A new lens

I readily admit that I view everything through ideological lenses. Some lenses wash out too much contrast, keeping me from seeing a difference that I either do not notice, or write off as a meaningless or even false distinction. After I begin missing too much, reality taps me on the shoulder and suggests that I try new lenses. It is not an option to remove the lenses entirely. No lenses, no filter, too much glare pours in.

Libertarianism has been my most trusted lens for perhaps fifteen years now. The prescription has needed adjustment from time to time, and now it seems that I need to do close-up work with one scrip, driving with another, so to speak. But it has done well for me, I haven't driven over a cliff or failed to heed a product's warnings or nutritional tables. The lens of libertarianism rarely leaves me feeling as if a large part of the real world is escaping my notice, nor that it shows me things that others dismiss as hallucination. It has withstood the tests of these 15 years. But it alone will not show me everything I need to see. I'm always open for others.

Im pleased to report that I've just found a new, very interesting lens and have not yet finished trying a pair and navigating with them. RKBA readers, stay with me, this isn't some maudlin fatherhood post. Gun content below.

William Strauss and Neil Howe's Generations. Hat tip to Jay Manifold writing at ChicagoBoyz.

I'm cheating by reading the closing chapter. It slices, it dices, it prognosticates:

• p. 403: "Boomers will force a dramatic turn in the politics of Social Security. In the 2010s, they will lay the terms for an entirely new intergenerational 'deal,' snapping the chain of ever-rising benefits that G.I.s insisted would never end." Yup, that's me.
  
• p. 405: "Unlike their G.I. fathers, Boomers will have little interest in a continued U.S.-Soviet rivalry." Written in 1991, dawgs.
  
• p. 406: "Great peril might arise if Boomers find themselves confronting old religious fundamentalists whose inner zeal matches their own." Are they talking about religious fundamentalists in the US, or elsewhere? On one side of the political fence, I see the hostility to domestic fundies, but a curious moral-relativistic baring of the nether cheeks to the foreign ones. On the other side of that fence, our Boomer President surrounded by Boomer and Silent staffers, unable to articulate in harmony exactly why the foreign fundamentalists are so bad and we must kill them. Is it a war against Terror, or a war against Islam, or against Islamic fundamentalism, or against a metastasizing Arabic imperialism concealing itself in Islamic fundamentalism? This has implications for how we fight them (and yes we must), so we better get all that cleared up and sing from one page of music, y'all.
  
  
• p. 407: "Make no mistake: Faced with crisis, this generation of onetime draft resisters will not hesitate, as elder warrior-priests, to conscript young soldiers to fight and die for righteous purpose." From where I sit, conscription is a non-starter. Only a minority of Boomers is calling for it, and many more Boomers are shouting it down.
  
  
• "It is easy to picture aging Boomers as noble, self-sacrificing patriarchs---but just as easy to see these righteous Old Aquarians as the worst nightmare that could ever happen to the world." Who floated the conjecture of torturing captured Al Qaeda members?
  
  
• p. 400: "A Boomer jury will resist making the community pick up the tab where it deems an individual to be at fault." Would be just if the evil-gun-marketing lawsuits would dry up and blow away. Real soon.
  

But this lens is not without its, er, chromatic aberrations. Some of what the lens tells me I will see, I don't believe. I'll give it time to prove itself, as all prognostications require:

• p. 399: "Like all Idealist generations entering midlife, Boomers will mount a relentless attack on all forms of subsance abuse. They will strike blow after blow against tobacco---taxing, restricting, and humiliating anyone involved in its production and use. The alcohol industry can expect its sternest challenge since Prohibition. The firearms industry will fare better thanks to the fact that the Boom will not dislike violence per se, just meaningless (read: '13er') violence." Emphasis in original. I can see the treatment of tobacco and ecstasy, but not alcohol. And bad evil guns? Pleeease.
  
• p. 398: "Boomer-run corporations will keep relentless focus on the 'bottom line'---not just profits, but principles about what companies should mean to their owners, employees, customers, and neighbors. . . Even well-performing companies will downsize staffs, defer dividends, or shift marketing strategies to achieve values-related goals." All of the values-based investing I've heard about has dried up, blown away, and been rolled over to, uh, tobacco.
  

Most important to me as I examine this nifty new lens, is how the writers who crafted it appear to have no political axe to grind. Had they sounded even slightly lefty or righty, I would have dismissed this book and returned it to the library at once. I haven't seen any bias of that sort yet and I will be watching.

Any other folks who have read this work or related ones (several other books are dedicated to specific generations) please comment or email me.

Two new InDenvers!

Go congratulate Walter and the Mrs for their twins, born today.

About damned time

The April 04 issue of Liberty is especially good, now that I have gotten to it.

Stephen Cox's and William Merritt's reflections on homosexual marriage frame my position perfectly. I wish I could link to them here, but I can't. Yet.

There's also a great article on how New Urban neighborhood design is associated with significant (up to five-fold) increases in crime. I was going to try to work that into one of my interests, the reform of water-wasteful residential development in the parched West. I want to write about how my proposed redesigns would either repeat this disaster, or be modified to avert it. But I can't. Yet.

Why not? Liberty's web presence has been, in a word, unusable. Their site carries selected articles from their April issue, of course. April of 2001. I can't link to their articles because the articles are not uploaded. I had given up checking it to see whether they had resumed the web edition.

For a long time I suspected that they prioritized their web content so low that they didn't maintain it. This suspicion was fueled in part by Liberty's editiorial positions on music ripping and Microsoft Windows, which lean strongly towards preservation of intellectual property, condemnation of music piracy, and championing the absolute right of Bill Gates to set whatever license terms please him for the use of his software. Why put your content on an URL if someone could read it without paying and, horrors, even copy it? There have also been disparaging comments about those pesky webloggers (though the most interesting reading in the magazine, Reflections, reads like a group blog comparable to VC or The Corner).

If intellectual property protection was the reason they had chosen to publish only in print, it was a poor one. No periodical that wants to be important, wants to be cited, wants the reputation for unique and incisive reporting, chooses not to publish an online edition. It was probably the question of affording a webmaster who wouldn't crater them.

At any rate, I can put all that conjecture aside.
Huzzah! Liberty Magazine finally is overhauling their web presence. I've cited her articles there in the past and will do much more in the future now that they will have URLs. Hat tip: Jacob Levy at Volokh Conspiracy.

They're worth the dead-tree subscription too. Go for it, you know you want to. And tell them you've chosen to subscribe now because their content is now accessible online. Network effects and all that.

* * * *

Why are you still here? Pick up the GD phone and subscribe!

Laid back Sunday

In the CD changer:

• Billy Idol's Greatest Hits
  
• Reverend Horton Heat, Space Heater
  
• Frank Zappa, Apostrophe/Overnight Sensation
  
• Fountains of Wayne, self-titled
  

* * * *
The Denver News Agency gave our household a complimentary Sunday Post yesterday (funny how they have the newspaper all planned out one day in advance, hard to call it news then, isn't it?) and it reminded me of how little indeed I miss reading a dead-tree newspaper. Scrolling through, er, paging through their Perspectives section and seeing a guest editorial promoting the scrapping of the Electoral College, plus eight or nine editorials about how primaries bring out the non-mainstream candidates, and I had had quite enough.

Barbaloot wants to do the crossword. That, I submit, an internet application cannot substitute.

* * * *
We capped the day with the last of the antelope from last year. It started out looking like this:


and it ended up looking like this:



A roast marinated in Italian salad dressing, liquid mesquite smoke, and molasses. On the side, eggplant splashed with rice vinegar, snowpeas, carrots sprinkled with ground ginger, red pepper, celery, and sesame seeds. Grilled to medium rare over Strickland propane.

253 of 300

. . . is my score today in competition with the M9 service pistol. Good thing I got that right contact lens replaced.

I've carried one in the discharge of my duties but had never fired one before. To date I've only been able to shoot the FATS version, with the inert-gas-operated slide to simulate recoil.

No, I don't like 'em. Too fat in the grip, can't hit any controls without changing my grip, and they have a bad, bad reputation for reliability.

Friday quick hits

On h0m0s3%ual marriage, I've posted some items on my Senate campaign blog. I don't have an animus towards such arrangements myself, and I am certain that with time, States will allow it and more of society will tolerate it. As I think I make clear over on the other blog, I am suspicious of many of the activists seeking to extend formal marriage to gays. Here's an alternative view that shares my Constitutional objections but not my suspicions regarding access to spousal benefits.

My limited experience with such arrangements is limited to three couples, two of whom I've gotten to know fairly well, though I remain in touch with only one today.

That relationship is badly broken, and kids are involved. I'm also confident, admittedly with limited knowledge of the relationship, that its failure was not traceable to the lack of a marriage license provided by the State.

* * * *

Much ado about the trial run of an in-flight-assembled b0mB on Northwest Airlines 327. I reassert: we have to make Uncle Sugar recognize that airline passengers are not an asset to be secured, managed, and protected but an asset to be trained, prepared, and informed, and most of all permitted to protect air travel. The biggest obstacle in the way of us protecting ourselves aboard commercial air is Uncle Sugar. First he can get out of the way, next he can actually offer help.

