Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Thursday Potpourri

Item: The Right comes up on the wrong side of this idea, that all OTC (Over The Counter) drugs are a better deal than prescription (R/X) drugs of the identical formulation. Example: Omeprazole, aka, Prilosec. It's been out for decades, and it's been OTC for at least a decade, but the price is still on the order of a dollar per pill, when by now, it ought to be down to a dime or less. There are other examples. What is going to happen with this FDA ruling is that some widely-prescribed drugs that are losing their patents (patents timing out) and would have become very inexpensive for sufferers to use, will now NOT get cheap, and their OTC prices will be maintained at artificially high levels. So, just moving a drug out of the R/X class and into the OTC class is not a guarantee of saving anyone any money, and in fact, some of these patent-expired drugs will show steep price rises when they hit the OTC counters. Mostly, the drug companies benefit from this, not the patients. Oh, and that thing in the article about having to go to see the doc every time a R/X is adjusted? BullTweet! You CALL your doctor's charge nurse, and the nurse handles that. I do that all the time and there is never a bill for it.

Item: The case against Roger Clemens. If you know baseball, and I'm a fan, you know that there was a sea change in top-line pitchers about 10-15 years ago. The very best pitchers, like Clemens, USED to be "location" pitchers. They could consistently put the ball within a couple of inches of where they wanted it, and scouting told them where they wanted it. Now, the best pitchers are "power" pitchers, who have the ability to throw 95 mph fastballs and sliders, at ordinary accuracy, for 6 innings or better. "Location" pitchers are now closers, who only have to throw for two innings at most, never more than 35-40 pitches total. That just the evolution of the game, but Clemens was caught up in it. As the best "location" pitcher on the mound, the game passed him by because he couldn't toss the screamers time after time. He tried to pump himself into better shape via chemicals, so as to prolong his career at the top of the heap. I can't blame him for that, and the idiotic doping trial is just that, idiotic.

Item: Afghanistan. I had occasion, night before last, to listen to a local college Professor expound on the 'Stan. Very knowledgeable guy, Prof. Grant Farr of Portland State University, spent a lot of time over there, including through the Soviet occupation. His take, in a nutshell, is that Obama's Grand Plan won't work. Why it won't work is that Obama doesn't understand the nature of the country. First of all, Afghanistan is NOT a "country" in any real understanding of the term. It's a region of three main tribal groups, each having major problems with the other, and each being unlikely to ever cede ANY authority to the others within it's own tribal influence area. If that wasn't bad enough, our whole "nation building" exercise in the 'Stan is based on building a modern national Army which can hold it's own, and hold the Nation together. The major problem is that there is 70% total illiteracy in the 'Stan, and of the Army recruits, maybe one in ten can read and write, but probably not. You simply can't raise a modern Army from recruits who can't read or write, and expecially from those who not only can't read or write, but don't want to learn to do so, lest they be labeled as blasphemous by their local imams, who DO read and write, and want to hold that over their parishoners' heads. It all adds up to FAIL, just as it added up to FAIL for every major nation which has tried in the past century (we are the third world power in the past 100 years to try to "civilize" the 'Stan).

Item: STFU, Christie. Yep, others look at Tubby and see the same potential horror story I've seen.

Final Item: I realize that Zoos are places where humans may learn about other animal species, but you have to have just a LITTLE smarts before you go. Consider NOT dressing your little tyke to look like a baby zebra (prey animal) and parking him in front of the lion's den...

I might not be an airline pilot, but...

....oh, wait! I WAS a heavy air transport navigator, so I guess I am qualified to suggest that whoever wrote this inane article overlooked the fact that out over the middle of the Atlantic, the USAF transport aircraft would not have had his landing light on at all, unless instructed to do so by Air Traffic Control, but if that was the case, the same controller would have been talking to the Air Canada jet on the same frequency or on Guard, which all planes monitor.

