Snowboards into Orbit

Been watching the Olympics.  The snowboarding is fantastic.  The boarders fly up in the air, 20, 30, 40 feet, flip over, turn around, twist and flip, do 3 and 4 turns, straighten out and land on their feet.  Incredibly good. They fly so high and so fast, that if anything goes wrong, they will get seriously hurt when they hit the ground, snow fences, rails, trees, what ever.  On TV it looks dangerous, but I didn't see anyone loose it and crash.  Really good TV watching, these kids are good, very good, and it's great seeing them fly.

Unemployment is so liberating

That's the new Democratic line now that CBO has told us that Obamacare will cause 2 million layoffs and push people down to 30 hour work weeks.  Workers should look forward  spending more time at home with their families.  Yeah right.  "Daddy daddy, how come you aren't going to work?"  "John, how are we going to pay the bills?"   Quality family time that is.  Been there, done that.  Being out of work is not liberating and is not quality time at home. 
   Both Chuckie the Schumer and David Gregory  were pushing this new democratic line this morning on Meet the Press.
  Gregory opened t he show by trashing the Russians over Sochi which seems kinda mean to me.  We won the cold war, they know it, no need to rub it in.  
  

BP is safer, sadder, and wiser

So says the Economist in a long sympathetic article about BP.  The Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf knocked its share price down below $80, from $100.  Cleanup and payoffs cost them $42 billion.  They had to sell $38 billion worth of assets to raise the money.  They are desperate  enough to do deals with the Russians that the other western majors won't touch with a ten foot pole. 
   What the Economist fails to tell, is how a major oil company could be run by chuckleheads for so long.  BP blew up a refinery in Texas, with fatalities, due to skimping on maintenance.  They let the Alaska pipeline rust out and leak crude oil.   A couple of BP suits aboard the rig did the Deep Water Horizon explosion  The suits ignored protests by every experienced man aboard, and ordered the drilling mud pumped out.  The cement seal had failed to seal.  With the heavy drilling mud removed, explosive natural gas pushed up the drill hole and burst into flames when it reached the surface.  The Wall St Journal ran a series of articles afterward which make it quite clear that responsibility for the disaster rested entirely with the BP suits.  Who fled the country to avoid prosecution. 
   Just how senior management at a major oil company could tolerate, and even encourage this kind of bet-the-company risk taking is inconceivable to me.  No company I ever worked at would do things like that.  When it was a matter of things going boom, people getting hurt, or property damage everyone was damn careful.  Nobody wanted a catastrophe.  Apparently things were different at BP.
   They probably still are.  The Economist didn't tell about anyone getting fired at BP over Deep Water Horizon.

Would you buy a used warcraft from these men?

The British government let a 330 million pound ($546 million) contract to modify 25 helicopters.  The choppers, EH101 Merlins currently in service with the Royal Air Force, will be modified to serve at sea with the Royal Navy.  The modified choppers will be used by the Command Helicopter Force as assault choppers, troop carriers.  Modifications include a folding main rotor, a folding tail, beefed up landing gear, and a new avionics suite.  This comes out to $21.84 million dollars per chopper.
   Compare with a new Blackhawk ($6 to $14 million depending on which website you believe)
   Far away from Britain,  Israeli Aircraft Industries is offering used, refurbished, Kfir jet fighters for $20 million apiece.  The Kfir's were retired from Israeli Air Force service in the 1990's and stored in the Negev desert to keep them from rusting.  They have only a few hundred flying hours on them and IAI will tear them down, remanufacture and rewire them and equip them with up-to-date avionics.  Such a deal for fairly decent mach 2 fighter.
    Compare with a new F-35 which are going for $60 million apiece, give or take a few million for bargaining with wily salesmen.  I think the used Kfir fighters are a reasonable deal, but I fear Her Majesty's government has been taken to the cleaners on the chopper deal.

Does Sochi have any snow?

This is the winter Olympics.  Skiing.  For which you gotta have snow.   The noble world press corp has let us know all about various discomforts they are suffering in Sochi, but except for once, they have not bothered to tell us if they have snow for skiing.  Clearly personal comfort comes out ahead of reporting the facts. 

F-35 ready to fly. Software ain't

F-35 is an all software airplane.  Apparently it needs software to do anything.  It's been flying on an early version of software that provides "basic aviate and navigate" functionality, but cannot launch missiles or even drop bombs.  Next software version, 2B, offers some fighting capability but is pretty flaky.  The report talks about "poor sensor performance and stability, excessive nuisance warnings, and disproportionate pilot workload required for workarounds and system resets".  The Pentagon chief of testing thinks it will take a year to get software release 2B straightened out.  The Marine Corps wants to start flying for real in six months.  They can't both be right.
   The Aviation Week article did not mention whether the software was written in the DOD miracle programming language ADA, which was supposed to make software development quicker and easier. Nor does it mention how capable the processor[s] are or what brand they are.
   Lots of luck to the F-35 programmers, they will need it.

Cannon Mt Ski Weather

Fantastic.  It snowed all day yesterday.  We got 8 inches of powder.  It's cold today, 8F, sunny, and is forecast to stay cold thru the weekend.  This weekend might be the best skiing of the year.