Galactica Plot Twist Revealed

Gasp! I should have known.

And in other comics, today's Dilbert is hilarious.

Some Titles Suck

Take this headline from Yahoo! News: U.S., Iraqi troops clash in Baghdad

Makes it sound like American and Iraqi troops are fighting each other, doesn't it? Nope. As usual US and Iraqi forces are fighting against insurgents side by side. The story was written by Kim Gamel of the Associated Press, but the funny thing is that she probably didn't write the title. That work is usually farmed out to others (like Dawn Eden) who are trying to make the piece catchy in five words or less. This time perhaps six words was too few because they left out an important object to "clash."

Republican Presidential Hopefuls

A lot of people are starting to opine about the upcoming presidential race: Tamara, Kim, Steve.

I'm uncomfortable with my prospective choices. Why? Take the gun rights stances of the various candidates (which Kim reposted from Dave Kopel). They're varied. Generally the Democrats are bad and the Republicans are good. Unfortunately most of the big name Republicans like McCain, Romney, and Giuliani are at the bottom of the list with the Democrats. Me no likey.

It is possible that if the Dems nominate someone particularly odious and the Republicans do likewise, I may vote third party for the first time in my life. And if I vote third party it will be as close to straight ticket as I can manage. But the thought of actually voting for some Libertarian nutjob (or Mike Protack) fills me with dread.

Gruesome and Truesome

Kim du Toit led me to this post with graphic pictures (and I'm not kidding) of what happened to a cop after he tried to "disarm" an assailant carrying a knife. The cop lived, but suffice it to say that disarming his foe didn't go so well for him.

Knives (especially large fixed-bladed knives) are classified as deadly weapons for a reason folks. If someone is threatening you with a knife and is within 7 yards of you, just shoot them. Make them pay the price from bringing a knife to a gunfight. If they break into a run, they can close the distance and stab you with it in about a second. Maybe two if they're really slow. For God's sake at least draw your gun on them. Once they're running then drawing, firing, and stopping them before they get to you with that knife is damn near impossible. If you have the gun out already, then you might be able to do it.

Oh and also keep in mind that most modern body armor protects against bullets (wholesale amounts of blunt trauma) not blades like knives. Blades slice through the kevlar fibers, bullets stretch them. It is a completely different damage mechanism. That cop probably was wearing a vest and look how much it didn't help him. Or not if you're planning on eating soon.

Japanese School Stories

Azrael has been posting new stories from his career as an English teacher in Japan over at Gaijin Smash. Previously he had just been reposting stuff from his previous site. Definitely worth a read.

Kitty Zeppelin

Darn viking cats and their loud rock music.

So That's Who Painted That...

My parents may still have Head of Christ hanging over the mantle on our non-functioning family room fireplace.

Rapid Prototyping on the Desktop

What with me being a really big nerd and all, you would think that I'd consider a project like Fab@home to be really cool. A 3D printer you can make at home with readily available parts on open source software! Faboo!

It just doesn't do anything for me. I can't help but think that the desktop CNC mills that I mentioned earlier are a better way to go right now. They are also driven with OS software and the hardware costs are similar, but you can make finished quality metal or plastic parts instead of slopping looking stuff made from hot glue.

Part of me wonders if Fab@home wouldn't work much better if they had based the unit around a desktop CNC design like Sherline produces. They could have replaced the cutting head and motor with an injector unit. Unfortunately I think their simple syringe injector design itself may be why the final part quality isn't impressing me much.

UPDATE: The RepRap project seems to have the right idea. Mostly. It's aiming for a final cost of about $400 and you can build things out of actual plastic. But I really would rather not have to make my own circuit boards. The Tommelise project is trying to emulate RepRap but it's even cheaper because he's using wood instead of metal. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I think I'd really prefer to have a metal frame and the RepRap metal frame design isn't difficult to produce.

UPDATE2: Sears sells (or perhaps sold since it isn't on their website anymore) a CNC woodworking mill for ~$1800. Interesting, but still not what I'm looking for. I'm rarely going to want to work large metal parts. I'm not trying to build a car here. On the other hand I live in a house (or will when I have something like this), so working large wooden parts is great. I suppose I could turn out some pistol grips with this, but...

Comparing Rights

Geek with a .45 compares the redtape surrounding two civil rights: keeping and bearing arms and voting.

Cat Pics

While this site doesn't have enough Orange Tabby pics, a lot of them a hilarous nonetheless. Via Tamara.

The Dresden Files

So far I've read the first four novels in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. They're good genre benders that are a blend of detective novel and modern-day fantasy. So when Sci-fi aired the first episode of TV show based on it, I was ready and waiting.

And now I'm officially disappointed. If they had made Dresden Files a magical take on a TV genre (like CSI with magic), it wouldn't have been the books, but it still could have been good. This episode was very monster of the week and I was waiting for Buffy to show up. And I like Buffy, but Harry isn't Angel. Characters like Bob the Skull and Murphy were different than the novels. Even Harry was different really. Harry isn't much of womanizer, yet you see him waking up with the blond in the first scene of the show. Harry isn't a finesse wizard, he's a brute powerhouse. Heck, he's not a finesse guy, he's a bull in a china shop. You don't see either of those things. And instead of just taking the skinwalker down with his blasting rod, he uses a typical Buffy-style magical trinket. And they got basic magical concepts wrong as well (like the magical threshold on a dwelling).

But I don't dislike all the changes. Bob is a ghost now. Oh well. Justin, Harry's evil mentor, is also his uncle. Interesting. And they have to fill up a lot of TV time, so this could make for a solid arc. Jeep instead of VW Bug, fine. Dropping out the pentacle in some scenes, sure as a symbol that is probably grief they don't need.

So I'm withholding judgement, but I'm getting pessimistic. The second episode doesn't look any better. Maybe it's because they're airing the show out of order. The serialization of the first Dresden novel, Storm Front, doesn't air until episode 5ish. It was shot as the initial two hour movie. Maybe they're trying to give people what they know (Buffy) to get them interested before they give them something they don't recognize. I don't know, but I'll continue to give it the benefit of the doubt for a bit.

Amy kind of liked it and is going to read some of the books now, so hey it couldn't be all bad right?

The 2nd Amendment

Ryan at Jokers to the Right has a brief discussion about why the Second Amendment exits:

The twin purposes of self and community defense may very well lie behind the Second Amendment’s language encompassing both the importance of a well-regulated militia and the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. As the constitutional and criminal law scholar Don Kates has noted in the journal Constitutional Commentary, thinkers at the time when the Constitution was written drew no real distinction between resisting burglars, foreign invaders or domestic tyrants: All were wrongdoers that good citizens had the right, and the duty, to oppose with force.

I'm more amazed that Delaware manages to have such a restrictive Gun Rights climate when our state version of the Second Amendment reads as follows:

A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and State, and for hunting and recreational use.

Delaware has both complete prohibitions on some types of arms (most Federal Class III weapons) and a number of prohibitions on possession and open carry of arms. I wonder if any of these have been tested in court?

Dead Men Speak

Several conservative blogs, Michelle Malkin's among them, are reprinting 2nd Lt. Mark J. Daily's myspace post "Why I Joined". Daily and three of his soldiers were killed in action this week at the age of 23.

Thomas Jefferson said that ""The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The biggest problem of this war is that we seem to be losing so many of the former and so few of the latter.

The Parts Box

Sometimes this sounds familiar:

If I dropped a barrel, an upper receiver, and a lower in there and shook the box real hard, another carbine would fall out.

I currently have a bunch of gun parts sitting around at home in a box. Mostly it's just grips, stocks, sights, or scopes. I can't assemble an extra gun with this stuff though.

But the AR is an easy gun to have this "problem" with. One of the reasons I built mine to spec was that I didn't want to have a lot of extra trigger and upper parts just lying around.

Bible Quiz Time

De at the Thinklings is right, the advanced Red Letter Quiz is tough. I pulled 10 out of 10 on beginner, 8 out of 10 on Intermediate, and about 5 of 10 on Advanced.

