Three alternative angles of approach, or Second meet Ninth

Aim_Small_Miss_Small discusses a grand strategy to restore the Second Amendment of the Constitution to a fully-protected civil right:

. . . we must start and then move [non-committed antis] along gradually with the kinds of things they will find persuasive . . . we need to meet them (on the rhetorical and philosophical battleground) where they are instead of where we wish them to be.

I agree, but maybe we also need to look at other places where they already agree with us. Note the poll on the right sidebar of The Gun Blogs, where I found the post: which strategy should we RKBA types emphasize to what should the focus of gun rights activists consist of next? Expanding CCW, repealing "sporting purpose" language, et cetera. As you look at the poll results, you'll see there's not enough consensus for us RKBA proponents to concentrate and achieve one of them.

For example, many staunch gun rights activists argue that a national CCW would be a step backwards, because we'd be subordinating a right to a nationwide (read Federal) system of licensing.

Similarly, should we support BATF reform? Bullshit, some of us (including me) will shout back---shut it down instead. No good can come of it.

Between the poll and Aim's post, it occurred to me that we should explore other options that foster divisions, or just as good, doubt, among the antis instead of arguing over the divisions among us. Our options should not discuss guns openly either, because the antis will smell such tactics coming from far, far away and circle the wagons. Focus on collateral, apparently unrelated issues.

It will readily become clear to the gun rights activist that he or she ought to be fighting for other rights anyway, because the infringement of those other rights makes gun control that much easier---standing the old bromide "the Second Amendment is the right that guarantees the rest" on its head.

Recent events supply many possibilities.

• Asset forfeiture. Read the travails of the owner of KT Ordnance and you'll see that ATFE---the force-initiation arm of the anti-gun movement---doesn't need gun control per se to screw people over. They didn't charge Mr Celata with any crime. But they did raid him, copy his hard drives, seize his inventory, and then . . . nothing.
  
  They can bankrupt him by continuing to do . . . nothing. While his inventory sits in their vaults, or ships to the scrapyard, Mr Celata goes without the income it could have gotten him, and has to come up with even more money from elsewhere to petition to have his property returned to him. If he does nothing, he loses.
  
  No doubt the same tactic has successfully shut down a number of other businesses serving us gun folk, many of them not even needing a license from ATFE to be businesses because they weren't making firearms or ammunition in the first place.
  
  Asset forfeiture has been used to take cars from beneath the butts of guys looking for prostitutes, other guys looking for abuse drugs, and even more guys merely being accused of looking for prostitutes, accused of looking to score drugs, and accused of numerous other victimless crimes. The City of Denver has used it to seize cars and guns from ordinary folk who've been silly enough to drive through that city with certain models of gun aboard, in spite of Colorado's peaceable journey law and McClure-Volkmer.
  
  Don't argue about the victimless crimes themselves. That's a non-starter among our own community, and it will lead only to failure among the antis. If this were not so, there would be Libertarians in the Oval Office. There aren't, so don't. (Plenty of libertarians like me in the RKBA movement, granted, but we're part of a coalition and we have to cooperate.)
  
  But you definitely can argue about how asset forfeiture is unjust, how it makes the owner's innocence (or absence of being charged) irrelevant to the case the State is making against the property. Sure, it's a long-standing tradition of English law to charge a piece of property, rather than the owner. So what? Why should we even tacitly support a law that allows the State to get away with theft? Do we want our courts, cops, and prosecutors to be corrupted by it?
  
  Taking asset forfeiture away from the Man means taking an arbitrary and frequently-abused power away from anti-gunners. How to sell the dismantling of asset forfeiture to the antis? That could be tough, I haven't an idea yet. Perhaps by linking it to the campaign to end eminent domain abuse, which seems to be trending positively.
  
  
• Dynamic entry. I don't know whether KT Ordnance's raid was a peaceful, knock first, "hey we got a warrant, let us in," wait for Mr Celata to answer the door kind of raid. If it was, it's rare. Radley Balko will tell you more than you want to know about the overuse of forcible SWAT-type raids, in the dark of night, on the wrong house. He'll also tell you about the trend in using dynamic entries to carry out what used to be plain old police work.
  
  The bodies are piling up. Lawsuits to recover damages from mistaken raids are failing, justice is being denied. Puppies and kittens are not being blended, but shot, stomped, and Tased.
  
  Gun owners aren't the only targets of these raids. They started with the War on Drugs, but now that dynamic entry is becoming the default method of serving a warrant, gun owners are getting their share.
  
  How to sell this to people who are inimical to gun owners? The same way you sell it to the non-libertarian gun owners: Cops are dying in these raids too. And if only a percentage of the lawsuits by innocent victims succeed, you'll see cities and counties in deep financial trouble to pay the judgments.
  
  If you want to appeal to the feminists, call it an outrageous example of testosterone poisoning.
  
  Dynamic entry must be restricted only to saving the life of a hostage. This can, and should, happen state-by-state, much like liberalization of CCW is taking place.
  
  
• Marginalizing the weird. I have to be careful with this one. Consider: more people believe that extraterrestrial astronauts visit our planet, than that they will ever draw money out of their Social Security accounts. I'm not that sure of the latter anymore myself. That says more about Social Security than about the existence of UFOs.
  
  Lots of people think homeschooling is weird; I definitely do not, but many people do, and I'd wager a good number of them are part of the giant government apparatus that spits out search warrants and arms men to execute them. An animus against homeschooling, or unusual religious practices, can easily be exaggerated into a claim of child abuse. An animus against guns in a home with children is less of a leap.
  
  Unwholesome attention to weirdness easily becomes an intense desire to look for infractions of the law. In case you haven't noticed, there are more than enough laws now to blindly infract.
  
  How to sell this one to the antis? There are lots of other weird people in the world, and we need not give them respect, but they demand to be left alone unless they make real flesh-and-blood victims. The biker, the furry, the kink, the performance artist suspending yourself in midair by hooks through your flesh, the addict to plastic surgery. Leave weird people alone. You might be one.
  

Well, there are three ideas, in matters where gun rights activists can expand the effectiveness of their efforts and divide the antis, without even having to utter the word "gun."

Holding his nose cannot be enough

How can Glenn Beck stand to have to talk to Nancy Grace?

Let alone have to hear her voice?

It must be the magic of production, like how the Beatles could record an entire album with only one Beatle present in the studio at any one time. Ringo laid down the percussion, all else could be tweaked by engineers.

Soulcraft

Mlle Sklodovska and I had the house to ourselves today. I scratched an itch---homemade pretzels.

Reminds me of this article that TCM pointed me to recently.

Quote for the day

You say you are worried about your kid getting run over? I dealt with that concern by taking [offspring unit] for a ride in the country and stopping by the side of the road to point out roadkill racoons, particularly three day old gas-bloated ones buzzing with flies. "This is what happens if you play in the street."

The Wheat / Rye Guy

Medicine Bow Peak on Labor Day 2006

On impulse, I drove all of us up into the nearest mountains I knew, the ones I saw in the distance on my last speedgoat hunt. The offspring units behaved themselves quite well and seemed to enjoy the 10,847 feet above mean sea level.

Oh, I'm full

Dinner at Sal Grosso off Powers Ferry Rd this evening. Excellent, Smithers.

Nadia debuts

Nadia is a Romanian AKM with laminated furniture, built from a non-matching kit from Classic Arms.



I folded a Tapco receiver flat for her, gave her a Tapco piston and G2 ignition group, and refitted the magazines with Falcon Arms domestic floorplates. A domestic muzzle protector sits out front.

Work to create her was spread out over several weeks, including a couple abortive attempts on the receiver. Some work remains, such as a replacement disconnector spring, a replacement safety lever, and a better rivet fixture for the trigger guard, which is screwed on presently. More sanding and oil for the wood, and another coat of flat black paint for the receiver, after she's been shot in.

She is unfired, waiting for me to find a good place to try her out. I ran the bolt carrier in repeatedly until it's as smooth as I remember Kalashnikovs ever to be.

The cheapest kit I could find was chosen for a reason: if I was going to dick this up, I didn't want a lot of money in it. In retrospect it wasn't difficult, it just demanded patience and a willingness to consult the gods on the bulletin boards.

Everybody should try one before the kits dry up; ATFE knows this homebrewing is going on and they're bent on stopping it the one way they can, by blocking importation of the parts kits unless key components, expensive to make domestically, are destroyed.

An Army of Davids will still need its slings

The biggest reason for the slack posting of late is that since KT Ordnance was raided, I've been obsessed with building my own blaster from parts.

Not just any blaster. A Kalashnikov. An AR will come later, when KT is open for business again and can sell me an 80% receiver blank. But dammit, something had to be done now.

TCM and I discussed it---normally I'd keep my mouth shut and avoid the attention, but if I have the huevos to post on the KT mess, I ought to have the huevos to do what ATFE raided KT to try to stop. Otherwise the domestic terrorists ATFE will have won.

A plain-jane Romanian AKM copy, with the laminated furniture and vertical foregrip, is almost complete. A few dollars have been sunk in Harbor Freight goodies such as a 12-ton press and a fluxcore wire welder. Pictures to follow.

And a few more Klashes, in particular a wz88 and a Polish AKMS.

I can stop whenever I want.

