Where is Global Warming when we need it?

It's July and my furnace is still firing.  It is only 60F, cold.

 

America is the finest country in the world.

 American created democracy in the modern world.  When we ratified our Constitution in 1798 all the other countries in the world were hereditary monarchies.  Two hundred thirty years later that Constitution is still working for us with only 27 amendments.  Of those 10 were part of the original deal and passed the same year that the Constitution was ratified, so we really only have 17 amendments as later thoughts on how things ought to be. 

   We ended slavery.  It took the worst war we ever fought to do it, but the Union won, and they abolished slavery.  We lost 600,000 men fighting the Civil War, worse than all the other wars we ever fought, all put together.  We followed up with the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.  

   We showed the world what capitalism could do.  People believe the streets are paved with gold in America.  That is because of the wealth American capitalism created.  American labor unions defeated communism by winning decent wages for the workers.  America (with a good deal of help from the Russians and the British) defeated the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII. 

    Americans are inventive.  Cotton gin, electric telegraph, steamboats, revolvers and repeating firearms, telephone, incandescent light, gyrocompass, airplanes.  America launched the first missions to the Moon.

   Forth of July is coming right up.  We should be proud of our country.  We have done good work over the years.

Bill Cosby is out of jail

 I have been a fan of Bill Cosby ever since he was  doing "I-Spy" on Philadelphia TV in the 1950's.  I had an LP of "200 miles an hour".  I watched Fat Albert and the Huxtables.  It was a big surprise to me to hear on the radio that Cosby had been indicted.  I know nothing of the facts of the case, only the verdict and the jail sentence.  Now the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned the court findings and ordered Cosby's release from prison.  Only took 'em two years, while Cosby was doing prison time, to get around to it.  No explanation as to just why they did it.  I am sure Cosby and his family are overjoyed.  I am perfectly OK with it. 

We don't do Declarations of War anymore

Last time we declared war on anybody was back in 1941, right after Pearl Harbor.  Now a days we call it "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" and apparently they last forever.  They give the president authority to spend money, dispatch troops, order air strikes and other military action.  The old fashioned declaration of war became moot when the war was over.  Anyhow Congress just decided to cancel out some  Authorizations to kick ass in the Middle East passed some twenty years ago and still being used today.  Not a bad idea.

   The president can use military force to defend the United States which covers the small stuff but probably does not go as far as doing regime change on disagreeable nations.  As a matter of procedure, and a matter of political survival, the president wants to have Congress and the bulk of the nation behind any serious military operations.  They should remember that we lost the Viet Nam war for lack of domestic political support. 

Excaliber 1981

Released in 1981 making it forty years old this year.  It’s long, two hours and twenty minutes.  It tells the King Arthur story beginning with Uther Pendragon’s visit to Igraine, where with Merlin’s magical help he begets Arthur.  We have a young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, in front of a big crowd and being acclaimed king.  We have Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere.  We have Mordred’s treachery leading to Arthur’s death at the battle of Camlan.  In short all the significant stories from Malory’s La Morte d’Arthur are presented. 

   The movie has a few costume problems.  Everybody wears shining armor, plate armor, all the time.  Makes it hard to tell who is who since they all look alike, and wear helmets that obscure the actor’s faces. Arthur gets marred wearing shining plate armor.  In real life plate armor doesn't breath, making it sweaty as well as heavy.  I am sure armor would have been kept on hooks in the armory and only donned to go into combat, not worn around the house. The other trouble is, in Arthur’s time (late 400’s to early 500’s) armor would have been either old Roman armor or chain mail, or boiled leather.  Plate armor would not be developed for another thousand years. 

   Nigel Terry plays King Arthur, Helen Mirren plays Morgana, and Nicol Williamson plays Merlin.  Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson have bit parts, so small that I never recognized them while watching the movie. 

Choosing the Right Strategy for WWII.

   Right after Pearl Harbor there was incredible political pressure to do something about Japan.  Natural enough.  But Roosevelt wanted to deal with Germany first.  He saw Germany was more dangerous.  She was bigger than Japan, bigger population, far more heavily industrialized, had her own supplies of coal and iron, had plenty of top flight scientists, and occupied a very strategic location, right in the center of Europe.  Europe was the center of the civilized world in those days, where as Japan was way off in the Far East.  The US Joint Chiefs of Staff and most of the American establishment agreed with Roosevelt and supported his views on the matter.  The British were all in favor.  And, Hitler declared war on the United States.  This was purely off the cuff on Hitler’s part, he had no alliance with Japan, no treaties offering support, and he didn’t own the Japanese anything.  Five million German soldiers were locked in deadly combat with the Russians, the British were bombing the snot out of his homeland, last thing Hitler needed was another enemy.  What Hitler did manage was to convince everyone in America that Germany and Japan were in league with each other (the Axis) and so nailing the Germans was as good as nailing the Japanese. 

   Had we followed our first impulse and thrown everything into smashing Japan we might have given the Germans time to develop nuclear weapons.  We certainly would have given them time to get their deadly Type 21 submarines into action.  We would have given Hitler time to beat down the Russians.  Time for Rommel to stiffen the defenses on the Atlantic Wall.  As it was, the Atlantic Wall was almost strong enough to defeat D-Day.  Another year or two of laying more minefields, building more pill boxes, and it might have been strong enough to hold.

Ho Ho Ho. Windows 11 coming for Christmas.

The Wall St Journal ran three pieces on Windows 11 today.  It will start coming preinstalled on desk tops and laptops by Christmas time.  Windows 10 owners will be offered a free update. They say they have not changed the user interface "much" from Windows 10.   Windows 7 and 8 users will NOT get a free update. " Users can choose from Android apps Amazon offers to install on their PC's." to  quote the WSJ piece. I think this means Windows 11 can download and run some, perhaps all, Android apps.  TikTok and Uber ride hailing service were mentioned by  name.  They claim better integration with "the cloud" which is not a feature I care about.  They claim deeper support for Microsoft "Teams".  First I ever heard of "Teams".  I must be loosing touch with the technology since I retired.  They claim 20 million users for "Teams"  a year ago and 145 million users today.  

   Did not talk about how much slower and fatter Windows 11 will be compared to Windows 10.  Every new version of Windows going all the way back to 3.1 has demanded more RAM and more disk space and more time.  Only improvements in PC hardware performance over the years has kept Windows sluggishness within limits.