The New Baptist Covenant

Paul, being Catholic, asked what this whole thing is about. The answer is politics of course, both national and denominational.

Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have proposed the establishment of a broadly inclusive alternative Baptist movement to counter what they called a negative image of Baptists and to address poverty, the environment and global conflicts.

How broadly inclusive is it?

About 80 leaders of 40 moderate Baptist organizations claiming to represent 20 million Baptists in the United States, Canada and Mexico met at the Carter Center for the announcement. Leaders from the Southern Baptist Convention were not invited to attend.

Conservatives have a pretty strong hold on the Southern Baptist Convention right now. That would have me dancing with glee if it weren't for the fact that these folks are probably way to the right of me. The kind of folks LawDog might call "Shia Baptists". They are not the sort of people who react well to people dancing with joy at the suffering of others, but mostly because it involves dancing. In comparison, my Baptist church actually holds an annual dinner and dance for us young folks. (Coming up on February 3rd!) I suppose it's a good thing my church belongs to the Baptist General Conference.

So I'll admit that the conservatives aren't necessarily doing good things with the convention. There have been concerns with new restrictive rules governing SBC supported missionaries for instance. There was talk of pushing some type of formal creed onto some other SBC supported groups. And of course they're treating the Calvinists well. That last one was sarcastic by the way.

Of course this new organization isn't actually about those problems. It's about spreading peace, love, and understanding. But not the Peace of Christ, Love of God, or Understanding of Eternal Salvation. No, then we wouldn't be respecting people's beliefs. No this would mostly be through handout programs which will barely allude to the person of Christ, even by name. Oh and loud political statements which probably don't respect Romans 13 very much.

Now don't get me wrong, stewardship of the environment and feeding the hungry are important things. But they should not exist in a vacuum. Christ didn't just feed the hungry, he did it to show who his Father was. It was a means of leading people to him and therefore to God. Christians need to follow that example. I have a great fear that this group, like most liberal religious groups, will have aims that are deeply political and shallowly spiritual.

"24" is to Benefit Bush Administration

Or so says Keith Olbermann. If the Bush Administration wishes to respond, might I suggest: "Countdown with Keith Olbermann is to benefit the Democratic Party."

Lets face it, 24 is a dramatic program about fighting terrorists. Incidentally, it is largely made by Democrats. Countdown is a news show. It is also largely made by Democrats, some of them strongly partisan like Olbermann. Which one bothers you more fiction or "non-fiction" made by political partisans?

The political overtones of "24" are also decidedly mixed as far as I can tell (since I don't watch the show). Yes the terrorists are all Islamic, but all the "good" politicians seem to be Democrats. David Palmer, Wayne Palmer, and even Jim Prescott seem to be portrayed as principled men. Sure they can be manipulated into making bad decisions, but they are properly guilt ridden afterwards. The Republicans, John Keeler and especially Charles Logan, don't have such good luck. Keeler seems to be a dirty dealer in his election campaign in Season 4 and Logan is revealed as both a weak president and a primary conspirator to a number of terrorist plots in Season 5.

Via Felix.

Helms Deep in Candy

This nerd diarama would bother me if they made it out of candies I actually eat. Had it been chocolate, my wife and I would have probably snuck into their home and eaten their holiday's work.

Foul Weather

Heh. When I was in Grad School I once went to the lab in a hurricane. I had a meeting scheduled with someone. People thought I was crazy until I told them our adviser actually walked through the lab.

Hurrying Home

I got a call from an aggravated Amybear at work. It seems she couldn't get The Club we now use religiously off of her steering wheel. The lock wouldn't turn. And she had to drive to work. She's not happy.

I finish what I'm doing at work and hurry home. Yup the locks locked up tight alright. I spray a couple of short spurts of CLP into the keyhole on the lock and now it opens like a charm. Once more I have proven my manly worth to my wife. And finagled the afternoon off from work for a "family emergency." Any of my coworkers reading this are not to tell my boss that I'm already done fixing her car.

Now lets see if CLP can work its magic on the rough lock on our front door.

UPDATE: Amy is now requesting her own bottle of CLP. Steamboat Willy is wrong about CLP being good for everything. I think Ballistol holds the title for that. It cleans and protects smokeless, black powder, conditions leather, and does a host of other things. I heard some people even put it on crackers, but they might be joking about that. Might.

Russian Engineering

I believe this may be the first time Estonians have celebrated on seeing a Russian tank. A local historical society unearthed (literally!) a Russian T34 after 60 years and took pictures of the event. How did they know it was there?

...a local boy walking by the lake Kurtna Matasjarv noticed tank tracks leading into the lake, but not coming out anywhere. For two months he saw air bubbles emerging from the lake. This gave him reason to believe that there must be an armoured vehicle at the lake's bottom. A few years ago, he told the story to the leader of the local war history club "Otsing". Together with other club members, Mr Igor Shedunov initiated diving expeditions to the bottom of the lake about a year ago. At the depth of 7 metres they discovered the tank resting under a 3-metre layer of peat.

They pulled it out with a large bull dozer. The result?

After the tank surfaced, it turned out to be a 'trophy' tank, that had been captured by the German army in the course of the battle at Sinimaed (Blue Hills) about six weeks before it was sunk in the lake. Altogether, 116 shells were found on board. Remarkably, the tank was in good condition, with no rust, and all systems (except the engine) in working condition.

116 shells aren't as fun as you might think. The Army Ordnance Museum here at APG has a bunch of tanks parked on concrete pads in a field. By "parked" I mean slowly rusting away because of exposure to the elements. A storage compartment on one rusted out once a while back and several live rounds tumbled out of the tank. I think the curators had to call the base bomb squad.

Tower Defense

A coworker has been min/maxing his way through this game. It really is quite addictive and fun.

He's Baaaack...

I remember first seeing Troy Hurtubise on a TLC special (or Discover Channel or whatever, who can tell the difference?) about the Ursus armors he developed. It involved him getting hit by a truck while wearing one. He even asked a biker gang to try to beat him up.

Anyway, Hurtubise is back with a proposed military version of the aforementioned bear armor. Looks interesting at least...

Alaska Statehood

Ah that explains it. I had thought we were going to use it as a source of polar bears or something, but all that time we were just flanking Canada.

Everybody's Heard about the Surge

QandO currently has the best overall coverage on my normal reading list. They have a bullet point breakdown of the speech and general reaction piece. McQ also has general thoughts and analysis of the troop surge.

Hopping Mad

The price of hops is up 25% from this time last year. Thankfully, I'm a scotch drinker. Because its economical. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Nutjobs on the Right

From Tamara:

I have no real love for the peccadilloes and strange beliefs of the Right. From politicians with a tenuous grasp of the Constitution to preachers sticking their noses where they don't belong, I get a twinge of annoyance at least once a day. It remains largely an annoyance, however, as so much of what they hold dear has very little impact on me in my daily life

She continues a little later with:

The Left has had less influence at the national level for the last decade than an outboard motor would have on the course of a supertanker, but with the convulsion of November '06, that has all changed, and suddenly they're out to really get me good and surly, because they're not after my Good Times, they're after my money.

The sophisticated Blue State city-dwelling agnostic may mock the tent-revival evangelical's belief that "With God, everything is possible", yet he somehow leaves unexamined the fact that he believes the same thing, except that "God" is replaced by "legislative fiat".

Yeah. At least some people on the right, including Christian Nutjobs like me, are for smaller government. Which means I have no desire to spend your money to support my nutjob programs. I'm pretty confident we can fund our nutjob programs ourselves if the government would just get off of our back. At least we can if they're worth doing. And since we want them off our back, we're probably going to try to get them off yours as well just to be fair.

While that belief unfortunately isn't universal even among the Rightwing Christian Nutjobs, it is still fairly widespread. Even more unfortunately the nutjobs on the left have no such sense of propriety. They all want the government to do everything and therefore they want you to support and defend their nutjobbery by proxy.

