Head Shrinkers and the Goldwater rule

The Goldwater rule, goes back to 1964 when Goldwater ran for president against LBJ.  A bunch of shrinks opined in the public press that Goldwater was mentally unstable and unfit for the presidency.  In short the shrinks called Goldwater crazy.  Goldwater sued them for libel. 
   The American Psychiatric Association, after the election was over and the smoke had cleared, issued a rule that shrinks must not opine about the mental conditions of people they had not met and examined in person.  Which makes sense.  If you haven't examined the person yourself, what do you really know?
     And, in the few cases where you have examined the person, that makes you the doctor and the person your patient.  For a doctor to talk/write about a patient's mental or emotional state is a clear violation of ethics, common courtesy, and ordinary politeness.  Should my doctor  discuss my health, physical or mental, with anyone, I would be deeply offended, offended enough to find a more honest doctor ASAP.

Are burglars tele casing my place?

I get a lot of strange phone calls.  When I answer, all I get is silence.  So I hang up.  Are they calling to see if anyone is home?  So they can burglarize the place in safety?  Even though I have little in the place of worth to a burglar or a fence.  About the only worthwhile items are a seven year old Sony flat screen TV and a HP laptop. 

How can two ships collide 200 miles offshore?

Surely all ocean going steamers have radar in these days?  The Ramore Head, upon which I sailed to Europe in 1956 had a very good radar on her bridge.  Southwester, a 42 foot wooden sailing yacht, had a decent radar that could pick up ordinary buoys at a couple of miles when I sailed on her twenty years ago.
   Now we have video of a supertanker, engulfed in flames, 2-3 hundred miles off of Shanghai China. The newsies say she collided with a freighter carrying grain.  Were the bridge crews sound asleep?  Surely the radar on both bridges showed the other vessel approaching?   Chapman (Piloting Seamanship and Small Boat Handling) has an entire chapter on right of way and rules of the road.  The Officer of the Deck is required to know all the rules by heart and follow them.  Both ships were far out to sea, free to maneuver in any direction without fear of running aground.
  So what really happened?
  For that matter we have never heard what really happened aboard those two Navy destroyers that collided with merchies last year.  

Wolff, Bannon, Fire and Fury

That's all the TV newsies are talking about.  I'm sure the book has lots of dirt on the Trump administration.  At this point nobody knows how much is real and true, and how much is made up.  All the newsies want to spread the dirt around to stick it to Trump.   Trump and his people say it's all fake news.  I don't see how we voters will ever know what's what.  And this voter doesn't care anymore. 
   I rate the Trump administration on things like GNP growth, unemployment decline, cutting my taxes, cutting regulations, getting Keystone XL going to lower my furnace oil cost.  Things that count in the real world.  It would be nice if the newsies spent more time telling us what's going on in the world rather than spreading rumors designed to hurt the Trump administration.

The Bering Land Bridge

A lot of talk about it.  The Bering Straits are shallow, and not all that wide, and it is thought that in long past times the seas went down and/or the land went up, and people and animals could cross from Siberia to Alaska dry footed.  A lot of speculation about how and when the Indians came to North America centers on when the land bridge might be open.
    What the land bridge enthusiasts forget, or perhaps never knew, is that man can cross the Bering straits by boat, given decent weather.  Say summer weather. The Eskimos used to cross regularly, up until the Soviets tightened up their customs enforcement after WWII and  started hassling any American Eskimos they caught on their side of the straits. 
     The Eskimos used skin boats, umiaks, to make the crossing.  Granted a skin boat sounds kinda flimsy, except the skins were walrus hides, a quarter of an inch thick and tough as fiberglass.  A umiak could carry a dozen people, and were strong enough to take the thrust of a forty horsepower outboard motor. 
    If today's Eskimos could make the passage, I dare say the ancestors of the Indians could make the same passage, about anytime they felt like it.  No land bridge required. 
    The recent publications about DNA analysis of an 11,500 year old Indian child from an Alaskan site all talked about crossing on the land bridge.  I maintain they could have come by boat, any summer. 

Cannon Mt Ski Weather

I have 9 inches of nice light powder on the railing of my deck.  And my deck is within walking distance of Peabody Slopes chairlifts.  It snowed all day Thursday.  No wind (despite weatherpeople predicting hurricane force winds) . So the nice new powder snow is still on the trails rather than blown off into the woods where it doesn't help the skiing at all.   Conditions are as good as it gets at Cannon.  Forecast is for cold over the weekend, so bring an extra sweater, a scarf, maybe even a face mask. 

Floating Fortress to bolster US Naval Power

Headline of a Wall St Journal op-ed on Saturday.  The writer, William Lloyd Stearman, long time National Security Council staffer,  laments the fact the the US has not done an amphibious assault since Inchon, way back in the Korean War.  He blames this on the existence of anti ship missiles that make it too dangerous to bring warships closer than 100 miles to land. 
   His solution a humongous 1000 foot long ship, displacing 125,000 tons, loaded with anti aircraft missiles and artillery, more artillery for shore bombardment, helicopter and VTOL fighter pads, and carrying Marines would be able to close up on the enemy coast, land the marines, and give them fire support.  "This ship could be designed to make it virtually unsinkable."  Yeah right.  This concept has been kicking around in various issues of Naval Institute Proceedings for years under the name of "arsenal ship".
  Sounds cool, but Mr Stearman seems to have forgotten WWII experience showing that if you put enough bombs and torpedoes  into the biggest ships, they sink.  Witness Bismark, Yamato, Roma, Prince of Wales, Lexington, Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu, Zuikaku, and many more famous capital ships.  
   To do an amphibious assault, first you need air superiority, air craft carriers and their air wings.  Once you have air superiority, you don't need an arsenal ship.  The aircraft take out the anti ship missile sites.  Then ships of ordinary size will do just fine. 
  I'm surprised that this guy was a National Security Council staffer for more than 15 years and has no better grasp of naval warfare than this op-ed shows.