Thoughts on gun control

Gun control, every one’s favorite topic since all those terrible shootings in the last few weeks.  Democrats in Congress are all hot to pass new gun control laws, whether we need them or not.  Remember that Democrats have wanted to outlaw private ownership of firearms for many years now.  This looks like their opportunity. 

   They are pushing an “assault weapons ban”.  Trouble is, there is no difference between “assault rifles” and deer rifles.  In short, an “assault weapons ban” would become a ban on all guns.

   And then they talk about the “gun show loophole”.  I bought a gun at a gun show a while ago.  I, and everyone else, had to wait on the “instant background check” which took about an hour and a half.   Background checks are required at gun shows except for antique black powder guns.  

   And they are talking about toughening up the background checks.  Dunno just what that means, but I suspect it could get really ugly.

    The gun control people are saying that some guns, “military grade weapons”, “AR-15’s”, are more dangerous than other guns and we can make progress by banning the more dangerous guns, hence the push for an “assault weapons” ban.  This is wrong.  All guns are lethal.  Deer rifles are just as lethal as “assault rifles” In fact many states won’t allow deer hunting with AR-15’s, they don’t think the AR-15 is powerful enough to kill a deer cleanly. 

9/11 eighteen years ago.

Does not seem that long ago.  I was at work, Analog Devices in those days.  I brought our lab TV out into the main aisle so everyone could watch.  We were stunned.  I remember later all the vehicles driving around with American flags flying off them.
We do need to remember that we, Americans, have enemies out there that want to kill us all.  They got 3000 of us eighteen years ago. 

Effective new car advertisement

I was web surfing and I bumped into a Cadillac ad on The Hill.  Curious to see what the new Caddies look like, I clicked on it.  They have about 5 or 6 models.  Hard to tell them apart.  Models don’t have names anymore, just numbers, all starting with XT.  They have an XT4 and an AT5 and some other ones.  The only model that still has its name is Escalade, the big SUV.  Escalade was the only model that gave a price, horsepower, and some other info.  The other XT models just had photos, except for XT4 and XT6 which lacked photos entirely.  Stylists worked at giving all the XT models a family resemblance, they all have the same grille, and the same fore and aft creases in the sheet metal, the same nose down fanny up in the air look.  None of them have much of a trunk anymore.  Most of them are higher than traditional Caddies.

   Who ever put this ad together just googled for luxury cars and put the search results in the ad.  So right below the Caddy listing we have listings for all the competition, Lincoln, Mercedes, BMW and so on.  That’s not how I would do a Caddy ad.  

  I am an old Caddy owner.  Had a 99 Deville sedan once.  It was a nice car, lots of power, plenty of room, 27 mpg.  I ran it up to 140 K miles.  At that point the NH road salt finally managed to rust the entire rear axle off the car, and nobody wanted to fix that, so I traded it.  None of the new 2020 Caddies looked very attractive to my eye. 

Wall St Journal ranks US colleges.

The Journal ran a long piece today listing the top 500 US colleges.  I looked thru the list of names, looking for colleges that I and my family attended to see where they ranked today.  Looks like we all attended pretty highly ranked colleges.  

1 and 2.  Harvard and MIT.  I lived 9  years in Cambridge MA , used to rent to Harvard and MIT students,  walked both campuses, very scenic.
7     Brown University in Providence RI.  I applied there, many years ago.  Did not get in.
9     Cornell in Ithaca NY .  My cousin Andrew graduated there.
12   Johns Hopkins, Baltimore MD.  My daughter graduated there.  Majored in international relations, minored in Russian, both stood her in good stead when she did a 2 year tour with the Peace Corps in Kirghistan.  
15   Columbia NYC  My brother and his daughter (my niece) both graduated  there.
24   Wellesley, Wellesley MA.  My mother graduated there.
30   Tufts, Medford MA.  My sister in law graduated there.  Her older daughter, my other niece also graduated Tufts.
35    Middlebury, VT  my other brother graduated there.
91    Franklin and Marshall, Lancaster PA.  I graduated there.  BA in history
148  University of Delaware, Newark DE.  I graduated there with a BS in electrical engineering after my 6 year tour in USAF. 
176  St Olaf College, Northfield Minn.  My brother in law graduated there.
217  Drew University Madison, NJ.  My oldest son graduated there. Majored in theater.
237  Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY.  My youngest son graduated there, BS in Mechanical Engineering.

North Grafton Republican host Bill O'Brien as speaker.

North Grafton Republicans had Bill O’Brien for their featured speaker last night.  Bill is running for US Senate, going up against Jeanne Shaheen, the democrat incumbent.  Bill has been around in NH politics for a long time.  Back about ten years ago, when the Democrats had driven the state budget $1 billion into the hole, Bill was speaker of the NH house.  He managed to cut the state budget 18%, bring it into balance, without hiking taxes. 