Quote for the day, no-liquids-aboard edition

From a highly placed source in the API list:

I heard a Department of Homeland Security public service announcement today asking Americans to report anything suspicious. If I were to call and report that I find it suspicious that we're in a war but we're not controlling our borders, I don't think I'd be well received.

a little closer to reality, perhaps?

Usually, my posts titled "Idea number xxx" are flights of fancy, if-wishes-were-horses proposals. If I could finance them, I suppose they would be feasible, technologically, but they'd need someone with completely different skillsets to find the willing market and make the sale.

It pleases me that STOL airships are far closer to reality. Of course Dynalifter does not list medium-haul domestic passenger airlift as a potential market, as I had wished. By the time such craft and services are available, if ever, I will have little need to go to the East Coast anymore.



But that's not the point. Maybe I'd buy stock in it.

at VC

An interesting post by Ilya Somin, about the divide among libertarians on the US occupation of Iraq. Milton and Rose Friedman are quoted.

Please don't challenge me on the choice of "occupation" for what the US is doing in Iraq. By plain-English definition, that's what we are doing, and I use it with no intent to challenge the intent or wisdom of it.

I left a comment there, after wading through mounds of libertarian blather about abstraction versus the concrete, moralism versus consequentialism or utilitiarianism, and walls of flame. Plus some gems. It deserves the rare, vaunted Second Reading.

It isn't enough to simply oppose or support this conflict. Slogans such as "oppose the war but support the troops" and "regardless of how we got involved, we still have to win" don't even scratch the surface. In a way that transcends foreign policy or the face Uncle Sugar puts on diplomacy, regardless of whether American boots marked Saudi soil, this war was coming to us one way or another. Why we fight it predicates how we fight it, and how we fight it determines whether we will win it. If we are not fighting for the right reasons, we will lose.

Why the DoD will not switch from SSN to random service numbers

Bruce Schneier:

We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: the people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of failure.

DoD will not suffer if my SSN is compromised and my identity is stolen. I do.

Unless the incentive can be turned on them, they have no reason to change.

Mideast, short and sweet

James Rummel prompts me to remark that the face-packing in the Levant is a bit overdue.

One newsreader earlier this week referred to Israel's defending herself against Qassam rockets and UCAVs as "perpetuating the cycle of violence."

Madam, this is no cycle. The violence over the last few weeks all seems unilateral to me. We can hope that the Lebanese government, if there is one (or if a sensible one is in waiting) will see this as an opportunity to eject unwanted puppeteers and determine their own future, and set their own relations with neighbors.

If the US intervenes as a so-called nation-builder, let them learn from recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do not value democracy so highly that this new democracy you build can merely vote down the rule of law, the right to own oneself, and the right to be equal before the law regardless of one's practice of this or that religion. Talk to the speechwriters and find some word other than democracy to bring tears welling in Americans' eyes.

*****

And speaking of James, I'll be taking dinner with him this evening.

To the finish line!!

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a bit. But see, I'm better at being a Gear Guy than I am at waxing politic. So here's a gear post for you.

Background first. I snagged twenty-two (that's 22...) HK-91 steel mags off of GunBroker a couple months back for cheap. They were advertised as having "minor surface rust". I figured, what the heck, a little elbow grease and they'll be as good as new. I posted the winning bid at $42 and they appeared on my doorstep about a week later. Well, lemme' tell ya', minor surface rust, my ass!! They were nasty!! Now I had a decision to make: toss them or continue throwing money at the problem. Being that I am The Cabinet Man, throwing good money after bad has never been reason to stop while I'm ahead. Now, I've never done anything like this before -- never even held an airbush -- so this was uncharted territory for TCM.

So, I had the local headstone/memorial shop sandblast the buggers inside and out for $50. Then I ordered two kinds of finish: Lauer Weaponry's DuraCoat "Black Oxide" and Brownells' Teflon/Moly Oven Cure "Dark Park Gray". Not knowing how much would be required, I ordered a pint (16 ozs) of each. I also ordered an airbrush kit from Lauer that included a 1/4"-to-1/8" adapter so that I could use my air compressor for this task.

When back from the sand blaster, the mags had a nice gritty surface. They were so clean, they were silver colored!! I degreased them with acetone and then used a new toothbrush and compressed air to get rid of the cotton fibers left behind from the cleaning rags. I connected all of the airbrush goodies and was ready to go. (NB: the "instructions" -- and I use that term loosely -- for the airbrush were non-existant. I had to figger' the whole thing out myself. Not impossible mind you, but it didn't leave me with warm-fuzzies. Remember: newbie here...) I cranked down the line pressure off the tank to 45 PSI, pulled on some latex gloves, and was ready to go.

Brownells first.

The directions on the can specify that the metal to be sprayed should be warmed to ~100°F. To do that, I just laid them on a piece of plastic sheeting in the driveway for a few minutes. It worked great. I sprayed on two coats about 1/2-hour apart. The finish dries very quickly to the touch. In the case of bare steel, it was a matter of seconds (literally!!) until the freshly sprayed mag could be handled. After letting the second coat dry another 1/2-hour, I put them in the oven at 300°F for -- you guessed it!! -- a 1/2-hour. And that was that.

Now here are the negative details. First, there is no indication on the Brownells can of what to use for cleanup. Nothing I tried worked. Acetone, kerosene, mineral spirits did nothing. I finally disassembled the airbrush and scraped it clean with rags and pipe cleaners. I got it cleared-out enough to use later with the DuraCoat. Second, since the Teflon/Moly stuff dries so quickly it was tough to keep the airbrush clean and running. I was constantly fussing with the flow nozzle just to keep it clear. Third, the baking process is very stinky. Make sure you have a way to properly ventilate. I opened all the windows and ran the attic fan the second I smelled chemicals. There's a slight lingering odor but not much.

The good. The Teflon/Moly goes on very smooth and even. It's easy product to work with, needing no hardener or reducer. The color is a perfect match to the gray parkerizing I've seen on mil guns. As far as I'm concerned, the Brownells Teflon/Moly is quite idiot proof. (Thank God...) I used just over 1/2 the can of finish (~8 oz) for eleven (11) magazines inside and out.

DuraCoat next.

DuraCoat has no special requirements for preheating the item to be sprayed. Unlike the Brownells stuff, DuraCoat comes with a reasonably clear set of instructions. (It wasn't until I read them that I discovered the need for their reducer for clean-up. I went back to the Lauer site and it does state this, but it's not obvious...) The DuraCoat finish comes with a small bottle of hardener that needs to be mixed at a 1:12 ratio (hardener:finish). Throughout the DuraCoat phase, I mixed the hardener:finish in the color bottle a few tablespoons at a time. Not so good for consistency but it was all I had. Using the DuraCoat proved to be quite a challenge.

First, the DuraCoat is much more like a paint than the Teflon/Moly. It sprays on OK but remains wet for almost a 1/2-hour. This slow drying process made it difficult to spray the entire mag -- inside and out -- in one pass. It's also a very "sticky" finish. After the first couple of magazines, my gloves would stick to everything: the mags, the sprayer, the drop sheets. By the time I finished the eleventh mag, the airbrush was a sticky, globbing mess and my gloves were useless. It was very frustrating.

I also had trouble with paint "blobs" from the airbrush. I don't know much about them so I'm not sure if this was a "feature" of the DuraCoat or of the airbrush. (You can see one of the blobs in the center of the mag pictured below. This is actually one of the minor blobs. There are worse...)

One thing the DuraCoat does have going for it is that "a little goes a long way". I used very little product, less than half what I did for the Teflon/Moly. I also got the sense that a second coat wasn't needed. I still applied two coats to the feed lips and the areas that will contact the rifle (basically the upper third of the mag). Perhaps someone more skilled in such things would have put on two thin coats but my setup wasn't working well enough for me to do that. In hindsight, perhaps a bit of reducer in the mix might have helped with the blobs. I dunno'...

So here is the final result, DuraCoat on the left, Teflon/Moly on the right:



In my opinion -- at least for this application -- I would definitely choose Brownells Teflon/Moly over the DuraCoat. Sure, I had to hassle over the airbrush clogging while using the Teflon/Moly but it produced a much smoother, more even finish. And it was just plain easier to work with. Only time will tell which will wear better. In hindsight (#2), I should have experimented with just a couple of mags for each finish. That way, I'd have 20 mags in Teflon/Moly rather than just 11. Maybe DuraCoat works for other folks (those with better equipment?? with more patience?? with actual training??) but it didn't work so well for me. YMMV...

Thumbs up, Brownells Teflon/Moly Oven Cure!!

TCM

Since it's Disney Channel Games week, . . .

Screw the games with guys racing each other inside inflated balls. The sidekicks on Disney's shows are, shall we say, more interesting. Since as a father I have to watch this stuff anyway---otherwise the offspring units will be Very Pissed and not eat their broccoli---throw us dads a bone.



Mix it up with the Spike crowd and expand your viewership, Mickey. Work the studio system to the full extent and make sure these properties actors have a future once they are old enough to check themselves into rehab. Not every one of them will be a Kurt Russell.

Alyson Michalka represents Phil of the Future.

Anneliese Van der pol shouts it out for That's So Raven.

Wrestling in vanilla pudding.

