Presidents and bikes

 I don't remember any US President on a bike, up until just now.  I can remember back thru Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bush Sr, Bush Jr, Obama, and who else.  I don't remember every seeing photos of them on bikes, or reading about them going biking.  Until we get to Biden who falls off his bike in front of a lot of cameras. 

Run for the Hills.

 Fox News had a guy on Sunday (yesterday).  He claimed the stock market was going to tank, everybody should get out of stocks, keep the money in cash.  I hope he is wrong.  At least after selling all your stocks you could buy US bonds.  They pay 2-3% interest which is far more than banks are paying on deposits. Me, I am staying in the stock market. 

Fate of Taiwan?

We are hearing more tough talk from the Chinese about how Taiwan is (or ought to be) part of China, and how the Chinese might take military action to make it so.  Taiwan is 120 miles off shore and the Strait of Taiwan that separates the island of Taiwan from the Chinese mainland is blue water, deep enough to float aircraft carriers.  The Chinese army is very big, bigger than ours, probably bigger than the Russians.  Should the Chinese get that army ashore on Taiwan (and keep it supplied) it’s all over for Taiwan.  No way can Taiwan produce an army big enough to compete with the Peoples Liberation Army. 

    So the secret of keeping Taiwan independent is keeping the Chinese from crossing the Strait.  This has two angles, navy and air force.  If Taiwan can put up enough aircraft to sink the Chinese ships carrying the Peoples Liberation Army to their shores, they win.  This can be hard to do.  The newest Chinese war planes are nearly as good as ours, or maybe just as good as ours.  The Chinese just have to put up fighters to take out Taiwan’s bombers.  Taiwan has to put up bombers to sink Chinese ships, and fighters to fend off the Chinese fighters.  The bombers might be US made A-10’s; they don’t have to be 8 engine strategic bombers.

   Or the Navy angle.  Best is a bunch of submarines, they can stay submerged and just torpedo any Chinese vessel that needs it.  As long as they stay underwater they are pretty much immune to enemy aircraft. The US Navy and the Chinese Navy have about the same number of ships.  The effectiveness of ships is largely the effectiveness of the ship’s missiles.  When surface ships meet in combat they fire missiles at each other.  The ships with the best missiles win.  Best missiles have best range, best anti jamming features, best and strongest warheads, best guidance systems.  We don’t really know how good Chinese missiles are.  Afghanistan and Ukraine have showed American Stinger anti aircraft missiles to be excellent.  Ukraine has shown the American Javelin antitank missile as highly effective.  We can believe American naval missiles are just as good.    When it comes to aircraft carriers, the combat effectiveness lies with the carrier’s air group.  All the carrier vessel needs to do is launch ‘em and land ‘em.  It’s up to the aircraft to survive enemy fighters and get hits on targets.

   Used to be America gave Taiwan private assurances that the US navy would keep the Chinese from invading them.  Now, with WRBA and Biden, nobody knows what to think.  The Chinese may think we will let them invade Taiwan.  Who knows?

Christmas in July (well June is close to July)

 The UPS truck dropped off a carton for me this afternoon.  It had a nice brand new Dell laptop inside.  No bill, no indication of anyone except Dell, maker of the laptop.  I didn't order another laptop, I bought a new Acer in person from a computer store down around White River, two years ago.  Could it be one of those robocallers who say "some an so is charging something expensive to your Amazon Plus card" ?  I canceled Amazon Plus a year ago.  I'm still getting the calls.

   Could it be Youngest Son and his very nice girlfriend sending me a Birthday or Father's day gift?  There is a tiny icon on the shipping label of a gift box tied with a ribbon.  A name that could be very nice girlfriend's first name, with a last name appears on the shipping label.  I have not learned very nice girlfriends last name so could mean anything.  

   So far, Laptop has powered up, connected to my home network, updated Windows and is currently trying to get me to open  an account with Microsoft.  I have avoided that on my current laptop (Redkey) and my Dell desktop (small box).  Microsoft has tightened things up and it doesn't like my email address.  I will see what comes.  I am expecting Youngest Son and very nice girlfriend up here this evening so we ought to be able to straighten things out. 

The Martian Chronicles versus Fahrenheit 451

The Martian Chronicles is a collection of short stories.  It’s old. Copy write 1950.  Back then little was known of Mars short of what could be seen in a telescope.  The Martian satellites and rovers are half a century in the future.  The short stories are various, some tell of live Martians on Mars, dealing with Terran explorers.  Some tell of Terran explorer's trials and tribulations getting to Mars, settling on Mars, whatever.  I encountered the Martian Chronicles in grade school and I loved it.  I read it repeatedly on my own time.  Still have a paperback.  It broadened my mind a lot. 

  The other book Bradbury is known for, at least in science fiction circles, is Fahrenheit 451.  This is a simple tale of future Nazi like bad guys who burn books they don’t like.  I didn’t read it until much later and it never lived up to the promise of the Martian Chronicles. 

   For some reason school teachers liked Fahrenheit 451 far better than they liked Martian Chronicles.  Probably because the book burning had been going on the Germany less than 20 years before and teachers understood it and detested it.  Martian Chronicles had a lot of stories that required serious thinking to get your head around them.  It’s a pity; I think Martian Chronicles would have developed a love of reading in a lot of children.  Reading Fahrenheit 451 was just work, not much fun.

Robocallers who mumble

The robocallers have sharpened up their game this month.  Used to be, I would pick up the phone, and then wait five seconds.  (one thousand, two thousand ...) If the robocaller failed to answer within 5 seconds (fairly common) I would hang up.  Now, the robocaller picks up the phone after 2 or 3 seconds and starts its spiel.  If the robocaller mumbles, so that I cannot understand what company it is calling from, I hang up.  If the robocallers suggests I press 1 (or any number) I hang up.  

We need a law criminalizing robocallers.

Bye Bye Internet Exploder.

Apparently Microsoft is going to drop Internet Explorer.  The Wall St Journal; ran a long front page article lamenting this, flavored with a lot of IE users tears.  What they did not mention was the history.  Netscape Navigator was the first real web browser and Netscape was selling it for $30, It worked, and lots of people were sending in $30 to Netscape.  Micro$oft woke up to the power of browsers and wrote Internet Explorer to compete with Netscape Navigator.  Only Micro$oft included Internet Explorer as part of Windows, which made it free.  This torpedoed Netscape’s business plan of selling Navigator for $30.  They sued claiming unfair competition.  The Federal Trade Commission dismissed Netscape’s suit. 

   Which was the end of Netscape as a company.  Netscape Navigator was very good, and a bunch of computer savvy hackers maintained Navigator for many years.  Navigator is still out there, it calls itself Firefox now.  I still use it.  According to figures I see on my blog, Firefox is still number three in popularity amount browsers.  Micro$soft and Internal Explorer, and the follow on Edge are so far down they don’t even show.