Brits approve Hinkley Point nuclear plant

Back in July the new British government of Theresa May ordered a "review" of the project.  Back then, the "review" was seen as an indefinite delay.  Well, will wonders never cease?  Today the Wall St Journal announces that the Brits have given the project a go ahead.  The work will be done by Electricite de France, with financing by China General Nuclear Power Corp.
   The Brits have imposed some restrictions on the builders selling out their shares in the plant without Her Majesty's government approval.
   The announced price of $23.8 billion is way high.  You can put up a 1 Gigawatt nuclear plant for $4 to $5 billion in this country.  

Air Force bites off more than it can chew.

Or fund.  The big three money suckers.  The F35 fighter.  Cost is outta sight.  The software isn't finished.  The gun doesn't fire, the engines cannot take more than 5.6 G.  The KC-46 tanker project.   The Air Force managed to gold plate a simple "put tanks inside a well proven airliner" project into an ongoing boondoggle that is running late and over budget.  The new B-21 strategic bomber, this is going to be a somewhat smaller, and hopefully cheaper, version of the B2 bomber.  It's just getting started, but the project did make it thru a bid challenge by the loser[s]  (Boeing and Lockheed).  Aviation Week did not offer much in the way of cost estimates on the big three.  I'd guess $1 trillion over the next 10 years. 

And, after the top three projects, we have a four projects  in to the Request for Proposal, going out for bids, study project phase.  We have a new jet trainer to replace the capable but ageing T-38 Talon. A new ICBM to replace the Minuteman III.  The Long Range Standoff Missile to arm the new B21, and re arm the B-52, B1, B2 fleet.  A new helicopter for VIP transport. 

And even further out, an A10 replacement.  Which is hard to think about.  The existing A-10 is good at what it does.  It's a ground attack fighter that can fly low enough and slow enough for the pilot to see and hit his ground target.  Once the airplane can do that, it isn't fast enough to dogfight with mach 2 jet fighters.  The answer to this short coming is to provide fighter cover for the A-10s as needed.  Bombers have needed fighter escort ever since WWII.  

   The Air Force isn't going to be able to round up the funding to do all of this stuff at once. 

Trump proposes 6 week paid family leave for new mothers.

 Not a bad idea.  Birth of a child is the most important event in a person's life.  New born infants require pretty much full time care.  Mothers, and fathers, feel an enormous compulsion to gave that care.  Any responsible employer ought to be willing to cough up six weeks wages to ease the stress on their valuable employees.   
   There were some other ideas from Trump, mostly making child care costs deductable.  You could do that, but simpler, just as effective, and requiring less paper work is to raise the exemption taxpayers already get for each dependent.   

Vetting or "extreme vetting" of refugees

"Vetting"  nice bureaucrat word, not defined in dictionaries.  The word appears in my Webster's but the definition concerns veterinary care for animals.  We think the bureaucrats mean checking a refugee's background with his home country authorities.  You ask questions like "is this person really a citizen of your country?" and "can we see his police records?" and "Was he gainfully employed before he left your country for America?" and "Did he have a driver's license?" and "What are the names of his wife and children?" and "How far did he go in schooling?"
   For real countries, for example England or Japan,  this works.  There are authorities over there, we know who they are, they have access to written records and they want to cooperate with the United States because of the 800 pound gorilla effect.  (What do you say to an 800 pound gorilla?  Ans: Sir!)  We can believe what the authorities of real countries tell us. 
   This doesn't work for Syria and similar places.  In Syria the authorities are either the Bashar Assad regime or the various rebel groups.  Depends on where you telephone.  We cannot believe anything that either group will tell us.  The records may well have been bombed or shelled or burned.
   So no matter what anyone says, admitting a refugee from places like Syria is a risk, they might be enemy agents looking to do us harm.  We cannot get trustworthy information from their home authorities, mostly because there aren't any left.  The best we can do is interview them, using sympathetic interviewers who speak their mother tongue, and know the area from which the refugee claims he is coming from.  I'd say a good interviewer could catch many, but not all, enemy agents pretending to be refugees.  
    The refugees have suffered terribly, you don't flee your homeland unless things get really bad.  I feel sorry for them and want to help them out.  Letting them into the United States is a great big help out.  And, we need young working age immigrants to keep our population growing.  
   And, I don't worry about enemy agents infiltrating as refugees.  Was I ISIS or the like, and I wanted to get an agent into the US,  I'd come up with papers and plane fare to Canada.  Then he could walk across the border just about anywhere.  More dependable than being a refugee who might or might not get admitted.  

Shannara Chronicles

This swords and sorcery fantasy TV show hit the airwaves (cable waves?) back last fall.  I caught a couple of episodes off the cable over the winter before they killed the show.  It made it onto Netflix recently and so I signed up for the total season (just 3 DVD's) to see what it looked like. 
   The name of the show comes from the Terry Brooks fantasy novels, the plot borrows heavily from Tolkien.  The unnamed world is threatened by an invasion of demons, ugly bad guys who look like Tolkien's orcs, but have magic powers too.  .  It stars three characters, Handsome Boyish Hero, Good Chick, and Bad Chick.  Good chick, is an Elvin (NOT Tolkien's spelling of the word) princess. who volunteers/is selected for a mission to save the world.  She starts off carrying a silver flower blossom (puts me in mind of the Ring of Power), with handsome boyish hero and Bad Chick for travel companions.   Destination of her mission is never made clear to me. Bad chick is daughter of a human bandit chieftain and starts out doing banditry.  As time goes on, she falls in love with handsome boyish hero, which does her good, and she stops doing bad, and starts doing good.  What makes the show hard to follow, is that Good Chick and Bad Chick look so much alike it's hard to keep them straight.  They are both brunettes, they wear their hair the same way, they both have very fair completions, they both have superb figures, they dress the same, they both do martial arts with the best of them, and they both are soon in love with Handsome Boyish Hero.  Somehow, after quite a few episodes,  they become friends with each other, rather than fighting it out for the attention of Handsome Boyish Hero.  The only things distinguishing one from the other is that Good Chick is taller than Bad Chick, but Bad Chick is cuter. 
   Anyhow, it was good enough for me to watch all three discs and stay awake til the end of each episode.  If you like fantasy this one is fairly OK. 

Summer home shop project

As always, you need more storage space in a shop.  So last month's project was a combined wall shelving and plane till project.  I5t's made from ordinary lumberyard white pine.  The finish is one coat of Minwax "puritan pine" to give it the light tan color, the natural pine is bright white which seems a little much for a shop.  Plus one coat of poly urethane varnish over the Minwax.  Hanging it on the wall was tricky.  This bit of wall has NO studs in it.  I know, I put the wall board up myself some years ago.  So it is now bolted and lag screwed to the joists.  I started out with three lag screws going straight up, but the last one broke off deep in the hole, so two lag screws will have to do.  Part of the project was to have a place to put my handplanes where they would be handy, and where they could show themselves off.  The shelves are still fairly empty but I don't expect that to last long.  The dadoes in the side are to accept a pair of chisel holders, which I haven't made yet. 

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.