To Alpha Centauri in just 20 years?

Sounds good.  Ultra small spacecraft, one big silicon chip containing camera, radioactive thermal electric generator, comm and nav systems, to weigh a couple of grams.  A light sail one meter square.  A 100 Gigawatt laser plays on the light sail for 10 minutes and accelerates the micro probe to 20% of the speed of light.  That will get it the four light years to Alpha Centauri in 20 years.  Then it radios back what the camera's see. 
   One sticky point, how does a micro probe, weighing only grams, have enough transmitter power to drive a radio signal back to earth? 
   Idea comes from internet investor Yuri Milner.  He is making grants to fund research.

Weak Tea from The Economist

Cover story this week "Can She Fix it?"  Cartoon on cover shows Hillary, dressed in mechanic's coveralls, holding a monkey wrench, studying a beat up engine hanging on a chain hoist.  Said engine's outline is the lower 48 of the United States.  Of course no mechanic has used a monkey wrench since WWII, real mechanics all use Snap-on socket wrenches.  But that's all right, the guys who write for the Economist were never hot rodders. 
    The think piece article goes on for three quarters of a page laying out the woes of the American economy, low growth, growing unemployment, stagnent wages, and all the rest.
    But the Economist doesn't suggest any serious fixes for all this woe.  They call for "slashing unnecessary regulations" without naming a single regulation in need of slashing.  "Ensuring big firms no longer operate in protected markets"  without naming a single protected market or big firm wallowing in one.  And they call for more government bailouts to companies going down the drain.  And retraining for workers in down the drain companies. 
   Some how I had expected better from a newsmag named "The Economist".
   

North County Do, The Lincoln Reagan dinner

We do this once a year up here in Grafton county.  It's a big deal, everyone who is anyone in the state comes.  This year we had all four republican candidates for governor, and both candidates for US senate. and both candidates for NH senate.  And some candidates for NH house. I've been kicking around NH politics long enough now that I knew most of the people there. 
   For governor we have Frank Edelblut, youn guy, first term NH rep, enterpreneur,  talked about making live better for business.  And we have Ted Gatsas, four term mayor of Manchester, older guy, didn't talk much, I was sitting next to him.  And then Chris Sununu, comes from a good family, good name recognition, made a good talk, probably best of the governors.  And Jeanne Forester, current NH senator, well liked and respected, she has been around for a while and everyone speaks well of her. 
   The we come to the US senate race.  We have a primary challenger (Jim Rubins) to well liked incumbent Kelly Ayotte.  Far as I can see, Rubins is a loser, if he wins the primary, the democrat Maggie Hassan, current governor, will beat him.  Kelly Ayotte is sincere, hard working, and with luck and a lot of help, she can win. 
   I see men's fashions are changing.  Half the men there, myself included, were wearing blue blazers, the kind with brass buttons, and khaki slacks.  The other half were wearing dark business suits.  And some untraditionalists, like Jim Rubins, showed up in blue jeans. 

I'm voting Republican, even if it's Trump

First of all, you gotta vote for one of 'em.  I'll grant that Hillary and The Donald aren't anyone's idea of a dream team.  But, one is better than the other.  It's a citizen's duty to pick the better of the two and vote for him.  Staying home is for wimps.
   It looks like we will be faced with Hillary vs The Donald this time.  This isn't cast in concrete, yet. There is a chance Trump won't have the votes for a first ballot win, and the convention goes for someone else, Cruz, on later ballots.  But don't bet on it.
   So,  do you vote Republican, or vote for Hillary?
   Hillary is untrustworthy.  Weird things keep happening around Hillary, going way back.  There was Vince Foster, old Rose Law Firm friend and White House something-or-other, found dead in a Washington DC park one night.  They said it was suicide, but it sure is suspicious.  There was "Travelgate" when Hillary got upset with the employees at the White House travel office.  The employees got fired and replaced with people of Hillary's choosing.  There was Whitewater, an Arkansas real estate deal that the Clintons participated in.  They even got a special prosecutor onto that one, years of "investigation" let the Clinton's off, even though a fair number of other Whitewater participants went to jail.
   Then there was the Monica affair.  Hillary should have divorced Slick Willy over that one.  She didn't, God knows how the Clinton marriage has been doing since then, but it cannot be warm and loving. 
   Then there was Benghazi where four American diplomats were killed by Islamic terrorists.  Clinton, (and Obama) refused to sent rescue missions.  In fact they fired two US general officers that very night for declaring that they would lead rescuers to Benghazi.  Hillary basically wrote off the Americans serving in Benghazi.
   Then there was Hillary's tour as secretary of state.  She has the reverse Midas Touch. Everything she touched turned into disaster. Syria, Libya, Iraq, North Korea, South China Sea, Ukraine, and some more I have forgotten.  Add in the private email server by which she hoped to keep all her emails private, forever.
   And Hillary wants to take our guns away, leaving us at the mercy of whatever criminal or terrorist might happen by.
   Set this against The Donald.  The Donald is politically incorrect, vulgar, inexperienced, and unwilling to take advice from anyone (my way or the highway is The Donald's style).  I'd druther have that than Hillary.  At least The Donald is loyal to the United States of America.

