Jamcleat

An article in the Economist  caught my eye. The article/commentary concerned the organizing principles of the Occupy Wall Street movement and especially as it relates to the American style of Democracy. Well into the article was this

Moreover, direct deliberative democracy by its very nature puts effective power disproportionately in the hands of extroverted, energetic, and charismatic individuals with a knack for persuasion. The opinions of introverts and those of us who need a good deal of time to mull things over tend not to be fully included into the decision-making process. So these people (most of us, I think) must go along, their views systematically underrepresented until the rule of the pushy yammerers becomes too intolerable and they leave. Exit is more powerful than voice if voice is not your strong suit.

Looking at the first sentence, I would say that it is also true of monarchies, dictatorships, boardrooms, executive suites, unions, Congress, sales and marketing and just about every other human endeavor.

Looking at the last sentence, exit is much easier for the young as the elders have a great deal of inertia/momentum depending on your reference frame.

A usual, the contemplative are stuck in the middle.

The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to treat the ouster of the strongman Manuel Zelaya for violation of the laws of Honduras as a coup.  The courts and congress of Honduras support the ouster.  Hugo Chavez and Hillary Clinton, along with the Obama administration support the ousted strongman.  Of course the Clintons are lawyers and know how to twist the law to suit needs of the moment.  The USA’s meddling in the affairs of other countries has always been annoying to the small countries of the world.  Maybe just this once, we could do the right thing and  let Honduran law rule Honduras.  We could support the President Michelleti until elections are held and his term ends in January of next year.

The Steelworkers have persuaded the government to impose a tariff on tires imported from China.  This seems to have sparked a trade war that will result in reduced Chinese  sales for American companies and higher prices for American consumers.

If the unions wanted to do something useful for their members, they would lobby the government to insure that overseas workers had the right to organize and strike as American workers do.

The unions would then organize and lead the overseas workers to bargain for the pay and benefits that American workers have fought for and won.  But the current crop of union leaders are to busy scamming the American workers and the American public to truly benefit anyone but themselves..

After beating up the auto executives for flying to Washington in their company’s jets, Congress has quietly added a cool $200,000,000 to the appropriations bill to get a 3 luxury jets more than the Air Force had requested. Our Air Force provides the aircraft to fly the President and Congress. We taxpayers of course fund it. At least with the auto execs, the stockholders (owners of the company) are the ones that pay. The jets are used by military and government travelers but apparently the problem is when the holidays come, some members of Congress can not get a seat.

As I was goofing off today on vacation, I twittered that I was going flying on flight simulator. I later got an email that someone was following me. I checked and he was a flight sim enthusiast and he had links to 10 scariest airports. I took some notes and tried the first one on the list. Paro Bhutan runway 33. Here are some thoughts on the numerous attempts (more than a cat has lives).

There must be some way out of here. Said the Joker to the Thief…

The Paro airport in Bhutan is in a bowl in the mountains. The surface is over 7000 feet. How do you fly out of here in a Cessna 172 (or anything else for that matter).

I put the Paro airport in and took the defaults. Runway 33 faces a cliff way too high to get over. Forget treetops, this is solid rock. Let’s get real. You would not be headed in this direction without serious headwind. Adjust weather. Crank in an appropriate headwind. What would make you choose 33 vs 15. Do you need all that fuel? Lighten up. Leave those souvenirs behind and also that passenger. Know the Pilot’s Manual. Best angle of climb is key here. Review the route. The best mountain route is not always shortest.

Hints: The route to the north is a dead end. But you will always feel like you can make it. Wrong!
A well executed tight 180 to the left might work. Give it a try.
This will take you out to the SE which is probably the way you came in.

There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Gotta beware gotta beware…

Credit to Bob Dylan and Jimmy Hendrix for the music playing in my head.

I was alerted by a  Groklaw to an MSNBC article on the Ig Nobel awards. I really appreciate the folks who do these as it really is an award that truely extends the bounds of human knowledge.

The award for Medicine made me think that it would be interesting to do a 4-way double-blind study with a non-generic drug, its generic equivalent, and the non-generic in a different form.  The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effect of marketing and price.  High and low price the real thing and the imitaion.  What if it turns out that price improves the performace of the drug, regardless of composition.  Would this make the ethical drug companies more ethical if they raised prices?

About a year ago, the ice maker in the fridge died. Since my brother and his family were on the way from where-ever to visit and spend the night, ice was vital. I went to the part store and got a new ice maker and put it in.
Recently when the ice maker started making no ice and an annoying clicking noise in midweek, no panic but genuine annoyance. There is good new and bad news. I can look at it on the weekend but the parts store is open week days. I unplugged the plug and my wife put the ice tray in the freezer.
On the weekend, I had time to look. The ice maker has a white cover on the end. It has some catches on the side away from you that you understand once you have it off. Slip a flat-blade screwdriver under middle of the lower edge and work it in a bit until you release the catches. Gently but firmly. The plastic cover comes off and reveals the motor unit. The shaft of the motor (on the side away from you) turns a shaft with a set of paddles on it. There is a metal mold to form the semi-circular-segment prism ice “cubes”. There is also a heating element and a thermal sensor. The underside of the cover has the a sticker with some clues to as to how it works.
The next post will discuss the fix.

A neighbor followed my wife into the neighborhood a few nights ago. Actually he was driving a car following her car as she drove into the neighborhood. He saw that some of her lights were out and should be replaced.

My son pointed out that unless you have someone walk around your car regularly while you signal and tap the brake, you never really know what lights are working.

So Phillip and I did a light check on each of the cars and made a list. I took the list to — and got $28 worth of bulbs. Then I spent the afternoon replacing bulbs.

First the Buick – The Buick has a lighted trim strip in the back. What appeared to be 1 light out on the left was actually 3 – 2 bulbs on the left and one on the right. The bulbs are inside an assembly that is held on with 6 wing nuts. These nuts are a neat design that you can use a socket wrench on with an electric screw driver but you can get them off by hand. This job would have been straight forward except for the broken bulb that crunched when I tried to turn it. Careful work with a soft-jaw plier did the trick. The other bulb was one of two high brake lights. These are easy to reach from inside the trunk.

Then the Cavalier – Two high brake lights out. Again easy to reach. The right turn signal light requires removal of the entire headlight assembly. Remove the bulb holder, change the bulb, and put it all back.

Then my Olds Cutlass Cruiser – The problem here is that the dashboard light was out on the left side. This kept the engine temp gauge in the dark. I am a bit paranoid about the engine temp since a bit of overheat cost be about $1200 a couple of years ago. Getting at the bulbs requires removing all of the dashboard trim (6 screws), the instrument cluster (4 screws) only to find that the bulbs that the store computer called out were just the bulb. For the dashboard, you need a special assembly of the bulb and its mounting plate. I re-arranged the bulbs so now the dark part of the dashboard is from 60-120 MPH. Not a part of the speedometer that I use a lot.

I apologize to anyone who got a virus from this site. I normally never use Windows at home as it is unsafe to use except in a corporate environment where you have experts and firewalls and such. Never buy a computer for your home that includes Windows. As such I got the virus from my own web site, this one. The problem has been corrected. My webmaster son noted that there was a vulnerability on Feb 3 and had it on his list of things to upgrade. Too late. Again I apologize.

I’ve imported all your old pages and re-formatted them a little bit to work with this thinner layout.

I hope you like it!