Supply chain is breaking again

 Stopped by Wallymart for catfood.  Last time I scored a 40 can carton of Friskies.  This time all I got was 4 cans for Friskies and 3 plastic containers of something else.  Cat eats two cans a day, so I only have a few days of food for Stupid Beast. 

Land lines are not what they used to be

 The phone rings.  I get out of my chair and answer it.  Sometimes I get dead air.  Sometimes I get a sales pitch so broken up by flaky caller's phone as to not be understandable.  Sometimes I get a foreign accent so thick that I cannot under stand it.  Sometimes I get a weak voice that mumbles and I hang up. 

   You would think the buyers of this advertising would do a little quality control and shape up the worst offenders.  They are paying for each call placed, not whether the call sells any product for them. 

What happens in Ukraine?

On the Russian side we have

1. A whacking big Russian army, and some Russian navy, camped out, in the snow, on Ukraine’s borders.  It would just take a telephone call from Putin to get them moving into Ukraine.  That’s at least twice, maybe more, the size of the Ukrainian army. 
2. Putin has the Germans, and plenty of other European countries almost hooked up to enough Russian natural gas to heat all their homes and run all their electric plants.  Putin knows (or he ought to know) that the Germans need that gas and will do a lot to keep the pipeline deal going, even if the Americans want to shut it down.
3. He knows Biden is mostly out of it, and even in his better days was not very brave, and will do nearly anything to avoid conflict.
4. It’s probably up to Putin alone, if he thinks invasion of Ukraine won’t cost too much he will do it.  If he thinks it will hurt Russia he won’t do it.  Unless we have another Oleg Penkovski (legendary sleeper mole in the Kremlin), we won’t know until it happens.

On the American side we have:

1. NATO and other treaties that give us a lot of support all over Europe.
2. Serious economic strength, far greater than the Russians have.  This strength would be better used if Biden made some straight forward threats of economic sanctions.    

Explorers 1985 Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, Jason Presson

Cute movie.  The three actors are playing young boys, let’s guess 14 years old.  Young enough to be very cute, old enough to be able to do stuff.  They invent a spaceship, it moves by clean thoughts and righteous living, nothing as crude as rockets.  They evade a suspicious cop, they find off world creatures who know about earth music and flicks.  It’s fun to watch.  The young actors mumble a bit so I didn’t catch all the dialogue, but it could have been worse.  Naturally after adventures in outer space they all make it home safely.  Ethan Hawke gets the nicest role of a good kid, who has a girl friend, and stays out of trouble.  River Phoenix gets the role of super nerd scientist who creates the spacecraft.  Jason Presson gets a decent role as the kid who knows stuff, like welding and finding the more or less ready to go hull of the space craft.   Good watch for children in the vicinity of 10 years old.  But the time they reach 18, forget it. 

 

Russian tanks with wimpy guns?

 The Russians have been showing a lot of newsreel stuff of their army on maneuvers just outside of Ukraine.  Assuming this footage is recent, and not left over from WWII, I see some strange stuff.  A bunch of tanks with tiny cannon, like 1 inch (20mm)  bore.  The lesson from WWII is that any decent tank needs a three inch (75mm) gun.  Modern main battle tanks have moved up to 4 inch (100 mm) and 5 inch guns (120mm).  I wonder what the Russians are doing buzzing around in 1 inch gun tanks?  And I saw a number of Russian tanks with really narrow treads.  Another lesson from WWII is tanks want the widest tread possible to prevent them getting stuck in snow or mud.   

   Have the Russians forgotten their lessons from WWII?  Or are the Russian newsreels showing obsolete or training versions of their equipment? 

Biden is talking about leaving US citizens to sink of swim in Ukraine.

 He said that confrontation between Russian troops and US troops would touch off WWIII.  Not so.  We tell the Russians that were are getting our people out.  If they get in our way we will kill them. 

Brits claim break even nuclear fusion.

It was in the Wall St Journal today.  The achieved 60 Megajoules for 5 minutes.  That's enough fusion power output to cover the energy required to run the fusion reactor.  In more familiar units, a watt is one joule per second, so I read 60 megajoules as 60 megawatts, enough juice to do a lot.  Keep this up and we might be able to fuel our cars and keep our houses warm without drilling for more oil.