LED's for Grow Lamps?

Enthusiastic aditorial for a European company advocating LED grow lamps for indoor farming. LED's are described as "efficient".
Yeah right, but a glass window letting in sunlight is more efficient. Like in a greenhouse.

Need to Know, new TV show with Ray Suarez

It's a new Sunday pundit show, I caught it on NHPTV this morning. Trouble is, this show is deceptive. They were talking grand strategy, like keeping Saudi Arabia in the Western orbit. They show a graph saying that Saudi only supplies 11 % of US oil needs, and obviously, we can let Saudi fall to Islamic terrorists, Iranian mullahs or the Klu Klux Klan, and it will only cost us 11% of our crude oil. Right.
The three top oil producers in the world today are Saudi, Russia and the US. Loose production of Saudi and a world wide oil shortage will drive the price of crude up to $200 a barrel, twice what we pay today. This is a problem, and the Need to Know TV show tried to sweep it under the rug.
Ray Suarez should be ashamed to moderate this slanted TV show.

Atlas Shrugged

Went to see it at a friend's house. Friend had a VERY nice home theater with a huge screen and room shaking audio. Comfy movie theater style seats, popcorn, it competes well with the Jax Jr.
The movie can be reviewed on several levels. I never read the Ayn Rand book upon which it is based. The plot held together and was coherent to a non-book-reader. That's better than Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, which cut so much and moved so fast that if you had not read the book you were lost.
The plot has a Colorado railroad tycoon rebuilding a worn out branch line to current standards. She orders new rail made of a supermaterial from another industrialist. There is a lot of nice photography showing giant tracklaying machines pulling up rotten wood ties and rusty rail and plunking down fresh new concrete ties, shiny rail, and replacing bridges. Naturally the lady railroad tycoon and the supermaterial industrialist form a romantic attachment. Thruout the movie we see key employees disappearing from both firms. After each disappearance someone will ask "Who is John Galt". We never do learn who John Galt is. We also see a lot of idle rich going to parties, and a lot of political scumbags passing New Dealish share-the-wealth legislation, and union scumbags attempting to scuttle progress both on the rails and back at the supermaterial foundry. This could become a rail fan's movie, a lot of nice closeups of huge trains barreling along.
The movie carries a lot of ideological freight. The friend who showed it did it as a Tea Party activity. The original anti new deal slant of the book is still there in the movie. In fact the whole movie has a new deal/great depression look-and-feel about it.
Viewed just as a movie, leaving out the ideological stuff and the Ayn Rand tie in, it's an OK but not great movie. The plot lacks conviction and has too many Tom Swift science fiction elements, the characters are cardboard (although pretty or handsome). The photography is good, lots of great scenery, gritty urban decay, lush office interiors. Most reviewers panned it, but you have to suspect that the movie's political points rubbed lefty movie reviewers the wrong way.

Should the Supercommittee fail to agree

The Supercommittee is running out of time. They have to produce a deal by Thanksgiving and that's only a week away. By all accounts the Democrats refuse to reform Medicare and the Republicans won't go for soak-the-rich income tax hikes. The Republicans did offer a $200 billion "revenue increase" (aka tax hike) but that wasn't enough for Democrats.
So what happens after Thanksgiving?
Ans: nothing.
So what happens in 2013?
A little bit of tummy suck in. The 2013 spending plan is right now $1047 billion. The suck in would reduce that to $953 billion. A horrible 9 %. Oh woe. The sky will fall. And this world shaking spending cut is just a plan. Congress usually goes over plan by the time the fiscal year is over.
With the Feds borrowing 40 cents of every dollar spent, a 9% spending reduction ain't gonna save a thing.

Words of the Weasel Part 23

"Austerity". Used to mean reducing spending to the point where it hurt. Going without stuff. Not any longer. Today "Austerity" means tax hikes.
Just the other day a piece about French "austerity" imposed to keep their AAA bond rating. Read the piece, and we find that all the "austerity measures" are all tax hikes.

Psychiatric-drug use climbs 22%

From the Wall St Journal. Hmm. Does that mean that Americans are 22% crazier than they used to be?
We are talking prescription drugs here, so that means doctors are writing 22% more prescriptions. Have we developed new drugs to treat the previously untreatable? Is this a reflection of the decline of Freudian psycho-analysis in favor of drugs to set the head right? According to this article 20% of the population is taking psychiatric drugs. That's a lot.
Apparently a lot of the growth is in ADHD prescriptions for grownups. Ritalin is rising.
Anyhow, it's bound to increase the awful cost of American health care.

