Land of a Thousand Pricks?
I drove my partner, Advon, to the MSP airport today. He goes home, I stay at Undisclosed Remote Location to roll up all of the workshop results and insert them into a new scenario for Cadre.

Took a delay en-route to the Mall of the Americas. While trying to merge with traffic to get into the West parking garage, two vehicles, not one but two, would not allow me to merge.

Side note on Mall of the Americas: it would be phenomenal if every store were something different. But there were at least three Victoria's Secret stores, for example, on separate levels. And nowhere for me to buy a bigger HD for the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform.

While leaving aforementioned huge repetitive Mall, another prick didn't realize that I was on the on-ramp, accelerating to highway speed, and that he should either accelerate so I could merge behind him, or decelerate so I could enter ahead of him, or change lanes so it would not matter.

I've driven this stretch of I-494 before; I used to report to headquarters of a beeg telecom company in Minnetonka. I just don't recall idiots on the road, though.

Please note, many of my best friends are from Minnesota. But a thousand pricks can go a long long way towards ruining it.

Who's this guy?

This lizard is about 8 cm head to tail. You see him here hiding under the arch of my boot. There are two blue stripes down the sides of his tail.

He escaped unharmed, I was not stepping on him.

Neologism
saudimasochism
Suffering, by a nation's leaders, because of foreign policy that requires one to make nice with the House of Sa'ud.

Guardbumming update
Our present undisclosed remote location is 15TYU20136769; we're here working with Cadre, to debug new USAF doctrine on how to operate an airbase after it has been attacked. Interesting work, with some of the best people in the business.

Well, Mister President, it's the Bees and Spiders again! They stole my food stamps and sol'em to the Rats!
I'm surely not the first blogger to observe this, but: deregulation is being blamed for the capital-w-worst capital-b-blackout in US capital-h-history, or as Scott Chaffin directs, the Great Northeastern Blackout of Ought-Three. At least I'm the first to use a Firesign Theater line as the title for it. I hope it's apropos.

Bush-adorers: watch how he handles this one. Blue-ribbon committee? Thorough inquiry? Donk-apologists: watch how your party's leaders try an En-run around the facts. Is this a tar-brush to apply to the GOP?

FoxNews, to their credit, hosted a talking head from Cato today, explaining that if there's a problem with deregulation behind this blackout, it's one of not having enough deregulation. Without the freedom of prices to reconcile supply with demand, nobody has the incentive to build and maintain generation capacity within his own market, and relies more heavily on drawing power from neighbors (across regulatory boundaries) during peaks. There's too much source-sharing (transmission) among markets.

The technical cause of the blackout will be ascertained quickly, probably before this post is even timestamped. It may indeed be a relay the size of Glenn Reynolds's fist, or a serial cable the diameter of Mr. Untel's urethra. Whatever.

The solution, the measure or set of measures that keeps this from happening again, is not technical but economic and political. It will not be found by any of the parties holding the power necessary to put it in place, because solving it does not deliver benefits to those parties. "Paging, uh . . . the Usual Suspects. Usual Suspects, please meet your party at the Committee Hearing in 2123 Rayburn."

Our Macs and dual-boot Linux/Windows boxes are on UPSes, I have five gallons of bitters to rack, and we're celebrating my wife's 40th birthday tomorrow. Have a wonderful weekend, be back Monday from Undisclosed Remote Location. Relax and have a homebrew.

Quote of the day

There are 135 candidates for Gov[ernor of California]. I'm not sure I want to be governed that badly.

From e-Claire.

I guess they don't like it
The new USAF tiger-stripe utility uniform is thoroughly dissed at Sgt Stryker, and mildly ridiculed there as well.

I admit, changing to new AF-unique camouflage uniforms is sending good money after bad---I need replacements for the Scope Shield radio and PSN-11, for example. If the AF wants a distinctive look in a uniform, go back to khakis, and save the BDUs and DCUs for bases and climates where they make sense. But as other commenters at Stryker have noted, USAF seems to have already decided on a new uniform, and seeks user comments just to cement the decision. So we might as well complain abouttry to add some functionality to the uniform they've already committed themselves to.

Pity if I'm just hip-shooting. I already wear BDUs, and I don't need to wear the tiger-stripes or work next to someone who does, to guess at how they will or won't work, and what should be improved about them. But then I'm a proponent of bringing back warrant officers, having worked for a few of them. So you can take my suggestions with more than the usual dose of salt:

Pin-on rank insignia, in a pattern distinguishable at very short distances from that of officers.
Cargo pockets that will hold an LMR comfortably.
Buttons arranged not to snag on camouflage netting.
A pattern other than Solar-Absorption-Maximized Black (that goes for the T-shirts too).

The TIC awareness of premature death by congestive heart failure . . .

encourages me to run. A good 28 to 32 minutes, four times a week, over a course that gradually expands through my neighborhood.

This course takes me past a backyard fence on which grows a vine with deep green leaves, and large, soft-green conical flowers. Could it be?



Yes. Hop flowers. Charlie Papazian describes them in the Complete Joy of Homebrewing as developing tiny yellow capsules of lupulin at the base of each petal as the flowers ripen, from mid-August into September. Boy and I walked there today and popped a flower off the vine, and found the lupulin. I rubbed the flower between my palms and smelled it. It's the real stuff.

Homebrew: just what I need to reduce my triglycerides.

I am growing old, I am growing old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, continued
Your humble blogging correspondent chose his grandparents poorly.

Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with gastro-esophageal reflux disease, and was prescribed with Aciphex so I no longer felt like an alien was clawing its way out of my chest. Today, the Aciphex was switched for milder and less expensive Zantac.

Between deployments for Operation Enduring Freedom, my cholesterol was found to be high, and triglycerides even higher. This Spring, diet and exercise had reduced them considerably but not brought them down to levels acceptable for my doctor('s insurers). Doc said I drilled down the levels as much as diet and exercise are ever likely to do; the rest is genetics. So we try Gemfibrozil for six weeks, and another blood draw to see if I need to eat it forever.

The WUTT Model for Concealed Carry Laws
A friend of mine is seeking a CCW license in Maryland. I took notes on our discussion of the pros and cons, and invite him to guest-post here about the experience when it's concluded. He is concerned, as many others are, that seeking a license to carry, in a way undermines our collective position that concealed carry is a right.

I'm ambivalent about this, and here's why. For your examination is my model for how, or where, CCW may be a privilege rather than a right. I'm not a Constitutional lawyer any more than I'm a nuclear physicist, but I firmly believe that constitutions, big and little "c", were written to be accessible to the layman, and that Occam's rule applies to their interpretation. Of course, all 18 of my readers are free to email me or comment below that I'm full of shit and ought to shut up.

I have a pdf of Colorado's CCW application on my desktop and have been toying with filling it out and walking it into the Sheriff's office. Colorado's constitution specifically denies that there is a right to concealed carry, which to me means that the legislature has the power regulate it (as long as the US 14th and 2nd are not violated, there's equal protection, etc) but may not outlaw it completely.

The regulation of concealed carry is a legitimate State power when Constitutionally reserved and when impartially carried out, considering that States should have relative freedom in legislating against crime, to find the best results and compare them with those of their neighbors---the "laboratories of democracy" argument.
States' rights don't exist: "As our Constitution is written, governments have 'powers' but no 'rights.'" (see Kozinski's dissent, page 5991, second paragraph in Silveira v Lockyer, and my brief comment on it).

In comparison, Vermont not only doesn't have a CCW permit law, Alphecca (who is not a lawyer either) explains that it can't, by her own Supreme Court's interpretation of her constitution. In Vermont, concealed carry is a right, out of the reach of Vermont's police power. This is how it ought to be with all states, except those whose constitutions explicitly deny a right to CCW, such as my present home Colorado. Last summer it looked like Ohio might end up like Vermont, swinging from one pole, no concealed carry by private citizens, to the other pole, a right to carry concealed simply because their Constitution protects an RKBA and doesn't reserve a power to regulate CCW, and their legislature has failed to pass a CCW law. I'm not following this matter (James, any news?). Alaska legislated both a CCW license system, and unlicensed carry in a very broad range of circumstances (scroll down to "Carry without a permit").

By this model, if a state has reserved the power to regulate but her legislature fails to or chooses not to regulate it, it is still not a right but it can't be prosecuted either. Colorado has a "traveling" exception to the permit requirement (CRS 18-12-105.2(b)).

