Getting ready for Thanksgiving

 I have my children coming up, so I did some spiffing around the old place this Saturday.  The place was built in 1962, so it ain't new, and many would call it old.  I started out to clean the oven.  This oven is a son-of-a-gun to clean.  The lower heating element makes it impossible to clean the oven floor, unless it is removed.  So I get my set of spintites to unscrew the heating element.  Got the screws out, pulled the element forward and drew an impressive zap.  I had forgotten that one end of the heating element was always hot, even with the oven turned off.  So down to the basement to pull the stove circuit breakers.  Juice off, I tried to disconnect the two wires leading from the stove to the oven heating element.  One came off, the other refused to come off no matter what.  Best I could do is tape the heating element up out of the way.  

   So I started to clean the oven grates.  Part way thru this I noticed a lot of water building up under the kitchen sink.  Some inspection revealed a broken hold down nut-thingy under the sink.  So it's Saturday, Franconia Hardware is open, and down three mile hill I go.  Mike has the right parts, Mike has the right parts for everything.  Back up three mile hill I go.  Install the new U bend.  It leaks,  I tighten the nut-thingies with a wrench.  That manages to break the downspout.  Back down to Mike's I go.  He has a new down spout.  It's getting dark by the time I get the kitchen sink drain back together.  Then I have to finish up cleaning the oven and get the heating element back in place.  I manage, by which time it is 5 o'clock.  So I feed the cat and make myself a good stiff drink.  

Long day.

Kyle Rittenhouse trial is OVER. Thank Goodness.

 The jury acquitted Kyle on all counts.  From what I saw on TV, it did look like the people Kyle shot were really attacking him, and he shot them in self defense.  The jury saw it that way and they spent more time looking at video of the riot than I did.  Good thing for Kyle the jury was able to acquit on all charges.  Weasel juries will try to split the difference, convicting on some charges and acquitting on others.  That weasel makes the defendant guilty but the jury can point to the charges they acquitted and claim they were doing the right thing.  In Kyle's case, the jury did the right thing and acquitted him on all charges.

In this case a white teenager shoots three white rioters.  I don't see how anyone can call Kyle, or anyone else in the case a racist.    

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial was in Wisconsin.  Bill de Blasio and Mario Cuomo (New Yorkers both of 'em) had comments on the case.  What do a couple of New Yorkers know about a trial in Wisconsin??

Technological advances: the rifled musket.

 Some things move slowly.  The British Army issued a smooth bore flintlock musket, Brown Bess it was called, for nearly 100 years.  Infantry tactics were worked out.  You have your men load their muskets and fix bayonets.  You close with the enemy, very close.  Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes was the order given at Bunker Hill.  That's probably 20 feet, so close you cannot miss even with a smooth bore.  After firing on the enemy  you went at them with bayonet and gun butt.  Nobody got a chance to reload.  This state of affairs lasted up thru the Napoleonic wars.

   Come forward to the American Civil War.  All the new Army officers, recently pulled from civilian life, are furiously reading Jomini, Napoleon's biographer/historian.  Both Civil War armies, Union and Confederate figured Napoleon knew land warfare, he won a number of striking victories.  The Americans figured if it worked for Napoleon it ought to work for them.

There had been one important technological change since Napoleon's time.  The muskets were now rifled. The troops could open fire at 200 yards (600 feet) and get hits.  Rifling had been around for a couple of hundred years, problem was, using a round ball in a muzzle loader, it was quite difficult to force the ball down the barrel.  The ball had to be big enough to take the rifling, which meant the rifling had to cut grooves in the lead ball.  So, rifled guns were made, were used, but they were so slow to load that armies issued faster loading smooth bores.  

   The French solved the problem with the invention of the Minie ball, a lead slug with a hollow at the back.  The explosion of the gunpowder forced the hollow rear end of the bullet to expand and take the rifling.  The Minie balls were cast small enough to just drop down the muzzle, just like a smooth bore.  So now we have a rifled musket, that loads as fast as the old Brown Bess smooth bore.  And it is in mass production, issued to most of the troops at the start of the Civil War and issued to all troops by the end of the Civil War. 

    So now we consider the effect on infantry tactics.  The defender, standing his ground, can open fire when the attackers are 200 yards away.  By the time the attacker has charged 200 yards, the defenders have time to reload, at least once, and give 'em another volley.  The defenders get at least two shots for each man.  The attackers only get one.  Muzzle loaders cannot be reloaded on the run, you have to stop, stand still, to get the powder, the Minie ball, and the wad down the barrel, to say nothing of getting the percussion cap on right.

   That's what happened to Pickett's Charge.  Union infantry shot Pickett's men down before they got close enough to use the bayonet.  And something similar happened at all the Civil War battles.  Defenders always defeated attackers.  This was not supposed to happen if you had read your Jomini.

Malwarebytes vs Word vs Win 10

 

Word for Windows choked up when I tried to print. Drew an error message from malwarebytes about an exploit. Uninstalled malwarebytes and Word can print again.

Death and Taxes

 My telephone bill, just plain old telephone service, was $26.95.  Of this, $15.30, better than half, was federal tax.  It's not one tax, it is seven different taxes, designed to disguise how much Uncle is nailing me for. 

Movie the Golden Compass. 2007

 Based on a fantasy trilogy by Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass,  The books were good, they are young adult (YA) which I read as more interesting and better written than Adult Fiction.  The movie was pretty good.  Dakota Blue Richards does a fine job of playing Lyra, the main protagonist, even though she was only 13 years old at the time.  I thought she did more for the movie than Nicole Kidman or Daniel Craig.

   It is too bad that they never made movies from the other two books of the trilogy.  It could have been mediocre earnings from the Golden Compass.  From a budget if $180 million, they only made $70 million in the US and Canada.  Worldwide earnings were better, $370 million, so they should have made a fair amount of money on the Golden Compass. 

Abolition:

 Way back when, long before the US Civil War of 1860, slavery was confined to the Southern colonies which would form the confederacy for the Civil War.  The North was into small farms owned and operated by free men.  The big slave worked plantations were a Southern phenomenon.  And the two systems did not interact much. 

   Starting back in the early 1700’s a feeling began to grow in the North that slavery was unfair, cruel, and close to a mortal sin.  Abolition it was called later.  For the Revolution, this feeling was submerged, all hands North and South, understood that to beat the Redcoats we Americans needed unity in the face of the enemy and we could not afford the political strains that abolition would bring, at least not until we had won the Revolution. 

After the Revolution abolition grew apace.  A lot of protestant preachers spoke in favor.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe became a best seller, selling nearly as many copies as the Bible.  The Republican Party was created to push abolition.  When the Republicans elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Southern states seceded from the Union.  When the South fired upon Fort Sumter the Civil War was on.  If the south had just let Major Andersen’s Fort Sumter garrison continue manning their guns, the North might well have let the South secede in peace.  But after the South fired on the Union flag, the North sprang to arms,  It took 600,000 casualties, more that all we suffered in all the other wars we ever fought to win the Civil War and free all the slaves. 

   We didn't fight the Civil War for white supremacy.  We fought it for freedom and liberty.