Ethiopian Airlines crash

It was a brand new Boeing 737 MAX, the same plane that Lion Airlines crashed a couple of months ago.  In the Lion crash, it is believed that the autopilot got into a snivit and thought the plane was stalling.  It took control of the stick, pushed the nose down to get out of the stall, and flew the aircraft into the ground, over the strenuous objections of the crew, who pulled back on the stick as hard as they could.  Aircraft hit the water, killing all on board.   This Ethiopian crash looks like it might be the same problem.  It's too early to be sure, we have not had time to read out the cockpit recorders, but it sure looks suspicious.  The Lion air crash investigation is not complete, and they have not issued any fixes to the 737 MAX based on that disaster, yet.
   The 737 MAX is the well known 737 which has been flying for decades.  The MAX part is a re engine mod, putting on bigger, more powerful and more fuel efficient engines on a well proven airliner. The anti stall feature in the autopilot is a reaction to the Airbus crash in the south Atlantic a couple of years ago.  In that disaster the entire flight crew, three qualified pilots in the cockpit, failed to recognize they had stalled the aircraft and failed to pull out of it.  The plane hit the water, all on board were killed, and it took a couple of years of searching the ocean bed to find the flight recorders and figure out what had happened.

Wall St Journal is OK with stock buybacks

We been hearing a lot of talk from both left and right about the evils of corporations buying back their stock. Like talk of banning the practice. It's not that corporations need the stock, they can print new stock certificates for nearly any amount of money for pennies, cost of paper and ink.  It's not like buying raw materials or building new factories.  It is believed that buying up the company's stock will raise its price, supply and demand, make the stock scarcer and its price will rise.
   Saturday's WSJ editorial came out strongly in favor of  allowing stock buybacks.  They didn't give any numbers.  The traditional way for a company to raise the price of its stock is to declare a big fat dividend, Which is paid to all stock holders and can be expensive for a company like GE with a zillion shares outstanding.  The idea behind stock buybacks is you only have to pay off the investors that actually sell their stock, rather than all shareholders.  Might be cheaper that way.  The WSJ didn't give any numbers supporting that idea.
   On the other hand, the main reason companies want to boost their stock price is to reward executives with stock options.  I had a stock option once, with Bernie Gordon's Analogic, and it paid off like crazy.  On the other hand, if the company wants to pay off a hardworking successful CEO, they can jolly well vote him a cash bonus. They don't have to manipulate the stock market to reward successful executives. 
   And, you would think that companies could find constructive things to do with extra cash in the till rather than doing stock buybacks.  Like new product development, new factories and distribution centers, improved manufacturing techniques to lower product cost, more publicity and advertising, buying up competitors,  stuff that would increase their income. 

What will it take to get the Jewish community to vote Republican?

Obama was not a supporter of Israel.  This new rep Omar from Milwaukee is a friend of Palestinian terrorists and no friend of Israel. So is Alex Occasional Castro. The US Jewish community ought to wise up and dump the Democratic party for the Republican party.  The Republicans are long time friends of Israel, and reliably against  antisemitism in all its forms. It was Trump who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.  It was the Republican party that led the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  The Democrats pander to their black supporters who are antisemitic at heart.

Beat the Press brings on Cohen

In case you hadn't noticed, the democrats have had Micheal Cohen, Trump's long time lawyer and fixer, testifying in front of Congress.  Even Fox News carried the hearings live, for hours.  Today, Sunday,  Chuck Todd on Beat the Press summarized the testimony, actually Todd reran video clips that he thought would hurt Trump the most.  I watched.  Actually, I didn't think that any of the things Todd showed were particularly bad, evil, or even just crude.  Todd showed a clip about Trump knowing about an upcoming Wikileaks dump of Hillary's damaging emails. So?  This is a violation of what?  Then there was a lotta talk about Trump trying to build a hotel in Moscow.  So?  To build anything in New York you gotta pay people off.  I'm sure it works the same, maybe worse, in Moscow.   And more talk about a meeting in  New York with a Russian agent who claimed to have dirt on Hillary to share with Trump.  So?  If I am running for election and anyone turns up dirt on my opponent, I'm gonna listen.  As I heard the story, the Trump people decided that the dirt on offer was fake at the first meeting with the agent  and didn't buy.  Not so dumb. 
   In short, Todd's best picks from Cohen's testimony failed to convince me that anything was out of order.  I am OK with Trump, but I would not describe myself as a true believer.  If the Cohen testimony doesn't convince me, it won't convince any of the Trump base voters. 
   Too bad the MSM wastes all that press coverage on a nothingburger story, rather than informing us of what is really going down in Washington. 

