The Great Springfield Model Train Show

It's the biggest show except for maybe Timonium down in Maryland.  The Amhearst model railroad club puts it on at the Eastern States Fairground in West Springfield MA.  It's big, the train show filled all four of the very big exhibition halls at Eastern States.  It pulls in the fans, they can charge $5 parking and $14 admission and get it.  I saw license plates from as far away as Maryland and Ontario.  Traffic trying to get into the fairgrounds at 9 AM Saturday was fierce.  I'm guessing we had 10,000 people for Saturday, and the show runs thru today.
   Took me three hours to drive down from Franconia.  It was still dark when I got on I91 and I rolled right along.  I did try and keep it below 80 mph.
   The crowd looked older than it did last time I went to Springfield.  Mostly guys, mostly old enough to be retired.  Some small grandchildren who were fascinated by the moving model trains.  Very few middle and high school kids who would be old enough to build their own model railroads.  Not many working age folk.  This is clearly an old guy's hobby.
   They had dozens of operating layouts on the floor.  Big ones.  All modular, all take apart and load in a trailer deals.  They were all put together and looking very good. They had all the vendors in the world.  I bought some decals, some well used rolling stock to serve as projects, and some hard to find detail parts. 

Black Socks

Front page story in this morning's WSJ.  Army will now allow troops to wear black socks with gym outfits.  Lotta talk about why.  They didn't say how white gym socks look nerdy with nearly everything.  Then the story mentioned that the Army has a 57 page uniform regulation and a 287 page uniform guide.  Good lord.  How many field grade officers does it take to create 287 pages on what to wear?  Or was it GS12's?    That's a lotta paperwork.   Maybe we could do some cost cutting here?
   I spent six years on active duty in USAF and I cannot ever remember seeing, let alone reading, a uniform regulation.  I was able to look sharp and look regulation in front of my troops without a 287 page uniform guide. 

So I watched the Republican debate last night

Everybody looked good and sounded good.  I could vote for any of them.  Except Rand Paul who is an isolationist.  Nobody committed any lethal gaffes.  Nobody missed The Donald.  Any one of these guys ought to have no trouble beating Hillary. 
   And Megan Kelly seems to have a new hairdo, quite becoming.

Men's fashion from the WSJ

Half page story, with picture of "Next in Men's Fashion".  Shows five scruffy looking male models, wearing clothes I'd never be caught dead wearing.  We have one in a bright yellow turtle neck, grass green jacket, purple pants, and loafers without socks.  The other four are wearing mud color outfits.  The story called the color "brown" and said "It's the new black".   We have one "suit" (matching jacket and slacks) in a really loud hounds tooth check, with tailoring by Omar the tent maker, accessorized with a dark bead necklace.   And the next model is wearing a leather jacket, only it has white furry cuffs and white furry edging.  And the guy wearing a "military inspired" jacket that looks like jackets my grandmothers used to wear, black shiny slacks, and white gym socks under his loafers.
   The story claimed a 29 billion Euro market for global luxury ready to wear.   Maybe Euro males buy this stuff?

Shannara, TV show

Caught it last night.  It's a Game of Thrones wanna be show, comes on at 10 PM which is a bit late for me, but it was worth staying up for.  It is "based" upon the Shannara fantasy novels by Terry Brooks.  I read the first one many years ago and was sufficiently un impressed that I never read any more of them.  So I cannot intelligently comment upon how well the TV show tracks the books. 
   It's swords and sorcery with handsome young sword swinging heroes and some very pretty, leather clad heroines.  There is some vast undefined struggle between men and elves (both good looking) and some really ugly demons.  Dialog is mediocre.  For instance I never did catch the names of any of the handsome heroes or pretty heroines or the ugly demons.
   Still it was OK and I will make an effort to catch the next episode next Tuesday night.

Democratic Socialism, what is it?

The newsies occasionally ask a Democrat what the difference is between democratic and socialism.  You don't have to look far for an answer.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) set up for business in 1917 and lasted until 1989.  That was the biggest, longest lived, and most miserable socialist government in history.   Although the country styled itself as "socialist", the ruling oligarchy styled themselves as communist.  Communists and socialists believe in the same things except that communists believe they need a revolution to take power, whereas socialists think they can win power thru elections.  Otherwise they stand for seizing control of all economic activity (pretty much everything) and running it to suit themselves.  The Russians suffered thru 70 years of grinding poverty brought on by their socialist system. 
    The Bern undoubtedly claims that his socialism is different from the Soviet type.  You can believe as much of that as you like. 

Conservative, Smervative

The Republican candidates are on TV bashing each other.  Favorite bash, "He's not a true conservative".  Well, I don't really care if he is, or ain't, conservative.  I want a candidate who will make an effective president.  For openers we need someone who can win the general election. Which means getting the independents to vote for him.  Independents are centrist in their thinking, the ones who are lefties join the Democrats, the righties join the Republicans, what is left (43% of the electorate) is middle of the road.  Come out too strong for some favorite conservative causes, the gold standard, pro life, isolationism, tax relief for the 1%, and others,  you loose the independents. 
   We need someone who can lead, i.e. present a program and convince a majority of the citizens (and their Congresscritters) to support the program.  A candidate who insults the other side is going to have trouble getting the other side to go along with his program.  
   We need someone willing and able to accept advice.  As a subset, we need someone who can judge which advisers know what they are talking about and which ones don't.   Nobody knows everything, any president needs to accept good advice from qualified experts.  And ignore bad advice from know-it-alls.