As Hube has noticed, there are those who disagree with my assessment. But frankly I don't think those heralds of future Christian Fascism really get right-wing Christian Nutjobs like me. They fail to realize that we only have consensus across a some broad moral principles like abortion, homosexuality, and sex before marriage. You know, things most of the country had consensus on before the 1960s and 1970s stirred everything up. But on any kind of religious specifics, we'd rip each others throats out long before we could impose some sort of rules on the rest of the country. I don't mind praying with Catholics and Pentecostals, but I definitely don't want to give them the ability to legislate how I pray. I don't want to have to learn Latin for the Catholics or, uhh, pig latin (Esperanto? Hebrew?) for the Pentecostals.

Look, Wikipedia has a list of over 60 Baptist groups in the US. That means there are over 60 groups of Baptists that can't reach consensus on their church government. And thats just one denomination. If the Baptists are incapable of getting our differences worked out among ourselves, how the heck are we going to impose them on other people?

Hube once told me that he isn't a fan of organized religion. I told him I wasn't either, that's why I'm a Baptist.

A Sad Day for Amy

The creator of Scooby Doo died today of heart failure at the age of 81. Man, those Japanese guys are dropping like flies.

Sports

From Paul:

The Eagles won!

The Giants lost!

The Cowboys lost!

The only thing that could make it better would be for the Yankees to somehow lose!

Amen to that brother.

Smalltime Survivalism

A recent thread at Kim du Toit's place on disaster preparedness has me looking forward to when Amy and I have a house. Kim and his wife have a good series of posts on this subject including:

• A list of their emergency firearms
• A list of general emergency supplies in case they have to leave home in a hurry.
• Household preparations to maintain emergency supplies of food and water.

Why am waiting until we have a house? In a word, space. Right now, Amy and I have a healthy amount of emergency supplies around the apartment. I have my guns (but oddly enough I may not have enough holsters). I buy ammo in bulk to save money so I generally have plenty of it. We have portable radios (AM/FM and shortwave), a compass, flashlights, maps, tools, duct-tape, toilet paper, etc. We even have a decent stock of first aid supplies. Both Amy and I have basic first aid training.

But while we live close to enough running water to keep us happy, we don't have any way to make it potable should the faucets stop working. We don't have room to store more than a few days of food. Other than our fireplace, we don't have a place to cook food in the case of a power outage. And there aren't good solutions to the last two problems given the size of our apartment and the restrictions our complex's fire code puts on us.

But a house should give us the needed space to fix these problems pretty easily. A pantry full of canned goods will give you enough food for a while. A gas or charcoal grill will let you cook it. I might even look into a generator that could keep the fridge/freezer running for a few days if we didn't have power.

But then again we do live in Delaware. We don't have major natural disasters like hurricaines or earthquakes and even tornadoes are rare. A heavy snow or ice storm will only shut down the state for a few days at best. Even then we live within easy walking distance of our local grocery store. We live high enough above our nearby creek that I doubt we'll get flooded. Which basically leaves a riot or other breakdown in polite social order and I don't see that happening in Newark. So I'm not too worried.

UPDATE: Kim has a good list of solid survival supplies.

Pot Bellied Kitties

Get Fuzzy is right, "scruffy, averaged-sized, with a little pot belly" does describe every cat I've ever met. Except Milo, his special diet has given him quite a large pot belly now.

Other People Shooting

Dale Franks is a new NRA member and discusses his recent trip to the range over at QandO. His lovely wife (I assume) takes some pretty good pictures of the back of his head.

Rest in Peace Momofuku Ando

It seems the inventor of instant ramen noodles died yesterday at the age of 96. Phd has a tribute comic. Thanks for getting me through grad school Ando.

The Fruits of Meta-blogging

Have you ever realized that you don't have to read a blog because everything worth reading is meta-blogged by others you read more regularly? That was my experience with the Boars Head Tavern. The signal to noise ratio was pretty bad (largely because they don't thread) and whenever someone said something good (or perhaps something unusually foolish) it showed up on several of the other blogs I also read. So since I like to keep my blogroll lean, they disappeared.

There's a good example of this over at the Thinklings. Michael Spencer of the BHT and Internet Monk takes issue with Jay Bakker's theology. Bakker's church is pro-homosexual largely because he empathizes with them as a persecuted group and he feels (feel being the accurate word) that God does likewise. Now I agree that God feels for the persecuted, but I don't think he does it to the exclusion of things like morality or speaking the truth. Righteousness and love are not telling people that they aren't sinning. Righteousness and love are showing people how not to sin by introducing them to someone who never has.

The rest of the Thinklings post is equally good. Jared largely skirts over the Constructive Curmudgeon's 15 Refusals where he lists what are essentially anti-resolutions. I don't like these sorts of lists very much. Both the list and the list writer seem rigid and judgmental. Where is the love?

Jared unintentionally gives a very good counterpoint to the refusals a bit later:

1. Loving our neighbors.
2. Blessing our enemies.
3. Reading our Bibles more frequently and deliberately.
4. Worshiping with other believers weekly.
5. Praying more fervently.

Yup, that's a pretty comprehensive to do list.

Samurai Cat

So this is what Miaowara Tomokato's armor would look like.

I don't think I could shoehorn Milo into that getup though. Most of the suits don't let the cat use his main weapon: his mouth. They also keep them from using their ears properly. On the other hand, given how much Milo loves wearing clothes, not being able to use his mouth isn't much of a disadvantage.

The samurai armor isn't the only one on that site. If you want to create some warped feudal version of Tom & Jerry, there are mouse armors as well.

Via MAKEblog.

Shot to the Head

Now this is an interesting story that has been sitting in my draft bin for a week or two:

In the middle of Joshua Bush's forehead, two inches above his eyes, lies the evidence that prosecutors say could send the teenager to prison for attempted murder: a 9 mm bullet, lodged just under the skin.

Bush is fighting a legal battle against having the bullet removed. Removal won't injure him, but considering the effort he is making, it probably will send him to jail.

For those not in the wound ballistics "know" head shots are tricky things. Not only is the head a smaller are more erratically moving target than the torso, but the skull is also round and fairly hard. It is covered in highly elastic skin and tissue that is easy to penetrate into, but hard to penetrate out of. When you combine these things together you can have bullets do wacky things, like penetrate the skin, skip off the hard bone of the skull, but not exit the head because of the elasticity of the skin. It is possible, but certainly not probable, for a bullet to do a complete 360 of someones head.

That probably isn't what happened to young Joshua though. He probably caught a ricochet in the forehead despite his prospective victim's statement that "I just can't believe I missed him at that distance." The assailant was standing in a darkened alley at the time.

Tammie Bush, the teen's mother, disputed allegations her son is a gang member.

"We know he's not a criminal," she said. "He's a good kid."

Keep in mind Bush admitted to being a part of the robbery, just not a part of the related robbery shooting. So he's already admitted to being a criminal at this point. Ah mothers...

Federal Crime Commission

Several police chiefs are reacting to increasing crime statistics by proposing a federal crime commission to look into what is going on, what works, and what doesn't. Here's Diamond Joe:

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., instrumental in passing the Clinton administration program to hire 100,000 additional police officers, says more money for additional officers and resources — not a commission — is needed to drive down rising crime.

"We don't need a commission to tell us what works," says Biden.

Actually getting people together to figure out what works and then disseminate that information is extraordinarily useful. Commissions, either on crime or education, are programs I can really support. Instead of the Federal government passing a law that will almost certainly require them to meddle in local affairs, they produce a set of recommendations for what has worked in different areas. Local jurisdictions can adopt them or not (as they feel is appropriate). And the return on investment to the taxpayer is quite good.

Want an example? A recent statistical analysis of the Brady Campaign's state-by-state gun control ratings show that they are completely detached from actual violent crime statistics. Or, in other words, gun control doesn't work. Wouldn't that have been nice to know earlier?