Lost Wax Casting, ancient technology, still in service

The process goes like this.  Make a wax version of the desired part or artwork.  Then cover the wax master  with clay.  The clay was fired (like pottery) to make it hard and tough.  In the firing the wax melted and ran out.  Then molten metal was poured into the clay mold and allowed to cool and harden.  When cool, the clay mold was broken off and you had a shiny new part or art object.  And no mold parting marks.  Aviation Week claims the lost wax process is 5000 years old.
   Today we call the process "investment casting"  and a lot of key aerospace parts are still made that way.  In fact Aviation Week was complaining about a lack of investment casting capacity  slowing production in the aerospace industry.   One key part made by investment casting is the turbine blades for jet engines.  The tougher you can make the turbine blades, the hotter you can run them which gives better fuel mileage, which translates into better range and better carrying capacity.  Modern turbine blades are very tricky, they have cooling passages up the center, they are cast from secret alloys involving a lot of nickel, and who knows what else, and they are cooled slowly and carefully so that they come out as single crystals of metal.  Some one commented "There are nine countries in the world that can make nuclear bombs, but only two, the US and the UK, that can make modern jet engine turbine blades."

USAF manages the KC-46 tanker contract

The KC-46 tanker job should have been a straight forward contract.  Take a well proven airliner which has been in production and flying for decades, take out the seats and install fuel tanks, plus an air-to-air refueling boom in the tail.  No high risk new technology.   Piece of cake, right?
   Well, first the Air Force decided that it knew more about how to wire an aircraft than Boeing did.  Air Force insisted that Boeing re do all the aircraft wiring "to bring it up to Air Force standards".  Good cost enhancer that was. 
   And then, the Air Force wanted a fancy remote vision system, rather than a plain old reliable glass window, to let the refueling boom operator see his boom and steer it into the receptacle of the receiving aircraft.  Now Air Force is complaining that the remote vision system  lacks contrast and looses detail when the receiving aircraft is backlighted by the sun.  (Beware the Hun in the Sun).   For the last two years USAF has refused to accept new KC-46 tankers 'cause of  the remote vision system and 40 brand new KC-46 tankers have piled up at Boeing's  Everett field.  Now, the Air Force has agreed to accept the aircraft, but they will withhold $28 mil per aircraft until the remote vision system is fixed. 
   How to screw up a simple procurement.   Way to go USAF. 
   Note: I am a USAF veteran. 

Green New Deal, or New Green Deal

Speaking as an electrical engineer, let me address one part of the Green New Deal, electric power generation.  We need to keep the power on for customers, all night, and all day.  "Alternate energy" (windmills and solar cells) won't do that.  For example, I live up in the north country where it gets very cold (20 below) and stays cold for days.  My oil burner won't run without electricity.  Should the power go off, my heat goes off, and my pipes will freeze after a couple of hours.  Lots of industrial processes, from traditional ones like baking bread to high tech ones like fabbing semiconductors need the power to stay on while the batch, be it loaves or LSI semiconductors is in the oven.  If the power quits while a batch is in process, that batch is ruined.  Loss of a batch of loaves is a loss of hundreds of dollars, loss of a batch of semiconductors is tens of thousands of dollars.  Plenty of other batch processes will be ruined if the power fails while the batch is in process.
   Solar cells stop making electricity when the sun goes down.  Which happens every evening.  Windmills stop making electricity when the wind stops blowing, which happens less predictably, but often enough. My house is high in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I get plenty of dead calm days.  In fact it's a dead calm as I write this.  A power system based on solar and wind will suffer frequent power outages, like every night.  Which is unacceptable, except for those who advocate a return to the Hiawatha life style, teepees heated by wood fires. 
   The greenies have poisoned the waters concerning nuclear power.  We have built dams on all the rivers.  Just the middle sized Connecticut river has six power dams on it starting with Moore Dam in Littleton.  If we want the power to stay on all night, we need to burn natural gas.  Fortunately we have plenty of natural gas.  It's becoming a waste product of fracking.  Out on the Bakken they are paying people to take the gas away.  Natural gas is out competing coal in the power generation business.  
   So, Alexandra Occasional-Castro's call for elimination of fossil fuel ain't gonna happen, not unless we put up with power failures on a daily basis.