The French flew a mission to Rakka, some burb in Syria that ISIS calls its capital, today. As retaliation for the Paris massacre on Friday, an air strike on Monday ain't too shabby. Ten fighters dropped twenty bombs. Massive this is not. Even if some Fox newsies call it massive.
In the old days, I would stand on the flight line in the early morning at Korat RTAFB as we launched the morning strike on Hanoi, always 60 F-105's loaded with six 750 pounders apiece. And I always watched the afternoon strike, another 60 aircraft with six bombs apiece take off around 1 o'clock. I'm not gonna call 10 sorties and 20 bombs "massive".
Monday, November 16, 2015
Obama stays eloquent for 45 minutes on TV
The question all the reporters asked was "What are you gonna do about the Paris massacre?" Obama evaded gracefully, evaded the followup questions, and managed to spend 45 minutes on live TV saying that he isn't going to do anything on account of the Paris massacre. He still wants to bring in a LOT of Syrian refugees to the US. He isn't going to take any action, military or otherwise against ISIS.
Obama claimed that Syrian refugees would be "vetted" before they are allowed into the US. Hah. Tell me about how you gonna do that. Pick up the phone and call Baghdad? And ask if Mohammed so-and-so is an ISIS terrorist? Who's gonna answer that phone? Assad's flunkies? ISIS, the other rebel groups? And even if they wanted to, can they check public records in a country undergoing a civil war? I don't think so.
Syrian refugees are a gamble. Most of 'em are probably harmless refugees, some of 'em are ISIS, some of 'em are Al Quada, some of 'em are other bad things. And they all look alike.
Obama claimed that Syrian refugees would be "vetted" before they are allowed into the US. Hah. Tell me about how you gonna do that. Pick up the phone and call Baghdad? And ask if Mohammed so-and-so is an ISIS terrorist? Who's gonna answer that phone? Assad's flunkies? ISIS, the other rebel groups? And even if they wanted to, can they check public records in a country undergoing a civil war? I don't think so.
Syrian refugees are a gamble. Most of 'em are probably harmless refugees, some of 'em are ISIS, some of 'em are Al Quada, some of 'em are other bad things. And they all look alike.
Sword of Summer, by Rick Riordan
It's out, it has made the WSJ best selling hardback fiction. Subtitled "Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard". I enjoyed it. Rick Riordan started writing about Percy Jackson, a teen aged New York kid who gets mixed up with the gods of Greek mythology. Those were good enough to get the first two books made into fairly decent movies. This book has a teen aged Boston street kid get mixed up with the gods of Norse mythology. As a long time resident of Boston, I enjoyed the various local references, Longfellow Bridge, Charles St, Boston Aquarium, Bunker Hill, all places I have been to and know fairly well.
It's a "young adult" book but I liked it, even if I am no longer a young adult. The protagonist is a decent teenager, who is given (stuck with) a horrible problem, he rises to the occasion, and with some help from his friends, wins thru in the end. There is a gutsy girl friend, some strange relatives, and some difficult to handle gods. Good fun.
It's a "young adult" book but I liked it, even if I am no longer a young adult. The protagonist is a decent teenager, who is given (stuck with) a horrible problem, he rises to the occasion, and with some help from his friends, wins thru in the end. There is a gutsy girl friend, some strange relatives, and some difficult to handle gods. Good fun.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Picking a College
College is VERY expensive. Too expensive to waste. You go to college to improve your prospects of a good job after graduation, to learn something of value, and to graduate, actually get that degree.
You want to avoid colleges like Mizzou, which made nationwide headlines after it's president resigned under pressure from black radicals. No teaching or learning is gonna happen there, not for months, and a showing a Mizzou degree to an employer will get you laughed at now.
So how do you weed out the crazy places? Well, first off, visit their website. What activities do they take pride in? Opening a new laboratory or running off a climate change demo? Check the student groups on campus. Chapters of things like the American Physical Association or IEEE are good signs, chapters of ACLU or SDS are bad signs. Count the faculty, tenured professors and part timer "adjunct" professors. Count the student body. Divide students by faculty members to find the student faculty ratio. Count the number of courses offered. Sort the courses between real learning (English, physics, history, math, etc) and talky talky courses (gender studies, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies,art history, etc.). Remember that professors of talky-talk courses are apt to egg students on to doing political demos with non negotiable demands.
Visit the campus and talk to students and faculty. Get the students to talk about the faculty. If the students are contemptuous of the faculty, that's a bad sign. If the faculty are contemptuous of students, free market capitalism, American exceptionalism, and first amendment freedoms, that's a bad sign. Read the posters on the bulletin boards. Find some college blogs and read them when you get home.
You are looking for a place with a reasonable campus attitude, like we are all here to learn stuff, and we understand that as American college students we have it pretty good in life. You want to avoid a place full of grievances, racism, class envy, and spite. If everyone is mad at something or somebody, the place may blow up either while you are there, or after you graduate, reducing the value of your expensive degree.
You want to avoid colleges like Mizzou, which made nationwide headlines after it's president resigned under pressure from black radicals. No teaching or learning is gonna happen there, not for months, and a showing a Mizzou degree to an employer will get you laughed at now.
So how do you weed out the crazy places? Well, first off, visit their website. What activities do they take pride in? Opening a new laboratory or running off a climate change demo? Check the student groups on campus. Chapters of things like the American Physical Association or IEEE are good signs, chapters of ACLU or SDS are bad signs. Count the faculty, tenured professors and part timer "adjunct" professors. Count the student body. Divide students by faculty members to find the student faculty ratio. Count the number of courses offered. Sort the courses between real learning (English, physics, history, math, etc) and talky talky courses (gender studies, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies,art history, etc.). Remember that professors of talky-talk courses are apt to egg students on to doing political demos with non negotiable demands.