A few WSJ words about Credit Default Swaps

For those who tuned in late, a credit default swap (CDS) is paper insurance, if the financial paper you hold defaults, the credit default swapper will pay you off. For a slight fee of course. The swapper will charge a percent or two to cover his expenses. So eager beaver young hi-roller can buy Greek bonds that pay 28% and tell his supervisor "It's OK, I bought a credit default swap on them, so when the Greeks default, we get paid off."
Only, the Greeks or the ECB or somebody worked some kind of evil magic and the Greek CDS's won't pay off after the bondholders took a 50% haircut. Woe is me.
"investors concluded that the CDS's of other EU countries weren't to be trusted either. So when fears mounted over Italy's solvency last week, investors bailed out of euro-zone debt."
Oh the horror of it. Investors will stop pouring money down an Italian drain. The world will end on Tuesday. Francesco Guerrera, a Wall St Journal editor, thinks this is terrible.
Actually, it's a good thing. Capital ought to be invested in economic development, factories, mines, off-shore oil platforms, sea going ships, roads, bridges, airliners, you know, stuff that employs people and makes money. Money loaned to EU governments just goes to pay pensions of retired bureaucrats. The bad part about CDS's, is that they encourage investors to invest in loser government bonds instead of useful things.
Far as I am concerned, anything we can do to stamp out CDS's is a good thing. Investors ought to look at the risk involved in any investment. CDS's (when they work) shuffle the risk off on the third party, and allow the investor to put his money into really risky stuff but without assuming the risk himself.
Society's capital will be better directed, resulting in greater economic growth and more employment, if the investors have to face up to risk.

Do I believe in stimulus?

In this day and age of scary big budget deficits, some governments (like NH) have reacted by cutting government spending. Others (like CA, USofA and Greece) have not. Each time a thrifty government cuts spending a whole bunch of pundits pipe up and say "Reducing government spending reduces economic stimulus and casts us deeper into Great Depressions 2.0". Is this really true?
The pundits have all been brought up on Dr. Maynard Keynes, British economist from Great Depression I. Keynes claimed that the Great Depression was caused by a "failure of demand" and the proper role of government was to create demand by spending money, and if necessary, printing it in order to spend it. This theory is attractive to politicians (who love spending money), business (who receives this largess), and liberals.
But does it work in the real world? Certainly Obama's $1 trillion porkulus bill didn't do much for Great Depression 2.0. Keynesian spending requires money that has to come from somewhere, either out of taxes, or inflation (which takes money out of everyone's hide). Could it be that taking all that money away from taxpayers reduces those taxpayer's ability to spend?

Maxims

Napoleon is remembered for saying "In war the moral is the the physical as three is to one". By which he meant that his army won because his solders believed in the cause they were fighting for. And there must be something in it, Napoleon repeatedly beat enemies as numerous as his and equipped with the same weapons that his men carried.

Of course we should remember that Napoleon is also the man who said "Le feu est tout", which translates into English as "Firepower is everything".

Words of the Weasel Part 22

"Nuanced." As in "President Obama's nuanced response to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Quoted from Elizabeth Warren, currently running for Scott Brown's Massachusetts senate seat. Nuanced. Speak softly and slink out of the room. The Iranians are dead set on getting the bomb. Only military action or regime change will stop them. Nuanced won't cut it. Once the Iranians get the bomb, they are immune to invasion. With nukes they can pretty much do anything they like, and if we move to stop them, they will threaten to nuke someplace we care about, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Tel Aviv.
"Firepower." As in "The European Stability Facility needs more firepower". The Economist and even the Wall St Journal have taken to using "firepower" in place of "money" which is what they are actually talking about. Not quite sure why. Can it be that all these good liberals really think "firepower" sounds nicer than "money"?

Back to the Civil War

Whenever times get slow, the services change their uniform. The US Army has gone back to Civil War style blue uniforms and rank insignia. I just saw Chief of Staff Gen Ray Ordiero on TV. Instead of the traditional silver stars on the shoulder loops, he was wearing gold shoulder straps of the sort that William T. Sherman and U.S. Grant used to wear.
Only took 65 years for the Army to get back to blue. When the US Air Force got started in 1947 it picked blue for it's uniform. To prevent anyone from confusing Army soldiers with Air Force airmen, the Army promptly switched over to green uniforms. Now the Army is over it's snit with the Air Force and the soldiers are going with two tone blue uniforms.

After doing something stupid, sue

Something called "FairPoint Creditor's Trust" is suing Verizon to recover the purchase price Fairpoint paid Verizon for the privilege of going broke. For those of you that tuned in late, some years ago Verizon decided that operating telephone lines in rural New England was a money loser. Few paying customers, spread over a wide area means lots of wire to maintain and few bill payers to fund the thing. So Verizon found a bigger sucker. Small backwoods phone company from down south somewhere , name of Fairpoint, thought they could make money running land line phone service in New England. Verizon wasn't making any money off a fully paid for physical plant. Fairpoint was going to borrow a zillion dollars at 12 percent, give the money to Verizon, and then make enough money to operate the system and pay off the debt. Right.
Not only did Fairpoint fall for this scam, the public utility commissions of all the affected state bought into the scheme. And some bankers somewhere (Wall Street?) were dumb enough to loan out the money.
Things happened as any idiot could have predicted. Fairpoint couldn't make money, couldn't service the debt, and declared bankruptcy a few years ago. I haven't been following this closely, but I hope all the idiots who participated in this stupidity lost a lot of money.
Anyhow, the suckers, after getting thoroughly plucked, hired some lawyers to try a get some money back from Verizon. Let's hope it doesn't work. Far as I am concerned anyone who got mixed up in the Fairpoint scheme was too stupid to be allowed outdoors without a keeper.

