Getting tough in the Model Railroad business

Model railroading as a hobby get started in the Great Depression, mostly 'cause the technology to make the little trains run only became practical by then.  Two magazines, Rail Model Craftsman and Model Railroader got started way back then and until last month, both were still in business.  Business was good enough to get both of them onto the magazine rack at Walmart, which is about as widespread a distribution as anyone can hope for.  Both of them had plenty of advertising, in fact with the demise of local hobby shops, about the only way for small manufactures of specialty stuff to reach customer was thru ads in one or both magazines.
   Well, something is changing.  Rail Model Craftsman suddenly announced it was out of business. Boom.  No warming, no mailing to subscribers, just an announcement on their website.  Dunno what happened,  Bad management?  Insufficient ad revenue?  Rising expenses?  I don't know, and the few insiders who do know aren't talking. 
   Anyhow, a big upheaval in a small world.  Does it mean that the hobby is shrinking?  The crowds at train shows are mostly older geezers, a few grand children, not many middle aged guys. 

Braveheart redux

Polls are showing the Scottish Nationalists may win the referendum and Scotland will secede from the United Kingdom.  Save your Dixie cups, the South will rise again.  Far as I know, the arguments for Scottish independence are all emotional and sentimental, reviving medieval heroes like William Wallace and peotry by Robert Burns.  The arguments against are cold economic ones involving exports to the EU, converting to the Euro.  Scotland is the thinly populated, poorer part of England, and  cutting themselves off from exports to and subsidies from England is gonna hurt. 
  It will also hurt British pride, and reduce British influence somewhat, but probably not too much to withstand. 
  Wonder how it will work out?  Up North of here, the Quebecois figured out that secession from Canada wasn't worth the pain.  Took 'em 20 years to figure it out, but they did. 
   Film at eleven. 

Beat the Press

They  opened with an Obama speech (boring) and moved on to celebrate some US cities that they thought were doing well on their own, with out assistance (money) from Washington.  They selected Oklahoma City, Tacoma, and Pittsburg.  They had the mayors on, and a lot of happy talk ensued. 
   No numbers were ever mentioned.  Like population, then and now, metropolitan domestic product, employment or unemployment, number of welfare recipients, municipal tax revenue, number of businesses,  number of students per classroom, nothing of substance, nothing to show me that these carefully selected towns were doing any better than any other American city. 
   No discussion of business activity, manufacturing, what industries were important, what industries had moved into town.  what new startups  were in town, new industrial parks started, nothing about the town's business at all.  Which is odd, it's business that makes a city tick.  Business employs the citizens, pays the taxes, builds the buildings, and ultimately pays for everything in town. 
   Anyhow it was a nice puff piece for three favored mayors, but it wasn't real news. 

Motherless bear cub picked up in Littleton

It's tough being an urban (or even suburban) bear.  An irate homeowner connected his dumpster to 120 VAC after repeated bear chow downs in said dumpster.  A lactating bear was electrocuted.  This took place somewhere on Church St, back in June.  Last Monday Fish and Game finally managed to round up the orphan cub for relocation
   Let us hope that homeowner doesn't have any children or pets. 

So use a real camera already

The leak of Jennifer Lawrence and other Hollywood celebrities embarrassing photos on the the internet apparently comes from their use of smart phones to take the photos.  The smart phones, unlike real camera's, immediately upload every picture they take to the cloud.  And once anything is "in the cloud",or on the internet, hackers, NSA, Google, the Russians, the Chinese, and who knows who else can see it.  There is no privacy in cyber space.
   I haven't seen the pirated photos, but those who have tell me they are unflattering selfies rather than flattering glamor shots by real photographers.  
  Moral of the story.  Use a real camera, not a slippery too-smart-for-your-own-good phone. 

Wolverine

It got bad reviews so I didn't bother to see it in the theaters.  I netflixed it last night.  It's an Marvel X-man  flick but thinned down to just Hugh Jackman.  Charles Xavier, Magneto, Storm, Cyclops,  and all the rest don't appear. The movie takes Wolverine to Japan, with a pair of pretty Japanese girls, one of which he manages to sleep with.  Jackman is still ripped, and his shirt comes off frequently.  A lot of Kung Foo and martial arts and derring do.  The plot was incomprehensible to me.  New bad guys keep popping up and Wolverine would slash them into hamburger.  Old good guys would turn into bad guys.  Dream sequences.  Wolverine would go to bed with one of the Japanese chicks and the chick would morph into a round-eye chick who might have been Jean Gray from the first X-men flick but might not have been.  Then she would morph back to being Marico, wealthy Japanese heiress pursued by Yakuza gangsters. 
   No connection with any Marvel comic book that I know of.  Just the Wolverine character.  
   OK, but nowhere near as good as the first couple of X-men flicks. 

Civil Disobedience ? What no strikes and picket lines?

Someone, probably the union SEIU, is organizing demonstrations outside fast food restaurants, and managing to get some of the demonstrators arrested.  Used to be, when labor wanted something they called a strike to shut down the business, and threw up a picket line to discourage customers, scabs, delivery men, just about anyone, from entering the premises.  It was effective, management would capitulate quickly.  I wonder why SEIU isn't doing that to McDonalds?
   Could it be that McDonalds workers don't want to go on strike?  or walk a picket line?  I wonder how many of the demonstrators are real McDonald's employees?  Or are they all  SEIU goons?