Lest anyone think Colorado's constitution's CCW clause is unjust and violates the US Constitution's RKBA clause, well, Kentucky's has a CCW clause, and no less of a gun nut than Thomas Jefferson held the KY Constitution up as a model for the rest.

By my reckoning, if a state's constitution does not reserve to that state the power to regulate concealed carry, they can neither require permits nor prosecute those who CCW without them. The state's RKBA amendment or clause rules, statewide; if the state's constitution doesn't have an RKBA amendment or clause, then the Federal one suffices, and it is mute about CCW, unless you want to split hairs about the right to "bear" meaning "in plain view." Then you can run up against rulings that the RKBA does not apply to persons openly bearing arms in terrorem populi. The populi of Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and a few other Front Range cities seem to be easily terroremed, and are frantically passing laws against open carry.

I ask these bozos: which would you rather have, because you have to allow at least one: open carry, or concealed? If both are outlawed, then the "bear" part of the Federal RKBA is violated.

So the foregoing is my model of how CCW ought to be. Of course that's not how it is.

This is one reason I'm toying with the app for Colorado: under their constitution, I see less problem with the new system than with the old (how can discretionary permits be legal under an equal protection clause?).

Take that same law to a state whose constitution doesn't reserve a CCW-regulating power, and does guarantee an express RKBA for the purpose of defending self (Pennsylvania?) and I get heartburn again. The blow was softened somewhat by the low cost, $13.50 for 5 years, and that it was ready in a week (this was 1993, much can have changed since then).

Don't get me started on New York.

So then, EB, don't kick yourself for duplicity in the System Breaking Us Down. Go for your CCW in Maryland and good luck, your constitution does not guarantee an RKBA so you have the Fed guarantee to rely on.

Many thanks to packing.org for concise and well-organized reference material.

Barsoom beckons
Firstborn sneaked out to the back patio with me tonight to look at Mars. She picked it out at once. While she was training my old Sears 7x35 binoculars on it, a Perseid blew in, cutting North to South. It burned up before she could see it.

More on the waycool new USAF uniform
Follow this link or this one. Both have photos.

Question that remains unanswered: are they contemplating pin-on rank insignia? Can't see any on the photos.

He could have used an ought-six but he didn't
In Publicola's thorough follow-up on one Mr Gates in South Carolina, a correspondent asserted that discharging a shotgun at criminal trespassers would endanger Gates's neighbors. Don't buy the argument.

At a moment when lethal force is being exchanged recklessly by criminal trespassers, you would be a fool to use less-than-lethal force to disabuse them of it. You will use lethal force, and you'd better bring enough of it.

Now that you've taken the decision to use lethal rather than less-than-lethal force, you can choose which type, platform, caliber, and so forth to minimize the risk to any innocents nearby.

The shotgun fits this bill better than anything else. Its ratio of P_Kintended to P_Kunintended is very high.

Summary:
Mr Gates was duly diligent in his choice of a shotgun for the application, compared to other firearms he could have chosen.

Erratum: nobody posted in reply to Publicola about the potential of Mr. Gates to endanger any of his neighbors by discharging a shotgun at said trespassers. Of course, homeowners are responsible for where their bullets fall, and the choice and employment of firearms to defend homes must include such calculations.

Reading about this incident and how Mr. Gates was treated by the authorities caused me to remark on those risks and how the shotgun firing shot (versus slugs, or the choice of another firearm) mitigates them. This would be a valid point to make to anyone inclined to second-guess him, especially those who have the power to indict him or seize his property.

It is an indication of the quality of readership that this point was not raised---gunbloggers know better. I apologize for the error, and thank Publicola for bringing it to my attention.

Give them back now
Thanks to Publicola, who forwards Rachel Lucas's post regarding a man whose firearms were seized by police after he shot gunfighting trespassers in his front yard. Police seized all of them, not just the shotgun actually used to quell the affray, though they concede that no crime was committed. Publicola also ably dispels the notion that some forensic evidence could be collected from the shotgun's seizure, or that it would even be worthwhile.

They seized not just the shotgun he used in the shooting, but all of them.

Cut this the hell out. Give them back now, with an apology to him and termination for whoever made the decision to disarm him.

On second thought: whoever moved to disarm the homeowner, it's now your turn to sit on his porch with nothing but a cordless phone and a flashlight for the next 72 hours. No hardshirt either, asshole. If you live through that, then you're fired.

If this happened to me
I would hope to have the kind of balls this guy has. My first action would be, as G Gordon Liddy has advised, don't hand them over to the cops. If the cops insist that I must be separated from my weapons, I'm transferring them to my lawyer for safekeeping. Possible outcomes:

• Worst: I am officially identified as a Bad Person and lose the right to own them. The lawyer sells them and I get the proceeds.
  
• Bad: the lawyer returns them when the bullshit is over.
  
• As if we have an RKBA: the lawyer pushes back hard enough that I don't give them up.
  

What does a lawyer have to say about this?

Update on the so-called sexist singular
Your humble correspondent found the following notice refreshing, in Multiservice Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for
Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Protection, Air Force TTP(I) 3-2.46:

Unless this publication states otherwise, masculine nouns and pronouns do
not refer exclusively to men.

Visible in the properties box for this pdf, the author of the document is a woman.

I brazenly seek and would humbly accept
a nomination for the position of Director of the Transportation Security Administration, under a Reynolds/Lucas ticket.

• E-tickets from API 250 will be honored as the sole necessary qualification for commercial pilots under the Federal Flight Deck Officer program.
  
• FFDOs will use their own sidearms. None of this locked-cabin-box bullshit either; you're trained to shoot it, you wear it.
  
• Uniform alterations to prevent printing will be expensed to the airline.
  
• Passengers: you're getting your Gerber E-Z-Outs back. And your crochet hooks, and any other implements that have been seized. You're not taking your shoes off any more either.
  
• Other reasonable proposals will be entertained.
  

introducing Anduril

Anduril
is a Remington Model 600 Mohawk, in .308 Winchester.


It wears a black-and-white laminate stock from an outfit in Los Angeles, an aluminum trigger guard from the former Numrich, a Burris ScoutScope base, and Burris two-and-three-quarter X ScoutScope. The mount looks a tad high for a gen-yoo-wine Scout Scope.

We're still looking for three Millett ball-bearing type sling swivel sockets, and then we'll fit the sling.

Maybe this week, I can find out how this thing shoots . . .

Overnight outing

We sneaked away last night to a campground I've been meaning to stay at since I found it last October, while looking for a place to shoot with a bud from Colo Spgs.

It's in Pike National Forest, West of Woodland Park, North of US 24, on the way to Tarryall Reservoir. Try 13SDP 68628 18183.

Happy Meadows Campground consists of about 10 campsites nestled in a sort of hogsback, right along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. Most campers come there to fish, and half of the sites are right on the banks of the Platte. Slip through some tall grass and step into the water.

Here's Middlechild and Firstborn on the banks:



At least two of the campers there had hummingbird feeders out, right on the picnic tables, and hummingbirds were veering in and out, availing themselves of the feast.

I did not realize how fearless hummingbirds are. I almost had to pick one out of my eye at breakfast this morning. Nor did I realize how loud they are; they woke us up this morning with a chatter like that of crickets.

What does it take?
Go read Publicola's post on what constitutes the last straw. What would yours be?

Fuz's books:
Just finished for the third time:


Getting Firstborn excited about this one, which I will begin to read to her this summer:


Just added this to my Amazon wish list (sorry, this feature will not be shared with blog readers):

Rumor mill
. . . has it that USAF, envious of the Marines' waycool camouflage pattern, is pursuing its own unique camouflage uniform. The pattern was described as the Vietnam-era tiger stripe, weaving the "urban" colors blue, gray, and tan, mimicking the concrete, dirt, and buildings of airbases.

Sounds cool, but, uh, guys? Can you angle the chest pockets on the jacket, like on the MARPATs? And attach the cuffs inside out like theirs too---the cuff buttons hang up on camouflage netting.

And for Pete's sake, let's convert to a pin-on subdued enlisted chevron---just one, on the flap of the jacket covering the placket buttons, at the level of the chest pocket flaps. Or provide a flap to carry the subdued cloth chevron from the GoreTex parka, like on the CADPATs. Officers would continue to wear rank insignia as on the current uniform.