Obama's Jobs plan

Kill the XL pipeline. That will create a lot of jobs. Although he claims merely to be delaying approval until AFTER the election, in the real world putting a one year delay on a big project often kills it dead. The oil producers in Canada need to market their oil. There are plenty of countries in the world who need oil and have money. China for instance.
So kiss the jobs, and the oil goodby.
That's really good for the country.

Yet another Republican debate

This one was televised on a channel that Time Warner Cable carries up here. It had the usual semicircle of podiums on a stage, a candidate behind each podium, and NO name tags on the podiums. Which is OK for a political junkie like me who knows the candidates faces, but for a more casual viewer, not OK.
The studio audience cheered many of the candidates when they made a good sound byte. Romney and Cain did especially well on applause. They booed the newsie moderators for asking Cain about the sexual harassment thing. Makes you wonder how that studio audience was selected. Just passer's bye off the street? By invitation only? Each candidate given a block of tickets? Who knows. Anyhow they cheered for the candidates and booed the newsies.
And Rick Perry suffered an embarrassing brain fart on stage. He declared he would eliminate three federal agencies, named two, and then couldn't think of the third.

Rick Perry

So I emailed an old college buddy who has been living in Texas for better than 20 years. What do you think of Rick Perry I asked.
The answer came back "Not much".
The friend pointed out that Texas's economic success during Perry's governorship is mostly due to vast deposits of oil and gas in Texas, rather than any particular cleverness on Perry's part.
The Texas housing market is in trouble due to crazy mortgage lending. The cost of home owner's insurance is thru the roof.
The state budget is out of balance and they have been cutting school funding despite a massive untapped rainy day fund.
There was a case called "Willingham" in which a probably innocent man has been convicted of arson and executed. Perry fired the review board.
"Perry looks good, has good hair, but a whiny wife."
He is close to the religious right, he is OK with creationism.

I've known this guy for 50 years. He is pretty level headed and an astute observer. With a recommendation like this, I don't think a wanta go with Perry.
His final comment was, "Republicans can do better."

Close encounters of the Asteroid kind

Front page of the Wall St Journal has a big drawing of asteroid 2005 YU55, which crosses earth's orbit and came within 201,000 miles of earth (inside the Moon's orbit) Pretty science fictiony for the staid old Wall St Journal.
This one missed.
Question: what should we do when we detect one that's gonna hit us? The only thing that might do some good, it to nuke it. Good big nuke, close up, might blow it into gravel. Or it might break it up into a dozen pieces. But the pieces keep coming. What causes more damage, one really big hit, or a dozen smaller hits?
Do any of those ICBM's have the oomph to boost a big nuke up that high? These asteroids are small and dark and hard to see, so they will be real close before we spot them. No time to build a special rocket, we would have to use something off the shelf. That's an ICBM that's been standing silo alert for decades. Or possibly a satellite launcher from Space-X.
If we have enough delta-V to do a rendezvous and land on the thing (heh, works in the movies) we could set a big nuke on one side of it it. Set it off, and that rock is gonna move. Trouble is, it may not move all that fast, which means we gotta nuke it when it's far out there, to give it time to move far enough to miss the earth.
Do we have any rockets with that sort of delta-V?

What do you lead with?

Tonight and last night The Newshour led with the Herman Cain sexual harassment story. Where as Fox News, put the story on "page 2", after other lead stories. Looks like the Newshour wants to torpedo Herman more than Fox does.

Internet censorship bill in Congress

US rep Lamar Smith (r -Texas) is supporting a bill to allow the Dept of Justice to shut down any website it wants to. No trial, no nothing, if DOJ wants the site off the internet, bang, it's gone.
This measure is the darling of Hollywood, 'cause they want to use it to "prevent piracy".
Rep Smith has accepted a few hundred thou from the entertainment industry.
What does it cost to buy a US congressman? Not much apparently.

News from the People's Republic of Cambridge

Cambridge public schools will close for a Muslim holiday this year.



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Glad I no longer live in Cambridge.

