Fortune Cookie Wisdom

An economist wrote my wife's cookie from tonight's dinner:

The value lies not within any particular thing, but in the desire placed on that thing.

Or in other words, something is only worth what someone will pay for it. This is one of the foundational principles of free market economics.

The Worth of a One-Liner

Comics jokes from IMAO that really tickled my funnybone this week:

If Jim from the Office is going to play Captain America, then Dwight should be the Red Skull.

Wolverine’s self-healing ability was evolved in response to Canada’s government run health care.

An Engineer Does Good

Starting in 1947 and working into 1948, automotive engineer Norman Timbs built his dream car out of steel, aluminum, and spare parts. The result was the '48 Timbs special. It's a steel space frame with an aluminum body, independent front and rear suspensions, and no doors. The mid mounted Buick V8 pumps power to the rear wheels. It also has a full spare. I'd say that they don't make them like this anymore, but frankly they never really did.

Not Fitting the Narrative

Let it not be said that bloggers can't do this too. Mainstream Baptist is heavily invested in the principle Separation of Church and State and lead a post with the title "Supreme Court Affirms 10 Commandments Decision" this week. The problem? They didn't.

The Supreme Court denied cert. That's legalese for refusing to hear the case. The Supreme Court does this to the vast majority of cases that petition them for appeals because they just don't have the time to hear everything. Denying cert allows the lower court ruling to stand, but does not imply that the Supreme Court agrees or "affirms" it.

Funny how I posted as much in his comments, but that one never came through his review process...

Training for the Zombie Apocalypse

Cheaper Than Dirt's current e-postal match is zombie themed and emphasizes headshots. Looks like fun and I may print those targets out for my next trip to the range. Of course I have to question the idea of not shooting the humans. They're in the middle of zombie mob, they're almost certainly infected. HT: SayUncle

Awesome Trivia

The four spikes at the end of the stegosaurus's tail are call a "thagomizer." This is not some sort of obscure technical term derived from latin or greek. It is a reference to a Far Side cartoon Gary Larson drew in 1982. Thanks to Irregular Webcomic for another cool piece of trivia.

History Threatens to Repeat Itself

Why didn't we get HillaryCare in 1994? According to Robert Reich, it was because Fed Chairman Greenspan let the administration know that he wouldn't go along with it. Fast forward 16 years and Bush appointee Ben Bernanke is saying the same thing to the Obama administration.

J&G Sales Offers Argentines

My standard sidearm is a 9mm hipower made by FN. When I bought it FN was blowing them out through CDNN for $400. Since then the price for a hipower has skyrocketed to around $800. In retrospect I should have bought two. Since then several of the manufacturers of hipower clones, like Hungarian firm FEG, have also gone out of business. You can't get a cheap clone anymore either. The good news is that J&G is now offering Argentine M90 hipowers for around $330.

These aren't as slick as FN made guns and they don't have the modern extended manual safeties or firing pin safety. I think that makes them around a MKII in FN nomenclature. But they are made under license to FN and parts should still interchange (unlike say the Inglis slide and frame kits from Numrich). That's good news if you want to drop in Cylinder and Slide parts kits.

I may still pick one up as a potential build gun.

Tracers Work Both Ways

As two recent photo sets from Oleg Volk demonstrate, the same goes for green laser sights.

Frank Lautenberg

Pundits are speculating that he may be the next Democrat to announce their retirement because of his recent health issues. Lautenberg is 86 and recently injured himself in a fall after which physicians discovered a bleeding ulcer. I still doubt he'll retire, not because it would be a bad idea, but because he's already retired in 2000. When Lautenberg was tapped to take over for the disgraced Bob Torricelli in 2002, he publicly expressed deep regret for ever retiring and did so again in 2008.

The MiddleMan Episode 13

The ABC Family show The Middleman was cancelled after 12 episodes. The cast did a table read of the unfilmed 13th episode at San Diego ComicCon 2009. I finally got around to tracking down the YouTube footage of it. Quite excellent. There is also a comic book version of the episode as well, but I'm not sure if it is currently in print as Amazon isn't carrying it.

Zombie Dice

Howard Tayler is playing a very twisted dice game. I may have to go looking for this the next time I'm near by Days of Knights or Between Books.

Streetside Engineering

I have an idea I'd like to try out. I current have large piles of snow in front of my house from the recent winter unpleasantness. Because of the surface area to mass ratio, these six foot tall piles are going to take forever to melt. I'd like to speed that up using smarts.

My first thought was to sprinkle them liberally with rock salt. The problem is they're big enough that putting enough salt in place might be troublesome. My second thought is that the biggest piles are on my lawn and any salt will end up on or under my yard. I'd rather not salt my own fields as Rome did to Carthage.

My second thought is to stab some aluminum strips into the heart of the larger piles. Aluminum is an excellent heat conductor and is available in a number of forms at the local hardware store. If I can find some cheap strips (preferably black), I can essentially conduct heat into the heart of the pile. I could put them in in the morning and then pull them when I got home so they wouldn't cool the piles during the night. Not sure if they'd work, but it might be neat to try.

Thoughts from my fellow nerds?

Unexpectedly!

So at what point do we fire the people in charge of predicting job loses and gains?

The Massachusetts Senate Race

This just in... Teddy Kennedy has reportedly voted for Coakley to replace him in the Senate. Twice.

I don't know whether Brown will win this one. Polling says it's close. Several people have pointed out that the margin of victory will unlikely surpass the margin for potential fraud. I think it is great that he's making a race of it though. I also have a wonderful feeling of schadenfreude that this whole situation would be a non-issue if the Massachusetts legislature hadn't been so scared of a Republican Governor appointing a Republican Senator in 2004.

The really interesting thing to me is the Democratic reaction. They seem to be doubling down on the stupid. Hey these policies are so bad we're even having trouble in Massachusetts! Lets do them even harder! I kind of expect this from their party leadership, most of whom are sitting in secure seats. But the rank and file? Not so much, especially the Blue Dogs in the House who are quite likely going to be thrown out on their ear in 10 months.

Orthogonal

The Volokh Conspiracy points out that the Supreme Court likes it's big words. (http://volokh.com/2010/01/11/orthogonal-ooh/) What perpendicular is to 2 dimensional space, orthogonal is to 3 or higher dimensional space.

Sarah Palin

Some new poll of Republican insiders has Sarah Palin running dead last in a proposed 2012 primary field. Which is fine because after shorting her term as Governor of Alaska, I don't think she should run. But Mitt Romney leads the field. You know, the guy who promised Michigan voters whatever he wanted to hear in the 2008 primaries. The guy who passed a horrible failure of a healthcare reform package in his state. He's no a conservative, he's another GOP stands-for-nothing.

If the GOP was smart they wouldn't be asking about whether Palin was going to run in 2012. They would be firing Michael Steele and making her the head of the party in 2010.

Elder Gods Take to the Slopes

This Cthulhu ski mask (http://www.cthulhulives.org/store/store.lasso?1=product&2=33196) is an idea who's time has come. Be the first huge nerd to wear it on your local slopes.