Old gray mare ain't what she used to be

My sister-in-law's Volvo sedan has rolled its odometer twice. Not sure what's wrong with it now, but many of the motorized electrics don't work, such as a window or two, and other maintenance items are adding up to the conclusion that it needs to be replaced.

SIL wants a hybrid. I stress that hybrids' price premiums will not break even on the saved fuel unless gasoline prices climb above maybe $5 a gallon and stay there, or much of that price premium disappears in 6 months. She's also 6'3" or so, and of, er, ample proportions. The little streamlined monocoques of the Prius or the hybrid Honda will probably not fit her.

She has a loooong commute from Herndon VA to Frederick MD every damn day. Any place she'll move to early in the life of this car will create a commute of comparable distance.

If she wants the fuel economy and the long engine life, and the option to use a biologically derived fuel, I'm thinking diesel, as I am thinking of it for myself. Will a woman of SIL's proportions fit into a Jetta TDI? (yeah, they take a price premium too---ever price a pre-owned TDI? Still, it's manageable.)

Are any other carmakers offering or planning performance-diesels for passenger cars?

Speedfreaks

We are with in-laws in Western NY, and took in Six Flags at Darien Lake yesterday.

Firstborn enjoys the fast coasters, though she becomes a sobbing mess while waiting to get into the car. "Is she OK?" ask concerned riders just before we climb in. "Is she gonna be alright?" Makes me feel like a child abuser. But the sobbing is gone after the first steep drop.

Predator was very good, but Ride of Steel is the shiznit. After that, two turns on the Viper and she was done with rollercoasters for the day.

Carhenge

Now that we live within a couple hours' drive of this place, all I needed was an afternoon free as the excuse to get there.

More on this later when I craft a satellite overhead comparison of this to the original. How faithful were the builders? Have differences in its location on the Earth been compensated for?

Idea 437

The problem is that, in meatspace wargames such as at Ft Polk, there is an explicit trade-off between MILES gear that is utterly digital, or simulated munitions that possess real external and terminal ballistics. The digital gear supports extensive automated systems to characterize the armed engagement, at the cost of significant loss of authenticity.

The laser systems can also teach the wrong lessons. Lasers can’t penetrate drywall or foliage; bullets can. The laser vests, according to the RAND report, “equate concealment and cover, a dangerous lesson for ground forces who sometimes demonstrate a frightening ignorance of the difference between the two.” (The JRTC sometimes uses paintball-like “simunitions,” but they don’t have the information-gathering capabilities of the lasers.)

The solution would add the support for scalable automation (position, time, operator, manner of impact, option for umpiring or other mediation) to the physical entity of a moving, material, nonlethal bullet that will penetrate enough concealment (but not body armor) to drive the point home, like paintballs do.

How cheap are RFID tags nowadays?

Develop a plastic bullet containing an RFID and an impact-activated transponder.

• When the round is fired, it squawks a timestamp and position coordinates provided by the rifle.
  
• When it hits something, it squawks its identity and a timestamp.
  
• When it hits a trainee, the trainee's load rig (containing a compatible transponder) hears the identity, estimates how near the bullet came to vital organs, and barks out a hit, wound, or miss, and so forth. Even a bullet impacting a tree or rock in front of the soldier will register with the soldier's rig.
  

Develop a cartridge around that bullet, that either cycles the service rifle or cycles a training top-end for the service rifle.

When the ammunition is issued to the soldier, a transponder interrogates it so the supervising system knows which soldier is carrying it.

Without knowing much about RFID tags and their RF capabilities, I'm guessing that the location of a given tag or swarm of tags could easily be triangulated by a limited number of networked location-aware transponders. I'm also guessing that the tag can be interrogated in milliseconds. And that it can be powered by the acceleration of a small magnet through a wire coil, both packed comfortably aboard the bullet, so the tag gets an ample shot of DC both when it is shot down the barrel and when it bounces to a stop.

At the end of the exercise, golf carts equipped with transponders and vacuum cleaners scour the play area and sweep the spent bullets up, either for re-use or disposal.

Nothing in this concept is incompatible with the existing MILES gear. Both systems can overlap, and probably should, because the RFID-tagged bullets will not duplicate the exterior ballistics---the range and accuracy---of real rifle bullets. If they did, they would be real rifle bullets and carry the lethality of real rifle bullets.

Merry f^c%in8 Christmas to me and a cast of millions

This greets me in my work inbox:

You are receiving this e-mail as a secondary means to notify you that your personal information was among that stolen in the recent theft of Veterans Affairs electronic data. For more information please contact the Veterans Affairs contact center at 1-800-333-4636 or visit the VA Website at http://www.firstgov.gov/veteransinfo.shtml.

Maybe I'll have grounds to sue, inspite of being still alive and not depending on portable oxygen. But to sue whom? DoD? VA? SecDef? Congress?

Please view the project of dismantling the Social Security system not as an economic objective but as a matter of simple criminal justice. Our government practically requires us to create and maintain a vulnerability to identity theft to simplify their governance over us. In this policy this government is insubordinate to us.

The vulnerability is made even sharper and more prevalent, the exposure to risk greater, for persons who have served in her defense.

This is intolerable.

Weck up to Dave

Dave and I got some dinner the other night, had a great time.

We have differences: he's atheist, I'm a lapsed agnostic, for example, but we share a love for and commitment to the American West. We just had trouble putting our fingers on exactly what about the American West evokes that love.

And Dave, go for the Bresnan phone. It costs more than the Vonage, but it coexists much better with the pipe it's connected to.

David is only the second blogger I've made my way to meet, WalterinDenver being the first. But that might not count for some of you, because I met him before I launched WUTT!.

Big Sky

It ain't no fooling, this is Big Sky Country. I'm TDY at Malmstrom AFB, hoping to sip coffee with David MSC sometime in the next few days.

It's prettier than I thought it would be, though colder and wetter.

A lot is running through my mind as I write. So much I want to do. But my day job as dragon soldier and rest-of-the-time job as father really do interfere. Shameful.

KISS: I have a real and tangible animus toward the notion that things should be kept simple, Stupid.

Stateless places: Both a CSI episode and a Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode remind me of Bill Bradford's Liberty poll some years ago, demonstrating that the State's reach is by nature and of right ought to be limited.

f^ckerz r out of control

ATF has raided KT Ordnance, a maker of lawful 80%-complete firearm receivers.

This agency needs to be shut down. Baby steps would be OK but eventually they need to close their doors. The few agents in that organization that are worth a sh17 can find work in another agency where they are needed to, oh I dunno, find goddamned militant islamicists in the US?

JPFO asks rhetorically why KT was singled out. It wasn't because they were supporters of JPFO. It was because KT embraced JPFO's assertion that the ATFE is a rogue agency.

They can't let that go without comment, now can they?

Number Two

It is now official, a second gifted-talented kid inhabits our house: Boy.

The school district tested him and qualified him for their advanced program. God have mercy on them all. He starts K next year.

What will it take?

Does one need any further or better or more clearly-defined reason for the US Department of Defense to halt the use of the Social Security number as an identifying number, than this one?

This is an official announcement from The Enlisted Association of the National Guard, of the United States (EANGUS).

Theft of Veterans Affairs (VA) Personal Data

Monday, May 21, 2006. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has recently learned that an employee, a data analyst, took home electronic data from VA, which he was not authorized to do. This behavior was in violation of our policies. This data contained identifying information including names, social security numbers, and dates of birth for up to 26.5 million veterans and some spouses, as well as some disability ratings.

Emphasis mine.

Will we soon have some veteran, with the plastic tubes shoved up his nose to deliver his life-preserving oxygen, bitching to Congress about how his identity has been stolen, how his mil pension is now redirected to a meth lab on the other side of the Mississippi? How about a Korean-era serviceman's widow dumped on the curb because she couldn't make her rent payments, because her identity was stolen?

Will it have to come to that?

Arm up!

Today, ladies and gentlemen, is Patriots Day.

Fa bene

One of the Christmas gifts from years past I finally got around to trying: pasta attachments that mate to the massive frigging power-take-off on the premium stand mixer I got for my Sainted Wife whom I do not deserve.



That was fun. Amazing how two cups of flour turns into a patch of noodle dough 10 centimeters wide by 10 meters long (though only microns thick).

Bike'n'shoot

TCM and I met at the Bike'n'shoot. TCM, avid cyclist and dedicated shooter, placed.

Fûz finished without dying. He's the guy sucking wind on your right. TCM remains incognito.

Gas piston upper for AR15

File this under Noodling.

One repeated criticism of the AR15 design is its direct gas impingement action. Propellant gas is tapped from the barrel and led through a tube backwards into the receiver of the piece, and into the bolt carrier itself. The gas pressure works against a piston which is a rearward-facing surface of the bolt. The pressure builds between that face of the bolt and the internal surfaces of the bolt carrier ('directly impinging' upon the bolt), forcing them apart. A cam translates that force into rotation of the bolt, so its lugs disengage with their mating surfaces, the bolt unlocks, and the bolt carrier can retract, carrying the bolt with it.

The propellant gas passing through the bolt carrier leaves a mess behind, as a carbon buildup that has to be cleaned out, or it will build up to the point that the piece malfunctions.

