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?