I Don't Get Vertical Foregrips

My understanding of rifle technique is pretty weak, but it largely breaks down to "whenever possible use your muscles as little as possible." This is because your skeleton doesn't expand or contract, but your muscles are always moving whether you like it or not. Therefore you want to support and aim the gun using rigid skeletal members, not by shoving it about using your muscles which are far more variable. This yields better accuracy.

Enter the vertical foregrip which appears to be designed almost solely to allow you to muscle the gun around. I've tried it and except for being a convenient place to hide a bipod, I find that I'll never get proper skeletal support using one. My accuracy drops into the toilet accordingly.

Now I can understand why some people like it. If I had a select fire weapon, the gun is going to be bouncing around anyway. I'm going to have to apply muscle to it to hold it on target so I might as well affix a convenient lever arm to help me out. But like almost all civilians, I don't have a select-fire weapon. That guy isn't me. Accordingly the vertical foregrip looks to me like something civilian shooters adopted from the military without thinking it through.

Now I'm more than willing to admit my shortcomings in this area. Can someone that shoots a rifle/carbine much more than I do help me out?

Climategate!

From the Timesonline via Instapundit:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The issue is not a long-term temperature increase over the last 150 years. 150 years ago was the end of the Little Ice Age, so no one really disputes that temperatures have increased since then. The real issue that has been deliberately obfuscated is (1) how warm the Medieval Warm Period was and (2) whether the divergence of temperature behavior from historical trends over the last 50 years is the result of how the historical data has been subjected to a moving average while recent data has not.

Groan

Six months after putting General McChrystal in charge, the news this morning was that President Obama has finally made a decision about Afghanistan. No idea what that decision was as the White House will not divulge its actual content for another week. Is the man such a lightweight that merely having meetings and deciding something is national news?

What's next? This just in, after intense discussions with the highly trained White House chef corps, the President has opted for Cheddar instead of Swiss on his turkey club. The effects of this change on the Presidential Gastronomy should be known early next week.

Expensive Deer Hunting

And a deductable later...

This Week's Gunblogger Groupthink Is...

The 5.7x28mm round used by the Fort Hood shooter is no more powerful than a .22 rimfire magnum. It's crap. Why? The 40 grain 5.7 is blazing down range at 1750 fps from a pistol. The 40 grain rimfire mag is moving at more like 1200-1300 fps from the same barrel length. The 5.7 has 80% more muzzle energy than the .22 mag. That's a lot people. Now maybe they'll both through and through with similar terminal performance, but you can't just dismiss that level of difference.

Is the 5.7x28 round a copkiller? No. There are no instances of it being used to actually kill cops. For that matter the civilian legal ammo isn't even particularly dangerous to people in common police body armor. At least no more dangerous than 7.62 Tokarev.

New Look

Ever since Blogrolling went down and then came back with crappy popups, I've been looking to rework my layout. I've been running this one for long enough on the test blog (and using the test blog for my regular blogsurfing) that it's time to put it on here. I don't love it, but I've decided it is a 90% solution. Unfortunately that means the demise of haloscan comments for the time being.

Loving Midlength

I think a discussion of AR-15 gas system lengths deserves it's own post and this is it. The big issue here is barrel length and port pressure needed to cycle the gun. As the gas port move closer to the gun's chamber (and away from the muzzle), the port pressure goes up and the gun cycles harder. This is good in that it is more likely to cycle, but bad in that too hard will break things.

Rifle length systems are about 12 inches long. As they are the longest, they are also typically the gentlest of the gas systems. But if the barrel is too short, then they won't cycle properly because the gas port pressure will drop too low after the bullet leaves the barrel. Because of this they are typically used on guns with barrels 20 inches or longer like the M16.

Carbine length systems are about 7 inches long. There are shorter lengths (like the pistols), but for most people this is as short they want to go. These cycle the action quite hard. Hard enough that Colt had to make changes from the M4 to the M16 to beef up some parts, alter the feed ramps, and use a heavier buffer to slow the bolt down. These are typically used on guns in the 14.5 to 16 inch range like the M4 carbine. However civilians can't have barrel lengths below 16 inches without a special tax stamp, so most people with carbine length gas systems have 16" barrels or 14.7" inch barrels with longer pinned flash hiders to meet the 16" legal requirement.

Midlength systems are in the middle and are about 9 inches long. These shoot softer than carbine, but harder than rifle. It's a happy medium and works very well for 16 inch guns. Since I have a 16 inch gun, this is what I bought. The disadvantage is that this is a purely civilian length gas system and has less support than the rifle and carbine lengths in the aftermarket. Until recently only one company made a free float tube for it. About the only accessory my midlength can use that a carbine can't is a standard military bayonet.

And for the record, I think the 14 inch barrels that are pinned to 16 inches are silly. The 5.56 round need all the barrel it can get to tumble and fragment for proper lethality. I also think the stepped barrels on 16" guns are silly. Military carbines have that feature so you can mount M203 grenade launchers on them. Civilians can't own those either.

Shiver Me Timbers

I heard an interesting rumor on the internet. (And with a source like the internet, you know it must be true.) Rumor has it that the US Coast Guard has started reissuing boarding cutlasses for some drug interdiction searches. Evidently a sailor making a standard drug search was attacked and forced to defend himself with a fire axe. You have to wonder what his sidearm was though.

Being Too Niche a Market

I own an AR-15. This is not uncommon. It uses the 9 inch midlength gas system. I prefer that length for a 16 inch barrel, unfortunately very few AR parts makers tool for it. Lots of them only do rifle and carbine length. If I wanted to free float my barrel, I could go to Rock River for a tube or YHM for rails or cut down a rifle length part or spend a lot of money. I even asked several parts shops at small arms conventions I attended in May whether they were planning on supporting midlength. Several hemmed and hawed, but surprisingly it was the guy at the UTG/CAA booth that felt my pain.

UTG now has an aluminum midlength free-float rail. Not sure I want UTG parts on my gun, but I don't think I mind them putting some downward pressure on the market. More importantly Hogue is now making midlength free float tubes for less than $50. Now that's something I might pick up and put on my gun.

Ammo Sales

Looks the like the ammo rush is really over and the suppliers are starting to meet inventory in earnest. While shopping with Amy yesterday, I picked up 200 rounds of 55gr .223 at Dicks. Not only did they have it on the shelf, but it was on sale for $8/20 rounds. That should be my range needs for a few trips at least.

Boom Headshot!

Seasonal hostage situation resolved.

I Concur

Sebastion points out that covering your car in NRA bumperstickers isn't a good idea. Guns are one of the major targets of property crime. Criminals want them and so there will always be a black market for firearms. Criminals especially like to know where you store them, because they don't want to rob an armed man or woman, but they love to rob unoccupied houses or vehicles.

When you put an NRA, pro-2nd, or pro-carry sticker on your car, what you're saying to criminals is "this car might contain guns, rob me when nobody's around." This is also true for anything on the outside of your home.

