70 or 80 S-3 Vikings out of the boneyard in Arizona, refurbish them, build new and larger fuselages for them.  Cargo aircraft typically cube out before they weight out, in other words you run out of room to pack stuff into them long before the cargo gets too heavy to fly.  So a new a bigger fuselage would make a better freighter and still be competitive on price.  The S3 Viking is/was a twin jet carrier based antisub aircraft that the Navy retired  a few years ago. 
    So, looks like the Navy is looking at rebuilt Greyhounds, rebuilt Vikings, or brand new and pricey Ospreys.  I have my doubts that the Osprey has enough range, but I don't have any figures.

Greenies want to hike food prices

Heard on NHPR this morning, the greenies are going to push for a state law requiring all food containing "genetically modified organisms "  carry a special warning label.   . There is no evidence that "genetically modified organisms" have ever harmed anyone, in anyway.  The ultra conservative FDA sees nothing wrong with them.  They have been in widespread use for many years with no evidence of problems. 
   Never mind, they must be evil and we shall drive them from the market with a scarlet letter on the package.  That will let us feel good about ourselves for weeks and weeks. 
   For farmers, grocers, and everyone else in the food business, such a law is yet another government regulation, raising costs, exposing them to lawyer predation, and making it harder to stay in business.  For lawyers, fixers, and bureaucrats, such a law is a full employment act. 
   For consumers,  it's just more fine print on the back of the package.  When was the last time you read all the fine print on a box of frozen veggies? 
   If I was in the grocery business, I'd comply with the law by putting "GMO" stickers on everything in the store, just to cover my ___. 

Just 'cause you got a cancelation notice

Doesn't mean you are uninsured.  You aren't uninsured until the cancellation notice takes effect.  So sayth Allan Colmes,  Fox News liberal gadfly.  So all of us who received cancellation notices effective in January, we aren't uninsured. 
   Great.  Thanks Allan for letting us know.

Picky software reduces dispatch reliability of 787 Dreamliners

The 787 has more powerful computers than anything flying, more sensors for temperature and pressure and such than ever before, and the software checks all the sensors and keeps issuing warnings to the crew when there is really nothing wrong.  But the crew has to do something when the computers are crying "Failure". Especially, when the computer issues an alarm before takeoff, the aircrew will call maintenance to check it out before they taxi out, leading to late departures.  Boeing claims a dispatch reliability of 97.5% which sounds pretty good, but it means that out of 100 departures, 2 or 3 will be delayed by computers crying wolf. 
   Any how Boeing is updating the software to make it less hypochondriac.   They want to get dispatch reliability up to 99.2%
   Dunno how we ever flew anywhere back in the '60s and '70s before microprocessors.

NSA snooping kills jet fighter sale

Brazil was close to buying Boeing F/A 18 fighters to replace their ancient F5E (1960's) fighters.  But revelation that NSA was eavesdropping on Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and national oil company Petrobras  has soured relations with the US.  The fighter deal may now be dead.
   Thanks NSA.  Keeping America safe by throwing Americans out of work.                                                                                                

Obama goes for the deal

TV news reports that a deal was reached with Iran last night.  No details are given.   What ever happened to "open covenants, openly arrived at"?  (One of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points from 100 years ago).   One suspects that the deal isn't that good for us. 
    Oh By the way.   The right to enrich is the right to make nuclear weapons.  Iran lacks any right to enrich, or to have the bomb.

Iran goes for the bomb

All the Iranians (or anyone else) needs to make a nuclear bomb, is enough fissionable material, either 90% uranium 235 or plutonium.  U235 occurs in nature. 0.7% of natural uranium is the fissionable U235, the rest is stable U238 which won't make a bomb.  Plutonium does not occur in nature, it has to be made in a nuclear reactor. 
   The Iranians have built up a huge battery of 19,000 centrifuges to separate the fissionable U235 from the inert U238.  They have been running the centrifuges long enough to create tons of uranium enriched to 20%.  Concentrating from 20% to 90% is easier than what they have already done, concentrating from 0.7% to 20%.  Iran is withing spitting distance of the bomb.
   The last thing the world needs is nuclear weapons in the hands of Iranian crazies. 
   So, as the Iranians moved closer to the bomb, we set up an economic blockade on Iran. The US Senate made it law.  They can't import anything technical, not even auto parts, they can't sell their oil.  Surprisingly,  this is working.  Iran is hurting enough to start bargaining. 
   Only the deal the Iranians are offering is "We promise not to make a bomb, and you lift the blockade."
Such a deal.  And Obama wanted to accept it. 
   Fortunately the French were wise enough to reject this "deal".  And probably the US Senate won't fall for it either.
   The deal we want is "You Iranians turn all your uranium and all your centrifuges over to us, and permit no notice inspections of every place in your country.  And you don't get to have reactors.  After that is accomplished to our satisfaction, then we will lift the blockade." 
   If we let the Iranians get the bomb, their neighbors, Saudi and Iraq will build their own bombs.  The Pakis and the Israelis already have the bomb.