Biden is right though, general recommendations from any commission are likely to be along the lines of lots of cops, lots of convictions, and lots of years in prison. Those things will certainly work, but isn't it also possible to have too many cops or the wrong kinds of cops? For instance, SWAT teams have been used to break into the homes of little old ladies or raid neighborhood card games in the last few years. Why? Largely to justify their existence to the tax payer. You have to wonder if there is a point of diminishing returns with some of these policies.

I have to wonder if we couldn't do better with a return to a more distributed approach to crime prevention. That is to say, instead of asking the federal or even local governments to get involved in the gritty details of our day to day lives, ask the citizens to get to know their neighbors and watch out for each other. Then empower them to defend themselves and each other with good laws that favor the innocent instead of the criminals. You just can't spend enough government money to protect everyone, but if you create a climate of individual empowerment where many people will spend their own money to protect themselves.

Medical Correlations

In another story from Instapundit, education is a leading determiner of longevity. It swamps health insurance and a many other factors. For Insty:

I'm not sure that the causal relationship is there. It may just be that idiots are more likely to drop out of school, and also to die young as a consequence of idiotic behavior. As John Wayne said, life is tough, and it's tougher when you're stupid.

Education correlates well, not because it increases life span but more likely because people with the determination and foresight to favor education also have the determination and foresight to eat right, exercise, etc.

There is a similar old saw in the self defense world: you are your best defense. This isn't because with training you can equal a commando or assassin or what-have-you. It is because ultimately hired security or whatever aren't going to be around every moment of the day. They aren't for the Queen of England, so they sure won't be for you. You and what you have on hand are the only defenses which will be present every second of every day. Wherever you go, there you are.

The Anti-Qaeda

Instapundit lead me to this TCS article on combating non-state terrorist groups using a similar distributed organization that holds itself above the law. It really worries me.

We've had such organizations before although never on an international scale. In the US such groups generally referred to themselves as Committees of Vigilance. A good Committee forms to deal with a specific threat, defeats it, and by doing so re-establishes legal order. Then they disband. A bad committee quickly degenerates into just another competing pack of thieves and killers. Vigilance Committees are never good things. But, I would argue, they have sometimes been necessary in the history of the Republic and, as such, have been necessary evils. The creation of a group like an Anti-Qaeda seems like making a similar monster.

That said, I have to wonder if the real lesson of this story and the war in general isn't a little different. To win an insurgent war, a nation must to either be willing to crush them and any related populations or be on the insurgents side. North Vietnam formed the Viet Cong to destabilize the South. Iran is backing Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army. Why don't we start training pro-democratic insurgents in Iran and/or Syria? I'm not seeing a huge downside to it.

UPDATE: From Instapundit on January 4th:

It's been obvious that Iran is behind much of the internecine slaughter in Iraq. I don't understand why we haven't been returning the favor by fomenting insurrection in Iran -- or what made the mullahs so confident that we wouldn't. I continue to wonder if they've managed to deter us from significant action, somehow.

Exactly.

Foxtrot Ends Dailies

Bill Amend is taking the strip Sundays only for the foreseeable future. He wants to take some time off after doing the strip every day for almost twenty years. I've been a big fan of the strip (like Paul) for quite a while. My coworkers and I especially enjoyed the Halloween coloring strip that involved factoring large numbers to color in the proper numbered blocks. I guess that makes us techno-masochists or something.

UPDATE: It could be worse though, he could be pulling a prank like this.

Scott Adams Does It Again

I wasn't too happy to see this in print:

My long term goal is to develop such a reputation for household incompetence that I am never again asked to do anything around the house. So far my plan is right on track.

You're not supposed to say that out loud, our wives will catch on. Eventually they start to think about how we can't take crockery out of the dishwasher without supervision, but somehow we are trusted to push a machine with sharp spinning blades around the yard. They'll either figure out we're faking or they won't let us do anything. The former would suck and I'm betting the latter would be far less enjoyable than it sounds.

He did hit the ball out of the park with this one though:

I always check a movie’s critical reviews before committing two-plus hours of my life to it. This method of movie filtering does not work because movie reviewers are sick bastards who enjoy misery as long as it is well crafted.

Exactly. Art in the modern age is supposed to be painful for some reason. That's why you never see comedies on the list for Best Picture and why modern art gives you a headache if you stare at it for too long.

I'm a Man Baby!

Or so says the BBC. I might have been more of a man if I took my time doing the tests. Or maybe not.

Goin' Shootin'

Tomorrow should mark my first trip to the range since before Thanksgiving. All my free time has been taken up shopping or doing other holiday related work. Over a month is too long for shooting trips, especially for a handgunner like me. I'm expecting to suck tomorrow when I finally get there.

Hopefully I'll be able to pack in a few more trips to the range before winter really sets in, temperatures drop, and the range starts to ice up.

If any DCBA members out there have tomorrow off because of the holiday and want to tag along, let me know and we'll work something out.

Man of the Year?

I second Hugh Hewitt, this guy should get it.

I remember back in 2001, right after September 11th, the feds started actually doing things. People gave them tips about people acting weird or threatening and instead of dismissing them and sitting on their asses all day, or whatever they did before, they actually followed up on them. Two guys with sport jackets, credentials, and maybe even guns actually went out to knock on doors and politely talk to people. Not arrest people. Just talk to people, get their side of the story, and leave if they were asked to do so.

The left side of the internet went up in flames. This was Nazi persecution! How dare they drive to my home and ask if I have a few minutes? How dare they ask me questions until I asked them to leave? How dare they? Gestapo! Fascist bastards! This is an intolerable oppression!

Of course I pointed out that this was not persecution or fascism. This was government agents actually doing what we pay them to do. Of course I had not yet learned about Bush Derangement Syndrome. I did not know that I was casting pearls before swine as I do now. And I still find it hilarious that the left wants to grant phenomenal cosmic power to centralized authorities, but are shocked when those same authorities actually use that power.

But I digress. If you want to see what persecution and oppression actually are, keep an eye on that student holding up a sign criticizing Ahmadinejad to his face at an Iranian university. That man is taking his life into his hands. I assure you that the government agents who knock on his door will show you what oppression really is.

Now if you excuse me, I have to go listen to Folk Song Army by Tom Lehrer.

Babylon 5

Dale Franks is opining on the greatness that is the Babylon 5 television series after picking up the box set.

If you are looking for something unusual, compelling, exciting, and thought provoking, I heartily encourage you to log on to Netflix or Blockbuster and add Babylon 5 to your queue. Be advised, you really need to start with Season 1, and watch the episodes in order.

B5 is pretty great, especially the second, third, and fourth seasons. In the first season, the series just wasn't quite right yet. The plot and look of the series just hadn't quite come up to speed. The fifth season was something of an afterthought because they actually tied up the original five year arc in season four when they thought they were going to be canceled. But the heart of the series is very good.

I also enjoyed Crusade and most of the TV movies. Crusade suffered from bad network management from TNT. Legend of the Rangers on Sci-Fi was god-awful though.

Part of my distaste for BSG is that it really just isn't as good as B5. Not only do I dislike its brooding pretentiousness, but BSG often can't get simple continuity right. I might tolerate that in Star Trek, but if you want to be "the best show on TV" then don't have major episode plot points conflict each other.

Ministry of Silly Hats

Amy tried learning to knit a while back. While she was doing it she stumbled across a girl who made knit hats with ears and other features. In the end she didn't have much luck with the knitting, but I wonder if these sort of fleece hats might be more up her alley.

Christmas Movies

Tam and ColtCCO state that Die Hard is the best Christmas movie ever. I'm going to have to disagree and go with my brother's pick: Lethal Weapon. The first and best of the Lethal Weapon movies.

I also had a warm spot in my heart for A Christmas Story, since it's about a boyhood love of firearms. But it's just too overplayed these days. I can't take 24 hours of any movie.

