Five Percent GNP growth in third Quarter

This is fabulous growth.  The US has averaged three percent growth going back to the earliest figures we have.  To get 5 percent means the economy is red hot.  Is that real?
   Do I believe these numbers?  They come from Obama bureaucrats who have every incentive to shore up a crumbling Obama administration with some good news.  The numbers are a "restatement".  They issued earlier less rosy numbers back in October, what we heard yesterday was new numbers based on what?  New data?  Applying some "corrections" to old data?  Mere pencil whipping?   Who knows. 
   How did they treat domestic oil production?  It has been going up, but the price is going down.  Result, more barrels of oil shipped, less money taken in.  How do they score this, as a gain or as a loss?  Do they count things like stock trading and derivative gambling as part of GNP?  How do they treat the greatly increased food stamp program?  Is it a gain because more food money is spent?  Or a loss because more tax money is taken away from honest taxpayers?  How do they handle the increase in health care costs?  Is it more production, or is it a greater drain upon taxpayers? 
   The basic idea, that the economy is growing a 5 percent a year is cool, I like it, everybody likes it. 
Question:  Is is real?  Who knows?  Surely not the newsies, they all grew up on new math and calculators, leaving them totally enumerate.   The economists are not much better.   

New Hampshire Director of Tourism

Victoria Mumble-Mumble was the name given on NHPR this morning.  Newly appointed by governor Maggie Hassan.  She had a bright young thing voice and spent her air time pushing a plan to increase out-of-state students in New Hampshire colleges.  Not a bad idea, but you'd think the schools would have this obvious play pretty well covered by now.
   They did mention a few numbers.  Tourism is New Hampshire's #2 industry, bringing in $4.7 billion in revenue.
   Not a word about skiing, hiking, snowboarding, fishing, snowmobiling, leaf peeping, or climbing, the real tourist draws in New Hampshire.  No mention of the new state liquor stores on I93, the tourist railroads, Strawberrie Bank, or even funding for the highway rest areas.  Our tax money at work.

NYC police officer slaying. Perp was a nut case.

My sincerest sympathy to the families of the two slain New York police officers.  But, despite the torrent of criticism of Mayor De Blasio and Eric Holder, in actual fact, the killer was a nut case.  Just his actions make that clear, first he shoots his girl friend in Baltimore, then he shoots two police officers in New York, and then he shoots himself.  I'm not a shrink, but that has got to be, the actions of an insane individual. 
   And this insane killer was running around loose.  Someone should have noticed that this guy was insane, and he should have been popped into the booby hatch and left there. 
   Trouble is, we shut down the booby hatches fifty years ago.  So now insane individuals are left loose to commit multiple murders.  It has gotten so bad around here that nut cases have spent weekends hand cuffed to beds in local emergency rooms, just because there is no where else to put them. 

Anti Lead Freaks at work

So, yesterday I find two Xeroxed sheets in my mailbox raving about the dangers of lead in my tap water.  I guess the local water board had the mail man put them out.  The sheets lack an author, although I would guess that the Environmental Pollution Agency is responsible.  They are all hot about a level of 15 parts per Billion of lead in the water.  Me, I don't worry about anything until it reaches one part per Million, a 1000 parts per billion.  
    We fixed the lead poisoning problem back in the 1960's when we stopped using lead dioxide as the pigment in white house paint.  Titanium dioxide makes paint white now.  But bureaucracies never die, the Environmental Pollution bureaucrats went out looking for something else to do.  They decided that the solder used to fasten copper water pipe together was dissolving in the water and poisoning people.  Nice theory, but in actual fact, solder is a metal and does not dissolve in water. 
   We have been using lead water pipes since Roman times.  In fact, the words plumber and plumbing come from the Latin word for lead, plumbum. 

Sony's IT department ought to be fired

Some industry sources are telling me that Sony got hacked because their IT department wasn't minding the store.  Log files show repeated unauthorized intruders in their system.  Had the IT department been doing its job it would have checked the logs, and clamped down on the intruders.  They sat on their fannies, and it cost Sony as much as the Target hack cost Target last year. 
  For that matter their top execs ought to be fired for allowing a company culture of badmouthing other Hollywood figures in email. 

Hobbit, Battle of Five Armies

So I went to see it at the Jax Jr in Littleton  last night.  Pretty full house seeing as the movie has been playing for four nights already.  Lotta kids, lotta highschoolers with dates.  It was in 3D, which I find somewhat annoying.  Although they have improved the 3D process, the screen is sharper and in better focus this time.
   As a Tolkien fan since forever I had to see this one, even though the critics have panned it.  Actually the critics are onto something.  The movies has a lotta fighting, lotta marching armies, Smaug the dragon incinerating Esgaroth-upon-the-Long-Lake, Bard the bowman shooting down the dragon on the wing.  Vast armies of Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs, marching in step, pikes out.  Sword fights on crumbling stone bridges.
  Movie is weak on names.  It opens with a glamorous red haired elven princess falling in love with a Dwarf.  She survives the whole movie but I never did catch her name.  Dwarf name I did catch, sorta, it was either Fili or Kili.  The hairstylists went a little overboard on long and shaggy hair and beards for all the guys and Dwarves. The Orcs bring a lot of trolls to the battle, 12 foot tall, beer bellies like a filing cabinet, blue skin, capable of head butting their way thru stone walls.  The ordinary sized characters like Thorin seem to be able to cut them down with just swords, no big problem. 
   We won't comment upon how well the movie follows the book.  You have to enjoy the flick on its own terms.
  

Sony Folds

In response to some emailed threats of violence, Sony withdrew it's new comedy film, which skewered North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un.
   This prompted Newt Gingrich to decry the action as losing the first cyberwar battle.   I suppose. On the other hand I always thought Sony was a Japanese company.  I guess Newt has an inclusive vision of who constitutes "us".  Certainly the Japanese have been loyal and useful American allies and trade partners for 70 years  so maybe they are "us".
   Pulling the film means Sony gives up box office revenues, still the most important  revenue source for movies.  They have some $40 million sunk into production costs which Sony is kissing good bye.  Of course these are the same Sony executives who were dumb enough commit their snark to email.  Everyone (except Sony execs)  knows email is so insecure that any thing put in email might as well be posted on the local bulletin board.  You don't bad mouth customers or acting talent you might need to do business with, in public.  Email is public.  Ollie North showed us this back during the Iran Contra affair in the 1980's.  Sony execs are slow learners.  Dead slow.
   You also have to wonder about terrorist/hacker good faith.  Sony pulls the flick, but will the terrorist/hackers refrain  from publishing more embarrassing emails?  Or call off their theater shooters? Who knows?
    Uncle Sam is making noises like the Sony hack was done by the North Koreans.  It will be interesting to see what evidence they can produce.  Surely the hackers went thru one of the various anonymizer sites to cover their tracks. 
    Another question.  How do you go about retaliating?  Do the Norks even have computers for us to hack back at?  Surely they don't have on line banking or stock trading for us to mess up.  Are we willing to call a hack attack an act of war and take some kind of real military action against the Norks?  I don't think so.  They don't have any international trade to speak of.  They don't care about world opinion.