The Norks and their nukes

The Economist ran a cover story about the need to do something about North Korea's nuclear program. They went on about weakness and craziness in the Kim regime.  Like it might be so crazy as to not be deterreable. The Norks have a missile operational today with enough range to hit all of South Korea and all of Japan.  They have missiles under development with enough range to hit the western US.  They managed to launch a satellite which means they have a missile that can reach anywhere in the world.  Might not have the throw weight to loft a nuclear warhead, yet.
   The Economist claims that the Bill Clinton administration considered an air strike on the Nork's nuclear facilities, but Clinton backed off,. fearing that it would touch off a second Korean war.  I never heard that story before.  There has been some talk that the Norks have dug in so deep that even our 15 ton Massive Ordinance Penetrator bomb couldn't take 'em out.
   The Economist does acknowledge that non-military ways of pressuring the Norks pretty much don't exist, especially as the Chinese like having the Norks as a buffer state between them and the South Koreans.  The Chinese are sending enough food and fuel to North Korea to keep 'em alive.  The Chinese fear the Kim regime is shaky, and that any serious pressure might cause it to collapse.  The Chinese don't want that to happen, cause the likely result is the South Koreans take over from the Kim regime, giving the Chinese a pushy, industrialized competitor, who is hand in glove with the Americans, right on their border.
  Best the Economist can suggest is installing anti missiles, THAAD and Patriot.  They compute that such a two layer defense, each layer having a Probability of kill (Pk) of 70% would yield an overall effectiveness of 90%.  Not bad, but not very reassuring when you think about how bad just one nuke can be.
   Of course Aviation Week doesn't see things quite that way.  They have reported that each of the Nork nuclear tests had a yield of about one kiloton of TNT.  That's so weak that most people call it a fizzle.  So maybe the Nork's don't really have nukes, yet.

Snowflakes on NPR

The morning story is from an NPR chick.  She had a flat tire, and 5:30 in the morning.  Rather than opening her trunk and breaking out the jack and the spare, she started off by finger stroking her smart phone.  She found out she was not a member of AAA, and AAA memberships would not be effective for 48 hours.  But she did find some obscure web site that offered road service.  It took service better than an hour to get there, and only three minutes to change her tire.  She closed the piece by raving about clever new websites.
  She would have done better  just changing her own tire, all by her little snowflake self.
  I can remember insisting that my teen age daughter change a tire right in our driveway before I allowed her to drive herself to school. 

Sorry about the Gorilla

On the other hand, I know nothing about gorilla's, and I know nothing about the specific gorilla that got shot. I am not going to second guess the zoo personnel who had to deal with the situation.   I'm sure the zoo people feel terrible about killing their gorilla, and did every thing they could to avoid it.  They clearly did the best they could in a bad situation.  And, the life of a four year old boy is more important than the life of a gorilla.  I'm glad the boy lives.
 A  question that the newsies have been too ignorant to ask. .  How does a small boy get into an enclosure stout enough to hold an adult gorilla?  If the enclosure can keep gorillas in, why did it not keep small boys out?
   Something for all parents to consider.  Small children think live animals are cute and huggable.  In the Disney movies all the animals talk and act like people.  There was a time when a wild black bear strolled by my NH house.  All the small children playing on my deck dashed down after the poor bear.  They wanted to pet it.  The bear, seeing what was coming for him, increased his pace smartly and disappeared into heavy woods before the kids got too close.   Fortunately that bear did not have any cubs with it, or things might have gotten very ugly.
  Parents ought to make sure their children understand that wild animals are dangerous, and should NOT be pursued.   Wild animals are safe as long as you keep your distance.  I have wild bears strolling about up here all the time. I keep my distance, the bears keep their distance, and we all stay very happy. 

Xmen Apocalypse

Spent Memorial Day weekend at youngest son's brand new house.  Since it rained Saturday, we went to the movies.  This is the newest Xmen flick, just out.  It might as well have been titled "Xmen versus the Mummy".
Lotta CGI special effects. Explosions, fires, collisions, Magneto's strange powers destroying whole cities.  According to the rather weak plot, an God/Demon/Evil Sorcerer from Egypt of 3600 BC  comes to life in fairly modern times and starts doing evil.  Never mind that First dynasty Egyptian Old Kingdom didn't get started until about 2900 BC.  This is the prequel Xmen, set in the 1970s or 1980's.  Whole new cast, all younger.  The guy playing a younger Charles Xavier isn't as good in the role as Patrick Stewart was.  Nice costumes, the chicks look sharp and sexy, the guys look hunky, mostly.  Hugh Jackman gets a brief (5-10 minute on screen) part.  He never gets to speak a line, he just kills a bunch of soldiers, and the last we see of him he is dashing off into a snow covered forest, bare foot, and wearing only Bermuda shorts.  Does adamantium warm a body as well as make it bulletproof? 
   Nobody has a line as good as Storm's line in the first Xmen, "Have you ever seen a toad struck by lightning?"
   OK for kids, or dyed in the wool Xmen fans, but not as good as the first two Xmen flicks.

