The Computer Science major

Computer Science as a major has good employment odds.  Plenty of entry level jobs are open to grads with no experience, but hold a computer science degree.  There is plenty of room for career growth.  You can work for big companies or little startups.  There can be travel involved, there are always customers having trouble with the product, and someone has to go out to the customer's site and get things working. With some experience you can set up as a consultant and make a good deal of money.  Consultants have to buy their own health insurance, but the rates they command make that easy. 
   To be employable, you need to learn to program in the C language, and it's follow on, C++.  You also need Java, and Python.  Check the college course catalog and make sure they offer all four languages.  If they don't, think about another college.  Plan to take two semesters of each programming language.
   Back in the day, Computer Science used to offer courses in compiler design.  Don't bother, all the compilers ever needed have been coded by now.  Assembler language is also obsolete, the current compilers create code nearly as fast as the tightest assembler code, and  the compiler language is faster to write, easier to debug, and easier to maintain.  But, assembler is fun, I  did a lot of projects in assembler over the years and enjoyed them.  But I would not allow a project to use assembler today, I'd insist that it be done in C.
   You don't need all that much math to program.  Beyond algebra, a course in statistics is useful, integral calculus is useful, a lotta computer programs just do numerical integration.  But you don't have to be a math wizz to be successful in programming. 
   Courses in the "domain" are good.  Computer science treats the computer and the languages, it doesn't do much about the problems that computers are used to solve (the domain).  I'd get in a course in economics, and a course in physics.
  Computer Science will offer courses in software project management, but one is probably enough.  They have been pontificating about project management for 50 years, and we still have projects come in late, over budget and inoperative.  Look at the Obamacare exchanges.   
  

Smokescreen? Release Bin Laden documents after Ramadi?

TV newsies are buzzing about the release of about 100 documents off the laptops seized when we got Bin Laden years ago. 
Is Obama doing this to distract public opinion from the loss of Ramadi to ISIS last weekend?

Britain Begins by Barry Cunliffe.

I picked this up in DC last week at "Politics and Prose", a nice independent bookstore out on Connecticut Avenue.  Picks up the story in the ice ages and carries it up to the Norman Conquest.  Does all the archeology and all the historical sources starting with Pytheas "On the Ocean", going on thru Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Gildas and Bede.   Lots of good color illustrations of archeological finds, hand axes, gold hoards, weapons, torcs.  Good maps.  It is heavy on archeology, light on political history.  It's up to date, the last book I read on this era was Alcock's "Arthur's Britain" published in the 1970's.  It does not change Alcock's story much.  Apparently the archeology is settled, with little new finds after 1970. 
  Naturally, we readers want to hear about Stonehenge, and King Arthur.  Stonehenge is dated, described and illustrated but little more is said.  The elaborate astronomical speculation in "Stonehenge Decoded" is not mentioned.  King Arthur is mentioned, and dated but little more is said.  The problem with King Arthur is a nearly totally lack of contemporary written sources.  Most of the Arthur legend that we know and love was created 600 years after Arthur's lifetime by Geoffrey of Monmouth.  Many of the better Arthurian tales are romantic stories written by late medieval authors whose names and dates we know, for example  Christian de Troyes.   The only near contemporary writer is Gildas, who simply never mentions the name of Arthur.  Bede, writing a couple of hundred years later never mentions Arthur.  All we have for contemporary writing is a couple of lines from an Easter table from Gwynedd.  What we have is a medieval copy of the original.  Arguments against the authenticity of this document are easy to make.  Too bad, I love the Arthurian tales as much as anyone, and it is a little disappointing to find so little historical evidence for Arthur's very existence.
  I enjoyed "Britain Begins",  but I would have enjoyed it a bit more if it had covered the political side of the story more. 

$150 million for pure papework?

According to Aviation Week, NASA is considering paying $150 million to "man rate" an interim upper stage on the "Senate Launch System" heavy lift booster.  "Man Rating" is a pure paperwork exercise, checking and recording where every bit, piece, nut, and bolt came from, and what testing it passed.  Paperwork costs a lot, weighs a lot, and does not contribute to the mission. 
  But NASA is in love with it. 

Words of the Weasel Part 40

Heard on a TV pill commercial.  "Issues with intimacy".  Ordinary folk say "Can't get it up."

Ballista

Pre gun powder artillery used by the Greeks and the Romans.  Looked like a giant crossbow mounted on a stand.  Could throw bolts or softball sized rocks.  Only, it differed from the crossbow in that it didn't use a self bow (single stiff piece of wood or metal bent to shoot an arrow).  The classical ballista had a skein of stretchy cord or fiber or human hair, into which a wooden arm was pressed.  Pulling back the arm wound up the skein and when let go, the arm was snapped forcefully back into position, launching the projectile.  Ballista had a pair of skeins and a pair of arms.
   The secret of making those skeins, getting the windings stretchy enough, was lost in classical times.  Later medievals used the trebuchet, a weight powered stone thrower, since no one could make a ballista any more.  Modern attempts to recreate the classical ballista have never been able to make skeins stretchy enough. 
  Well, on TV, the History channel, they had a working ballista the other day.  Looked pretty good, shot pretty well.  They used an old cow skull as a target and had no trouble hitting it dead center with a bolt nearly as big as a modern javelin.  Slick.  They used a cop's speed radar gun to clock the projectile at 70 mph.
  The History channel didn't say anything about the skeins they used.  Did they rediscover the ancient secret to making them?  Or did they cheat and use modern rubber bungee cord, something unobtainable in classic times? 
   Any how it made some fun TV.

Hypothetical Questions

The TV newsies are having great fun asking Republicans "Knowing what we know now, would you have attacked Iraq?".  The newsies love this one.  No matter which way the candidate answers this one, it makes him look bad.  We haven't had as good a question since "have you stopped beating your wife" made the rounds.
  No Republican wants to say Bush was wrong going into Iraq. Everyone knows it was the threat of an Iraqi nuclear program that convinced Bush and the Congress to declare war on Iraq.  Back in the day, our noble intelligence services produced evidence of a Saddam Hussein  bomb program strong enough to convince even Colin Powell, an experienced and respected man who most of us trusted.  After the invasion, no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program was discovered, and to the credit of the Bush administration, no attempt to fabricate evidence was attempted.  Today, knowing that Saddam didn't have nukes, and wasn't anywhere close to having nukes, nobody would have invaded Iraq.  Everyone knows that, and there is little to be gained in asking the question, other than embarrassing Republicans, something which the average TV newsie loves to do. 
   Better questions to ask all candidates.
1.  What will you do about ISIS?
2.  What will you do to prevent Iran from getting nukes?
3.  What will you do to get  US economic growth back up to 3%?
4.  What job killing regulations will you repeal?