Also, when a pilot has been off the controls (sleeping) for a while, and he comes back on, it is customary for that pilot to request and get a briefing from the other pilot who HAS been flying, and to not touch the controls until that briefing has been given. There is a hand-off routine for change of flight control in the cockpit, with request, followed by agreement, followed by change of controlling pilot, followed by acknowledgement of change of pilot. That system is almost never broken, because breaking it can lead to FUBARS like this one.

What the First Officer did was use full elevator deflection downward, which caused the aircraft to fly a negative-G path, which causes unrestrained passengers and gear to hit the overhead in the cabin, then fall back down (when nearly full deflection upward was applied to reverse the abrupt descent).

There is a CAAS (Collision Avoidance Alerting System), now in it's 3rd generation, IIRC, that would have given the pilot warning that an actual collision was imminent, and probably flown the airplane out of danger. The First Officer did not need to react this way.

That First Officer needs immediate re-training. 

I might not be a power grid engineer...

...but I know a SERIOUS lack of engineering when I see it.

For once, the daily fishwrapper did itself proud, and provided a concise, useful look at the alternative-power mess in Oregon, my Oregon. RTWT, then come back, I'll be waiting.

I might not be a fish biologist, but...

Here's a new meme re-branded meme.

"I might not be..." presents the common-sense approach to issues that have "gone all technical" and now ordinary folks get disparaged and laughed down for trying to expound on them.

Curse those technocrats who claim the entire world of knowledge to themselves, anyway.

So, your Rivrdog blog will spend some time with this meme.

In fact, I already have. My recent post on electric cars was an "I might not be an automotive engineer, but I know what I want and should get in an electric car" post.

The "I might not be..." posts also point out something that this blog has become noted for, and that's holding up our poor educational establishment to the light of history, showing what it could be, has been, but isn't now. I might not be an engineer, but I can read engineering articles and become somewhat informed. I might not be a fish biologist, but I can and DO read up on invasive species, and coupling my interest with that of a conservationist having a 1950s-1960s basic science education (much better than today's), I can see why there is huge danger in crossing ecosystem boundaries with different species. In Oregon, we put our money where our mouths are on this subject, and every boater pays a $5/year fee (including the Holy Paddlers, who howl about having to pay the fee, because paddling is supposed to be freeeeeee) to support research into and control of, invasive species.

So, never be afraid to stand up for your basic education. Just because someone else might have degrees in a narrow field which you lack, and maybe even be or have been employed by the Government to use those degrees for Government Planning Bureaus, or perhaps received grants of money to study those narrow subjects, it does not mean that YOUR common-sense approach to that same subject is somehow insufficient for human understanding.

In fact, these narrow fields of academic and scientific concentaration frequently become "in-bred" with their high priests and acolytes forming what is nothing but a belief system, or religion, around that body of knowledge. When those fields of endeavor and study become inbred like that, no good can ever come of the furtherance of those missions.

If you don't believe me, look at how the Endangered Species Act, a good concept involving the basic precepts of conservation of species, became fouled with political ambition and is now used almost exclusively as a tool for furtherance of Government control and seizure of privately-held resources, as well as re-distribution of wealth from the private/successful sector to the public-assistance (unsuccessful) sector.

I could go on, perhaps even write books, and I will, eventually, but for now, I'm just taking notes, and YOU should take note, too.

YOU might not be a historian, but if you can write down your observations, you fill the role of one in a good and useful manner.

I want an electric car

...but none of the apple i-crapple I see offered today meets my specs.

Here are my specs.

• Range: 40-60 miles on battery, HONEST miles, not test-track miles. Hills and all. Heat or A/C on. Freeway miles at 65 mph.
• Fast recharge: with a 50-amp, 240-volt outlet, capable of 30 minute recharge from emergency low-battery warning to 80% (takes a VERY spendy recharge setup). With less current, longer recharge times, but no worse than 5-hour with 120-volt 30-amp service. Emergency recharge capability at far lesser currents, i.e.: a week of daylight with 300 watts of solar or wind power.
• If not fitted, at least wired for input from a high-efficiency diesel generator set of 12KW, and if fitted, that genset capable of reverse output to power a receptacle (i.e., the whole house). This fitted genset would power the car on the level as long as there was diesel juice to burn, at freeway speed. The genset might even be optional, in a light trailer to be towed.
• Seats 4 in comfort, luggage space for 4 two-suiter bags plus smaller duffel.
• AWD, full time. Traction control, re-gen ABS braking.
• 10KBTU air conditioning. 15KBTU heat plant, which could be diesel-fired (lots of those around in marine service), OR, the heat/AC could be a function of running the genset on low-speed/less cylinders if that was an engine option for it.
• Price comes in at $20-25K without genset, $30-35K with one installed.

