Sunny Skies in NH

Sun is out, it's getting a little crispy, but not so crispy as to have frost.  TV is full of hurricane stories, but you would never know it from looking at the sky around here.

I oughta turn in my U of Delaware degree

I got my engineering degree from University of Delaware back in the early 1970's.  It was a decent place, with excellent faculty, and reasonable students.  Since then things seem to have gone downhill.
   Back some years ago, FIRE denounced Delaware for running an indoctrination program on the dorms.  The RA's  were holding mandatory meetings, advocating all sorts of lefty multi culti things, and quizzing students about their sexual activity, and sexual identity.  After the FIRE story broke, the alumni (myself included) sent in a blizzard of disapproval letters, emails, and phone calls.  It was enough, and the resident indoctrination policy stopped.
   Now we have a new story.  Students reported nooses hanging from a tree near campus.  Hate crime they cried.  Police investigated next day and found the "nooses" were actually the remains of paper lanterns from an event held on the premises months ago.  Students so wanted a hate crime to demonstrate against, that they totally ignored the police report and went on to hold demonstrations. 
   Back when I was a student at U of D, the students were better balanced, better informed, and not looking for a cause celebre to spark political activity. 
   Maybe I should turn in my degree.
  

Another Homicidal Maniac allowed to run loose

Flips out and kills six, seven, eight, or more college students in Oregon.  Before the bodies are cold, Obama is on TV bleating for gun control. 
  How about some nut case control?  Someone should have noticed that something wasn't right before he started killing.  Parents, teachers, relatives, friends, co workers, someone.  Some psychiatrists should have examined him, diagnosed him as a homicidal maniac, and committed him to a mental hospital. 
   Well that didn't happen.  Apparently it never does.  If someone else had been carrying, they might has stopped him.  Wanna bet the college forbade carrying on campus? 

What to read for light reading?

Long ago I used to read "mainstream fiction" and science fiction.  The mainstream drifted off course, yielding immense thick tomes with wimpy protagonists who whined a lot but never did anything.  Science fiction especially back in the John W. Campbell era was more readable.  Likeable protagonists had missions, set out to accomplish them, and usually succeeded.  The stories had life, often had thought provoking future societies, and the story moved. 
   Well they don't right science fiction much any more.  The really great golden age authors are mostly dead by now, and the few survivors are getting too old to write anymore.  The newer authors mostly try to do Tolkien style fantasy because they never took physics, chemistry, and biology in high school and feel they are to ignorant to do science fiction.  Fantasy, especially when you can invoke magic, means you can dream up anything you like, you don't have to know anything.  Trouble is, none of the Tolkien wanna-be authors have written anything nearly as good as Tolkien.
   At this time, I have started reading what the trade calls "Young Adult" books, mostly fantasies.  At least they have likable teen age protagonists, who have a mission, go out and do it, and don't whine. Rick Riordan's  stories of classical gods and goddesses surviving into modern times (21st century) are fun.  Phillip Pullman's stories set in an alternate earth are good.  George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones stuff is OK except he keeps killing of all the good guys and letting the bad guys flourish.  

Volkswagen, Who Dunit?

I wonder just who at VW was in on the emissions cheating software.  It could have be just a single programmer.  Despite code reviews,  only the programmer, usually a single individual, really knows what his code does.  I can visualize a clever programmer thinking up this scheme, and being so pleased with his cleverness that he slips it into production code, without anyone's knowledge.
   I can also see someone in middle management thinking up the scheme, and taking it to his boss for OK.  And I can see that boss going to his boss, right up the organization until the CEO's office is reached.  I can also visualize senior management, a bunch of bean counters, not really understanding what they were being asked to approve. 
   I can also visualize someone in engineering thinking up schedules of fuel injector settings vs engine RPM, in fact maybe three such schedules, full throttle acceleration, economical cruise, and "idle"  Idle being defined any time the car isn't moving.  And passing these schedules over to the programming staff, who codes them up without really understanding what's going on. 
   Or, someone in marketing, scheming to get into the US market with diesel cars, talks to some old buddy over in engineering or the software group about how to get the diesels to pass the much stiffer US emissions tests. 
   I wonder what really did happen.  And will we ever learn?

New TV Season

Last night was ABC.  I watched the Muppets at 8 PM.  Not great.  They were more entertaining on Sesame St, or in th various Muppet Movies.  In a half hour show, nothing much happened.  Miss Piggy took up with a live actor (forget his name) but she never really told off Kermit. Too bad, while raising three children I got to see a LOT of Sesame St, and the Muppets were a big part of it. 
  So, at 9PM I watched a Marvel Comic book show, Agents of Shield.  Meh.  Again nothing much happened.  So fair martial arts moves, one confused male rescue, but no resolution of his problems. 
   So back to Netflix for me.

Trump's Tax Plan

Not too bad, not too good.  I like the idea of just a few tax brackets, and lower rates all around. Scrubbing the "Alternate Minimum Tax" is an excellent idea.  Recalculating my taxes for "AMT" takes as much time as figuring them straight up on the first pass.  Scrubbing the death tax is a good idea.  Most small American businesses, gas stations, motels, barber shops, restaurants, stores, landscaping companies and the like, are owned by the individual who created them.  When this guy dies,  they levy estate tax on the entire business, often as bad as 20%.  Most of these small businesses don't have that sort of money, and if they do, they cannot afford giving Uncle 20% of the business in cash.  If the owner could pass the business down to an heir, tax free, it might stay in business and keep employing people.  As it is, death of the owner is death of the small business. 
I clicked out to the Trump website to read the whole thing.  There ain't much more to it than what The Donald gave out on TV yesterday.  It's short and vague.  Doesn't list the "loopholes" he plans to close.
   I don't like the notion of the bottom tax bracket being zero.  I think everyone should pay something, if only a few percent, to let them feel the pain of taxes.  Especially as the bottom half of the income groups is the one that sucks up more government bennies that the others.