The upside? Fewer parts and less weight compared to a firearm that contains this gas in a cylinder up front of the receiver, and uses the pressure to move an operating rod. In an indirect-impingement firearm, the operating rod moves the bolt carrier without depositing burnt-propellant crud in the receiver.

So the noodling goal is to improvise an operating rod that weighs the least possible and fits within the AR15 footprint--or a footprint expanded to what the market will accept.

Picatinny-rail forearms are the rage. A free-floating tube takes the place of the original AR15-type forearm nowadays, and Weaver-type rails are fastened to or forged integrally with the tube at 12, 3, 6 and 9-o'clock positions. Plenty of room exists within to contain a few grams of extra hardware.

The extra hardware consists of a spigot and an operating rod, fitting into a replacement gas block. The photo shows the first two parts and omits the gas block.



The spigot is up front and the op rod is to the rear. The spigot's rear section has an outer diameter that just matches the inner diameter of the op rod's frontward cylinder; the spigot's rear is male to the op rod's forward female. Cannelures are turned into the spigot's rear section to reduce weight and give the crud someplace to collect until the rifleman has time to take it out and clean it.

What the photo does not show is the yoke ("gas block"), the part that is fastened to the carbine barrel and is bored to take the spigot. The forward, thicker section of the spigot has keyways milled into it so it quarter-turns into the yoke to fasten there.

The yoke has a port bored in it so a hole in the barrel lets propellant gas out, through the port, into a matching port in the spigot. The spigot then redirects the propellant gas rearward into the op rod.

As the gas passes through the port, into the spigot, it enters the op rod's cylinder, filling it and pushing it rearwards.

A spring surrounds the rear tail of the op rod, and that spring compresses as the op rod retreats. The op rod's tail has the same diameter, minus x, as the original gas tube of the AR15, so it easily passes into the upper receiver and enters the bolt carrier key. The op rod tail pushes against the bolt carrier key, so when the op rod retreats, it pushes the bolt carrier key as surely as gas pressure in the tube would.

When the op rod retreats far enough, the rearmost face of the spigot is exposed, and the gas that filled the op rod cylinder can escape. No gas is introduced into the upper receiver along this route. The bolt carrier, having more mass than the op rod, keeps going rearward. The op rod runs out of gas, so to speak, and its return spring pushes it home again, back over the rear tail of the spigot.

The spigot guides the op rod's cylinder back home; only a millimeter or two of the op rod's travel will not be guided by the spigot, so there will be no need of a tube or rail to guide the op rod.

When the shooting day is ended, the operator can turn the spigot a quarter-turn or so, pull the spigot forward out of the yoke, and clean it off. The op rod will also come forward, through the yoke, and out the front of the carbine so its cylinder can be cleaned out. The op rod's cylinder's outer diameter is less than the inner diameter of the yoke's spigot passage.

Reassembly is reverse of disassembly.

All of it should fit within the confines of the modern Picatinny-railed handguard. Some propellant junk will accumulate within that handguard but that won't interfere with operation of the carbine. A toothbrush will get it out. Some tuning of internal surfaces of the handguard may be necessary to guide the op rod on its travel, and to buffer the op rod's return spring.

The challenges? First, to make the parts very light. If the walls of the op rod's cylinder are thin enough, they'll heat up in protracted fire so propellant gunk will burn off rather than build up. Too thin, though, and the walls will rupture. The yoke and spigot have to be kept light too. All of it will have to be steel rather than aluminum alloy, to resist the burning propellant gases.

Another problem would be the bowing of the tail of the op rod under firing pressure. If it flexes or bows too much it will bind against the hole in the upper receiver instead of shoving the bolt carrier rearward. Maybe the tail could be peened with flats so it will bow at more nodes but with less amplitude. This will be less of a problem with shorter-barreled carbines, such as the M4, because the tail will be shorter than that of the A3 rifle, with same diameter, thus stiffer.

My car is my property, continued and revised

Please let me clarify some points about this earlier post.

I do not support a law that explicitly establishes a right to have a firearm in one's car while on an employer's property.

I do support a law that establishes an automobile as a person's property, protected with the same Fourth Amendment rights as one's papers, effects, and home.

I'm still wrestling with the idea that one can enter a contract that requires one to surrender a civil right. I've been wrestling with that idea for decades and probably will continue to do so in my grave. It's for greater minds than mine. Maybe Jed is right, interfering here is an impairment of the right of contract.

Some of my concerns arise from how one can be held to "enter a contract" by buying a house or entering a business, or taking a job. To me, it's not a contract unless it is for a fixed beginning and end dates, among person or persons identifiable, with consequences for failure to meet the stipulations of the contract on all parties, and a means to terminate the contract. There is only one entity with whom I have actually entered an employment contract, and it did indeed demand the circumscription of some of my civil rights, but that's because it's the frigging US military. They are a different animal entirely from being a grocery bagger, newspaper carrier, or cable geek, and ought to be. None of those other entities ran a contract past me. In the case of cable geekery, they tried: headhunters told me those attempts weren't contracts and are unenforceable.

Taking a job with a papermill is not necessarily entering a contract. Agreeing to take that job does not equate to implicit consent for the papermill's ownership to search my car while it is parked on their property in the course of my working there. Union work may differ.

What would make a "gun-free workplace" more palatable would be law or jursiprudence like that proposed for a "gun-free supermarket". Business A is welcome to assert its right to property over the building and grounds of its business, such that employees or patrons are forbidden from being armed while on that property. Business A knowingly surrenders indemnity for violence that occurs there, and maybe their insurer will note that fact and charge premiums accordingly.

Business A must also bear some costs---not directly financial, as in fines, but operating costs, signage, storage---to make sure its employees and customers know their choice and can comply with it at the place where they cross that boundary between public property and Business A's private property.

Business B chooses not to establish such a policy, and Business B is protected by law from any suit holding it responsible for violence that occurs there, provided Business B is not the perpetrator. Please read the comments to the post I linked immediately above, they illuminate.

Absent this kind of law, we have recourse only to public pressure. PR has discouraged businesses who were weighing "gun-free" policies for their customers: Burt auto dealerships in the Denver area, for example, responded positively to a call-and-write'em campaign; I've heard that Applebee's did also.

But if workplace violence is as prevalent as some say (well, is it?), and workplace violence succeeds in spite of "gun-free" workplace policies (leave the "because of" argument for another day), then employees are at greater risk than patrons. What about them? Failing to protect employees' RKBA is, in my view, implicit acceptance of the principle that the presence of a gun causes crime regardless of the character of the people involved: 'It doesn't matter who you are, or who your co-workers are, doesn't matter how well I checked you out before I hired you. If the gun is there somebody might get hurt.'

Distinctions regarding what really constitutes private property take on new meaning here, and I stress them.

*******

Jed and I, and all five of my other regular readers, should be so lucky that someday the individual RKBA receives the respect and juridicial deference that are implied in this discussion. We are still trying to secure an uncertain and tragically disrespected RKBA in our own homes and on public streets; the right answers for RKBA within places of employment, worship, and commerce, at some presumed distance from the purely public sphere, depend on agreement that an individual RKBA exists. Such agreement cannot exist in a nation and at a time where mere possession of the instrument in private without State permission can be a crime, or in a city whose civic leaders or sworn peace officers can unilaterally call for the instruments' wholsale seizure.

Perhaps it is a sign of progress that our legislators and courts are now weighing the RKBA against other rights, without obvious intent to use that balancing act to short-sheet RKBA. Perhaps the RKBA can be defined, in part, from the outside in---where must it recede in importance versus other rights?

Piranhas in Cheyenne

HB78 failed last week, and HB46 didn't make it even that far. The local paper's editorial pages argued strongly against 78, though I doubt that's what did it in. NRA's emails suggested that it competed with other bills regarding what Wyoming would do with its revenue surplus, and lost; the website for the Wyoming legislature also listed at least two other bills in the House that aimed to liberalize concealed carry. HB78 just went the farthest of them.

As I have said in other venues, concealed carry is liberalizing and expanding rapidly, such that I predict in 10 years all but two States will offer shall-issue CCW permits at the most restrictive, and many will have permit-free carry like Vermont has always had and Alaska recently adopted. Those two hold-out States will be at risk of losing Federal monies because they do not allow uniform CCW for their own citizens nor reciprocity with other States' CCWs. What Wyoming failed to get in HB78 this year will be back, again and again, until it is law. Permit-regulated concealed carry leads the way and makes permit-free laws palatable, passable, and therefore possible.

And someone will always be unhappy with it, even with the very idea of it. Since Wyoming Tribune Eagle does not load much of its content online, I can point you to neither their editorials nor to the lettitors they spawned. As I receive WTE only on Sundays, I can't riffle through the back issues to recreate the dialog either. Their copyright feathers might also get ruffled if I OCR'd them for reproduction here.

But what little I see still shows stark and embarrassing illiteracy on the part of concealed-carry opponents.

In particular, one Roger MacDonald-Evoy seems to have jumped the shark, by misidentifying the Second Amendment as the States' Rights Amendment, and arguing that the Second Amendment is a State or collective right.

I didn't know that anyone had designated one of the articles of the Bill of Rights as a states' rights amendment per se---as a Federalist, I assert that a) States have no rights, merely powers, which were intended to be broad, and b) the Federal government's powers were enumerated---relying on just one article to set this principle forth seems redundant on the one hand, and pitiably inadequate on the other. But we Federalists, though outspoken, are scarce. Other Constitutional philosophies, and even unconstitutional ones, prevail.