What I DON'T need in an electric car.

• I don't need 0-100 times in the funny-car category. 12-second 0-60 time, and 75 mph top speed are fine with me.
• I don't need huge range. This car is not going to have to travel out of the City on it's battery. If I want to take a Road Trip, it will have the generator to do that on, or I won't use the car.
• I don't need high style. The car doesn't have to have the coefficient of drag of a stealth bomber, in fact, if it looked like a Checker Marathon, I would probably jump with joy.

Car people, are you listening? Romney, you have car blood in your veins. If you get to be POTUS, are you going to see to it we get these choices?

H/T to Peace or Freedom, fka 4RWWs. Neither one of us are engineers, Dave, but we both know what we want and what we don't want.

Rivr Logistics Division, standing down

Aye, standing down.

The Coast Fork of the Willamette River, normally a small stream, large creek really, that flows by the Rivrsis' Rivr Cottage in Cottage Grove, OR, has had a hungry eye on her place recently. Seems that the Corpse of Engineers got taken in by some failed weather models, and let the reservoirs upstream of her get too full, so they had to have an emergency max opening of the floodgates at the dam just a couple miles above her.

That raised her River to it's max known flow rate and max gage height.

Then it commenced to pour. We have a Pineapple Express in progress, it's tropical connection going straight to the coast of Vietnam. It's been SERIOUSLY raining. In the inches. The tributary streams, and there are a few above her and below the dam, rose, and contributed their flow to the river.

I didn't like the look of this after she reported the second level of her three-terrace riverside lot going under, so I put the M35A2 at her disposal, and she began to make up a list of stuff which would be dragged out of the cottage and tossed into the truck (which can handle 30 inches of water with no problems.

The Corpse of Engineers lowered the reservoir level enough with the emergency opening, though, so now they've partially shut the floodgate, and the Coast Fork is receding.

The steep climb of the trace on the 28th is when they opened the gate, the steep drop of the trace today (just 1.5 hours ago) is when they closed it....

Standing down now (and saving the 50 or so gallons of diesel it would have taken to make that trip).

 

Calling all legal beagles

I have a question for you:

Can the US Supreme Court ever take up any case "on their own motion"? Some lower courts can and do take up matters, even political matters, on their own motion, and issue rulings as a result of argument that Court hears.

Just wondering, because it seems that a thorough investigation in Keyna turned up not only eyewitnesses who have direct knowledge that Mrs Soetoro had her child Barack in a hospital there, but seem to have turned up a Kenyan birth certificate for him as well. That birth certificate contains the usual footprint on it, and has been certified by a British official as genuine. It seems, according to the eyewitnesses, that Mrs. Soetoro flew to Hawaii three days after giving birth, then registered Barack as having been born in Hawaii.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's recent look at the HA "birth certificate" did not include this information from east Africa.

So, the question devolves to the SCOTUS then, which Court would have to decide the issue anyway, and decide it before the election, hopefully. The only way I see that happening is if the Court took the matter under advisement on it's own motion. From a forensic point of view, if the Court found that the Keynan birth certificate was believeable as a registered document, it could order Barack Obama to provide a copy of his footprint, and that would settle everything. If the footprint on the document matched that on the Keynan birth certificate, then the course is clear, and President Biden takes over immediately (and probably pardons Obama immediately). Of course, the SCOTUS would then have to decide what happens to all the legislation and Executive Orders that bear Obama's signature, and THAT mess could take some time to sort out.