In a slightly related concept, you're not really concealed carrying if you're wearing overtly pro-gun gear. Some of the esoteric logos might be fine, but anything else calls attention to yourself and makes people take a second look. Not a good idea.

Steam Punk Rock

Note to self: While Jeph Jacques was kidding about the Society for Creative Rock Anachronism, there are actually steampunk bands like Abney Park and Vernian Process. The hard part is going to be finding out if their music is any good without spending money on it.

Snerk

Habitat for Humanity New Castle County has announced their 2009 fundraising Christmas tree ornament: Blue Ball Farm. You may now giggle like an adolescent. But not for too long.

Sometimes Complaints Show More about the Complainer

From this article criticizing the M4:

"My weapon was overheating," McKaig said, according to Cubbison's report. "I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half hour or so into the fight. I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down."

360 rounds in 30 minutes through your rifle and your gun became unreliable? Wow I would have never guessed that if you overheat a machine, it becomes unreliable or breaks. Ditto the other soldier who ran 600 rounds through his M249. If you want to avoid overheating, you can change out the barrels on machine guns for a reason.

More telling for me is the opener of the piece:

In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.

If someone is trying multiple types of weapons and none of them work, that isn't a criticism of the weapon. If none of the guns work, the only systematic element they all have in common is the soldiers tasked with maintaining them. And there is no magic rifle design that won't fail without proper maintenance.

This isn't to say that everything is hunky dory with US small arms. The SAW in particular is not a very good gun, something the newer lightweight versions of the weapon only make worse. But the M4 is, by all accounts, a decent weapon.

Hitting the Usual Suspects

Amybear went to a bridal shower today so I was left to my own devices. I was planning on making a trip to Ommelanden, but just as I was getting dressed it started to rain. The doppler map of the area showed that it was going to last a while, so instead I made a survey of the local gun shops.

The result? Miller's has a lightly used Sig P6 for under $400. It was a reasonable piece at a reasonable price. Patriot had a used Heritage Rough Rider with both .22lr and .22 rimfire magnum cylinders. I have a hard time spending big money on a .22 and that seemed like a nice little gun. The also had a Pietta 1858 Navy model converted to .38sp. Great gun except that the bore of a .36 cap and ball is larger than a modern .38 so you can't feed it any old ammo off the shelf.

Patriot is also stocking EAA's Windicator model of .38 and .357 double action revolvers. Good trigger, very nice grips, and all steel so I'm not too concerned about them. They're a lot of gun for under $300 and seem well worth the price.

Twilight

I just finished reading the Twilight books. Pretty good in spots, but not without their faults. The most annoying thing is how emo Bella Swan is in books two and three. She's the first person narrator for 90% of the novels so you can't really get away from her either.

Toys You Can't Buy Anymore

Roman Polanski

He's a pedophile. Stop defending him. While he was taking naked pictures of a thirteen year-old model, he got her drunk with champagne and quaaludes, and then he raped her in every orifice. Around that time he also had a romantic relationship with fifteen year-old Nastassja Kinski. Polanski was in his forties during this time.

Stop justifying it. The excellence of Chinatown or the Pianist or Rosemary's Baby doesn't change anything. His pregnant wife being murdered by the Manson family doesn't excuse it either.

On a related note: Mumia did it. He's a murderer not a damn martyr. Kindly stop trying to free him.

Young Adult Employment Stinks

Instapundit points out that the worst job market right now is the 18 to 24 year-old non-students.

My question: does this have anything to do with the skyrocketing price of unskilled labor thanks to recent minimum wage hikes? Congress enacted a minimum wage increase that took it from $5.15 to $7.25 over the last 3 years. Meanwhile the job market has gone in the toilet. Who gets paid the minimum wage? Kids living with their parents. What a surprise 52% of them are out of work.

The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

So Michael Bloomberg's Mayor's Against Illegal Guns is an ideological front for the Brady Campaign? That's amazing, that's astounding, that's... well not really surprising at all. I wonder if the Joyce Foundation pays any of MAIG's bills for them. That would complete the anti-gun circle of life.

Big Screen Goes Bust

The 42" Philips we picked up about 16 months ago died a couple of weeks back while we were visiting Amy's parents. It's going to cost us $700 to fix. Seven hundred minus... carry the one... ah right that equals time to buy a new TV.

This time around we're going to go with a 40" Samsung, either the 40B530 or the 40B550. I'm leaning towards the 550 just because it has a few extras ports and supports firmware upgrades via USB. We'll probably go with Best Buy because we ended up having Geek Squad look at the Philips when it broke. The 4 year extended service contract through Best Buy costs less than a home visit fee from the repairman without it.

But I have to say that I really hate buying TVs. It seems like none of the stores have decent feeds playing on their TV walls. Best Buy's tape loop is all herky jerky so you can never tell what is going on or accurately pair two TVs. Walmart's feed was so fuzzy I'd have thought it was standard def if the pictures weren't widescreen. What I want is still images with good color depth, slow pans that let me pick up on pixelation, and finally quick motion that repeats at least 3 or 4 times in succession so you can accurately compare motion blur on two different TVs.

UPDATE: We hit Sears and Boscov's before picking up the 40B550 at Best Buy. The feed sears had was awful, but it wasn't exactly their fault. They were showing one of the high def ESPN channels which, unfortunately for them, was currently showing a pro basketball slam dunk competition from the mid '80s. This did not make for good high def viewing. Boscov's was showing a different ESPN channel that actually worked very well. Slow shots of brightly colored uniforms, the occasional quick break for repetitive motion, and wide pans over the venue all made for good comparisons. Unfortunately they didn't carry the TVs we were looking for and didn't have the same repair apparatus to stand behind what they were selling.

Trivial Tidbit

Today's Dangerous Book for Boys calendar trivia item: Lewis Carroll invented the portmanteau "chortle" for his poem Jackerwocky as a combination of chuckle and snort. He also coined the term "portmanteau" for words of this type in Through the Looking Glass.

Teen Birth Rates

A long time ago I did a paper on teen pregnancy rates. One of the things I discovered was that in the 1950s teen pregnancy was huge. Just as huge as it was in the early '90s (which at the time was the most recent data). The rub? In the '50s those teen mothers were 19 and married instead of 16 and not.

I'm betting similar phenomenon is happening in the latest study of teen pregnancy rates in conservative and liberal areas Instapundit has brought up. In particular even if the age of the teenage moms is similar, the effect of abortion between the two is probably going to be very different.

Now They're Community Organizers International

Citizen journalists have demonstrated that ACORN is widely corrupt. So what does ACORN do? Reform itself? Nope. Make blanket statements and then change their name so nobody knows that COI is really ACORN in a different hat.

Will It Kill a Zombie?

Important experimental work to prevent the zombie apocalypse:

A Fresh Eye on WWII

The Russians have some sort of internet archive storing military memoirs from the Great Patriotic War. Some are even translated into English. Good stuff. The aforelinked tanker drove a US supplied Sherman throughout the war. He liked it a lot better than the British tanks and even the T-34, but hated the Tommyguns that were issued with them.

Via Tam.