Speaking of the jacket front button flap, since we all carry pens tucked in there anyway, why not just widen it a bit and put a pen pocket inside there?

One last thing: leave oversize pen slots or big buttonholes in the pocket flaps for the big bellows pockets on the trouser legs. When you put an LMR in the pocket, you need a handy way for the antenna to stick out. Better yet, put a sturdy belt loop in the pocket, attached to the leg sideways, to clip the LMR on to. Otherwise, the LMR flops around in the pocket.

Another last thing: attach the seat pockets on the outside of the trousers. Ask why, if you must.

Yet one more last thing: follow the Marines and convert to a single, quality, brown suede safety-toed boot. Single, as in, the same boot for temperate or desert climates.

Greatest hits
This blog continues to get hits from Erosblog's mention of a post that discussed the romantic possibilities of a weekend away from the kids.
Second, searches for St. Pauli Girl costumes. Close third for the same post, but searching for girls on trampolines.
Note, these are the most frequently recurring search terms, not the biggest-hitting referrals. We can claim only two Instalanches, one kicked my way by James Rummel after he read my comments at Scott Chaffin's, and the other shamelessly self-promoted.

Don't forget your harpoon
So says a tornado safety sign at Fort Leonard Wood's TDY quarters:

Post Siren will sound continuously when danger is imminent! Siren is long whaling sound.

Idea 272, or Visualize Seething Rage

Idea 272, or Visualize Seething Rage Since driving a few tollroads during this summer trip, I am reminded of the costs of collecting tolls. The Federal income tax, in comparison, seems very cheap to collect, because the Feds themselves don't collect it, they make employers collect it for them. The Feds don't want to do it themselves and they're worried that private collection agencies would be heavyhanded. Employers are stuck with the job. Taxpayers aren't excited about someone else collecting from them either. They like the Christmas-y feeling of getting their overpayment rebated to them, which can only happen with a system that withholds during the year. They won't be sold on the notion of making out the check for the whole tax year's amount unless they see the real opportunity cost of payroll withholding---they need to see a little Christmas every paycheck. And they won't get agitated about high tax levels unless they not merely understand the opportunity cost, but feel it like the proverbial boot in the face. In short, popular support for a drastic reduction (do not use the term "reform") in Federal income taxes will not materialize unless we can convert at least some employer withholding into employee investment. Let's transpose the little-pain-every-paycheck with the Santy-Claus-in-April, into a little Christmas every paycheck and the big pain in April. We can show the opportunity cost, in real dollars and cents, using commercial, off-the-shelf systems available now, and we can make it politically palatable to practically all of the stakeholders by aiming it at lower-income brackets first. Because women are more prevalent in the lower-income brackets, or so I am told, the remainder of this post refers to the taxpayer in the feminine gender. End employer withholding, by replacing it with employer withholding, er, with a twist. Instead of the Federal income tax withheld, the exact same amount is directed to an employer-administered savings account, much like a 401(k). Surely many good vehicles are available to receive these monies, with the understanding that they will be cashed out on a known date; the problem will be choosing vehicles where the monies will be out of the reach of tampering and won't crash during the tax year. The employee owns the dividends and income this money generates, tax-free now and forever, as it waits for April. The employee also gets periodic spreadsheets showing the dividends and income that the money makes, and the taxes she paid in prior tax years. At income tax return time, the employee gets one check, which she must write from that account, payable to Uncle Sugar for whatever amount the 1040 says. It's like a Christmas Club, but the gift is for Uncle Sugar. This is important: the check must be written in longhand. Mechanically printed checks and electronic transfers are prohibited. I want to see the salty stains of sweat and tears on that paper check from the effort of writing out the date, then Pay to the Order Of, the amount in digits, the amount in words, watching those dollars going away, away. Not because I'm a brutal prick, but because this program must brew seething rage to be successful at its long-term goal. If she owes less tax than she saved, she keeps the difference. Roll it into a Roth or waste it. If she didn't have enough withheld, she has dividends and interest to soften the blow. Maybe she owes more than that. Pay closer attention next tax year, which is already in progress. And remember: "seething rage." Who'd you write that check out to? To make the proposal easier to slide past a reluctant Congress, the program has to be narrowly aimed at a small group to start. Let's say that only taxpayers whose total tax (line 40) was less than three thousand dollars for each of the last three tax years can escape employer withholding and join the Anti-Christmas Club. It's for the Children! The real "fat cats," so to speak, have already escaped withholding the hard way: they're making quarterly payments to the IRS so this program doesn't benefit them. By Democrat Party logic, proponents of this withholding-escape plan can claim it would help single mothers and their kids because it wouldn't benefit "the rich." Gradually ratchet this threshold figure upward, by indexing it against the Federal minimum wage and first-class postage. Every time the bastards increase either one, multiply the increase by one hundred and add that increase to the threshold (minimum wage increases by a buck, the threshold goes up by one hundred bucks). OK, seriously, I'd rather index the threshold against the local cost of living or median income. Rising tide lifting all boats, and all that. Sweeten the deal for the employers, since we're still saddling them with compliance costs. I'm not sure how to do this, do please visit the comment box below if you have a suggestion. Maybe, every employee enrolled in the Anti-Christmas Club is counted as a member of the 401(k) for the purpose of admitting "highly compensated employees." Most companies seem to struggle for the low-end participants so they can include more high-end ones. Throw them a bone. April is the cruelest month As an added benefit, this proposal gives many more taxpayers the perverse incentive to wait until the very last minute to file their returns, further congesting the IRS and Postal Service. Since the money never really leaves her until she writes that painful check (visualize seething rage), it doesn't matter whether she owes or not---she'll sit on the bucks and let them earn until the last possible moment. "I've got the owner of Motorola aboard this bus!" Many stocks take a price dip in April because enough of their holders have to sell something to cover their tax liability. Wouldn't it be cool if single moms, with their 1040's made out to the cent, go cruising for stock bargains at about that time? Editor's note: I choose not to number this idea "666"---an Anti-Christmas Club plan, anti-Christ, number of the Beast, six six six, get it? It just wouldn't have worked.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been at least ten weeks since my last Carnival.
I have a post in this week's Carnival of the Vanities, hosted at Single Southern Guy.

Idea number 43, or Thank you for flying Redneck Express
Indulge me in a daydream.

Commercial airline travel was never that pleasant when I did it often. Flying with wife, three children, and their assorted stuff makes it far less so. Now that airport security has been improved from an expensive sham (rent-a-cops) into an extremely expensive sham (Federal law enforcement officers); airline passengers are now accorded the same customer courtesies as felony suspects, and complaining about it only aggravates the treatment; the metal detectors have been cranked up so high the staples left behind from my splenectomy routinely trigger them, and now they kinda tingle; and my United miles are exhausted and my Red Carpet Club membership has expired---we simply won't fly the family on airlines any more.

So when the time came for us to make our trek back East, we packed ourselves like the Beverly Hillbillies into our van and drove.

When night fell, we ramped off the Interstate, looked for a vacant room and took it. In the morning,we took continental breakfast (if offered) then refueled and repeated.

Kids are exhausted and fighting one another, and have listened to the same Hank the Cowdog audio book for the fifth time. Barbaloot can get 3 good hours behind the wheel at one stretch, I can get about 5. AM radio coverage in flyover country is remarkably sparse. Police radar coverage, however, is quite thorough. Gasoline was affordable but that's not a sure bet either. If a petroleum-eating strain of monkeypox rears its viral, er, head, we're screwed.

I want better choice as a transportation consumer. I am not alone, I cannot be. There's a market segment in the void between long-haul Winnebago-istas and 30-day-in-advance Priceline airfare, going utterly unserved. We'll pay more for the speed and convenience but not to the point we'll pop for commercial airfare and/or the humiliations and fine print that come with it. We'd like the opportunity cost to fall somewhere in the middle too, between the twelve hours parking lot to parking lot for flying, to the n days of a cross-country drive.

Now why can't some smart-ass MBA:

• commission a tilt-rotor airship, capable of ferrying about 30 passenger vans at an airspeed of 180 kph,
  
• schedule service from various Interstate truck-stop outposts, such as Limon, Colorado, to others, such as Warrenton, Virginia. A mixture of express and multiple-stop routes would be fine.
  
