Sunday, March 20, 2016
So why is Obama making nice to Cuba?
Well, it looks good to the lefties in the Democratic party, but do ordinary Americans approve? Or care? I think most Cubans in the country are refugees from Castro, and would be happier to nuke Cuba than to recognize Cuba. I suppose Obama will get some "legacy" out of it, but does the US as a whole, not just Obama and his cronies, get anything out of it?
Where is Tom Clancy (and Jack Ryan) when we need them?
Say what you will about Tom Clancy's books, they were good action adventure, where the Americans are the good guys, and American ingenuity, courage, and advanced technology win the day in the end. Clancy's hero, Jack Ryan, starting as a CIA operative in Hunt for Red October, works his way up to President of the US by the final stories. Compared to the current flock of presidential wannabees, Jack Ryan looks pretty good, well read, well educated, brave, intelligent, a good shot, able to lead a team of top flight people, and able to take advice. In contrast to today's crop.
In Clancy's literary universe, America is a special country, faced with numerous low life overseas enemies. And America manages to come out on top of them in every story. Good fun reads. Back in his heighday, Tom Clancy was selling more hardbacks than every other author, all put together. Makes you feel good about being an American. Too bad Clancy died a little while ago.
In Clancy's literary universe, America is a special country, faced with numerous low life overseas enemies. And America manages to come out on top of them in every story. Good fun reads. Back in his heighday, Tom Clancy was selling more hardbacks than every other author, all put together. Makes you feel good about being an American. Too bad Clancy died a little while ago.
Friday, March 18, 2016
Whither the Republican party?
Lotta handwringing going on. The Donald is leading in pledged delegates right now. He seems to pick up 35% of the primary vote every time. Right now he has 600 and some delegates, only half what is needed to clinch the Republican nomination. Ted Cruz is behind, but not impossibly far behind, with maybe 400 and some delegates. Maybe The Donald will pick up another 600 delegates by convention time, which will give him 1237, the amount needed to win out right. And maybe he won't. No body knows, and nobody really believes the polls.
If The Donald gets enough delegates by convention time, he still has a problem. Although 35% of the party likes him enough to vote for him, that leaves 65% of the party that doesn't like him, plus all the democrats don't like him. Does not look good for The Donald to beat Hilliary. The Republican establishment is scared out of their socks by these odds. If The Donald leads the party to a resounding defeat in November, they will most likely get voted out of office themselves. So they are going all out to get anyone besides The Donald nominated. At this point, the only likely alternative is Ted Cruz. All the other candidates have dropped out (except Kasich who doesn't have much in the way of delegates). The Trump voters will be outraged by a convention that doesn't nominate their man and might do all sorts of bad things.
If The Donald lacks the delegates by convention time, all sorts of things might happen. Ted Cruz might be able to pull all the non Trump delegates behind him and get the nomination on a later ballot. The establishment might try to slip in Romney or McCain, or some body, anybody else. If they succeed they will outrage all the voters, which is a bad thing. Some charismatic nobody might arise and sweep thru the convention on a wave of applause. That happened, once, Wendell Wilkie back in 1940. Hasn't happened since.
Or something else might happen. Stay tuned.
If The Donald gets enough delegates by convention time, he still has a problem. Although 35% of the party likes him enough to vote for him, that leaves 65% of the party that doesn't like him, plus all the democrats don't like him. Does not look good for The Donald to beat Hilliary. The Republican establishment is scared out of their socks by these odds. If The Donald leads the party to a resounding defeat in November, they will most likely get voted out of office themselves. So they are going all out to get anyone besides The Donald nominated. At this point, the only likely alternative is Ted Cruz. All the other candidates have dropped out (except Kasich who doesn't have much in the way of delegates). The Trump voters will be outraged by a convention that doesn't nominate their man and might do all sorts of bad things.
If The Donald lacks the delegates by convention time, all sorts of things might happen. Ted Cruz might be able to pull all the non Trump delegates behind him and get the nomination on a later ballot. The establishment might try to slip in Romney or McCain, or some body, anybody else. If they succeed they will outrage all the voters, which is a bad thing. Some charismatic nobody might arise and sweep thru the convention on a wave of applause. That happened, once, Wendell Wilkie back in 1940. Hasn't happened since.
Or something else might happen. Stay tuned.
