Oh you can see the body rot a coming thru the fenders

Yesterday got warm enough to wash the car.  It hit 70, first time the year.  Poor car has gone all winter without a wash.  Not that it matters much, it's painted a mud dirt color (not my choice) and looks about the same clean or dirty. 
  And, as I sponged the winter filth off it, I find a smallish rust patch has eaten thru the left front fender, and more is coming up on the right.  It's 12 years old, with over 100K on the clock, and it looks like it might rust out before anything serious goes wrong.  We will see.  Previous set of wheels ran to 140K before the rust made the rear axle fall off. 
   And, when she finally goes, looks like I'm reduced to some dinky little econobox.  Present set of wheels is a full sized Mercury Grand Marquis, they don't make those anymore.  Or anything like it. All they make today are econoboxes, minivans and SUVs. 

Tesla Battery Powered home. Payback time.

Tesla has announced a big battery, big enough to run your house overnight, for $3000.  Right now, my electric bill is $100 a month, so it would take 30 months, call it three years, to pay off the battery.  And that's just the battery.  To live off-grid, I need solar panels or a windmill to charge the battery, and some fairly heavy duty electronics to regulate the charging and convert DC into AC.   Let's guess another $3000 before I am off grid all the way and have reduced my electric bill to zero.  It will take 60 months, five years, before I recover my costs, and then I am ahead $100 a month.  I could invest $6000 in the stock market, and with 6% per year, that oughta be worth $8029 after five years.
   You know, that battery is almost making economic sense. 
   I could cut my electricity use a lot by putting in a propane or natural gas tank, and buying new gas appliances, stove, water heater, refrigerator.  Maybe $2000 for all that.  Plus who knows how much for propane.  Wouldn't help my electric bill much since half the bill is a fixed connection charge, but it might reduce the size and hence the cost of the battery I need to get thru a winter night.  The battery HAS to keep the oil burner running so my pipes (and I) don't freeze before dawn.  Dark lasts 14-15 hours in winter around here.  The oil burner uses maybe 5 kilowatt hours over the night.  The battery is advertised to be good for 7 kilowatt hours.  That leaves 2 kilowatt hours for lights, TV, web surfing, and the like. 

The Sunday Pundits go to Baltimore

I watch 'em all, Beat the Press, Face the Nation, the McLaughlin shouting hour, and Josh McElween on WMUR.  They all did a lot of talking about Baltimore.  They interviewed politicians.  The democratic ones called for an urban agenda, more money, reform of the police,  improved schools.  All in vague terms, no specifics.  None of them talked about getting corporate investment into the cities to provide jobs.  The one Republican, John Boehner, merely said that Baltimore has been run by democrats for the last 50 years, which makes it a democratic problem.  Beat the Press dredged up 50 year old video of Pat Monahan predicting awful things to come. 
   I gotta admit that I don't know Baltimore well, so I'm pontificating from a distance.  But I still think that reasonable jobs in real industry, would solve a lot of Baltimore's problems.  If they really cared down there, they would pass a right to work law.  Corporations won't invest in states that lack a right to work law.  If Maryland became right to work, it would be the ONLY right to work state for a couple of hundred miles in every direction.  Surely some company needing a strategically located facility would brave the crime problem and buy up some cheap empty lots in Baltimore and build something. 

The Supremes

The word "marriage" does not appear anywhere in the US Constitution.  But the Supremes are thinking about changing US marriage law to include same sex marriage.  The Constitution doesn't give the Supremes the right to mess with marriage.  They are going to do it just because they can. 
   Groovy.  Real Democracy that.  Allow nine out of touch lawyers to make new law for the entire country.  Judges love it.  Gay marriage advocates love it,  easier than doing the political campaigning to get the issue thru the legislature.
   New law in a democracy ought to come from the elected legislature, not the courts.  Last time the Supremes made law on a social issue, was Roe vs Wade nearly 40 years ago.  The voters are still sore about that one.  Had abortion law been properly passed by the legislature[s],  there would be a lot less resistance, a lot less hostility, and a lot less name calling, and far greater social cohesion. 
   I am making an argument about process, not substance.  Process is important for the social and political cohesion of the country.  If a thing is done fair and square, in accordance with the rules, people tend to go along with it.  If a thing is done in a sneaky and underhanded fashion, people fight it.  Look at Obamacare..  And, there is no need for the Supremes to dictate new law in this case.  A fair number of states have already passed gay marriage laws, and the polls show enough votes out there to pass it nearly everywhere. 

House of Cards Season 1

I just got to this via a Netflix disc.  I don't have HBO, or whatever pay-per-view channel first offered this.  It's a modern Washington melodrama.  Every one is well dressed, well coiffed, well educated, well heeled, and treacherous.  It opens with the new administration stiffing senior congress man Frank What's-his-last-name.  Frank goes on to stick it to the administration with a damaging leak to the Washington Post, oops Herald.  Most everyone comes across as nasty.  Frank, the view point character, seems to be OK but you can see a broad streak of meanness just waiting to jump out and zap someone. 
  What's worse, we see stuff on TV news every night, just as raw. 

Marketing for Dummies

Marketing is the art of getting customers to buy your product, rather than your competitors product.   Marketers often put on airs and consider themselves above mere salesmen in company hierarchies.  Which is sorta dumb, you need a lot of face-to-face time with real customers before you know enough to market anything. 
One little known secret to marketing is naming the product.  The product needs a name to distinguish it from the competitor's product, to allow customers to inquire about your product, place an order for your product, recognize your product in advertising, or even to leave a favorable comment on a website about your product. 
   For example Detroit used to give names to their cars, Roadmaster, El Dorado, Impala, Fury, and De Ville.  Now they make do with DTS, CTS, 6000LE.   None is memorable, or easy to remember. 
   Also, a product wants one single name.  Selling the same product under two different names is counterproductive.  For instance Chrysler sold the very same mini van under the Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler names.  Everybody knew it was the same minivan, Chrysler didn't even bother to change the grille. But it dilutes the advertising, and lowers the name recognition.  If I run three ads for ONE product name, customers are more likely to remember that name than if I run three ads for three different names. 
   Likewise, once you have a decent product name, with some recognition out in the market, DON'T change the name.  Datsun had established itself as a decent car over the span of 15 years, and a reasonably successful racing program.   Then corporate decided to change the name to Nissan, which nobody remembers to this day.   Suits at Ford decided to use "500" for the name of their bread-and-butter passenger car, instead of the long established and well liked name "Torino".  It required  intervention by Allan Mulally, new Ford CEO brought in from Boeing, to put the Torino name back on the car. 

Baltimore. Lotta angry people there

Granted, Freddie Gray's death while in police custody was the trigger event, but I think there must be a lot of anger stoked up over many years  to cause Monday's riot. 
  Judging from TV, Baltimore has plenty of blacks in important positions with the city, starting with the mayor.  Ain't like Ferguson where all the city officials were white.
  Then there was that video clip of a mom dragging her teen age boy out of the riot and chastising him.  If there had been more citizens like that, moms, fathers, neighbors, shop keepers, that riot would not have happened.  Either the rioters scared off the decent citizens, or the decent citizens were angry too, and didn't really mind a bit of rioting and the MSM coverage a riot brings. 
   I think a nice big Baltimore auto assembly plant, with plenty of unskilled job openings would go a long way toward preventing riots.  Being out of work, with no prospects of ever getting a job, makes people angry.  Having a job makes people stay out of trouble lest they loose that job.
   I wonder what kind of job the Baltimore public schools are doing.