Friday, February 5, 2016

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

After a whole lot of "winter storm warning" and other theatrics from TV weathermen, we got an inch. It's still cold and the mountain is making snow. 

Our Heroin Problem

By all accounts we have a problem.  Deaths from overdoses are way up.  And so, our gallant legislature passed three bills to address the problem.  One will set up "drug courts", type and jurisdiction un specified.  You would think any real judge sitting in a real court, could recognize druggies and when appropriate, sentence them to rehab.  I don't see why we need to establish a special set of courts to do this. 
   Of course, we don't have much, if any rehab in NH, so the real judges sentence druggies to jail rather than letting them run around loose.  And our gallant legislature doesn't seem to be doing anything about the lack of drug rehab.
   Then they passed some more funding for law enforcement and called it anti drug legislation.   I can't remember what the third one was, but it didn't sound like it would do diddly about hard drugs.
   I believe that with enough of the right sort of drug rehab, we can get a lot of druggies off the stuff.  I'm not a real expert, so I might not have this right, but there ought to be some numbers (number of druggies entered into rehab, number druggies later rearrested for possession). I would expect some treatment programs work better than others.  We should copy the more successful programs.
   We also need to get the word out to our young folk.  We need to make sure they know that heroin and the other hard drugs will ruin their reputations, get them fired from their jobs, get them divorced, get them jailed, and kill them.  Schools, churches, and all social organizations should feel a responsibility for getting the word out.  Things like Facebook should at least prevent the sale of drugs on their sites, and blackball users who advocate drug use. 

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Icebreakers $1 billion each?

Op ed in the WSJ this morning, a couple of retired general officers explaining the need for more US icebreakers.  Makes sense, especially if we are gonna have off shore oil exploration in the Arctic.  If they have an emergency on an Arctic oil platform, icebreakers can get up there for a rescue. 
   The OpEd claims that new icebreakers will cost $1 billion  apiece.  That sounds too high by  a lot.  An icebreaker is just a merchant steamer with a very strong hull, a specially shaped bow, and extra powerful engines.  You'd think you could buy one for 10-20% over the price of a standard merchant steamer.  Unless Pentagon weinies gold plate the specifications.  Which they have a lot of practice doing.  I think you can buy a supertanker for $200 million, you ought to be able to get an icebreaker for about that kind of money.
   Then the Op-ed veers off into the merits of leasing icebreakers instead of buying them out right.  This does not compute.  The only reason for leasing anything is you don't have the up front cash to buy it outright.  Uncle Sam has all the upfront cash in the world, and he can print more if he runs short.  The lessor has to make all his expenses plus some profit, His expenses include interest on the money he has to borrow to buy or build the ship.  A lease deal will cost the taxpayers more than an outright buy.  Especially as icebreakers are very specialized and I don't think there are any for sale, you need an icebreaker, you have to build it special. 

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

The year of A size post cards

We get a blizzard of ads in the mail these days.  New this year is the A sized post card.  Used to be a post card was 3 by 5 and got a cheaper postage than regular letters.  Now they are 8.5 by 11 (full typing paper size) and made of fine heavy paper.  And I get a lot of 'em.  I was able to light the fire on nothing but the A size post cards that came in over the last couple of days. 
   A size?  Engineering or draftsman jargon for a drawing the size of a piece of typing paper.  We had B size, C size, D size and more. 

Shannara: TV Show

So I watched it again last night.  Not bad.  The cast is good looking and can act.  Sets and costumes are right up to snuff.  However, nobody ever called anyone by name in the whole one hour show.  So I still don't know the stage names of any characters.  I suppose I could look them up on IMDB but I'm thinking the script writers could do better.  They have two decent warrior princesses, but I cannot tell them apart.  They both have long dark hair, wear the same dark leather outfits,  carry swords and ride horses.  
   And it is better than Galavant.

Flint's water. How about some scalps?

Every one knows, at least any one who has done plumbing or taken high school chemistry, that acid eats metals,  turning solid metal into invisible ions dissolved in the acid, like salt dissolving into water. All water pipes installed before the 1980's are metal.  The plastic pipe now used didn't come on the market til the late 1970's.   You cannot allow the city water to become acid, 'cause it will eat the pipes all over the city.  Standard procedures for city water  works is to add enough lye (sodium hydroxide) to acid water to neutralize it.  This has been standard practice for a hundred years or more.  This ain't rocket science. 
   According to the newsies, when Flint switched over to using acidic river water which, for some reason, most likely a screwup somewhere, this was not done, and acidic water flowed all thru the city's water pipes, eating out the metal.  All copper plumbing is fastened together with tin-lead solder and older pipes are pure lead.  Our word "plumber" comes from the old Latin word for lead (plumbum). So, the lead content of Flint water soared up and up.
    Anyhow the newsies were on NHPR this morning wailing about the Flint water situation.  What needs to be done is find the persons who failed to add the lye to neutralize the acid, and prosecute them.  We ought to take at least three scalps, one from the Michigan environmental pollution agency, one from the federal environmental pollution agency, an one from the city of Flint water department. 

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Coin Toss? Fair? 64:1 odds of winning 6 out of 6 coin tosses

TV reports that six close Iowa races between Hillary and The Bern were settled by coin tosses.  Hillary won all six.  Is she just lucky or was the fix in?  
Odds of winning one coin toss is 1:2, we all know that.  Odds of winning two out of two coin tosses is 1/2*1/2 or 1/4.  Odds of winning 6 out of 6 coin tosses is 1:2**6 or 1:64.  How lucky do you think Hillary is, really?