ACORN

The Senate has voted to defund ACORN by 83-7. Call your Senators and thank them, unless you live in VT or IL. Suggest they vote to defend a lot of federal bullshit spending.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns

While it sounds relatively harmless, Mayors Against Illegal Guns is an anti-gun group founded by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Because it sounds like group against obvious bad thing, there is evidence that some of the current members don't really know or understand what agenda is being driven. Recent efforts by the blogosphere, pro-gun groups, and the NRA have been making them aware. Several mayors, especially from conservative districts, have left the group.

The mayors of Dover, Newark, and Wilmington are all members. I recently received an NRA flier about Vance Funk. Which would be great if I actually lived within the Newark city limits, but I don't. Perhaps I'll send the letter anyway and hope that he doesn't notice.

Recipes

Amy is paging through a Betty Crocker Microwave Cookbook. One recipe suggests microwaving a pork shoulder in several stages that total over 40 minutes. Look, if you're cooking something in microwave for the better part of an hour, you picked the wrong appliance.

Disney Buys Marvel

For $30 and 0.745 shares of Disney per Marvel share. Speculation abounds about what effects this will have on the Marvel Universe. I'm guessing it really won't have much of an effect on the comics, but will probably change how Marvel Studios and Marvel's merchanising system will work.

The real question is: now that Howard the Duck and Donald Duck are under the same corporate banner, are they still going to make Howard wear pants?

The Reset Button

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again.

Amen to that sentiment assessed by Rasmussen.

I think there should be an official "vote the bums out" mechanism for Congress. One that doesn't involve pitchforks, torches, and rifles. It could go something like this: when invoked by popular vote, all sitting members of congress at the time of the referendum would be forbidden to run for re-election. The House would turn over upon the next election. The Senate would turn over completely in 3 Congressional election cycles. Anyone effected would be barred from federal office for at least 6 to 10 years. They cannot run or be appointed to elected federal office. They would also be forbidden from being appointed to any unelected office that requires congressional approval. It would essentially be a 6-10 year ostracism from federal office. I think we need one of those.

Via Alphecca.

Ted's Dead Baby, Ted's Dead

Ted Kennedy has died. Expect conflicting eulogies that portray him as the last in a line of true American aristocrats or as a foul-smelling drunkard. I'm not sure how Massachusetts intends to handle replacing him in the Senate, but we can expect another Democrat. Kennedy wanted his current wife to hold his seat. Unfortunately whomever his replacement is, they will probably be in good enough health to actually show up and help break any filibuster attempts by the Republicans.

Looking Forward to Rosh Hashanah

It seems that the Whitehouse is Jewish community organizing for the high holy days this year. The marching orders have gone out and this year's sermons are to be on the moral urgency of adopting universal health care. Great.

Amy and I go down to her parents' house for services during one of the holy days every year. When we can swing it, it's Rosh Hashanah instead of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur involves fasting which Amy hates and I mildly dislike. But this is important to her parents so we go and I like Amy's parents. Their synagogue and rabbi? Not so much.

Amy's family's head rabbi gave a sermon on the high holy days in 2004 which I can summarize as "George Bush is evil - Vote Kerry." I find her sermons unenlightening generally. This isn't a Christian/Jew thing. I mean the sermon she preached on matzoh balls missed me culturally, but that isn't her fault. It's mostly a liberal theology thing for me. When any kind of religious instructor preaches a sermon like "Abraham would have been morally right to tell God to go to hell instead of offering up Isaac," I just can't grasp where they are coming from theologically. Actually I can, but I have absolutely no respect for it.

I have no doubt that this year's sermon will focus on the moral imperative that we fold, spindle, and mutilate the Commerce Clause even further to justify more federally run health care. It's for the children. Or not because they already have S-CHIP. The elderly? Medicare. The disabled? Early Medicaid. Hmm... Lazy people who consistently vote Democrat? Is there a program for them yet? Well there soon will be.

Cheap Shooting

I like cowboy guns. I'd love to pick up a .45 colt single action revolver with a .45 acp conversion cylinder one of these days. I don't reload, so the .45 acp conversion is almost mandatory as .45 colt is cost prohibitive.

Another option are these .22 lr chamber inserts for .45 colt revolvers (or similar ones for .45 acp). I had initially dismissed them because I couldn't understand how they would be accurate. Without a barrel to stabilize them, the .22lr bullet will just bounce down a .45 caliber barrel and wind up flying any which way. Turns out a portion of the insert is rifled so it acts as barrel and chamber in one. The actual pistol barrel would act like a giant flash hider. I'm still not sure I'd buy a set, but they no longer seem like a complete waste of money.

Back Together Again

I finally finished fitting the arched mainspring housing for my 1911 yesterday. I did a cold reblue last night to clean up the shiny spots on the housing. Everything went back together smoothly this morning. Everything works, or as near as I can tell without taking it to the range. I'd rather not have learned how to detail strip the receiver of a 1911 the hard way though.

I'd still like to change the sights, but after taking over a month to get the gun back into working condition, I'm in no hurry to take it out of action again.

As You Get Older

I had an interesting conversation with some coworkers while coming back from lunch a few days ago. We all noticed that while our parents are not technically illiterate, they don't necessarily grasp the latest technologies. Most of our parents had a lot of trouble with e-mail for instance. We wondered what technology we wouldn't be able to grasp when our as yet unborn children get to be our ages.

• Jeez dad, why do you keep using these old mp3 players? Don't you know everything's on audio crystals now?


• I know. My dad is still listening to music with his ears. I keep telling him he can get it piped straight into his audio center in higher fidelity now. Especially with his hearing.


• Well he probably refuses to mindjack onto the connected global consciousness anyway.


• Yeah, my parents will only get on using a hardline. I keep telling them that the info cloud is subspace accessible now, but the idea of instantaneous high bandwidth connectivity inside their heads freaks them out. They still make me talk to them with words! It takes me forever to tell them anything! Like whole minutes even!

We know it's going to happen, we just don't know when or what with.

Banana Bread

French toast was created as a very tasty way to get rid of stale bread. I've mentioned that banana bread is the fruit equivalent. It is where the overripe bananas wind up at my house. We recently discovered that bananas for bread freeze very well too. They retain their flavor and while the ice crystals make bananas really mushy, that's an advantage when you're going to recycle them into bread.

We've been trying different recipes lately. I started with one Amy's mother gave us. It uses bisquick and sour cream. I was very tasty, but I don't generally keep either of those ingredients around the house. Plus the sour cream gives Amy trouble. Then Amy suggested a healthy recipe from Hungry Girl. It didn't rise well and sat like a sweet banana brick at the bottom of my load pan. It wasn't bad and we still ate it, but we're not trying that one again. We tried this one from Cooks.com this week:

3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. salt
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3 ripe bananas
Bread pan

In medium size bowl mix first three ingredients. Add flour and baking soda, mix well. Add bananas crushed with fork. Mix well. Grease bread pan and put mixture in pan. Bake 1 hour in 325 degree oven.