More on h0m0s3%ual marriage

One cause for activists on the political Right to seek a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is that the Defense of Marriage Act has not been tried in the Courts, and likely will fall. They say they must begin the long and arduous process of ratifying the amendment because the DOMA won't stand.

Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School, on how the Defense of Marriage Act would fare in the Courts:

The Court did not clearly say or signal that DOMA was unconstitutional; the Court held that criminalizing sexual conduct [in Lawrence v. Texas] violated people's liberty, not that homosexual couples were entitled to equal access to the benefits flowing from marriage. And my sense is that most constitutional scholars (not all, but most) that have considered the issue believe DOMA would be upheld.

One step closer to the MP3-player-slash-language-trainer

I'll coin the term yoda to refer to a small device that one can clip
to oneself, and let it teach you something during times of stress. The foreign-language yoda I proposed isn't just already in development, it's in beta.

Hat tip: BoingBoing.

Quote for the day

The terrorists' motive, we dimly realize as we notice their targets (an office building in New York, a dance club in Bali, men standing in line to become policemen and protectors of their people). The fact that we would never call it genocide has little to do with our opponents' motives but much to do with their power. We can destroy them - if we wish to unleash our arsenal. Even restraining those lethal machines, our wars against the states that protect them are over in weeks. We have the ability to commit genocide; they do not. That is why we should be held to higher standards, but we shouldn't ignore their motives. We can become villains because of our power, but the terrorists are not victims because of their
impotency.

Ginny at ChicagoBoyz

Independence Day 2004

The Pundit Family were the guests of the Governor of Wyoming for fireworks at Cheyenne Frontier Park. For those of you familiar with the area, please enjoy.



M'selle Sklodovska, who normally dislikes loud noises so much that she wears earplugs for most busy restaurants, went without them for the fireworks display. She watched the display with slack-jawed wonder and applause.

Toad didn't seem to mind the racket either.

That racket, by the way, was not just from exploding fireworks. Thousands of cowboy boots were also thundering on the aluminum decks of the bleachers.

World has gone to hell while I was away

We flew the entire family to Buffalo recently to celebrate the inlaws' fiftieth wedding anniversary. When Grandpa picked us up from the airport and brought us home, we saw that Grandma had a yellowish cast to her skin, and was exhausted.

They had hired a caterer, limo, DJ, and whatnot, and invited about 50 family and close friends to see them renew their vows, but Grandma looked and felt, well, bad. She usually calls it a night well after midnight, but the night we got there, she was conking out at 9PM. Not like her. She was worried that much of the last-minute preparations had yet to be done the next day but could not go on. She promised to see a doctor the following morning.

Bile duct blockage and a gall bladder to be removed, is what the doctor determined. She was hospitalized that evening. Barbaloot and her sister spent hours calling the guests, florists, caterer, DJ, limo, and hall, to tell them the event was off.

Not to be deterred, she and Grandpa renewed their vows in the chapel at Kenmore Mercy Hospital on Saturday evening, with all ten grandchildren in one place.



She's had her gallbladder removed, the day we flew back to Colorado. She's home too, and recovering well.

Upgrades

The mission-critical G4 has received an improvement---its original 350 MHz processor has been replaced with a 1 GHz aftermarket processor. Noticeably faster, under $300. Installation was simple.

I had to backup a drive and update the boot ROM before installing, which took some time.

Barbaloot approves of the upgrade, after seeing a Harry Potter game spin up. Downside: the original HD, running OS 9.0, was upgraded to 9.2.1 so I could still boot the G4 with it after the CPU upgrade---the CPU is not compatible with OS earlier than 9.2.1. Now that the original HD is on 9.2.1, it won't mount the later (default boot) drive, where OS X sits. OS 9.2.1 asks whether I want to initialize (Apple for format) the later drive. So I might as well have not bothered with the OS upgrade on the older drive.

Toad at five months and some

He's eightieth-percentile height, thirtieth-percentile weight. In summary, he's just like his mother's father. He smiles generously.



It's getting closer for Walter and charming Mrs. Indenver to bring theirs home, isn't it?

Pack, not herd---call for papers

Interesting development at Winds of Change, a call to formalize distributed defense concepts.

What skills, tools, and organization do citizens need to respond, if we've proved that centralized defenses---like those that fumbled the WTC/Pentagon attacks---will fail? What's the TOE?

Don't forget search and rescue, optimized for building collapse (San Francisco earthquakes, NYC skyscraper collapses, NJ train wrecks).

Wish list

I wanna:
iRiver H140 (the link is to the 120)

Stragetic Hamlet: Pittsburgh

A delightful column recounts the early military career of George Washington in the land of my
youth, the Allegheny Plateau, and how it shaped American history.

To have a unique combat uniform, all USAF has to do is wait ten months

Now that the Army is adopting a new combat uniform (tip of the K-pot to Airborne Combat Engineer), there will soon be no other US armed service left using either the woodland pattern BDU or the three-color day desert pattern DCU.

Granted, the Navy will still use BDUs and DCUs in those ashore instances where they need a camouflage uniform, but work with me here. Besides, the Navy can work out a deal with the Marines to use their exquisite MARPATs.

USAF will have the BDU and DCU effectively to ourselves. Then we can just stencil the new USAF brand on the pocket and the cap and call it our own.

The Army redesign effort appears to have gone much farther out of the box in its thinking, run extensive wear-testing in theatre, and is already closed on the deal to the point that they'll begin fielding their new uniform at about the time USAF opens a website to Airmen for comments on their tiger stripes.

We at WUTT! called the following, which the Army adopted---but a bottle of Johnny Walker says USAF will not:

• Removable rank insignia centered on the jacket front, as on the Gore-Tex parka
  
• Angled jacket pockets, easier to reach into than horizontal
  
• Pencil pocket separate from the jacket pockets (though the Army put theirs on the sleeve)
  
• Tan undershirt, instead of solar-absorption-maximized black
  

It merits mentioning: the Army's design team was run by NCOs.

More on the male finishing school

I'm not alone in noticing a need for a men's finishing school, as proposed here at WUTT!.

However, the likely beneficiaries of this schooling (rather than the students) assert that most men don't realize they need it. Women will ask themselves, "What am I doing wrong?" but men just shrug and turn back to their ESPN. I assure you, Marilyn, this is not completely true. Some men are deeply introspective about their failures at romance.

It also prompts me to ask: why can't more women take up flyfishing?

Looking for a song

DavidMSC has been looking for a
song.


Well, so am I. "Get Around Girl" by Tommy Tutone. I'm not the best at looking for such things, but I can't even find cold trail on it.

"Wanna build that cloverleaf on I-25? Then push light rail."

From Volokh Conspiracy:

The Supreme Court, though, has long (and correctly) recognized that the government does not have a free hand to impose conditions on grants of benefits. When the government controls 25-30% of the GNP, and has vast regulatory power over the economy, imagine what it could do using conditions. "Want a tax refund? Promise not to spend in on anti-government activity." "Want to buy a chunk of federally owned land to build a home? Promise to let us search your house whenever we like, without any excuse."
"Want a corporate charter? Promise not to criticize the government."

If this is the jurisprudence, then, how can the Federal government Constitutionally attach conditions on the grants of benefits to States? In particular, how can the Feds withhold highway funding from States that prefer not to lower their blood alcohol content threshold for DUI? "Wanna build that cloverleaf on I-25? Then push light rail." What gives corporations preference (other than, perhaps, the position of the
corporation as an individual compared to a State)?

In this case the term "benefit" is not even appropriate; the monies to which the Federal strings are attached should represent, for the most part, return of monies taxed from the citizens of that State in the first place, if not in this year's budget, then from last year's or next year's. There should be no net gain or loss over time between taxes taken from the State and Federal expenditures returning to it.

The usual rebuttal that "who pays the fiddler calls the tune" rings hollow. Granted, the quote above comes from a post about the rights of corporations, but I would assert that States have an even broader right to operate than corporations---States are not considered creatures of the Federal government, they are precursors to it who consented to its creation. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments guarantee that States will have a free hand in governing within their spheres, on the condition that individual rights are protected and the Federal government is held supreme in the enumerated areas given to it to govern.

Note, this is probably the only time WUTT! has ever, or will ever, discuss States' rights per se. I'm a States' powers kind of guy---islands of government power surrounded by a sea of individual rights and all that. But for a State to exercise those powers granted to it, it must have some right to operate without interference from other governments.


Woo-hoo! The VC post just below this one has more.

Dream carbine

Galil parts kits are coming into the country. Such kits are made by dismantling selective-fire 5.56mm rifles, putting the parts into a bag, and cutting the receiver into bits. By US law, the receiver---the frame, if you will, to which all other parts attach---is the firearm. By selling a kit containing all the parts except the receiver, you're selling no firearm, just everything you need if you can get a domestically-manufactured receiver. Building one, though, has some legal complexities involved.

New receivers are being manufactured in the US, without the holes where the selective-fire parts would pin in. Take one of these, with its US-originated serial number, and substitute an arbitrary number of other US-made parts, and it's legal per the Assault Weapon Ban (that will, if we mind our Congress, sunset in just a few months). However, these receivers are steel and might be rather heavy.