Strange Obit in The Economist

The Economist wrote an obit for Dennis Ritchie, who died October 12. The obit writer was so ignorant as to fail to mention that Dennis Ritchie is the Ritchie of Kernighan and Ritchie, "The C Programming Language", a slim paperback book owned and revered by every programmer on earth. The book is so basic and so well known that it goes by the name of "K&R" in the programming world.
Then the obit writer makes a few wild claims. "C fundamentally changed the way computer programs were written". Not quite so. That honor belongs to FORTRAN which goes back to the early 1950's. FORTRAN was the first widely accepted higher level language and made portable (will run on more than one brand of computer) programs possible. It was so popular that all competing computer companies were obliged to offer a FORTRAN compiler on their machines.
C came later, 1960's, from Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at Bell Labs. C caught on and became wildly popular because it was a vastly better FORTRAN than FORTRAN was. Not that C could do anything that FORTRAN couldn't do, but programming in C was infinitely easier. C swept away the myriad of pit falls, gotcha's and spaghetti coding practices of FORTRAN. I can still remember the pleasures of doing it in C after years of struggling along in FORTRAN.
C had a lot of great features, foremost among them was manual, K&R. This thin book was clear and lucid and above all short. Everything you need to know is in it, well organized and so well written you could read it for pleasure. Compared to the massive, wordy and opaque manuals that came with other computer languages, The C Programming Language was pure poetry and contributed mightily to the success of C.
Today practically all commercial programming is done in C. So in honoring Dennis Ritchie we are honoring a man who created modern computer programming, not single handedly, but with co workers. Dennis didn't do all the work, but he did do a lot of the work.

Firewall, or is it a ring fence

With Greece sliding down the tubes, and the rest of the EU running around crying out "The sky is falling, the sky is falling", newsies on NPR and at The Economist keep agitating for a "firewall" (American speak) or a "ringfence" (European speak) around Greece to "prevent the contagion from spreading".
I wonder what they are talking about? Do they mean a great big sugardaddy who will step in and guarantee that all lenders to Greece and every other shaky country will get paid off in full and nobody will ever loose any money?
That would be nice, but neither the Americans nor the Chinese have that much money, and even if they did, they are not inclined to spend it on Europe. Nobody else in the world is big enough or well heeled enough to be a creditable sugardaddy.
The fundamental problem with Greece is nobody in their right mind is gonna lend them any more money. They are broke, owe more than they can ever pay, and still want to borrow more to cover their government spending. Their economy, never very good, is not growing, and doesn't throw off enough cash to pay their way. What kind of "firewall" can change that?
Then come the other shaky European countries. They aren't as bad off as Greece, yet, but everyone of sense can see where they are headed. Already they have to pay 5 and 6 percent for money while Germany and America can borrow for under 3%. As confidence wanes, they are going to find it harder and harder to borrow money. Soon it will become impossible.
Again, what sort of "firewall" will convince people to lend to deadbeats?
Or are we just hearing naive newsie's wishing for Santa Claus?

Dances with Dragons George RR Martin

It's the latest and fifth in the Game of Thrones/Fire and Ice saga. It's thick, and takes some time to read. It ends like the first four books of the series, all the good guy protagonists get killed, and the bad guys are still alive and ready for use in the next book. Actually I think one or two of the Starks are still sort of alive at the end, but the rest have bought the farm.
If you have read the previous Fire and Ice books, you will want to read this one, just to learn what happens, but toward the end I found myself just skimming hoping to get to where something happens. I'm afraid Mr. Martin has been reading too many of the Robert Jordan fantasies which just go on and on and nothing ever gets accomplished. Good old Tolkien, who invented the genre, at least made things happen. At the end of the trilogy the ring was thrown in the fire and the dark lord destroyed. Tolkien's modern imitators don't do that sort of thing anymore, the story just rambles on and on and never seems to get anywhere.

Dr. Watson on NPR

NPR ran a piece this morning about Watson, the IBM computer that is now the world's Jeopardy champion, having beaten the top human players on live TV a while ago. Watson has been hired to do legal scutwork, replacing 500 lawyers. (Question: What's 500 lawyers thrown out of work by a computer? Ans: A good start)
The NPR piece ran on speculating that massive unemployment awaits as computers take over from humans in other places.
Funny thing, the piece was all science fiction, things that might happen in the future. They didn't talk about draftsmen, clerk typists and travel agents. All of which have gone away since I started working.
Back when I started in industry, I sketched the needed drawings on squared paper and then went down to drafting. Where a full time draftsman would make beautiful D size drawings in ink on vellum. Or, even more time consuming, "tape out" a printed circuit board, laying each trace out with thin sticky tape. My first real design, a 4 by 8 inch CPU board, took a draftsman four weeks to tape out. Back then companies had more draftsmen than engineers.
Then we engineers got desktop computers with CAD programs. I could produce better drawings, faster, right on my desktop. The last few places I worked, before retiring, had no draftsmen at all. The engineers did all the drawings, using desktop CAD.
Back when I started work, everything written, memo's, proposals, instruction manuals, test procedures, parts lists had to be typed. And companies had clerk typists who took hand written rough copy and typed out fair copy using the legendary IBM Selectric typewriter. Then we got Word for Windows. Pretty soon everyone typed their own stuff on their own desktop computer. Again, the last couple of companies I worked for, didn't even have one clerk typist.
And, back then, to go on a trip, you called the company travel agency and they arranged air tickets, rental cars, and motels. Not any more, everyone makes their own arrangements using Orbitz or Travelocity. The travel agencies are mostly gone by now.
So, fairly humble automation has already replaced a lot of workers. I mean a $600 Windows desktop is peanuts compared to Watson. The cheapy desktops ought to replace a lot of pure paper shuffling jobs. Which isn't all bad, who really wants to shuffle paper for a living?

