An oldie but a goodie. First published in 1956 when I was in middle school. I saw it in a Harvard Square bookstore, and thought it was so cool. I begged and pleaded with the parents and somehow I received a copy for birthday and read it cover to cover. Pratt starts off with Alexander the Great, moves up thru Pyrrus of Epirus (from whom we get Pyrric victory), the siege of Vienna, the revolt of the Netherlands, and ending with the carrier battles of Midway. Although it concentrates on the military history of Western Civilization, the book is a good introduction to Western European history.
The writer, Fletcher Pratt is a helova good writer. He made his living dong decent science fiction, good stuff that sold, and he knows the periods of which he writes well, gives all sorts of interesting details. Pratt is a good fun read, and in this book the reader gets at good abet sketchy history of the Western world going back 2500 years. If you have a middle school child or grandchild, this book would be a class A gift.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
What small children ought to know
And it's your responsibility to tell 'em about it.
1. Beware of going into the street. The cars will run right over you. Stay on the sidewalk. If a toy or a ball rolls into the street, don't go after it. Find a grownup to retrieve it.
2. Beware of going out on the ice. If the ice breaks, you are dumped into freezing water over your head. Your chances of pulling yourself out are poor, especially after the water soaks into your winter coat and snowpants making them very heavy. My mother required us kids to wack a hole in the ice with a pickax to see if it was four inches thick. Any less than four inches and we couldn't go skating on it.
3. Stay away from the stove. I still remember my mother touching a paper towel to a dark electric stove burner and watching it burst into flame.
4. Beware of electric sockets, light sockets and lamp cords. If the insulation is old or bad, they can kill.
5. Beware of power mowers. They can fling rocks and stuff with the speed and force of bullets. Stay away.
6. Beware of wild animals and strange dogs. Don't try to pet them, they may take it the wrong way, and bite you.
7. Beware of cars with engines running. They may be parked at curbside, standing in driveways, or parking lots. If the engine is running (smoke from tailpipe, and/or lights on) the car is getting ready to move. Stay well clear, since you are short and the driver may not be able to see you.
8. Dress for winter when going out in winter. Coat, boots, mittens and hat. Maybe snow pants too. Even if going by car. One dark Friday night the car engine lost power going up Franconia Notch with all three kids in the back seat. We might have had to walk out, four miles or more. Fortunately I was able to fix the problem by flashlight and we drove on. But we also had the needed winter gear to walk it should it have been necessary.
1. Beware of going into the street. The cars will run right over you. Stay on the sidewalk. If a toy or a ball rolls into the street, don't go after it. Find a grownup to retrieve it.
2. Beware of going out on the ice. If the ice breaks, you are dumped into freezing water over your head. Your chances of pulling yourself out are poor, especially after the water soaks into your winter coat and snowpants making them very heavy. My mother required us kids to wack a hole in the ice with a pickax to see if it was four inches thick. Any less than four inches and we couldn't go skating on it.
3. Stay away from the stove. I still remember my mother touching a paper towel to a dark electric stove burner and watching it burst into flame.
4. Beware of electric sockets, light sockets and lamp cords. If the insulation is old or bad, they can kill.
5. Beware of power mowers. They can fling rocks and stuff with the speed and force of bullets. Stay away.
6. Beware of wild animals and strange dogs. Don't try to pet them, they may take it the wrong way, and bite you.
7. Beware of cars with engines running. They may be parked at curbside, standing in driveways, or parking lots. If the engine is running (smoke from tailpipe, and/or lights on) the car is getting ready to move. Stay well clear, since you are short and the driver may not be able to see you.
8. Dress for winter when going out in winter. Coat, boots, mittens and hat. Maybe snow pants too. Even if going by car. One dark Friday night the car engine lost power going up Franconia Notch with all three kids in the back seat. We might have had to walk out, four miles or more. Fortunately I was able to fix the problem by flashlight and we drove on. But we also had the needed winter gear to walk it should it have been necessary.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Sunday afternoon on NBC TV is all about blacks and Hispanics
And, of course, how neither blacks nor Hispanics will vote for The Donald. Groovy, NBC getting in some licks for Hillary.
