Is my laptop listening to me?

Have I been bugged by my laptop?  Who knows.  Yesterday the Chrome Browser by Google was accused of flipping on the internal mike and sending all the audio to Google.  I don't use Chrome, but if Chrome can do it others will do it too.  I dug into the wordy but vague instructions for my HP Pavilion no-model-number laptop.  You can go to Control Panel, find an applet "Sound" and disable the internal microphone.  At least in software.  Who knows what Windows bug will allow hostile code to turn the mike on again?  The internal mike is hidden under a groovy looking perforated panel above the keyboard.  I don't quite fear audio snoopers enough to take the laptop apart and risk breaking something.  I did bother to put a piece of tape over the internal camera lens. 

The Second World War by Antony Beevor

It's comprehensive,  It's long (863 pages). It's up-to-date (2012).  It covers all the lesser known second world war actions such as Kolkin Gol, where the Soviets whipped the Japanese,  the Ichigo offensive in China, and the Hurtgen forest operations.  The author is a Brit, but he joins in with numerous others in trashing Montgomery.  He covers the really grisly parts of the war, the  Holocaust, treatment of prisoners, in horrible detail.  He doesn't believe in strategic bombing. 
   His writing style is pedestrian, "They did this, then they did that, then something else happened, ...".  Little to no background information, little discussion of why things happened, no explanation of might-have-beens.  Little to no discussion of why the winners won and the losers lost.  Little discussion of the political angles of the war and the peace, such as could the Soviet takeover of eastern and central Europe been avoided? 
   I have read better World War II histories, starting with Winston Churchill's war memoirs (6 volumes), John Keegan's Second World War, Rick Atkinsen's  Liberation Trilogy, Samuel Elliot Morrison's Two Ocean War, Harold Spector's Eagle against the Sun, William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and many others

Nutcase control

The horrible killing in Charleston SC has brought the gun controllers out in force.   This is misguided, and distasteful.  The gun isn't the problem, the crazy man pulling the trigger is the problem.  I say anyone who kills nine people, worshiping,  inside a church, is crazy.  That's just not human behavior. It may not meet the lawyer's definition of insane, but what do lawyers know, really?
   What should have happened, sometime in the past.  Someone, family, friends, teachers, should have noticed that this young man Dylan Roof was doing and saying strange things.  Some competent psychiatrists should have examined Roof, decided that he was a dangerous nut case, and popped him into a mental hospital.  We used to do things like that, but 1960's activists managed to close mental hospitals all across the country and make it practically impossible to involuntarily commit anyone, no matter how crazy they might be. 
   In our free society,we are reluctant to grant anyone, even proper courts of law, that kind of power over citizens.  The soviets showed us how political opponents could be taken out of action by committing them to mental institutions against their will. 
   I don't believe we can ever have an airtight system but we can do better than we do.  At a minimum we ought to have some empty beds in mental hospitals for those clear cut cases, where everyone, authorities, family, friends, agree that so-and-so is crazy, there is somewhere to put them.  Up here there are no empty beds and the patient winds up handcuffed to a bed in a hospital emergency room, often for several days. 

"World's greatest Deliberative Body" needs an overhaul

That's what the US Senate likes to call itself.  But it indulges in procedures that allow members to conceal their votes from their constituents.  It plays the "let's vote on whether to have a vote" game which is a way to kill a bill without actually being seen to vote against it.  It  gives the leadership a private veto of bills it doesn't like.  When the leadership doesn't want a bill to pass, it just refuses to bring the bill to the floor.  It allows individual members a blackball on appointments.  If a member doesn't like a candidate for a judgeship or other federal office, he can file a "hold", a secret note saying don't bring this guy up for a vote.   "Holds" are secret, nobody outside the Senate knows they exist, or who filed them. 
   The Senate ought to give up this "vote to have a vote" malarkey.  All bills should come to the floor, for one vote, pass or fail, each session.   In New Hampshire, with a 400 + person legislature, every member's bills are always brought up for a vote.  No reason the 100 person US Senate cannot do as well. 

