Nutcase control

The horrible killing in Charleston SC has brought the gun controllers out in force.   This is misguided, and distasteful.  The gun isn't the problem, the crazy man pulling the trigger is the problem.  I say anyone who kills nine people, worshiping,  inside a church, is crazy.  That's just not human behavior. It may not meet the lawyer's definition of insane, but what do lawyers know, really?
   What should have happened, sometime in the past.  Someone, family, friends, teachers, should have noticed that this young man Dylan Roof was doing and saying strange things.  Some competent psychiatrists should have examined Roof, decided that he was a dangerous nut case, and popped him into a mental hospital.  We used to do things like that, but 1960's activists managed to close mental hospitals all across the country and make it practically impossible to involuntarily commit anyone, no matter how crazy they might be. 
   In our free society,we are reluctant to grant anyone, even proper courts of law, that kind of power over citizens.  The soviets showed us how political opponents could be taken out of action by committing them to mental institutions against their will. 
   I don't believe we can ever have an airtight system but we can do better than we do.  At a minimum we ought to have some empty beds in mental hospitals for those clear cut cases, where everyone, authorities, family, friends, agree that so-and-so is crazy, there is somewhere to put them.  Up here there are no empty beds and the patient winds up handcuffed to a bed in a hospital emergency room, often for several days. 

"World's greatest Deliberative Body" needs an overhaul

That's what the US Senate likes to call itself.  But it indulges in procedures that allow members to conceal their votes from their constituents.  It plays the "let's vote on whether to have a vote" game which is a way to kill a bill without actually being seen to vote against it.  It  gives the leadership a private veto of bills it doesn't like.  When the leadership doesn't want a bill to pass, it just refuses to bring the bill to the floor.  It allows individual members a blackball on appointments.  If a member doesn't like a candidate for a judgeship or other federal office, he can file a "hold", a secret note saying don't bring this guy up for a vote.   "Holds" are secret, nobody outside the Senate knows they exist, or who filed them. 
   The Senate ought to give up this "vote to have a vote" malarkey.  All bills should come to the floor, for one vote, pass or fail, each session.   In New Hampshire, with a 400 + person legislature, every member's bills are always brought up for a vote.  No reason the 100 person US Senate cannot do as well. 

Making haste slowly, and cost enhancement

After two previous snafu's, Boeing got the Air Force contract for the KC-46 tanker.  That only took 7 or 8 years of well paid lawyer work to sort out.  The original idea was to buy the well proven Boeing 767 airliner, take out the seats and fill the cabin with tanks.  Somewhere along the line, the gold plate boys slipped in a few cost enhancements.  They called for the aircraft wiring to be redesigned to USAF specs.  Never mind that the commercial 767 has been flying safely for 25 years using Boeing designed wiring.  Never mind that Boeing knows more about how to wire an aircraft than everyone in the Air Force all put together.  And to add insult to injury, someone dropped the ball, and the first few aircraft off the line lacked the USAF spec wiring.  Boeing last year took a $425 million pre tax charge for this.  Cost enhancement at work, again. 
   And then someone slipped in a requirement for extensive flight testing.  They are talking about making 65 test flights a month, which is a helova lotta flying.  I doubt they will make that schedule.  Never mind that this is a well proven commercial airliner with an excellent safety record going back 25 years, we are gonna flight test it like it is a brand new clean sheet design that have never flown before.  Cost enhancement at work, again.