Don't get me wrong, I like Mac-evoy, as he calls himself; I've worked a little with him, and he shares some of my tastes, such as Firesign Theatre and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. He's a witty fellow, and I'm a little surprised and disappointed he didn't prepare himself better for one of the blogosphere's best-illuminated topics.

The letters to WTE's editor today lit him up, including one from HB78's original sponsor. Again, I apologize that I can't link to them, because WTE doesn't put their content on-line. Mabye Macevoy thought this would be a simple appeal to logic, no more effort or trouble than stepping gently across the swamp of irrational redneck gunlove. Instead, he has piranhas roiling the water up to his 'nads and no firm place to stand.

The employer's parking lot is his property but my car is my property

I disagree with Jed:

Any law which deprives a business of the right to control access to their private property, and the terms thereof, is a blatant violation of property rights. We cannot, and should not, defend gun rights at the expense of something so fundamental.

I'm not arguing for gun rights in this instance, but indeed property rights. My automobile is my property. The State has an interest in knowing what's in my car only so long as it is moving on a public road. They can require that my car bear identifying marks for several reasons, including the possible recovery of my property if it is stolen, as well as the enforcement of requirements to insure it for operation on public roads. The State can search it under (too) many circumstances, usually in connection with it moving on a public road.

I disagree that my property rights in my vehicle, and my rights in the other property my vehicle may contain, are conditioned by where that vehicle may be, whether moving or parked.

If I keep a piece in my car, and the car and the piece are lawfully mine, it's nobody's business whether I have a piece in it.

it's about LUUUUUURRRVE

Those rare times that I get to see HBO, it can still surprise and titillate.

And disturb. The teaser for this show suggests, at least to me, that it is aimed at religious fundies, and the kind of world the left thinks they'd like to build if they ever came to grasp the levers of political power.

Ha ha laugh oh that's funny he's got three conservatively-dressed Stepford milfs and he worries there's not enough of him to go around {it's not for every man!} ha ha isn't that just precious and the milfs fight over who's in charge and they have to work out a schedule where they pass him around like a bowl of Fritos y'know? salty greasy and corny

The live trailer included remarks from the producers, about how the show is not about polygamy, it's about LOVE. Ok sure. Sometimes a Frito is just a Frito.

How to get mugged in the sterile area of an airport

We are paying $8 plus for 24 hours of 802.11g internet access in the airport terminal. I may ultimately use about 10 of those hours, given last night's weather. But couldn't SBC sell their connectivity in realistic increments?

Who in an airport would order 24 hours of WiFi unless he's setting up a kiosk to sell fake Rolexes?

Could this law have helped Cory Maye?

From HB46, now passed out of Wyoming's House and headed to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary:

A person who uses force as permitted in W.S.
6-2-602 is justified in using such force and is immune from
criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such
force, unless the person against whom force was used is a
peace officer, who was acting in the performance of his
official duties and the officer identified himself in
accordance with any applicable law or the person using
force knew or reasonably should have known that the person
was a peace officer.

Of course it always hinges on what a DA asserts that a person "reasonably should have known," and on how well a defense counsel can counter to a jury what that DA asserts. But would Cory Maye be on death row if this law had been in effect at that place and time?

The only loophole that I see in this bill is the 'applicable law' standard for how a peace officer must identify himself. Should shouting "police", even repeatedly and through a bullhorn, suffice?

Regardless, reforms like this one still don't address the root of the problem---the overuse of dynamic entry.

and on your right, the Bridge to Nowhere

I drove past the Clinton Library this afternoon. Wow.

It does look just like a gigantic aluminum-sided trailer.

now that's country

I just found a Jim Reeves collection. His He'll Have To Go reminds me of the satire treatment of same by Homer and Jethro. I'd kill to have that.

None of this Toby Keith sh1t. Friggin tin-foil cowboy hats.

Ooops

A chem detector rang the cherries with a false positive for nerve agent at the Russell Senate Office Building.

It could have been a cleaning lady spilling a large quantity of Simple Green. Some molecules that feature an ether linking to a glycol will trigger nerve agent detectors.

What I should have done in the first place

The scanner has been a Canon LiDE 20, bought at bargain-basement price at the BX on Golfball Prairie AFB a year ago.

The printer has been an Epson Stylus Color 740i, bought not long after we brought the G4 PowerMac home in '99.

A lot of water has passed under these bridges, in the form of emails to Canon's tech support to get their scanner to work on the Classic emulator on OS 10.2.8, then their upgraded drivers to run directly on OS X; emails to Epson to get their printer to play nice with a Linksys Ethernet print server; emails to Linksys to get their print server to play nice with the Epson.

It's been an expensive bargain and I'm not done paying for it. All I wanted was one multifunction printer/scanner/copier that runs on the home network with an IP address, and I can print to it from any of the menagerie of computers in the house.

The Linksys server has been yanked out and put in the box while I ponder tactics to return it for refund or credit. The Canon scanner is going to my workplace until we get our Sharp copier upgraded with a scanner and OCR. The Epson printer is perfectly mission capable.

But HP has found a place in our home. Their Photosmart 2575 connects directly to the home network. I installed its drivers on 3 machines---the PowerMac, a Win2k, and the Clandestine Blogging Platform's WinXP--and the only hitch I have is with printing from Mac Classic applications on the OS X emulator.

The support email is already sent to HP, with a $5 bet with any of my five devoted readers that they'll be unable to get that aspect of it to work. So I am holding on to the Epson printer, just to print from Mac Office 98.

Quote for the day

I have two replies when as a criminologist studying firearms issues I am asked would the world not benefit if there were no guns? First, 1200 years ago there were no guns. Yet, for excellent reasons, that period in Europe has been called the Dark Ages. Firearms are the only weaponry by which the weak can resist the strong. Their absence was characterized by oppression and massacre not peace.

Don Kates, quoted by David Hardy at Arms and the Law.

Kates's other reply is worth reading too.

Chun-bi!

We went for the Kia Sedona. USAA negotiated the price to about $800 over dealer invoice. The dealer had one equipped as we wanted, in the showroom. About 45 minutes after USAA told me about it, I called, brought over the paperwork, and offered the GMC for trade. They offered about what I expected. An hour or so after that, I drove the Kia home.

Mama-san very pleased. Very pleased.

Could I have done better? Probably, but I'm not terribly interested in knowing exactly how much better I could have done by dickering, haggling, and feigning attempts to leave the lot in disgust. During the testdrive a few weeks ago, the grizzled cowboy salesperson answered what questions he could, then just handed me the keys. "The gas gauge is near E," I said to him as I headed for Nationway. "You've got about 35 miles," he said. Them's balls. He let the car sell itself.

Well, sort of. He ticked off the warranty, the Michelins, the side curtains, the improvements over the 2005 model (thanks, Chaz, you were exactly right). But he was low-pressure like I've never seen. "We aren't going anywhere. Just give us a fair chance at your business."

Gawdddayahmm it's a 3.8L DOHC V6.

The hardest part about this car will be explaining to my UAW brother-in-law that I didn't buy (a) GM, (b) 'Murcan. That boy needs an exit strategy.

Damning with faint praise?

I was paid a compliment today, I think.

The lot of us were being bitched out, with some justification, and I sat and took it. I took responsibility for it. I was not leading, scarcely following.

Another of us later approached me and said she admired my ability to absorb the abuse.

Is that a compliment?

Making Swen's day

Swen weighs liberalization of Wyoming's self-defense laws.

FWIW, Swen, I didn't buy the leetle badge.

RFQ: blog software for inside the fence

I want to try an internal FOUO-only weblog for my organization. From what I have seen, AKO won't do it (Six months of watching my AKO site load "The weblog channel is coming soon!").

My immediate leadership is giving tacit support, and the DOIM will let me have space on a server. So which blogging application do I get?

Requirements:

• Multiple posters.
  
• Readers will have to log in to the site to read it. The admin (me) will issue userids and allow users to set passwords.
  
• If a post links to content outside the fence, the outside content's referrer log must not capture the location of my server. As WUTT!'s own Sitemeter log says, "blocked referrer." That sounds more like a function of DOIM's firewall than of the blogging application.
  

Is this even 75%-capable in Microsoft Office/Outlook?

Anyone else doing this in a green, blue, or purple environment? If so, what are you using?

Carshopping

Bill Quick is thinking aloud about buying a Prius (no link; he's moved to a new hosting service and I can't find his archives). This moves the holders of Chez Fûz to blog about our deliberations of a new offspring-unit transporter.

My initial druthers were hovering around the Dodge Grand Caravan, because I've rented or borrowed a few and like the passenger room. The sticker isn't too nasty either, though I'd hoped with weakness in the industry they'd try harder to stimulate sales. We test-drove one today and it behaved like I expected it. Barbaloot is just elated to be looking at a new kid-hauler. But a conversation a few weeks ago with a snake-eater led me to consider the imports.

So we stopped at the Kia dealer just a few blocks away. We are very torn now. More car, more airbags, more horsepower, a little less passenger space. Way less money. Way better warranty.