• price it somewhere between the net costs of driving, feeding, and lodging a family of five for four days on the one hand, and five hub-to-spoke airfares and the rental car on the other. Charge by weight: we'll bring the sedan instead, or pack lighter.
  

The business case for FedEx was probably more complex than this.

It is not really my idea. A German firm plans to fly huge airships for freight, in those areas poorly served by rail, or for those cargoes that don't fit on rail or truck. Figure, a service like this would be faster than rail (well, duh) and truck. Rail hasn't been courting ex-air travelers with lower fares either.

Kilo for kilo, most of the airship business would be freight, but some space would still be available for passenger cars and their passengers, just to maximize revenue for each flight.

Perpetual whiners over the dearth of mass transit can rejoice that a new form of it is available; the car is optional and the service would take Segways, bicycles and even llamas. Tell all your perpetual mass-transit whiner friends to buy stock in the company, or shut the hell up.

This service would not operate from existing airports, which are Nationalized and wrapped in counter-terror anality. Instead, airship service would have to be staged from the towns that today are little more than truck stops. Airship terminals as proposed here would look like big ferry queues with truck scales, a convenience store, a liquor store, and no need for TSA screeners. The large cities and the commercial airlines don't want this kind of traffic near them anyway.

So the elevator story goes like this:

Log in to get a fare quote, and either confirm a space or get on standby. Then pull up, weigh in, pay up, drive aboard. The guys in the blue coveralls will chain your car to the deck. We don't give a fiddler's damn if you brought your pocket knife aboard. You didn't? Here, have one of mine.

Take a nap in your own car. Reheat Firstborn's hot cocoa in the microwave upstairs. Barbaloot can get out her knitting basket, complete with TSA-verboten lethal crochet hooks. Didja know cell phones work just fine at 10,000 feet? WiFi is an extra five bucks.

Triple-A highly recommends the view of the Missouri River from the passenger lounge.

The restrooms are forward of the lounge. There's no place to take a leak over the side, don't even try it.

Set a foot on the flight deck or mess with the engines, and you'll be croaked by Lester over there with the twelve-gauge. Ask him if he gives a damn about your pocket knife. To him, "air marshall" is some kind of sneaker.

Leave your luggage in the car. If it gets lost, it's your own damn fault.

Enjoy your flight, you and your car will be in Ashland, Kentucky, in twelve hours. Thanks for choosing RedEx.

Hell, I'd even blow a day waiting for a standby slot or an alternate route, just to get us within a four-hour drive of our destination and save us two days of driving. Ashland's canceled by a storm? OK, uh, there's space on Beckley, West Virginia, loading in two hours. Or you could dash down to Pueblo and catch the six-forty-five to Charlottesville. Great. We'll take the Beckley.

If you were in my shoes, what would you pay for this service? If you were on the chamber of commerce for a town with a rail head and fair-to-middlin' highway access, what would you do to entice an airship terminal to move in?

If you're the transportation minister in a country emerging from decades of central planning and you need to extend infrastructure to your rural markets right now, would you plow (more) government money into an international airport, or offer tax and regulatory incentives for freight airships?

If you manufacture aircraft, and you were not awarded the contract for the latest fighter, your military helicopter is under a cloud, and jumbo jet orders are down, would you bid on a STOL heavy-lift airship?

I rest my case, and return you to your normally scheduled blogging.

I'll give you two Fr Buerhle's for an Alphonse Gampp
My wife's aunt passed awayvery suddenly last December. She was a spinster, who lived with my inlaws throughout my wife's life. Since we could not break away then for the funeral, Barbaloot insisted that we trek back East for vacation, to help round up the aunt's possessions.

The aunt was a packrat. Her room is not being organized, it is being excavated. One box Barbaloot emptied last night consisted entirely of mass cards, probably one for every funeral the aunt had ever attended during her adult life. We sorted through them only to save those of relatives, including members of Catholic religious orders: at least two Jesuit priests and two nuns.

One card dated to 1934, printed in German. We're talking collectibles here.

Mother-in-law burst out laughing when I compared them to baseball cards.

I'd turn out the lights but due to a javascript error I can't publish the link to hit the switch
Everyone on my blogroll is bailing out of Blog[star]Spot. I may be the last guy left. Eeeesh.

Not false, just misleading
It's the kind of thing that sneaks up on me, slowly emerging in my consciousness.

The white-on-blue road signs posted along interstate highways, indicating which services are available at the next exit, use a fork and a knife resting on a plate to show that food is ahead.

Very rarely is that food served on a plate; more rarely still is it eaten with a fork and knife.

It's like how synthetic flavors have asserted themselves on our tastebuds---there's an artificial blueberry flavor, for example, that anyone can identify as "blueberry" even though real blueberries, with which the taster is perfectly familiar, are a completely different taste, also known as "blueberry." Perhaps a "blueberry one" and "blueberry two" or "blueberry (synthetic) and "blueberry (actual)."

Things I learned on the television the other day
Regis Philbin is the Green Wiggle.

Life sciences lesson
Firstborn is becoming familiar with the plants and animals of the Eastern US. I've shown her plantain, burdock, tulip poplar, and sumac. She already recognizes poison ivy, creeping charlie, prickly lettuce, and lamb's quarters.

We are also visiting land that has enough wet spots that she hears peepers at night, and we can see lightning bugs. She saw one hit the windshield a few nights back.

Update on the notebook
The Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform now bears 3 OS's, namely Lycoris, Win98, and Win2k.
Interestingly, when Lycoris is running, any USB device that I jack in causes the CD-ROM to rename to the manufacturer of whatever USB I plug in. The Samsung CD-ROM player becomes a Fujitsu when the digital camera is inserted, or an IOMega when the CD-RW is inserted.
And it stays that way until KDE is restarted.

Annoying.

Happy blogiversary to me
Sorry for the light posting of late. I fear that I've been dropped from some blogrolls, and that stings, but that is the nature of the beast. If I'm not producing enough to keep the hits coming, I am just taking up space.

I am also not willing to move from Blogger, despite several entreaties to do so. It's not an option, for one technical reason: I don't know the tech and haven't the time to learn it. As I travel (as now) Blogger is accessible to me practically anywhere, whether I am traveling with the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform or working from a morale desktop in a God-forsaken downrange location. I don't think other blogging platforms allow this. So I stay at Blogger for the time being, or I take WUTT dark.
Tomorrow will be the first blogiversary of Weck Up To Thees!
Thanks for the hits, the links, that strange cameraderie. And keep coming to visit, even if it isn't as often as it used to be.

we're still just ahead of the replacement level of 2.1 live redneck births per breeding pair
In the contest of Wal-Mart versus Target, we do drop more dollars at Target than at Wal-Mart. They are within a few hundred meters of each other, neither is harder to get to than the other, both are right on our way to I-25.

But please allow your humble narrator to point out that Target's sporting goods section has Pilates accessories.
Wal-Mart's sporting goods sections stock Mini-14's. Target may be hipper, trendier, neater, and all that, but they can also be too "city mouse" for me---they can give me the same cloying sensation that accompanies an Old Navy commercial.

The Wal-Marts that feature "dingy aisles loaded with cast-offs and marked down boxes of cereal" (say, Dell Range Boulevard in Cheyenne, Wyoming), usually redeem themselves by including an aisle of reloading equipment, right down to blister-packed replacement decapping pins for RCBS dies.

Alas, Castle Rock's 24/7 Wal-Mart supercenter has no dingy aisles (Firstborn likes to coo over the live lobster tank). Instead of a reloading section, it has an expanded golf aisle. As best I can determine, the customers still have all of their teeth, normal or better-than-average body fat indexes (visualize trophy wives driving Escalades and Hummers), and no domestic violence convictions (one terrible incident in the parking lot, however). In short, a redneck level waaaay below the national average.

The clerk in Sporting Goods there today replied instantly, "no reloading", so quickly in fact that

• it was clear he knew what "reloading" was
  
• he knew whether any Wal-Mart anywhere would stock reloading merchandise
  
• this Wal-Mart, serving the Douglas County demographic, would rather stock velvet Elvis paintings, or Nine Inch Nails CDs, than reloading merchandise, and
  
• I should have known better than to ask.
  

So no RCBS decapping pins for Fuz today, grumble grumble.

