Pentagon paperpushers outnumber the armed forces

According to the Friday Wall St Journal, the Pentagon has 1.4 million civilians working for it, split about even steven between snivel servants and beltway bandits.  The armed forces number only 1.3 million.  That is a scandal beyond words. 
   And I certainly will not believe Pentagon whining about budget cuts while they waste money on so many useless mouths.  For the salaries and benefits of 1.4 million  paperpushers, we could afford 1.4 million more soldiers. 

F35 gets shellacked by an F16

They held a  "basic fighter maneuvering exercise" aka mock dogfight between the just going into service F35 and a twenty year old F16.  The F16 out flew the F35 and was able to gain missile launch position and gun fire position repeatedly.  The F35 pilot's report somehow leaked out of Lockheed Martin and got posted on the "War is Boring" website a week or so ago.  Aviation Week, highly respected industry trade journal, ran the story this week.  According to the pilot, the F35's flying qualities are "not intuitive or favorable".   The F35  has "inferior energy management" which is jargon for lack of engine power.  And the stability augmentation system  limited motion of the flight control surfaces reducing turn rate and maneuverability. 
   Stability Augmentation ("Stab Aug for short") goes back to the ancient F101 Voodoo fighter of the 1950's.  Voodoo was fast, supersonic in fact, by virtue of a pair of J57 engines, the best of Pratt and Whitney for that year.  It was designed before the area rule of supersonic streamlining was discovered and suffered for it.  It was marginally stable in flight. If the pilot pulled back on the stick too hard, Voodoo would "pitchup"  flip up vertically to the airstream and then fall off into a flat spin, for which recovery was impossible.   After loosing a number of Voodoos to pitchup, stability augmentation system was added. Stab Aug was a few black boxes with gyros that monitored pitch rate and first gave the pilot a warning horn, and then grabbed the stick and pushed it forward if the pilot failed to heed the warning horn.  Stab aug on the Voodoo was a red X failure, the plane was too dangerous to fly if stab aug was broken.  Pilots were required to switch stab aug off at low altitude (like coming in to land) lest stab aug push the stick forward and auger the Voodoo into the ground.
    Apparently the F35 is even less stable than the old Voodoo and requires stab aug on all axis, roll, pitch, and yaw.  The microprocessor[s] stand between the pilot's stick and the flight control surfaces, and flat out change the pilot's commands as it suits them.  The microprocessors are very conservative and don't allow much in the way of high G maneuvers.   
   Lockheed Martin said that the F35 was supposed to finger targets at long range with radar and missile them.  Sounds good, but usually higher headquarters will forbid firing on targets that cannot be seen and positively identified.  We had this in Viet Nam. By the time you get close enough to positively identify your target, you are so close that a good old fashioned dog fight is going to happen. 

Saint Gaudens, Cornish NH

d

Saint Gaudens, "Aspet"  The artist and his family summered here, and had studios.  Massive tree was planted in the 1880's and is presently tearing up the front steps into the house.  US Park service is working on the problem.

Statue of Civil War admiral David Farragut.  The original stands in New York City. This is a half size copy.  Not sure how the size is reduced.  I suspect someone just carved a new statute, keeping his eye on the original.

 

Formal garden behind "Aspet".  I didn't get the name of the artist who did the gold sculpture at the back.

This

The all black 54th Massachusetts regiment under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw marches off to war.  The original is in front of the Massachusetts state house.  Saint Gaudens was never fully satisfied with his work and he keep on modifying and improving it long after it was delivered to Boston.  This a a casting made in 1993 from the original's plaster.  It was undergoing conservation yesterday which accounts for the scaffolding and tarps.  

Greek goddess Diana.  The original is atop Madison Square Gardens in New York City.  This one is half size.

Abraham Lincoln by Saint Gaudens. 

The Auguste Saint Gaudens historical site is in Cornish, maybe 15 miles south of Lebanon on the Connecticut River.  I have known of it for years and years, and yesterday I finally drove down to see it.  I shook hands with Governor Maggie Hassan, who was there, with the executive council for some affair or other.  It's a beautiful place, nicely kept.   The statuary is inspiring.  Too bad we don't have any artists as good as this anymore. 

