Scary Sharp works good

Doing woodwork as I do, I do quite a bit of sharpening of chisels and plane irons and the like.  For years, I did the obvious thing, use an oil stone, with a drop of 3 in 1 oil on it.  It's a synthetic silicon carbide stone with a coarse side and a fine side.   I never got into the mystic of natural Arkansas stones or Japanese waterstones  or Tormek machines, all of which get a lot of coverage in the enthusiast press.
    I just did pick up on the Scary Sharp technique.  This does away with stones and recommends using sandpaper, stuck down on a piece of glass.  And it works.  You can get some really fine sandpaper, 600 grit and finer, often from an auto parts store.  I stuck a piece of 600 grit down on a piece of glass and gave it a whirl.  I lubricated the sand paper with a few drops of water.  A little polishing takes all the scratches off the edge and gives it a nice shine.  And the tools do cut better. 
   I now make three passes on a tool, once on the coarse side of the oilstone, one on the fine side of the  oilstone, and the last pass on the 600 grit sandpaper.  I suppose I could use a few more grades of sand paper and omit the stones completely, but I don't see the point.  The 600 grit is close to stropping, which requires a thick leather pad or strop, charged with some really fine grit abrasive.  Local stores up here don't carry strops or the abrasive, but they do carry sandpaper.

   I have a bench grinder but I only use that for really heavy duty blade reshaping, say grinding out a nick.  Or on lathe chisels which get really worn down doing lathe work. 

Extraordinarily ugly fashion ad.

The Saturday WSJ comes in extra thick, due to a huge slick paper fashion magazine tucked inside.  It's 3/8 inch thick and weighs about a pound.  Hefty it is.  Back cover has a really truly ugly ad.  The model is one of those rail thin stick figures.  She is modeling a skirt suit, jacket plus mini skirt, made from a "super tweed" synthetic fabric in brown and black, extra nubbly.  Her face is OK but her expression  is off putting.  Her stance is weird, and awkward.  She has her legs spread wide, and her hands are clasped in front of her crotch. And she is wearing black combat boots.  And her handbag is a cartoon.   Louis Vuitton "Series 3"
   What sort of woman would buy that outfit, let alone appear in public wearing it?

Buying a laptop with the WSJ

It was one of those Wall St Journal lifestyle articles.  Mentioned favorite laptop brands.  The mac books got top rating at $2000 or so.  After nattering on for half a page, the closing advice was to pay at least $600 for a laptop to avoid unspecified problems.   I chuckled to myself.  I got my HP Pavilion for $300 down at Staples 6 months ago.  Works fine, keyboard has decent touch and feel.  Bags of room on hard drive, runs Firefox, Office, Picassa, Orcad, C++ compiler, and other stuff just fine.  I'm not a gamer so I don't stress the processor much.
   Anyhow, I'm thinking that particular WSJ column was more sales pitch for pricey laptops than real practical advice

Environmental Pollution Agency Spill

I hear the EPA administrator wringing her hands on TV about the spill.  Not a word about finding the person[s] responsible and firing them. 
    According to the Wall St Journal all that soup had been sitting in that mine, not hurting anything for better than 100 years.  EPA brought in a backhoe to clear away the opening to the mine, and knocked down a dam that have been holding the soup inside the abandoned mine, letting it flood into the river.

Improving Display readability in Windows 8,1

Windows 8 specializes in hard to read displays.  The text is faint and low contrast, and hard to read even until ideal lighting.  Micro$oft in its wisdom decided to omit a display contrast control, or at least hide it so deep that I haven't found it yet.
   Some inprovement can be had in an obscure place.  Go to control panel.  Select "Display". Select Calibrate Color.  Go thru the song and dance.  At the end select "Text Tuner.  Go thru the Text Tuner song and dance.  And the end I found my text a little darker and clearer, a worthwhile improvement.  Nearly as good a good old Trusty Desktop running XP. 

Lack of women in tech caused by lack of math

This article claims that girls don't take enough math in middle school and high school to take a STEM major in college.  I can believe this.  The Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) fields all require calculus.  You cannot understand the STEM courses unless you know calculus, the homework problems are calculus based,  the explanations of how things work and what's going on won't make sense to you unless you have taken integral calculus first semester of your freshman college year. 
   To take calculus in college , you need a fair amount of math before you get to college.  You must have algebra, probably two years of algebra, and a year of trigonometry.  A year of plane geometry is very helpful although not mandatory. 
   If you get to college without the necessary algebra and trig, it will take you two years (four semesters) to pick it up, by which time you are a junior.  Which is too late usually to take a STEM major, most of which start in sophomore year. 
   The big attraction of STEM majors, is they make you truly employable,  upon graduation, and for the rest of your life, unlike majors in political science, art history, sociology, and any kind of  ethnic or gender "studies".   STEM majors are fun, the subjects  have right answers that can be proven to be right, and not subject to the political whims of the professor.  They offer understanding of the real world, as opposed to the ivory tower world of academia.   You don't want to lock your self out of a STEM major at age 15, before you have clue as to what you want to be when you grow up. 
   So take the necessary math in high school and middle school.  Keep your options open. 
   Back when I was in high school, the girls were always ahead of the boys in math classes.  There is no gender based math incapacity.  Math is not hard, and you don't have to memorize very much to do well in it. 

Hillary has a plan to make college affordable

Hillary wants to have tax payers subsidize college education even more heavily than they do now.   Maybe another $350 billion.  To be paid for with by a soak-the-rich tax. 
I got a better plan.
First.  Lay off all college administrators except perhaps one (1) college president per college.  The administrators don't  contribute to student education, they just collect their pay.
Second.  Lay off all the janitors and buildings and grounds workers.  Students can sweep the halls, set the tables, clear the tables, wash the dishes, mow the grass, shovel the snow, sweep the gym, clean the lavatories, and do any campus chores that don't require a professional engineer license.  Students do this in return for getting an education, they don't get paid in cash.
Third.  Colleges are  required to pay off the student loans of any and all students who fail to graduate.  The admissions office should not admit students who won't be able to hack the curriculum just to take their student loan money.  No degree, no tuition money.