Chinese Navy invited to join Pacific exercise.

The US Navy invited China to participate in "Rim of Pacific" (RimPac) naval exercise this month.  This is an international deal, with every Pacific country and some Atlantic countries to sending ships to play wargames.  The Chinese sent a pair of their latest and newest destroyers which impressed everybody with their phased array radars, vertical launch missiles, 100mm gun,  good paintwork, and sharp looking crews.  The Chinese were clearly showing off, they allowed tourists on board while they were in port, and they allowed an Aviation Week reporter to sail with them.  The westerners were duly impressed.  The phased array radars suggest that the Chinese have a ship borne SAM system as good as the US Aegis system.  Aegis is very good, and the Chinese might have matched it.  We cannot tell for sure with out looking at the missile hit rate from live firing trials, information which is top secret in any Navy. 
   Aviation Week was impressed by the 100 mm (4 inch) cannon carried by the Chinese.  The US Navy only carries a 76 mm (3 inch) gun.  I am not so impressed, WWII US destroyers carried a battery of six 5 inch guns.  Granted that modern warships rely upon their missiles to take out aircraft and surface vessels, there is a need for guns, for use against shore targets and to convince enemy merchantmen to heave to and be boarded.  You can't really use missiles against a recalcitrant merchie, a missile hit will sink him.  Where as the traditional shot across the bow, possibly followed with a few rounds to the bridge will get their attention every time.  Gun rounds are smaller than missiles and a ship can carry more of them. 

Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr 2009

Somehow I missed this one when it was in theaters.  Netflix brought it to me last night.  Medium good.  Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes was somewhat eccentric.  Robert Downey's Sherlock Holmes carries eccentric over into "nutcase".   It gets so outrageous as to make even the faithful Watson lose patience with him.  Let alone the audience.   Sets and costumes are great.  We see Victorian London in it's full glory, horse drawn cabs, Thames river craft and London Bridge still under construction.  The plot is obscure. I never did understand what was going on. The final "drawing room scene" where Holmes reveals all, has Holmes explaining so many inexplicable happenings that I lost track. 
   Not a bad movie, but it could have been a lot better. 

Missiling airliners

Aviation Week shows a photograph of a big piece of aircraft skin, well peppered with shrapnel holes, taken at the Ukrainian crash site.  Clear evidence of the detonation of a warhead close aboard.  The wreckage bears Malaysia Airlines red and blue stripe paint scheme. 
   Malaysia Air was not alone in the Ukrainian skies.   Air India flt 113 and Singapore Airlines Flt 351 were on the same air routes and only a few miles away when Flt 17 was struck by the SAM.  Malaysia Air was not the only target in the air that day, it was merely the unlucky one that got hit. 
   There does not appear to be any international organization to designate  dangerous airspace and warn airman away from it.  The closest approach to such an organization is the US FAA, which has designated pest holes like North Korea as no fly zones.  FAA has a good reputation for competence and non partisan ship and so most airlines around the world follow FAA recommendations, even though the foreign airlines are not bound to do so by law. 
   The SAM used for the shootdown bears the NATO designation of SA-11 Gadfly.  It's Russian makers call it BUK-M1, but the NATO designation is more widely known.  Each SA-11 launcher vehicle carries 4 to 6 missiles and the radar to aim them and can launch independently of central control.  The launchers do NOT carry Identification Friend or Foe (IFF)  equipment, a WWII technology still in use today.  IFF equipped aircraft return a coded message to ground radars.  All airliners on international routes carry IFF.  SA-11 launch vehicles are designed to plug into a central command trailer with the NATO designation of Snow Drift. The Snow Drift does have IFF equipment.  It is likely that the SA-11 launcher that hit the airliner was not plugged into a Snow Drift and thus did not have any IFF information available to its crew. 

Want a Cease Fire? Stop launching rockets.

Bombarding the national territory, whether with tube artillery or rockets, is an act of war.  Has been since the invention of gunpowder.  When Hamas wants a cease fire, all they have to do is stop launching rockets into Israel.  Since Hamas is still launching, obviously they want the shooting to continue.  They figure they get favorable press treatment and generate sympathy in Europe and the UN.  And in fact, the world and the US press has been falling over themselves to give Hamas  good copy.  Even Fox.  Lots of video of bombs exploding in Gaza, ambulances hauling off Palestinian wounded, wounded children in Gaza hospital beds.  No video of Israeli buildings struck by rockets, firemen battling blazes in Tel Aviv, Jewish families mourning their dead. 
   As far as the Israeli's are concerned, long as the rockets are flying, they plan to keep hurting Hamas, by which they mean everyone in Gaza.  Hamas only exists because everyone in Gaza supports them.  Actually, the Israeli's have been quite restrained.  If the Israelis really wanted to kill Palestinians, a quick carpet bombing of a few Gaza apartment complexes would kill thousands.  Gaza is wall-to-wall people, they could hardly miss.
   Trouble with the Israeli strategy.  Their enemy is crazy.  Hamas wants to exterminate the Jews, no amount of talking to 'em is gonna change their minds about that.  Their schools teach hatred of Jews to their children. Their mosques teach the same. They think of themselves as martyrs, they want to be killed in action against Israel.  You cannot punish people like that enough to cow them or change their minds.  I figure Israel would have to kill off 50% of 'em to have much effect.  And the Israelis are too civilized to engage in that kind of genocide. Israel can make 'em smart some, but their scruples don't allow the outrageous amount of killing needed to have any real effect on Hamas.

