Memos I've written, never meaning to send

Department of Defense
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Prairie AFB

XXX Civil Engineer Squadron, Readiness Flight

---

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

XXX Medical Group/CC/CCT/CCF

XXX Logistics Group/CC/CCT/CCF

All Readiness Support Team members

All Squadron FSTR Representatives



SUBJECT: C-CW CONOPS Functional Area Training Completion Tracking

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

[[ SIGNED ]]

FUSILIER N. PUNDIT

MASTER SERGEANT, USAF

Civil Engineer Readiness

Excused absence

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




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

There'll be a balm in Gilead

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

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

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

Quote for the day

Hat tip to In-Cog-Nito at ChicagoBoyz:

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

Fred Schoeneman

How 'bout some milfs on trampolines?

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

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

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

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

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

What's playing? (updated)

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

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

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

Dare I eat a peach?

My first pair of bifocals arrived in the mail today.

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

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

Quote for the day

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

Arnold Kling

AFAIK, Skype is still available.

Sauce for Lott, sauce for Hollings

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

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

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

FrankenBoy

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



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

The '05 Grosstod

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They pay us to do this?

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

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

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

TCM and LCG go to the Million Mom March

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

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

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

Short Story: I was told to leave.

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

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

and the long-ago debunked

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

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

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

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

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

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

TCM

User doc for Idea number 483

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

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

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

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

Idea number 483

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wise Turkey Encounters a Mysterious Squeaking

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

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

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

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

Another squeak came in reply, outside the window.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soon, the Wise Turkey knew what he would do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then he went to bed.

Fûzboat replaced

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

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

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

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

Paging Mr Rummel, Mr James Rummel

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

Surely Mr Rummel could fit in a new CCW student.

Oooops. Never mind.

Quote for the day

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

Eugene Volokh, whose blog is not an opinion blog.

Go tell them they're wrong, please

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

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

blotter stuff

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

* * * *

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

* * * *

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

Maybe Mamamontezz would be up for illustrating them?

* * * *

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

Roger that, big time

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

Zell Miller: Dump 17th Amendment

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

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

Used to work for one of these

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

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

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

If pack is preferable to herd, we need claws

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

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

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

He lost me right there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The very rudest buzz to be had

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

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

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

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

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

I'll be glad when this is over.

My Skype username is Patriotbrewer

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

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

It's the harmonics, stupid

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . this little chromium switch here . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Selling federalism

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Rice badgered by assholes; film at eleven

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

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

Idea courtesy blogson Scotsman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NYPD Hiring!

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

Well then, what of this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our lives, fortunes, and sacred bandwidth, updated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeeeehawwww!

Free WiFi in the hotel room in Cheyenne!

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

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

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

Late-breaking:

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





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

You must choose

We appreciate the carefully constructed point here:

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

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

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

Meet Recluse:


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

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

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

Hey, I work for a living!

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

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

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

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

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

Rocky Mountain Blogger Roundup

Walter hosts the Rocky Mountain Roundup. Please go there.

Quote for the day

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

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

But tomorrow, Madame, I will be sober

We despaired in a recent post that carbines of the AR15 family can get a new lease on service with Uncle Sugar if only the cartridge were changed to something that delivers lethality at greater range. One new cartridge is under serious consideration by our esteemed Uncle, another has been proposed, both fitting neatly within the physical constraints of the existing carbine and magazine, needing little more than a new barrel, bolt, and magazine follower to lose the "poodle shooter" pejorative.

Either the 6.5mm Grendel (the preferred solution here at WUTT!) or the 6.8mm Remington SPC (the likely successor) would be a major step forward.

But as the borrowed Churchill quip implies, we can change the caliber but the carbine will still be an AR15. It taps propellant gas from the barrel, and ducts it half the length of the weapon back to a chamber inside the bolt carrier to operate the action. This reduces the weight and parts count of the weapon, but dumps propellant gas inside the action where it can foul it and cause malfunctions.

The AR15 also uses a cocking handle that rides inside the top of the upper receiver. It is difficult to use this cocking handle with the non-firing hand while the firing hand keeps a consistent grip. The movement of this control also interferes with placement of a cheekrest. Aftermarket upper receivers are available with cocking handles on the left side of the receiver, like the FAL's, instead of on top at the rear.

