Angela Merkel's Lament

"All I can say is that we Europeans must really take our destiny in our own hands.  The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over as I experienced in the past few days."  Angela Merkel said these words at a campaign stop in Bavaria. 
   In my estimation, these are words that all sensible European leaders ought to be saying.  Europe, the EU, is as big as the United States in regards to population, land area, industrial capacity, wealth.  It has real threats, the Russians, financial turmoil, a flood of Muslim refugees, Brexit which could lead to disintegration of the EU, Islamic terrorism, high unemployment and sluggish growth, oppressive regulations, Greek bankruptcy, falling birthrates,  and doubtless more that are not obvious to Americans like me. 
   We Americans will help out against Russian aggression, but the rest of the problems we see as purely internal European problems.   Against most of them there is nothing we can do, even if we believed we ought to.   Wealthy Europe is a tempting target to aggressors, refugees, terrorists, and others.  Europe lacks America's natural defenses, lacks America's large and effective armed forces, and lacks America's political unity.  Any thinking person ought to be concerned.  Angela Merkel, as leader of Germany, the largest and most influential member of the EU, is speaking to Germans and EU citizens about what ought to be. 
   But US TV, even normally sober Fox News, is going ape over Merkel's words.  I heard both Shepard Smith and Charles Krauthammer yesterday decrying Angela Merkel words as a call to break up NATO,  and trash the American alliance.  How do you spell "overreact"?
  I read Angela Merkel's words as a call for Europe to stand on it's own two feet.  Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to say.  

Words of the Weasel Part 51

Someone invented a new and opaque term for a tax on imports to the country.  This sort of tax has been called a tariff since at least the American Revolution, and "The Tariff" funded the federal government down until the invention of the income tax in the very early 20th century.  The size of the tariff was a serious political issue from the Revolution right on.
   We enacted a very stiff tariff,  the Smoot Hawley tariff right after Great Depression I hit.  Most historians and economists tell us that Smoot Hawley made the Great Depression worse, and prolonged it.  Needless to say, "tariff" became something of a bad word  most places.  The exception was in union circles, the unions like tariffs.
   There is a push to put in a tariff again.  Only since "tariff" is now a bad word, they call it a "Border Adjustment Tax".  And the newsies let them get away with it. 

Fake News takes over the MSM

For the last couple of weeks, stories featuring the name of someone in the Trump administration, the proper noun "Russians" and little else have been all we get from the MSM.  The stories are always been from anonymous sources, i.e. sources fearful to give their names lest stuff fall on their heads.  Highly reliable those sources are.  The stories never actually accuse anyone of illegal, treasonous, or immoral acts, they just insinuate that something evil is going on.  Last couple of days they have been talking about, not accusing anyone of anything, just talking about communication between the Trump administration and the Russians.  Sure, the Russians are our international competitors (real people call them enemies). but there is nothing wrong with talking to them.  "Jaw, Jaw is better than War, War."  Winston Churchill said long ago.  JFK managed to keep the Cuban missile crisis from turning into WWIII by talking with the Russians.  After the smoke blew away he set up the "Hot Line" a secure back channel of communication.  There is nothing wrong with talking to the Russians. 
   I wonder what else is going on in the world?

Latest Intel CPU chip is $1999

That's just for the chip, mother board and casework extra.  Read all about on Slashdot. 
 Damn, that is pricey.   I remember when the Mostek 6502 selling for $30 won the Apple II slot, and in the process extinguished the Motorola 6800 which sold for $100.   And there is some market share such a chip will miss, such as the $300 laptop market.
   And in real life, the speed of a desktop computer is set by the speed of the RAM, hard drive, OS, and network, not the CPU.  I notice my relatively new HP laptop running Win 10 is no faster than my 10 year old desktop running Win XP.  Improvements in hardware speed are sucked up and thrown away by the latest version of Windows.  

And yet more unsolicited advice for Detroit.

How come so many cars on the road are painted gray?  Car salesmen will tell you it is "silver metallic" but in actual fact, it's gray.  And another whole bunch of cars get painted mud color.  Do customers really want mud colored cars? What ever happened to red, or blue, or British Racing Green, or black, or other bright primary colors? 
  Is it really consumer demand for cars painted yucky colors?  Or is it some faceless flunky who chooses the paint color for the average car going down the production line?  Most cars are built on speculation, they don't have a customer nailed down, so the factory builds what it thinks will sell, and ships it to the dealers who manage to sell it.  If the dealer's lot is filled with cars painted yucky colors, then yucky colors they will sell. 
   Maybe sales would increase if there were more cars painted decent colors?

Learning while in a Vegetative State.

Dandelions manage it.  They are vegetables, or a least plants.  Left to their own devices, dandelions will grown nearly 12 inches tall, flower, go to seed, and propagate themselves. 
  But, make one pass with a lawnmower and it learns 'em.  After getting mowed, the dandelions change their life strategy, and grow low to the ground and flower low to the ground, too low for the mower to mow them.  Dandelions learn from the first pass of the lawn mower. 
   Smarter than the average weed. 

Words of the Weasel Part 50

Impact, used as a verb. Bad English example "The car impacted the guard rail."  Impact is not a verb, it is a noun, using it as a verb is trendy but annoying.  Newsies can be particularly annoying this way. 
Proper English is " hit": or "strike".  Good English examples " The car hit the guard rail," or "The car struck the guardrail."