More Old Line Science Fiction Authors, L. Sprague de Camp

de Camp was a pretty good writer.  All his stuff is worth reading.  My favorite is Lest Darkness Fall. It's old, copyright 1939. but it still reads well.  Thru methods not well explained, a modern archeologist, Martin Padway gets miraculously transported from our modern time back to Ancient Rome of the 500s.  Despite being written about 70 years ago Padway comes off as a perfectly reasonable modern American in his dealing with the inhabitants of Ancient Rome.   Fortunately Padway knows Latin and Italian well enough to get along in Ancient Rome.  He manages to make a living by borrowing money from a local Rome banker and setting up to distill and sell brandy.  The time is just a few weeks before Justinian, the Eastern Rome Emperor will make his attempt to reconquer Italy for the Empire.  Padway decides to oppose Justinian and Justinian's general Belisaurius.  Thru good luck, and employment of some 20th century military ideas, the Goths in Italy, with Padway leading them, manage to defeat the Imperial invasion.   Padway meets a number of pretty and cool chicks, does not marry any of them.  All in all a good read.  You will enjoy it.   

How long before Biden crashes the US dollar?

Goldman Sachs asks the question.  These are bankers worrying about borrowing too much money.  When bankers express worry about such things, trouble is not far away.

Presby’s sugaring off party

Presby throws this party every year.  Breakfast of pancakes, choice of bacon, pork sausage, or ham, donut holes, coffee.  Kids love it.  Saw new maple sap tanks and the new stainless steel sap boiler, bought some maple stuff, and enjoyed the morning.

 

Biden’s 9000 oil and gas leases.

 Biden has been complaining that the oil companies have 9000 leases to drill and they have not drilled them.  What Biden doesn’t say is that some of these leases were for dry holes, land that just didn’t have any oil in it.  Others are leases on land that has a little oil, but not enough to justify sinking an expensive well which will never produce enough oil or gas to pay for the cost of drilling.  In both of these cases, oil company management is doing the right thing, conserving money by not drilling unless the well will be profitable, i.e. pay off the costs of drilling it. 

   Biden is threatening to cancel all the unused leases and maybe fine the oil companies for not drilling them. 

   This abusive policy is not going to increase domestic oil production and get it back up to where it was when Trump was president.  It will provide welfare for lawyers for years.

   Biden ought to get the leasing situation straightened out so that a lease is issued within a month of the oil company making a request for one.  He ought to sell leases off shore, in Anwar, just about anywhere except in the Grand Canyon.  And come up with a way to disqualify British Petroleum for gross incompetence and endangering everyone near a BP facility.  BP is the company the let the Alaska pipeline rust out and leak, managed to blow up their refinery in Texas, and caused that awful blowout in the Gulf of Mexico back in Obama time. 

Rare Element shortages.

    Lithium is element number 3, above hydrogen and helium.  It is an alkali metal with a single valance electron.  It is found in nature as various compounds.  Elements lighter than iron are quite plentiful in the universe and on earth.  The lighter elements are created in all stars, of which there are many.  The heavier elements, heavier than iron, are only formed in supernova, of which there are many many less than there are stars.  Only one star in 1000 (or more) goes supernova, so the elements formed in supernovae are scarcer, although available.  Copper, silver, gold and platinum are all heavier than iron, scarce enough to be called precious metals, but common enough to be used as money and as jewelry. 

   Anyway, we should be able to find plenty of lithium in North America if we look.  Actually they have found a sizeable lithium deposit out in Oregon.  The company prospecting this deposit was saying on the radio that required greenie paperwork will delay opening a mine in this deposit by five or ten years.  If we really need more lithium for batteries in battery cars, we could get it now be revoking all the greenie paperwork.   

Let’s cut federal spending.

There are a lot of federal agencies that we could do without. 

1. Kill off the Securities and Exchange (SEC) agency.  This was created after the great depression with the mission of preventing another great depression.  After great depression 2.0, which broke out in the winter of 2007-2008 it is clear that the SEC has failed in its primary purpose.  We ought to shut them down, lay off all the workers, burn the files, and sell the buildings. 
2. The federal education department.  They don’t do any teaching which is all that counts in education.  They have been issuing a bunch of “guidance” letters that are not really needed. Again we ought to lay off all the workers, burn the files, and sell off the buildings.
3. The bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).  This is the old revenooers from the 1930s.  The agency was created to collect the federal whisky tax of $10.50 a gallon, and suppress moon shining.  In recent times they brought us Ruby Ridge.  We could shut them down completely.  State and local police can handle what little law enforcement BATFE does. 
4. The Federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  I cannot think of anything HUD does other than draw their pay.  We could shut them down and nobody would miss them.
5. There are probably more, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind.

 

More old line science fiction authors, Hal Clement

 Hal wrote a bunch of stuff, all of it decent.  His master piece was Mission of Gravity.  The giant planet Mesklin has incredibly strong gravity at the poles.  Mesklin rotates so fast that the planet is stretched out into the shape of the yolk of a fried egg.  Rotation is so fast that centrifugal force reduces surface gravity at the equator to only 3 G. 

   The Terrans have landed an instrument probe on the North Pole to study the intense gravity field with an eye to developing anti gravity.  Unfortunately something goes wrong and the probe fails to takeoff upon command.  The Terrans land one brave man, Charles Lackland, on the equator, where the gravity is light enough to allow a successful blastoff to take a look around.  Charles encounters the natïve skipper of a sea going freighter, Barlenan by name, and talks Barlenan into voyaging to the North Pole to attempt to salvage the probe.  Equipped with Terran TV cameras and recorders to read the instruments on the probe, Barlenan and his crew set off.  They encounter many adventures along the way. 

   It’s a good read; I read it to myself back in grade school.