But, not a word about a much larger and much more important voter block, women. Hispanics are like 10% of the electorate, blacks are like 15%. Women are 50%, which is a whole lot more. Anyhow in a long period of talk, not a word about women, lots of words about blacks and Hispanics. I wonder why? Can it be that the newsies, or women, or both, find the traditional women's issue, abortion and birth control, to be repellent this year? And they don't know of any other issues? Or perhaps good old lefty NBC thinks it's better for Hillary to divvy up the voters into small special interest groups rather than one very big group?
It was the women's vote that sank Romney four years ago. Women favored Obama over Romney by 10%. That's Obama's winning margin right there. And I never did hear any discussion of why women liked Obama better than Romney. Was it because Obama is good looking, slender, and sexy? Whereas Romney just looks like a happily married husband? Could it be women liked Obamacare? Or Obamanomics even though both policies threw a lotta people out of work? Was it being Mormon? Something else? None of the pollsters did any polling on this, or at least they never published.
But, not a word about a much larger and much more important voter block, women. Hispanics are like 10% of the electorate, blacks are like 15%. Women are 50%, which is a whole lot more. Anyhow in a long period of talk, not a word about women, lots of words about blacks and Hispanics. I wonder why? Can it be that the newsies, or women, or both, find the traditional women's issue, abortion and birth control, to be repellent this year? And they don't know of any other issues? Or perhaps good old lefty NBC thinks it's better for Hillary to divvy up the voters into small special interest groups rather than one very big group?
It was the women's vote that sank Romney four years ago. Women favored Obama over Romney by 10%. That's Obama's winning margin right there. And I never did hear any discussion of why women liked Obama better than Romney. Was it because Obama is good looking, slender, and sexy? Whereas Romney just looks like a happily married husband? Could it be women liked Obamacare? Or Obamanomics even though both policies threw a lotta people out of work? Was it being Mormon? Something else? None of the pollsters did any polling on this, or at least they never published.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
World War II, nearly everybody lost
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France were invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940. Yugoslavia and Greece got the same a year or two later. Poland, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were invaded and occupied by the Soviets. Germany and Italy were heavily bombed and then invaded and occupied by the Anglo Americans. A few countries managed to stay neutral, but darn few.
We, America, won without taking too much damage. The British won but suffered a lot more. The Russians won at a terrible cost.
So on balance we have three winners, and a whole lotta losers. Right after the war, 1946, the survivors (losers all), determined never to do a World War again, set out to build a United States of Europe to prevent another catastrophe. It started small, just six members. It went thru a bunch of name changes, but it kept growing, and now everyone is in it, except the Russians. They set up a Common Market, the Euro, and a government of sorts in Brussels. Up until this summer it looked like a winner, despite some boondoggles like Greece.
This summer the Brits pulled out. That's a setback for the United Europe idea. Britain is the second biggest economy in the EU, right after Germany, they are very good diplomats, and they have the enormously strong American connection, far stronger than anyone else in the world. Britain will be missed.
It will take some years for Brexit to sort out. If no other country follows the Brits, then it's a minor setback. If some minor players bail out that's a bad thing. If a biggie, France say, bails out, that's a very bad thing.
Time will tell.
We, America, won without taking too much damage. The British won but suffered a lot more. The Russians won at a terrible cost.
So on balance we have three winners, and a whole lotta losers. Right after the war, 1946, the survivors (losers all), determined never to do a World War again, set out to build a United States of Europe to prevent another catastrophe. It started small, just six members. It went thru a bunch of name changes, but it kept growing, and now everyone is in it, except the Russians. They set up a Common Market, the Euro, and a government of sorts in Brussels. Up until this summer it looked like a winner, despite some boondoggles like Greece.
