How soon we forget

From the Economist:  "Data General introduced the first minicomputers in the late 1960s"   Not true.  I was in the industry way back when, and everyone knew the first commercially successful minicomputer was the PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corp (DEC everyone called them).  The PDP-8 wasn't much of a computer, it was only 12 bits and could only address 4 K of  "core" memory. (RAM had not been invented yet).  It sold for $10k, 1960 dollars no less.  But it was enough computer to automate a lot of test and assembly tasks, and $10K looked cheap when compared to a mainframe. 
   DEC and competitor Data General thrived on making minicomputers up thru the 1980s but neither of them were able to transition to the microprocessor age.  The remains of DEC were bought up be Compaq in the 90s and Data General faded away somewhere and nothing was heard from them. 

What the Republicans oughta do

We start the new year with Republican control of house (solid) and Senate (decent but not veto proof or even filibuster proof).  The voters are unhappy, they are still out of work, just scraping by.   They still have Obama who will veto anything they pass.
   Republicans need to show the voters they care, they keep the public debate both public and sensible. 
they need to propose laws that the voters approve of.   Laws that fail to attract a single Democratic vote lack broadbased support.  And to win political support, the laws have to be understandable.  Which means short.  Which means to the point.  A law doing something good packed with a trainload of unrelated pork is easy for the voters to classify as a swindle.  Obama is looking for opportunities to veto anything and everything.  Bills with wads of pork tucked into them will get vetoed and Obama will claim he is vetoing because of the pork.  So keep the bills clean and simple, so that everyone understands what it is about. 
   So much for generalities.  Mitch McConnell has already cued up the Keystone XL pipeline.  Good chose, it is simple, most voters like it, Obama might even sign it, and will face some heat if he doesn't.  Next start appropriation bills. one for each federal department thru the committee process.  Then we can cue up some tax reform, some immigration reform,  some patent and copyright reform, and some regulatory rollback.  For instant, an act of Congress declaring that CO2 is not a pollutant and cannot be regulated by the EPA under the clean air act.  An act of Congress declaring that "navigable waters" means waters deep enough to float a canoe in dry season.  Tighten up the endangered species act to forbid invention of new species, followed by declaring the new species endangered. 
   We voters want to see some democratic lawmaking done in a serious fashion by serious people.

The Railway Children Masterpiece Theater 2000

A charming and very British tale set at the turn of the century, 19th to 20th century that is.  A well to do British father is arrested and jailed for unspecified crimes.  His wife, in order to keep her children with her, decides to cut expenses to the bone.  She sells the nice London house, and its furnishings, and moves the family to a humble place out in the country. 
   Arriving after dark in a strange place, the locals lend a helping hand getting them from the railway station to country place.  As days go by the children strike up acquaintances with the railway workers and passengers.  One thing leads to another, and the children persuade an elder and wealthy gentleman (played wonderfully by Richard Attenborough) to take an interest in their father's case and get him sprung from jail.  Happy ending.  Good warm feeling kind of flick.  For rail fans like me, there are lots of good shots of British steam trains chugging thru the extra scenic British countryside.  
    The flick portrays an England of many social levels, and every one fits comfortably into his or her level and works to carry out his job to the best of his ability. There is a warm consensus about right and wrong, honor and duty.  You get a feeling for the social glue that held England together thru the two terrible world wars to come.  Nice feeling.
   The feeling was strong enough to upset the lefty Masterpiece Theatre commentators.  They tacked on a lecture at the end explaining that real railway directors were nasty people like Commodore Vanderbilt and Deacon Drew, the charming Richard Attenborough character never existed in real life.  Which is too bad.  I like the notion of benevolent men running the society.  The idea for the movie came from a book by E. Nesbit published in England.  Although I never read it, over here we had The Box Car Children, a different schtick, it was good enough to support seven different movies and TV shows since the early 1950's.  Clearly the author's idea was pretty strong, and possibly closer to real than a that of a lefty American commentator.    