Richard Hammond Interview

I'm an unabashed fan of the BBC's Top Gear. It is everything a car show should be. So when host Richard Hammond was seriously hurt in a jet car accident while filming an accident, I was worried that this might be the end for the show. Even if they didn't actually lose Hammond as a host, they might lose the ability to mock him mercilessly on British television. And that might be even worse than death.

But fortunately the Hamster has made an almost miraculous recovery. He's given his first post-accident interview and AutoBlog has the YouTube clips.

Christmas Come and Almost Gone...

Christmas Day may be gone, but I won't finish celebrating the holiday until mid-January when I get together with my extended family. Possibly even later than that depending on when my sister actually comes for a visit. She was going here this year, but one of her labs needed emergency surgery. He's doing well, but she was unfortunately but understandably absent from the holiday festivities at my parents house. Her portion of Christmas has been postponed until an unspecified later date.

And what festivities they were! The drain for my parents kitchen sink became blocked after their garbage disposal failed to sufficiently digest some of my mom's potato peelings. Unfortunately the clog was actually in a bend in the drain pipe below the kitchen floor, not in the disposal itself (which would have been easy to fix). Amy and I walked into the house to find my dad and my brother snaking the drain pipe with little success. Fortunately CVS was open and we were able to buy some generic Drano. The rest of Christmas afternoon was spent cycling chemicals down the drain. But at the end of the day, the sink was running well enough to turn on the dishwasher so Huzzah! Or as my lovely wife would say, Woot!

Out of our little family, Milo seems to have made out better than anyone with the presents. We had to hide some of his new toys last night just so he would let us go to sleep.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

How do I get this cat out of thee?

With Friends Like These...

How not to compliment Anna Venger:

I've never seen pictures of your children before. Wow. They're very beautiful.

They must take after your husband. They look nothing like you.

Ouch. I think I was that guy a few times in college. And at work. And probably other places too. I had a tendency to bounce my Timberlands off my uvula on a regular basis for a while there in college though. Sometimes you think you're saying something clever and it just don't come out right you know?

Fortunately I'm generally smart enough to realize it after I've said it. I pays to be good at apologizing profusely. I also can be pretty objective when it happens to me now. The guy says "Oh my gosh! I'm sorry! That didn't come out right..." and I just tell them they're going to have to shove that foot in a lot farther in before they impress me.

Divorce

Physics Geek is talking about how much he hates it after a friend recently filed. A guy in my old bible study was divorced, he has two daughters with his ex-wife. He has actively counseled several friends and coworkers not to do it especially if you have kids. The long and short of it is that if you intend to be a good father after the divorce, just stay married. Getting divorced won't make your life any easier because the kids mean you'll still be seeing your ex-wife on a regular basis. Plus he was constantly moving to keep close to his daughters after every time his ex changed boyfriends (and therefore residences).

I often wonder if the prevalence of divorce is one of the reasons why homosexuality is on the rise in American culture. Geek deals with the debasement of the sanctity of marriage over at his place. And he's probably right. Once upon a time, the failure rate of homosexual relationships was a pretty good reason to oppose same-sex marriage. Now the heterosexual failure rate is also huge, so that rhetoric is just a wash.

But I often wonder if divorce isn't promoting the homosexual lifestyle in other ways than just debasing the institution of marriage. I've heard a lot about strong correlations between gay lifestyles and poor parental figures (distant fathers or weak mothers depending on the sex of the individual). I wonder if there is also a correlation with divorce for similar reasons. It seems to me that divorce would often degrade one parent as a role model. The current high divorce rate would increase the likelihood of children growing up under those conditions.

UPDATE: At the end of last month, Anna Venger discussed a study that examined family life and gay marriage rates in Denmark. It essentially confirms my suspicions.

Open Lesson Plans

Joanne Jacobs is hyping Open Planner, which is a website that provides lesson plans in a distribution scheme similar to open source software. You download and use the plans and can modify them as you please, but you should provide your modifications (and the reasons for them) back to them for incorporation with the rest of the planning documents.

It seems to me that a large repository of good lesson plans can't be anything less than a good thing for teachers and students. But then again I'm not a teacher and never really have been. It is my understanding that ownership and originality of your own lesson plans is a contestable issue in the education industry. I think some teachers would consider using outside plans as something akin to plagiarism (similar to the pastoral plagiarism issue that cropped up a while back). And this might just make lazy teachers lazier. On the other hand what I really care about is the quality of the kids educations...

AD in an MRI

Turns out the magnet in a Magnetic Resonance Imager is strong enough to fire a 1911, even if all the gun's safety features are still on. Like most gun incidents, this one required multiple people to screw up: the firearms owner (a cop BTW) and the MRI tech.

Via Tamara and SayUncle.

Beware the Mall Ninja

For his black pajamasBDUs provide concealment that allow him to strike at any moment. But mostly he only strikes on the internet or at firearms events.

Mall Ninjas are something like the Mary Sues of the firearms community. They lay claim to a vast stores of experience, none of which they can actually demonstrate. At one time it was easy to spot them. Most Mall Ninjas are in their early to middle twenties and, for a while there, you just couldn't be a war vet (or have their breadth of "experience") and be their age. Now you generally have to rely on someone who has been there and done that to pick out someone who hasn't.

Reform in Iran

Turns out the results of this year's Iranian elections mirror the results of their American counterparts. Out with the conservatives, in with the liberal reformers. Well that's what the rhetoric will be at least...

Thumbtack Code

An interesting tidbit of information came up during the discussion of a shooting over at Kim du Toit's place. Turns out the way to get Mormon's and Jehovah's Witnesses to leave you alone is this:

If you put a black or red thumbtack in your door frame they don’t knock.

Green means they're receptive to your message. Yellow means they aren't adverse to it. Red means the owner responded belligerently. Black means stay away. I'll have to remember this if I see people passing out Watchtower in my complex.

My Life in Comics

I've had this problem with my branch secretary a few times. I managed to smooth it over though, you do not want the Secretaries mad at you. Secretaries make the world go round.

I also thought this "comic" was great, both because I love bad puns and because of the extensive explanation of Maxwell's equations in the commentary text.

Dangerous Toys

Radar has a top ten including the infamous Jart. One toy that didn't come put is the science kit. Science kits used to actually have chemicals children could do serious bodily harm to themselves with. They could mix up their own explosives or accidentally create poison gasses. Now? Please you can probably build a better science kit with things from the supermarket.

Currency Reform

So now that coins like the penny and nickel are worth less than the metals they're made of, can we finally demonetize them? Lets start with then penny. I mean can you buy anything for a penny these days?

Via Tamara.

Christmas Meme

1. Eggnog, Cider or Hot Chocolate?

Hot Cocoa

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?

Wrap

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?

Colored

4. Which of Santa's reindeer -- Rudolph, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Donder, Blitzen, Cupid and Comet. -- are you? And why?

Tsk tsk, learn the order question-giver guy. It's Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder/Donder/Donner, Blixen/Blitzen. I'm a Blitzen guy myself. I recieved a country tape called "Truckers Christmas" as a white elephant gift in College. My favorite song on it is "Dammit I'm Blitzen". Its about how Rudolph (the new guy with the flashy nose) gets all the credit and Blitzen (being the last reindeer) ends up taking all the crap. The name also means lighting in German.

5. When do you put your decorations up?

Early in December, although I'm running late this year because they're under a pile of stuff in my storage space.

6. What is your favorite Christmas dish?

The turkey and stuffing sandwiches the night of Christmas (since Christmas "dinner" is actually served as a late lunch in my house).

7. Favorite Christmas memory as a child?

Playing games with the whole family at my Grandparents in Connecticut.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?

My family never really played Santa up, so I have no conscious memory not knowing the truth.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?

Sometimes, it was a logistical thing. If we went to Connecticut to visit family, we would often travel Christmas morning to avoid traffic. Then we would open our presents Christmas Eve. But generally if we were opening on Christmas day we didn't open any early.

10. What kind of cookies does Santa get set out for him?

None. It's the stingy Scot in my I suppose.