Grade school math scores improve, reading flat

Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, show a solid 9% rise on the math scores, whereas reading scores are flat. The test results cover the years 1990 to 2010, twenty years in all. Assuming they haven't watered down the test over twenty years, this says that the math teachers are improving their performance and the reading teachers ain't. Wonder why?
Could it be that reading teachers assign nothing but awful books? I made a point of reading all of my son's assigned middle school and high school reading and wow, every one of 'em was awful. Wimpy protagonists who get sand kicked in their faces for 350 pages. Hard core distopias that make 1984 seem like summer camp. Totally boring tales. Age inappropriateness, books that would make sense high school junior year, assigned in 7th grade. Minor works assigned in place of the author's best work. Books of pure political indoctrination thinly disguised as literature.
Could it be a steady diet of awful books turns kids off from reading?

Obama doesn't negotiate, at all

A week ago, Obama announced he was withdrawing ALL American forces from Iraq. Despite objections from the Pentagon and leaving Iraq wide open to invasion or subversion by Iran. At the time Obama claimed this unfortunate result was caused by Iraqi intransigence; the Iraqi's refused to sign a status of forces agreement exempting US troops from Iraqi law.
Say it ain't so. Well, Max Boot, writing on the Journal's op ed page says it ain't so. According to Max, President Bush used to have weekly video conferences with Mr. Malaki. Where as the only time Obama video conferenced was just once, to announce that negotiations had failed. In short, Obama didn't bother to negotiate, he just picked up his marbles and went home.

There is a shortage of truck drivers

Truth. I heard this on NPR this morning. Better than 120,000 long haul truck driving jobs are going begging. NPR even explained that only a high school diploma and a little practical training (like backing up a semi) was needed. There were at a loss to explain the shortage of truckers.
Somehow I think the NPR "reporters" must have been talking to some human resource droids at a trucking company.
I cannot imagine not being able to fill up a class of trainees by advertizing "Good jobs, good wages, no experience necessary."

Why are the years of the 21st century numbered 20?

A long time confusion factor for me. When presented with "umpteenth century" in the text I always had a mental hangup. Why are the years of the umpteenth century always numbered umpteen minus one? E.G. the years of the tenth century are numbered 900 to 999, the years of the twentieth century are numbered 1900 to 1999.
It's because we don't have a zeroth century. The year and century numbering system goes back before the invention of zero, and even today we have trouble with the notion of a zeroth anything.
In the case of century dating, it got started early. It was natural to refer to the years between the birth of Christ and the year 99 AD as the first century. It still does, only computer programmers would dare call it the zeroth century. Once you call years 1 to 99 the first century, then you HAVE to call the years 100 thru 199 the second century. And there we go, and the confusion persists into the twenty-first century (years 2000 thru 2099)

We got 8 inches

Second snow of the season, this one is for real. The over achieving town plow came by at 7 AM, Ken King had my driveway plowed out by 8 AM. Electricity stayed on all night. But the lawn is gonna suffer. We did not have the leaves raked off, and unless we get a big meltout, those leaves will stay there until spring. Cannon now has enough snow to open. Opening for Halloween hasn't happened for 20 years or more. I remember the last time it happened, they opened the top of the mountain, there wasn't enough snow to ski all the way to the bottom. This is better, we have 8 inches at the bottom and more up higher.
Bottom picture is a foot rule stuck in the snow on my porch railing. Top pix is my mailbox, looking cold and lonely. Street has already been plowed.
I wonder how much snow fell on the Occupy Wall St folks. And how many of them have adequate winter clothing.

Batten down the hatches

The radio has been using the S word in the weather forecasts. The sky has clouded over and now is threatening real snow.
So. Get youngest son's "stuff" off the garage floor so I can get the car into the garage and out of the snow. Take down the deck sun unbrella and stow it for the winter. Get the new-to-me Weber grill, and the charcoal, and the lighter/chimney into the garage. Roll up the American flag and take it indoors. Take in the garden hose.
Matter of fact I just saw the first flakes fluttering down.
Now that all is stowed safely for winter, I can light the fire and read the Wall St Journal.

Unwritten Constitution to become written?

New Hampshire has a thing against income tax. It goes back many years. It's so strong that you could call it part of the unwritten NH constitution.
Now the Republicans have proposed a constitutional amendment to outlaw state income taxes in NH. Sort of making the unwritten constitution into a written on. The Democrats are objecting loudly.
These is a real good chance that the Republicans have the votes in both houses to pass it, and that the voters will approve it in November.

Security chief caused Upper Big Branch disaster?

