Boeing keeps the 777 competitive

The 777 is Boeing's big twin jet wide body airliner.  It's been flying for 20 years.  Boeing plans to keep it flying for quite a bit longer.  They have announced a series of upgrades, each one minor in itself, that will cut fuel burn by 2%.  And they plan to pack in another 14 seats, so the fuel burn per seat might go down by 5%.  Which doesn't seem earth shaking, but  every little bit adds up.  The 777 can hold 40,000 gallons of fuel, about four 18 wheeler tank truck loads.  Saving 2% on a long flight might be 800 gallons.  At $2.50 a gallon, that's $2000.  Per flight.   
   One improvement is to remove the tail skid, and take out some beef in the aft fuselage designed to carry the loads from the tail skid, should the tail drag on the runway during landing or takeoff.  They souped up the autopilot to absolutely prevent tail dragging.  Boeing of course claims the improved autopilot will be infallible. 
   There are a bunch of other things, to numerous to list, and not all that interesting, unless you are out shopping for wide bodied airliners. 

Jerry Brown goes on Meet the Press

And manages to say nothing of substance in 10 minutes of airtime.  They started him off on the California drought.  He talked about "progress" and " programs" and "Urgency".  Nothing about dams, canals, wells, and allocation.  The biggest water users in CA are farms, and you could turn off their water, let 'em go broke, and have enough water to supply everyone's homes.  Not a word about any of this.  We did learn that Jerry believes global warming is causing the CA drought.  And he doesn't like Ted Cruz, they played a clip of Cruz saying that the globe hasn't warmed at all in the last 17 years (which is true, according to GISS data).  Jerry doesn't believe that, and called Cruz "totally unfit to run for president". 
   Well, we know where Jerry's heart is.  And where is head is too. 

Hitchhiking. Anyone seen any lately?

Back before I had my own wheels, hitchhiking is how I got around.  I can remember some amazing trips, like up to Cape Ann, to NYC from Lancaster PA, back to boarding school after missing the bus back from a sporting event.  My parents did not approve, lectured me on the dangers, but never flat out forbid my hitchhiking.   Later on, when I got my wheels, I can remember picking up a bunch of different hitchhikers, pretty much all guys, all young, all scruffy looking. Some of 'em had signs., some didn't.  There would be clusters of hitchhikers at key thruway exits. 
   Not any more.  I haven't seen a hitchhiker on a thru entrance in twenty years or more.   My kids never hitchhiked.  Nobody else's kids did it either.  I think it has died out. 
   I assume the missing children on milk cartons campaign scared parents and kids enough that kids quit hitching. 

Market place winners and losers

Loser: Windows.  Only 56% of the hits on my blog were from Windows machines.  Used to be Windows had 90+% market share.  Runner up Linux!  29%.  Hard to believe.  Linux works good but the multiple suppliers haven't convinced the market that all Linux programs will run on all flavors of Linux.  The rest of the hits were  from various cell phone OS like Android.

Winner:  Firefox.  Top browser, 57% of hits here. Beat out Chrome. Internet Exploder way down at 11%.  This after some net buzz about how Firefox was all washed up. 

He thinks they would vote Democratic

Obama just came out in favor of mandatory voting, everyone would be required to get out and vote.  He doubtless thinks the non voters would vote Democratic if you got them to the polls. 

The Two State Solution

We think this means a state of Israel for the Jews and a state of Palestine for the Palestinians.  US State Department is all in favor. Has been for years.  Israel has given the idea a test run, in Gaza, and it hasn't worked out well.  Israel removed the Jewish residents of Gaza, and turned the area over to the Palestinians.  Since then, Gaza has been firing rockets over the border, which is an act of war in the real world.  It got so bad the Israeli Army had to intervene last year, causing and taking casualties.  I think they did stop the rockets. 
   With that background,  Bebi said he would not favor the "two state solution" just before the Israeli election, which he won on Tuesday.  Our State Dept went ballistic, and after the election, Bebi softened his words about the two state solution.  I haven't bothered to look up just exactly what Bebi said each time.  But I can understand where he is coming from.  Gaza shows how bad the two state solution can be and surely plenty of Israelis don't want to have anything to do with it.  Backing off a bit to mollify the American State Dept is also understandable. 

How many boots on the ground does it take?

Depends.  Just a couple of guys, with laser designators and radios, and a BUFF full of smart bombs overhead, and great things can be accomplished.  Ask the Northern Alliance.  The Taliban had nearly wiped them out when 9/11 happened.  A few days later, they got their couple a guys, and their BUFF, and that turned everything around.  The Northern Alliance drove the Taliban clean out of Afghanistan and into hiding over the border in Pakistan within a matter of weeks. 
  Of course it can be pretty dangerous for the couple of guys.  They have to be right up on the front line, where bullets fly, and bad things happen.  But it can be fun, especially for guys who like making things go boom.
  But you would think just a thin stiffening of American soldiers, and a mob of locals, Peshmerga perhaps, and plenty of air support, and ISIS could become toast. Say a few tank companies to show the way, a plentiful supply of guns and ammunition for the locals, supplies flown in by air, some decent intel from the locals, and  a bit of luck and problem solved. 
   The way the newsies tell it, doing ISIS is as bad as doing WWI trench warfare over again.  I don't think it's that hard. 
   With luck, in 2016, we could elect a president who understands these things.