Leaf Peeping.

It was a lovely day, sun, warm, clear sky.  Leaves still bright.  I decided I had to get out and look.  So I drove over the Kancamagus to Conway, and back thru Crawford Notch.  Foliage was magnificent all the way.  Whole hillsides showing gold and red. Individual trees all bright red. I brought the camera, but I already have, and have posted, a bunch of pix of brightly color leaves, so I didn't take any more.  Plus a lot of really beautiful scenes don't photograph well, you have to be there and see them.
Good Trip.  At the right time of year. 

Selecting a "man-on-the-street" for inteview. NHPR style

NHPR newsie in Orlando Florida is interviewing a "representative" voter.  Didn't give his name.  It became clear listening to this guy that he is gay, and pretty much all his waking thoughts are about his gayness and how it effects his life, his relationship with his mother and family, and the world in general.  It's hard for me to take this guy as representative of the typical Orlando (or anywhere else) voter.  Real people have other concerns than their sexual identity in their lives,  stuff like jobs, sports, hobbies, cars, politics, computers, music and more.  All this guy could talk about was his sexual identity.
   Granted that being gay can bring unusual stresses.  But 95% of the population is straight, and has interests other than sex and sexual identity.
   I don't think this guy is representative of anybody except himself.  And the NHPR newsies were too dumb or too PC to figure that out.  Or they just wanted to put a gay guy on the air. 

Moderators, Presidential Debate type.

The last two presidential debates had dreadful moderators.  They asked dumb ass questions, they were profoundly ignorant of many simple matters, and they both tried hard to help Hillary and hinder Trump.   Chris Wallace ought to be better.  He is smart, knowledgeable and fair.
   Far as I am concerned,  Republican presidential candidates ought to be pickier about debate moderators.  They should veto any rabid democratic moderators like Candy Crowley along with other more ignorant newsies.  And since newsies are a fairly low grade lifeform, they ought to look for prominent Americans from other walks of life. 

Free College. We used to have it.

I got one back in the 1970's.  My Air Force hitch was up, after a tour in South East Asia, and I enrolled at the University of Delaware for a Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering degree.  I  had been stationed in Delaware long enough to qualify as a Delaware resident, entitled to resident's rates at the state university.  For residents tuition was super low, only a few hundred dollars a semester.  For a couple of semesters my text books cost more than my tuition.  My GI benefits covered tuition, books, and rent on my apartment.  Between that, and money I saved during my Air Force hitch, I graduated with no student loans to pay off and enough money left over to get married and take a honeymoon in England. 
   University of Delaware might not qualify as completely free in those days, but it was so cheap that anyone could afford it.   With Dupont and Hercules in the state, the engineering program at Delaware was good.  
   So when you hear Hillary campaigning for free college education, some one ought to ask her what happened to the ones we used to have. 

Words of the Weasel Part 48

"Bottle of flammable liquid"   That's what the cops called it on TV.   In real life, we call them Molotov cocktails.  

Words of the Weasel Part 47

Heard on TV this morning.  "I was self medicating myself with alcohol."   Sounds a helova lot better than "I drank like a fish."

Franconia Notch Fall Foliage

I took these pictures yesterday up in the Notch.