11. Snow! Love it or hate it?

As a kid it was great, now I'm typically driving to my parents so not so much.

12. Can you ice skate?

Not well.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?

Buzzy, a stuffed Raccoon I bought when I was little. I still have him. He's sitting on Amybear's dresser at home with my college graduation cap and medal on.

14. What's the most important thing about Christmas to you?

Family. I wish I could say "Jesus being born to take the sins of the world," but like most people I basically take that for granted.

15. What is your favorite Christmas dessert?

Pie. Pumpkin, cherry, apple, strawberry rubarb, it's all good.

16. Favorite Christmas tradition?

Getting a little piece of coal (the same piece actually) in my stocking every year.

17. What tops your tree?

Star.

18. Which do you prefer--GIVING OR RECEIVING?

Both.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Carol?

"Silent Night", the 3/4 version without the showboating. I'm also partial to "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" because we did some fun stuff with that in Chorus.

20. Candy Canes?

Not the peppermint ones, but some of the other flavors are ok. Except they get messy too quickly.

For others responses try, Hube, Anna, or Paul.

Merry Criminal Christmas

How can you not enjoy a story that ends like this:

"I d-d-didn't n-n-nknow S-santa Cl-Clause was such-such a s-s-sumbitch."

"Believe it. Into the back seat, Nanook. Let's go put you into a nice warm cell."

My that LawDog has lead a colorful life down there in Texas.

Like Not Learning to Land

Thankfully, a driving school in Rhode Island thought it was strange that a forthright young Muslim only wanted to learn how to drive Hazmat vehicles didn't want to bother with learning to back up. They contacted the authorities and one would-be terrorist is in custody under a number of charges.

Grand Theft Ego

Amybear finally has her car back after the theft. But her confidence has still taken a hit. Your car is kind of like your home on wheels, and getting one stolen out of your apartment's parking lot means neither one feels particularly safe anymore.

Pinochet, Allende, and Chilean History

The essay republished at ChicagoBoyz.net is worth a read if you like serious historical analysis. Kim du Toit gives another reflection on the state of Chile after the death of Pinochet and how it relates to current events:

Now here’s the interesting thing about Pinochet: his example is seductive.

I have said several times in the past few weeks that Iraq doesn’t need a parliamentary democracy—at least, not yet. What Iraq needs is a Pinochet: a man who could bring the country to heel, subdue the more violent elements of the country with the utmost brutality, and set the economy on a track which would lead to long-term prosperity.

And then he could step down, exactly as Pinochet did.

I don't know that I'm a fan of Pinochet, but I can understand the sentiment. I have often wondered if the reason the American experiment succeeded where so many others have failed, is the presence of a few key individuals like George Washington. Men who were respected, had the authority to govern, but also had the morality to stop governing when their time was past. Power is a difficult thing to turn down, yet doing so may be the key to building a successful nation.

UDPATE: Kim has more.

We Will Make Everything... Metal

Who knew Benny Hinn was so angry?

Via Locusts and Honey

Free Leisure Reading

Thanks to novelist and blogger John Scalzi, who is publicizing the release of Peter Watts novel Blindsight for free on the net.

Gun Owners in Ohio Rejoice

From David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy:

A few minutes ago, the Ohio Senate voted 21-12 to override Republican Governor Bob Taft's veto of a bill to reform Ohio's gun laws. The Ohio House had previously voted 71-21 to override the veto of House Bill 347. Because both houses achieved the necessary 3/5 majority, the bill will become law in 90 days.

The details?

The bill makes a variety of changes to Ohio's Shall Issue law for concealed handgun licenses. It explicitly prohibits local governments from creating no-carry zones, except in places where state law already forbids carryings. The bill also removes the requirement that concealed carry permitees must, when driving, keep the handgun in plain view in the car, or in a locked container.

Even more significantly, the bill eliminates over 80 anti-gun local ordinances, including bans on cosmetically-incorrect self-loading firearms (so-called "assault weapons") in Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati. Like the vast majority of states, Ohio does not have an "assault weapon" ban, but Ohio has had more cities with local bans than has any other non-ban state.

Now if only we could get the Delaware legislature to look into reforming our firearms laws.

Christmas Time is Here By Golly...

Paul has several great Christmas posts up, here is taste:

This is the time of year when we think back to the very first Christmas, when the Three Wise Men; Gaspar, Balthazar and Herb, went to see the baby Jesus and, according to the Book of Matthew, "presented unto Him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh."

These are simple words, but if we analyze them carefully, we discover an important, yet often overlooked, theological fact: There is no mention of wrapping paper. If there had been wrapping paper, Matthew would have said so:

"And lo, the gifts were inside 600 square cubits of paper. And the paper was festooned with pictures of Frosty the Snowman. And Joseph was going to throweth it away, but Mary saideth unto him, she saideth, 'Holdeth it! That is nice paper! Saveth it for next year!' And Joseph did rolleth his eyeballs. And the baby Jesus was more interested in the paper than the frankincense."

But these words do not appear in the Bible, which means that the very first Christmas gifts were NOT wrapped. This is because the people giving those gifts had two important characteristics:

1. They were wise.

2. They were men.

It goes on for quite a bit more. I wonder who actually wrote this thing, the tone reminds me of Scott Adams.

For more topical humor, I give you wrapping gifts with pets. I'm sure Milo will be a huge help wrapping presents this year. Because cats are known for nothing if it isn't their helpfulness and obedience.

Food Science Fun

I linked to Cooking for Engineers over two years ago because I thought their recipe format was amazing. It still is of course, but the recipes themselves are pretty darned good too. Like this one for making your own marshmallows. I always wondered how to do that.

Turns out that just one of the Top 25 Food Hacks at Slashfood. Some are old internet staples like making ice cream with liquid nitrogen or lighting the grill with liquid oxygen. Several others involve making or refining liquor with available household equipment. Oddly enough some of these seem to have been the subject of Mythbusters episodes.

And last but not least on this topic, this DB Fletcher table would be really cool in the dining room.

Executioner's Tale

A Saudi executioner talks about his work in video or plain text. Freaky.

If you're going to kill people, beheading or hanging really isn't a bad way to do it. With the gas chamber or lethal injection, execution creates systemic damage throughout the body so that even if you wanted to harvest the organs, it is impossible. The major organs can still be viable with beheading, hanging, or even firing squad.

Of course required organ harvesting after capital punishment has been considered a bad idea in some SF.

The Problem of Novelizations

John Scalzi's recent interview of Karen Travis is quite good and it carried me through to her recent essay defending her work on the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It is an excellent essay that highlights the difficulties of writing works using corporately owned copyrights.

So apart from the fact that it can be a lot harder for the author, there’s no fundamental difference between writing a tie-in for any franchise and a creator-copyright piece. It still has to stand the tests of good fiction, except that it’s got to be done fast, it’s got to be done right, and it’s got to be done despite changes, deadline shifts, studio diktats, or — here’s the real white-knuckle ride — trying to fit in with an ongoing TV series that’s still being written, as many of my colleagues do. Those who’ve novelized movies tell me stories of not being allowed to take scripts away home, and having one chance to read them with a security guard standing over them: and a movie script makes a novel of about 20,000 words. Adding another 80,000 words without deviating from the film takes real talent. Tie-ins are not a job for the faint-hearted or the dilettante.

I mentioned that last bit about the movie scripts to my brother over the weekend.

Military Survival Manuals

Since I'm something of a military buff (what with working for the Army and all) Instapundit's reference to the US Army Survival Guide came as a bit of a surprise. While I can get access to the PDF internally through the Army, it is also available to the public through a currently instatrashed link found on his site.

For printed versions of this and other works (like the excellent pre-2000 military Combatives manuals), I highly suggest you turn to military surplus sites like Cheaper Than Dirt. You can buy this stuff through Amazon, but you'll generally be paying service manual prices of at least ten or fifteen dollars. Or you'll be buying it used. On a surplus site you're looking at five bucks or less for the same document.