A tool must be weighed against what it will be used to do:

• Getting four kids about to swim lessons twice a week and Mass once a week. That includes one kid who needs no special seating, two in boosters, and one in a child seat with lap bar.
  
• Taking the child and Boy to get groceries once or twice a week.
  
• Three or four times a year, all of us to camping or a road trip to some scenic place.
  
• Maybe once a year, schlepping all of us to the Great Lakes to see grandparents.
  
• Three or more times a year, bringing lumber home from one of the bigbox DIY stores. Luggage rack will do it.
  

The majority of the miles will be in town. Compared to what the current vehicle did in Colorado, less highway and much fewer miles total per year.

Using USAA's comparison service, we considered a few other models. The model number profusion on Toyota Siennas discouraged me immediately. The number of Honda Odyssey models available was a turn-off too. The Hondas appear to be smaller than the Kia anyway, and their MSRPs were way higher as a class.

Disappointment: USAA's comparison service won't work on any platform other than IE 6 on Windows. God knows I've tried.

USAA's purchase negotiation service will also be interesting. "Give us the name and number of their fleet manager, we take it from there." The Dodge dealer people furrowed their brows when I asked them that. The guy at the Kia shop didn't know WTF I was talking about.

So Fûz's first reader poll!

Dodge Grand Caravan SXT, or Kia Sedona EX? Sorry, no fancy-schmancy drop-in poll in the post. Just leave a comment.

Arguments to buy American just for the sake of it will fall on deaf ears. If Detroit wants to sell to me, they have to compete the old fashioned way, price and features.

I don't do resolutions

But I do have a plan or two. They won't all be done this year.

• Closing off our basement walkup in a new Bilco steel door. The door's here, we need the enclosure around it. Pressure-treated lumber and smoke-tinted plexiglas.
  
• Get at least two bids for putting radiant hydronic heat into Chez Fûz. I hate hate hate forced-air heat. If energy prices are on a continuing upward crawl, if not an upward stair-step function, we'll recover the costs, estimated at $3 per square foot. We'll staple the PEX tubing to the underside of the subfloor (wreck out ductwork and acoustic ceiling to get at it), and heat both first floor and basement from each run. Would be awesome to run it all from two zones and a large water heater instead of a boiler. I'm groovy with using a strong glycol-to-water mix rather than straight water. I bought some books on designing these systems but they don't have the meat or I don't bring the mastery of plumbing potatoes. I'd like to know I'm not getting snookered by the contractor.
  
• With all of the space liberated by removing the forced-air furnace, I'll put a water softener (back) in. There used to be one, it was disconnected and stuck in a corner. The resin bed is ironed up. That can be fixed with a few bucks of chemicals.
  
• The main argument around here for forced-air heat is the relative ease of integrating air-conditioning with it. In this part of the prairie, I can't see air-conditioning being necessary more than two weeks out of the year. Better to me, active ventilation of the roof crawlspace. A 1600 cfm blower costs less than $100 and pennies to operate. I'll put it over the garage where the noise won't bother me. The problem: where to put louvers to let fresh air into that space? It's tight under the eaves.
  
• Laminate floor in dining room. We already bought the materials.
  
• Tile floors in kitchen, foyer, upstairs baths.
  
• Graywater system to catch laundry and shower water. There's a huge crawlspace under kit and DR, adjacent to all of the plumbing, where that water can be caught and stored. Getting that water to the rear lawn is a cinch. Front lawn will take some craft.
  
• A bat house. I'd fasten risers to the chimney but am afraid the wind will rip it down and trash the roof.
  
• A new offspring-unit transport mechanism for Mama-san. A Grand Caravan would be awesome in a turbo-diesel. Too bad that product doesn't exist.
  

New blasters this year?

Jeff at Alphecca asks what new blasters a blogger has gotten this year. Can't say that I have gotten any, though TCM has gathered a few.

I would like to get one of mine back, though, from a 'smith who doesn't reply to emails. She's Dierdre's sister Hermione.

This coming year (tomorrow perhaps) Firstborn will send her first .22 bullet downrange. A good pellet rifle will be in order if she gets the itch. Aside from that, I want no more guns, just time and a place to shoot them.

The problem isn't PowerPoint, it's how it is used

Twice in the last month I have been shortchanged in a course of instruction, by an instructor who chooses not to subject me to "death by PowerPoint. Let's go ahead and get our hands on the equipment instead, you'll learn more."

It would be forgiveable if the instruction were accompanied by sound handouts or preceded by comprehensive read-ahead material. A few block diagrams would help too. Instead I am explaining in whispers to colleagues what all this gear is supposed to accomplish and why, and learning little for myself.

I've cursed PowerPoint myself, in this very space in fact. But dammit, y'all, PowerPoint isn't the problem here. The lazy tendency to shovel a tech manual into PowerPoint, now that's a problem. Making your slideshows underinformative, oversizing them with raw digital photos, adorning them with MS's clip art, those are the problems. Fix them and slideshows won't bore people to death, they'll actually be informative and useful.

Both times, the instructors were contract employees for defense contractors. They represented the same company, in fact, though I suspect this is a trend and is much more widespread. Anybody else encounter this sort of thing?

Chicken or egg question

Barbaloot and I are watching one of my presents to her, the DVD set of Aeon Flux (impulse purchase at BestBuy).

First episode: Utopia or Deuteranopia?

Trever Goodchild mumbles his goals and means to himself as he completes his purge of competing high-level functionaries to consolidate his rule over Bregna. Among his means: "Total information awareness."

So my question is: was this work recut in the last year or so to add in that throwaway line referring to Admiral Poindexter's pet program, or were Peter Chung and the Aeon Flux writers more visionary (still) than I give them credit? Amazon lists the DVD collection in '95.

Do you own the data created incident to being eyeballed?

What if two vehicles are hustling along a rural road, doing low-80s in a 75-limit zone, and a Highway Patrol vehicle comes from the opposite direction, suddenly pulls over, reverses direction, and catches up?

The patrol car hovers behind the rear of the two vehicles for about 4 minutes, then passes, hovers behind the front-runner for a few minutes, then lights up and pulls the front-runner over?

Mama-san, passenger with me in the rear vehicle, asks "Why didn't he just pull the guy over instead of waiting so long?"

I, driver of the rear vehicle, replied "He ran the plates."

"Wouldn't he do that after pulling him over?"

"No, he wants to make sure he's not pulling over some psycho who'll try to shoot him. He wants to know whether this will be a one-unit stop, or a two- or three-unit. Bench warrant, multiple traffic violations, expired registration, Al Qaeda, you name it. Run the plates first, know what you're getting into."

Then the wheels were turning. He surely ran our plates too. Hmmmm, the patrolman was probably thinking, serviceman and his wife and kiddies. Nothing interesting here . . . The guy in the front tripped the radar. What about him?

Which makes me wonder: how many times have my plates been run, either by obvious marked patrol vehicles or air units, or by unmarkeds just weaving through busy traffic? What about when optical-character recognition technology is mated with radar camera units and fast, fast realtime connection to the databases, allowing hundreds of plates to be "run" per minute? The potential there for loss of privacy would be staggering. The anonymity of the herd would be gone if it isn't already. The consequences of minor errors, either in the tag records themselves or in the data pipeline between the camera and the DMV, would be enormous.

Johnny Law will assert that he has the power to use government-owned information and commerically-available technology to enhance the apprehension of lawbreakers. How can one object, unless one is caught redhanded and wriggling to escape? The syllogism: the innocent have nothing to fear, therefore the fearful are not innocent.

So how should the civil libertarian respond to this development?

I submit: assert that publicly collected information be owned by those who collect it, and the subjects of collection. If you run my plates (public information, my property interest in my vehicle, my payment of taxes to use that vehicle on public roads, the presence of my vehicle on public roads) with commonly available technology (a camera in the patrol vehicle or mounted to view traffic on the public road, plus OCR to translate the plate into registration information) the resulting data belongs to both the government, who collected it, and me, whom it is about.

The cops know when they collect it. For it to be of use to them for the purposes of law enforcement, they must collect date/time, location, observing officer, and so on---to be evidence it must meet evidentiary standards.

But I may not know that it was collected at all, let alone know the details incident to its collection. If the information's mine, even in part, I have a right to know that it has been collected, where, when, and by whom. If there's an error or fraud I have the right to challenge that piece of information that may be, or is asserted to be, about me.

So do I have a right to know every time that my plates have been checked against databases of vehicle registration, operator licensing, outstanding warrants, and so forth? Some would be surprised to find how often their plates are run, so to speak, though I wouldn't be.

If facial recognition becomes reliable, will my face be "run" with the same regularity? Worse, will my face be run even if facial recognition does not become reliable? Should I not have the right to know the data points are being created so at the very least I can challenge them?

Will the shiny sexiness of technology overwhelm such error, to the extent that a bad OCR on my plate or a bad facial match, be more credible than my wife's testimony that I was five states and two time zones away from the crime?

Here comes the Al-Qaeda Exception: Hypothetically, an Islamofascist mole operating in the United States will be driving about just like I do, occasionally breaking a speed limit just as I do. He can expect to have his plates run about as often. His plates, his operator license, and other governmental records incident to operating a motor vehicle, would be subject to the same level of scrutiny as mine are. But if he's a jihadi baddass, he's looking tactfully to see whether his profile is low enough. Is he being followed or observed more than the average guy?