Infantry tactics, close vs open order

Close order tactics go back to the Greek phalanx.  You form your men into a line, shoulder to shoulder, have them march in step to keep the line straight, and have at it.  At Marathon a much smaller force of Athenian heavy infantry defeated utterly a far larger Persian army.  Close order tactics were the only tactics known from that day down to modern times.  The replacement of spears an pikes by muskets didn't change tactics much.  You still formed your men into line, in the open, and had at it.  The colorful uniforms and tall hats of the period were designed to make your formed line of troops look bigger, taller, and more dangerous to the enemy.   Close order tactics persisted down to World War I.  Officers liked them because it kept the men together, in sight, and within earshot of shouted commands.  At the battle of the Somme in 1915, the British infantry "went over the top" in line and marched thru no mans land toward the German trenches.  The Germans machine gunned the assaulting British with gusto. 
   Open order tactics go back to the battle of Kings Mountain in the American Revolution.  A superior force of loyalist militia, commanded by the famous Major Patrick Ferguson was wiped out in South Carolina by a patriot militia composed of Scots Irish back woodsmen.  Major Ferguson positioned his men on high ground, in line, ready for an infantry attack which never came.  The patriot backwoods men moved up under cover, in small groups and when close enough, fired into the massed loyalists.  The loyalists replied with volleys of musketry and sometimes massed bayonet charges.  Some two thirds of the loyalists were shot down against patriot casualties of  only a few dozens.  At the end, Major Ferguson attempted to break out of the encirclement on horseback.  The patriots fired a volley and blew the major out of his saddle.  Later they counted seven bullet wounds in Ferguson's body. 
   Open order tactics didn't catch on in a big way until the very end of World War I.  Dubbed "Ludendorf's infiltration tactics" they contributed to the success of the last German drive on the Western Front in 1918.  Open order was adopted generally after that.  In modern form, a dozen men, a squad, with a light machine gun, led by an NCO, is the lowest level of organization.  On attack, the squad moves up until resistance is encountered.  At which point, the machine gun is emplaced in a likely location, and under cover of its fire, the riflemen move up until they reach another likely location for the machine gun.  The riflemen then give covering fire while the machine gun is moved up closer to the enemy.  This process is repeated until the objective is taken. 

Best announcement speech yet

Donald Trump.  Announced that he is really running.  Spoke for an hour, live on Fox News.  Talks good.  Speaks using facts, numbers, concrete examples.  Makes campaign promises.  Specific ones, ones that we can understand.  Published his net worth, on TV, he says he is worth $8 billion and some change.  Compared to Trump, everyone else is speaking in bafflegab, vague sound goods that really don't mean anything.  Listening to The Donald, you know exactly what he means to do.  And it all sounds realistic, like he could make it happen. 
   Lets see how far good speeches can take him.  I mean Obama got to be president mostly cause he gave an inspiring speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.  Why cannot Trump go as far, especially as he is a much better speaker than Obama?

Coffee Making

Good coffee is enjoyable to drink black.  Poor coffee needs cream and sugar to kill the bad taste.  One secret to good coffee is a scrupulously clean coffee maker.  An oily residue settles out of brewed coffee and then turns rancid, giving a nasty flavor to the next pot of coffee until it gets washed away in hot soapy water.  Some coffee makers, percolators especially, have interior nooks and crannies that are impossible to clean, short of wrecking the thing.  Whereas the French press is the most easily cleaned coffee maker out there.  The old all glass vacuum Silex was OK providing you had a long thin brush to clean the inside of the suction tube to the upper bowl.   The all glass Chemex with the paper filters is OK.  I don't trust the plastic Mr. Coffee machines, I think the plastic takes up the rancid taste of coffee oils.  For myself I have been using a small two cup French press I got from LaHoutes camping supply store. 
    I get excellent results buying plain ground canned coffee.  The $3 a can Shurfine Columbian makes as good a cup of coffee as the $10 a can Dunkin Donuts and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.  I keep the coffee can in the refrigerator to reduce evaporation of the coffee essences.   
   My rural water supply system has gone ape on chlorine lately, the tap water can smell like a swimming pool.  I  let my coffee water stand in a pitcher on the kitchen table overnight.  Improves everything. 
   I put two rounded tablespoons of coffee and a shake of the salt cellar into the French press. The salt smooths out the flavor and takes the edge off the bitterness.   Fill it up with boiling water and let it brew four minutes. 
   Good coffee, drinkable black.

Windows 8 does its own thing, Touchpad

In order to make a laptop usable, you need to disable the touchpad while typing.  Your typing hands hover over the touchpad, and the damn pad sees light finger brushes as solid mouse clicks. Each time that happens, bad things happen to your text, random cursor moves, weird escape sequences inserted in your text, or whole pages of text just gone.   I use a plain jane USB mouse,  the kind with real mechanical buttons that click when pressed.  So I have no need of the touch pad, in fact it messes up my typing. 
    So, off to Windows 8 configuration land.  Stroke your finger from the right hand screen edge toward screen center, and a mystery menu pops up.  Click on "Settings" (bottom gear wheel icon).  Click on "Control Panel".  Sort thru the hundred or so icons in ControlPanel and click on "Mouse".  Inside the "Mouse" program, click on "Touchpad" tab.  Check "Disable internal pointing device when USB mouse is present".  
   Make a record of how you did this.  Windows 8 will occasionally clear the checkmark and your typing goes to pieces again.  When that happens, repeat the whole procedure, and the problem will go away again, at least until Windows 8 decides to liven up your life.
   It ought to be a felony to release software this flaky, but heh, if you are Micro$oft, anything goes.