Blogger Beta

Well I bit the bullet and made the switch over to the new version of Blogger, but I'll need to update my layout before most of the new features will show.

Oh and vote for me!

Guns and Politics: DC Firearms Prohibitions

The current courtroom battle over the Washington DC residents' 2nd Amendment rights is shaping up well. We have the proponents:

"We interpret the 2nd Amendment in military terms," said Todd Kim, the District's solicitor general...

And at least one good judge:

"Show me anybody in the 19th century who interprets the 2nd Amendment the way you do," Judge Laurence Silberman said.

And then we have the scariness:

Silberman and Judge Thomas B. Griffith seemed to wrestle, however, with the meaning of the amendment's language about militias. If a well-regulated militia is no longer needed, they asked, is the right to bear arms still necessary?

"That's quite a task for any court to decide that a right is no longer necessary," Alan Gura, an attorney for the plaintiffs, replied.

Not only is it "quite a task" but it isn't their place. If you wish to rewrite the Bill of Rights, then do so. But you damn well better do it with the amendment process.

Blogging: New Blogger Version

Well it seems that the power that be at Google have figured out how to fix some of the older restrictions. Being on a group blog and a blog with over a thousand posts was good enough to keep you out, but no longer. Now I have this note saying I can change over whenever I want.

But do I want? That's the question. Any thoughts out there on the interweb? Last I heard blogger beta had it's issues. Any idea if they've been fixed? Comments, as always, are open.

Wheels: Aluminum Rims

Autoblog has a great YouTube clip of how they make forged and cast aluminum wheels for your car. There are a couple of clips of these folks shaping a hot aluminum rim as if they were just throwing a pot. I think it's pretty cool, but then again I'm an engineer so I would.

Fun: Tactical String?

I've heard many things called tactical in my day: knives, guns, pants, fanny packs, even door stops... but silly string is a first for me. I can't deny that it's useful though.

Blogging: Vote "Baptist" in 2006!

It seems that I am in the running for the Best of the Top 2501-3000 Blogs. Unfortunately so is fellow DCBA member Colossus of Rhodey and he's probably a better blogger than I am.

So to quote Black Adder, there is only one thing left to do: Cheat! Pretend you're a Chicago Democrat and vote early and often on whatever computer you can lay your hands on. Err, once the polls open on the 7th.

Fun: Strange Design Esthetics

I guess the Soviets went through an interesting design period in the late '70s into the '80s. The first building gave me a flashback of John Huston's voice describing Minas Tirith from the old Rankin-Bass version of Return of the King.

Not that the US is any different. I remember visiting my sister when she was doing her doctoral work at Cornell, there was a museum designed to look like a sewing machine for no particular reason I can remember.

Via Digg and my brother.

Guns: Assembling an AR

I'm thankful that I built Mabel exactly the opposite from how this guy put together his AR-15. I assembled my own lower and bought a custom upper from a reputable manufacturer/assembler. It is my opinion that unless you intend to build a lot of AR-15s, or do a lot of customizing on a single one, you are better off going my route.

You are only going to make a profit of a couple hundred dollars by building your own gun instead of just buying one. Half of that is in the lower and half is in the upper. Now the lower doesn't require expensive tools. You need a hammer, a pin punch or two, and a wrench most stock-manufacturers throw in for free. I had all that stuff lying around my apartment. On the other hand building an upper requires a vice, a sturdy work table to clamp it to, a receiver block, a barrel wrench, and some other odds and ends. You can easily blow that hundred dollars you "saved" on tools you may never use again.

Also keep in mind that the upper is where the accuracy is or isn't. Building an accurate AR is just putting a quality barrel into the upper and a good trigger into the lower. The latter is easy. The former is trickier. If you put too much torque on something (or not enough) it will show in how your gun shoots. Why risk it? Just buy the darn thing assembled.

Blogging: Reading Patents

I seldom enjoy the media's coverage of technology. The media operates on principles it shares with sales, sometimes for good reason given salesmen's use of press releases. Salesmen like to say that a good salesman can sell anything. Suits, stationery, cars, houses, doesn't matter. Reporters like to think that a good reporter can write on anything. Local, religious, politics, op-ed, etc. Unfortunately this isn't actually true. Salesmen are much better at selling what they know and reporters are much better at writing what they know. And most writers don't really know technology.

But sometimes even bloggers I respect get it wrong. Whenever you see someone railing about the outrageousness of a patent, read the patent. In the case of the McDonald's sandwich patent, a quick read will demonstrate that they aren't trying to patent making a sandwich with ordinary utensils like you or I would do. What they are trying to do is patent the process and associated tools they have developed to quickly produce sandwiches in a streamlined process within the food-service industry. This won't effect you at home at all, but if the patent does go through then Quizno's or Subway might have cause for concern. McDonald's new process is probably better than what those sandwich makers currently use and by patenting it, McD's competitors can't just copy it.

Politics: Bolton Goes Bye-Bye

I share AnonymousOpinion's sadness. Unlike others in the administration like Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton has done a great job. I don't know that he has convinced a lot of people to vote our way, but he toed the line and was generally pretty well respected at that institution. People knew where he stood and that he wasn't going to take crap. And I can respect that.

Review: Thank God It's Only a Rental

Dodge Caliber

So Amy has a Caliber right now while her Civic is being repaired post-theft. Let's just say that I'm really happy we're not paying to drive this thing.

Our Caliber is a mid-grade SXT. Which means the interior shouldn't be cheap but it still is. The car itself has a peaky 2.0 liter engine with a narrow power band located way up in the RPM band. The engine doesn't have any life below about 4500 RPM (peak torque is at 5200, peak horsepower at 6500). And the gearing is too tall because they went for fuel economy. If you stand on the accelerator, you wait several seconds for the car to accelerate to the point that it can actually accelerate. And the car is 3000+ lbs, pretty heavy for a "compact".

But of course the combination of the high beltline, low roofline, and poor window layout means that you can't see out it anyway. So whats the point of having enough power to get out of someone's way if you can't see them in the first place?

My Mazda has an engine the same size, but the gearing is lower and the powerband is wider so it doesn't have these problems. It is also much lighter so I get similar gas mileage. Oh, and I can see out of it.

The Camry

My parents are Toyota fans. Ever since we bought a Camry in the mid 1980s, they switched over to the Japanese and haven't looked back. They currently have a late '90s Camry and a Sienna minivan. I dislike both of their current cars. They are slow and don't turn well, so they drive like Japanese Buicks. I believe my brother concurs.

But the 2007 Camry rental I drove down south last week was pretty nice. It was a four cylinder but was peppy and handled well. The interior looked nice and everything worked, with one exception: the automatic transmission lever was confusing as hell. Unlike most of the standard forward and back affairs, this one was shaped like some sort of strange lightning bolt. You can kind of see it in this picture. You have forward, reverse, neutral, and gear settings for 5 or less, 4 or less, etc. So there are 8 positions on the stick and some of them are next to each other. We drove around for quite a while before we realized we were locked out of overdrive because the stick was too the left instead of the right.

Just make it tip-tronic Toyota, ok? Their higher trim grades have them and it's the same 5-speed in both cars. My Mazda has a similar lightning bolt shifter pattern, but all the "or less" gears are condensed into a "manual" mode that lets you just select what you want within reason. It works well and if you don't want to use the manual mode, it is easy to just ignore it, unlike in the Camry which is just befuddling.

Gear: Those Wonderful Toys

Interesting tech toys I've noticed in the past week:

When the British took to calling flashlights "electric torches", I don't think they meant using them to actually set fire to things.

The big problem with a lot of locking knives is that if the lock breaks or the blade comes unlatched, the knife blade swings down onto your knuckles. I have had that happen once with a cheap swiss army knife. It sucked. The usual technique to prevent this is overbuild the knife lock so this can't happen. The Van Hoy Snap Lock has an interesting solution to this. While normal knives open and close in the plane of the blade, the Van Hoy's blade opens and closes perpendicular to it. The site has pictures that are worth a thousand of my words, but it is a very interesting idea.