Let's get somebody to make an alloy or carbon-fiber Galil receiver. Let's get somebody else to make a carbon fiber-wrapped 6.5mm Grendel barrel at about 18" length. That keeps the weapon's weight down to the range that a Grendel deserves, 'cuz the original Galil (milled steel receiver) was on the heavy side. The carbon barrel should also be immune to point-of-aim shifts as it heats up.

Open up the bolt face and reface the extractor so they take the Grendel's case head.

You might have to tweak the gas system. Emphasize might: the Grendel's developer claims that pressures were very close to those of 5.56mm military cartridges, so a gas system that's reliable with 5.56mm should need little tuning to make it hum with 6.5.





Replace the gas tube with a new one with Weaver rails on top. The front-mounted rails let you mount the modern gizmodified intermediate eye relief optics.

There's WUTT!'s competitor to the AR15 platform, in a damned rugged form factor, firing the most capable cartridge that will fit in that form factor. Fixed and folding stocks available. Tritium sights standard.

Most photos are now moved

There are a few photos located on other computers, that I have to upload to the Comcast site for relinking. But most of them are moved and the links are updated. Sorry for sharing a stupid learning experience with my dozen readers.

It doesn't sink in until I hear it from my own kid

I was explaining this afternoon to Firstborn why I was off work today, picking her up from a playdate instead of concluding an exercise working for a fighter jock who thinks he knows more about the CONOPS than I do.

I told her that a former President of the United States died recently, and today was the day that our government chose to remember him as his body was put to its final resting place. On such days, the government releases everybody from work so they can pay attention to that person and pay respects to him. I was one of the many people who were given the day off for that reason.

"He was a great person, wasn't he, Dad?"

"Yes, he was."

"People really liked him."

"Sure did."

"But some people hated him."

"Sure did."

"Did as many people hate him as they hate George W. Bush?"

"That's hard to tell. Reagan seemed to be able to deflect or simmer down a lot of the hate that was directed at him."

"A lot of people hate George W. Bush, don't they?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"My friend So-and-so from school says that George W. Bush wants to start six wars."

"Oh really?" This was a different So-and-so from another kid, whom Firstborn told me said that George W. Bush is the worst man ever and that he wants the world to end so he can have all the oil.

From this I conclude that Firstborn has two friends at school with holes bored through their skulls, so their parents can funnel hateful mush directly into their brain cases. Parents who, by the way, dropped Big Dollars to enroll these same kids into a Montessori education so they can figure things out for themselves. It's painful to contemplate.

"Yeah. He wants, uh, the other guy to win."

"Firstborn, how much of this do you think So-and-so actually believes, and how much do you think he just repeats from one of his parents?"

"Probably he's repeating his dad. He says his dad says George W. Bush wants to start six wars."

"Okay."

"And he says---his dad says that the newspapers are all full of lies. But So-and-so, reads the paper every day like his dad does. He wants the other ... guy ... to win."

"To win what?"

"President."

"Ummm humm."

"But George W. Bush already won once, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did."

"Did George W. Bush start any wars?"

"There's one he didn't start. I fought in that one. There's another one, that I guess you could say he started. I haven't fought in that one, but I might. I don't think he started any wars without good reason though."

I'm going to be more proactive in figuring out the ideologies held by my kids' friends from now on.

Farewell to Ronald Reagan

All of the commenters on Reagan's passing away, to a person, smile as they recount their experiences with him. Those whom I cannot see, because they're on the radio, speak with voices that resonate with admiration for him. In a way they seem to be happy, both sharing in his widow's relief from the agony of watching him wither away, and sharing with each other the pleasure of having served or met him.

It is fitting that we pause from our lives and our affairs to pay last respects to him.

Another movie for the list

DavidMSC raves about Down With Love.

A noble contribution of tissue

FuturePundit (no relation) reports that Duke University researchers have discovered that a certain population of fat cells is in fact a sort of adult stem cell, that can differentiate into nerve cells.

This discovery suggests the ability to treat neurological disorders without the political or ethical concerns of using stem cells from other sources.

For example, Michael Moore could donate several kilos of his midsection to treat Alzheimers disease.

The question remains, however, whether anyone would knowingly accept into their own bodies any sort of cells from Mr Moore.

Wait! This isn't how I die!?!

After countless urgings from me, Barbaloot now enters her shopping lists into her Palm 125. "But what if we don't need butter on this trip?"

"Why then, Sweetheart, we don't buy it. At least it asks whether we need it so we won't forget it."

Another of our lists records what movies we want to rent. Big Fish was next on the list.

It's a hit. But on the video, there were trailers for Hellboy. Barbaloot added it to the list.

time to make the doughnuts . . .

My keyphrase for drudgery, taken from a very old TV commercial by Dunkin' Donuts, and how they were made fresh every few hours. The doughnut baker never got enough sleep, he was always trudging out the front door, muttering "time to make the doughnuts."

Why the drudgery? Since Angelfire blocks the loading of images from their pages to any other, we can no longer use their ad-suppored free service to store photos and just load them here at WUTT! Not surprising that they'd have such a policy, because their webpages are ad-supported, and remote loading denies them revenue (as if they're getting any from my web page there, but that's another topic).

So I'm building, slowwwwly, the same page on Comcast so I can load it from there instead. The Comcast web server is bought and paid for, but their page builder is a draaaaag to use. No way I can see to just directly edit the index.html as a text file, like on Angelfire.

I have about two-fifths of the photos moved over. So you can see the latest ones again, plus a new one or two. In another six weeks, they'll all be moved and the web page over there will be torn down.

However, I'll be putting all of the fiction up over there, at Ditchweed. More Wise Turkey stories, plus some Scaaaaarrry Stories.

To be fair, though, the blogging tool at Angelfire is not half bad. Whose engine are they using?

Memos I've written, never meaning to send

Department of Defense
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Prairie AFB

XXX Civil Engineer Squadron, Readiness Flight

---

TO:
XXX Mission Support Group/CC/CCT/CCF

XXX Medical Group/CC/CCT/CCF

XXX Logistics Group/CC/CCT/CCF

All Readiness Support Team members

All Squadron FSTR Representatives



SUBJECT: C-CW CONOPS Functional Area Training Completion Tracking

1. In January 2003, AF Civil Engineer Support Agency released training packages introducing the Counter Chemical Warfare Concept of Operations (C-CW CONOPS) to selected functional areas. These packages include CerTest training modules that generate a percentage score of the Airman's mastery of the subject. AFCESA intended for all applicable Squadrons to install the training packages and begin training all of their Airmen with them. The packages were originally published through AFCESA's HTTP secure web site. By May 2003, AFCESA distributed these packages on CD-ROM, through MAJCOMs to all units AF-wide.
   
   
2. No tracking or visibility mechanism was instituted to ensure that Squadrons in fact conducted this training or that Airmen retained the training. The packages were intended to introduce the CONOPS to the functional areas, describe the functional areas' unique responsibilities under the CONOPS, and provide a basis for later integration of the CONOPS into each functional area through longer-term revisions to job qualification standards (JQS) and career field education and training plans (CFETP).
   
   
3. HQ USAF Air Staff directed all applicable units to train their Airmen through their respective functional area C-CW CONOPS training packages prior to their next deployment to CENTAF AOR. In any event, all applicable Airmen must complete the functional area CONOPS training packages no later than 1 August 2004. This deadline represents a slippage from the original suspense of 1 July 2003.
   
   
4. Operational readiness inspections, compliance inspections, exercises, and MAJCOM rollups of staff assistance visits indicate that some Squadrons and even some MAJCOM directorates are not completing the subject training packages. Air Staff consequently has directed all Civil Engineer Readiness flights to track completion of these training packages at the base level, to provide visibility of this effort to HQ level via MAJCOMs.
   
   
5. Air Staff has not issued comprehensive guidance on the metrics or reporting format for CE Readiness to report completion of C-CW CONOPS functional area training. Our flight is merely charged with reporting a percentage of completion, monthly until further notice, for each applicable Squadron assigned to XXX Wing.
   
   
6. CE Readiness Flight has determined that metrics and reporting format for this tasker are of paramount importance to assure thorough, verifiable, and authenticable documentation of the completion of this training. If we reported completion of this training without absolute certainty that it is completed, it would be only a matter of time before the results are invalidated by investigation from IG or Air Staff, and a more stringent tasker eventually would be issued for the same task.
   
   
7. XXX CES Readiness Flight developed the following criteria to estimate and report your Squadron's completion of the subject training packages in the interest of saving all stakeholders, including your Squadrons, considerable effort in the long run:
   
   
   
   1. By close of business 1 June 04, each Squadron Training Manager will submit a memorandum for record stating whether the Squadron is encompassed by one of the functional areas for which AFCESA has release a C-CW CONOPS training package. XXX CES/CEX website lists the training packages, as does AFCESA's website.
      
   2. For each Airman assigned to or eligible for assignment to a mobility position, in a functional area for which AFCESA has published a C-CW CONOPS training package (as determined in the preceding paragraph), the CerTest provided with that training package will be completed by the Airman and graded results will be printed. The printed results will be signed and dated by both (a) trainer or supervisor and (b) training evaluator, and forwarded by unit training manager to XXX CES/CEX.
      