Captain Obvious does a "research" project
Heard this one on NHPR this morning. Recent research shows that well dressed men do better in business deals than slobs. The research had some "test" candidates, one dressed in a business suit and the dressed in a sweatsuit, negotiate a real estate deal. The guys in business suits got the better deal every time. They interviewed a software guy who said he felt better and wrote better code wearing a good shirt with a collar, rather than a grubby T-shirt. Highly objective a repeatable evidence that is.
They need to do research on this?
Fifty years ago, Air Force ROTC trained us officer cadets to look sharp, always wear a clean pressed uniform, keep our hair cut, and keep our shoes shined. The troops are more likely to listen to a sharply uniformed officer than to a slob. A principle of leadership it was called. For that matter, everybody knows that you always wear coat and tie on a job interview.
Sounds like those "researchers" were looking for something to blow their grant money on.
They need to do research on this?
Fifty years ago, Air Force ROTC trained us officer cadets to look sharp, always wear a clean pressed uniform, keep our hair cut, and keep our shoes shined. The troops are more likely to listen to a sharply uniformed officer than to a slob. A principle of leadership it was called. For that matter, everybody knows that you always wear coat and tie on a job interview.
Sounds like those "researchers" were looking for something to blow their grant money on.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa Randall
Lisa Randall, a Harvard professor of science, attempts to link up the dinosaur killer meteor strike of 65 million years ago with dark matter. It's an interesting read. Dark matter is mysterious, but it's existence is generally accepted. Observation of the rotation of galaxies, shows them rotating so fast that they ought to fly apart. The equations for speed of rotation of a satellite about it's primary go back to Isaac Newton, and are taught in sophomore physics, which makes them well known and universally accepted. Essentially, if a satellite rotates too fast, centrifugal force makes it fly off into outer space and stop being a satellite. If it moves too slowly, the primary's gravity sucks it down and it stops being a satellite and becomes a crater.
The only reasonable answer to the high rotation speed of the galaxies it to assume they contain more matter than you can account for by counting up the stars in the galaxy and estimating their masses. In fact the galaxies come up way short on visible (light emitting) matter, like short by a factor of two or more. So, it's generally accepted that galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, contain a lot of dark matter that does not show up as stars. Just what form this dark matter takes, is unknown at the moment. Lotta people are working on it, and we may have an answer any time now.
Now the author turns to the great dinosaur killer meteor. She wants to show that the Yucatan impact of 65 million years ago is a cyclical event, reoccurring at intervals of 30 million years or so. She cites studies of meteor craters and plots the number and/or size of known craters vs age. These plots give a wavery line on graph paper, and just eyeballing the line doesn't show any apparent periodicity. She goes into a long discussion about just how much periodicity, as opposed to pure random chance, you need to detect it in a graph. Surprise, she never mentioned the standard mathematical method of determining periodicity in any kind of line, the Fourier transform. Apparently she, a Harvard professor, has never heard of Fourier transforms. Well perhaps that's understandable, Fourier transforms are only taught in electrical engineering, no other branch of science has much need for them. Anyhow, without performing the definitive test for periodicity, the author assumes the giant meteor strikes reoccur every 30 million years and then presses on to explain how the Milky Way has a thin disc of dark matter at it's center, and the solar system passes back and forth thru this dark matter disc as it rotates around the galactic core on a 30 million year cycle. Somehow, passage thru the dark matter disk upsets objects in the Kuiper Belt, dragging them out of their nice circular orbits and tossing them down toward the sun in narrow elliptical orbits. Every so often one of them hits the earth, giving us a dino killer event.
It's an interesting read. I also think it's a long stretch.
The only reasonable answer to the high rotation speed of the galaxies it to assume they contain more matter than you can account for by counting up the stars in the galaxy and estimating their masses. In fact the galaxies come up way short on visible (light emitting) matter, like short by a factor of two or more. So, it's generally accepted that galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, contain a lot of dark matter that does not show up as stars. Just what form this dark matter takes, is unknown at the moment. Lotta people are working on it, and we may have an answer any time now.