Oh, and if you haven't guessed, no, in fact I DO NOT consider the appellations of "Birther" to be a pejorative as the Left wants you to believe. The cop in me see this as a mater of forensic science and law, nothing more. As a matter of science and law, impartial findings are expected, even if the matter is highly charged, politically.

$5/gallon gas by this summer, eh?

Another Thursday Thud!

The pundits and energy insiders are saying that we'll have $5/gallon gasoline by this summer. Of course, that's an enviro-whacko wet dream, they all think that it will get people out of their cars and onto crime-ridden busses and trains, or onto Holy Bicycles. It won't of course, any more than $5/pack cigarettes caused many smokers to quit.

$5/gallon gas WOULD cost Obama the election, that's a lock. When that price for fuel arrives, just watch how fast he drains the Strategic Petroleum reserve and jawbones the speculators (or has Gauleiter Holder toss them in the clink). Of course, he hasn't touched the SPR for any of the other price rises yet, but you can bet he will when his election's on the line...

And no, it won't drive any peeps into Government Motors showrooms to buy the now-$46,500 Chevy Volt, even though the Gummint just upped the ante on the tax rebate for it $2,500 to $10K. Chevy then raised the price $5,000, to show how much of a Team Player THEY aren't.

The Volt sucks, will barely get you to the grocery store and back on it's battery before it becomes just another under-powered gas-electric hybrid. Don't believe me, check the Internet for the data. Sold as a 40-mile battery-electric, the car, with careful driving, will get 25 miles before the engine has to run the generator to recharge the battery and power the car.

If any other car manufacturer lied about the car's mileage to the tune of 40%, you bet Holder's gestapo would put the boots to their front door and march off with their records, and frog-march an executive to the pokey. Not Gummint Motors though, the fix is in.

I considered buying a Volt once, when it was still in prototype testing, and there was a rumor going around that there would be an option available to power your house with the car in emergencies. If GM had had any smarts, they would have sold that option, and in selling the preppers the car, it would have smoothed over it's idiotic price point AND it's under-performance.

End of the "Greatest Generation"

Much has been written about the end of the "Greatest Generation", that being those born between 1900 and 1925, those who saw, in their lifetimes, the titanic struggles of their neighbors in the Great Depression and World War Two, those who saw, in their lifetimes (if they lived through the War) the development of most of the technology that we follow-on generations take for granted. I can't hold a candle to most of the great writers who have gone before, but I'm taking my shot right here.

Yesterday, I attended the funeral of Jack Hunt. Jack was born in 1920, and died just over a week ago, 92 years young. His life explains why he was a member of the Greatest Generation, and why that generation WAS the Greatest Generation.

I know Jack as he is the step-father of the wife of one of my best friends, and I have spent some time at his house with those close friends. Jack wasn't a wealthy man, but he followed his generational guidelines and saved a healthy proportion of what he earned, and so, lived out his final years comfortably and helped out his family with great compassion.

Jack was born and raised in coastal southern Oregon, and worked for his father early on. His dad owned a chain of small sawmills and operated them well enough to be able to send Jack to college. Jack attended Oregon State University, where he studied subjects related to the family business, and when he took that business over, after a short interruption called World War Two, he instituted enough new technology in both the physical and business ends of sawmill operations to keep Hunt's mills running through thick and thin, and to endow a scholarship foundation at Oregon Sate.

The Hunt family had always been world travelers, in the grand old traditions of packing the entire family's suitcases, and getting on ships and airplanes and traveling to far corners of the globe just to see how different folks did things differently. Jack himself went back to OSU, and took an advanced degree in Geography. Now, as our good friend Phil can tell you, the discipline of Geography (literally, "the study of Earth") is broad, and essential. It touches on all the physical sciences, and touches deep into the Earth sciences, and that was Jack's interest. As the harvest of timber began to fall off, Jack did some original research on timber production vs. climactic conditions vs. soil conditions. This got the attention of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, strangely enough, which was trying to manage timber-dependent tribes' resources for better benefit of the tribes. The Bureau asked Jack to look into the Warm Springs Tribe's timber operations, and Jack did that, directing improvements which made that growing and milling operation the most efficent mid-sized operation in Oregon, and probably the entire Northwest, where timber used to be King.

