Science Fiction Project canceled

USAF's Airborne Laser project, a Boeing 747 filled with a multi megawatt chemical laser was supposed to by able to zap enemy ICBM's as they cleared the silo. It was supposed to have enough range to loiter over South Korea and zap North Korean missiles launching out of North Korea.
The project has been going for 16 years, and has consumed $5 billion. Which is a lot of money for a single aircraft. In testing, a few missiles were zapped out of the air, and more were tracked.
Lets hope we obtained $5 billion worth of technological advancements, 'cause we certainly did not obtain a working weapon system for all that spending.

Innumeracy by the newsie's

Was up early and on the road by 5:30 AM this morning. The car radio was full of Iowa caucus stories. At 5:30 we heard that Romney "won" by 8 votes. And that Santorum was number 2 with just about as many votes as Romney. It wasn't until 8:30 that NHPR finally broke down and told us how many votes Ron Paul got. Three hours of listening to reporter's drivel before we get a real number.
Then, at least twice, I hear some pundit say "Well, Iowa is full of evangelical voters but New Hampshire is different." Yeah right. Come up my way and I'll show you a humungous bunch of very conservative voters.

No Fly List

Continental Airlines has been on my no fly list for 40 years. I was on a Continental charter to go to Viet Nam back during the war. The plane got as far as Hawaii and made a fuel stop. Then it took off and climbed up to altitude. A few minutes later the captain came on the PA system to announce that something was broken and he was turning back to Hawaii for repairs. And a few minutes after that, the captain came back on the PA system to announce that what ever it was has got well and he was going to press on. I haven’t flown Continental since.

Youngest son is flying to DC and now that we can all book out own flights, he books an 8:30 Continental out of Manchester for DC. So we get on the road in the pitch darkness of 5:30 AM and get to the airport on time. Just in time to find out that Continental had cancelled the flight. “Weather” they said. It was a beautiful clear morning, and the day before had been nice too. If Continental won’t fly in that kind of weather they are Class I wimps.

So they get the boy onto a US Air flight that doesn’t leave til 11:30, has a layover in Philadelphia and doesn’t get into DC until 4 PM. If you have time to spare, go by air.

Anyhow Continental is still on my no fly list.

Nuclear Iran

We really don't want the Iranians to get the bomb. Even if they don't nuke Israel immediately, it will terrify all the other middle east countries, pushing them to start their own nuclear programs, and it will make it impossible to employ conventional military means to do a regime change. Driving tanks into a nuclear power is very dangerous, they might nuke your capital.
What to do? Diplomacy is a waste of time, the Iranians are bound and determined to get nukes and not amount of talking will change that. Air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities might not work and they will certainly strengthen the regime and its determination.
There might be a third way. This suggests that the Iranian regime has powerful internal enemies. Surely there is something we could do to help them along. Money, web access, passports, explosives, prepaid cell phones, computer viruses, you name it, we have it. Come to think of it, the Iranians have been having a bunch of serious industrial accidents. Perhaps the Green party has a hand in that.
If we are doing useful work in this area, I hope our leaky CIA and State Dept can keep it secret. A news headline "Iranian Green Party is CIA catspaw" would wreck the whole thing.

Iowa

Damn, Iowa is all the TV news is talking about. Must be the only thing that isn't happening in the US of A. And all they have to talk about is the poll results (changing now and then) and their hopes of the future.
Well, I have some hopes too. I hope the GOP's most electable candidate wins. That ought to be Mitt Romney. Trouble with Mitt is, he never says anything, no promises to fix what's broken, stop the federal gravy train, repeal job killing bureaucratic regulation, nothing substantive. Mitt has learned that saying anything substantive just makes you enemies, never friends. For any policy issue there are people on both sides. Take a stand, and the people on the other side become your mortal enemies, the people on your side pay little attention. So the safe and election winning strategy is to say nothing at all, except perhaps to declare yourself in favor of motherhood and apple pie. Romney has been that way thru out this primary. It seems to be working for him, but it's hard to get excited about him.
Here's hoping Iowa votes for Mitt.

New Year's

I refrained from making any New Year's resolutions. I shall also refrain from commenting upon the year just past except to say "bummer". I shall refrain from predictions about the year to come.
I do have some New Year's wishes, but they are just wishes, not predictions. And I'll keep them to myself.

True Grit II

Watched the Netflix DVD last night. It's really good. I didn't expect a remake of a classic to be much at all. This one is. Hailee Steinfeld plays Matty Ross and does an amazing job, especially as she is only 14 herself, just what the role calls for. I would have guessed her to be older, say 18 or so. I will look for her in future movies. Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn. His Rooster is more disreputable than John Wayne's Rooster. Long gray beard, uncut hair, generally scruffy look, drinks harder. The other parts in this movie, Matty and Laboeuf, get better roles than they did in the original, which was a John Wayne vehicle and focused on the Rooster Cogburn role. The bad guys, Tom Cheny and Ned Pepper are not as well played as they were in the original. Lots of the dialog is unchanged, I assume it comes from the book, which I never read.