Would his right to know how often his plates are run, tip the government's hand that he's being watched?

Which way would you rather have it, gentle reader?

• Everybody, and I mean everybody, is entitled to know every time the government checks his public appearance against a database---even if that might tip off undercover operatives that they are being watched? Or,
  
• It's none of your business how often your plates are run. Al Qaeda is (all) the reason (we need).
  
• Only the suspected jihadis suffer diminishment of their right to know how often they or their public records are nudged. Oooops, every swinging d1ck has about 5 (or 10, or 40) "hits" a year, so we have to let some of his hits through, let him see them, or he'll suspect something. Problem is, the gummint at various levels will never be good enough at lying to falsify that kind of record plausibly. This option will certainly fail if tried (we've organized crime as an example: "Federal marshals are so far up my ass I can taste Brylcreem"). For practical purposes, disclose all hits or none.
  

Please answer in the comments. No similarity between this post and the NSA intercept story is coincidental. How you answer probably describes your opinion of the intercept orders.

First Thanksgiving with a convection oven

This was our first Thanksgiving with a convection oven. After frantic internet searches of how to roast a Thanksgiving turkey in one, I concluded that it would take maybe a little less time than a conventional oven would, that we'd positively adore the result, and that we'd depend on trial and error because of our altitude above mean sea level in the beautiful flyover country of Cheyenne.

With a meat thermometer, we'd still be disaster-proofing ourselves. Okayfine. A thirteen-pound critter stuffed, rubbed with paprika-laced olive oil and scattered with fresh parsley. Before:



Four hours and forty-five minutes later at 375, with foil over the breast and legs, and the meat thermometer in the stuffing showing 180:



Yes, delightfully crispy skin, moist breast meat. But still almost 5 frigging hours.

Endorsement

I support the Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package.

Details here.

stuff at the other place

Post up at the Senate campaign blog.

Please take one, they're free

Witnessed somewhere in Fauquier County, Virginia.

Friday ferretblogging

Scooter.

Damage may be undone

Update on the situation:

Belkin's USB 802.11g adapter was available at a good price. It installed and fired up instantly.

Then I downloaded a new WiFi driver for from Averatec, installed it, and removed the Belkin. Now my on-board WiFi works again and I have a second spare adapter.

Pain in the ass but we're operational again.

Update: A bud bought the Belkin adapter. I'm back to just one spare. Shall I travel with it from now on?

What's missing??

OK, normally I blog about gun gear or CCW or training (I think that sums up my entire blogging career, actually) but today I'm gonna' get a bit more personal. I'm starting to feel as if there are things --significant things -- missing from TCM's life. Two things in particular have been nagging at me: combat and women. (And, yes, I believe there's a distinction...)

I've never been in combat. In fact, I haven't been in a fight since the sixth grade. When it comes to violence and hostility, I'm a master at avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation. But part of me thinks that I'm overdue for a break in that trend. As I'm sure many of you do, I keep up to date as to the goings-on in the Middle East. All politics of the situation aside, I see what is obviously a grueling fight between our Boys in Camo and those who would like to kill them. To the grunt on the street, I have to believe it's that simple: him or me. And in a way, I'm envious. I spent 15 years in the Air National Guard and the closest I came to combat was being on-call for three months during the lead-up to Desert Storm. Yawn...

It is said that prostitution is the oldest profession. Perhaps, but what about soldiering? (What gets more ink: the history of prostitution or the history of war?) I'm sure that soldiering has changed little in the thousands of years its been practiced. And yet I feel as though that aspect of being a man, being a soldier in combat, has passed me by. Does combat change a man? For the better? For the worse? What does it feel like to fight another man to the death? How did the Spartans accept the notion that their defeat at Thermopylae was imminent? What went thru the minds of the soldiers that fought to a bloody stalemate at Antietam? How sweet was the victory for the Russians as the last desperate pockets of Nazi resistance in Berlin were finally crushed? Millions upon millions of men in history have known the answers to these questions. I do not.

Let me just say that I have no bloodlust and no romantic illusions about war. I have no doubt that combat is just as ugly and gritty and horrifying as many of those who have been thru it say it is. But I'd like to know that for myself, to experience that primal behavior firsthand, to understand it in terms that my mind has formulated based on personal experience. I'm especially curious as to how I'd act. How well would I perform under fire? Would I freeze? Would I crack? Is my situational awareness as good as I think it is? Would I remember and, more importantly, employ the training I've received? In short, would I "walk the walk"?

I've posed such ponderings to close friends and once they've realized that I'm serious, their answers have been remarkably similar: get in the fight somehow. Unfortunately, it's probably unrealistic to even consider such things. Sure, I've had training but nothing even remotely approaching AIT or even Marine boot camp. (Air Force, remember...) At 40-something, rejoining the ranks is mostly out of the question. Even in the unlikely event that I landed a mercenary personal security gig, could I really perform my job?? Getting yourself killed because you're ill-prepared is unfortunate. Getting your charge killed is unprofessional. Getting your buddies killed is unforgivable.

So what's a "wondering warrior" to do? How do these questions get answered?

One confidante suggested getting involved in anti-piracy activities. That might work if I wasn't terrified of large bodies of water. But the idea still has merit. Unlike the tenuous "keeping the world safe for democracy" mandate that drives our current involvement in the faraway deserts of Afghaniraniraqistan, anti-piracy is apolitical, malum en se kinda' work. No moral dilemmas to keep one awake at night. The pirates are most likely to be un- or poorly-trained. Their tactics would necessarily be limited and predictable since any extreme measures -- ie, sinking the target ship -- defeat the entire purpose of their enterprise. Unless the pirates adopt paratrooper tactics and/or submarines, any fighting would essentially occur in only two dimensions. Overwhelming numbers would be their only advantage, an advantage that could easily be negated thru superior firepower. Seems simple enough.

But then again, I've never been in combat so how the hell would I know?...


Then there's the second missing thing: a woman. As much as I hate to admit it, TCM has been without a woman for almost two years. Being alone isn't always a problem, being the busy, independent, and occasionally self-centered guy that I can be. But, again, I feel like I'm missing out on something. Something that the rest of the world takes part in every day. Something the rest of the world seems to take for granted.

Historically, relationships have presented yours truly with numerous difficulties. I've gotten better at them, though, since I've learned how to step "outside" of any conflicts and look at things impartially. (Not easy, by any stretch, but do-able...) I was unprepared for marriage when I tied the knot at 24 with an equally unprepared woman. We stayed married for twelve years. Our disfunctions remained dormant as we fought side-by-side thru countless non-marriage-related battles. We were a hell of team as long as we had a common enemy. However, once we were both out of college, working well-paying jobs, and focusing on the future, things got easy. Too easy. Without those common enemies, our marriage got stale and fell apart. As did the few relationships I was involved in after the divorce.

Except the last one.

The Little Chinese Girl (aka, LCG) was the one that got away. The relationship found me when I wasn't looking for it. I won't say it was a match made in heaven but it was good match, nonetheless, and we got along pretty durned well. (And, damn, she was cute!!) We had our differences, of course, but we also had enough in common to at least have good pillow talk and even better dinner conversation. We had complimentary talent sets, too. She was the idea person; I was the problem solver. We used the opportunity to improve our partnership skills: how to conduct a fair fight, how to negotiate and compromise, how to support one another, and how to listen and make sure we were being heard. We parted amicably once we both realized there were some serious gaps in what we each wanted for our futures. I had it good with LCG -- I knew it then and I know it now. I did almost everything right with her and we're both better for what we had.

And I miss that.

I miss having the interaction of another person in my life. I know how to deal with myself and my quirks. (Well, most of them...) Being with another is what's missing. I miss the companionship and the conflict and the commiserating and the sharing of Sunday morning breakfast. Life -- just like a relationship -- brings about a swirling river of difficult sacrifices, unexpected complications, and competing demands. At least in a relationship, there's a woman on the other bank of that river!! I've long ago thrown off the notion of blissful abandon, where nobody says the wrong thing, where nobody gets their feelings hurt, where nothing goes awry. That's the stuff of Hollywood and the (pulp) literary world. I'm much more pragmatic about love and relationships at my semi-advanced age. A healthy relationship should be equal parts romance, individuality, and mutually-beneficial business arrangement. To make it all work requires effort, optimism, patience, and occasional mumbling to oneself in the basement. And I won't truck a woman who's not willing or able to reciprocate. (Speaking of trucks, ...)

That's not to say I'm a perfect catch myself. Like I said, I have my quirks. I've been known to focus -- nay, obsess -- on a problem well beyond the point where it stops being funny. (I'm an engineer and, like a cop, I'm not paid to lose...) That said, I have Short Attention Span Moments that are the stuff of legends. When I'm in that mode, a 10-year-old with ADHD could beat me in a staring contest. I have a gun collection that's awfully difficult to explain. I prefer two wheels to any other form of transportation. I occasionally allot copious amounts of "alone time" for myself. This is especially true when work gets stressful. I'm an early bird.

