Robert A Heinlein vs Andre Norton

There is a brouhaha going in the science fiction community, surrounding the Hugo awards.  The Hugo is a top award, given to the truly top drawer authors.  According to the flak coming out of the combat zone, the Hugo's used to be controlled by a New York publishing house,  Baen Books if I remember aright.  A movement in fandom arose to take over control of the Hugos and cut the Baen people out of it.  Sides were taken, flames were posted.  I am far enough from ground zero that I don't really know who is who and what is what, and the merits of either side.  But the fireworks are fun to watch.
   A long internet ramble got diverted into comparing Robert A. Heinlein with Andre Norton as writers.  I'm familiar with both writers, having encountered both of them them in grade school.  Liked both, have read all, or nearly all the books they ever published.  I was a little surprised to see all the comparisons.  I always thought Heinlein was the better writer of the two.  Heinlein's stories were always new and different, he seldom repeated a story, where Norton's stories were pretty much all coming of age stories with very young protagonists.  Heinlein invented strong new characters for each story and seldom reused them in later stories.  Friday, Oscar Gordon, Johnny Rico, Podkayne, Manny Davis, Michael Valentine Smith, and many others were all unique, interesting, but only appeared in one book and were replaced by other characters in later books.  Andre's character was pretty much the same book after book.  She gave him/her a new name in the new book, but as a reader I knew this character pretty well, he/she never did anything to surprise me. 
   And, a lot of people sign their Internet posts with Heinlein quotes.  I don't remember seeing any Norton quotes out there.
   Thus endeth today's bit of trivia.  

Obama's Iran nuclear deal

So what does the United States get out of this deal?  The Iranians get a lot, they get $150billion in assets unfrozen, they get to sell oil on the world market, and use the global banking system to pay for stuff they buy and sell.   They get the US and its allies to lift other economic sanctions. 
  What do we get out of the deal?   I haven't even heard the Iranians promise not to build a bomb.  They still hold American hostages.   The IAEC gets to inspect some sites, after a 24 day warning period. 
   This deal is not a treaty.  If it's not a treaty, then we are not bound by it, the next administration could denounce it.  I assume that same thing applies to the  Iranians.  Since it is not a treaty, they are not bound by it either. 

Reduce income inequality, Get the Economy growing again.

Loosing your job makes your income as unequal as it can get.  Get the economy to grow again, and hiring will pick up.  Just giving jobs to the unemployed will do more to reduce income inequality than anything else anyone can do. 
   Bernie Saunders is whining about income inequality but doesn't say what he plans to do about it.  I bet Bernie wants to pass a soak the rich tax.  It will punish people he dislikes, and give him more money to spend on free stuff.
   I think we would do more good by getting the economy growing again.  Build Keystone XL pipeline.  Reform corporate taxes to complete with the rest of the world.  Right now US tax is far higher than places like Britain, Mexico, Canada, and others.  US companies are just picking up stakes and moving overseas to get themselves a solid tax break.  Permit export of US crude oil, and in fact everything except maybe nuclear weapons.  Lease federal land for oil exploration.  Stop raiding places like Gibson Guitar on trumped up charges.  Drop the war on coal.  Sort out Wall St deals between investment for economic growth and plain old gambling.  Tax the bejesus out of the gambling deals. Repeal all federal regulations passed over the last few years. 

Scary Sharp works good

Doing woodwork as I do, I do quite a bit of sharpening of chisels and plane irons and the like.  For years, I did the obvious thing, use an oil stone, with a drop of 3 in 1 oil on it.  It's a synthetic silicon carbide stone with a coarse side and a fine side.   I never got into the mystic of natural Arkansas stones or Japanese waterstones  or Tormek machines, all of which get a lot of coverage in the enthusiast press.
    I just did pick up on the Scary Sharp technique.  This does away with stones and recommends using sandpaper, stuck down on a piece of glass.  And it works.  You can get some really fine sandpaper, 600 grit and finer, often from an auto parts store.  I stuck a piece of 600 grit down on a piece of glass and gave it a whirl.  I lubricated the sand paper with a few drops of water.  A little polishing takes all the scratches off the edge and gives it a nice shine.  And the tools do cut better. 
   I now make three passes on a tool, once on the coarse side of the oilstone, one on the fine side of the  oilstone, and the last pass on the 600 grit sandpaper.  I suppose I could use a few more grades of sand paper and omit the stones completely, but I don't see the point.  The 600 grit is close to stropping, which requires a thick leather pad or strop, charged with some really fine grit abrasive.  Local stores up here don't carry strops or the abrasive, but they do carry sandpaper.

   I have a bench grinder but I only use that for really heavy duty blade reshaping, say grinding out a nick.  Or on lathe chisels which get really worn down doing lathe work. 

Extraordinarily ugly fashion ad.

The Saturday WSJ comes in extra thick, due to a huge slick paper fashion magazine tucked inside.  It's 3/8 inch thick and weighs about a pound.  Hefty it is.  Back cover has a really truly ugly ad.  The model is one of those rail thin stick figures.  She is modeling a skirt suit, jacket plus mini skirt, made from a "super tweed" synthetic fabric in brown and black, extra nubbly.  Her face is OK but her expression  is off putting.  Her stance is weird, and awkward.  She has her legs spread wide, and her hands are clasped in front of her crotch. And she is wearing black combat boots.  And her handbag is a cartoon.   Louis Vuitton "Series 3"
   What sort of woman would buy that outfit, let alone appear in public wearing it?

Buying a laptop with the WSJ

It was one of those Wall St Journal lifestyle articles.  Mentioned favorite laptop brands.  The mac books got top rating at $2000 or so.  After nattering on for half a page, the closing advice was to pay at least $600 for a laptop to avoid unspecified problems.   I chuckled to myself.  I got my HP Pavilion for $300 down at Staples 6 months ago.  Works fine, keyboard has decent touch and feel.  Bags of room on hard drive, runs Firefox, Office, Picassa, Orcad, C++ compiler, and other stuff just fine.  I'm not a gamer so I don't stress the processor much.
   Anyhow, I'm thinking that particular WSJ column was more sales pitch for pricey laptops than real practical advice

Environmental Pollution Agency Spill

I hear the EPA administrator wringing her hands on TV about the spill.  Not a word about finding the person[s] responsible and firing them. 
    According to the Wall St Journal all that soup had been sitting in that mine, not hurting anything for better than 100 years.  EPA brought in a backhoe to clear away the opening to the mine, and knocked down a dam that have been holding the soup inside the abandoned mine, letting it flood into the river.