Blogger's new features

The programming staff at blogger has time on their hands and they recoded the user interface,  the interface seen by us blog owners, not the interface seen by you readers.  Now after posting we see a list of all our recent posts with a count of  the comments and views of each post.  Fun, I can see which posts get the most views,  which I hope means the posts most popular with readers.   Going by this I oughta do more posts on movies, at least I have a higher view count on movie posts than on my political rants. 
   Of course I am wondering how this view count thing works.  How does the software know which post gets credit for a view when more than one post is in view at the same time?  Which is the usual case, few of my posts fill an entire page on Firefox. 

Space-X

Congratulations to the whole Space-X team.  Getting the Falcon to lift off and the Dragon to dock is a huge victory over Murphy's law.  There are a zillion things, some tiny, some large that can break, and it only takes one breakage to scrub the mission, or worse.  The Space-X team  did the required quality control checks, designed out the weak points, worked hard, and succeeded.
    It should be remembered that Elon Musk made a fortune in Silicon Valley, and then plowed a good deal of that fortune into Space-X.  Clearly better use of the money than Uncle Sam would have made of it had Uncle taken it in taxes.  Let's hear it for private enterprise.

Pop goes the tendon

Must be getting old.  I was in the kitchen and I just flipped a bit of crud off my fingers into the sink.  They was a faint pop sound and all of a sudden the index finger was off at a funny angle.  It didn't get better so next day I went to see my doctor.  Got there about nine o'clock. Did some Xrays, nothing's broken, got set up to see a hand surgeon in Concord (hour and a half drive).  Surgeon looked at it.  The tendon that runs over the knuckle tore out of its groove.  Only fix is splint the finger and wait FOUR WEEKS for it to heal.  With the splint in place.  Arrgh.
  So now I am learning to do one handed, all kinds of things that I always used two hands to do.   Including typing. 
   Note to self.  Don't wave hands rapidly.  Something might break off.

Words of the Weasel, Part 30

"Growth".  As used by European politicians.
Plain English meaning.
"Germans give us money."

Perhaps Europe can't pull the US economy down

Interesting charts in today's Wall St. Journal.  It shows US exports to Europe to be only 1.2% of US GNP.   That means the entire continent could disappear from the face of the earth and we would only loose 1.2% of GNP in export sales.  To be real, Europe won't disappear completely, worst that can happen is it drops into recession and it's US imports drop off somewhat.
   Somewhat larger, Eurozone banks make loans to the US equal to 10.5% of  US GNP.  If things get bad enough in Europe, and enough Eurozone banks fail, that lending can dry up.  But so what?  We have plenty of banks over here, and we can print as much money as well like to fund loans.
   In short, a Euro meltdown won't hurt us nearly as much as it hurts the Europeans.  Of course plenty of US politicians are already pointing fingers at Europe to explain miserable US growth rates.  How can you tell when a politician is lying to you?   When you see his lips moving.

Words of the Weasel Part 29

Heard this morning on good old NPR.
"The discussions are on going". 

Plain English meaning.   "Nothing has happened" 

What Price pills?

Anything you want apparently.  My doctor has prescribed me seven pills to keep body and soul together.  I had been getting them for free thru Medicare Advantage.  Then all of a sudden, my Visa got zapped for $180 on the last refill.  Ouch.
  So it being time for new prescriptions anyhow, I took the new ones down to Walmart.   After a half an hour (spent browsing Walmart) they gave me a grocery bag full of pills and paperwork, for a mere $81.  For three months worth.  Not so bad. 
    So before I put all the new pills in the medicine cabinet I read some of the paperwork.  Each bottle of pills comes with four pages of paperwork, run off on the pharmacy's laserprinter.  Aside from the name of the pill and a number, the paperwork is all the same.  Boilerplate.  I should be happy that despite this government required cost enhancement Walmart is still cheaper than Medicare Advantage.