This summer the Brits pulled out. That's a setback for the United Europe idea. Britain is the second biggest economy in the EU, right after Germany, they are very good diplomats, and they have the enormously strong American connection, far stronger than anyone else in the world. Britain will be missed.
It will take some years for Brexit to sort out. If no other country follows the Brits, then it's a minor setback. If some minor players bail out that's a bad thing. If a biggie, France say, bails out, that's a very bad thing.
Time will tell.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Lotta work needed on F35
The F35 is a flying computer. Software does everything. And the software is far from ready. Plus some other problems. The Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation set forth the "challenges" (bureaucrat speak for bugs or problems) still to be overcome.
First off is the 25mm Gatling cannon won't fire. This used to be a pure software problem and cannon firing software was promised sometime in the future. Which is a minor scandal. A gun ought to fire every time the trigger is pulled. All the software can do is correct the aim, but pilots can get plenty of hits without fancy software driven lead computing gunsights. But somehow they decided to route the trigger signal thru the computers rather then straight to the gun. Good design that. Now they discover that a little door that opens when the gun fires creates enough drag to throw the aim off. On the old F105, which I worked on for a year in combat, the muzzle of the 20mm Vulcan cannon stuck right out in the airstream, fired every time the trigger was pressed, and no silly little doors to get in the way. KISS (keep it simple stupid).
Second the project is running into difficulties getting the system to fire the AIM9L Sidewinder air to air missile and drop the laser guided Small Diameter Bomb. Sidewinder, an infrared heat seeker, has been around since the 1950's, and is still very effective, and cheap. SDB is newer, but it's been around for a while, it's a 250 pound smart bomb that you can put in a guy's bedroom window without leveling the entire apartment building. Neither require much electronic assistance by the launching aircraft. Did the F35 people bother to read the Technical Orders on either weapon?
Then there is the computer crash problem. In July the system crashed hard (blue screen of death hard) every five hours on average. With the last software update, that was improved to 9 hours between crashes. My Windows XP system does better than that. Here we are at Top Gun, closing on the enemy, when the system crashes. Instead of pulling some G's and nailing the enemy, we are pushing reset buttons trying to bring the computer back up.
And lastly the $400,000 a copy night vision helmet still doesn't work.
There is a bunch of other gripes about non essential systems, sensor fusion, date link, and some other stuff that doesn't belong on a fighter plane.
The test and evaluation people don't think the F35 program office has the funds to fix all this stuff.
First off is the 25mm Gatling cannon won't fire. This used to be a pure software problem and cannon firing software was promised sometime in the future. Which is a minor scandal. A gun ought to fire every time the trigger is pulled. All the software can do is correct the aim, but pilots can get plenty of hits without fancy software driven lead computing gunsights. But somehow they decided to route the trigger signal thru the computers rather then straight to the gun. Good design that. Now they discover that a little door that opens when the gun fires creates enough drag to throw the aim off. On the old F105, which I worked on for a year in combat, the muzzle of the 20mm Vulcan cannon stuck right out in the airstream, fired every time the trigger was pressed, and no silly little doors to get in the way. KISS (keep it simple stupid).
Second the project is running into difficulties getting the system to fire the AIM9L Sidewinder air to air missile and drop the laser guided Small Diameter Bomb. Sidewinder, an infrared heat seeker, has been around since the 1950's, and is still very effective, and cheap. SDB is newer, but it's been around for a while, it's a 250 pound smart bomb that you can put in a guy's bedroom window without leveling the entire apartment building. Neither require much electronic assistance by the launching aircraft. Did the F35 people bother to read the Technical Orders on either weapon?
Then there is the computer crash problem. In July the system crashed hard (blue screen of death hard) every five hours on average. With the last software update, that was improved to 9 hours between crashes. My Windows XP system does better than that. Here we are at Top Gun, closing on the enemy, when the system crashes. Instead of pulling some G's and nailing the enemy, we are pushing reset buttons trying to bring the computer back up.