      
      
      1. A CerTest certificate indicating that the Airman has not completed the entire series of training modules will be reported as zero percent complete.
         
      2. Only original CerTest certificates, printed in color with completion date and signed in ink, will be accepted. Photocopies and faxes will be rejected.
         
      3. A crisp, unmarked $20 bill will be paperclipped to each certificate.
         
      4. All certificates for all Airmen assigned to the Squadron will be forwarded at the same time in a single package, accompanied by a roster of assigned personnel, signed and dated by the First Sergeant or Squadron Training Manager. Rosters will be derived from only PCIII, MILPIDS, or ACES products, and will be generated within 5 calendar days of the print date of the first CerTest certificate.
         
      
      
   3. Readiness Flight will calculate your Squadron's percentage of completion by dividing number of CerTest certificates, by the total number of Airmen assigned to that squadron per the roster. Any discrepancy noticed between certificates and the roster constitutes cause for the return of the entire Squadron package, minus the $20 bills. Discrepancies include but not limited to (a) more than 5 calendar days elapsing between printing of the first CerTest certificate and generation of the Squadron roster, and (b) including a CerTest certificate for an Airman not appearing on the roster.
      
   
   
8. Due to the manpower loading that this reporting tasker places on the Readiness Flight, the following normally-scheduled activities of the Flight are cancelled until further notice:
   
   
   
   1. NBCC Defense Refresher training
      
   2. Explosive Ordnance Reconnaissance Training
      
   3. Mobility equipment issue by Prime BEEF
      
   4. Sizing of Airmen for Mobility equipment
      
   
   
9. Because this tasker has been imposed on all Readiness Flights Total-Force-wide, other Readiness Flights will not be available to provide these services in lieu of ours. In short, these services will be totally unavailable at this base or any other, until all Squadrons are visible at 90% complete on subject training.
   
   
10. We apologize in advance for the short suspense on this tasking. Please understand that all stakeholders in this process will be making comparable sacrifices to achieve the high level of readiness expected by Air Staff.
    
    

[[ SIGNED ]]

FUSILIER N. PUNDIT

MASTER SERGEANT, USAF

Civil Engineer Readiness

Excused absence

There's a damned good reason I am blowing off the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash. In fact, there are four. Here are three of them:




This is the third one I could have made. Kinda bummed but I would have ended up with a lampshade on my head anyway. I have enough to live down as it is.

There'll be a balm in Gilead

Somebody's copping from the Free State Project's playbook: gather your peeps to one state, where they become a competitive single-issue political force, and take it over peacefully.

However, theirs differs by seeking complete independence from the United States. All to stand athwart the scourge of homosexual marriage.

Margaret Atwood saw this coming, and offered a name for their new entity: The Republic of Gilead.

Quote for the day

Hat tip to In-Cog-Nito at ChicagoBoyz:

Jack Ryan is the kind of character that a former insurance salesman who has never been in the military would have created.

Fred Schoeneman

How 'bout some milfs on trampolines?

After another of Mlle. Sklodovska's doctor appointments today, I took her to a friend's birthday party. The party was held at an indoor playground---one hell of a simple business model. Take two parts vacant warehouse, one part labor, and a bunch of inflatable slides, climbers, and obstacles. Throw in a Pilates ball or two, do your legal paperwork, paint in primary colors, and charge better than ten bucks a kid. Not a license to print money, but respectable creation of wealth nonetheless. What else are you going to do with empty warehouse space? Shoot music videos?

A dozen kids bounced around, slid down slides, swung inflated boxing gloves half their own size, climbed a ten-meter inflated volcano, or scaled a fifteen-meter climbing wall, or ran from one to the other. In two hours they were exhausted and statically charged from sliding across the vinyl and plastic.

I noticed, however, as I always do, a Man Show angle in this. As in, some of the other kids' moms bouncing on or climbing the equipment with their kids. "How 'bout some milfs on trampolines?"

Dads, you might be missing out on a vital and rewarding part of fatherhood by not taking your kids to certain birthday parties.

The effect was spoiled later, when one of these women addressed me as "sir."

What's playing? (updated)

I've been posing these music questions lately to friends:

1. At what age did you first begin to appreciate popular music?
   
2. Is that age at least 15 years ago? If yes, proceed.
   
3. Can you think of two performers or groups who couldn't get your attention then, but for whom you have a deep appreciation now? Who are they?
   

Update: Andrew Ian Dodge asks just what constitutes "popular" music. I admit, I had reservations about my choice of terms. So for the purposes of this post, popular means "easily accessible through broadcast at the time." That can include country and western, bubblegum, classic rock, all fine with me.

Dare I eat a peach?

My first pair of bifocals arrived in the mail today.

Provided under TriCare, they are not the gradient kind. A sudden blur occurs at the boundary between magnified and non-magnified portions of the lens. This will take some getting used to, but they're only for the few hours a day after I take out contact lenses.

On the upside, the ophthalmologist says I'm an ideal candidate for LASIK, my corneas are about 580 microns thick so there's plenty of meat for the surgery. Uncle Sugar would pay for it if I were in the right status. Alas, I am not. As Advon puts it, "you're not Active Duty, you're just on active duty."

* * * * *

Firstborn and Middlechild are sleeping their second consecutive night in a tent pitched in the backyard. It's colder tonight, so they get thicker sleeping bags and a blanket tossed over the both of them.

* * * * *

Boy's stitches were removed today. I wasn't there to hear that one either.

Quote for the day

To me, the fact that the FBI is pursuing the wiretapping issue with respect to VOIP is just one more reason to doubt that the Bureau is the right agency to fight terrorism. I would have more confidence in a security agency that is working with the latest technology, not against it.

Arnold Kling

AFAIK, Skype is still available.

Sauce for Lott, sauce for Hollings

Pressure Fritz to resign from office in disgrace. You have to bid higher than you're willing to take. We'll accept his resignation from the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

TIC: He should be aware that Jews relinquished control of the world economy nearly two months ago. Don't Senators read the friggin papers?

He will not lack gainful employment---his current constituency surely could cast him in some upcoming projects.

FrankenBoy

This is what ten stitches on the forehead look like, 36 hours later.



I wasn't there to see this, or hear the stitches going in. Barbaloot surely would have appreciated the help.

The '05 Grosstod

About 15 years ago, National Lampoon printed a spoof car review---a central African dictator strained his broken English to praise his Grosstod, a conspicuously-consuming 4X4 behemoth, a precursor to the SUV because his corrupt, impoverished country lacked roads suitable for better-known luxury marques. Countless Google searches have failed to turn up a version of the spoof online. Perhaps a gentle reader who has a print version could scan it up for me.

I think of the Grosstod every time I hear the smooth-jazz string riff that is now the theme for Chrysler's TV commercials, and cast my eyes on the '05 restyling of the 300.



It is almost as if Daimler-Chrysler brought German designers over from their MB division, and committed thems to make a vehicle so Big'n'Ugly that it has passed the pale and is beginning to look cool again. In turn, it looks like a bronze brick with wheels and a grille; a lowered Dakota with a trunk; what Peterbilt would deliver if they secretly entered the passenger car market, repeating aloud to themselves in the skunkworks, "not a Hummer . . . please God, don't give us a Hummer."

It is a broad-shouldered post-post-modern car copped from the Adventures of Batman, sans fins. Like the new Thunderbird, I like the look, though I will pay for several college degrees, maybe one of them my own, before I will ever afford one. By then the design will be obsoleted, then retroed, like the cycle of skirt lengths. (Hmmm, wait a minute. Rental fleets will carry a few of them. Maybe in four years . . . )

Me gusta. Now what it needs is a turbodiesel and a receiver hitch. And central tire inflation.

Full faith and credit, privileges and immunities, and so forth

NPR's analysis of same-sex marriage, found through Volokh Conspiracy, inspires us to ask:

Some supporters of same-sex marriage argue . . . that the DOMAs are indeed unconstitutional, and the Full Faith and Credit Clause mandates recognition of out-of-state marraiges.

Okayyyyyy, so if all States are mandated to recognize any official public act of any State, why wouldn't the State of New York recognize my Pennsylvania CCW? That's an, um, extremely official act that the Commonwealth made, my paying the fee, their running the background check and all . . . Assuming that having to get a license to do so is legit, that license should be as portable as any other. And mind you, my Commonwealth CCW was a license, not a permit. Let's hope that's a genuine difference rather than a semantic distinction.

If by public we presume that this State act is a matter of public record, much like a real estate transaction, say, then this cements further that a CCW license would be even harder to ignore by another State, if it was issued by a State that makes the identities of licenses applicants and holders public.

Oooops. Licenses to practice medicine aren't portable either, are they? Acupuncture? Law? Pharmacy? Massage therapy?

Still, this deserves some exploration. All of the conditions, hoops, pitfalls and minefields applied to CCW legislation by those who want to defeat it must be turned into countervailing legal strategies to liberalize CCW.

If same-sex marriage can be used as a tool to demand CCW reciprocity from intransigent states like New York or California, then I could change my position on the matter from apathy to active support.

Let the Left's activists be careful what they demand in Court.

They pay us to do this?