Making haste slowly, and cost enhancement

After two previous snafu's, Boeing got the Air Force contract for the KC-46 tanker.  That only took 7 or 8 years of well paid lawyer work to sort out.  The original idea was to buy the well proven Boeing 767 airliner, take out the seats and fill the cabin with tanks.  Somewhere along the line, the gold plate boys slipped in a few cost enhancements.  They called for the aircraft wiring to be redesigned to USAF specs.  Never mind that the commercial 767 has been flying safely for 25 years using Boeing designed wiring.  Never mind that Boeing knows more about how to wire an aircraft than everyone in the Air Force all put together.  And to add insult to injury, someone dropped the ball, and the first few aircraft off the line lacked the USAF spec wiring.  Boeing last year took a $425 million pre tax charge for this.  Cost enhancement at work, again. 
   And then someone slipped in a requirement for extensive flight testing.  They are talking about making 65 test flights a month, which is a helova lotta flying.  I doubt they will make that schedule.  Never mind that this is a well proven commercial airliner with an excellent safety record going back 25 years, we are gonna flight test it like it is a brand new clean sheet design that have never flown before.  Cost enhancement at work, again.

Infantry tactics, close vs open order

Close order tactics go back to the Greek phalanx.  You form your men into a line, shoulder to shoulder, have them march in step to keep the line straight, and have at it.  At Marathon a much smaller force of Athenian heavy infantry defeated utterly a far larger Persian army.  Close order tactics were the only tactics known from that day down to modern times.  The replacement of spears an pikes by muskets didn't change tactics much.  You still formed your men into line, in the open, and had at it.  The colorful uniforms and tall hats of the period were designed to make your formed line of troops look bigger, taller, and more dangerous to the enemy.   Close order tactics persisted down to World War I.  Officers liked them because it kept the men together, in sight, and within earshot of shouted commands.  At the battle of the Somme in 1915, the British infantry "went over the top" in line and marched thru no mans land toward the German trenches.  The Germans machine gunned the assaulting British with gusto. 
   Open order tactics go back to the battle of Kings Mountain in the American Revolution.  A superior force of loyalist militia, commanded by the famous Major Patrick Ferguson was wiped out in South Carolina by a patriot militia composed of Scots Irish back woodsmen.  Major Ferguson positioned his men on high ground, in line, ready for an infantry attack which never came.  The patriot backwoods men moved up under cover, in small groups and when close enough, fired into the massed loyalists.  The loyalists replied with volleys of musketry and sometimes massed bayonet charges.  Some two thirds of the loyalists were shot down against patriot casualties of  only a few dozens.  At the end, Major Ferguson attempted to break out of the encirclement on horseback.  The patriots fired a volley and blew the major out of his saddle.  Later they counted seven bullet wounds in Ferguson's body. 
   Open order tactics didn't catch on in a big way until the very end of World War I.  Dubbed "Ludendorf's infiltration tactics" they contributed to the success of the last German drive on the Western Front in 1918.  Open order was adopted generally after that.  In modern form, a dozen men, a squad, with a light machine gun, led by an NCO, is the lowest level of organization.  On attack, the squad moves up until resistance is encountered.  At which point, the machine gun is emplaced in a likely location, and under cover of its fire, the riflemen move up until they reach another likely location for the machine gun.  The riflemen then give covering fire while the machine gun is moved up closer to the enemy.  This process is repeated until the objective is taken. 

Best announcement speech yet

Donald Trump.  Announced that he is really running.  Spoke for an hour, live on Fox News.  Talks good.  Speaks using facts, numbers, concrete examples.  Makes campaign promises.  Specific ones, ones that we can understand.  Published his net worth, on TV, he says he is worth $8 billion and some change.  Compared to Trump, everyone else is speaking in bafflegab, vague sound goods that really don't mean anything.  Listening to The Donald, you know exactly what he means to do.  And it all sounds realistic, like he could make it happen. 
   Lets see how far good speeches can take him.  I mean Obama got to be president mostly cause he gave an inspiring speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.  Why cannot Trump go as far, especially as he is a much better speaker than Obama?