And lastly the $400,000 a copy night vision helmet still doesn't work.
There is a bunch of other gripes about non essential systems, sensor fusion, date link, and some other stuff that doesn't belong on a fighter plane.
The test and evaluation people don't think the F35 program office has the funds to fix all this stuff.
Friday, September 2, 2016
Real Jobs
I was listening to NPR on the way home yesterday. They were doing a nice long piece on a dozen Maryland high school students who graduated high school back in 2012, and have mostly graduated college and found jobs. There was a teacher, an HR worker, an actor, couple of grad students, and I forget the rest.
None of them had taken a real job in industry, you know where they produce wealth. I'm glad to know that beaten up as the American economy is, it is still productive enough to carry all those fresh young faces doing nothing very important.
None of them had taken a real job in industry, you know where they produce wealth. I'm glad to know that beaten up as the American economy is, it is still productive enough to carry all those fresh young faces doing nothing very important.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Immigration (to the US)
We need it. To maintain the population, each woman in the US needs to bear 2.1 children during her lifetime. We aren't making that right now, it's like 1.9 or 2.0. And it would not be that high without immigrant women who bear more children than the native born do.
We need immigrants who are loyal to the United States. Not loyal to ISIS or Islam, of communism, or the old country, but loyal to the United States. Other the years we have done well in this respect, I have a number of immigrant friends who are intensely loyal to this country.
After loyalty, we need people who will become gainfully employed, stay out of trouble with the law, raise decent children, pay taxes, and contribute to the community. People like this strengthen the country, make the economy grow, and are good to have around.
We have 11 million immigrants in the country who haven't done the right paperwork to be here. Far as I am concerned, if they have been doing the right thing, (employed, clean criminal record, married, children) I say let em stay. Deporting them all would be brutal, and the TV coverage would look like the SS shipping Jews to Auschwitz. Let's not do that.
And, if we are gonna let them stay in the country, we need to grant them citizenship. All men are created equal is the core principle of the United States. That means everyone gets to vote. It's a violation of our principles to have two classes of people, real citizens and green carders.
I know, it lets the people who are here already get to the head of the line. Too bad. They showed courage in coming here, and have demonstrated that they are good citizens, why not let them go ahead? Plus the "line" is pretty much closed, it can take 20 years wait for a green card.
The newsies are having a lot of fun zapping the Donald on immigration issues. But immigration isn't all that important to the voters this year, not compared to the economy, jobs, Islamic terrorism and even Zika. The newsies like the issue cause it is simple enough for even their limited understanding, unlike say the economy which is complicated.
We need immigrants who are loyal to the United States. Not loyal to ISIS or Islam, of communism, or the old country, but loyal to the United States. Other the years we have done well in this respect, I have a number of immigrant friends who are intensely loyal to this country.
After loyalty, we need people who will become gainfully employed, stay out of trouble with the law, raise decent children, pay taxes, and contribute to the community. People like this strengthen the country, make the economy grow, and are good to have around.
We have 11 million immigrants in the country who haven't done the right paperwork to be here. Far as I am concerned, if they have been doing the right thing, (employed, clean criminal record, married, children) I say let em stay. Deporting them all would be brutal, and the TV coverage would look like the SS shipping Jews to Auschwitz. Let's not do that.
And, if we are gonna let them stay in the country, we need to grant them citizenship. All men are created equal is the core principle of the United States. That means everyone gets to vote. It's a violation of our principles to have two classes of people, real citizens and green carders.
I know, it lets the people who are here already get to the head of the line. Too bad. They showed courage in coming here, and have demonstrated that they are good citizens, why not let them go ahead? Plus the "line" is pretty much closed, it can take 20 years wait for a green card.
The newsies are having a lot of fun zapping the Donald on immigration issues. But immigration isn't all that important to the voters this year, not compared to the economy, jobs, Islamic terrorism and even Zika. The newsies like the issue cause it is simple enough for even their limited understanding, unlike say the economy which is complicated.
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