Rather than replace the AR15 family carbines already in Uncle's arsenal, we propose instead to refit them, both to change the cartridge to a non-poodle shooter, and to remove these two design details. Mr and Mrs Taxpayer may thank WUTT! for the tens of millions of dollars saved.

The existing upper receiver can be retained, if has the rails for the removable carry handle.

Everything from the upper receiver forward goes away. The new barrel bears a block, in place of the front sight, that offers short Picatinny rails at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock around the barrel's circumference. A gas piston inside the block taps the propellant gas and points it rearward. The rails offer ample space to mount sights, lights, designators, even a recoil- or muzzle-operated digital camera.

Instead of the loooooong gas tube sprouting from the gas block, an operating rod with a cylinder in its front end mates to the piston at the front, and passes into the upper receiver at the rear. The rear fits inside the bolt carrier key. Heckler and Koch have already designed this part and offer it as a retrofit for M4 carbines.

A replacement upper handguard has room for the operating rod, and includes a folding cocking handle. This handle can swing either to right or to left, to grab the operating rod and cycle it. The handle does not reciprocate with the operating rod.

A rear block surrounds the barrel immediately in front of the gland nut that tightens the barrel to the upper receiver. It has a short Picatinny rail at 12 o'clock, and a channel under that to take the operating rod and guide it, and retain the upper handguard. At 6 o'clock, it has hardpoints that lock bipod legs in place.

The lower handguard looks just like a lower handguard, but it is split into quarters, right and left. These are extensible legs of a bipod. The legs hinge where they attach to the front sight block.

A vertical foregrip, a GL, or a shotgun can be installed in place of the lower handguard, of course.

Important: the Picatinny rails do not surround the barrel along most of its length like on the current M4A1. The rails, and the handguards fastened to them, trap too much heat on the barrel. In prolonged action, the barrel gets hot enough to ignite a cartridge as soon as it's chambered, known as a cook-off.

The receiver-mounted cocking handle is removed, and a plastic plug installs in its place. Ears from the plug reach around to the rear of the sight rail on the upper receiver, to fasten tightly there. The plug provides a press-fit between upper and lower receivers when they are closed, and could be fashioned as a flip-up reserve rear sight, calibrated for the new caliber.

Name those guns

Airborne Combat Engineer shows a few photos and asks readers to name them.

The first is named in a comment to the post.

The other photo is of a Spanish CETME Model 58, precursor to the HK G3. CETME parts kits are being imported and assembled on domestic receivers as semi-auto rule beaters. They're OK as long as they don't have the dummy muzzle brake welded on the muzzle. The welding hoses up the tempering and warps the barrel. And the original rear sight sucks.

What do we get if we have won? Addition to the blogroll?

Update on 1 April: We did not win. But we are Priority 3 on ACE's blogroll. We reciprocate.

Idea number 229: reason for a mini iPod

We heard today that cardiovascular exercise and music, combined, improve cognitive skills. If this is true, it's a genuine practical reason for Fûz to get a mini iPod.

We have little use for downloaded music, at least within the Denver metro area, because AM and FM serve our needs just fine, Fûz listens to talk much more than music, and we're too damn stingy to buy CDs that have only one or two good tracks on them (there are a few exceptions). So it's hard to justify a dedicated MP3 player unless a killer app can be found, say, something that can help Fûz learn a NATO- or CENTAF- interest foreign language.

Are language study programs available in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis format? Yes, they are. The apps might not be "there" yet, they're oriented towards desktop study or they're just MP3 files of spoken language. The respect that the iPod is getting these days suggests that it has the processing power to be much more than just a music player.

Developers, and geeks at the service academies, listen up: somebody with deep pockets is ready to buy this in volume. Never mind the phraselators that will do the translating for you, there is no substitute for an instructed human brain. In the end, economies of scale can make instructing the human brain cheaper. Make a gadget that you can attach to the soldiers so they drill on language while they PT, and you'll know that the training will take. Better still, the soldiers will be able to summon that skill during periods of stress and exertion (when it's needed) because that's when it was learned. If Uncle Sugar provides the application and support, the GIs will probably provide their own iPods---we are Early Adopters.

Mere playback of spoken language will not be enough. It would need interactivity, for example it asks a question in the language of study and the student thumbs through a menu of spoken answers and chooses the right one; the app tracks the right and wrong answers. When it docks, it uploads the exam results, and downloads new lessons. The exam results can be channeled back to a wetware language instructor, who can guide the student with whatever intensity the student can handle and will pay for.