We use pam instead of grease and eggbeaters instead of eggs, but the recipe still worked very well. Its simple and tasty and isn't giving my wife stomach problems. I think I'll stick with it.

The Blackberry Ambiguity

A coworker asked if me whether I liked blackberries. I replied no, thinking that she meant the ever-present smart-phone that the Army issues to middle management and up. One of the things that keeps me from working too hard here is the prospect of being issued my own cyberleash.

Nope. Turns out she has bushes in her back yard. Her berries are quite yummy with a nice tart juiciness. My parents had Blackberries in the backyard when I was little and I remember enjoying them a lot. I'd plant a bush of my own, but whenever I think about picking them it sends me into Age of Empires flashbacks.

American Chopper Meets Antiques Roadshow

Amy and I caught Pawn Stars last night on the History Channel. It's a reality show set at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas. The post title says it all. Amy liked seeing people bringing in their antiques and I liked the interplay between the family members that kept the show interesting. I wouldn't mind catching it again.

Tiny Terror

My Eee 1005 arrived on Monday and I've been slowly whipping it into shape. On Monday I charged it and installed a real web browser. Tuesday took me to the Army website to download our anti-virus and security suite. On Wednesday, I installed my Army copy of MS Office and worked on getting my browser bookmarks sorted. I'll probably just apply all of Office&'s patches tonight and transfer more files over from my desktop.

I really like this netbook a lot. It's smaller and lighter than my churchgoing bible. The screen is clear and bright, even before the BIOS upgrade gave me a larger range of adjustment. The keyboard still works. The touchpad is good although multitouch commands were easy to accidentally activate. The battery life is immense, especially since Asus lets you play with the clock speed from the system tray. I hooked it up to charge last night more out of guilty than necessity. Installing software from CD/DVD requires an intermediate step because the netbook doesn't have an optical drive. I could buy an external USB unit of course, but my ipod works perfectly for sneaker-netting things over. What they say about the glossy finish picking up fingerprints is true as well.. So far so good though.

Solar Irradiance and Climate Change

The New York Times has an article on the dearth of sun spots this year which also mentions the improbability of their relationship to the cool summer we're having:

The idea that solar cycles are related to climate is hard to fit with the actual change in energy output from the sun. From solar maximum to solar minimum, the Sun's energy output drops a minuscule 0.1 percent.

Most people reading this probably haven't had college and graduate level thermodynamics or heat transfer. Allow me to explain the fundamentals. You do not do heat transfer or thermo in Fahrenheit or Celsius. You perform the calculations in Rankine or Kelvin respectively. These are just the former scales adjusted to zero at absolute zero. With convection and conduction, you can cheat because the temperature terms are linear and so the conversion cancels itself out. With radiative heating you can't take that shortcut because radiation is proportional to the temperature difference to the fourth power.

Why does this matter? It matters because room temperature on earth is around 300 K or 530 R. A 0.1% change in irradiance would produce a temperature shift of ~0.3 C or ~0.5 F. Global warming is credited with temperature shifts anywhere from there up to about a degree Celsius. While small, a simple back of the envelope calculation should show that that change in irradiance is nowhere near negligible in relation to the phenomenon being studied.

Update: Fixed the formatting left over from mailing it in. Did it on the new toy. Liking it so far, especially now that I have Firefox installed.

40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

In celebration, I give you Buzz Aldrin punching Bart Sibrel in the face:



Sibrel is one of the most prominent moon landing deniers. At the time Buzz was 72 and Sibrel was not. Go Buzz.

Getting Your Manga Fix

I've been reading a lot of manga online lately. I initially got caught up on Naruto at OneManga after my wife started talking about their iPhone manga app. It's a good site and most of the content seems to be fan translations, which is nice because I have no problem reading something on the internet that I can't get in the US. Spectrum Nexus and Manga Fox are similar but at least some of their content seems to be direct scans of US translations. Not sure if they're fan subs or not. Spectrum Nexus also has some flash vids of unlicensed anime like Blade of the Immortal.

New Toys

Being the spender in the family, I've had an itch to buy something extravagant for a while now.

I looked at some swords. The French 1829 artillery saber is a beautiful weapon. The US patterned the 1840 artillery saber (not the NCO sword of the same year) after it. Unfortunately the only company making a replica is Deepeeka, so even at $75 it probably isn't a bargain. The alternative is something like the Musashi Bamboo Katana which is a bargain. It's so nice I actually gave my brother one its sister swords as a Christmas present.

I also looked at guns. A bunch of the online parts shops have gotten .45 acp cylinders in stock for the Uberti-made single action revolvers. That's important because .45 colt costs a fortune to shoot unless you reload. CDNN is selling the Beretta Stampede for a song. The Stampede is also made by Uberti but has a modern transfer bar safety so it's harder to shoot yourself with it. I like not shooting myself. But even after a Virginian in cowboy gear actually broke up a convenience story robbery with a Peacemaker over the weekend, I just can't justify spending hundreds of dollars for a gun I probably won't shoot that much. Especially since I'd have to buy a cowboy hat and a proper holster rig once I bought it.

Instead I spent my money on a netbook: the Asus 1005HA-P. I tried the cheapest version of this model at Best Buy and was shocked that I could actually touch type on the keyboard. It's a great little machine, but the Best Buy version is pretty badly neutered. I bought the top end version on Amazon along with additional memory. Now when work sends me on travel, which it has been threatening to do regularly lately, I'll have a computer to take with me. It should come in handy.

Something About Maria

Amy loves BBC America. Right now we're watching "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" a reality show trying to cast the lead in the Sound of Music. Sometimes it's unintentionally funny. For instance they regularly comment on one contestant's Romanian accent. They mention that she was really good as Evita, but that was something of an accent part. Where do they think Maria von Trapp is from? She certainly wasn't born in Surrey like Julie Andrews.

This Just In...

Michael Jackson is still dead. Should he turn out to be undead, please act accordingly.

The Rule of Law in Honduras

Michael Wade at QandO discusses the current situation in Honduras with citations from the Honduran Constitution to back up the governments actions. The constitution has very strong protections on presidential term limits. Trying to remove them results in immediate loss of office. Lobbying for removal by private citizens results in loss of civil liberties. In short, people stating that his is some sort of extra-legal coup on the part of the Honduran military, courts, and congress don't have a leg to stand on.

The Truth About Grad School

PhD Comics current series on the dramatization of science is damn near perfect. It starts here and is currently ongoing.

Whenever I see someone doing research on TV, either in a movie or often in a documentary, they're sitting in shiny modernist offices or laboratories full of gleaming chrome and fluorescent lighting. In my experience the fluorescent lighting is about all they get right. My lab in college was largely held together by epoxy and duct tape. Anything metal was probably the worse for wear and the windows hadn't been cleaned. Ever. The greatest part is the repurposed lab equipment and old experimental gear which almost never clutters the corners of movie shots. At one point my lab was using an optical table as a desk. This was a precisely drilled and mounted slab of steel that weighed and cost more than an SUV. It's so heavy and unwieldy that after the experiments using it were completed eons ago, nobody had the desire to move it. The lab just grew up around it. It's probably still an incredibly expensive workdesk in Spencer Lab to this day.

