Admiral Jackie Fisher and the battle cruisers.

Jackie Fisher was appointed commander in chief of the British Royal Navy in the years before WWI.  Aircraft had not been invented yet.   Fisher saw his problem as finding the German Navy at sea and engaging it with the larger Royal Navy.   The Germans (and everybody else) would have a screen of cruisers around the battle fleet.  Cruisers could easily sink contemporary destroyers so having destroyers search for the enemy would just get a lot of destroyers sunk.  Fisher demanded a special purpose vessel, the battle cruiser, to go looking for the enemy.  The battle cruiser had to be fast, which called for a big ship, and heavily armed so it could blow enemy cruisers out of its way.  The result was a fine looking vessel, as big and handsome as a battle ship, but lacking a battleship’s armor.   The officers appointed to command the battle cruisers though they had command of a battleship and acted accordingly. 

   At the climatic WWI battle of Jutland, the British battle cruisers were commanded by flamboyant Admiral Beatty.  Beatty took his fleet of four battle cruisers out into the North Sea and located the German battle fleet.  At this time, Beatty should have broken off the action, radioed German position course and speed to British Grand Fleet and then run for it.

   Instead, Beatty engaged the German battle ship fleet and had three of his four battle cruisers were sunk by German fire.  “There seems to be something wrong with our ships today” said Beatty at the time. Beatty didn’t even bother to radio the German’s position, course and speed back to Grand Fleet.

    Fortunately for the British, Grand Fleet was commanded by canny old Admiral Jellico.  Jellico looked at the weather, the tides, and what Intel he had, and figured out just where the German fleet was going.  He got it right, and Grand Fleet was able to find the Germans, and cross the German’s Tee, the decisive maneuver in battle ship actions. 

    HMS Hood was laid down as a battle cruiser during WWI but was not finished and launched until the war was over.  After the destruction of three battle cruisers at Jutland, the British beefed up the armor on Hood.   But they treated her as a battle ship even though her armor was only 6 inches instead of the 12 inches considered proper for real battleships.  Twenty years later Hood was send out to stop Bismarck.  Bismarck scored a single hit on Hood’s deck, the shell went right thru and exploded and Hood sank in minutes.  The last of the battle cruisers.

Just in case, New Hampshire abortion law needed.

 From the looks of things on the TV news (highly reliable source that) there is a good chance that the Supremes will repeal Roe vs Wade, their abortion ruling.   Roe vs Wade requires abortion to be legal and available to every woman, over ruling laws in every state that criminalized abortion back then.  I think it would be a good thing for New Hampshire to pass a state law on abortion with some fancy language in the bill's header saying this only takes effect after Roe vs Wade is repealed.  

For me, I think such a law should declare abortion to be legal and available to all women, especially young women who  become pregnant in high school or college and giving birth would prevent them from graduating.  I think it should forbid late term abortions, which more and more seem like infanticide.  Pregnancy lasts nine months.  I would forbid abortion after 6 months (call it 24 weeks).  I don't believe that tax payers money should be used to fund abortion.  I think the woman, or her family, or a private charity should pick up the bill. 

Home solar energy.

You want your house to face south.  With big picture windows, facing south, to pick up sunlight.  You might need to buy a new house, or do some very heavy duty remodeling if your house faces the wrong way or lacks the necessary picture windows.  This works for me, on a sunny winter day my windows pickup enough warmth from sun that my furnace doesn’t run until the sun goes down.  While the sun is up it pours enough warmth into my house to keep it pleasantly warm all day.  No moving parts, no huge and leaky silicon solar cells, no DC to AC inverters, no battery banks, no deals with the electric company to keep my lights on after sundown. 

 You also want some big eaves to keep the summer sun out while letting the lower winter sun in.  You want your roof in a light color, not black, to ease the load on the air conditioner in the summer.  Here in North America the prevailing winds come out of the west, so you want some windows on the west side to open to let in some breeze.  And about the same amount of window on the east side that opens, so the breeze can blow right thru the house.  Some shade trees to shade the house in the summer are good too.

 Builders might keep these ideas in mind.  They don’t add much, if anything, to the cost of the house at the time it gets built.  They do yield a more comfortable and more energy efficient house.

You nuke Ukraine and we will nuke you back, harder

 That's what the United States ought to say to Putin next time he threatens to use his nukes.  For that matter, make it "nuke Ukraine or anywhere else".   Trouble is, if Biden said this, nobody would believe he meant it.  Everybody would expect him to chicken out in the clutch.  So we need a better president to make this work.

Puberty.

   Children are born with no feelings for or knowledge about sex. Other than the fact that young girls tend to hang with girls and young boys tend to hang with boys, little kids are unconscious of their sex.  This persists even though parents cut girls and boys hair differently and dress them differently.   It is not until maybe seventh grade, (14 years) that boys and girls begin to dance together, flirt with each other, date each other, and go steady with each other.  This change has been known for a long long time and is referred to as puberty. 

   Talking to kids about sexual matters before puberty is a waste of time; the kids don’t understand the talk.  Or misinterpret it to mean odd or harmful things the speaker cannot imagine.  After the kids go thru puberty then talks about sexual matters become understandable to them.  The kids may not grasp everything said, but at least they have a broad idea of what is being talked about. 

  Florida just passed a law forbidding schools to talk about sexual matters to kids in third grade and below.  That’s a good start, but I would make it kids in sixth grade and below. 

Supreme Court Leak.

    Leaving aside the intelligence supplied by the leak (court may dump Roe); the discouraging part is the existence of the leak and the leaker.  The leaker abandoned loyalty to the court, one of America’s oldest and most revered institutions, to merely serve the interests of the Democrat Party.  If an institution like the court cannot secure the loyalty of its personnel, what organization can?  Employees who place the interests of the Democrat party ahead of the interests of their employer, be it the court, the  armed services, the police, the lower courts, and more the nation is in deep trouble. 

   Many of the great things America has done over the years, winning wars, abolition, civil rights, huge engineering works, the moon landings, and more, were done by institutions, often against great opposition.  The institutions could not have succeeded if their personnel failed to support their institution, but instead had betrayed their institution to the opposition. 

   As to the issue at stake, overturning Roe vs. Wade, I am in favor.  Even though Roe has been the law of the land for 50 years, which ought to make it settled law, but hasn’t, I think it was a poor decision by a handful of lawyers on a matter that properly should have been decided by an elected legislature, either federal or state. 

Misinfornation, Disinformation, Malinformation or truth versus falsehood?

 Liberals having hissy fits over Musk’s buyout of Twitter keep talking about the terrible effects of misinformation, disinformation and now malinformation.   I don’t hear any talk about truth versus falsehood.  I think the liberals are whining about truth that does not support “the narrative”.  And they want those truths suppressed less they waken or even destroy the precious “narrative”. 

   Which is a lot different from what we expect of the media.  We want the facts of the case, not rooting for the Democrats.  We think any newsie who slants the news to favor the Democrats ought to be ridden out of town on a rail.