Scary. Hacker takes over a new Chrysler wirelessly.

Slashdot posted this.  The perp claims to have gained control of most of the Chrysler's systems, including the brakes, remotely by wireless. 
    I was thinking about getting a new car, as my 2003 Mercury is rusting out.  Do I want to buy something that hackers can take over remotely?  All the hacker has to do is give a playful little touch of the gas or the brakes while I'm going up three mile hill in a snowstorm to put me in the ditch.  PITA. 
   Actually, this points to atrociously bad design on Chrysler's part.  They have forgotten the principle of modularity.  Each module of the system (brakes, steering, suspension, engine etc) should be modular, stand alone, so that should other systems fail, it will keep on working, because it is not connected.  Clearly the designers of this car were hooking stuff together just for the fun of it.   There is no reason for the car computers to have any connections to the brakes.  I want my brakes to go on when I press the brake pedal, and for no other reason.  I don't want to give a malfunctioning microprocessor under the hood a chance to screw up my brakes. 

Terrorism or a Nutcase running around loose ?

The horrible shootings in Chattanooga are still on the top of the TV news.  Most of the commentary is aimed at convincing people that the shootings are Islamic terrorism.  Strongest evidence for this view is the shooter's thoroughly Islamic name.  
Question:   Suppose the shooter is just another nutcase who should have been in a booby hatch? Like the Charleston shooter.  Is the problem ISIS terror or our lack of mental health facilities? 

Guts.

I was assigned to a F-105 fighter bomber wing flying out of Korat Thailand during the Viet Nam war.  The day I arrived on base, we lost a Thud in combat.  For the next 90 days, my wing lost a plane every single day.  We saved some of the pilots, (never enough, but better than nothing).  Despite the risks from AAA, SAM, MIGS, and the unreliability of late 1950's jets, twice a day the pilots climbed into the cockpits and took off for North Viet Nam (route pack 6 we called it).  That took real guts.
  John McCain was shot down in the year I was over there.  He was flying off aircraft carriers which is even more dangerous than operating off the 10,000 foot concrete runway we had at Korat.
  I heard The Donald had spoken disparagingly of John McCain the other day.  I don't approve.  In fact, it makes me think that the The Donald shoots off his mouth too much to be President of the US. 

Cloudy, with a chance of greenies

The greenie's argument for global warming is based on computer models.  We know how much energy the Sun pours onto the earth. (1345 Watts/sqm * area of the earth = 1.78 *10 **17 Watts)  We know that the earth's temperature has remained reasonable steady thruout geological time.  That means the earth has to throw off, by infrared radiation, or reflection the same amount of energy.  If it didn't, the temperature would go up (or down).  
   Clouds are an important factor.  Anyone who has stood on the beach in a bathing suit and felt the chill when a cloud goes in front of the  Sun will have no problem believing that clouds cool the earth, by reflecting sunlight back into space.  Less well known, unless you live in the north, clouds warm the earth.  A clear winter night will get extremely cold, (-20 F) whereas a cloudy night will stay at +20F.  On clear nights, the earth will emit infra red radiation, which travels up and away to interstellar space.  This energy loss cools the world.  On cloudy nights, the same infrared radiation strikes the cloud, warming it, and the air it floats in, and conserving the heat.
   Which effect is stronger?  I have never seen any discussion of that. I don't think anyone knows.  What's more, it is generally assumed that a rise in global temperature will increase evaporation of water, increasing cloud coverage.  If increasing clouds cool the earth, fine, that will limit the temperature rise.  If increasing clouds warm the earth, hang onto your hats, as the earth warms, the clouds increase,which increases the warming.  Bad. 
   But, until the effect of clouds is understood, and programmed into the computer models, they are worthless.  Without an accurate treatment of cloudiness, the model's results will bear no resemblance to reality.
    And those claiming "the science is settled" are peddling ideology, not science.