Now the author turns to the great dinosaur killer meteor. She wants to show that the Yucatan impact of 65 million years ago is a cyclical event, reoccurring at intervals of 30 million years or so. She cites studies of meteor craters and plots the number and/or size of known craters vs age. These plots give a wavery line on graph paper, and just eyeballing the line doesn't show any apparent periodicity. She goes into a long discussion about just how much periodicity, as opposed to pure random chance, you need to detect it in a graph. Surprise, she never mentioned the standard mathematical method of determining periodicity in any kind of line, the Fourier transform. Apparently she, a Harvard professor, has never heard of Fourier transforms. Well perhaps that's understandable, Fourier transforms are only taught in electrical engineering, no other branch of science has much need for them. Anyhow, without performing the definitive test for periodicity, the author assumes the giant meteor strikes reoccur every 30 million years and then presses on to explain how the Milky Way has a thin disc of dark matter at it's center, and the solar system passes back and forth thru this dark matter disc as it rotates around the galactic core on a 30 million year cycle. Somehow, passage thru the dark matter disk upsets objects in the Kuiper Belt, dragging them out of their nice circular orbits and tossing them down toward the sun in narrow elliptical orbits. Every so often one of them hits the earth, giving us a dino killer event.
It's an interesting read. I also think it's a long stretch.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
NORKS give US student Otto Warmbier 15 years at hard labor
It's tough, I feel for the kid. But he is terminally stupid to travel to North Korea in the first place, and even stupider doing ANYTHING not 100% legit while up there. Think of it as evolution in action.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Middle of the Market (MOM) airliner
Boeing is talking about doing a new airliner to be a MOM airliner. Airbus is competing furiously, and Boeing wants a magic product to take market share away from Airbus. Unfortunately, just what the MOM airliner might be is vague, they don't talk about how many passengers it would carry, or the range it could fly. And some people feel there is no such MOM design.
Obviously Boeing is still feeling good about their new 787, which although smaller than the Airbus A380, is selling better. When they started the 787 they knew that Airbus was doing something much bigger, but Boeing figured that the 787 was about the right size and would sell better, and they were right.
The other thing that clouds the issue is that Boeing makes some many different sizes of airliners already that you would think one of them would be the MOM airliner. They have the smallish single aisle 737 which is still selling every one that comes off the production line. They have the 757 and 767 models, larger than the 737 and maybe to be dropped. They have the brand new sizable 787, the older but large 777, and finally the big old 747. They are still making a few 747's but it is clearly on the way out. Given this wealth of Boeing airliner types, it is hard to see a market segment for which they don't have a product.
For future growth, Boeing has the 737MAX project to put new and more efficient engines on the 737. This project is going head to head with a similar project at Airbus putting the new Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engine onto the tried and true A320 airliner. Boeing has the 777-X project to create an updated version of the big 777 twinjet. They have the USAF tanker project inhouse which something like 200 aircraft.
There has got to be some pressure inside Boeing to do another clean sheet design, using carbon fiber structure, and the latest of everything to create a follow on to the 737. But the last clean sheet design, the 787, encountered delays, supply chain hangups, cost over runs, battery fires, and it's gonna take years and years of production to recover the money sunk into it. The 787 has made it thru the development pitfalls and is now in production and making money. But it was so late that Airbus was able to get the directly competitive A350 to market only a year after the 787. Anyhow, there must be a lot of people at Boeing who have sworn "Never again" to the concept of advanced clean sheet designs.
Obviously Boeing is still feeling good about their new 787, which although smaller than the Airbus A380, is selling better. When they started the 787 they knew that Airbus was doing something much bigger, but Boeing figured that the 787 was about the right size and would sell better, and they were right.
The other thing that clouds the issue is that Boeing makes some many different sizes of airliners already that you would think one of them would be the MOM airliner. They have the smallish single aisle 737 which is still selling every one that comes off the production line. They have the 757 and 767 models, larger than the 737 and maybe to be dropped. They have the brand new sizable 787, the older but large 777, and finally the big old 747. They are still making a few 747's but it is clearly on the way out. Given this wealth of Boeing airliner types, it is hard to see a market segment for which they don't have a product.
For future growth, Boeing has the 737MAX project to put new and more efficient engines on the 737. This project is going head to head with a similar project at Airbus putting the new Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engine onto the tried and true A320 airliner. Boeing has the 777-X project to create an updated version of the big 777 twinjet. They have the USAF tanker project inhouse which something like 200 aircraft.
There has got to be some pressure inside Boeing to do another clean sheet design, using carbon fiber structure, and the latest of everything to create a follow on to the 737. But the last clean sheet design, the 787, encountered delays, supply chain hangups, cost over runs, battery fires, and it's gonna take years and years of production to recover the money sunk into it. The 787 has made it thru the development pitfalls and is now in production and making money. But it was so late that Airbus was able to get the directly competitive A350 to market only a year after the 787. Anyhow, there must be a lot of people at Boeing who have sworn "Never again" to the concept of advanced clean sheet designs.
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