The comic about making the graduate student wear a labcoat and look important? False. The only time I ever saw a professor in the lab was when photos were being taken. At which point they were the ones dressed up and looking official while making intelligent looking adjustments to the coolest piece of equipment in the lab.

But the bit about not being able to explain your research is true and classic. I worked on composite manufacturing using RTM, VARTM, and SCRIMP. Just Google them. Most of my work was modeling fluid flow through porous media using Darcy's Law. I tried explaining this to Amy once. About all she got was "you suck glue through tiny tubes." Yes, yes, that's what I do alright.

Sam Colt Made Them Equal

An international feminist group is advocating for disarmament in order to protect women.

Look, here's the deal. Men are bigger than women. Even when we're the same weight, men are stronger because women have more body fat and higher skeletal mass. Even when all things are equal, women are at a distinct disadvantage in a fight. And things are rarely equal if an attacker can help it.

How do you level the playing field? Give women a weapon that doesn't rely on physical size or strength. Something that cashes in on women's excellent fine motor skills. I don't know, maybe we could power it with small cartridges of powerful chemicals instead of a person's arm or leg strength. Make it ranged so the man's extra reach won't matter so much. Hey that sounds great! Where could we get such a device?

Guns have historically been great equalizers. The hand cannon leveled the social classes, it gave the peasant the ability to bring down the rich noble in his suit of armor. When you're talking about violence between men and women, they can do the same thing there as well. Which is why I take my female friends out to the range whenever they ask.

Oh and not everything those women want is stupid. I have no problem with making it hard for violent sex offenders to get guns. But a lot of their advocacy seems to be dedicated to the sort of gun buy back programs that the left loves, but which really don't work.

Headlights

I just replaced my driver's side headlight again. I've changed it 3 times now. The passenger side is still factory original. Every time the bulb has blown, I've used a standard Sylvania replacement from Walmart or an auto-parts store. I think I've figured out what false economy feels like now.

Famous Last Words

While not quite General John Sedgwick's "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance," SaysUncle points out that "What are you going to do?" certainly ought to make the list.

Fitness for on the Cheap

For those of you who have already tossed out your WiiFits, Instapundit linked to a site that all about working out on the cheap.

Life Sized Gundam

In construction. Now finished. How the first link classified the Gundam as "green," I'll never know. Maybe they made it out of recycled Sapporo cans.

David Eddings Dies

He was 77. Eddings' wife and coauthor Leigh died in 2007. Chris Byrne was also a fan.

Lego Aircraft Carrier

Just Awesome. My inner ten-year old thinks that is the coolest thing evar.

Via Tam.

Playing Catchup

Well I'm still alive. The month of May was pretty crazy for me. I spent two of my four work-weeks in either training or a symposium (more on that later). My workload was much heavier than usual and I only had half as much time finish them. So I dug deep and finished everything by their suspense dates. And now June is here and it looks like I might be able to catch my breath at work and have energy left when I get home to write something for everyone here.

Hopefully you'll see more blogging here in the coming days. Some of it might actually be on current topics as a clean out my queue of old posts I never quite had time to finish.

The New Trek

Saw it last night while Amy was in class. Good and very pretty, but it has a pretty bad case of the stupids in spots.

A few examples? The villian's ship has a bad case of flame factory. The interior has huge open spaces and lots of platforms with no railings that forebode future plummeting. The Enterprise wasn't any better. Several scenes in the engineering spaces made me wonder when Scotty was going to have to work his way through the Chompers. And Jim Kirk went from being a bad ass to being the galaxy's punching bag. I don't think he wins a fight in the whole movie. And when did Chekov become competent?

I felt similar to when I first watched Deadwood. Deadwood was every cliched Western I'd ever seen, but with more dirt, profanity, and general immorality of screen. Star Trek was every sci-fi cliche I'd ever seen, but shined up until everything glowed.

But boy was it pretty.

Not Stimulated Enough

I had my meeting to price out a new central air unit. It's going to hurt, but I'm going to do it anyway. The new unit will be 40% more efficient and will be probably be under parts and labor warranty for as long as I'm likely to own this house. It will also have humidity control which the current unit lacks and, in my mind, is practically mandatory for any sort of forced air unit.

Oh and the tax breaks and stimulus money? Yeah he told me not to expect any. In order to qualify for federal dollars I'd need an insane SERE rating. State money is limited by funded and the money is almost always spent by now. About all I can expect is a tax deduction come next April.

Color Me Stimulated

Whether you like it or not...

My AC went out this weekend. The local service people came by to check it out today. It's screwed. The cooling coil in my house's forced air loop has a leak. That means it's shot and will need to be replaced to the tune of $900 just for parts. I'm looking at two grand with install, recharging the now empty system with R22, servicing everything that needs it, etc. Ouch.

It's enough money that the service guys suggested pricing out a completely new unit. Why a new unit? Because the government is phasing out R22 due to environmental concerns. This process starts in January. The refrigerant replacing it in most applications (like household air conditioners) is R410a. Except that R410a is not backwards compatible with R22 equipment. If I'm lucky I'll be able to keep the lines that run between the two halves of my split unit. But the compressor and air handler are not compatible and would have to go. I'll find out what that would cost on Friday. That sounds like it's going to be a great way to spend my Friday off.

Not that any of this can really be laid at Obama's feet. I'm fairly sure the changeover is tied to agreements signed in the 1980s and was decided on at least two years ago. But I still want to gripe.

The Great Books

Physics Geek Jesus Freak mentioned Bill Bennett's list of books every high school student should read before graduation. He mentions that the Great Gatsby, which I haven't read, is overrated. Ditto Catcher in the Rye. Never read Gatsby, but I have to second him on Catcher. Holden Caulfield whines through 100 pages, the end.

The list reminds me that I still need to read 1984. We never covered it in school for some odd reason. When I had the chance to pick it up on my own, I read A Brave New World instead. It was the 90s. I thought that controlling people through their excesses was a far more timely topic than socialist totalitarian rule. But the world has kept turning and I find that I have to rectify the missing bits of my education.

Ammo Prices

Tam gives a thorough explanation of why ammo costs so much right now and why prices will have to come down eventually. I'm shooting a lot of .22 right now because of this. I have at least 4000 rounds of it left in the case I bought so I should be good for a while. On the other hand the last time I bought 5.56, I paid $13 for 20 rounds. Compare that to $6 per box when I built my AR a few years ago.

She also makes the point that if you're carrying a semi-automatic handgun, you ought to carry a spare magazine. It doesn't matter if the pistol mag carries a million rounds. You aren't carrying the extra mag for the capacity, you're carrying it as a reliability measure. If the magazine isn't the heart of the pistol, it's at least its stomach. If your one mag goes bad, then you have a very expensive and cumbersome breach-loader. Even if you can thumb a round into the chamber, that's a great way to break an extractor hook on some pistol models. Then you'll have a gun that can't feed or extract and you're doubly screwed. Carry a spare mag. It's cheap, it's easy, and it could save your life.