My boss Advon and I just finished a week at Undisclosed CRTC, working for Cadre. We tested out the USAF Counter Chemical Warfare Concept of Operations on a Reserve wing.

We worked some long days, and I was cast as a Czech coalition partner so I was in the muck with the exercised unit, MOPP 4, with an accent that made me sound more like Dexter than former Warsaw Pact.

Now we're at a hotel near MSP, overnighting for a flight back to Colorado tomorrow morning.

TCM and LCG go to the Million Mom March

(What's in the CD player, you ask? -- "Black Math", The White Stripes...)

Hi all. It’s The Cabinet Man (TCM) here. The Little Chinese Girl (LCG) and I went to the MMM with some flyers I typed up in an effort to harass, errr, uhhh, I mean, convert the Moms. Here’s my report.

It was more like the Few Thousand Mom March, actually...

Short Story: I was told to leave.

Long Story: LCG and I got down there late: ~1:45. We missed most of the speeches (Thank God!!) but we did hear Boxer, Conyers, and some (unknown?) author/writer spew vitriol. LCG and I split up (bad move when so vastly outnumbered) to hand-out the flyers. I handed out just a few then I saw this big quilt with pockets in it. I'll call it the Guilt Quilt. So, I go check out the Guilt Quilt. Seems people could stuff these pockets with supportive messages for the MMMs. Cool!! I promptly start stuffing it with flyers. At this point a very stern woman with an "event organizer" laminated badge charges at me, waves a flyer in my face, and says (and I quote):

"We don't like this kind of thing. You're not welcome here. Leave NOW."

Before I could utter some smarmy response, she turned and headed-off. Unfortunately, she was headed in the general direction of one of the many John Q. Laws and I chose not to wait and see where that was headed. I withdrew to the edges on the crowd and tried to keep an eye on LCG. Apparently, she did rather well. She's pretty bold and, unlike Yours Truly, not one to turn a back to confrontation. Unfortunately for her, she got corralled on at least two occasions and, later, one lady asked for a whole stack of flyers. LCG unwittingly gave her many of them. (The woman promptly tossed the whole lot in the trash.) So, in a sense, LCG was braver than I. [feelings of shame] Perhaps she was treated differently because she lacked a 'Y' chromosome. Who knows. Next time it's going to be "pack mentality" when attempting a similar feat.

Just before the MMMs began their march on the White House, LCG and I high-tailed it down to where the Second Amendment Sisters (2ndAS) had their shindig. We got there just as the last remnants of the stage and PA were being carted off. No joy. So, back to the Metro and home.

Notes:

There were many people at the MMM rally wearing t-shirts with pictures of "gun victims" on them. There was typically some verbiage about how this person was a son, aunt, acquaintance, whatever, and how/when they died. The part about this that really made me sad was that these people wore this trauma as a badge of honor. It was almost as if they were proud these people were dead/killed. Victim nobility. It was quite disheartening and I'm not entirely sure I understand it. The founder of Armed Females of America started that organization after her son was shot and killed. No less a tragedy but she doesn't wear it on her sleeve. Diametrically opposite reactions to an identical situation.

The MMM is definitely emotion-driven. The speeches were full of hate and the bile regurgitated upon the NRA's name was disgraceful. They did everything short of compare the NRA to Al Queda. (Actually, Mr. Unknown Author tried real hard to do just that -- fortunately a weak and pointless effort on his part. At least to this rational mind...) The speeches were simply rehashes of the same tired, incorrect "facts"
we always hear from this crowd. There was the requisite "No one needs an AK-47 to hunt ducks or an Uzi to hunt deer" speech.

There were "organizations" there, all wearing their colors. "Minnesotans Against Being Shot" was my favorite. There was the usual signage tripe:

"30,000 kids dead per year"
"That's why it's called an ASSAULT weapon"
"Bush Lied. People Died."

and the long-ago debunked

"AK-47. A.K.A. 47 times more likely to be killed."

There were MMM t-shirts being sold for $5. I thought about buying a few to use as gun cleaning rags (HAR!!) but I didn't want another $20 in the MMM coffers. There were a plethora of "Kerry in 2004" hucksters.

The LCG actually wasn't too proud of the flyers I put together. She thought them too blunt/abrasive. Perhaps so but I've never been one to be politically correct. I used the image of the Ukrainian policemen shooting the Jewish women from the (defunct?) GunTruths.Org site. On the backsides were four different "The MMMs have lied to you about..." where I tried to debunk the biggest lies we hear from The Other Side. I thought they were pretty good, as did a few previewers I recruited. I admit that at one point I was tempted not to go, thinking my presence would somehow lend credence to their "cause". Obviously, I got over that thought.

In all honesty, I got nauseated once. Boxer was spewing from the podium and I literally became sick listening to her. At that point I was really wishing I was at the 2ndAS rally. (I heard the 2ndAS rally was only about 200 or 300 people. Can't tell you for sure...) I was amongst the enemy and they were keeping a watchful eye on me.

The good news is that the MMM resulted in a paltry turn-out. Every time one of the speakers tried to rally the crowd, there was an anemic response. Only the die-hards showed up yesterday and, because of the small turn-out, there was very little momentum. If this is the best they can do, then we have few worries.

On another note, I have a few "gear tests" to post. I'll trickle them out as soon as I consult with Fuz about how to post pictures. Until then, Ciao!!

TCM

User doc for Idea number 483

Here's the product definition draft pdf of the owner's manual. Again, sorry, no graphics. Maybe in the OT&E draft, we'll have rudimentary graphics.

Update: Compatibility of ULG with Individual Body Armor.
Interceptor Type: The ULG can be used to clean heavily soiled Outer Tactical Vest. Remove Small Arms Protective Inserts and Ballistic Inserts, and wash only the Outer Tactical Vest. Clean the inserts according to the Interceptor System user manual.

PASGT Type: The ULG can be used to clean the entire PASGT Vest but it is not recommended unless the ballistic fabric can be removed and cleaned separately. Due to its weight and size, and the shock-absorbing qualities of the ballistic fabric, only one vest can be cleaned or rinsed at a time. Do not expect good results.

Shear-Thickening Fluid Type: Do not use the ULG to launder any body armor component that incorporates STF technology. Check the care label on the component to be certain ("Contains Polyethylene Glycol" or "Natick Type E" are usually in bold at the top of the care label). The STF armor will not be damaged, but the ULG will not find a suitable oscillation frequency and can damage itself. Follow the care label and user manual to clean STF armor using another method.

Idea number 483

Some GIs downrange in the Middle East are asking for manually-operated laundering systems, because they don't trust host-nation laundry concessionaires to treat their uniforms properly (or even to return them), and field laundries are either scarce or have long waiting lines. A GI with only a few hours of his own will not spend them waiting for a washing machine to come open. I've my own downrange scare stories about that (a female lieutenant asked me, "Are you playing with my panties, Sawgeant Pundit?").

So soldiers asking for washboards and such so they can wash their sweaty uniforms out in less time, in their own space, without relying on Force Provider. A washboard sounds like it would take up an inordinate amount of space in a guy's pack. Let's come up with something smaller.

Meanwhile, Procter and Gamble have introduced Tide Buzz, a stain-removal system that combines their Tide detergent and an ultrasonic oscillator that punches the detergent into the stain and shatters the stain itself so the detergent can suspend it.

Hmmmm. How about an ultrasonic oscillator, packaged in a waterproof housing, running on AA or C batteries. Get a 5-gallon bucket, or a sink, or a trashcan, any handy watertight container, add water and some detergent, drop in your clothes, turn the oscillator on and drop it in. Hot water would not be necessary. It sets up sound waves in the water to agitate the clothes and the detergent, runs long enough to knock the sweat and dirt out of the clothing, then sounds a beeper. The GI replaces the wash water with rinse water, sets the oscillator for the rinse cycle, drops it in, and the oscillator agitates the rinse water through the clothing to get the detergent out.

A detail nozzle on one end of the unit allows the soldier to use it like the Tide Buzz unit, holding it in hand and pointing the nozzle directly at a problem stain.

I'll bet this device could be packaged to less than the size of a soda can. Make it so it varies its buoyancy, slowly sinking to the bottom of the container, then rising back to the top, back and forth, to agitate all parts of the laundry load equally.

It would wear out uniforms less than ordinary laundry equipment does. The GI still has to dry the uniforms, and that really tears up fabric, but an item I saw on BoingBoing today might give the answer for that, and it might be as portable as the oscillator. Hell, compressed air from a deuce-and-a-half would dry clothing out right quick.

One drawback will have to be investigated: will this device remove permethrin? GIs commonly treat their uniforms with this stuff to repel insects. The permethrin persists after ordinary laundering, but dry-cleaning will remove it in one pass.

I can't claim this oscillator idea as my own, I saw it in one of those Sunday-newspaper gadget inserts (Brookstone and RealGoods struck out). But I'll take the finder's fee for suggesting this to our GIs.

Update: The Tide Buzz system does not use Tide detergent, but a special fluid. I hacked together a user's manual for a trial product, waiting for Adobe's online PDF converter to kick it back to me. No graphics, sorry, I had a deadline to meet.