Energy Bill

They are doing one.  The house passed its version a while ago, the senate just passed their version.  They now gotta do the conference committee bit and weld the two bills into one.  Obama has said he will sign it.  It's gonna spend $10 billion or so. 
   On what?  There is some unspecified research and development money.  Probably another try to convince people that solar or wind power is worthy and green, rather than a scam on tax payers and rate payers.  I, and a lotta other people and industries, need the power to stay on all the time.  We cannot stand hearing the electric company calling to say, "Sorry, the wind dropped, (or the sun went down) and we are going to shut your juice off for six hours."  For me, that means the furnace won't work and my pipes will freeze.  For industry it means that batches of product under going various heat treatments will be ruined.  Every something as old and well understood as baking bread cannot tolerate the oven going cold before the bread is baked.  High tech processes are even more sensitive.
  And there is money to work on "storage" of electricity on a utilities scale.  That's batteries which are ridiculously expensive.  A lead acid battery big enough to crank my V-8 car engine for a couple of minutes costs $50.  A lithium battery big enough to run my laptop for a couple of hours costs $50.  A battery bank big enough to run a small town would cost billions.  For that sort of money I can build a nuke plant, or two or three natural gas fired plants.   How do you say total waste of money?
  And there is some unspecified subsidy for those evil fossil fuels.  The ones that produce dependable power.   Even at today's price of oil, they don't need a subsidy.
   They tried to slip in a provision to clean up Flint Michigan's city water problem.  Worthy but hardly an energy concern.  There is probably a good deal more pork buried in it, which is why Obama said he would sign it.
   The TV newsies haven't said a word about it.  

How come we need bathroom laws now?

We have had men's rooms and women's rooms since the invention of indoor plumbing.  (sometime after the civil war).  How come just this year we suddenly need new laws about them?  How did we survive 150 years or so with out laws about bathrooms? 
   Could it be that the foerever-looking-for-a-cause crowd has just discovered a new cause, a wedge issue no less, that they hope to stir up more social unrest?
    I saw an internet ad showing a school shower room with the caption "How would you feel about a boy joining your 12 year old daughter in the shower?"  I thought about that for a minute.  I used to have a 12 year old daughter (she is much older now).  I know my daughter was tough enough to handle such a situation, had it arisen.  She would have hauled off and slugged the boy.  I watched her do something like that back when she was only six. 
   So I think the republic will survive without passing bathroom laws. 

Trusty Desktop is getting old

He is at least ten years old, still running strong, still running XP.  I gave him a new power supply maybe five years ago.  Lately, the DVD drive stopped working, jammed solid, won't open.  I pulled the drive out and got the covers off, but couldn't get it to open.
   So I googled for a new one.   They are really cheap, $35.  There was a time you had to pay more than that for a 5 inch floppy drive.  I was about to click it into my cart and go thru the checkout business, when I noticed an acronym, SATA.   A vague memory of SATA as a high speed serial interface surfaced from all the sludge sloshing around in my memory. Trusty Desktop used the old flat cable IDE interface.
 Ayup.  Times have changed, all the new optical drives are SATA, nobody makes the old IDE drives anymore.  Maybe E-bay?   I'd hate to junk trusty desktop and suffer thru Windows 10 on a new one.