Oh, and how about that Ninth Circus? Broken clocks and all.

Tax Day Tea Party

A number of Tea Parties are being held today even in the tiny state of Delaware. The one of most interest to me will be at the Shipyard Shops in Wilmington from 4:30 to 6pm. I don't think I'll actually be able to get there because it's too early and too far away from work, but good luck to anyone who can.

West Pointers Make a Good Impression

Amy and I caught this part of the ACM awards and were impressed:



Thanks to the reminder on Chris Byrne's site, I just picked up the audio and video off of iTunes. Might as well put that gift card to good use and the proceeds go directly to the Wounded Warrior Fund.

Very Fitting

I just heard that the last book of Jordan's Wheel of Time will be so large, they're going to split it up into 3 separate volumes. That's a fitting tribute to both the Wheel of Time's incredible length and Jordan's long-winded and repetitive writing style.

More likely though it's just proof that most of the books in the middle of the series (the entire drought/weather arc) should have been greatly abbreviated. He could have gotten on with it and still had plenty of pages left for the endgame.

These Colors Don't Run

Or even walk much. Hilarious. But wait, there's more.

I'm somewhat active in the gun rights and self-defense communities. I'm not a competitive shooter or instructor, but I'm at least aware of what is going on. It always amazes me when self-proclaimed serious self-defense enthusiasts are fifty or more pounds overweight. Some of them smoke like chimneys. Now I'm no pro athlete, but I try to keep myself somewhat healthy. Why? Because the first skill you want to have down for self defense is running away. Hotfoot your ass out of trouble. I can do that. My knees will be sore the next day, but the alternative is even less appealing.

Movement is the foundation of any serious self-defense system, both in defense and attack. You need to be able to get yourself physically away from trouble if you find yourself outmatched. You need to move explosively to properly employ cover and limit exposure in offense or defense. This is important. Plan your self defense training around it.

Self-defense is not about owning or carrying a weapon. The biggest part is mindset. Looking for threats and react to them before they get to you. Train so that you can properly use your defensive tools. Maintain basic physical health so you can handle the stress you will be under in these situations. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all of these down, but that doesn't make any of them less important.

Google Chrome

My home computer is an old HP celeron box I bought fiveish years ago when my Dell laptop died its last death. Lately browsing on this machine has been horribly slow. Especially with multiple tabs open and extra-specially if any sort of flash is involved. I was handling this by blocking flash ads and praying a lot when queueing multiple YouTube feeds at the same time. Eventually the whole computer grinds to a halt and the only thing I can do is kill the browser and start over.

I've recently come to realize it's not completely my computer's fault. For whatever reason, Firefox 3.0 is just really slow and seems to develop memory leaks over time. So I installed Google Chrome this morning. It is noticeably faster now but it's a little early to say how it will hold up after extended browsing. Especially when flash will eat up processor cycles on any machine and there isn't a flash-blocker plugin for Chrome.

I definitely wish I had Firefox's skinning option though. Chrome puts its tabs on the title bar above the address and tool bars. I suppose this is an efficient use of screen space. Perhaps it has the Mac throw-the-mouse-at-the-top-of-the-screen logic as well. But it seems clunky to me. I'd much rather have my tabs near the display window where every other browser puts them.

Hope These Aren't Horribly Broken in 4th Ed

D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium

GM and Rising Dread

Obama has now pressured CEO Rick Wagonner to step down. The president will presumeably appoint or at least suggest someone else to take his place. Because of course Obama's appointments have really been the strong core of his new administration.

Birthday Presents from Midway USA

Hey, the order I placed in November just shipped! I'll soon have AR mags, an extra mag for my hipower, and a red-dot for my M1. Everything was very back ordered.

Makes me really wonder whether I want to risk ordering a gun belt and mag pouches from them, but if they have them in stock it should be ok.

A Trip to the Left Coast

I spent most of last week in California. I was at a meeting in the middle of the Mohave desert but flew in and out of the Los Angeles area. It was my first trip out to Southern California and honestly, it could be my last for all I care.

I flew into the LA valley where the scenery is two kinds of heartbreaking. The city is full of idiots who get to routinely enjoy the obscene beautiful landscapes. The mountains seem to spring up and tower effortlessly over the urban plain. But on a bad day, you can barely see the mountains through the smog. Coming back into the valley through one of the mountain passes at the end of the trip, I could see the air change color as I approached the valley and things only got worse as I descended into it. I've often heard jokes about the air in LA being yellow. It's true. On the day I left, looking up at the sky made me feel like I was standing at the bottom of a used urinal. The city's general level of cleanliness didn't help matters.

The high desert was better. Cool crisp nights gave way to dry warm days with a pleasant but constant wind. The drive back and forth was over an hour of rocky hills, blooming desert, tiny towns, and power lines stretching back to the hungry Los Angeles Megalopolis. On the trip out it occurred to me that if the car died, I'd be over a day's walk from anyone that would care. I bought a small case of bottled water for the trip back. When my coworker asked me about it, I pointed out that our tiny Yaris had been requesting an oil change since we pulled off the rental lot.

I can't help but wonder if LA doesn't heavily shape media perception of the US as the center of the entertainment industry. The land is beautiful but polluted. Crime is rampant. There is a sharp division between rich and poor. It's poor are very poor and trying to make do however they can. It's most prominent upper class are famous people who make undeserved millions for being professionally photogenic. Isn't that media portrayal of American?

Oh and I hate LAX. Typical of older busy airports, it hasn't adapted well to the heightened security requirements of the post-9/11 era. The security lines were so long that my coworker returned the rental car at a different site, hopped the rental shuttle, went through the faster frequent flier line, and sat at the gate for almost a half hour before I got there. It was also the only time I've had the TSA get surly with me.

And no I didn't see anybody famous there.

Free as in Beer and Speech

Geek with a .45 makes an important point in this current post. I often hear the planned economy folks talking about the horrible perils of the free market. They have a point. The market is not an all-knowing, all-seeing hive mind. At best it represents the collected wisdom from a huge number of professionals. At worst, market movements are based on total SWAGs or groupthink reinforced by peer pressure and investor dollars. But the important thing to remember is that the free market is fundamentally free.

The free market is the result of allowing people to spend their money how they choose and with whom they choose. They get to use their insight and their money how they see fit and with whom they see fit. This is their fundamental right as free individuals. The more you infringe on this process, the more you must infringe on the fundamental rights of property and association.

Now some of these infringements are good ideas. I don't mind financial professionals having to be regulated and licensed to handle other people's money any more than I mind engineers having to be licensed to design a bridge other people will drive across. Ditto independent auditing requirements. But ultimately these laws reinforce the market by insuring the trustworthiness of free market agents. This is a good thing.

Still, I'm wary of those touting ideas like planned economies. Because they're ultimately about removing free choice from a group of people, in favor of something else. Often that something else defaults to decisions by a bunch of political appointees who could never get anywhere in the free market. And if the free market continues to be a nuisance to these people, soon that group denied free choice will grow include you and me.