Jack was a private pilot, and never lost his love of flying, something essential to timber operators and geographers. When I first met him in the 80's, he was already retired, but decided he wanted to build an airplane. He chose an advanced type of ultra-light to build, and built it in his basement (which had only a man-door for entry and exit). The kit was a monocoque frame, dope-and-fabric covered type, with a pusher engine. It was designed with a removeable one-piece wing and designed for a 25-hp Rotax engine. Jack loved the frame and wing design, the most efficient of the type. He didn't like the Rotax engine, thinking it should have been a bigger engine, so he replaced the 25-hp model with one in the upper 30-hp range, strengthening all the support structure for it as he did so. He didn't like the fact that there was no re-start capability for the engine if it stalled while airborne, thereby requiring un-planned, off-field landings. He developed the first system of an extended rope-starter arrangement which could be pulled on from the pilot's seat. Rotax has since made it pretty much a standard option. He installed an actual instrument panel with the four basic instruments: compass, airspeed indicator, turn-and-slip and rate-of-climb. In the grand tradition of Howard Hughes and the "Spruce Goose", he flew this aircraft once. He transported it to an outlying Portland airport, assembled it, and was conducting taxi tests when the aircraft took off, unplanned. He was at the bitter end of the taxi-way, so he gunned the engine and made a couple of trips around the traffic pattern to test controlability. The airplane flew OK, so he lined up to land it and brought it in over the thresh-hold, cut power, and the aircraft immediately lost controlability, and he crashed. He survived with bumps and bruises and one broken arm, but the aircraft didn't. He sold the pieces and turned in his pilot's license for good.

At the Methodist Funeral yesterday, the Pastor noted that Jack was the last WW2 veteran left in the congregation, and now gone, an era had passed for the Sunnyside Methodist Church. When I heard that, I got a terrible chill, as if I just saw my own end, and the end of everything that's right with this Nation. Yes, Jack Hunt WAS a shining example of the industry, courage and perseverance that got this Nation to it's highest point. My generation was unable to take it higher, and now it is in decline.

Yesterday, I attended two funerals, one for Jack Hunt, and one for my Nation. I am still crying for both entities.

Samsung Galaxy S-2 - first impressions

Just finished about 5 hours with the new smartass phone. It has more "do" in it than all the rest of the computers in my house put together.

Where is Google with their computer OS, by the way?

Lot of bloatware on this phone, and you can't dump it, so it reduces the memory by about a gig and a half. No worries, the phone will take up to a 32-gig Micro SD card, and you can move all the real big storage items to the card, and leave the 16-gig of memory to operate as RAM, which it will. Whatever you don't want to leave on the phone, it can access from the Google-Fog (not a "cloud", they still call their servers, servers)

Some things aren't really intuitive, so when I'm loading contacts today, I farged one up, and couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to erase it and start over OR edit it. Turns out you have to go to the "menu" hard Key on the phone and hit that while in the Contact to be Deleted. That makes NO sense, and it wasn't in the "quick start" guide, either.

My bad luck. I go to open my Internet account (I have the account, I just can't access it from the phone or desktop), and the page to register is hosed. Support finally admits that it will be down for DAYS while it is being re-done. That just SUCKS. Of course, you have to go through your "my account" page to access synching...I probably WILL wind up entering all 400 or so of those contacts by hand, unless "Cell-Bright" is working at the phone store and someone is there who knows how to run it. "Cell-Bright" apparently will synch any exportable data from any phone to any phone. Sounds like majik to me. Verizon quit offering that service several years ago.

The other thing I just found out is that the wi-fi radio is a TWO-WAY radio, will broadcast wi-fi as well as receive it. Have to pay a premium on my broadband bill of $15/mo, so I'm wondering how often I'd use that capability.

Fairly steep learning curve with this one, but there's no limit to what it will do, and it's actually FUN surfing with it, as opposed to the giant PITA it was with the LG eNV-3 I just retired.

Whatta toy! Whatta tool! Almost as much fun as a new gun!