Visit the campus and talk to students and faculty. Get the students to talk about the faculty. If the students are contemptuous of the faculty, that's a bad sign. If the faculty are contemptuous of students, free market capitalism, American exceptionalism, and first amendment freedoms, that's a bad sign. Read the posters on the bulletin boards. Find some college blogs and read them when you get home.
You are looking for a place with a reasonable campus attitude, like we are all here to learn stuff, and we understand that as American college students we have it pretty good in life. You want to avoid a place full of grievances, racism, class envy, and spite. If everyone is mad at something or somebody, the place may blow up either while you are there, or after you graduate, reducing the value of your expensive degree.
Democratic TV Debate last night
It came on late, 9 PM. We are down to Hillary, Bernie, and O'Malley. Due to the Paris massacre, they opened up with foreign policy. All three tried to sound tough without talking about sending US forces to deal with ISIS. No one mentioned Obama's troop withdrawal from Iraq that turned the place over to ISIS. O'Malley wanted more and better intelligence. He failed to mention that intelligence does us little good without the will to act on it, to strike the enemy. All three were four square for doing something, but they all avoided promising real action. Everyone was in favor of having the locals, Turks, Sunnis, Saudis, Egyptians, anybody except Israel, get in the fight.
After the first commercial break, they changed the subject to free stuff, how much each candidate would furnish, how high they would set the federal minimum wage ($15 vs $12), and how a few harmless soak-the-rich taxes would pay for it all without raising the national debt. Right.
I went to bed before it was over. God help the United States if any one of those turkeys becomes president.
After the first commercial break, they changed the subject to free stuff, how much each candidate would furnish, how high they would set the federal minimum wage ($15 vs $12), and how a few harmless soak-the-rich taxes would pay for it all without raising the national debt. Right.
I went to bed before it was over. God help the United States if any one of those turkeys becomes president.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Paris
First, my sincere sympathies for the victims of this unprovoked terrorism. To loose a loved one to terrorism is a greatest sadness I can think of.
The only thing for us to do, is get them before they get us. Obama is worthless for this, he lacks the stones to even call them Islamic extremists. Maybe the French can lead the way, they are a second rank industrialized power, with an army. They could whip a third world insurgency. If they wanted to, they could send a decent sized force to Syria to clean house.
The only thing for us to do, is get them before they get us. Obama is worthless for this, he lacks the stones to even call them Islamic extremists. Maybe the French can lead the way, they are a second rank industrialized power, with an army. They could whip a third world insurgency. If they wanted to, they could send a decent sized force to Syria to clean house.
Washing Windows 8
The Micro$ofties stuffed Windows 8 chock a block full of crapware, programs that suck up RAM and CPU time but don't actually do anything for you. Every so often I go out on a crapware hunt, and I always find something. Today I scored three kills. First off is a program "DasHost.exe". It is supposed to alert you to incoming email, sometimes. My email client, Thunderbird, has been successfully detecting incoming email for years with out it. After a net check, the consensus of opinion was "worthless", so I went after it. It's a service. Services are little (and some times not so little) programs that Windows runs behind your back. They all suck up precious RAM, and hog CPU time. They show up in Task Manager as processes and there is a special Windows program to manage them. Go to Control Panel. Pick Admin. Tools. Pick "Services". Find "Device Association Service. First STOP the Device Association Service. This shuts down the copy running in RAM at that moment. Then hit "properties" and change the startup type to "disabled". That preventsWindows from starting it up on the next boot.
While you are in there, find service "Themes" and give it the same treatment. Themes suppores the fancy Aeroglass look in the display. It sucks up a lot of CPU time and I don't like the look, I prefer the standard old Windows look.
My last kill today was "Power2Go Gadget". This is not a Micro$oft program, and several websites called it useless. It is NOT a service, so you cannot zap it thru the Services program, like Dashost and Themes. I found it with Task Manager, and the Windows 8 Task Manager can stop it, and prevent it from reloading (disable it). I'll double check tomorrow to see if it stays dead, but it's stopped now.
For doing all this, laptop feels livelier, it can keep up with my typing now.
Be careful messing with services. Back in XP, there were a couple of services, Remote Job Entry for one, that were essential to Windows. If you disabled Remote Job Entry in XP, Windows would never boot again. The only fix was to reinstall Windows from scratch, a tedious task, especially if you lacked the install CD-ROM discs. I suspect the Micro$ofties have planted similar booby traps in Win 8, but I don't know what they are. So don't disable anything unless you are sure, or have searched the internet and found an authoritative site like Black Viper to say that you can disable it without a disaster.
While you are in there, find service "Themes" and give it the same treatment. Themes suppores the fancy Aeroglass look in the display. It sucks up a lot of CPU time and I don't like the look, I prefer the standard old Windows look.
My last kill today was "Power2Go Gadget". This is not a Micro$oft program, and several websites called it useless. It is NOT a service, so you cannot zap it thru the Services program, like Dashost and Themes. I found it with Task Manager, and the Windows 8 Task Manager can stop it, and prevent it from reloading (disable it). I'll double check tomorrow to see if it stays dead, but it's stopped now.
For doing all this, laptop feels livelier, it can keep up with my typing now.
Be careful messing with services. Back in XP, there were a couple of services, Remote Job Entry for one, that were essential to Windows. If you disabled Remote Job Entry in XP, Windows would never boot again. The only fix was to reinstall Windows from scratch, a tedious task, especially if you lacked the install CD-ROM discs. I suspect the Micro$ofties have planted similar booby traps in Win 8, but I don't know what they are. So don't disable anything unless you are sure, or have searched the internet and found an authoritative site like Black Viper to say that you can disable it without a disaster.
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