Words of the Weasel Part 57

From Aviation Week.
    The Dragon capsule had successfully completed a series of 2-sec. firings of its small Draco thrusters, used for in-space maneuvering and was about 0.5 sec. from igniting eight Super-Draco  launch abort motors when the anomaly occurred, destroying the vehicle, Koenigsmann said.

In plain English.  The launch abort rocket engines exploded during ground testing, destroying the Dragon crew capsule. 

Mechanical failure doesn't get much worse than this.

Question for the Space-X folks.  Why are not the launch about engines solid fuel?  The ones that blew were liquid fuel engines burning hypergolic (ignites upon contact, no ignition required) hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.  Solid fuel is stable, does not leak, and is very reliable.  Launch abort means rocket the capsule off the top of, and away from, an exploding booster rocket.  Never been done to my knowledge.  Requires VERY rapid response.

NH Senate activity 7 May 2019

Things are slowing down.  For the usual Ed Committee meeting this Tuesday 7 May, we had no new bills to hear.  We went into executive session to rehash some bills previously heard.  We took up HB 131, a bill to create yet another study commission on prevention of suicide among school children.  We decided it needed more study, and postponed action until the next meeting.  Next was HB 149 concerning co operative school districts, and how to handle matters should the level of cooperation drop off, and one party want out.  We decided that existing law was just fine, and we voted HB 149 Inexpedient To Legislate.  We discussed HB 226 which wanted to decrease new teacher apprentice time from 5 years to 3 years.   Cannot remember what we decide to do with this one, my notes are silent on the matter.  We probably decided to kick the can down the road and deal with it later.  We did vote HB 258, a bill requiring study of teacher training, Ought To Pass, 4-0. Frankly, this is a no account bill.  The best teacher training is training in subject matter, English, US history, science, foreign language, art, etc.  A teacher that knows his or her subject matter can do a fine job teaching our children.  We voted HB 437 a quibble over paperwork, changing “ethics” into “conduct”. Ought To Pass, 4-0.  And we voted HB 447, which would have allowed school to start before Labor Day rerefer to committee, giving us more time to argue about it.  And we closed out the morning by voting HB 489, a bill concerning transfer of students from one school district to another, Inexpedient To Legislate. 

   We took a brief recess and then heard John Tobin’s presentation on state aid to education.  We need to do something.  Poorer towns like Berlin are running out of school money, despite outrageous property tax rates.  We need to do something to help out the towns with little assessed value in their tax base. 

    Then I met with 80 fourth graders from Berlin, down for State House visit.   Bunch of cute young kids, most wearing red school T-shirts.  I welcomed them, I said a few good words, and I shook hands with all of them.  It’s a worth while educational exercise.  For kids to understand anything about democracy in New Hampshire, they need to visit the State House.   

After a quick lunch, I got to the Senate hearings on the state budget.  Every one speaking, spoke up for more money to their pet cause.   The only gave each speaker three minutes.  After an hour of this I left for the hearing on HB 557, a bill to curb robocallers.  I spoke, urging some cruel and unusual punishment for robocallers, boiling in oil for the first offence and burning at the stake for the second offense.  I mentioned the robocallers who call me, pushing drugs, about once a week.  I suggested that we require the phone company[s] to fix caller ID so it cannot be spoofed.  That would give the PUC something useful to do.   

Good vibes yesterday, Tiger Woods Medal of Freedom.

Fox broadcast it live and at length.  President Trump awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tiger Woods.  Trump spoke of Tiger Woods at length and with warmth.  I think a white president awarding honors to a black golfer is a nice touch. It might not heal all the racial divisions of the country, but it helps. Tiger Woods is a fantastically good golfer, perhaps the best there ever was.  The president plays golf himself, and knew the ins and outs of Tiger's career, along with some ups and downs, and he spoke from a good knowledge of golf, and a good memory of watching some of Tiger Woods best moments.  Well done to both men. 

Disk Hogs in the wild.

I just discovered that Firefox allows web sites to store megbytes of stuff on your hard drive.  This is not those little old cookies, which were in the 100 byte class.  This Cached Web Content is megabytes.  I found I had a whole gigabyte of  "stuff" stored on disk courtesy of Firefox.  You can free up a gigabyte of disk.  From within Firefox click on the nameless button with three horizontal stripes, far right on the task bar.  Click on Options.  Click on Privacy & Security.  Click on Cookies and Site Data.  Click on Clear Data.  Clear the check mark for Cookies and Site Data unless you want to have to log into all your favorite websites (can you find your passwords).  Leave the checkmark in Cached Web Content and click on clear.  It's worth doing this before running anti virus to speed up the scanning.  If anyone knows how to shut down Cached Web Content I would love to hear about it.
   I figured it was time to run antivirus on new desktop, SmallBox by name.  I downloaded the free Malwarebytes V 3.7.1.  The default scan option is quick, a minute or two but doesn't check your disk files.  The  "Custom Scan"  option does do disk files.  That took an hour.  A lotta time spent scanning the gigabyte of Cashed Web Content, courtesy of Firefox. and even more time scanning a gigantic new Windows folder at C:Window\Services\LCU.  The LCU folder is so huge that I googled on the name just to see what it was.  What little info turned up indicates that people know about it.  None of posts explained what it was, and whether I could delete it or not.  It's huge.  Any info would be welcome.
   Malwarebytes tagged a  profile folder to Firefox as malware.  I didn't agree with that call, and told Malwarebytes to leave that file alone.  It did find some seven registry keys and three other files as malware.  I let Malwarebytes quarantine them all. 