Nuking Hiroshima was the right thing to do

The Japanese started WWII by attacking Pearl Harbor, in time of peace, without a declaration of war.  They sank the Pacific Fleet battle line, which gave them naval supremacy thruout the Pacific, at least by the thinking of 1942.  They inflicted several more humiliating defeats upon us and upon the British.  They treated our prisoners of war like dirt, many of them died in Japanese captivity. 
   The Japanese fought hard.  Guadalcanal, Saipan, Okinawa, Io Jima, Tarawa.  Based upon bitter experience gained on Okinawa and Saipan, we figured invasion of the Home Islands would cost us a million casualties, and the Japanese far more.  By 1945 US submarines had blockaded Japan, nothing big enough to be worth a torpedo was getting in or out of the Home Islands.  The Air Force had total air superiority, and were fire bombing every city in Japan.  Even at this low point, with their backs to the wall, the Japanese refused to negotiate. 
   Offered a chance to end the war, Truman took it.  And it worked.  The first nuke on Hiroshima shook 'em up, but not enough to bring them to their senses.  The second nuke on Nagasaki finally did the trick.  The bitter end generals were pushed out of government, and some rational men took over and ended the war. 

Horatio Hornblower, The Mutiny

Good flick.  Came to me thru Netflix.  The Brits started a series of TV movies about Hornblower, starring Ioan Gruffyd, nice young guy, who looks the part and acts the part well.  This one is maybe #5 or #6 in the modern series.
   Horatio Hornblower is a Royal Navy officer, serving during the Napoleonic wars,  invented by author C.S. Forester back in the early 1940's.  Forester wrote half a dozen Hornblower tales over the years and they are still in print.   The TV movies are all good.  Costumes are really good.  The naval officers, the petty officers, the seaman, the marines all wear different uniforms, nicely made.  I'm not a real expert on period costumes, but they all look right to my eye.  Most of the action is filmed at sea, on board ship.  The ship[s] are convincing.  Makes you think they took the trouble to find or build real sailing warships.  Either that or the CGI folks are getting really good.  The ships in this modern series are much more convincing that the ship[s] in the old 1950's Hornblower movie with  Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo.
   Anyway, it's a good watchable flick, good camera work, good soundtrack.  Lots of action, great scenery, excellent plot.  The other Hornblower flicks are just as good. And the books are all good reads. 

So what is Congress planning for Puerto Rico?

Puerto Rico is broke.  They owe $70 billion on loans taken out in the past.  Between pensions, welfare, lotta featherbedding, and plain old graft, the Puerto Rico government spends far more than it collects in taxes. They cannot make payments on the loans coming due. 
   Thru some quirk in the law, Puerto Rico as a US territory, cannot declare bankruptcy the way cities and towns, and possibly states can.  The idea in bankruptcy is to prevent everyone and his cousin suing, which is more than anyone can defend against, and have an "impartial" judge divvy up the bankrupt's assets.  For companies, the judge usually decides to keep the company going, and avoid laying off all the employees. To this end, the bankruptcy judges usually tells the lenders to just suck it up, cancels  the debts, makes some company reforms and sets the company going again. 
  For places like Detroit and Puerto Rico, the path is less clear.  No bank with two brain cells firing is going to loan a nickel to places like that.  The unions, the pensioners, and everyone else will die in the trenches before allowing any cost cutting.  Which leaves the cash strapped government to make payroll with IOU's.
   Mean while, all the big New York banks, who made all the totally foolish loans are down in DC right now lobbying Congress to bail out Puerto Rico, i.e. have taxpayers pay off the loans, so the banks don't have to to confess how stupid they are.  The banks are asking for $70 billion in comfort money.  That's a lotta money.
   There is some kinda Puerto Rico deal going thru Congress right now.  Speaker Ryan is pushing it.  Nobody knows what's  in it. 
   A Puerto Rico deal should merely make it possible for Puerto Rice to declare bankruptcy and be protected from a zillion lawsuits while they work out the details.  The bankruptcy court should have the power to cancel debts, cancel contracts, fire politicians, and raise taxes. It should NOT pay off the lenders.  The lenders made stupid loans, anyone could tell Puerto Rico could not pay off the loans, even twenty years ago.  For being stuck on stupid, the banks oughta take a $70 billion hit.  Maybe it will learn 'em some.
   And our noble MSM ought to find out what is going down in DC and clue us in.  Perhaps the banks have bought them off?