Who needs their own camera?

When you can Google images of nearly anything.  I'm making HO models of hopper cars.  So I Google "hoppers  Baltimore and Ohio" , and presto, a hundred photos of B&O hopper cars pop up, old ones, new ones, builder's broadsides, end views side views, three quarters views.  Then I can go for Hoppers, Chesapeake and Ohio, or hoppers Boston and Maine
   One thing to watch out for, half the photos on Google are of model hoppers.  Since I am modeling, I want photos of the real thing rather than some other modelers idea of what a hopper should look like.

So what ails the House Republicans, really?

The current Speaker of the House kerfuffle is fun to watch, but it means that House Republicans dislike each other too much to work together.  That much is clear from watching the TV news.  What is less clear is the why of the situation, and a description of the sides, (Two? Three? More?) and what the beefs are. Which side has which beef? 
  Is it some concrete issue or issues?  if so what are they?  Immigration?  taxes? Planned Parenthood? abortion? Syria? Ukraine? TPP?  Voter ID?  Gun control? all of the above?  Something else?  And if its issues, who is one which side[s]?   The TV newsies don't seem to know, which is not unusual, TV newsies know very little. 
  Is is personalities?  Some reps just cannot stand other reps?  If so, who cannot stand who?  How many are involved? 
  Is it pecking order?  Some reps want more influence, more juicy committee assignments, better office space? better parking spots?  some other perk that we don't know about?
  Is it strategy and tactics?  Such as shutting down the government vs cooperate and graduate?  Try to get some good legislation thru or just dig in your heels and oppose Obama at every turn on general principles?  Compromise with the Democrats or hold out for ideological purity even if it means you don't pass anything.
  

Steve Jobs, Product Champion

A lot of people, youngest son included, don't understand what Steve did that makes him important.  Steve was not an inventor.  His famous products, Apple II, Mac, Ipod-pad-phone used the standard technology of their times in straightforward ways.  There are few to no patentable ideas in these products.
   So what was Steve's role?  Steve was the guy who could tell a salable product from an also ran.  Long before prototypes were built, or market analysis done, Steve could look at the proposed product, when it was just a paper study, or a paper specification, and recognize the market beating products.  As executive, Steve was the guy who pushed the products he saw as successful thru research and development, into production, and marketed them successfully.  He didn't invent these products, he chose them , nurtured them and brought them to market.   And made Apple the wealthiest corporation in the world.
  I haven't seen the forthcoming movie about Steve, the reviews are unexciting, apparently the movie dwells on Steve's shortcomings and a father and family man.  That's regrettable, but a lot of men suffer simular failings.  Very few men have been as productive in business as Steve was.
  He is missed.

We can do better than McCarthy for Speaker

US Rep Kevin McCarthy is currently running to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House.  McCarthy has some problems.  First and foremost is raging hoof in mouth disease.  He brags that the House committee on Benghazi has been instrumental in bringing Clinton down in the polls.  That's super dumb.  Benghazi  is about why military support was denied a US ambassador under fire.  It's about why two US general officers were relieved of command that night.  Chairman Trey Goudy has bent over backwards to keep the committee working on real stuff, rather than becoming a get-Hillary operation.  And in one short brag on TV, McCarthy has blown all that away.  Nobody is ever going to believe the Benghazi committee is anything but political retribution now.
  Plus, McCarthy is Boehner's right hand man.  Expect more of the same, only less effective.  Boehner didn't get all that much done, but he was respected by every one, his word was good, and if there was a chance of talking people around to his point of view, Boehner could do it.  McCarthy lacks that kind of respect, especially now that he opened his big mouth and torpedoed the Benghazi investigation.  And, he will continue Boehner's policies, he approves of them, if he didn't he wouldn't be Boehner's #2 man.
   We ought to do better than McCarthy.

TV doesn't advertise for consumerism

Consumerism, that evil denounced by lefties, Popes, and communists.  Supposedly too much love for consumer products, like cars, nice houses, color TV, clothing, laptops, i-pod-pad-phone, that sort of stuff.  True believers are supposed to love hair shirts, poverty, raising their own vegetables.
   So I'm watching a late night movie on TV, the cheapy kind where you get ten minutes of movie followed by ten minutes of commercials.  Funny thing, few to none of those irritating commercials were pushing consumer products.  Lots of ads for pills and medicine, nearly as many ads from lawyers looking for plaintiffs so they can sue pill companies, ads for fast food, insurance, financial deals and credit cards, just one ad for cars (Honda).  Those ads ain't pushing consumer products, at least not the kind of consumer products that I could get into buying.  I suppose fast food does get consumed, but can you imagine the reaction of your kid after you gave him/her a happy meal as a Christmas gift?
   Consumerism is pretty much a spent force here in the US.  Which might account for why the economy sucks, low demand for consumer goods.

Free market capitalism makes us all rich.

The United States is the richest country in the world.  Our poor live better than the middle class in most places.  Our store shelves bulge with products, fresh vegetables, fruits, meat.  TV sets, computers, automobiles, refrigerators, electric power, clean running water, flush toilets, oil heat, and telephone are commonplace.  We can buy fresh produce any time of year. 
    Private enterprise capitalism brings all these benefits to us.  For instance, all the zillions of different things we need, from food clothing and shelter, to repair parts for every automobile manufactured since Henry Ford's time, to semiconductors of a million different types, light bulbs, hand tools, appliances, furniture, there must be a billion different things  for sale in the US.  And somehow, our factories produce just the right quantity of of each and every thing we need.  You can always find what ever it is you need or want.  The stores have enough stuff on the shelves but not too much.  This miracle of organization and planning happens automatically, and the answers come out right every time.  Supply and demand takes care of it.  When something runs short, the price rises, which encourages producers to produce more of it.  Or new producers to enter the market.  Likewise when demand falls, the price falls, and producers make less of it, or switch to other lines of product.
   The Soviets tried to operate without supply and demand.  The communists fixed the prices of everything and set up a giant bureaucracy in Moscow to issue production quotas to every producer in the Soviet Union.  Somehow they never got it right, and the Russians bounced from shortage to shortage.   Just recently Russian coal miners went out on strike because they couldn't get soap to wash up with coming off shift. I mean soap is a very simple commodity, it's been in production since Roman times.  And coming off shift in a coal mine, you need soap to get the coal dirt off your body.

    One of the things that makes the US dollar so strong, and so valued world wide, is US abundance.  An overseas holder of dollars knows that the Americans have plenty of every thing to sell.  And they sell it happily.  Show the money, and the product gets shipped.  Whereas a holder of Russian rubles is mostly out of luck The Russians don't have much to sell, and much of what they produce is so shoddy that no one really wants it.  They can do crude oil, vodka, and weapons, but that's about it. 
    So let's stop bashing capitalism, and stop talking up communism (aka socialism).  Capitalism makes us all rich.  Communism makes us all miserable. 

Sail a 700 foot container ship into a hurricane,

And then suffer engine failure.  The ship sinks and all on board are lost.  Lifeboats don't help in a Cat 4 hurricane. 
   Dumb and dumber.  The hurricane's location was on all the TV channels, it wasn't moving very fast, even a sluggish container ship could out run it.  You gotta be really really dumb to sail  any kind of ship into a hurricane, especially a top heavy unseaworthy container ship. 
   Dumb number two.  Leaving port with the ship's engines so messed up that they fail at sea.  Without engine power,  any ship will broach broadside to the wind and get battered til it sinks.  With engine power you can keep the ship's bow into the wind, taking the blows of the sea on the strongest part of the ship.