In release 2, increase the processing power and add a microphone, so the student speaks the answer and the app/device can improve pronunciation, either through its own intelligence or piped back to the instructor. Randomly speed up, garble, shout, or heavily inflect the speech and see if the student can keep up. You get the idea.

Is this starting to sound like it needs a high-end Palm instead?

The Rocket eBook is a dead letter at this point, too damn heavy to take on a run, not enough capacity, no apps. Anybody desperate for one?

He's a nine-pounder!

Toad now tips the scales at 4 kilos even.



This is a bigger thing than it sounds. We've had our Gattaca moment with Toad---he has a little cleft in his soft palate. It wasn't discovered until about two hours after he was born, there was no outward sign of it at all. But it means he can't nurse, he can't generate the suction. Good lawd we tried, and after a few weeks, he was well below birth weight instead of gaining.

We now use a device called a Haberman bottle to feed him, and Barbaloot expresses milk every few hours to load into the Haberman. He's gone from 60 to 100 ml a feeding in about 3 weeks of diligence.

About Christmastime, if he keeps gaining weight, he will withstand the general anaesthesia to undergo surgery to join the muscles in the back of his throat, and mend the cleft.

Further on the low-drag pipedream

The 6.5mm Grendel AR15 uppers are available. A little pricey perhaps, but available. We at WUTT! prefer the metric convention to the SAE, BTW, but showed deference to the developers. Since it seems everyone else has taken up the metric name, so shall we.

Though we'd be pleased as peas if a plainjane fluted heavy barrel were offered. We have the punches and wrenches to fit it to our existing upper. Otherwise, we're just changing the caliber on something that will still be an AR15 tomorrow morning. The same charging handle in the wrong location, the same gas system. Maybe they could borrow HK's op-rod driven gas system for the M4? And work the charging handle into the upper handguard?

Grendel links found through 6.5mm Grendel fan site, found through Airborne Combat Engineer, found through Murdoch, found through Hellinahandbasket.

I've finally found one

I've found someone else making the point that the campaign for homosexual marriage is in part a campaign to extract benefits from employers. A commenter at ChicagoBoyz:

the current debate on gay marriage is at least partially fueled by the intertwining of health care and employee/family coverage. The controversial issue is portrayed as who should have access to the benefits as currently structured when the unspoken question is/could be whether the current arrangement itself is flawed.

We'll have more to post soon about health care, but read I owe my health to the Company Store in the meantime.

Another blog mirror

Anybody notice that a number of blogs are mirrored on "[yourblogurlhere[dot]ass[dot]otron[dot]org"? These mirrors will not load directly, but if you Google your own blog, links to the mirrors will turn up.

The Third World's Right Arm

Feces Flinging Monkey shows you the barest essentials of the Kalashnikov rifle. He offers a very good reason for us to know this. And if, God forbid, that reason is realized, the Kalashnikov and its variants will be the most likely piece you'd encounter.

What would Dagny Taggart do?

We are no particular fan of nor apologist for Martha Stewart. But the little we have learned about her (from hack sput CNN) tells me she's a genuine self-made woman with singleminded determination to succeed in a man's world, even choosing to pursue it over keeping her marriage.

Think about how a woman like that probably views herself. Mutual blogroller/rollee Feces Flinging Monkey opines that his compassion for Martha Stewart slipped a notch or two upon discovering that she turned down a plea deal that she could have afforded without wincing. Now she and her employees suffer needlessly.

Would Dagny Taggart cop a 200k/community service/parole plea to make the bloodsucking Feds go away? I don't think so. You can call it arrogance, if you like, or you could call it "give the fsckers an inch and they'll . . . " No delusions of heroism, nor angular faces, nor the swooning glowing-coals-of-cigarettes-in-the-darkness-like-the-flame-of-the-human-intellect required to visualize Dagny telling the Committee to shove their Certificate up their asses.

We submit that many of the abuses we suffer today, from

• physicians leaving practice because the malpractice insurance is unaffordable,
• to the class-action lawsuit invitations we receive from time to time because, for example, a 17-inch computer monitor did not measure exactly 17 inches,
  
• to the myriad nonsense warnings on consumer products,
  

is because somebody not so long ago ran the numbers and found that copping the plea, choosing not to fight the unfair charge, was cheaper. What does this have to do with Martha and the Feds? The commonality of tactics. Threaten, then offer a settlement. Make an example of the first guy and the rest of the herd goes quietly.

