Wendy's to install automatic kiosks in 6000 outlets

This story has gotten some serious airplay, always followed up with tsk-tsking about how $15 minimum wage causes low end jobs to be automated out of existence.  
It reminders me of  an old old Robert A. Heinlein story.  Our intrepid teen age hero has been invited to breakfast at a truck stop, by a trucker.  To make conversation the trucker says,
   "This joint used to be automated.  Then it went broke, and the trade all went to the Tivoli, down the road apiece.  Then the new owner threw out the machinery and hired girls.  Business picked up."
   At this point the waitress is taking their order and the trucker says to her,
   "I want that egg just barely dead.  If it's cooked solid I'll nail it to the wall as a warning to others."
   "I doubt that you will be able to get a nail thru it," replies the waitress.
   "See what I mean," says the trucker to our intrepid teen age hero.  "How can machines compete?"

   Good luck with automation Wendy's.

Trashing Sikes Picot

NPR and the Economist have been blaming the woes of the Arab world on the Sikes Picot Agreement of 1916.  Must be the centennial that brings this out.  I'll grant every one of the Arab woes, but I cannot believe they have anything to do with Sikes Picot.
   The Ottoman empire (forerunner to modern Turkey) used to own, operate, tax, and run all the the modern middle East, Greece and the Balkans, Egypt and North Africa.  Turkish/Ottoman control began to slip in the 19th century and World War I brought Lawrence of Arabia to completely tear up the Ottoman empire.  In 1916 the British and the French had Sikes (for Britain) and Picot (for France) draw up a plan to divvy up the Ottoman lands after the war.  The British, the French, the Italians, and the Russians all got a big slice.  Old style imperialism at work.  But that's the way things worked a hundred years ago.
   In reality, the local Arabs were too dis organized, too tribal,  too uneducated, and too primitive to actually run things.  It took 30 years for the Arabs to get up to speed and push out the European imperialists and set up their own regimes.  To a certain extent, but not entirely,  the boundaries of the new Arab states followed the boundaries drawn by Sikes and Picot, but so what?  The populations were/are  all Arab, they all speak Arabic, they are all Muslims.  With the exception of Egypt, there are no natural geographic borders (mountain ranges or rivers, or deserts) so one boundary is about as good as any other.
   The entire region is huge,  no Arab government has the smarts, the charisma, or the military force to run the whole place.  Best the Arabs can manage is to run smaller chunks of it, hence the multiplicity of regimes, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Qatar, Syria, and so on.
   So far as I am considered, the woes of the Arab lands are of their own making, it's not the fault of a diplomatic agreement among European imperialists a hundred years ago. 

Where have all the retail sales gone?

WashPo has a long article here bewailing the lack of retail sales.  One reason might be the really utilitarian product retailers have to sell.  Consider Walmart.  A worthy place, the price is right, the stuff is OK, and I shop there.  But only for pretty utilitarian things, like Jockey shorts, prescription medicine,  and paper towels.   Over the last few years we have lost the Radio Shack, a nice kitchenware place, a decent used book store, a very decent new book and toy store, an Ace Hardware, two video stores, and The Oasis restaurant.   All that's left is Lahout's, Walmart, Staples, Home Despot, and Lowes.  None of them are very gifty stores.
  For Christmas, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, I go on line to find nice stuff to give as gifts.   I gotta drive a long way south on I93,. Tilton or Concord.  to find anything much better.  So this Christmas, Amazon, Lee Valley, Signals, and Garrett Wade got all my Christmas buying. 

Cluelessness runs in the family

Apparently Chelsea Clinton's husband, Marc Mezvinsky, some kinda stock broker wheeler dealer has lost humungous amounts of his clients (suckers) money.   According to the Daily Mail, he lost the money speculating in Greek bonds.  That's a maximum stupid in my book.  Anyone with two brain cells firing knew that the Greeks were broke and would never be able to pay off their bonds.  Looks like Chelsea married a chucklehead.

There IS a difference in supermarket brands

Surefine (Mac's Market house brand) 100% Colombian coffee tastes better than Shaw's house brand 100% Colombian coffee.  Was in Shaw's the other day and picked up a can of their stuff by mistake.  Bad idea, it was harsh and bitter.  Even youngest son commented on how bad it was.  Whereas the Surefine at $4 and change a can tastes as good as jazzier coffees going for as much as $9 a can. 

North Carolina Bathroom Brouhaha

The Obama justice department and the state of North Carolina are now suing each other over the bathroom bill.  The Feds are threatening to cut off some serious federal money unless North Carolina knuckles under.
   Leaving the bathroom bill issue for a bit, let's ask why the Feds were giving a state that kind of money in the first place.  Education is a state and local responsibility, and should be paid for by state and local governments.  When the folks that spend the money have to raise the money, they are a bit more frugal in spending.  Where as free money handed out by the Feds gets spent as fast as possible.  There is always something to spend money on. 
  In short, why is my federal tax money being set to North Carolina?  It's a nice place and all, but I think it ought to be raising its money from its own citizens, not freeloading off of me, up here in New Hampshire.

Army to Shrink to 480,000 troops

  So how many are real combat soldiers, infantry, artillery, and armor, and how many are paper pushers and Rear Echelon Mother F----rs (REMF)   480,000 real combat troops is on the thin side, but possible. We only sent 140,000 troops to take out Saddam Hussein a few years ago.  But 480,000 who are mostly REMF's is scary.   
   In the real world, the troops are dispatched on one year overseas, unaccompanied, combat tours, and then they expect at least one year back home with their families.  When there ain't enough troops, the same guys get sent back on second and third and fourth combat tours with only a few weeks at home in between each combat tour.  This is pretty damn hard on the troops.