Driving down to Washington

Decided to spend Thanksgiving with daughter and her fairly new husband down in DC.  I drove just to avoid giving TSA a chance to hassle me at the airport.  Had a fine holiday, fine turkey dinner, good time. 
   Daughter owns a house in Washington NE, not far from H St.  The H St trolley project is still sucking taxpayer money after five years.  They have the track laid, the over head wire strung, and the trolley cars running, empty.  After five profitable years for the contractors, they still won't carry passengers, they just run empty trolleys up and down H St.
   The neighbor hood is mostly black.  I was impressed with how nice the neighbors were, friendly, cheerful, helpful, really nice.  Perhaps DC is far enough south that the southern charm is still alive.  
   The car, new to me, even if it is a 2003 Buick, ran like a top all the way down and back.  Burned maybe a half a qt of oil, got 26-27 mpg.  Lot of trucks hauling lots of product over the road.  Even if some of 'em are empties, they wouldn't be on the road unless they were headed somewhere to pick up a load.  So even with Great Depression 2.0 still on, a lotta product is being made, then shipped, and paid for.  The truckers and the bus drivers are still polite and professional.  They stay in lane, they signal, they drive straight, good safe drivers.  I took the scenic route on the way down, crossed the Hudson on the Newburg bridge (60 miles north of Manhattan)  then took old US 202 at Flemington NJ for West Chester PA.   Avoided a pile of tolls.  It's scenic and maybe a couple of hours longer.  On the way back I took the toll route, I95, Delaware Mem. Bridge, I290, Jersey Pike, GW Bridge.  Managed to get off the GW Bridge onto the Henry Hudson Parkway up the west side of Manhattan, nice views of the Hudson.  Picked up the Cross County Parkway to the Hutchinson River Parkway to the  Merritt Parkway, to the Wilbur Cross Parkway, all the way to I91.  made the whole trip, including a quick stop at Mac's Market in Franconia in 9 1/2 hours. 
   

Tis the Season To be Jolly

Yeah, BUT NOT BEFORE THANKSGIVING.
This is the Grinch posting here.  Christmas season, and decorations, and music on the radio should NOT start until AFTER Thanksgiving.
   I know the retailers want to get a jump start on the Christmas selling, but there is a limit.  If you stretch Christmas shopping season all the way back to March, you don't actually sell more stuff, you just spend more time doing the selling. 

Mouse and Mouse pad beats Win8 touchscreen

Taking Flat Beast (my laptop) on the road for the first time.  Some things work good, like Flat Beast detected and logged onto daughter's WIFI router automatically.  Email comes thru and everything.  What with lack of deskspace and such I am working the laptop from the lap.  And I miss the real mouse, which don't work so good on a overstuffed couch.  The built in touch pad is flakey and jumpy, and it lacks left and right buttons to click.  And the whole touchy feelie screen is ineffectual.  The slider thumbnails don't slide under a finger touch, the icons are too small for my full sized fingers, and the whole screen is more touchy flaky than touchy feelie. 
   Tomorrow I drive home, and day after that I can get back to web surfing from a real desk with a real mouse. 

War on Coal presses forward

The US Senate just passed two "resolutions" one disapproving EPA regulation about to be applied to working coal fired power plants, and a second one disappoving EPA regulations of new and modified coal fired power plants. 
   Our noble NH Senators, Shaheen and Ayotte, vote against both resolutions.  Thanks guys.  I'm paying 25 cents a kilowatt hour and you voted to increase the price of my electricity.
   And "resolutions" are pretty weak tea.  You want to get EPA's attention? You cut off their taxpayer funding, all of it.  A "resolution" of disapproval doesn't mean anything. 

Why are drug prices so damn high?

Answer: Because the drug companies spend to damn much on marketing.    The biggies all have armies of salesmen, with sample kits, company cars, and expense accounts.  The salesmen visit every doctor in the land at least once a month.  They take the doctor out to lunch, and they buy pizza for his staff.   At lunch they push their company's line of pills. 
   This is the most expensive way to market a product imaginable.  It works, and if everyone in the industry does it, everyone has to keep up.   Paying all those salesmen takes a big pot of money, and the drug company has to get the money from somewhere.  Guess where it comes from?
   Economical marketing is to merely offer the product on the Web and get some articles placed in the medical trade journals.  A step up from that is to open brick and mortar stores.  The special sales call is as expense as it gets. 
   Not sure what we can do about it, other than taxing it.  Right now, sales expenses are a legitimate business expense and can be deducted from income.   Not sure if I like the idea of the IRS telling companies how much they can spend on various business activities.  Maybe some public interest group could lookup and publicize how much the drug companies spend pushing drugs to doctors.

Lion's Gate disappointed in box office for Hunger Games Part II

Wall St Journal had this.  The opening weekend box office was $101 million, the lowest of any of the Hunger Games movies.  The was in the Business & Tech section which just writes about money matters. 
   Funny, they didn't say a word about the quality of  Hunger Games Part 1.  It was nothing like as good as the first one back in 2012. And I'm pretty sure every fan who went to Part I was disappointed as well, especially as the first one was one of the best movies Hollywood released that year.   So naturally the box office is down.  Make a poor movie and you don't make as much money. 

Surveillance at Mosques

Dunno if I am ready for mounting video cameras on mosques, but I see nothing wrong with undercover agents going to a mosque, mixing with people, talking to people, finding out what is going down.  They are places of public worship after all. Terror plots are discovered and defeated mostly when someone gives the cops a tip.  To get tips you have to have connections, you gotta know people, they gotta know who to call or talk to. 
   BTW,  you don't want to close mosques, no matter how rabid they get.  As long as the mosque is open, it's easier to keep an eye on suspicious individuals.  Close the place and they just go underground, which makes it harder to keep track of  'em.
   You deal with rabid imams with informal pressure.  You find some community leaders, other clerics, parishioners, local businessmen.  If your police force is on the ball they will know who these people are.  You explain to this group that the imam is going over the line, that he is stirring up trouble, and you give them some good quotes from the Koran that counter the imam's rants.  Put your community leaders group together with the problem imam and have them apply some pressure.