Taiwan

 Taiwan is a sizable country, with a lot of high tech industry, that is friendly to the United States.  It is an island, off the coast of China, and China thinks it ought to be part of China, under the control of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Taiwan used to be part of China until 1947 when the communists took over China.  The Chinese nationalists, Chiang Kai-shek's party, retreated to Taiwan (Formosa it was called in those days).  China has wanted to regain control of Taiwan ever since 1947.  Only in the last few years has China become strong enough to make that a possibility.  

When Nixon and Kissinger did the opening to China back in the 1960's, one part of the deal that the Chinese insisted upon was for the United States to stop promising to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack. We have kept our promise to the Chinese on that subject.  Our state department called this policy "strategic ambiguity", we would not say we would  defend Taiwan but we would not say we would not defend Taiwan.  

The strait of Taiwan is 120 miles wide and deep enough to float aircraft carriers.  To defend Taiwan our navy has to move into the strait and sink all the landing craft loaded with Peoples Liberation Army soldiers.  The Chinese will use their navy to defend their troop ships and landing craft.  As of right now the Chinese have as many ships in their navy as we have in ours.  We need to build some more navy ships in order to have a bigger navy than China does.  

Biden just came right out and said we would defend Taiwan, which is the right thing to say, we need Taiwan.  To back up those words we need a navy strong enough to prevent the Chinese from landing troops on Taiwan. 

Dreadful books are one reason kids aren't learning to read.

 

This evening Trey Gowdy said on his program that children’s school grades and scores have been falling since 2011.  He mentioned difficulties reading in particular.  I can agree with that, kids that can read, quickly and well, can learn everything else they need to know by reading about it.  A good deal of the loss I will lay at the feet of school teachers, who assign just dreadful books for the kids to read.  My youngest son had a good deal of trouble learning to read, so I did what I could to help him, including reading his assigned books so we could talk them over.  Most, perhaps all, of the assigned books were terrible.  “The Giver” about a distopia so harsh as to make 1984 look like summer camp. “Riding the bus with my sister” where the sister was autistic or something and the protagonist finally falls in love with the bus driver and marries him (Boring, extra boring).  “Of Mice and Men” assigned in 7^th grade which is entirely too young for a story about sexual dysfunction.  “Fahrenheit 451” instead of Bradbury’s much better “Martian Chronicles”.  A looser story about the mujahadeen in Afghanistan in which the young girl protagonist’s favorite camel gets turned into K-rations for the mujh to eat.  I don’t remember reading a single book that was of interest to Youngest Son, or to me, and I do a lot of reading.    

   About the only good books from my childhood still in the bookstores are Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  We have picked up the Phillip Pullman books, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and the Rick Riordan books, but that is about all.  We have lost Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and the John Carter Martian stories). Andre Norton, (lots of good science fiction),  Robert Heinlein, the greatest science fiction writer, L Frank Baum and Ruth Plumley Thompson, the Oz books, Fletcher Pratt, The Battles that Changed History, Bruce Catton, civil war. 

   In short assign the kids too many really dreadful books to read, and we have taken a lot of the good readable books off the market. 

Wuhan Lab. Why is the US funding any kind of research in China???

 The TV is now discussing the US grant to the Wuhan Lab and what it was for.  Many people and National Institute of Health (NIH) say the grant was to do dangerous "gain of function" research.  Dr. Fauci denies this. My question is why were US taxpayer funds sent to a Chinese lab rather than an American lab?  American labs offer access to the raw experimental data, chance to interview the researchers, in general a necessary openness.  Chinese labs do what the Chinese government tells them to do.  In the case of Corona virus, which we think was created in the Wuhan lab, certainly a vast embarrassment to China, the CCP closes the doors, keeps foreign investigators out, conceals or destroys the lab results, and won't allow interviews with the researchers.  So why did US funding go to China?  Was it that the Chinese would perform "gain of function" research that US labs won't?  The Obama administration forbid "gain of function" research because it is very dangerous, and we don't want the know the results.  Gain of function research fiddles with the genes of the virus, bacterium, whatever to see what happens.  It often happens that the modified pathogen becomes much more deadly.  

