Price Inversions

Seen at my local grocery market, hot dogs $6 a pound,  Chicken $1.29 a pound.  Looks like good old beans and franks ain't cheap anymore. 

Norks finally get the bomb

Took 'em five test shots before it worked right.  The first four Nork tests had yields in the one kiloton area.  That's a fizzle in most people's books.  Where as the United States was able to produce TWO functional nuclear weapons in 1945 with only one test shot.   The Little Boy gun type uranium bomb was so well understood that it was sent into action without a test, and  produced a 20 kiloton yield that devastated Hiroshima.   Fat Man, the far more tricky implosion type plutonium bomb, was tested once in Nevada before being dropped on Nagasaki.  In action, it worked properly, with a 20 kiloton yield, and vaporized Nagasaki.
   Getting a fission bomb to explode is tricky.  You have to assemble a critical mass of fissionables, either by gun style assembly or implosion, and hold it together long enough (nanoseconds) for the neutrons to fission the fissionables.  If the energy released in the first few nanoseconds blows the bomb to bits,  you don't get a 20 kiloton yield, you get a fizzle.
    We let the Norks run off five nuclear tests, and finally they got it together, achieved city smashing yield, and we did nothing to stop them.  

Bring back paper ballots

They cannot be hacked by the Russians.  And they can be recounted should there be some irregularities, or challenges.  And they don't suffer from hanging chads.  We could do it.  There is plenty of time to print ballots for the entire country before the election.  Up here there is never a lack of public spirited citizens to count ballots on election night. 
   And the various ways of cheating on paper ballots have been around for centuries and are well known.  Precautions against ballot box stuffing and other chicanery can be taken. 
   Them voting machines, which are small computers run by software, and we all know how trustworthy software is, can be hacked to change the election result, and there is no way to tell.  No paper record, and nobody can decipher the software, so you can't prove a thing.   All it takes is one party fanatic with access to the machines, and he can do anything, and leave no traces.  And if the election committee is stupid enough to connect their election machines to the public internet, all bets are off. Anything can happen. 

Epipens are only $20 in Europe

And we could have them over here for that price if we passed a federal law allowing duty free import of medicines from any reasonable first world country.  Like Canada, the EU, Japan, a few other places.  First world countries all have regulations on the sale of medicine.  If they rule a medicine OK for sale to their citizens then it's OK for Americans too.  FDA doesn't get to block imports.  If it's legal in the country of origin, the law shall make it legal here. 
   The reason Epipens are selling for $600 here is that FDA shut down all the competitors.  Nothing fancy in Epipen, its just adrenalin in an easy to use hypodermic needle.  No patents, no nothing, but FDA kindly drove all the competitors off the market.  Nice work for Mylan.    

Battles that Changed History

An oldie but a goodie.  First published in 1956 when I was in middle school.  I  saw it in a Harvard Square bookstore, and thought it was so cool.  I begged and pleaded with the parents and somehow I received a copy for birthday  and read it cover to cover.  Pratt starts off with Alexander the Great,  moves up thru Pyrrus of  Epirus (from whom we get Pyrric victory), the siege of Vienna, the revolt of the Netherlands, and ending with the carrier battles of Midway.  Although it concentrates on the military history of Western Civilization, the book is a good introduction to Western European history. 
   The writer, Fletcher Pratt is a helova good writer.  He made his living dong decent science fiction, good stuff that sold, and he knows the periods of which he writes well, gives all sorts of interesting details.  Pratt is a good fun read, and in this book the reader gets at  good abet sketchy  history of the Western world  going back 2500 years.  If you have a middle school child or grandchild, this book would be a class A gift. 

What small children ought to know

And it's your responsibility to tell 'em about it.

1.  Beware of going into the street.  The cars will run right over you.  Stay on the sidewalk.  If a toy or a ball rolls into the street, don't go after it.  Find a grownup to retrieve it.

2.  Beware of going out on the ice.  If the ice breaks, you are dumped into freezing water over your head.  Your chances of pulling yourself out are poor, especially after the water soaks into your winter coat and snowpants making them very heavy.  My mother required us kids to wack a hole in the ice with a pickax to see if it was four inches thick.  Any less than four inches and we couldn't go skating on it. 

3.  Stay away from the stove.  I still remember my mother touching a paper towel to a dark electric stove burner and watching it burst into flame.    

4.  Beware of electric sockets, light sockets and lamp cords.  If  the insulation is old or bad, they can kill.

5.  Beware of power mowers.  They can fling rocks and stuff with the speed and force of bullets. Stay away.

6.  Beware of wild animals and strange dogs.  Don't try to pet them, they may take it the wrong way, and bite you. 

7.  Beware of cars with engines running.  They may be parked at curbside, standing in driveways, or parking lots.  If the engine is running (smoke from tailpipe, and/or lights on) the car is getting ready to move.  Stay well clear, since you are short and the driver may not be able to see you. 

8.  Dress for winter when going out in winter.  Coat, boots, mittens and hat.  Maybe snow pants too.  Even if going by car.   One dark Friday night the car engine lost power going up Franconia Notch with all three kids in the back seat.  We might have had to walk out, four miles or more.  Fortunately I was able to fix the problem by flashlight and we drove on.  But we also had the needed winter gear to walk it should it have been necessary.

Sunday afternoon on NBC TV is all about blacks and Hispanics

And, of course, how neither blacks nor Hispanics will vote for The Donald.  Groovy, NBC getting in some licks for Hillary. 
   But, not a word about a much larger and much more important voter block, women.  Hispanics are like 10% of the electorate, blacks are like 15%.  Women are 50%, which is a whole lot more.  Anyhow in a long period of talk, not a word about women, lots of words about blacks and Hispanics.  I wonder why?  Can it be that the newsies, or women, or both, find the traditional women's issue, abortion and birth control, to be repellent this year?  And they don't know of any other issues?  Or perhaps good old lefty NBC thinks it's better for Hillary to divvy up the voters into small special interest groups rather than one very big group? 
   It was the women's vote that sank Romney four years ago.  Women favored Obama over Romney by 10%.  That's Obama's winning margin right there.  And I never did hear any discussion of why women liked Obama better than Romney.  Was it because Obama is good looking, slender, and sexy?  Whereas Romney just looks like a happily married husband?  Could it be women liked Obamacare?  Or Obamanomics even though both policies threw a lotta people out of work?   Was it being Mormon?  Something else?  None of the pollsters did any polling on this, or at least they never published.