A year ago, the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia suffered a catastrophic explosion that killed 29 miners and wrecked the mine. It was the worst mine accident in decades.
At the time, the miner's union blamed management, and management blamed an act of God. Inspection records revealed a number of safety writeups, but those of us with practical experience know that inspectors always write up something, it's their job. The seriousness of the safety writeups was never discussed in the public press or the internet, at least not at a level that rose above partisan fingerpointing.
After a year of investigation, the government finally prosecuted and obtained a conviction yesterday. Trouble is, Hughie Elbert Stover, the convicted defendant, was the mine security chief. They convicted him on charges of destroying paperwork, and being obstructionist.
The SECURITY CHIEF caused this disaster? Security chiefs supervise the guards on the gate, the night watchmen, and issuance of security badges and parking stickers.
The mine explosion might have been caused by a lack of ventilation, broken gas detectors, inoperative fire extinguishers or failure to wet down coal dust. None of these things is under the control of the security chief.
Sounds like the Feds were unable to find or prove negligence on the part of mine management. But after all the furore, the Feds had to bring home a scalp. Well, they have one. Maybe Mr Stover didn't preserve all the paperwork, or maybe he just called the prosecutor a Yankee carpetbagger, but his job didn't give him the power to cause the disaster.

Even green projects get protesters.

Vermont just finished up a wind farm project. The guv'nor spoke movingly about rolling back global warming, and putting an end to the evils of fossil fuels. Outside the plant gate they were protesting.
God help us if we ever tried to build something useful around here, something that made products and employed people. Like an automobile plant.

First Snow.

It's light, but it's sticking in places. Winter is coming.

Day of Reckoning?

Could the European debt crisis really be the European welfare state running out of other people's money?

Perry's 20 % flat tax.

Ouch. Over all the years I worked and made good money and filed my own income tax, I never paid more than 17% real tax. Real tax is 100 * (what you paid Uncle/what you made). That calculation takes into account all the wonderful deductions that I worked so hard to take advantage of.
Perry offers a 20% sorta flat tax ( he still has various deductions). Tax payers get to chose between current law, and the new 20% tax. That's easy, most of us will take existing law, tiresome as it may be 'cause it's cheaper, like 17% or less. The "rich" (any one paying more than 20% under current law) will take the new Perry tax and save money. This doesn't sound like much of a budget balancer to me.
Was it me, I'd scrap the existing income tax law, all of it. Declare it repealed completely. Then pass a brand new law that has just three tax rates, one for the poor, one for the middle class, and one for the wealthy. No deductions for anything, except charitable donations, in CASH, with receipts. Everyone pays something. No tax credits, no dependents, no mortgage interest, no state&local tax deduction, no married/single/head or household. you make it you pay tax on it.

Optimistic or Pessimistic about America's Future

Title of a longish article in this month's Commentary magazine. The editors collected 41 essays by "leading American writers and thinkers" on the subject. I skipped thru them, only reading essays by people I had heard of before. Max Boot, David Brooks, Hugh Hewitt, William Krystal and some others.
With the exception of David Brooks, they were all optimistic. Brooks writes for the New York Times, and doubles as a talking head going up against Mark Shields on the Newshour. Not a good background. The rest of them think America can pull out of Great Depression 2.0 and go on to enjoy a second American century.
I'm all in favor.

What's up with Iraq withdrawal?

Obama has agreed to withdraw ALL US troops from Iraq, leaving only an Embassy guard. The original plan was to leave a few thousand men to train the Iraqi forces and deter an invasion from Iran. The Iranians know that we would like to stop their nuclear weapons program and do a little catchup for the embassy invasion of 20 years ago. They would think twice, maybe three times before marching into Iraq and getting in a shooting incident with the Americans. 'Cause for all they know the Americans are looking for a good excuse to bomb their nuclear program to bits.
Anyhow, the Iraqi's are on their own now. And they don't have any reliable American troops to take care of any little domestic problems, like Moctadar Al-Sadr, who might need dealing with. And once out, it will take another 9-11 to get the US to send troops back there.
Was it me, I would have bargained a little harder with the Iraqis about an acceptable status of forces agreement. But Obama doesn't listen to anyone, let alone little old me.

So what's an Infrastructure Bank?

The phrase has been floated by democrats recently, with no description of what it is. Presumably an infrastructure bank would loan money to cities and states for infrastructure projects. Roads, high speed rail, bridges, broadband, Big Dig style tunnels, maybe even electric power plants. It would get the money to loan by selling bonds on Wall St. It would be a "government sponsored entity" (GSE) like Fannie and Freddy are. As such, investors would be willing to buy its bonds cheaply because the full faith and credit of the United States stands behind them. That's how Fannie and Freddy worked. Infrastucture Bank could borrow at 3 and a skosh percent, much lower than cities and states can borrow, and loan out at 4 or 5 percent, still better than cities and states can do.
Infrastructure Bank would have a large, well paid, staff with full benefits, and members of Congress get to hand out these plum jobs to friends, relatives, and supporters. Always a good thing for incumbents.
Infrastructure Bank borrowing would not show up in the Federal deficit. It could borrow as much as it liked and not make the official deficit worse. At least not until it went broke like Fannie and Freddy did a couple of years ago. Then all of Infrastructure Bank's debts become US taxpayer debts.
Infrastructure Bank gets to say which (or whose) infrastructure projects get funded. Projects for friends and supporters get loans. Projects in political enemy's districts don't.
All in all, it's a way to run up the public debt, hand out cushy jobs to the well connected, and centralize control of infrastructure spending in Washington.
What's not to like?

