Next Gen succumbs to budget cuts.

Next Gen is the FAA's plan to completely redo the national air traffic control system.  Under Next Gen, each aircraft would be required to carry a GPS receiver, and upon interrogation from ground radar the aircraft would report it's position according to GPS.
  Next Gen would require every aircraft to be equipped with a $25,000 GPS box, at the owner's expense.  Benefit is better accuracy.  GPS is accurate to a few feet.  Ground radar is accurate to only a few miles.  Knowing that the radar positions are only accurate to a few miles, air traffic controllers keep planes spaced apart in the sky by ten miles or more.  It is claimed that Next Gen would permit closer spacing, making more room in the sky to absorb the ever increasing load of air traffic.  And the equipment manufacturers are more than pleased with the thought of selling all those expensive GPS boxes.
   And now, according to Aviation Week, all this goodness is on hold because Congressional austerity programs won't pay for Next Gen.  Oh woe.
   In actual fact, there is plenty of sky for  any amount of aircraft using today's tried and true radars.  The bottleneck is at the airports.  We only have about 50 big airports into which ALL the scheduled air traffic goes.  These airports can only handle 60 planes an hour.  That limit is set by common sense.  You want the plane that landed to slow down and turn off the active runway before you allow the plane behind him to land.  Just in case the landing aircraft blows a tire, skids off  the runway, or worse (Asiana 214 anyone?) .  That takes about a minute.
  Likewise you want the plane taking off to make it safely into the air before you allow the plane behind to start his takeoff roll.  This takes about a minute.  So the airports are the limit to air traffic, not a lack of sky to hold the planes.  No amount of pricey Next Gen GPS will do anything to let the airports handle more traffic than they do now. 

Car Hacking

NPR and Fox have been running stories about car hackers.  The hackers claim to be able  to take control of the victim automobile, blow the horn, work the steering, work the brakes and accelerator, change stations on the radio, just about everything.
   This is the stuff of Hollywood movies.  I can see it now, black clad villain, laughing maniacally, fingers a radio control box and causes the hero's car to dive off the cliff, pull out in front of a freight train, swerve into a bridge abutment.
    For this to work, the victim car has to cooperate.  It has to have motors or actuators to move the steering, the brakes, the throttle.  And, no decent car ought to have that kind of automation.  The trusty '57 Chevy drove just fine without any of this junk.  It wouldn't parallel park itself, but I learned how to parallel park a long long time ago and I still do it by hand.
   There might be a market for cars proof against hacking.  As it is, I plan to keep my trusty Mercury Grand Marquis running as long as I can, just in case.
   While they are at it, they could market a car without that black box speed recorder that can ruin your day in court after the accident.

   

Why the Democratic establishment wants Weiner to resign

The TV has been cluttered with top national democrats urging Anthony, can't-keep-it-zipped Weiner to pull out of the NYC mayoral race.  Apparently they don't trust the voters to reject Wiener.  Maybe they have something there, after all the voters re-elected Obama after four years of wrecking the economy and throwing them out of work. 

Thought Crimes and uniform regulations

According to the TV news the case against Bradley Manning, the Wikileaks leaker, revolves around Manning's intent.  If Manning meant to harm the US, long jail term.  If he thought he was a whistle blower he gets off.
   This isn't right.  Manning revealed classified documents to people who lacked clearances, who lacked a need to know, and who were not service members, who were not even US citizens.  That's illegal and ought to be enough to punish him good and hard.  The case should not revolve around intent.   Intent is thought.  We should not be trying thought crimes, where the defendant can be found guilty for thinking the wrong thoughts.  Crime must consist of actions, not thoughts.
  Watching Manning of TV, I see that the Army has revised the Class A uniform.  It's now dark, almost black, with silver piping on the epaulets, like the Nazis used to do.  Goes with the retro Civil War style shoulder straps on the officer's uniforms. 

Who killed the Western?

The Atlantic runs a long sad commentary here that doesn't say much.  They never mention the real Western killer, Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles.  That came out in 1974, when the Western was getting long in the tooth, and many of us figured Westerns were for kids.  Blazing Saddles drove this point home so hard, that no Westerns were attempted for 10 years, and the couple that were tried 10 years later flopped despite decent casts and screen writing. 
   I liked Westerns,  the good guys won, the bad guys were beaten, the scenery was cool, tough guys acting tough,  lots of action, what's not to like?  But after Blazing Saddles trashed the genre so thoroughly, it was impossible to take them seriously ever again. 

Intent and the right to vote.

A bunch of NH political types were discussing Voter ID on WMUR this morning.  Much of the discussion revolved around the"intent" of voters, namely do they "intend" to live in NH.  That's what you get when you get a bunch of lawyers together.  All talk, no sense.
   Intent is what a person thinks, and we don't have telepathy, so no one knows what another person thinks.  Law that takes thought into account creates thought crimes, where merely thinking the wrong thoughts is a violation of the law.   We should not have thought crime laws.
  In regard to the matter of who is entitled to vote in New Hampshire, we need to speak of objective, real things, things that can be seen and touched and photographed.  As a general rule, a New Hampshire voter needs New Hampshire plates on the car and a New Hampshire drivers license.  In fact, those two items are enough in my book.   Voters lacking a car upon which to have NH plates, need to explain how they got to the town offices, since most NH town offices can only be reached by car.  If a friend drove them to the office, the friend's car needs NH plates. 
   Voters lacking a car and a drivers license (very suspicious, everyone has a drivers license) must show evidence (lease, utility bill, mortgage stub) of a home in NH, something a little more permanent than a motel room, and a year round residence, not just a ski chalet. And they need to show a decent photo ID.  NH drivers license, passport, Armed Forces ID card, birth certificate, something solid.  College ID's don't count. 
   But what ever we do, let's do something real.  Let's not create thought crimes.

Somewhere a village is missing its idiot

Jack Lew, Obama's new Treasury Secretary was on Meet the Press this morning.  Oh boy, are we in trouble now with this guy running Treasury.  He starts off by saying that Congress needs to fund things the Middle Class needs.  Right.  The middle class doesn't need "programs", doesn't use "programs" .  The middle class needs jobs, not programs. 
  Then Jack talked about all the good work Obama has done reducing the deficit.  Right.  Deficit is still $1 trillion dollars, which is too damn high by a factor of 10. 
  Than Jack talked about economic growth, and how good it is.  Right.  The economy hit bottom back in 2008 and is still there on the bottom.  Obama declared that recovery had begun when things stopped falling, but things are still on the bottom it hit back in 2008.  Can you say dead cat bounce?  Growth this year is in the 1 percent range, which translates out as invisible.
  Finally Jack urged that we "stay on the path to growth." Right.  Since 2008 the path has not led to growth.  But Obama is bound and determined to keep the country on it.
   Either Jack believes this stuff, which makes him a total idiot, or he has no qualms about peddling snake oil on national TV.  Which isn't a good thing either.   So glad Obama appointed this loser.