The first transaction may have been cheaper. But now, thanks to the first few guys to cave, the overall costs have been transferred to the rest of us.

Update: Ilana Mercer's column frames our concerns well. Also Jonathan Gewirtz at ChicagoBoyz.

Update the second: And we borrow a page from Kipling, courtesy of Eugene Volokh.

Another idea of mine stolen---before I even had it

We proposed a new service carbine cartridge here, based on the 5.45x39.5mm cartridge case (rather, a 6mm PPC case) opened up to take a 6.5mm bullet with a high ballistic coefficient, yielding a finished cartridge that will still fit in the AR-15 magazine and action but deliver lethality far beyond the 5.56's practical range. Aside from the new barrel, the AR-15 would need to switch to the breechbolt compatible with the 7.62x39mm case, and take a retuned recoil spring and buffer.

Am still way behind on my reading: it was on the API list four months ago. Alexander Arms has rolled one out, along with an AR-15 upper to shoot it. They call it the .26 Grendel. They use a Lapua match bullet with a BC going North of .53. Check the video at this last URL, where an Alexander Arms spokesman describes its performance.

Here's a discussion of the 6.5 versus 6.8mm Remington SPC. Because the SPC appears to rely far less on barrel length, and SOF operators will prefer short-n-handy and reach for a different weapon if the range goes beyond 400 meters, 6.8mm will be the new US service rifle cartridge if the 5.56mm is to be replaced. But a .26 Grendel upper, which was once Fûz's pipedream, now has become a commercial off-the-shelf item.

The US Army consideration of replacing of the AR-15 is also proceeding apace, and apparently the teams are talking to each other, because a 6.8mm XM-8 is in testing (scroll to post dated 9 March 04).

Regarding Middlechild

We've mentioned our Middlechild's idiosyncrasies, and how we've investigated them to discover that she suffers from sensory integration disorder.

We now take her for weekly appointments with an occupational therapist, who has tested her in various ways to identify exactly which senses are not integrating. She has an unusual posture, which makes her easy to topple and causes her to hang on people instead of standing beside them (very trying at Mass, for example, and a pain in the neck to her classmates).

There are some vestibular problems, which compound her problems with balance. We learned that getting dizzy because one has been spun around is a compensatory mechanism that prevents even more serious problems, and Middlechild's compensatory mechanism is faulty on one side. Spin her one way on an office chair, for example, for a few seconds and stop her, then time how long her eyes retrace side to side. If they don't retrace, or if there's a significant difference in how long the eyes retrace after clockwise versus counterclockwise rotation, there's a problem. Her eyes didn't retrace at all when she was spun in one direction versus the other.

It's all treatable, thank God, without meds or surgery, just exercise. The weekly appointments seem to be succeeding, though slowly. Riding a skateboard into a crash wall was suggested, so we saved up egg cartons and filled them with expanding foam to make a crash wall that will endure more than one crash. It will even bear Middlechild's weight, in fact, if any other SID parents are tuning in---email for the recipe. A WalMart skateboard was found for about five bucks.



Core muscle tone, endurance, and proprioception are also a problem, so I have broken out our old taekwon-do notes and now lead Middlechild and Firstborn through some stretches to loosen the posture and give her a feel of where her body parts are.

We regularly ask her what her "engine level" is, to make her alert to her activity and how it affects her attention. She bends close to her work, letting her hair fall around her face, just to block out distractions around her. She can't look me directly in the eyes for more than a glance, unless our noses are touching and my eyes converge into one "bigeye" to her.

The testing is also where we got our first unbiased suggestion that Middlechild is bright. Out of sync, but bright.

We started the testing on our own, without the assistance of her school, because we were warned by other parents that, being a government entity, the school will be slow to respond. We were also warned that such entities are predisposed to not act---their obligation to act, and the funding to support such action, is warranted only if there is "scholastic impact." Luckily, Middlechild's kindergarten teacher, who first flagged us to the seriousness of this condition, understood that predisposition and couched her observations accordingly.

We owe this woman big-time.

Middlechild has gone through SIPT testing and three months of occupational therapy while the school was forming their team and getting it into action. They reviewed their findings with us this week, and I'm still getting my head around it.

Her teacher, a social worker, a nurse, the district's occupational therapist, and the district's psychologist all participated in the meeting. Nothing surprising, most of it already determined by our occupational therapist, though they used different testing instruments. But they were almost giddy in describing how they enjoyed examining Middlechild and comparing notes on her. They discussed their findings in a prearranged order to put the psychologist last.