Markets are ugly and they're messy. They're fallible and they can be manipulated. They can definitely use some level of regulation just to maintain trust and honestly. But they're free and that, in and of itself, is worth something.

Dark Comedy for the Day

In honor of the President's gallows humor on 60 minutes:

Q: Why did the Founding Fathers create the Federal Government with three branches?

A: Because a three ring circus is far more fun.

The Wisdom of Proverbs

My son, keep your father's commands
and do not forsake your mother's teaching.

Bind them upon your heart forever;
fasten them around your neck.

When you walk, they will guide you;
when you sleep, they will watch over you;
when you awake, they will speak to you.

Tam has related economy snark. I remember doing a study in Proverbs several years ago in Singles Group. Proverbs isn't a book of continuous prose, it is a book of often repeated and restated maxims. People who don't listen to their parents (or the words of the wise) and then coming to ruin is one of the major threads running through the entire book.

My pastor went on to lament about his own generation, the Baby Boomers. He pointed out, quite correctly, that the common formative thread of his generation is "don't trust anyone over 30". Your parents are idiots. Don't listen to them. This explains why their parents are "the Greatest Generation" and their kids are not.

Mexican Gun Running

While the feds keep making outrageous claims about Mexicans running guns from the US to drug cartels across the border, current events are showing something different:

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico's drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Why would you spend a lot of time jumping through legal hoops in Texas in order to get a semi-automatic assault weapon, when I can go to a Latin American banana republic and buy them in bulk from a corrupt supply sergeant or captain or general?

Via Smallest Minority

Watching the Watchmen

I caught the 7:30 show at People's yesterday along with about 15 other moviegoers. Good but not great. Thoughts?

• Malin Akerman doesn't quite pull off Laurie. In some places she's ok, but none of the scenes Laurie has with her mother work. Maybe she's too wooden (although it could easily go too far the other way), maybe the direction sucked, maybe it's because Carla Gugino is so obviously 30 something in lots of makeup.


• Ozymandius is turned into an obvious villain and wasn't cast properly. The actor playing him is too scrawny for an olympic gymnast and you don't get a feeling of depth or intelligence. He's not even dressed properly. Instead of being in the comic's regal purples and golds, he's in more sinister navy blue and silver.


• Very ham-handed direction in parts. The comic very skillfully and tastefully cuts around nudity and graphic violence. The movie revels in them. Ditto major plot points like Laurie father.


• The script could be more streamlined, especially since Hollis Mason's role is so pared down in the theatrical release he might as well not be there. Nixon's role was also mostly unnecessary and horribly done.


• Nite Owl, Rorschach, the Comedian, and Dr. Manhattan are all executed near perfectly. Matt Frewer makes a good Moloch and Danny Woodburn (whom I fondly remember as Carl the Gnome) goes a good job as Big Figure.


• I like the new plot climax. The comic's plot climax was it's weakest part, the new one is simpler and in almost all ways better. Falling action was mediocre though.

I realize that my list is mostly criticisms, but honestly those four good character executions absolve a multitude of sins. I have a similar feeling to what I experienced after the Lord of the Rings films. I don't regret seeing it in the theater and I don't think most people will either.

UPDATE: People are saying that the opening credit sequence is great, but what do you think?



Just kidding.

But HK Says Its Good

The Norwegians are having trouble with the ultra-reliable HK416.

I'm not sure if I've pointed it out here, but nothing in the HK416 is revolutionary. Colt has developed and testing all these changes as planned product improvements for the M16/M4 series of weapons. The government didn't adopt the changes then because they didn't bear fruit. Now HK is trying to sell this stuff as the 416, largely by buying articles in Army Times. No thank you.

A Neon Demon on Wheels

Netflix brought us the Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer movie this weekend. Despite the bad mouthing it took in the press, we both really enjoyed it. They capture the feel of the classic show perfectly. But you aren't going to get depth of plot here. Why would you expect that with a Speed Racer movie?

I could give you a brief plot overview, but it's Speed Racer. Speed drives fast cars through multiple exotic and completely made-up countries as he tries to win the Grand Prix. Every race is fixed against him, but Speed has his friends like Racer X and his family on his side. And an awesome bulletproof car with buzz saws.

What you're going to get is action oriented racing scenes turned up to eleven. Most of the tracks and rally scenes look like they're taken straight out of a racing video game. But it's an alternative future/present/whatever. Every car has the Mach 5's jump jacks and if you ain't bumping, you ain't racing. Actually most of the racing scenes are more like boxing or wrestling than bumping. Cars are frequently destroyed in candy-colored pixie-stick explosions with the pilots being thrown clear in their gumball safety gear. Or brightly colored parachutes if they fall into a deep icy crevasse. Good stuff.

There are decent bare-knuckle fight scenes. With ninjas! Or cigar-chomping mobsters! And a monkey! That's hitting all the bases right there.

There are the obligatory scenes where Spritle and Chim-Chim stow away in various places. Unlike on TV, they are generally useful. They're either exposition and foreshadowing or acting as an important diversion that actually helps the Racers out. Good. Nothing like having to be constantly saving your grubby little brother and his monkey for no good reason.

Anyway, great movie. About my only complaint is that some of the characters curse. Rent it and be a kid again. But still best not to think too much.

The Urban Ghillie Suit

Well I guess this might work in a third grade classroom...


Sorta looks like a construction paper version of Madame Trashheap or Cousin It to me.

Oil Prices

Well this article goes a long way to explaining why oil is below $40/barrel and yet regular unleaded is still running $1.80 at the pumps. The answer? Oil companies and speculators are paying people to sit on it supply, mostly by paying tankers to sit on what's in their holds.

Now I can't be too pissed off about this. Because of plummeting prices the companies were drawing down crude inventories at an accelerated rate earlier this year. That (and stupid laws designed to curb "price gouging") caused shortages across the south last hurricane season. Now that the prices have bottomed, they ought to replenish those stocks as fast as possible. But I'd like those cheap prices to trickle down to me at some point. More importantly, they were running record profits for quite a while there, so it would be nice if the oil companies were willing to accept less when that's the cards they've been dealt.

Done with Blogrolling

Well the new service is up. It's also worthless. Not only does it automatically serve up embedded ads which reduce the usefulness of the service, but the whole thing is horribly slow. No thanks.

I've discovered that Blogger has a widget that lets me do the same thing. All I have to do is update my site from 1.0 templates to 2.0 layouts. Looks like I'll have to front burner that effort.

AIG Bailout to the Nth Power

When I turned on the news this morning, I heard that AIG is receiving even more money from the US Government. Uncle Sam now owns a substantial portion of the business. Why do they keep receiving government funds? Could be a lot of reasons I suppose, but the big one has to do with AIG handling insurance for the US congressional pension program. That's an interesting factoid, isn't it?

By the way, why does Congress still have an old school pension system when the rest of the US government was phased over to 401k style Thrift Spending Accounts when the Federal Employee Retirement System went live over two decades ago? Why does Congress have a retirement system at all?