Wishful Thinking at the Atlantic

Plan could finally free New York-city traffic congestion.   Dream on Atlantic.  The plan amounts to hiking bridge tolls, and putting tolls on the four free bridges.  Jack the toll up to the point where people stop driving into Manhattan.  
   First of all, when you are running a city, you WANT people to come into town.  They shop, attend shows, eat at restaurants, spend money.  They are customers.  You want customers.  Without customers you have Detroit.
   People will drive, 'cause driving is convenient, and much faster than  bus or subway.  No matter how many roads you build, traffic  increases to fill road available.  And, when traffic gets bad enough, people will take the bus or the subway.  For instance, I seldom take my car into Boston.  I take the T.  It's faster, and cheaper than parking in town.  I don't go into Manhattan very often, mostly 'cause the traffic is horrible, and the subway is complex for out-of-towners to master.  

Will the US act when Putin moves on NATO?

Lot of the newer NATO members are ex-Soviet Union or ex Warsaw Pact.  Putin has shown that he wants them back, part of Russia, under his thumb.  Ask anyone in Ukraine.  Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Czech Republic, and some others share borders and history with Russia.  Putin might make a move on any one of 'em.  
  NATO is a military alliance, with a "Three Musketeers" clause, One for all and all for one.  An attack on one is deemed an attack on all.  We set up NATO right after WWII when it looked like the Soviets wanted to take over all of Europe.  Back then, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki still smoking, no one doubted American resolve and willingness to use force.
   How about today?  Take Estonia for example.  It just managed to pull itself out of the Soviet Union in the shakeup after Mikhail Gorbachev hauled down the red flag of the Soviet Union in 1991.   Lot of ethnic Russians in Estonia.  Some of them are unhappy about things like school being taught only in the Estonian language.   Putin has already made noises about this.
   So, what happens when the Russians move into Estonia like they did in the Crimea?  Will the US honor NATO treaty obligations and send troops to defend it?  Obama doesn't want to.  That's pretty clear to everyone in the world.  If we let the Russians eat up Estonia, is NATO membership worth the paper it's printed upon? 
    The question before European countries, both eastern and western:  What do you say to an 800 pound gorilla?  Answer:  Sir! 

Noscript, Cleaning up Firefox

Firefox has been getting flaky.  It will get stuck in loops, sucking up all CPU time, hogging humungous amounts of memory, and slowing to a crawl.  Plus opening unasked for ad windows.  That last is scary, if Firefox will open an ad window just 'cause a website asked it too, it can plant a virus, or do anything else bad that you can imagine. Standard Firefox allows websites to load code into your browser and execute it on your computer.  Which is a gaping security hole.  This code is called "a script" which doesn't sound so bad, but it is bad. 
   There is a fix.  Get NoScript, a Firefox "extension".  Google will find it for you.  NoScript blocks all scripts, along with other flaky things like Java.  Properly coded websites will continue to work properly.  Cheap ass websites, such as blogger,  stop working 'cause they rely on scripts to make 'em work.  Noscript allows you to re enable scripts for the websites that have to have scripts. 
   Since installing NoScript on both Trusty Desktop and Antique Laptop the Firefox lockups have ceased, the unasked for ad windows have gone away.  Re enabling scripts for the low speed websites that rely upon them is easy.
   The Mozilla help pages say good things about Noscript, clearly the Firefox programmers know about NoScript and consider it a good thing.   

NRA cuts another notch on its gun butt

Obama has given up on his surgeon general nominee, a Dr. Vivek  Murthy, who is anti gun, and considers gun ownership a disease.  NRA said a vote in favor of Murthy would be reported to the membership, a serious threat.  NRA has some 5 million dues paying members, it gets the word out to the membership via a monthly magazine, American Rifleman, and the membership takes a word from the NRA very seriously, far more seriously than they take a word from the MSM. 
   Anyhow,  nervous democrats from red districts decided that  voting for Obama's surgeon general might get them voted out of office in November.  There were enough democrats seeing the light that Obama has given up on the nomination. 

Aviation Week on Malaysia Flt 370

My copy arrived in the mail this morning.  Aviation Week reports a few details, like the aircraft tail number, how old it is, and it's last trip thru heavy maintenance (periodic inspection we called it in USAF)  All this was quite unexceptional.  They gave a map of radar coverage in the area.  They did not speculate on the cause of the loss.  They went on at some length about electronic reporting and tracking systems the could be installed, if there was funding, but are not present today.  That's about it.
   No speculation about hijackers, aircrew, Bermuda Triangle, terrorists, bad karma, etc.  Aviation Week just reports the facts, of which there are few.

Obama sanctions Russian officials

In return for invading Ukraine, Obama announced the US will sanction a few Russian officials.  Nine, or was it eleven of 'em. Of course he never names these officials, nor explains what they did, that puts them in the US shooting gallery, but Obama did get a lot of press coverage. 
   Obama has said nothing about increasing US natural gas exports,  bouncing Russian banks out of the world financial system, selling arms to Ukraine, offering Ukraine a trade deal as good as we give Canada, or anything else of substance. 

Beating up on GM, some more

The get-GM crowd is in full cry.  Defective ignition switches on a huge batch of GM cars.  The switches would occasionally fail and kill the engine.  This has been talked up as a lethal safty hazard with 12 deaths claimed over 10 years.  Wow!. 
   Now I am not a big fan of GM, they have done plenty of stupid things over the years.  But to call engine failure a lethal safety hazard?  Over the years I have experienced sudden engine failure on the road, maybe three times.  Last one, ten years ago,  was a Dodge Caravan that broke its timing belt on the way to Blind River Canada.  But you know, the engine just dies, and you pull the car over to the shoulder, and pop the hood, get out some tools, and try to fix it.  Twice before I got her going again, but the timing belt breakage was beyond my side-of-the-road repair abilities.  This sort of thing is a major pain in the tail, but I never considered it dangerous. 
   Oh well,  GM bashers have to get their kicks somewhere.