College Majors

Personally I didn't have a clue back when I was doing college.  I was lucky enough to be able to go back to college, after a hitch in the Air Force, and get a degree in electrical engineering, which served me well thruout my working career. 
  To choose your major wisely, you really have to know what you want to do after graduation.  Of course, if you are wondering about what to major in, you probably don't have a clue about your future career, again, I didn't at the time.
   In the usual case, when you don't really know what you want to do with your life,  you oughta keep your options open.  College majors fall into four catagories.  science sechnology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) , liberal arts , job training (business, education ,pre med, pre law, computer science) and nothing majors (gender studies, sociology, political science).  You don't want to rule out anything too early. 
   Which means you want to take calculus freshman year.  All the STEM majors are calculus based.  Without calculus the course material will be meaningless to you.  If you don't have calculus, the whole STEM field will be closed to you.  Smart planning doesn't close out a broad avenue of study for no good reason.
   Calculus isn't hard.  The concepts are totally new to students coming up from algebra and trig, and can be hard to accept.  They aren't hard to remember, but  they are aren't readily believable like two plus two equals four, something everyone accepts.  Some people simply cannot get their heads around calculus, no matter how hard they try.  A lot more people shy away from it 'cause "math is hard".  The forward looking student ought to try it, 'cause without out calculus, whole realms of learning are forever closed to them. 
  Calculus requires preparation in high school.  You need algebra, perhaps two years of algebra, and trigonometry.  A lot of calculus work uses trigonometric functions, equalities and transformations which you have to know.  Now a days, schools tend to label the trigonometry course "pre-calculus" but it is still trig.  A course in plain geometry is nice, but not essential.  If you don't get this stuff in high school, you will have to pick it up in college, before you can take calculus.  If you don't do calculus until sophomore year, you won't be able to take STEM courses until junior year.  Which is pretty late.  So start planning in high school and get your math courses in early. 
   If, by junior year, you decide to major in liberal arts or job training, go for it.  But you will have the option of STEM majors if you want them.  Which is a better place to be than wanting to do a STEM major but being locked out of it thru lack of calculus.
  

Electricity for homeowners

Just a few bits of wisdom picked up over the years.  Understand, electricity can be dangerous, can burn your house down, so if you have any doubts about a do it yourself project, you ought to call a pro. 
   Juice comes into the house from the street with three wires.  Two hot wires, color code black, and a neutral wire, color code white.  The two hot wires are 120 volts, alternating current (AC) which means the voltage goes up and down, current goes back, and forth 60 times a second.  The two hot wires are 180 degrees out of phase with each other, which means when one wire is plus, the other is negative, and vice versa.  Which means you have 220 volts measured from one hot wire to the other.  Things like electric stoves, electric car chargers, big power tools , central air, and the like  get 220 volt power.  It is customary to run a special branch circuit for each 220 volt appliance.  The familiar branch circuits are all 120 volts, which is obtained by using one hot (black) wire and one neutral wire.  The hot wires each measure 120 volts to the neutral wire. 
  Black to brass, white to chrome.  Old electricians proverb.  The screws on the sockets and light fixtures are alternately brass and chrome.  Wire black to brass and white to chrome and you won't get hot and neutral switched around. 
   Fuses, or circuit breakers are there to protect the wires, not the appliances plugged into the branch circuit.  Should a short circuit occur, massive amounts of current will flow in the wires, which are buried in your walls, and heat them red hot, setting the house on fire.  The fuse or circuit breaker will open the circuit and cut off the current before anything bad happens.  New houses use #12 wire for branch circuits which can handle 20 amps.  Older houses had lighter #14 branch circuits which called for a 15 amp fuse. 
  Never fuse the neutral.  Another old electricians proverb.  It's complicated, and I cannot explain it without several diagrams.  So just take it from me.  Don't fuse the neutral.
  Treat neutral as if it were hot, i.e. don't think it's safe to touch.  A whole bunch of common faults can make neutral become hot and shock the bejesus out of you. 
  Run a safety ground color code green on all new work.  Safety ground protects against shock should the appliance insulation fail and allow a hot wire to touch the case, making the case hot.  If the case is connected to safety ground, all sorts of current will flow, and the fuse will blow, removing power and making the case safe to touch.  Back at the fuse box, the green safety grounds want to be connected to a good earth ground, say a 4 foot iron pipe driven into moist dirt, or the cold water pipe coming in from the street, before the water meter. 
   Most electric codes call for the neutral to also go to earth ground.  This is worth checking out.  One of the houses I owned over the years came to me with the neutral ground clamp rusted clean off and dangling in midair. 

Flight safety or political retailiation?

Ted Cruz accused the Obama administration of  forbidding US airlines to fly into Tel Aviv in order to pressure Israel over the Gaza strip.  He might have something there.  The flight ban was laid on after a Palestinian rocket hit within a mile of the airport.  Which is not nearly as dangerous to aircraft as a SAM. 
   Fortunately FAA dropped the flight ban to Tel Aviv after two days, which makes me think maybe they were really thinking about flight safety rather than retaliation. 
  That a responsible US Senator would make such a charge indicates a major loss of trust with the Obama Adminstration.