When it came time to load up Linux for the new Clandestine Media Access Platform, to what reseller was Fuz referred by Lycoris? Wal-Mart.

I know that some fellow bloggers refuse to give Wal-Mart business because they import heavily from the People's Republic of China. Point well taken. Just remember that they sell Linux-equipped PCs too. Give them some credit---though they may be selling products of slave labor, they are also, in a sense, selling handcuff keys.

And the pissants who militate against the esthetics of Wal-Marts (excepting blogrolled comixho, of course) are often the same busybodies who form homeowners' associations, and whine over the decline of quote small private downtown shops unquote while kvetching over a recycled paper cup of something syrupy at Starbuck's. If they give a rat's ass about workers' rights, it will not be those of the Chinese who chafe in the PRC's collar.

honey-dews
Update on the Clandestine Media Access Platform: Lycoris runs the CD-ROM and the floppy just fine. The CD's must be ISO-9660 formatted, though, it reads no CD-R's left open by DirectCD, or burnt with a UDF reader on them. Unless there's a downloadable Linux widget for that somewhere . . .

Boy child can load and run his Putt-Putt games on the Mac clone without supervision, including smudged fingerprints on the CDs, and dropping the CD to the concrete floor when he switches from Putt-Putt to Pajama Sam. He has destroyed two games in the last two weeks. On the up-side, he can click through Save the Zoo in about 15 minutes.

Oh by the way, S.22 doesn't do a damn thing about
. . . identity theft other than to limit who can have or sell Social Security numbers, and specify harsher penalties. No reform of tying this number o' th' Beast to one's credit in the first place, which makes it so potent a weapon against its assignee (I hesitate to use the term "owner" or "bearer"). No pilot program to compel the military to return to a DoD-issued service number for all routine admin actions.

"I'm worried that, if this cleverly-named bill gets to the Senate floor, several Republicans might vote for it because it has a popular-sounding title."
This from a fundraising letter from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Your humble narrator would dispute that the name is clever: "Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act of 2003." Rather, that it is bland, general enough to be meaningless. All the better for pulling a fast one or making one's vote deniable.

It's also saying a lot that a lobbying organization will admit that some Senators will vote for something without even a superficial familiarity with its contents.

I've long agreed with a proposed Congressional rule that would require every bill to be read aloud, in its entirety, to the Committee of the Whole before it is put to a vote, as well as to the Committee that is responsible for sending it to the floor for that vote. It is one of those commonsense measures that will go nowhere. This Senate bill is the latest example I've taken the trouble to even skim. So be careful if you browse to that link up there in the title of this post, its fat ass spreads across 486 pages.

For Chrissakes, it's got a bit of everything: identity theft, telemarketing fraud, Nationalizing the Amber alert, protecting senior citizens from whatever distracts them from their oatmeal, and shielding whistleblowers. In addition, of course, to the usual suspects, ballistic fingerprinting and The Gun Show Loophole, whatever that is held to be in Senate bill 22.

It's a wholesale bid to overhaul Federal criminal law, including the laws of evidence and sentencing.

To your humble narrator, "Federal crime" is supposed to be an oxymoron anyway, with the exception of those few Constitutionally enumerated offenses such as treason and counterfeiting; and judges are supposed to have control of the sentencing process.

Guard bummer
My trips to Cheyenne are coming to an end. I will spend a few weeks this summer to read Hank the Cowdog to my girls, take a few road trips, work with a few rifles, and start job-hunting.

I will be temping for another entity beginning midsummer, on a military pay status known as MPA (translation not available at this writing). That means a new Schlumberger combined access card with all the bennies, and a new stack of business cards. The insiders' term is Guard-bumming, or working on a succession of active duty or manday periods rather than holding down a continuous job.

During that time, though, I will be sleeping in my own bed, continuing to read Hank to Firstborn and Middlechild, and developing the resume.

Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform update
The Dell notebook's 6GB drive has been scrubbed clean and reloaded with Lycoris.
Am blogging through Mozilla at the moment.
A few hardware items remain to be cleared up, namely the CD-ROM and the detachable floppy. All else seems to be tits.

Then a repartition and an installation of Win98 or 2k to run the stuff I really bought this platform for in the first place.

While I'm at it
Hearty agreement with Will Baude about attempts to amend Senate rules governing the filibuster.

. . . after nine days, any filibuster can be broken by 51 votes. Even if the time limit were double or triple that, I think that this completely obliterates the purpose of the filibuster rule. Let us be clear about something. The filibuster was not designed to ensure "full and fair debate".

Emphasis mine. The Senate as a legislative body is supposed to put a specific minority, the population of a smaller state, on equal footing with those of larger states. The filibuster is one form of leverage to accomplish that end.
The filibuster ain't broke.

Less than optimistic
In fact, I'm full-blown ambivalent about the prospects of Silveira v Lockyer if it goes on to the Supreme Court.

If conflicting Circuit court rulings on the Second Amendment force the Supremes to rule on the question of whether it protects an individual right, they will probably find a way to answer that yes, the Second Amendment is an individual right, but that it can be so thoroughly circumscribed by State and Federal law as to have no meaning.

The ruling would have to discuss the purpose of the Second Amendment, which is a reset button. Judge Kozinski's description of the right protected (not granted) by this amendment, necessarily puts a choice before any other judge who must rule upon it. What judge would rule that a person has a right to challenge with force a hypothetically tyrannical government that might be paying that judge's salary?
What judge would rule that a person has a right that therefore pre-exists the government?
What judge would rule that people should be allowed to make arrangements today, in case of a possible tomorrow "where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees"? What judge would admit that he or she could someday be cowardly or irrelevant?
What judge would rule that the great unwashed masses have an explicit right to access a reset button that could put all them out of their robes, their chambers, their jobs?

I admit that I know few judges, and only a handful of attorneys. Like most people I've had unkind things to say about them as a class, until I needed one, and since recanted on those unkind utterances. But are there many more judges whose opinions agree with Kozinski's? Are there many judges and lawyers who can visualize a time or a circumstance wherein a Doomsday provision would be needed?

If there are, I owe them apologies and gratitude. And pose a further question: what would it take? what would make a judge reach for that reset button himself? I know, I know, courts examine specific real cases and will not rule on hypotheticals.

Side note: Kozinski's dissent is also the first place I have seen a convincing distinction between a State's power and so-called States' rights.

Spam haiku

The other white meat
square meal in a can
The raven quietly contemplates

Found on the Gunsite email list. More at www.spamhaiku.com.

Viddy well, O my brothers
This passage caught my eye, in an article describing the impact of the massively multiplayer online game:

Unlike single-player games, these virtual environments don't go into cryogenic suspension in your absence. Events transpire. Battles are fought. Rivalries flare. Alliances are formed. In a world that can't be flicked on and off, actions have lasting consequences, both narrative and social.
As players build ther characters, accruing strength and skill with experience, they also build reputations and relationships. Survival depends on whom you know, and how much they trust you, rather than simply on the weapons you're carrying. Success depends less upon combat skills than on social interactions.

So I offer some observations.

• Parents of children who have immersed themselves in Dungeons and Dragons fear that role-play games are corrupting them. Even those who dispute that role-play games corrupt children strongly agree that role-play can modify behavior.
  
• Children who misinterpret facial expressions tend towards violence and delinquency. They perceive threats where there are none, making them more prone to violence; they receive stress and dissatisfaction from human company. Prenatal exposure to alcohol is a culprit, though I suspect that other, non-organic causes exist, and under controlled circumstances it may be unlearned, even if organic in origin.
  
• The free market relies as much on one maintaining one's reputation, as on one having recourse to unfair dealers through the courts. Businessmen who deal unfairly or without goodwill get fewer and less valuable deals, even if they operate well within the boundaries of the law. To prosper, one must be trusted and one must trust.
  

Put these all together and what might they spell? Massively-parallel multiplayer games have evolved to the point that a player's actions have consequences that the player may not notice immediately. Among those consequences, a bad reputation. People who do not value, therefore do not cultivate, a good reputation will become life's losers.

By engaging in role-play on this scale, with real people at the millions of distant ends of the game, he will learn real-world values, but in a way that he can afford to lose a few times, come to understand why he lost, and not suffer (or cause) real violence or hardship. She would learn that by giving someone else enough rope to hang himself, she fastens the other end of the rope to herself.

