Best Book in the last 125 years.

 This was a NYTimes thingy.  They polled their readers and the readers voted for “To Catch a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.  A worthy book I suppose, I have read it, and watched the movie, but it is far from being my favorite book.  Too preachy and too much misery.  Runner up was much more reasonable, Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring”.  The NYTimes revealed their ignorance of Tolkien in this listing.  Anyone who read and liked the Fellowship has read and liked the other two books of Middlearth.  In short real Tolkien readers would have listed “The Lord of the Rings” the name of Tolkien’s complete trilogy. 

   Tolkien would be my choice too.  I first read it in grade school, on my own time and loved it.  I read it aloud to my children, twice and they loved it both times.  I still find it a good read and I have been out of grade school a very long time.  It has everything, Middle Earth, a pleasant place that many of us would move to if we could.  Sword swinging heroes, really evil villains, action, treachery, magic, elves and dwarves, a heaven reachable by sailing ship, dangers but the dangers can be overcome by stout hearts and cold steel, and a cozy inn, the Prancing Pony.  Lots of interesting characters. 

  Are readers of the NYTimes so into social justice that they picked “To kill a Mockingbird” over Tolkien?  Did the NYTimes fudge the votes some how?

Victory at Sea 1952

Victory at Sea is the definitive sea going version of World War II.  Sometime after the war some one at NBC was looking at the news reel film shot during the war and was so impressed that he said “We ought to show this to the public.  And so they did.  It started coming out on NBC in 1952.  The movie film of warships in action, troops in combat, the US industrial plant turning out war material, the aircraft in combat was compelling.  I was very young when it was broadcast on NBC, but I watched each episode to the end.  They got Richard Rogers of Broadway fame to compose the score, and it was very very good.  Every bit as good at the score John Williams would do for Star Wars 25 years later.  They sold 33 rpm vinyl records of the score. 

    The movie film is dramatic.  The show a battleship, taking a hit, rolling over on its side and then sinking.  They show German U-boats torpedoing merchant vessels.  They show British troops, flat tin helmets, Bermuda shorts, bayoneted Enfield rifles marching across desert sand to encounter Rommel’s Germans in the Western Desert.  Good shots of Mussolini and Hitler.  A lot of really old fashioned tanks and motor vehicles. Some shots of European navy sailors wearing T shirts with big black and white stripes that no American would be caught dead wearing.

   I got my three disk set in a plastic box at the cheapy DVD bin at Walmarts some years ago.  You ought to be able to find them somewhere.  If you have children, showing Victory at Sea to them will give them a fine clear idea of what went on in World War II.

All in all, Good Flick.

The midterm elections are coming.

 You all ought to make plans to vote in November, and vote for Republicans.  We have all seen this last year how bad a democrat government can be.  We need Republican majorities in both houses of the US Congress to keep the democrats from ruining America. 

Are there enough Greenie voters to matter?

The Biden administration does not seem to be able to count.  They are jacking up fuel prices to hurt everybody just to please the Greenies.  Greenies believe that drilling for oil and mining coal is a sin against Gaia.  They believe we can keep from freezing to death in a New Hampshire winter with wind and solar.  They don’t understand that solar goes away every evening at sundown and wind can stay calm for days.  As I write this, high in the White Mountains, not a breath of air is stirring.  In short, Greenies believe in things that are not real.  Superstition we used to call this kind of thinking. 

   Anyhow, to get down to winning elections.  Do the Greenies really count?  The population of the US is like 330 million, of which at least half are old enough to vote.  Call it 150 million voters.  How many Greenies are there?  A million would be a lot, but not enough to win an election. 

   The Biden Administration, those faceless people that write Biden’s speeches and executive orders, would do better to concentrate on the majority of real voters and not the thin wedge of Greenies. 

 

Biden calls Putin a war criminal.

We didn’t used to do that sort of thing.  I don’t remember anyone calling Hitler a war criminal during WWII.  After victory over Germany and Japan, we occupied the countries, and then we set up Nuremburg and what ever we called the one in Japan, had some war crimes trials, got some guilty verdicts, did some death penalties. 

  But we didn’t go about calling enemy heads of state war criminals while the war was going on, be it a hot or a cold war.  Putin probably deserves it, invading a smaller, peaceful, neighbor and slaughtering its civilians is a horrible thing to do.  

   Plus, we won’t be able to put Putin on trial until we defeat and occupy Russia, which is a tall order.  So unless something strange happens, Biden’s accusation of war crimes remains at the level of political propaganda, rather than the operation of an impartial justice system. 

What schools should NOT teach.

 Race.   Don’t teach that one race is or was superior to another race[s].  Stick with Jefferson, “All men are created equal”.  Do teach that the US Civil War was waged to abolish slavery, and it was successful in this. 

 

Sex.  Teaching about any kind of sex before the children reach puberty is destructive and we should not allow it.  Before puberty, the kids simply do not know what sex is about, and teaching about it, against it, in favor of LGBTQ issues, gay marriage,  transgender issues (changing sex), or what ever is destructive.  After kids reach puberty, a school sex education course that tells how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and for girls how to avoid getting pregnant before graduation is OK, but no more.

 

Politics.   Don’t teach current political conflicts.  If you just have to teach some politics, teach about political controversies in the past.  “No Taxation without Representation” is a good place to start.

 

Urban Mining to save the planet

Urban Mining.   This is a British article which is actually about recycling.  We toss a lot of stuff, some of it is valuable, electronics for example, most of it is worthless.  The author talked about the need for a "well sorted waste stream" but never got around to saying how the sorting might be done.  Do we want to force homeless people to stand at the dump sorting glass bottles by color and grabbing the odd piece of electronics out of the waste stream?  I don't think so.  

Up here in New Hampshire we have the sorting mostly under control.  We have separate bins for glass bottles, tin cans, aluminum cans, plastic bottles, newspapers. magazines, miscellaneous paper, old clothes, cardboard, and electronics.  Only the electronics, mostly dead TV sets and dead desktop computers, seems to have much potential of yielding rare earth metals, or lithium, or copper or gold or silver.  The town dump  (transfer station for the trendy minded) sends the electronics off somewhere, I don't know where, every so often.   Where ever the stuff goes, it is a pretty well sorted waste stream for "urban mining".