The Wise Turkey Encounters a Mysterious Squeaking

It was on a night just like last Wednesday, early spring, a very chilly and wet night just after a few warm ones. The Wise Turkey was preparing himself for bed, having rinsed mud from his muddy gardening boots and hung them on a peg in the pantry, then taking a small dinner of seeds and bread, brushing his feathers carefully to clean out the mud and pollen, and climbing the stairs of the house to his room.

He had sipped some water and sat down on the edge of the bed. Listening to the creak of the springs in the old bed, he noted they somehow sounded different. He paused, motionless, and the creaking and scratching continued briefly, then stopped. He thought for a moment---Wise Turkeys are pensive like that, always conjecturing an explanation for anything out of the ordinary---bed springs don't do things like that, at least these springs never did before.

After a moment, and a heavy eyelid or two, he thought better of it and swung one skinny, clawed leg up on the bed. The creaking and scratching resumed. He paused, motionless again, straining his hearing. Yes, he was not mistaken.

He bounced, lightly, once on the bed. The unusual sound was not coming from his bed. It was coming from the wall. He cranked his eyelids as wide open as he could. Silently, he lowered his leg to the floor and stood, then crept to the window. He reached to the sill of the window and brushed it with his wing, softly at first then harder, until it made a gentle squeak.

Another squeak came in reply, outside the window.

He slid the window open slowly, and carefully stuck his head out to look.

There in the gloom, above and toward the south-eastern corner of the house, three dark forms hung under the eave of the roof. One large, two smaller on either side of it, like three black leathery bells hanging there in the dark.

The Wise Turkey brushed his wing against the sill once more, and he heard the strange sound once again, though it was barely a sound, it was more like a click that happened so fast he could barely hear it. Ben and Doug, the old men who lived with him in the house, would never have heard it because they were humans, and they were old. Old humans don't hear high-pitched sounds as well as young ones, you see, and there are sounds even young ones can't hear.

Then he saw two tiny points of light open at the bottom of the large thing in the middle. They blinked. They were eyes, and the eyes were looking directly at him.

You probably know what those dark hanging forms are by now.

The large middle one stretched wide with leathery wings taut between fine bones like the fingers of a hand. The two smaller ones slid closer to the large one and climbed from the eave to its side. Then they squeaked again, in tiny, weak voices.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see that they were nuzzling their tiny noses into the fur of their mother's belly. Moments later, they squeaked again and shivered.

Wise turkeys, as I already told you, tend to figure things out if they are disturbed or if they think any kind of suffering is going on. And these bats were clearly suffering.

The warmth of spring had called these bats out from their winter sleep, and had offered many flies and moths for them to eat. But the cold snap of this night had cut short the bats' anxious feeding too soon after coming out of hibernation.

Soon, the Wise Turkey knew what he would do.

There had been peaches for sale at the market several days ago, brought over the mountains by his friend the Elk, from a land where the seasons are ahead of ours here and peaches have already ripened and the trees are preparing themselves for winter.

He had bought some. The peaches were in a colander on the kitchen table, and some were overripe. He remembered that at dinner he had seen, out of the corner of his eye, that fruit flies had begun circling over the peaches.

He pulled his nightshirt over himself, stepped his claws into slippers, and padded downstairs to retrieve them. He also brought a tray and a lamp.

Still very quietly, he slid the tray into the open window, wedging it so it would bear the weight of the peaches and the lamp without falling either out or in. The colander of peaches, with fruit flies looping around it, was on the end of the tray that hung outside, and the lamp balanced it at the end inside the bedroom. Then the Wise Turkey sat softly again on the edge of his bed, letting a few squeaks rise from the mattress into the tangy cold air that was entering through the window, and he watched.

After a few minutes, more scratching and more squeaking, then silence, as the Wise Turkey watched the flies and the peaches in the flicker of the lamp. Soon enough there flew a dark form, too fast to see except as a shadow that darted between the lamp and the colander full of overripe peaches. It made no noise, none at all---wait, here and there were faint clicks, like the sound of one fingernail tapping another, or like the breaking of a thread drawn too tight.

His eyelids again became heavy and he could see the darting shadow no more. The peaches were now as cold as the night air, and no more fruit flies stirred over them. The oil of the lamp had burned low. He brought the tray in and set it aside, then looked out again to the eave.

The two babies were attached to their mother's belly, and her wings were folded over them. Her eyes looked directly at him, then blinked once, twice, and closed slowly as if she too were drowsy.

He slid the window shut and took the peaches back downstairs.

Then he took a paring knife, peeled a peach, cut away the brown spots of its flesh, separated the flesh from the pit, and ate it slowly.

And then he went to bed.

Fûzboat replaced

An '02 four-door Malibu with V6, everything power except seats. No stone chips.

I probably got taken to the cleaners: I got $825 for the Taurus with the hemorrhaging transmission, and paid about $250 less than their asking.

But I wasn't followed into the parking lot by a hustler and endured no good-cop-bad-cop routines between the salesman and his manager.

The finance guy needs new software though, or a new printer that registers consistently on his forms. It took longer to do the paperwork than to close the deal.

Paging Mr Rummel, Mr James Rummel

I wouldn't wish a random act of violence on anyone. But maybe someone's heart can be changed and some good come of it.

Surely Mr Rummel could fit in a new CCW student.

Oooops. Never mind.

Quote for the day

Witch hunts are unambiguously bad because we know there are no witches.

Eugene Volokh, whose blog is not an opinion blog.

Go tell them they're wrong, please

Grim asks me to pass along to all dozen of my readers, that DoD is taking comments on a proposed rule that would prohibit civilian contractors in deployed areas (such as Iraq) from arming themselves.

This has ramifications for life here in the peaceable Republic. Go now and comment, please.

blotter stuff

The Cabinet Man is alive and well, has not been interned for reeducation by his anointed betters in Maryland for dissing their CCW process, and is considering a new main battle rifle. Please show him the love in the comments section, readers, to encourage him to post something new.

* * * *

You might be interested to know that we named our children according to a system. This system was not laid down in advance so much as the order emerged, and as more children were added we noticed which rules were laid down and followed them.

At least one name, first or middle, is taken from someone else in the family. No surprise there.

Girls' names follow a rhythm of dah dit dit dah ("open the door") and boys' follow dah dit dah dit ("have a cookie").

Firstborn's non-family-originated name was after my second-grade teacher.

Middlechild's non-family-originated name is from B. B. King's guitar.

Both of Boy's names are from family, either my grandfather or Barbaloot's father. We thought he'd be an only boy (hence "Boy") and the double family name.

Oh we were mistaken. Toad gets a middle name from my father.

* * * *

The Fûzboat is being replaced. At 100k miles and an irreparable transaxle leak, its movements are easily traced by satellite. It leaves "C"-shaped puddles of warm cherry-red oil wherever it is parked. Much of this oil also is blown back to the catalytic converter, where it turns to smoke. We think the leak comes from an axle seal damaged when we slid the front curb-side wheel into a curb on a patch of ice. It put a nice crack in the transaxle case too, but another Twenty-first Century shmoo, J-B Weld, closed that up handily.

Rather than face the nasty one-time hit of depreciation that comes with driving a new car off the lot, we're pricing cars from a rental fleet. Hello Malibu. Or Intrepid. Or Impala. Or Taurus. I'm torn.

* * * *

Toad carries around about 12 pounds and is round, full, and very smiley. He gives us six hours of uninterrupted sleep, and it's time to reassemble the crib in Boy's room for him.

* * * *

I make up stories to tell my daughters as I drive them around to swimming lessons, occupational therapy, or a grocery trip. Firstborn asks for a Wise Turkey story. They are made up on the spot ("It was on an evening just like this one, in early spring, a cold night after two very warm ones . . . "). The very first Wise Turkey story took several grocery trips and a Christmas shopping trip or two to tell, and carries an epic quality. Unfortunately it will be difficult to recall and post here, but I'll try.

Maybe Mamamontezz would be up for illustrating them?

* * * *

Speaking of illustrating, I visited a Barnes and Noble at the Mall of America last weekend, prior to returning from a TDY at Undisclosed Combat Readiness Training Center, and scanned the Art section. I grabbed one on drawing manga. Firstborn is fascinated.

Roger that, big time

How refreshing that somebody goes public in support of the return to legislative appointment, rather than election, of Senators:

Zell Miller: Dump 17th Amendment

Just as only Nixon could go to China, I think only a former Senator could so boldly suggest a move.

Again, how damned refreshing. When the State legislatures resume appointing Senators, then they can resume recalling them too.

Used to work for one of these

StrategyPage has a l337l3 post on theater air control squadrons (scroll as needed to 28 Apr 04). I used to be a one-deep readiness shop in one of these units for a loooong time.

I dispute that there's anything really "high tech" about them. And they aren't all that portable. By the time the several tons of TPS-75 radar on six prime movers is packaged with the rest of its operations, maintenance, and support people and all of their gear, it gets closer to 25 vehicles and 100-plus officers and enlisted. Break them into A and B shifts and put them somewhere outside the protective layer of SFs that usually accompany a forward operating location, and they'll look rather skinny and vulnerable.