I survived the flu

It came on the day after Christmas.  I assume I picked it up from one of the six kids we had up for Christmas.  It started out as a sore throat, and moved on to serious vomiting.   That subsided by morning, but I decided to stick with clear liquids for the day, hot tea, jello, chicken broth, and Scotch.  It was a very low speed day.   One thing does work fairly well, Benadryl Allergy and Cold.  It soothes the throat, opens up the nose, and makes things a little less miserable. 

Cops should not wear black uniforms

Hitler's SS wore black, with chrome trim no less.  They looked fearsome.   American police officers should wear blue, real blue, not a blue so dark it looks black, to show that they are civilian police officers, not SS thugs. They should wear police officer caps, with a brim, and the traditional eight sided cover, not the Air Force 50 mission crush, and not the Wehrmacht peaked cap, and not crash helmets. 
   Many, perhaps most, crimes are solved when someone gives the police a tip.  If the public doesn't like the police they won't give 'em any tips.  All professional police officers understand this and go to great lengths to establish good community relations.  
   Community relations can be difficult when the community has a high proportion of real criminals and wannabe criminals.  I mean, the business of the  police is to arrest criminals, and criminals don't like that.  Best the police can do is contact the law abiding members of the community, clergy, store owners, business men, school teachers, boy scout leaders, citizens of good will, and establish some kind of rapport.  Once established, use the rapport to communicate the police side of controversies to the community. 
    And, communities need to reduce the number of laws that they have the police enforce.  For instance, the Garner death on Staten Island came about thru police (five officers no less) enforcing a law against selling loosies.  Granted, the police were acting at the behest of neighborhood merchants who wanted Garner gone from in front of their establishments, but the loosey cigarette law gave a pretext for hassling an undersirable.   Police should not get into enforcement and arrests unless real harm is being done.   Unnecessary laws ought to be repealed before they cause trouble.

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station

Vermont Yankee is an elderly medium sized nuclear plant which has been powering the Vermont/New Hampshire area for years and years.  A while ago the owner gained a federal license good for the next twenty years.  How ever they were unable to defeat the greenies in the Vermont legislature and gain a state license.  And so the owners are gonna close Vermont Yankee this coming year.
   NHPR ran a piece about this today.  The reporter was concerned with job losses at Vermont Yankee.  Nothing about where the electricity would come from, or what might happen to the outrageous electric rates around here.  Nothing about other industries relocating to sites with more reasonable rates.  Nothing about the real economic reasons for having a power plant.  Like keeping the lights on.
   Instead NHPR dwelt on the economic impact of loosing 1200 jobs at the plant.  Wow.  1200 workers at a nuclear plant?  That's a helova lotta workers just to keep the grass mowed and the plant painted.  It's a nuclear plant, it just sits there and electricity comes out.  You don't have to stoke the boilers or unload trainloads of coal.  The reactors just run.  There is some preventive maintanance, checks for leaks, calibration of instruments and the like but you don't need 1200 people to do that.  Can you say featherbedding?

Five Percent GNP growth in third Quarter

This is fabulous growth.  The US has averaged three percent growth going back to the earliest figures we have.  To get 5 percent means the economy is red hot.  Is that real?
   Do I believe these numbers?  They come from Obama bureaucrats who have every incentive to shore up a crumbling Obama administration with some good news.  The numbers are a "restatement".  They issued earlier less rosy numbers back in October, what we heard yesterday was new numbers based on what?  New data?  Applying some "corrections" to old data?  Mere pencil whipping?   Who knows. 
   How did they treat domestic oil production?  It has been going up, but the price is going down.  Result, more barrels of oil shipped, less money taken in.  How do they score this, as a gain or as a loss?  Do they count things like stock trading and derivative gambling as part of GNP?  How do they treat the greatly increased food stamp program?  Is it a gain because more food money is spent?  Or a loss because more tax money is taken away from honest taxpayers?  How do they handle the increase in health care costs?  Is it more production, or is it a greater drain upon taxpayers? 
   The basic idea, that the economy is growing a 5 percent a year is cool, I like it, everybody likes it. 
Question:  Is is real?  Who knows?  Surely not the newsies, they all grew up on new math and calculators, leaving them totally enumerate.   The economists are not much better.