So what is critical race theory, really

 Far as I can tell, from web surfing, critical race theory says that skin color is your destiny.  If your skin is white you are a nasty oppressor, if your skin is brown or black then every thing that goes wrong for you is whitey's fault.  White kids should feel guilty.  Brown and black kids should not work hard, they should accept failures in life as white oppression.  

   Forget Jefferson "All men are created equal" and Martin Luther King "Judged by the content of their character".  And if you look deeper, critical race theory looks like Communism or Socialism with the capitalist vs worker conflict replaced with white vs black (or brown and black) conflict.  

Not something that does any kid good to be taught.

Uniforms for Richard Sharpe TV dramas

 I have been watching my collection of the Richard Sharpe videos.  Sharpe, played by Sean Bean, is a British Army officer in the Napoleonic wars.  They have some cool shots of the redcoats, in uniform, in line or column, in action.  The red coats are really red, so red that I wonder if they could dye cloth that bright a red back in 1810 or so.  The redcoats and most of the other troops wear white pants which are nice and white and clean in most of the shots.  I gotta wonder if in real life white uniforms could stay looking that presentable after a bit of scrabbling around in the dirt.  But they look cool for the video.  And the officers get to wear gigantic hats.  I am not a real expert on period costumes so I don't know just how real the ones in the videos are, but they look cool.  

How Long Can America Keep Borrowing?

 Title of a Wall St Journal Op=Ed.  The answer is simple.  The US can keep borrowing as long as people are willing to buy T-bills.  Right now T-bills are selling briskly.  They are considered the soundest investment on the planet.  The US has an enviable record, gong back a couple of hundred years,  of never welshing on its debts.  In actual fact, we promise to repay a T-bill, with interest, after a fixed period of time, 5 years, 10 years, whatever, depends upon the specific T-bill.  We repay the T-bill owners with dollar bills, of which we can print as many as we need.  So as long as the financial community thinks US T-bills are a good investment they will keep buying them.  So long as we don't do anything really stupid to shake world wide confidence in US T-bills and US dollars, we can keep on borrowing. 

Wall St Journal discovers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

 TSMC we call them in the industry.  They have been around, and important for 20 years that I know of.  Biggest semiconductor fab in the world.  TSMC doesn't design chips, they accept designs from anybody with money and fabricate them.  They specialize in digital parts, 5 volt or 3.3 volt.  Should TSMC go out of production for some reason (Main land china invades Taiwan for example) there would be a semiconductor shortage world wide much worse than the shortages we are having now.  

Anyhow the Wall St Journal ran a story this week indicating vaguely how important TSMC is to the world economy.  First time the Journal has bothered to notice TSMC. 

Driving Home from Maryland

 When I got as far as Massachusetts all the electric road signs were encouraging all the citizens to get vaccinated.  Probably a better use for those signs than flashing simply "Drive Safely" messages.  I found the scenic route I took on the way down is 620 miles, the ordinary route (NJ Turnpike to Delaware Memorial bridge is 580 miles. Trip back took 12 hours, one hour of which was taken up by lunch in Brattleboro VT.  I got on Main St in Brattleboro looking for a restaurant. no luck. just two pizza and fried chicken places with no where to park.  Wound up at a snappy Japanese place on the way out of town.  I even remembered how to use chop sticks, something I have not done for 50 years.  That was yesterday.  Today I reregistered the car ($123.30, Arrgh) and picked up my cat from my sister in law.  Popped cat into the plastic cat carrier and let her cry until I got home, got the car unloaded, got her litter box cleaned and refilled, ad the doors closed.  I will keep her inside for a day to let her readjust that this place is home and not to wander too far.

More Improvements in Police Work

 We ought to go thru the law books and remove as many laws as we can.  For instance now that pot has been legalized in so many states, we should not be arresting people and putting them in jail just for simple possession of pot.  Waste of law enforcement time, waste of prison space,  and it makes the victim almost un employable.  In New York, Eric Garner died while the cops were arresting him for selling single cigarettes (loosies) on the street. That's a law that should never have been passed.  And it took a man's life. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know criminal law all that well, but I bet a lawyer could point out a bunch of other laws on the books that could be removed. 

Heavy Truck Traffic

 Drove down to Maryland to visit my daughter yesterday.  Trucks every where.  Big 18 wheelers pulling big 57 foot trailers.  It was like diving along side a freight train.  I figure a lot of 'em are delivering something, others are empties going out to pick up something.  Either way it looks like business is getting better.  

   I did not see many Detroit passenger vehicles. Lotta Toyota, lotta Honda, lotta Kia, not much from Detroit.  The pickup trucks mostly looked like company trucks or work vehicles.

Trip took me 12 hours, it usually only takes 11 hours.  I ran into a terrific thunderstorm near Philly, just poured down rain.  I had to ack off from my carefree 70 mph to like 40 mph cause the rain was so heavy that I had trouble seeing the road.  And I took the scenic route thru Pennsylvania instead of the faster but boring NJ turnpike route.  Tappan Zee bridge is gone.  It is now calling itself the Governor Mario Coumo bridge.  Ego trip much for New York's Granny Killer? It is the new bridge.  They have got the old bridge down and scrapped.  Not bad looking, pretty cable stayed design.