But I thought that most of these units (including my own) were disbanded in the last few years, partly because their nifty new Modular Control Equipment---computerized, networked radar screens---weren't Y2K compliant. Maybe by now they've figured out how to use Sun workstations instead.

If pack is preferable to herd, we need claws

Bruce Hershensohn joined Bill Bennett's radio show today as a guest. In his closing remarks, about the likelihood of another terrorist attack against the US and timed to influence the general elections, he made a strong point that it will not be enough for us to survive through this period. We will have to win. We will have to prevail.

I was tracking him on this point. He continued: we will have to give Mideast terror groups a resounding defeat, so our children and grandchildren can someday enter a Federal building without having to navigate the concrete planters and metal detectors. I was tracking him even better. He wants future Americans to not have to suffer the indignities of airport searches. Wow. I liked his line of argument better still.

Then he used the word inconveniences to describe all of these antiterrorism measures that he hoped one day would no longer be necessary because of the sound defeat of the parties these measures are deployed to deter.

He lost me right there.

It is not a fscking inconvenience that I can no longer carry a folding knife aboard an aircraft, a common practice of mine and many others before the World Trade Center was leveled. We are not merely discommodated by having to either check that knife in luggage or leave it at home. A few stout folding knives, in the hands of ordinary passengers, could have turned that attack from three thousand deaths and an American economy held breathless for days, to the loss of just the plane and the souls aboard it, possibly even to recovering control of the cockpit. We've seen that ordinary people can and will do the extraordinary, even to kill themselves while foiling an attempt to convert an airliner into a cruise missile. Public policy must not interfere with people rising to the extraordinary occasion.

Public policy in this case actually prolongs our vulnerability to terror, pushing farther into the future any day when we can forklift the giant planters away from the Federal building and stop wanding grandmas in the airport, and release the TSA screeners to the economy to pursue useful work.

If instead of a terrorist capture of the plane, there is a mishap, and the crew manages to land the plane in some remote, Godforsaken country with a few souls still alive, I'll need that folding knife, and that Swiss Army knife, both regular companions of mine, whether to extract passengers from the wreckage, or break into luggage, or improvise shelter until help arrives. My fellow passengers might need them if I'm dead, and they're welcome to rummage my pockets to find them.

Giving up those knives is not a mere inconvenience, Mr. Hershensohn. It's helplessness, and nobody is made safer by being rendered helpless. This helplessness is imposed upon all of us by people who see their responsibility not in my safety, but in the smooth operation of a gigantic nation-state bent on preserving itself. We are mere resources for that state to expend; in that respect they are little better than al Qaeda sending hopeless twits to detonate themselves among us.

A critic could infer that, by my reasoning, we ought to allow people to carry guns aboard aircraft too.

Well, glad you asked: yes, we should. Not just pilots, and not just after said pilots have effectively been nationalized as Federal law enforcement officers. But we have to crawl before we can walk, walk before we can run. Restoring edged weapons would confer no disproportionate advantage to the boarding terrorist. There will be more than enough of us Retrosexuals bringing ours along again.

Letting the very cold air of reality hit every man's and woman's face will brace us as a people for the task before us. We cannot prevail as a nation, in a conflict against a stateless Islamist underworld, unless their ultimate target, the weakling, is denied them. We'll do our part, but our laws must not put obstacles before us.

The very rudest buzz to be had

I hate getting head colds. They start as a sinus infection, cause my right ear to plug up, then move to the throat to reside there as an irritating cough that lasts for days.

Since moving to the higher thinner air of Colorado, I get them very rarely and have almost to be injected with a concentrated sample to contract one. Or receive a kiss from my daughter.

One is now winding down. Thanks very much to chlorpheniramine maleate, dextromethorphan hydrobromide, pseudephedrine, and some menthol.

I have to be very careful with these medicines, they make me giddy. A single dose of Nyquil will have me sailing for days, with my pupils cranked open as if I'd dropped windowpane. People will see me and ask, "Did you get your hair colored, Fûz?" or "Hey, nice dental work!", whispering to each other after I pass, "what's different about him?" as if I were the guy who just got his Cialis scrip. Subjective time seems to slow down because I swear I can see the office computer's screen flicker under the influence, but not when I'm free of OTC cold meds.

Guaifenesin we simply cannot do any more. It makes my ribcage feel like it's inflated with helium and one careless move will unmoor me from the Earth. Meanwhile, my voice has taken on a Barry White growl.

I'll be glad when this is over.

My Skype username is Patriotbrewer

Am eager to try out the nifty Skype, a free P2P encrypted internet telephony client. Somebody gimme a call in the evenings, Mountain time.

Marshalbanana from Greece has been trying to reach me but we haven't connected yet. With a name like that, though . . .

It's the harmonics, stupid

Wired's shorticle on electronics forbidden on aircraft elicited the harrumpf factor.

"The operating frequency of these devices is well below the range of aircraft systems." But if these devices are digital, their myriad transistors are being turned from full-off to full-on, to signify the binary ones and zeros that trigger other transistors in turn in the construct we know as code. Whether that code drives the video of a GameBoy or the audio of an MP3, or a spreadsheet, makes little difference.

When a waveform of full-off to full-on and back is created, it wants very badly to divide itself into an infinite number of sine waveforms whose frequencies are multiples of the fundamental on-off frequency, with amplitudes decreasing as the frequency increases. If you have a lowly 16 MHz square wave clock, it will want to break apart into sine waves of higher frequency. They aren't intended, they just happen, and good design will seek to reduce the amplitude of those harmonics, or the power at which those harmonics escape the device.

The issue returns to frequency and power. What frequency or range of frequencies is being emitted by these devices, and at what power? Then, what frequencies, at what power, will disturb a commercial aircraft's systems?

It was our luck to have been employed on a project where the engineers intentionally overdrove a part so its harmonics were stronger, because one of those harmonics was desired as a clock frequency for the product. The manufacturer of the part improved it to reduce the harmonic output. It could not longer be mis-applied that way. The PCB had to be relaid, we missed milestones, the financing was withdrawn, the project cancelled.

On the bright side, this got Fûz laid off, forcing a relocation from NY to Colorado. The harmonics created by square waves have offered me a wild, sinusoidal rollercoaster ride.

. . . this little chromium switch here . . .

WUTT! is going to enable Atom site feed. Wish me luck.

Screw it up for us and you screw it up for your enforcers too

I remember when an over-ten-round magazine cost less than thirty bucks, say, for a wondernine like the Beretta 92 or Browning P35 or the countless Glocks. I could find them anywhere, like Dershem's in Bellefonte, or Grice's or Bob's Army-Navy in Clearfield, Pennsylvania.

This was before the '94 AWB. It was even before the AWB was deliberated.

Prices started climbing as soon as the laws were proposed, and they kept climbing until, for all intents and purposes, the prices on some of these over-ten-round capacity magazines approached infinity. New ones could not be had at any price.

Ironically, since demand among the civilian sector approached zero, the manufacturers for these products found themselves serving a much smaller legal market, the police and gummint buyers. Said manufacturers could not keep their assembly lines busy so they scaled production back to the point where economies of scale no longer applied. Prices for the cops and the gummint climbed too.

High-volume magazines already imported or manufactured before the ban because of certain demand remained inexpensive, such as those for M16, AK, G3, and FAL. But they're the exception.

If, insh'allah, the AWB sunsets as anticipated, it may take some time for the supply to ramp back up for the return of legal private demand for high-cap magazines. But police departments everywhere were Taking It in the shorts for these ten years, paying triple or quintuple what they used to for replacement magazines for their sidearms. All in return for receiving a privileged status as the only lawful owners of new-production magazines.

It's happening again, as new blog-rollee Heartless Libertarian points us to Geekwitha45's report. The introduction of a new, badly needed cartridge for Uncle Sugar's service rifles is delayed because no manufacturer wants to undertake the project of supplying the magazine for it without the legal demand from private citizens.

Maybe next time policemen will remind themselves that supporting that ban has cost them and their departments, in real dollars and perhaps officers' lives, and maybe they'll think twice before allowing themselves to be used politically for similar bans in the future.

Selling federalism

A friend of mine at work often accompanies me to lunch. He's a lapsed-Catholic-turned-evangelical, and likes to discuss the finer points, if you will.

I've been introducing him to federalism, especially in the context of his support of the proposed Defense of Marriage amendment to the US Constitution---he supports, I oppose.

Secularism is a hard sell to him, federalism is even harder, BTW. But it's working. Wanna know where I pick articles to forward to his email inbox?

Volokh Conspiracy. At least 6 posts over the last two months. Strangely enough, whatever point we're discussing at lunch, when I get back to my computer and graze over VC, there's a new post that supports my point. Copy and paste, and wait for him to come out of his office and review how the post applies to our discussion.

NB: there are other sites I'd forward content from, but these here nippernet computers go through a filtered proxy server that excludes opinion sites. It lets sports scores and the latest William Hung mpegs through, but no opinion. No Reason, no Cato, no IJ. No NRA (but Violence Policy Center comes through---wonder, should I hire a lawyer? Or just complain to NRA?). No Instapundit. Whatever you guys at VC do, do not call yourselves an opinion site.