The kid may also learn what many ordinary adults (including many therapists) have not: cultivating and protecting one's reputation by serving others is not tantamount to kissing ass, castration, or selling out. It demands bravery, singlemindedness, and an erotic drive; if more adolescents and teens saw this, they would perhaps be more enthusiastic about growing up and being responsible.

The "unpacking of the face," can make this game therapeutic, can intervene with those troubled juveniles who misinterpret the face. As a game, the kid will likely stay with it longer than he would with interacting with real people. As the game unfolds, the kid learns better to interpret others' emotions and intent, and to work towards longer-term goals; he or she might also benefit from a choreographed "replay" of the poorer decisions and the consequences that they precipitated.

A massively-parallel multiplayer approach is preferable to one manipulated by few people or only one person, even if that one person is a credentialed therapist, because it would better mirror the real world the kid will (re)join. Even some bad actors should be admitted, because we can't keep them out of the real world. Let the therapist moderate, not create, this world.

This is just a thought, of course, and I do not claim it as my own. Many libertarians would find the idea chilling, like the Lodovico Technique made warm and fuzzy by hiding it behind a StarWars videogame, and handing the joystick to the subject. But as a parent, I can sympathize with parents who somehow failed to intervene in the right way, at the right time.

Aaahhhh, much better
Your correspondent has upgraded the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform, aka notebook computer, from a Jurassic-era Compaq Pentium at 66 to a refurbished Dell Latitude, PIII at 500, thanks to a quick drive to Fort Collins. Was leery about the Windows XP, but it seems not to have stolen my soul just yet. It's busy deducing my Social Security number for later upload to its Master.

Aaaaarrrrghh, WTF?
The URL for my blog today returns a web page for Aaron's Bible. Maybe they found Raed . . . .

Unintended mirror site
With a tip of the hat to Swen, your correspondent has found that WUTT, among other blogs, has a mirror site in Japan.

David Brin, please call your office
A proposal for ubiquitous webcam surveillance reminds me of Brin's Transparent Society.
Found via Instapundit.

Bigger than my britches
Your correspondent is inserting Weblog Meta Data Initiative meta tags into WeckUpToThees! just for grins. Wish me luck, hope I don't munge the template again.

Could this be the beginning of a personnel reform?

The armed services "make a terrible mistake" by "having so many people skip along the tops of the waves in a job and serve in it 12, 15, 18, 24 months and be gone," he said. "They spend the first six months saying hello to everybody, the next six months trying to learn the job and the last six months leaving. I like people to be in a job long enough that they make mistakes, see their mistakes, clean up their own mistakes before they go on to make mistakes somewhere else."

Rummy suggests reforms in the assignment policies of military officers. Did he read, was he influenced by, Path to Victory?

Mr. Rumsfeld has made no secret that he views his personnel decisions as equally significant to changes he may bring to weapons procurement strategic doctrine

Mmmmmmmaybe.

We'll know for sure if, some years onward, the policy of "up-and-out" is replaced by "up-or-stay." I see the spectacle weekly, of effective, determined, fit professional men and women who can't juggle themselves into a "slot" that allows them to make lieutenant colonel, even slots in units or responsibilities they do not enjoy, and consequently are contemplating retirement. These are people my age, hell, even younger than I am. We ought to find a way to keep these people in uniform, doing what they like and what they do well.

Rummy's apparent distaste for zero-defects philosophy is also refreshing.

One possible downside:

Reservists could opt for specialties that guarantee more active service time and mobilization if that fit their lives; others . . . would be confident of less time on active duty beyond the weekend a month and two weeks a year of training now.

Rumor has it that Rummy has some "issues" with Reservists. They are harder to mobilize because they, er, have civilian jobs and commitments and mortgages and such. Most of us would have no quarrel with a restructuring that takes us away from private life less often than has been the case for the last decade.

But the DoD's present heavy dependence on reservists is intentional, a lesson learned from Vietnam. If mobilization incurs a widespread social and economic impact, our leaders will be less prone to overseas adventurism. Our experience in Iraq seems to bear this out, that in Kosovo far less so. Would the United States be safer or richer if it were "easier" to go to war?

Found via Donald Sensing.

Aside: even the Gray Lady has a smidgen of difficulty with homonyms.

The idea of merging personnel, which was viewed by some officers as an attempt to reign in the independent analysis of the military's Joint Staff, is not in the proposed legislation.

That would be "rein."

some folks swear by 'em
Please sign a petition to convince Uncle Sugar to sell those piles of M14 rifles to the civilian marksmanship program instead of having Uncle pay contractors to cut them in half with torches and haul the scrap away.

unusual places for a Red Label ad
Has anyone else noticed that Sturm, Ruger and Company have been advertising in general readership publications?

OK, so American Spectator is not exactly as widely read as Time. Still, it's not a "gun" mag.

bad juju
Barbaloot admits that she's having a tough time at home, looking after kids, while I'm away at work for the week. She's feeling drained, getting short-tempered with the kids, and worried that I'm not looking for a job. So I'm troubled.

A government program to arm everyone
Megan Mcardle asks, "if guns are widely available in Iraq, how come they've got this nasty dictatorship?" Please read her post and the comments.

• Civil arms are necessary, but not sufficient, for liberty. Megan and commenters conclude that people have to believe that armed struggle will have a chance to succeed before they'll try it.
  
• What constitutes "widespread" gun ownership is in the eye of the beholder. I don't agree that it's impossible to quantify gun ownership in Iraq in a meaningful comparison with that in the US or elsewhere. Of course, the news coverage of Iraqi gun ownership does not attempt honest quantification.
  
• Clearly the falling regime made sure that its friends had more, or better; this regime was also expert at knowing who its friends, enemies, and even fence-sitters, were. And where they were, and what they were saying.
  

Please keep coming back to this: it did work the one time we tried it. We are as sure as we can be in retrospect that had we not been armed competitively with our rulers, we would not have achieved independence.

Iraq's experience does not disprove that assertion, nor those of the disarmament lobby.

Break break . . .

The United Nations has drafted a confidential blueprint for administering [post-Saddam] Iraq.

One more reason, if more were needed, to not allow the United Nations to administer Iraq after Saddam's fall: what civilian gun ownership exists there today surely would end.

He misses his dog
Jakester seems to be on a remote assignment to recover and/or reconstruct the Columbia. Please visit and deliver some linkage.

I have a dream, continued
Why have, or should, the United States undertaken this task of ending the nexus between Church and State power?

We may not have invented it, but we were the first to get it to work. We are the antithesis of the Church-State. Though we are disposed to leave people alone, our determination to be left alone places us naturally in opposition to Men of the One Book.

Timeo hominem unius libri or, I have a dream
Agree or disagree:

• The United States is not engaged in a military campaign to liberate the people of Iraq from a hated secular tyrant. That may be a collateral benefit but it is not the goal of the campaign.
  
• The United States is not engaged in a military campaign to eliminate a first-tier source of weapons of mass destruction. That is also a collateral benefit but again is not the goal.
  
• The United States is not engaged in a military campaign to topple Al-Qaeda. Though these critters appear to be present in Iraq and have benefited from the regime that is about to topple, Al-Qaeda is mostly already toppled in their former seat of power. Fragments of their organization surely persist both in Afghanistan and scattered throughout the Islamic world, and they may still possess the resources and organization to mount an attack on the scale of the World Trade Center attack.
  
• The United States is not engaged in a military campaign to topple Islam. Devoted WUTT readers (both of them) may complete this paragraph as an exercise of their superb wits.
  
• The United States is not engaged in a military campaign to topple radical or fundamental Islam. Too much attention on the "Islam" part, to the extent that it distracts from the true and deserving goal.
  

The United States is, or ought to be, engaged in a campaign to defeat religious fanaticism where it wields secular power. This campaign has military dimensions as well as philosophical and political. The political dimensions will be articulated backward through time to roots that will include reverence and gratitude for Islam's turn as a custodian of Western thought, and forward to the day when any man or woman can claim Western thought as his or her birthright.
The military and philosophical dimensions of the campaign will demonstrate that the secular world functions according to rules that can be observed or deduced from it, and that those who ignore secular observations and deductions in favor of a One Book will fail or die, at the hands of those who master the rules rather than ignore them.
The present phase of the campaign appears then to be almost a violation of the overall campaign as framed here. Perhaps it is a mere stepping stone. Iraq is the center of gravity of the danger, and at the same time probably the most secular place in that center of gravity, where this campaign has at least a toehold, a snowball's chance of taking root.
The Men of One Book, though they and their Books are many, must be shown that they will not be tolerated as anointed, unquestioned holders of the reins of state power.