But it's not all bad. I have my good points, too. I try to take care of myself -- emotionally and physically -- and avoid bad influences. Most of my friends are of sound character and won't elicit the dreaded "I never want to see him in my house again" conversation. I'm always where I say I'll be and I come home every night that it's logistically sound to do so. As much as I use them, I hate computers and I'm rarely found fiddling with one "just for the heck of it". I kinda' know how stuff works and can usually fix it if it's broke. I have all my hair.

So, with all these endearing qualities, you're probably asking yourself, "Why doesn't this guy have a date for next Friday??" Well, I've been asking myself this same question for a while. I know the answer. It can be stated -- but not explained -- in one word: exposure. I'm just not around any women. I don't get any exposure.

Take my job (please...) I write software, in a basement, surrounded by Y-chromosome-types just like me. My pastimes are heavily male-populated: shooting, four-wheeling, bicycling, and motorcycling. (I once joined a bicycle racing team with the goal of meeting women, only to discover that there were just two types of women on the team: married or lesbian. I kid you not...) Even my "solo projects" -- woodworking, reloading, electronics tinkering -- don't lend themselves to female involvement. I've considered taking up a hobby that would have women in the same room but there are always repercussions to that. "TCM, why don't we go ballroom dancing anymore??" Sorry, but I'm not gonna' feign interest in tennis or cajun cooking just to get a date. That's all the world needs: another phony. Fuz once recommended the ubiquitous internet coffee shop as a place to meet women. A reasonable suggestion which I admit I have yet to pursue.

I've tried on-line dating with little success. A few years back (before LCG) I met a woman on-line but she turned out to be a poor fit. It took longer than either of us expected to discover the mismatch and it was a difficult break. I recently tried the on-line thing again but it proved futile. Put simply, the women wouldn't respond to my e-mails, which is quite demoralizing. I spoke to a woman who was trying out on-line dating and she said the whole experience is very different for women. They are typically inundated with e-mails and their challenge is to weed out all the man-chaff. She admits that she's probably tossed more than a few good candidates into the recycle bin simply because she didn't have the time to scrutinize the sheer volume of e-mail. I can only hope that this was what happened to me. It's either that or my e-mails weren't as interesting / clever / charming / attention-grabbing as I thought they were.

Just in case "third time's the charm" is for real, I'm getting ready to try on-line dating again. I need to get a new photo and re-work some of the profile text. I'm in no rush at the moment since work is gonna' be pretty crazy for the next three months. I went to a new doctor a few months back and the last question on the three-page background questionnaire was, "What is your current form of birth control?" I wrote-in my answer: "Working 80-hour weeks." She read that and enjoyed a good belly laugh. If I can make a 45-year-old married mother of three laugh like that, I guess there's still hope.

Ciao!!

TCM

Stop the raid on Social Security

Sign the petition.

HT Jonathan G at ChicagoBoyz.

National Air and Space Museum

We got to goof off today and celebrated it by standing beneath a static display of a Soyuz mated with an Apollo.

Undoing the damage

I should have known better, but I installed XP service pack 2 on the newer Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform. It whacked my wireless adapter.

Kudos to both Geek Squad and Averatech's free customer support. The wifi still doesn't work yet but I have a Ghost backup that I can restore if just removing SP2 doesn't bring it back. If this doesn't work, I'm getting a USB wifi adapter at BestBuy tomorrow cuz I'm out of town for a while.

Next clandestine blogging platform might as well be a Mac if Windows is going to keep hosing me this badly. Wonder whether Apple will ever ship Powerbooks on AMDs?

Idea 842: Internet radio for real

We kept Googling for a way to pull radio station streams off the Internet and hand them to a conventional stereo system; we were rewarded for our patience.

The term I meant to look for is digital audio receiver, which covers a multitude of devices that have either an Ethernet or a WiFi input, and component audio output. Most of what I found were devices that depend on a computer you already have on your home network, so you can pull your MP3s or iTunes stored there over the home network to a stereo system with the power and fidelity to rattle your windows.

These devices need an application installed on the computer to direct the audio output over your home network to the device. As cheap as $49 if you are willing to stick with Bill Gates's abominations, from the various flavors of crippling DRM to the distasteful and permeable Windows itself.

Pay a lot more if you want Sony to give you a DAR with more features and flexibility, but Brother, beware that rootkit.

In this respect, to me, digital audio receiver is a misnomer. The computer is the receiver, the player is just a stream interface between it and your stereo.

I need no access to the MP3s on my computers---got that already on a satisfactory standalone device. I don't subscribe to iTunes or Rhapsody or suchlike either. What I'm hurting for is realtime streaming of the AM stations or hosts that this here brick shanty and its surrounding rolling prairie and electric windmills block out, or the FM stations that I read passably in the car but come in fringy at home.

Call me anachronistic, but a fixed, cabled digital communications medium should provide better service than a mobile analog one.

What I had more in mind was a stripped 'puter, with stripped browser, that connects to various radio stations with an interface borrowed from WinAmp, independently accessing the Internet through the home network. The user can browse for the programming by category or content, or artist name. All the other puters in the house can be shut down, or busy doing something else.

Hell, load the player's control panel as a webserver on the player, and use a Palm Pilot or Windows handheld, to IR or Bluetooth or WiFi into the player. Once at the control panel, seek a station, program, or tagged content ("what's the talk radio world saying about 'Sam Alito?'"), or history ("who the hell was I listening to at 0300 from Des Moines last Friday?").

If you're so into Glenn Beck that you subscribe, you might be able to load your login credentials into the player so it can listen live directly from Glenn's site, or let you browse his archived material.

If Nullsoft marketed a player like this, even if it served only the same content WinAmp could access (including the video), for around $75, I'd buy one and even hardwire it to my router. This player could probably run on the Palm OS itself, needing no disk, just some flash memory and lotsa buffer.

Suffice it to say the market hasn't yet gotten where I want it, but they're getting close.

Update, 20Nov: CabinetMan asks, "Why don't you just recycle an older notebook computer?" Cuz there's no money in it.

There's no good way to spin this . . .

There is a passage from East of Eden where the less-favored son is scolded by his father, for investing in bean futures in advance of a certain war that would demand beans. Something about how ghoulish it would be to profit from the misery and death of others.

My IRA jumped about $6 grand in two months, those very same months being the impact and aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I'd have to dig into the details of the funds that provided most of the ooomph in that period, but it's the most dramatic fscking jump in that IRA I've seen since I rolled three 401(k)'s together to form it.

Yeah, yeah, post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that. But it occurred during a period when one would expect the profits of virtually every sector of the economy to fall. This was a time when everyone predicted dire consequences for the markets because the US economy just had a chunk of flesh bitten out of it. Counterintuitive is the word that came to mind.

We're not talking about a huge amount of money here, though it constitutes most of my life savings left over from the dot-com bust.

Would there be so much kerfluffle over oil companies price-gouging if most people in my generation held that kind of position and realized that kind of gain? Adam Trask be damned---we'd become rich by gouging ourselves. Cost myself a couple Jacksons a month out of my wallet but watch my IRA grow by as many Clevelands? Gouge away.

This suggests to me that if it were this easy everybody would be doing it everybody understood this, and moved their investments accordingly, they'd be competing for those investment vehicles intensely, driving the average cost to purchase said vehicles up to the point where schmucks like me wouldn't bother. But that's not the nature of markets nor of risk, is it?

Flyover Country is good for AM radio

Just figure: frequencies measured in the hundreds of kilohertz will propagate very well over the prairie and fragment (not be received well on consumer equipment) in the mountains. As I drove home from work this evening, the amply-laminated Prairie atmosphere of Flyover Country was throwing to my car's spindly antenna the programming from Las Vegas, somewhere in Iowa, Dallas, and Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

This is a richer bounty than I enjoyed in my youth as Super CFL tempted me from Chicago during my roller-skating winters.

My sadness is that I haven't the AM receiver to capture it in my own home. Only in my car will the radio catch it. The Onkyo at home won't even pull in KNUS from Denver, through the Terk antenna. So I lack my fix, developed over the last two years of drivetime driving, of Bill Bennett in the morning and Hugh Hewitt in the evening. Glenn Beck is incisive but not that incisive. The local hosts in Cheyenne aren't incisive at all, except for one counter-criticism of the Kelo decision.

Just figure II: is there an internet device that pulls broadcasters in and offers them to my home radio receiver? In that case it isn't good for AM radio per se. But it's great for those talk-show hosts and broadcasters who stream their shows over the Internet. I Googled last night for "internet radio component audio" and came up kinda dry, but I remember such devices, which I considered extravagant at the time but in retrospect now seem almost sensible over a broadband connection, offered at a store staffed by DeeDee who could be cute?

What we had to explain to Firstborn

AMC gave us the remarkable gift this evening, of having to explain to Firstborn what was meant by Dr. Lao in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao. She was grokking it rather well.

Better than her understanding of Joint Committee hearings on oil company windfall profits.

So note well: if a 9-year-old can divine the meaning of a Silent-era made-for-TV movie but not grok a Senate subcommittee hearing's intent, the fault is not with the made-for-TV movie.

O, the weird things one will see on C-SPAN at oh-dark-thirty

Frightening it is to see Ted Stevens of Alaska sucking up to people who don't need be sucked up to.

Pete Domenici doesn't fare much better either.

Lo dark days are these that Republicians must summon from their depths cloaked apologists for the Free Market.