Dr. Rice badgered by assholes; film at eleven

Nine-Eleven commissioners bitch-slap a National Security Adviser before a national audience, with applause from the gallery no less, and get interviewed later on television.

Well, if I did that, I'd get on TV too. But I'd be wearing handcuffs.

Idea courtesy blogson Scotsman.

There's millions of 'em on all three sides of us, imam! ---That means we've got those kufr right where we want them, Ahmed!

Professor Alan Gilbert was Peter Boyles's guest this morning, and both of them described the Fallujah action as a Perfect Storm, capable of uniting all Iraqis against the US occupation, growing to proportions that would force Uncle Sugar to contemplate leaving Iraq.

I pointedly disagree. Can't back it up, can't substantiate it. But here's the WUTT! take: the Sunna are getting their yarbles out. The Shi'a are getting their yarbles out. The Saddam-less fedayeen are getting their yarbles out. Not all the Iraqis are galvanizing to evict the Yank-led coalition, just all of the anti-Yank-led coalition Iraqis.

They're a distinct minority, mostly in towns that were intentionally bypassed the way Hitler should have bypassed Stalingrad. They've been waiting for a moment when political factors are right, when a signal atrocity would make a noticeable change in US public opinion of the occupation. The Blackwater event was it. Unfortunately for them, US public opinion does not respond the way it used to, they way their plans call for. This turning point will not turn their way.

It's been a few months since I've heard "flypaper" mentioned, but maybe this is when we roll all of that flypaper up into a few discrete balls and incinerate them. The few flies still in Iraq after that will remain a harrassing threat.

Essential to the success of the incineration: sealing the frigging Iran border.

WUTT! stands firm on its prior assertion, made in another venue, that this madness will not be over before American GIs bring home Persian wives.

NYPD Hiring!

Mark A R Kleiman is concerned that valuable infantrymen are being recruited away from US armed services, after having been trained to be valuable infantrymen at public expense.

Well then, what of this?

NYPD Hiring! Take Free Exam at Camp Lejeune, Wed., April 7th

You’ve protected THE WORLD’S GREATEST NATION. Now,
protect THE WORLD’S GREATEST CITY. Don’t miss the
opportunity to take our FREE EXAM at Camp Lejeune,
Wed, April 7 - 1800 hours, Marston Pavilion, 730
Seth William Blvd, Camp Lejeune, NC. Call:
1-800-550-3836. Please bring military I.D. The NYPD
is continuously hiring and test scores for all
active military will be kept indefinitely. If unable
to attend apply online at:
http://tracking.military.com/cgi-bin/outlog.cgi?url=http://www.nypd2.org/html/recruit/policeofficer.html
by April 16 for the New York City exam. Or call 212-RECRUIT.

Granted, Mark's concern was voiced in the context of the Blackwater employees (former military men) murdered in Fallujah.

Should this be stopped? I see little difference between this and non-compete clauses that were common when cable TV applications engineers were a hot commodity. What makes me valuable to one employer will to another employer, and I'm free to change employers if I can find one whose overall package is better.

Bringing the discussion back to territory that is familiar to me, I see a parallel between this issue and broad civilian gun ownership. Uncle Sugar trains hundreds of thousands of people to use lethal force responsibly. Immediately, Uncle does so for his own specific purposes, namely to field a competent army. But the training, if done well and kept up, becomes available to the civilian sector through the men and women who seek employment as sworn peace officers, commercial security guards, and armed citizens.

People who have not received this training, people who do not own firearms, and people who have not sought and received permission to CCW benefit from those who do. In fact, people who would never dream of receiving such training, people who object to widespread gun ownership, and people who want to outlaw all forms of concealed carry (except for agents of the government) derive a benefit.

Providing the training, even to personnel who will return that investment directly to Uncle Sugar for only another year or two then pursue richer opportunities, should not be counted as a net loss to Uncle, but as a net gain to all of us.

Our lives, fortunes, and sacred bandwidth, updated

Donald Sensing despairs over the Republic now that freedom of political speech is in peril from campaign finance reform. Agreed. So WUTT!'s proposal?

Maybe enough bloggers will, on or before 2 September, publish something that might violate the law if it were posted on 3 September. Then in posts from 3 Sep onward, keep referring to each others' 2 Sep posts.

Throw in a few citations of the Officially Sanctioned Media's post-3 Sep reporting as well.

Point out inaccuracies therein, e.g. "No, Kerry voted FOR it in October then spoke AGAINST it in May," to keep citing voting records up over and over again, but carefully couching our posts as responses or corrections to, or criticisms of, each others' posts, not examinations of the officeholders themselves.

Then call the Federal Election Commission, and turn each other in. Insist upon an investigation of every possible meta-reporting offense.

Update: Geekwitha45's comments and email to me disclose my embarrassing ignorance of BCRA. It does not regulate private activities, including bloggers, so my proposal does not incur the FEC's wrath.
OK. So we bloggers can still participate. I paid NRA a handsome sum to be one of their Lifers. I expect a return on my investment. Political research on the issues of our common interest, and publication of that research, is part of what I paid for. They're still allowed to collect the voting records, but they can't take out ads to present them. They can give the records to me and a few thousand other bloggers, and we can post them. Nothing illegal there.

Further, we can sell them steeply discounted ad space on our blogs to present their research there. Then they're breaking the law, and perhaps so would we be.

I use NRA as an example here, other incorporated outfits would fit the space just as well.

If anyone is actually prosecuted, we then discuss the prosecution itself, and the evidence presented. Then complain to the FEC about each others' meta-meta-reporting during the blackout period.

Distributed denial of service attack, but via analog voice, upon Bad Law.

Yeeeehawwww!

Free WiFi in the hotel room in Cheyenne!

Which reminds me: I have been reading the lessons learned reports from OIF, and one of the concerns is that the increased use of UAVs is congesting all of the satellites, to the point that DoD cannot deploy many more UAVs without hitting the capacity limit. Combine this with the desire to expand the use of Blue Force Tracker and Iridium satellite phones, and we'll be at or past the limit of available secure bandwidth in that theater.

The demand for bandwidth right down to the individual rifleman, loggie, firedog, or dirtboy is growing, so the congestion will only get worse.

We're going to have to move more of our wireless comms off the satellites, but to what? Well, how about developing a concentrator on a UAV, so it can be piloted in an orbit tastefully stood-off from a headquarters area, and let it route the calls either back to the ground or up to the bird? An unmanned airborne cell tower. Embed the security into the clients---the phones, pagers, PDAs---so the UAV is not a gigantic classified COMSEC item that must be recovered if it crashes or is shot down.

Late-breaking:

After follow-up interviews with Ms Seiler, Madison Police have released an updated sketch of her alleged abductor:





Anyone who has seen a person answering this description is urged to contact the Madison Police Department.

You must choose

We appreciate the carefully constructed point here:

. . . those who do not speak against, are in danger of being assumed to agree with the perpetrators of the next jihadist atrocity.

That's Sgt Mom, with WUTT!'s Quote for the Day.

If she were ten pounds heavier, I'd be dead

Meet Recluse:


She's our oldest cat, we took her and her littermate The First Otis in when we closed on our first house, in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in 1993. Our litter training skills were such that Recluse had to be chased and caught from time to time, to be moved to the litter box. On one such occasion, she snagged one of her front claws in the carpet, and as she fled, the claw held and she flipped herself over.

She has not forgiven me. She never will. She spends her entire day under our bed, with occasional forays to water, litter, or food. Whenever I enter the room, she bolts.

If she had just a few more pounds on her, she'd tear my throat out in my sleep.

Hey, I work for a living!

Posting has been light recently. We posted a sudden upsurge last Thursday and Friday because, well, Fûz took some leave as his orders were about to end, and he was waiting for indication of whether he'd be kept on orders. Thursday and Friday were to be devoted to a leaking automatic transmission in the Fûzboat, learning how to operate a sewing machine, and getting in line with the Milfwagens to drop off and pick up Daughter Units at school.

Fûz's orders were renewed for another 90 days, so Thursday was spent downloading and running the AF's replacement for The Execrable FormFlow so he could submit new leave paperwork. Friday was spent getting his orders amended, and having a new DoD ID card prepared. Without further gory detail, Thu and Fri were shot in the temple.

Upside, Fûz continues to draw salary for another three months. And we made it to the Knights' fish fry.

Update: On 1 April, we received the auth for 360 days. And the transmission still leaks after installing a new pan gasket.

Fûz can blog from work, in a limited fashion, in between feeding Toad and chasing Boy and stretching Middlechild and reading to Firstborn, and letting Barbaloot nap. But he gets to go to Undisclosed Combat Readiness Training Center and work with Cadre again for a few weeks.

Rocky Mountain Blogger Roundup

Walter hosts the Rocky Mountain Roundup. Please go there.

Quote for the day

Allah, as Muslims view him, is omnipotent, above logic and reason, unrestrained by natural law. He can decree at any moment that evil is good and two and two make five. People are subject to his arbitrary and tyrannical rule and can do little more than plead for mercy. Nations who worship such a God, it turns out, are themselves governable only by a tyrannical ruler.

Tom Bethell, American Spectator, March 2004, "The Living Hell of Bill Moyers" (sorry, no URL directly to issue or the article).