US history textbooks

 Anyone know of a good US history book for grade school?  I know some good ones, but they are all college level.  Starting grade school kids on Morrison and Commager isn't going to work.  I would like a text that tells US history straight, not the New York Times 1619 propaganda slant. 

Bullet proof armor

There used to be the Higgins Armory Museum out in Worcester Massachusetts.  Big building, three or four stories tall.  All filled with medieval plate armor.  The museum was put up by a Yankee millionaire who liked to collect armor.  His collection is what filled the museum.  I took my kids out the Higgins a couple of times.  They loved the place. Unfortunately the money ran out a few years ago and they had to close the museum.  A great loss.  

   Higgins did show that plate armor was bullet proof.  Most of the suits bore a proof mark, a bullet mark where the maker had tested the armor by firing a bullet at it.  As time went on, guns grew more powerful.  There was a suit of plate armor at Higgins that sported the proper proofmark, but also sported a big bullet hole in the breast plate.  That bullet probably killed the wearer.   

   Early suits of plate were "cap a pied" French for head to toe.  These had plates protecting arms and legs, including lovely plate armor shoes to protect the feet.  One of these suits would keep out Robin Hood's arrows all over.  Guns hit harder than arrows, and in the 1400's when muskets came into use, they had to make the breast plate thicker to make it bullet proof.  To keep the weight down they dropped the cap a pied and left arms and legs unprotected.  The thinking must have been that a bullet in the torso was probably fatal but a bullet in a limb, while a bad wound, was survivable.  

   By the 1700's the muskets were powerful enough to pierce any plate armor light enough to wear, and so troops stopped wearing armor and just went into battle wearing a colorful cloth uniform. 

Wanna bet all those Chinese and Russian hacks are against Windows?

 Everybody runs Windows.  It is the most insecure operating system in history.  Stick a flashdrive into a USB port and Windows will upload and execute any programming that might be on the flashdrive.  Windows allows any program access to the internet without ever asking the user if this program is safe. Windows comes out of the box with a remote access loophole that allows foreign computers to gain complete control of your machine.  

 I have to believe that the agencies that got hacked this week were all running Windows.

They all should have been running Linux. 

Who dines outdoors in the snow???

 With a lotta snow on the ground, the TV is still talking about dining out of doors.  They showed a clip of a New York restaurant taking in the tables and chairs with a foot of snow on the ground. 

Election integrity

 Ideally, voters ought to appear in person at the polls, on election day, show their picture ID, be checked off on the registered voter list, and then vote on a paper ballot.  No ballots of any kind submitted or "discovered" after the polls close shall ever be counted.  Absentee ballots should be provided only for voters who have a good reason not to be able to get to the polls on election day, such as members of the armed forces stationed overseas.  Fear of contracting a disease is not a good reason for voting absentee.  Ballots should never be mailed out to anyone.  Absentee ballots must be picked up at town hall in person or by a friend or relative who has a picture ID and the voter's signed application form.  

   Ballots shall be counted by hand.  Ballots shall be stored after counting in case of a request for a recount.  

So far as I know, New Hampshire is in fairly good shape except for allowing the use of voting machines.

Super Cute.

 That Chinese spy Fang Fang, or Christine Fang is CUTE. super cute. A lot of guys would do most anything to get a chance to sleep with her.

What is the most eco friendly container?

 A lot of stuff from the grocery store has to come in a container.  Corn flakes, milk, Quaker Oats, ground coffee. And a lot of other stuff too.

Ground coffee is sold in tin cans, cardboard cans, solid plastic jugs and "paper" bags. I call the bag material paper but it probably has a lot of plastic in it.  Anyhow which of these containers is cheapest for the coffee company to buy?  Which container takes the least amount of energy to manufacture?  Which container uses the least amount of scarce materials like tin?  Which container can be recycled?  Which container is happy in a landfill?  Happy containers rust out in a few years.  Unhappy containers last for millennia.

Most of us would like to do the right thing by the environment, if we knew what the right thing was.