  

I was taught to always treat every fire arm as loaded

 This teaching started in summer camp (riflery was taught in those days) when I was 11 years old.  This teaching continued up thru my Air Force years.  When picking up a gun the first thing you do is make sure it is unloaded.  This includes opening the chamber to make sure there is no round lurking there in.  Another basic gun safety rule is "Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to kill".    The recent tragic accident of Alex Baldwin and a "prop" gun indicates Alex Baldwin has not been properly trained in gun safety.  Had either rule been followed this killing would not have happened.  Surely Alex did not intend to kill his cameraman (woman). I feel sorry for his victims and for Alex. 

Solve the Truck Driver Shortage

 The TV is saying that the backup in West coast ports comes from a lack of truck drivers to get the containers out of the port and on their way to make room for another shipload of containers. I think the truck driver shortage could be easily fixed, just reduce the amount of paperwork done for each driver and allow 18 year old high school graduates to earn a truck driver's license. 

   Driving a truck is not that much different from driving a car, and most high school graduates have already obtained their driver's licenses.  Granted, a truck is bigger than a car and requires more attention to clearances and care to avoid sideswiping stuff, and backing a semi trailer rig is tricky.  I am thinking that about a week's behind the wheel practice will be enough.  If we decide that class room instruction in rules of the road and other stuff is necessary, have the classes taught by real truck drivers, not bureaucrats or ed majors.  

  Some will object that 18 years is not enough to be a responsible driver.  I say that is up to the hiring manager.  If he thinks the applicant for a job is trustworthy enough to handle his company's trucks, let him hire the kid.  I graduated high school quite some years ago.  All my classmates were responsible people, in whom you could entrust an expensive truck, and its valuable cargo.  I'd like to think that today's high school graduates are as good as all my classmates were years ago. 

Chinese Hypersonic missile Fractional Orbit Bombardment System

 Been a lot of talk about this.  It certainly indicates that Chinese missile engineering is good.  On the other hand I am not convinced that this weapon offers a worse threat than what we face already.  Standard ICBMs are extremely difficult to stop.  The warhead comes in at nearly orbital velocity, Mach 20 or 18,000 mph.  The warhead has a tough heat shield to prevent it melting from atmospheric friction. To shoot one down probably needs nuclear warheads on the anti missile.  

  At Raytheon many years ago I worked on the anti ballistic missile system radar.  It was a massive radar, definitely a fixed installation, no way it was ever going to be mobile.  It  was a phased array radar so it could generate multiple beams to track multiple targets.  The anti missiles had to accelerate at 100 gravities to get high enough to prevent their nuclear warheads from blowing the city they were defending away. 

In short, the new Chinese missile is impressive, but I don't see it as being all that more dangerous than standard ICBMs, of which we have a lot.  

Boeing is hurting.

 So said the Wall St Journal yesterday.  They cited a truckload of lawsuits resulting from the two crashes of brand new 737 MAX's.   They didn't talk about how the 737 MAX is selling now after the treacherous MCAS autopilot has been fixed.  How much revenue is Boeing bringing in from sales?  If it is enough to pay off the lawsuits, Boeing will survive.  If it isn't, bad things will happen.  

   They did mention that ONE Boeing employee, the senior test pilot, is in trouble with the law.  This guy convinced federal regulators that the very existence of the MCAS system did not need to be documented in any of the 737 manuals.   This seems like picking on a fairly low level employee who surely was just following direction from higher ups.  No mention of who the higher ups were. 

   The treacherous MCAS system was a band aid to make the 737 MAX fly just like the plain old 737 to avoid the cost of pilot training to fly the 737 MAX.  The 737 MAX was a plain 737 after an engine swap.  The new engines gave better fuel consumption, maybe 5% better.  With jet fuel going for $3 a gallon, and a full fuel load being a couple of 18 wheeler tank trucks, say 20,000 gallons, 5% fuel savings might be 1000 gallons, or $3000.  Nice chunk of change.  The new engines are bigger in diameter than the old ones, which meant they had to be slung somewhat lower under the wing.  Which meant that increasing the engine thrust, say for takeoff, had an increased tendency to push the aircraft's nose up.  Too much of this and the aircraft will stall, and fall like a stone.  So MCAS was supposed to give a bit of down horizontal stabilizer to counter the nose up tendency.  The two crashes of brand new 737 MAXs were blamed on the MCAS system going crazy and diving the plane into the ground.  

  The Journal piece did not mention who at Boeing, engineers or suits, OKed the MCAS design and what testing was supposed to be performed on each aircraft.