UNH does a bear survey

It came in the mail, big 8x11 envelope, full of a survey about wild bears. Questions like do you see bears on your property? (yes) and should fish and game shoot them, or chase them away with noise makers. The survey was aimed at classifying responders as pro-bear, tolerant of bears or anti-bear.
Pro-bear means feeding bears.
Tolerant means bears are OK to have around but don't feed them, don't leave unlocked trashcans or dumpsters for them, and keep your distance.
Anti-bear means seeing a bear is scary and disturbing and bears ought to be relocated or shot.

It is amazing how the bears have come back. We have a lot of 'em now and I see 'em walking on town roads several times a month. Didn't used to be that way. Back in the 50's and 60's bears were extinct in these parts.

So what's up with European Banks?

BNP Paribas, a big France bank, owns 198 billion Euro's worth of Greek bonds. Which will become officially worthless real soon now. The same bank says that it has increased its capital reserves to 57 billion Euros.
So when ever BNP Paribas faces reality, they will find themselves underwater by 141 billion Euro's. Reality being that the 198 billion Euros worth of Greek bonds are really worthless.
They aren't the only European bank stupid enough to buy Greek bonds.

E-books

There is hope for the ink on paper kind. With some assistance from youngest son, I downloaded a .pdf of the latest George R.R. Martin fantasy novel and I'm reading it on my ordinary laptop. The experience isn't as nice as reading a real book, even a mere paperback. Seated in my favorite reclining chair, the laptop is heavy and hot in the lap. Page turning is awkward. And the pages are not numbered, so finding your place is problematical. So far I have avoided shutting the laptop off, for fear of loosing my place.
All in all, I'd druther have a tradition hardback.

Hitler's biggest mistake.

Which was? Hitler made a lot of big mistakes. He attacked the Russians, who were so terrified of Germany that they were never going to cause him any trouble what so ever. He failed to crush Britain. He ordered his revolutionary jet fighters to be converted into bombers. He refused von Paulus permission to withdraw from Stalingrad. He ordered the fateful counterattack at Mortain, and then refused to allow his generals to withdraw German forces from the Falaise pocket. He abandoned Rommel's army to capture in North Africa. He failed to develop nuclear weapons.
With a list like that, what's left to screw up?
His biggest mistake was to declare war on the United States. He didn't have too. He had no formal or informal agreements with Japan. At the time Germany was locked in mortal combat with the Russians and the British, he didn't need to add to his enemies list.
At the time, the week after Pearl Harbor, the infuriated Americans were about to go after Japan with every thing in the shot locker. Although the American high command and the Roosevelt administration knew that Germany was the more dangerous enemy and they wanted to "Do Germany First", public opinion might have forced a "Do Japan Now" strategy on the administration. Hitler's declaration of war solved that problem for Roosevelt.
With Hitler's declaration of war, Roosevelt was free to do what he wanted to do, namely defeat Germany before flattening Japan.

The Ascent of Money

Most irritating TV show. It's on PBS, has a British narrator, and it talks about high finance, stock markets and banks and such. The irritating part is the lack of causes. Every thing in life has cause and effect. This TV show talks only about effects, totally avoids causes.
I caught it where they are talking about an economic Renaissance in Chile after the overthrow of Allende. According to the show, Milton Freidman of the University of Chicago went to Chile after the revolution and talked economics to the new strongman, Pinochet. Freidman sold the Chileans on a new pension scheme, essentially the "individual retirement accounts" they talk about up here, and the economy boomed. Irritating part of program, I don't believe that a new pension scheme alone is enough to turn an economy around. Betcha there was other stuff at work too. And they never showed any numbers about the boom. I wanted a nice line graph showing GNP over ten years, some numbers. All they showed was shots of shiny skyscrapers down town. So how good was this Chilean boom anyhow?
Then we move up to Great Depression 2.0 They do talk about a "disturbance in the American housing market" started the trouble. Well, so what? We all know that. Not a word about Fannie and Freddie's role, not a word about mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps. Not a word about the role of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. No discussion of the secondary mortgage market, when and how it got started, and it's role in promoting "NINJA" mortgages (No Income, No Job, No Assets). They talked a lot about the evils of red lining, racial discrimination in housing but nothing about government pressure to do sub prime mortgages.
Essentially this show takes us to the scene of a disaster, and does a lot of handwringing about how horrible the disaster is, but doesn't tell us what caused it.
Irritating. I finally turned it off and went to bed.