Last but not least, building your own hovercraft (and playing games with it) over at MAKEblog. They call them Shoverboards. You can make one out of some duct tape, heavy plastic, a sheet of plywood, an old chair (or not), and a leaf blower. I suggest hearing and eye protection if you do though.

Fun: Cat Stuff

Amybear updated the cat blog with new pictures of his cuteness. She also notes the horrible failure rate of our laser pointers. We're on his third one. This seems to be caused by the general cheapness of the units we've found. They lack the proper circuitry necessary to prevent power spikes from burning out the Laser Emitting Diode.

Fun: Day of the Ninja

The Day of the Ninja, the counterpoint to Talk Like a Pirate Day, is tomorrow. Be sure to dress accordingly where appropriate.

Family: Why I'm No Longer Allowed to Leave the State

My business trip went well. I flew down south, worked hard, ate good food, and drank gallons of sweet tea. But things at home sucked for Amy.

Amy woke me up in my hotel room at 2 am Wednesday morning. Maybe it was 3 am. Really early anyway. Her car had been stolen. The good news is that she found out her car was stolen because the police pulled the thief over while he was driving it. The police made some phone calls to track down the vehicle's owner. Eventually Amy and a local cop were able to confirm that yes her car was not where she parked it.

Amy had a sleepless night (as did I a thousand miles away) and, because I was out of town, she had to take care of all the details of insurance and getting the car from an impound in Dover back to our local shop. She did a great job and I'm very proud of her. But she is definitely not happy about it.

She's also feeling very vulnerable and understandably so. It's time to sit down and start teaching her about guns again. I think I'll start with basics of grip and stance (since she seemed to be having trouble with that on our last range excursion) I can do that with an airsoft pistol in the comfort of our home.

It's also time see if BJs carries the Club. And I need to buy defensive ammo. My stock of 55 grain 5.56 should work in the AR, but I want some hollowpoints for the Hipower and 1911. I'm thinking 185 grain or 230 grain JHPs in .45 and 147 grain JHPs in 9mm. I haven't researched the subject in a few years, so I need to look into good cost-effective ammo.

Government: Abuse

Anonymous asked me "Why didn't you think of this?"

Who says I didn't? The problem is that I took an oath and I don't break oaths easily. The other is that these people eventually get caught and then they go to jail. I don't want that either.

Family: 6 Months and Counting...

Six months ago today, I married the most beautiful woman in the whole world. How are we celebrating? I'm leaving town on a business trip and will be gone until Friday. I guess that's what my wife gets for marrying such a bad boy.

Guns and Politics: Liberty

Someone's signature on a firearms forum I frequent had the following quote from a New York Times editorial written by editor (and huge liberal) Verlyn Klinkenborg:

Sometimes I think the N.R.A. isn’t really about guns at all. It’s about making certain that the public — our political and civil society, in other words — has no ability to limit the rights of an individual. That is really what the logic of the “concealed carry” and “shall require” and “shoot first” laws says.

Guns make a perfect test case, because the end result is an armed cohort that is very prickly about its personal rights.

Uh oh, fellas, they're catchin' on!

Lord knows this is why I give the NRA my money in any case. The 2nd Amendment is not in the Constitution to protect hunters. It is there so that the people will have the means to violently resist local tyrants and overthrow their own government if necessary.

UPDATE: David asked if Short Barreled Rifles are legal in Delaware. A quick scan of the Delaware Code indicates that silenced firearms, automatic weapons, and any sort of short-barreled or sawed-off shotgun are illegal. The law does not mention short barreled rifles so they may be legal in Delaware provided you purchase them legally and have the appropriate tax stamp to satisfy federal law.

Guns: Tiny Terrors

Several people have shown me this .17 caliber small scale browning machine gun. Frankly, were I to purchase a small caliber "automatic" weapon, it wouldn't be that one. The gun is a true Class III machine gun which means it is illegal in Delaware (and would require giving Uncle Sam additional money if it wasn't). .17 rimfire ammo isn't cheap either.

No I'd much rather go with a gatling gun in .22 long rifle. The ammo is cheap ($10 for 500 rounds) and it isn't a machine gun according to the Feds because you have to constant turn a crank to fire it. There are kits available so you can build one yourself, but they don't appeal to me. I would rather go with the unfortunately expensive small-scale historical guns.

Politics: Global Warming

Hurricane season ends on Thursday after a grand total of 9 named storms. A little over half made it to hurricane status. What did the globe stop warming or something?

Family: Leftovers

Amy and I dined on some lasagna my Uncle cooked for the crowd at my parents place over the weekend. And some pie and banana bread nobody got around to eating. Man, I have to start hitting the gym.

I have come to the realization that lasagna is practically the perfect "leftover" food. Once-cooked lasagna becomes "twice-baked" lasagna when you reheat it. Provided you don't overcook it, the reheated variety is even yummier than the original. I shall have to look into this further...

Blogging: Not the Grammar Police

But I might be an informant. I thought I did pretty well, especially for an engineer:

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

By the way, the last question does count. I did the test both ways to see. Thanks Anna.

Gear: Pneumatic Rocketry

My cousin's kids were playing with an Air Hogs pneumatic rocket during their stay at my parents place. It is an amazingly simple yet fun toy. My brother and I even had a go pumping it up and launching it. About the only way to hurt someone with it is if they're standing on top of the rocket when someone fires it off. When playing with careless 4 year-olds, that happens more than you might think. But even then I think most of the injury would be to the person's pride. Really, it's fun for all ages.

Fun: Taking Them at Their Word

Kim Du Toit is relating an amusing and surprisingly non-firearms related anecdote.

Clearly, our soon-to-be ex-motorcyclist is either a young man, or on his first marriage, or both. For the benefit of my Readers who may fall into any of these categories, allow me to translate.

“Do whatever the f*** you want!” does not actually mean you may do whatever you want.

It really means: “If you don’t buy me flowers within the next two hours, you’re a dead man.”

Yup. If a woman ever defers to your preference in a statement that includes an exclamation point or profanity, you're in trouble. It doesn't mean she actually defers to you. It means she is so angry with you that she can no longer articulate it.

God and Politics: Thanksgiving

I really like Thanksgiving. It is probably my favorite holiday just because the Puritans seem to have gotten it right. They said that Christmas was too commercial (even in the 17th century) so lets establish a non-commercial holiday. A holiday you celebrate by getting the family together, thanking God, and eating food. And it worked.

To this day Thanksgiving is practically commercially incorruptible. Other than turkey sales and a few other things, businesses go from Halloween costumes straight to Christmas decorations. And Thanksgiving, if not about God in many households, is at least about family. Which I'm fine with because, in comparison, a modern Christmas is ultimately more about things than people.

Anyway, Steve put up the original Thanksgiving Proclamation made by George Washington in 1789. I'm sure if someone gave it today, people would be screaming "Theocracy!" Which just goes to show how far we have come.

Guns and Politics: No-Knocking on Heavens Door

So a 92 year-old woman was killed in a mistaken no-knock raid in Atlanta, Georgia. I initially saw it on Instapundit, but he links to good coverage at Reason. QandO also has good commentary and thankfully avoids standard Libertarian rhetoric like "how many people have to die in the War on some Drugs."

I hate no-knock warrants. Cato has a Google Maps chart of where they have gone wrong. It is an impressive list, yet it is not a comprehensive listing. While I conceed that these types of warrants may be necessary, I think police officers should be held liable for their actions in civil and even criminal courts when they go wrong (instead of assumed sovereign immunity). That should drastically reduce their frequency.

Guns: Abercrombie & Fitch

Why can't I get these at the mall? It would blow away an overpriced fleece that's for damn sure. At one point Abercrombie was much closer to Cabela's than its current incarnation. At least Old Navy hasn't gone crazy yet. I just wish I could buy an Colt 1851 there.