Extra credit for alert readers who can still see a shred of religious faith in the foregoing.

Quote of the day

Obviously, the army must strive to include a diverse population of Americans in its ranks, but forced diversity only polarizes the armed forces and the society they are sworn to protect. Diversity programs create an atmosphere of unfairness, which in turn undercuts trust. As part of the overall reform, the army must take a long-range look at diversity. Entrance into the officer corps, school and command selections, and promotions should be based on one standard: the need to win in combat.

Donald Vandergriff, The Path to Victory, p424.

Quote of the day

How the Dixie Chicks feel about the war is a matter of some indifference to me. If they had supported the war, I imagine their opinions would have come from the same well of ignorance.

Froma Harrop, "Taking the Chicks to task"

The will of the voters is heard perhaps too damned often
Today's Denver Post opinion pages begin with two columnists arguing about the value of voter initiatives.

I'll be right up front. I like the idea of TABOR, which would never have happened if it hadn't been an initiative, but I hate hate hate voter initiatives. Voter initiatives constitute my paying twice for something that was supposed to be done right once. We already have a legislature that represents voter interests.

How exactly does a bad law, passed as an initiative instead of through the legislative process, get repealed? How does a bad initiative get improved, modified, adjusted for agreement with Constitutional protections or even with existing Colorado law, before it goes on the ballot? Even attempts to make the initiative process obey simple requirements such as "single subject" are circumvented, often drawing the courts effectively into the business of legislating.

I agree with Mr Briggs, that initiatives to amend the Constitution are worse than legislative initiatives. A Constitution needs an amendment process that places as many hurdles as possible in the path of each amendment, from each branch of government as well as direct voter will, much like the path that ordinary legislation must take, but more stringent.

Conventions are hotbeds of potential for abuse too; witness New York's Constitution, that allows a Convention to be voted up or down only every 20 years. Otherwise, individual amendments must be passed through two consecutive sessions of the legislature, one before and one after a general election, before it can be put to a popular vote. Even with such controls in place to avoid seeming random or bizarre amendments, their Constitution has come to resemble an encyclopedia. What other hurdle could be added to this process to weed out nonsensical amendments? Still they exist.

There is a limit to how much we can rely on processes to make governments behave, however one defines "behave" and however one agrees in the first place with the premise that governments are supposed to behave.

We may have reached that limit in Colorado, and are now dealing with problems that are created by the tinkering with processes itself. The unspoken assumption may be that it shouldn't matter who we elect, or what kind of people we elect, the outcome will be acceptable. Further tinkering with processes will only mask our failure to elect officials who understand and obey their Constitutional constraints, or failure to eject public officials who ignore them.

And our failure to accept some of the downsides, compromises, and consequences that laws always bring with them.

Does this not make me green?
Contrary to Publicola's observation, I am not a manufacturer of death. I merely recycle it.

I am reloading brass empties that would otherwise go to a landfill---the firm that picks up my Number 2 plastic and clear glass does not provide a separate service to collect brass.

A businessman-hobbyist in Montana collects .22 LR spent cases, cleans them, and converts them into .224" bullet jackets. He probably sifts lead from the berms of his local ranges, and processes it to make the bullet cores. I buy from him, so not only am I recycling some of my own output, I'm supporting a local market for recycled content rather than buying from a gigantic multinational and helping to limit the spread of known environmental toxins.

Tools are also available, I hear, to convert .22 magnum cases into 6mm jackets. I'd rather have my kids doing that for pizza money than delivering newspapers.

The passive voice will be used
Further on the grammar and style of the construction that uses "based on": y'all would not annoy me so much if you used the active voice in the first place. Past participles inhabit that gray area between adjective and verb, like Republican Guards who doff their uniforms when it serves them---one is mischief, two together danger. A part of speech must commit, know its place and stay in it.

Who is the master, you or the word?
Kim duToit announces, correctly, that attrit and surveil are not words. They are sawed-off verbs made from Pentagonese nouns. I have been observed using the former, just last Wednesday in fact, but I have resolutely refused to use the latter.

I would direct your attention, however, to the usage based on. The word based in this case is a past participle. Without feverishly rifling through Strunk and White, I don't think one can cast a sentence with two participles in a row, one modifying the next.

" . . . our procedures must be modified based on the current situation"

is not acceptable, and causes the listener to grit one's teeth. How about "modified on the basis of"?

Reloading as foreplay

If shooting is viewed as sex, then reloading must be foreplay.

Over the last few weeks, I have tumbled almost 700 empties of five-five-six, trimmed or culled them to 1.760 inches plus .001 or minus .002, swaged the primer pockets, and chamfered the necks. Note: Hirtenberger's primer pockets are rather loose; that must be why they are crimped. Lake City's are tight. Swage them all, they seat without a hitch. There's remarkable variation in rim thickness too, so be careful trimming on case trimmers that grab on the rim.

Today I dusted off and reassembled the Suburban Clandestine Arsenal of Liberty, otherwise known as the Dillon RL550B progressive reloading press.



The first station is set up to prime only: CCI450, small magnum rifle. Though the RL550B can decap and resize, it is more consistent to do all of the resizing, decapping, and primer pocket swaging on the Rockchucker a few inches away (a slice of it is visible to the right in the photo).

The second station drops a charge of 21.5 grains of WC846, which is just a hair slower than BL(C)-2.

The third station seats the bullets, which today are bulk 60-grainer soft-points that were made from swaged lead cores jacketed by extruded twenty-two long rifle empties. The "H" on the casehead is still visible, meaning these were Winchesters, IIRC. Corbin offers the kits and press to make these bullets, but that's fun for someone else with more time, who sells them to me.

The fourth station is the Lee factory crimp die, then the dump into the Akro-bin.

It took more time to set the press up, adjust the propellant charger to the right volume and set the seater and crimp, than to roll one hundred rounds. Don't tell Chuck Schumer.

A small dab of a loud-colored nail polish in the cannelure tells me which load to look up in the notebook.

To confuse the enemy, to help soldiers remember code words, and boost morale with humor
Group Captain Mandrake is amused by the choices of codewords for Operation James. If only Uncle Sugar had such a sense of humor.

In an upcoming exercise in the States, two operating areas will be codenamed Condi and Tori. Beats the heck out of Temuka and Caravaca.

We're bringing the war back home
The occasion of the possible sunset of the 1994 Federal assault weapon ban reminds one: it is a respected ancient tradition for the victorious soldier to bring home a trophy from the vanquished. That trophy was usually a weapon claimed from his defeated foe.

What better to motivate some of our troops in Southwest Asia? Just remove the red tape.

Okay, yeah, it's just a Kalashnikov. But it's the thought that counts.

Oh to have been in that press conference
Some of the questions I would have posed to Tori Clarke:

• Ma'am, can you comment on the company and the country of manufacture of the nerve agent antidotes discovered in the hospital?
  
• If you cannot name the company or the country, can you at least comment on whether that country is a NATO, EU, or UN member?
  
• Can you comment on whether that same company also provides war materiel to the United States?
  
• Can you comment on when those antidotes were manufactured or shipped to Iraq, with reference to when any embargoes or sanctions were in place?
  
• Does the mere existence of these antidotes in a military store of some kind represent a violation of any of the UN Resolutions in place at the time they were probably obtained by Iraq?
  

By the way, Tori's autograph graces a copy of the orders that put my butt on that Rotator. She and Rummy toured a Forward Operating Location where it was my privilege to meet them both.
Yes, I am openly and crassly bragging.

One year ago today
my ass was on a Rotator headed from Rhein-Main to Southwest Asia.

Today my days are spent preparing a Wing in the doctrine known as "C-CW Conops." It's not clear where I would rather be, here, safe in the States talking the talk, or in SWA walking the walk.

I pray over every meal that our people succeed and come home.