Hand Cannon

From the American Rifleman. Taurus introduces the Model 405, a 2 inch snub nose revolver. The quintessential American hideout gun, Small, dependable, and powerful. Usually chambered for .38 Special.
Only this snubbie is chambered for .40 Smith and Wesson, an automatic pistol cartridge. Revolver cartridges have a rim that seats on the cylinder and holds the cartridge in place against the blow of the hammer, and gives the extractor something to grab onto. Automatic pistol cartridges are rimless, to make them seat nicely in the magazine and feed smoothly. The maker sells the gun with half moon clips, a steel disk with cutouts to grab onto the .40 S&W rounds extractor groove. One half moon clip accepts 5 rounds, ready to drop into the cylinder.
The .40 S&W round is hot, the 405 achieves 900 to 1000 foot per second with a 180 grain slug out of a 2 inch barrel. This compares favorable with the .45 ACP round which does 850 foot per second with a 230 grain slug out of a 4 inch barrel. In short, the tiny Taurus 405 hits nearly as hard as the big Government Model .45 automatic.
Was it me, if I wanted a belly gun that hits harder than .38 Special, I'd look for one in .44 Special, or .44 Magnum, both of which are revolver cartridges with rims, so I don't have to mess around with half moon clips.
The Taurus is a throwback to the old Smith & Wesson .45 cal model of 1917. The Smith was an ordinary service revolver chambered for .45 ACP. The idea was an Army revolver that could fire the standard Army pistol cartridge, .45 ACP. It made partly for Army officers who didn't like the new fangled .45 automatic, and partly 'cause Smith could make revolvers all day when the makers of the .45 automatic were falling behind wartime demand.

Why such concern for teachers

Obama is on tour, promising a bright future of more jobs for teachers. Sounds OK, but why do teachers get all the jobs? What about jobs for factory workers, truck drivers, construction workers, retail salespeople and all the other folk who actually create wealth in this country? Why does Obama care more about teachers? Is it because teachers always vote Democratic?

Martin Luther King memorial

I don't like it. The statue has Dr. King standing there, arms folded across his chest, and a "Shape up or ship out" expression on his face. A hardcore father getting ready to chastise his children.
I don't remember Dr. King that way. I remember a warm smile, a resonant and ringing voice, a warm man who offered sympathy, comfort, support, and leadership. Not a USMC drill instructor getting ready to put the fear of God into a squad of recruits.

The Eagle.

The 2010 movie, I just got it from NetFlix. I read the book ("The Eagle of the 9th" by Rosemary Sutcliff) back in middle school, so naturally I wanted to see the movie version.
If you haven't seen it you haven't missed much. Young Roman legionary officer Marcus Flavius Aquila, serving in Britain, sets out to redeem his family's honor. The 9th Legion under the command of Marcus's father, had set off into the wilds of Scotland some 20 years before and never returned. Marcus sets off north of Hadrian's Wall to recover the Legion's standard, one of the famous golden eagles of Rome. His only companion is Esca, a British slave of Marcus's.
It's a dreadful trip. It rains all the time, their rations run out. On the way up they pick up clues to the location of the lost eagle. The way back is worse, with angry Picts chasing them all the way on foot. The have to eat their game raw lest a fire give them away. Their horses wear out and in the last reel they are on foot, still pursued by war painted Picts. The Picts go in for olive drab warpaint from head to toe, that dehumanizes them completely. Marcus and Esca work out a number of personal differences on the trip. In the end Marcus and Esca return to civilization alive, unwounded, with the Eagle, and good friends.
My objection to the movie is it is a long, uncomfortable, dangerous, rainy trek thru the wilderness. Never a dry campsite, a good meal, it's just endless misery. It's not a trip I care to make, ever. The sets and costumes are good, the score is acceptable, the camera work is up to standard. Acting is OK, characterization is decent considering that the book was a Young Adult book with no girl friends or love interests.

I have a bridge to sell you

Today's Wall St Journal Op-ed page title. "How Billionaires Can Build Bridges to the Middle Class". The author's quote billionaire William Conway of the Carlyle Group lamenting that he just cannot find a good way to put $1 billion of his money to work creating jobs.
So helpfully they suggest that Mr Conway could fund "infrastructure" namely he could use his money to finance building a bridge somewhere. Cool. Let's suppose Mr. Conway takes them up on it.
Next paragraph they suggest all sorts of government regulations that should be created to make sure Mr. Conway does the right thing with his money. A public something-or-other would create a list of eligible projects and Mr. Conway would be allowed to pick one.
Wow! Here we have a public spirited billionaire, who has decided to spend his own money on a public project, and we have the chutzpah to tell this guy what projects he is allowed to finance and which ones he is not allowed? Methinks Mr. Conway would put his checkbook back in his pocket and go away, mad.
Clearly the authors have been smoking controlled substances. And spend too much time in academia.

Occupy Wherever?

What ever they are, they are getting plenty of press. Just finished watching a U tube clip that makes them look like hippies at a "be in". Passing a joint from hand to hand and making very mellow speak.
Lot of MSM and more serious newspeople have mentioned the lack of a "program". As in "what do they want", a set of political or economic demands. Apparently they don't have one. At least not yet.
Not surprising. I expect they are out of work, or still in college, and they don't like the prospect of unemployment or taking a job at the Golden Arches. Understandable. It's also understandable that they really don't know what they want, other than to end Great Depression 2.0, and return to plentiful jobs at good wages. We all want that.
Trouble is, no one really knows how to achieve that desirable end. So it's understandable that the Occupy Wherever folks don't have a clue either.