Monday, February 22, 2016

TV newsies calling Trump the nominee

I'll grant that The Donald is looking strong.  But he only has 67 delegates, out of 1200 and change needed to clinch the nomination.  I think we have a few more primaries to go before we declare a winner.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Another favorite store goes down hill

The Good Will Store on old US Rte 1 used to have a lot of decent used clothes.  I used to hit the place every month or so and score some nice shirts and slacks.  You could go down the row of men's shirts and just feel them, the one with a good feel you took out of the rack and inspected.  I'd find a first class maker's tag, L.L. Bean or Hathaway, or suchlike, on a nice shirt.
  Not anymore.  I stopped in yesterday, and huge row of men's shirts were all plain white or plain blue uniform shirts, the sort of thing McDonald's issues to their help.  And I wouldn't wear anyplace.  And the small kitchen appliances are gone and the stereo components are gone.  My home stereo, speakers and all, cam from that store in years past. 
   I probably won't stop there again. 

Marketing fail: Testor's DullCote

DullCote is a clear matte spray finish.  Testors has been selling the stuff to model makers, like me, since forever, at least 50 years that I can think of.  Well known brand name.  I stopped at the biggest hobby shop in Boston, Charles Ro, and bought a can of it.  Surprise.  The new labels that someone in marketing dreamed up, no longer have the DullCote name, instead the label calls itself Clear Lacquer in both English and Spanish.  I wasn't sure if I had the right stuff.  Only after turning the can over and over and upside down did I find a small sticky label that said " DullCote". 
   Probably the same marketeers who have decided not to put the maker's name onto new automobiles.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

So does anyone have the right to keep secrets?

Uncle is leaning on Apple  to crack a smartphone used by the San Bernardino killers.  Apple is refusing, saying that once they do, it will crack encryption on all Apple smart phones. 
The Apply phone is probably crackable.  Like Windows, Apple must need to patch the code in the phones.  Once you allow the phone to patch itself, change the code inside it, all bets are off, you can load code to do anything you want.  But, Apple is probably the only one who can pull this off.  They have the programmers who wrote the code, they have the source code, they have development stations that allow a programmer to single step thru the code and watch what it is doing.   Without this information and equipment, nobody outside of Apple has a snowball's chance in Hell of pulling it off. 
   Apple clearly fears that if they crack this phone, they will be on the hook to crack any phone in the future, and their customers, knowing that Uncle can snoop their Apple smart phone, will go to a more secure smart phone. Samsung for example.
   I like the idea of being able to keep secrets.  Fourth Amendment, unreasonable search and seizure.  Fifth Amendment, protection against self incrimination.  Uncle has so many ways of snooping that I like the idea of some limitations.  In this case, appalling as it is, I kinda doubt that the cell phone in question will tell investigators much, if anything, if it gets cracked.   NSA already has all the phone numbers that the San Bernadino killers called with thqt phone, and they can jolly well get agents out to interview every one of 'em.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Einstein and gravity waves.

Gravity waves are not new, Einstein predicted their existance a hundred years ago.  My sophmore physics course (50 years ago) covered them. 
   Gravity is a very weak force compared to the electromagnetic force or the strong nuclear force.  Which makes gravitational waves hard to detect.  Indeed, the detectors only managed to detect the most violent event imaginable, the collision of two black holes. 
   The unscientific newsies have failed to report on a bunch of interesting questions.  Such as how do you figure the distance of the gravity wave source?  It's been reported that the two colliding black holes are billions of light years away.  I wonder how they figure that? 
  What is the signal to noise ratio from the detectors?  Detectors of anything, including gravity wave detectors, tend to output low level random noise all the time.  Signals have to be stronger than the noise to be detected.  How much stronger than the noise was this event?  What causes the noise and could it be reduced in an advanced detector somehow? 
  Do gravity waves propagate at the speed of light?  We all kind of assume that they do, but it would be nice to have some measurements to confirm our ideas. 

Monday, February 15, 2016

Living Constitution, fancy words for judicial tyranny

Advocates for a "living Constitution" say that things have changed since the Constitution was adopted way back in 1789 and that judges [usually the Supremes] should change the way the Constitution works "in order to bring things up to date".  The appeal to the courts is a way of side stepping the democratic requirement that laws are only made or changed by the duly elected legislature.  It's easier to sell your changes to 5 out of 4 unelected lawyers possessed of lifetime tenure than it is to sell them to the much larger legislature all of whom needs to stand for reelection in the near future.
   The proper way to change the law in a democracy is to have the votes to pass your changes into law in the elected legislature.  Many will complain that this is just too difficult, which is another way of saying that they don't have the votes for their pet programs.  The Constitution allows for amendments.  We have made twenty seven amendments since 1789, the most recent in 1992.  It can be done, but the Constitution calls for super majorities in both houses of Congress and among all the states.  Amendments only happen with widespread political support.  
   The late Justice Scalia was opposed to the notion of a "living Constitution". He preferred to call it the enduring Constitution.  I'm with Justice Scalia in this. 
   Obama wants a "living Constitution" person to replace Justice Scalia. 

Stuart Weitzman: Wonder what he is selling?

Saturday was heavy WSJ day.  They pack a 184 page 10 by 12 inch slick paper fashion magazine inside the paper.  Makes for very solid feeling newspaper.
   Not that I am deeply into woman's fashions, but I like to look a pictures of pretty girls as much as anyone.  So I'm thumbing thru it and come to an arresting full page ad by Stuart Weitzman.  Three very slender, pretty models standing in front of the camera, completely naked except for high heeled shoes, the kind with big clunky heels, hugging each other.  If it had been in color it would have been porn, but a nicely lit black and white is arty.
   It did get my attention.  On the other hand, I am still wondering what Stuart Weitzman is selling.  Normal fashion ads have the models  wearing the product they are selling.  These models weren't wearing anything except clunky shoes, and somehow I didn't think that was the product.  Two following full page spreads with the same models only one of which was wearing an outfit that a girl might appear in public wearing.  The rest of them were in underwear.   Perhaps Stuart Weitzman is a modeling agency?