   He opened his remarks by saying that he was Trump before there was Trump.  He doesn’t support Planned Parenthood, saying that they are still selling body parts of aborted infants.  Bill sees “identity politics”, beloved by Democrats, as basically divisive, setting one group of Americans against another group.

  He is against Occasional-Castro’s Green Nude Eel; he sees it as imposing fantastic costs upon us citizens, as well as imposing harsh government controls on simple necessities like heating oil. 

   Bill is in favor of ending illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. He wants to fix the porous asylum system, and stiffen border defenses.  He wants a strong economy, because a strong economy creates jobs, the best thing we can do for people, and creates the wealth to deal with all the rest of our problems.  To which end he opposes red tape and regulations, and opposes government takeover of industries, and tax hikes.  He thinks US healthcare costs too much.  He opposes Medicare for All which would destroy Medicare and destroy private health insurance. 

   Far as I am concerned, Jeanne Shaheen has been a totally worthless Senator. She even wants to abolish the Electoral College, which was put into the Constitution to even things up between big states and small states.  New Hampshire is a small state and we would be crazy to give up the needed extra political power that the Electoral College gives us at the federal level.  In opposing the Electoral College Shaheen is opposing her constituents in New Hampshire in favor of the DNC. 

How did the 737 MAX get gounded, perhaps for ever?

It goes back to 2010 when Airbus announced a re engined A320, their workhorse single aisle air liner, that would save 15% on fuel.  Next year 2011, American Airlines told Boeing they better have a reengined 737 or else American would buy the Airbus 320 neo.  Boeing started the 737 MAX project a year later.  This project was a straight forward engine swap, replace the existing engines with newly designed engines that would give better fuel economy, leave the rest of the 737 alone.  It took Boeing four years, until 2016, to get the engine swap designed and built and get the first flight accomplished.  This is a rediculous length of time.  Back in the day, the British were able to swap out an anemic US engine for the 2000 hp Merlin engine on a North American fighter plane over a weekend.  The result of the British engine swap was the famous Mustang fighter.  You would think if the Brits could do it in a weekend, Boeing ought to be able to do the same thing in less than four years. 
   One of the constraints, was the 737 MAX had to fly like the preceding 737s.  And, the bigger engines of the MAX had a tendency to push the nose up when power was added.  So Boeing added code into the autopilot software to push the nose back down and make the new MAX fly just like the old 737.  Unfortunately for Boeing, the new code, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS for short,  could fail disastrously.  When things went wrong, MCAS could dive the plane into the ground.  This happened twice within a few months.  All on board were killed in both accidents.  Which caused the 737 MAX to be grounded.  It's been grounded for 5 months now. 
   Boeing hopes to present corrected autopilot MCAS code to the FAA for approval this month, September.  FAA, being a government bureau, can take as much time as they like to decide to OK the new code, or call for yet changes and/or testing.  When (and if) FAA ungrounds the 737 MAX then all the other regulators around the world will begin to unground the plane for their airlines and airspace.  At this point Boeing is hoping to get the 737 back in the air before the end of 2019.  This may be a vain hope.  

Solar Comes to Groveton NH

I attended a briefing up in Coos County about plans to build a 5 Megawatt solar power plant just outside of Groveton.  Present were Bennie Lamontagne from the department of business and economic affairs, Senator David Starr, Tara Giles from Salmonpress, and Barry Normandeau of Normandeau Trucking.   Tom Wemyss of Pure Point Energy gave the briefing.  He showed maps.  They already own a 600 acre site on the east bank of the river (Groveton is on the west bank) of which they plan to clear some 60 acres to make room for the solar panels.  The solar arrays will be mounted on solar tracking bases to improve power output.  The topography is such that the solar array will not be visible from the roads which will preserve the up country ambiance of the area.  There is a big Eversource substation close by to accept power to the ISO New England grid.  At one point Tom Wemyss mentioned selling power in Groveton for 8 cents a kilowatt hour.  That sounded good to me, since I am paying 20 cents a kilowatt hour in Franconia. 

    The project is waiting for the NH Legislature to authorize net metering for operations as large as 5 Megawatts.  Right now net metering is limited to plants no larger than 1 Megawatt.  Costs to install are roughly the same for large or small solar plants.  A five Megawatt plant can make enough revenue to justify construction, a smaller plant cannot.  There is a bill, HB365, to raise the net metering threshold to 5 Megawatts.  We passed it thru both House and Senate this spring.  Unfortunately the governor vetoed it.  A veto override will be voted upon in September. 

   Assuming a successful veto override, they have to do some more paperwork with DES and others.  Funding is in hand and construction could start next summer.