Avoiding "sexual assault"

Don't get drunk at parties.  You go to parties to meet guys, enjoy conversation, and show yourself off.  You can't do any of these when you are falling down drunk.  And, guys go to parties to pick up girls.  They know that falling down drunk girls will likely not object to getting laid. 
     And know your limits.  Tolerance for alcohol is a learned thing,  If you haven't done much drinking, a couple of drinks can get you into trouble.  Best plan is stick to beer, from a bottle.  You can drink enough to quench your thirst without getting smashed, unlike say martinis. 
   Same goes for weed.  Couple of tokes is probably OK, but a whole joint can put you on cloud 9 if you aren't experienced with the stuff.  
   Have a plan for getting home from the party.  Don't depend upon friends, they may hook up with a really cool guy and disappear.  Walking alone after dark is a bad idea.   If you get to your car and find you are too buzzed to drive safely, just take a nap in the car.  
If you really want to get pie eyed, do it on dorm, or at home, with some good same sex friends.

Will Airbus reengine the A380?

The A380 is the enormous double deck four engine super jumbo jet, biggest one in the air.  It's been on the market not very long, and sales have been mediocre at best, 318 delivered or on order since the rollout.  Now Airbus is talking about re engining it.  The newest engines can save 5 to 10 per cent on fuel consumption.  So far, only Emirates is pushing for this, they say they will take 70 more A380's if  Airbus reengines them. 
  Cost quoted for the engineering is staggering.  They are talking about $2.5 Billion just for the design, and presumably some flight testing.  Wow.  This is a airplane with the four engines in under wing pods.  Changes would be confined to the engine pods.  Design a new bracket to fit the new engine.  Make some changes in fuel piping, electrical harnesses, and the pod to accommodate the new engine.  You don't have to change anything in wings or fuselage or cockpit. You might have to replace the engine alternator control box, the one that keeps all four alternators in phase.   I figure 4- 5 engineers, with CAD/ CAM could do the drawings in a couple of months.  Then you have to test fly the aircraft to make sure everything works, and to make the regulatory agencies happy.  I'd budget $200,000 for engineers salaries, and let's say $1000 per flying hour for test flights.  Call it 500 hours of test flying (gross overkill)  The whole design and test effort is less than $1 million.  I may be a little low, but there is a helova long way between my back-of-the-envelope estimate and $2.5 Billion.  
   And, with the price of oil down by half since last summer, the urge to buy fuel efficient aircraft has presumably eased off a bit.

What's so bad about Common Core?

I actually took the time to download it and read a while ago.  It's not great.  It's written by Ed majors, using Ed major jargon, which makes it vague and hard to read.  Since it was too big to read altogether, I concentrated on the high school mathematics section.  It wasn't bad.  It wasn't as good as the high school math I had many years ago, but it wasn't all bad.  For instance, Common Core called for plane geometry up to the proving of some lesser theorem.  When I took plane geometry, we proved the Pythagoras theorem, which is harder, and basic. 
   Actually, as far as educating children goes, we would do better by simply requiring all high school students take chemistry, physics, and biology, as well as algebra, plane geometry, and trigonometry. 
   Anyhow, I am not going to take Common Core as a serious political issue.  It's a wedge issue, all emotion, no real substance.

Cannon Mt Ski weather

It snowed all day Tuesday, and we have 9 inches of fresh powder this morning.  No wind, so the snow is still on the trails rather than in the woods.  It's cold, 8 F, and overcast.  I'm all plowed out which means I93 and Cannon are ready to go.  Skiing ought to superb. 

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

After a steady all day yesterday hype on TV, the snow did start to fall up here just about 7 AM this morning.  No snow fell overnight.  It's cold, 10 F. Little to no wind.  Nice dry powder snow is falling, but isn't accumulating much.  Hasn't built up an inch yet.  It is nice fine flakes which promises to keep on falling for a while. 

Watch Greece and the Euro

Anti austerity party Syrisa won the Greek election yesterday.  Greece has been running on bailouts from the EU, mostly Germany, and those bailouts required Greece to shape up it's financial scene.  Syrisa campaigned and won on a platform of dumping the shape up moves.  If they do that, the EU is likely to stop the bailout.  In that case, nobody else, not every brain dead sucker banks, will lend to Greece.  Which means the Greeks will be unable to keep paying on their massive debts, and will be unable to meet payroll at home.  This ought to insure a lively time in the old town tonight, or tomorrow night as well.  The Greeks may decide to drop out of the Euro, and print enough Drachmas to meet expenses.  They may not, because every Greek holding euro's will take a very close haircut if that happens.
  For extra fun, watch the EU get all twisted out of shape.  They shouldn't, Greece is petty cash compared to the EU GNP, but listening to Europeans talk, you would think that Grexit is the end of the euro itself. 

Computer running Slow?

Mine perked right up after I uninstalled (zapped) the Avast free anti virus.  I'm still running XP, and after blowing away Avast, it now runs faster than Win 8 on a much newer computer.