More doings in the NH Senate

Ed Committee hearing, 30 April.  Light day.  We heard just one bill, HB 631, establishing a deaf child’s bill of rights.  It had a lot of supporters. The language is vague and wimpy.   Twelve clauses begin with “Deaf or hard of hearing children have a right to” this that and the other, all vague nice sounding ideas.  No sentences with words like “The school committee shall” of “The dept of Education shall”.  I asked about this, and was told that the language was copied from a bill in some other state and the “no state mandates on cities and towns” law prevented stronger language.  Far as I can see all this bill does is give parents the right to sue, at their own expense, should they come to believe that their deaf child is not getting a fair shake.   We had a lot of witnesses testify in sign language.   In executive session we did a lightweight amendment and voted it Ought To Pass.  This bill, with or without amendments is reasonably harmless to my way of thinking. 

   Then I attended the hearing in the Transportation Committee on HB 591, the anti off road vehicle (ATV) bill.  If passed it would close most roads to ATV’s even crossing them, let alone going into town to buy dinner, and make it difficult to establish more ATV trails.  I testified that ATV users are bringing real money to the North Country and should be encouraged. We need their money.  And that I would vote against this bill when it gets to the Senate floor.   

Words of the Weasel Part 56.

How to Weaponize an Existential Threat.  The title of a piece in the Wall St Journal Op-Ed page.  The author, Joseph Epstein is out to trash a lot of vague words, popular with newsies and pols, which have been creeping into English.  He mentions focus, issue (bland word for bug or problem), charisma, prioritize, weaponize, incentivize.  Word for Window spell check chokes up on weaponize and incentivize

   The author finishes off with “existential threat”.    A threat is a threat, when you are on the receiving end of a threat you have to either knuckle under, or get ready to fight.  The existential part is a fancy way of making the threat sound more dangerous.  Me, I will stick with “deadly threat”.   

   Mr. Epstein doesn’t mention “holistic”, a general purpose sounds good but means nothing word.  When I hear or read “holistic” I know I am wasting my time with this person or article.

Star Wars The Force Awakens 2015

The Force Awakens.  Following up on my Stars Wars refresher, getting ready for the coming Christmas new Star Wars movie, I popped my DVD of The Force Awakens into the player last night.  I’m getting them out of order, The Force Awakens came out for Christmas 2015, and Rogue One came out the next Christmas 2016. 

   They had a better sound man in Force.  All the dialog was audible.  And I picked up on a few of the new character’s names.  Rey, Finn, Poe, BB-8.  Never did catch a name for Darth Vader, Jr.  And everybody knows Han Solo, Leia Organa, and Luke Skywalker by sight.  In this movie they kill off Han Solo.  He will be missed. 

   Camera man was into the dark look, he turned out the lights in a lot of scenes.  Not quite as annoying as Rogue One camera work, but annoying.  Even out door scenes in broad daylight were dim.  Indoor scenes were black. 

   We have a plot of sorts.  Poe has a star map showing where the long lost Luke Skywalker is hiding/meditating.  It is programmed into his droid, BB-8, smaller and cuter than R2D2.  They need to get the map to the Resistance, who then launches a one person search party (Rey) to find Skywalker.  Rey is pretty good; we meet her on desert planer Jakku where she is making bare living scavenging wrecks out in the desert.  Rey has a vehicle nearly as cool as the air car from the first Star Wars flick.  It floats a bit higher off the ground and looks like a John Deere farm tractor without the wheels.  Noisy and smoky internal combustion engine (still surviving in the high tech Star Wars universe?).   Rey is lean and tough, fast on her feet, and a natural born pilot.  She and Finn escape Jakku in the good old Millennium Falcon which they find and steal right off the planetary boss’s back yard.  With Rey in the pilot’s seat and Finn manning the guns, we see a lot of low level flying with TIE fighters in pursuit.  Millennium Falcon is built tough in this flick; we see her scraping the ground and crashing thru trees, and still airborne.  I found these scenes a little jarring, in the Air Force, touching the plane to the ground, even lightly, was a crash, excepting touched the landing gear to the runway.  And, they can kick in the hyper drive and go faster than light before even getting clear of the hanger.