Weather is clearing up here

TV news has been reporting horrible weather, travel delays, lots of bad stuff.  They show a storm center still down around Philly, heading my way, arriving this evening. 
  You couldn't tell it by me.  Over night snow turned to rain, it's warmed up and rained all the snow off Cannon Mt.  It was blowing and raining hard this morning, but it's tapered off, and its clearing a little now.  Either we get another hit when that storm center gets here, or it blows out to sea and we get dried out.

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.