Maybe one floor can be mocked up as an aircraft cabin
WUTT joins the contest to propose a new purpose for the UN Headquarters should they become vacant in the near future: lease several floors out to Gunsite, LFI, Marksman's Enterprise, Thunder Ranch, and other fine dynamic conflict resolution schools, for indoor ranges and funhouses. The highrise looks like it has hallways about 200 meters long.

It's been done before
Rachel Lucas is piqued to no end about a fellow being tried for having an unregistered defensive tool. The prosecutors reduced the charge to a lesser offense so they could try him without a jury.
Tell it to Laura Kriho. They did that to her too. Her offense, by the way? Go read the links.
At times like this I wish Liberty magazine's online presence were, um, present. There was a wonderful article on how to prepare yourself for the examination to be put on a jury, so you can still render a verdict within your conscience but hopefully protect yourself from what happened to Laura Kriho. Vin Suprynowicz wrote something similar, reprinted in Send In the Waco Killers.

Maybe time to drop PayPal
Aubrey Turner discusses PayPal's change of policy to prohibit the use of its service for legal commerce in modern firearms. This merely puts PayPal's policy in line with that of their owner, eBay. The only time I ever used eBay was to try to replace a collectible that my son destroyed on a visit to a friend's house. I like the concept of eBay but I did not enjoy the experience of being sniped out of some POS knicknack.

I wonder, to what extent are these policies an attempt to avoid litigation, like the suits being brought by cities against the gun industry? Is there actuarial basis for companies to exclude activities like firearm transactions on the part of their clients because the companies' part in those activities exposes them to gun lawsuits? These don't sound like inspirations of a goo-goo dot-com executive, but policies influenced or even initiated by corporate counsel.

In any case, if they continue this policy, I will drop them and tell them why. Just like I'm about to do to the Denver Post.

Carnival of the Vanities
Wylie hosts Carnival 26 this week.

Quote of the day (from yesterday, actually)

People who get shafted have long memories.

Jonathan Gewirtz at ChicagoBoyz

Quote of the day (from last October)

One of the minor casualties of 9/11 was patience for listening to privileged Americans complain, in distinctly Anti-American terms, about their privileged American lives.

Catherine Seipp, You've Lost Your Way, Baby in Reason, 10.02.

Snow day, slow day
Blogging from the hotel today at 28k8.

It would be a bad idea

. . . for the Dixie Slitches to try to kiss up to their former listeners by doing concerts for deployed servicemen.

Get your finger out of that G-d-damned triggerguard!
Fox News Channel is interviewing Specialist Roberto Jimenez about his fighting load. As he was describing his service rifle, his magazine was seated, and his finger was in the triggerguard. The ejection port cover was down so nobody knows whether the bolt was in battery or his chamber was clear.

This stuff does indeed chap my ass. At least he was pointing his muzzle into the floor.

... balloon man whistles far ... and ... whee
The latino man approached our table at the Pancake Place, sensing an opportunity to entertain Firstborn, Middlechild, and Boy with his balloon art.
"Hello, would jour children enyoy balloons?"
"Of course."
"Jour boy, he would like a sword?"
"He really likes airplanes," offered Barbaloot. Boy's winged LarryMobile already needs a new purple paint job. His little wooden JayJay has lost both of its engines. His aircraft get a lot of attention and a lot of wear.
But the sword was already done, and handed to Boy after a final squeaky twist. His syrupy hand seized it and he lost all interest in pancakes.
It was Middlechild's turn. "I want a cat, please."
"How about a hommingbord?"
"Please may you make me a cat." The terminal "t" was distinct.
"Hmmmm, what color chall I make this hommingbord?" Squeak squeak.
He drew big lunatic walled eyes on the head with a permanent marker.
"I wanted a cat." Softly, humbly. With disappointment.
"Here is jour hommingbord."
Firstborn is far less inhibited. "I want a puppy" she shouted, before he even reached to his belt for the inflating pump. A puppy she got, though it was improvised from the giraffe page of the Big Balloon Art Handbook.
The "head" of this gir-puppy sprang out, then popped and sagged in pink tatters, moments after she received it and its creator was tipped by her grandparents. Firstborn sobbed.

One week later, off again to Pancake Place after Mass. As we are seated, I scan the crowd for balloon artists. Noticing none, I take a seat and open the menu. Only then I see balloon swords in boys' hands at a nearby table. Behind the clink of flatware and the clatter of plates, the rubbery squeaks and pump hisses are faint but certain.

After our order is taken, he approaches. He makes eye contact with me, recognizes me. It must be my expressive face.
"Ohhhh, this is the family who wants balloons only after the children are done eating." He smiles, twinkles his eyes. "I will come back soon," then he turns to the other end of the Pancake Place.

Firstborn and Middlechild finished a ten-inch chocolate-chipped pancake between them without distraction. Boy cared only for link sausage.

The balloon man did not come back.

Tasty Animals Day

My father-in-law and I grill pork chops with genuine Strickland propane, in wonderful March spring weather. Afternoon highs in the low seventies. Hope you had some very nice meat too.

it's like telling them not to swear
Lt Smash reviews General Order Number Zero with his personnel.

See this also.

They oughtta have 'em, too
I noticed a large plastic jug in our kitchen last night, with a label claiming that it contained "Pi-Mag treated water." Beloved wife Barbaloot says she got it from friends of hers, who offer various nutritional and alternative health products.

Her frown must have been in reaction to my facial expression of skepticism.

Later during dinner, after Boy was settling down from a tantrum, he crawled up into his mother's lap and asked for "magnet." Huh?

Barbaloot produced a little plastic shell holding two magnetized nubbled balls, which she rubbed over his back to soothe him.

My skeptical facial expression returned. We proceeded to discuss (quite energetically) these alternative health products, and how I thought they were hucksterism, and she thought I should be more open to possibilities that the white lab smocks don't have all of the answers.

The "infrared" blanket she had put on our bed did, in fact, make the bed more comfortable, though I woke two hours early, rolling back and forth with a splitting headache.

. . . twenty-four hours later . . .

I resume an article where I had left it Friday night, about how very small amounts of normally toxic chemicals or ionizing radiation can make one healthier---hormesis. Sorry, no online link to this article; see The American Spectator, July/August 2002, page 54, "Underdosed" by Tom Bethell. Like the guy in Repo Man says,

Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.

Calling for a declaration of war cannot be anti-war
There is a difference, though some will argue there is not, between several Congressional resolutions authorizing the President to use force in Southwest Asia on the one hand, and a declaration of war against an underground organization and its supporting states on the other.
Put me down as one of those who think the Congress should declare the war. Anything less is a delegation of powers to the President that were clearly intended to stay with Congress. It also affords our less honorable members of Congress with the opportunity to hide behind weasel words if the war does not succeed: "We passed a resolution allowing the President to use force to effect A. We didn't say anything about him invading B."
The President, as Commander in Chief, wages the war. He determines how and with how much. The Congress decides whether, and upon whom, the war will be waged. These roles were separated for a purpose.
Of course antiwar leftists are calling, and even suing, to force the President to stop preparations in Southwest Asia, until and unless Congress declares war. As Bigwig suggests, a fine way to silence them is to grant their wish.
If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then the decision to go to war is a political one. A decision of such gravity, of such consequences, deserves the public visibility of recorded votes for the genuine article, the real thing, the full monty.

Single-parent soldiers
Michael Reagan's radio program this evening discussed the plight of single parents in the Army of One (and the Air Force to which No One Even Comes Close, and so forth). The DoD should contract with accessing members, offering an annuity equal to one-half the value of the services they must provide to enlisted families. If the member makes it through the first term of enlistment (or to NCO status, whichever comes first) without taking on any dependents, the annuity is paid, in the form of a 401(k) with income taxes deferred. Any dependents, oops, no annuity.

Update: link to the radio program's website was corrected.

Mark your calendar
The feast day of Saint Gabriel Possenti is 27 February. He is, or ought to be, the Patron Saint of Handgunners.

Update: Kathy Kinsley responds to this with "Ick." I think it has something to do with handguns versus any kind of gun, with which sentiment I disagree. Handguns are inherently less accurate than long-guns. Marksmanship with a handgun is, caeteris paribus, more difficult and thus more daunting to the goblins. It deserves its own term to distinguish it from other forms of marksmanship.

Coyote tells me that the Saint was also a lawyer.
Please drive some traffic, and drop some dollars, at the site for the Possenti Society.