For a reason. The crescendo, the climax, the point of the buildup in suspense: the psychologist determined that her instruments are in fine working order and do not lie. Middlechild is not just bright, she has an IQ in the ninety-ninth-plus percentile. She has few friends, and has apparent difficulty making friends, because other 5-year-old kids don't grok her. Some of her other behaviors can be explained as easily by her IQ as by SID.

My first reaction was ambivalence. She's a blessing. She's gifted. It wasn't obvious but now makes sense. I'm proud of her. I feel closer to her.

But.

But GT kids can be as difficult to raise as learning-disabled kids. They can be moody, demanding, depressed. Their intellect outraces their emotional development. School, even Montessori, may not be challenging enough for her. A few visits to message boards confirm this.

I don't want to happen to her what happened to me. I was a gifted child too, and grew up to think The World Owed Me Something.
The catastrophes that ensued when I found out that the world's debt to me would forever go unpaid were staggering. My siblings had similar gifts and dealt with them in various ways, heavily influenced IMO by their birth order.

I don't want Middlechild to know she's gifted, at least until Barbaloot (gifted also) and I figure out how to explain it to her. But she already knows, inarticulately, something's going on, and so does Firstborn. Friction has already resulted, though Firstborn is no slouch either.

So on one hand, we are excited and thankful. On the other, I am privately worried, and shared this concern with Barbaloot. Her reply: "May you live in interesting times."

One downside of the meeting is that the school has built their case that they need make no special intervention for Middlechild; obviously, there is no impairment in her scholastic progress, though she can make her classmates uncomfortable as hell. The upsides, her teacher sees improvement in her behavior, cooperates in strategies suggested by her OT, and can influence which teacher will be responsible for Middlechild when she enters first grade. But otherwise, the district perceives no cause for action. That chaps me a bit, and we'll revisit that when we have more information.

What little advice we can offer today, cum grano salis:

• We've long suspected that ADD/ADHD is as much a growth industry as a valid medical diagnosis. Close friends confirm that when it's a valid diagnosis, it needs genuine medical treatment and that treatment offers dramatic results. But desperate parents and litigation-averse doctors may err toward ADD/ADHD when it may be sensory integration disorder, high IQ, or both, or yet some other disorder. Take the time, spend the money, hire the therapists, and run the damned tests.
  
  • How many Hinckleys, Klebolds and Harrises, Kinkels, and so forth are the results of similar misdiagnoses? One hosed-up teenager can do a lot of damage, and my experiences as described here further dispose me towards holding the parents responsible, even if a district attorney might not.
    
  • One gifted kid usually means others, whether it's by nature or nurture. Boy was hanging out in the room during the meeting, and a few comments were directed his way.
    
• This experience confirms my high regard for Montessori education and charter schools. Middlechild probably would have fallen through the cracks, or gone much longer and gotten much worse before being identified, had she attended a conventional public school.
  
• Every one of us would benefit from some testing by occupational or physical therapists. Facial tics, unusual postures, stumbles on ice or up stairs, short term memory problems, listening difficulties, restless limbs during a meeting: all of these have become more noticeable in the people around me. How many of them struggled to a miserable adulthood with the baggage of undiagnosed SID?
  
  • If I were on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I'd find funding to administer SIPT to every accessing military member. Not to throw people out, but the better to keep talented people in. Few other professions demand competence with one's entire body. It's justifiable.
    
  • If we remain wedded to the notion of The State running schools, the money that government-run schools blow on academic standards testing (to defend their franchise, we suppose) would be better spent searching for treatable physical barriers to learning, such as SID, before those barriers spawn behavioral problems or academic consequences.
  
  

In the coming years, we will use this space to share our experiences of raising Middlechild, in the hope that other parents will find useful advice, or offer it, among Fûz's usual rants about limited government, RKBA, homebrewing, and national defense.

We've been coaxing Barbaloot to offer her thoughts here too, but don't hold your breath. Toad's schedule needs to settle down before she can read what I've written, let alone write her own. At the present rate, Middlechild will post her thoughts here first.

Toad-induced sleep

It happens that we have never to date posted a picture of Barbaloot. You get another view of Toad, and one of the cats, in the bargain:



Toad has a powerful sleep-inducing effect on people.

Lest anyone doubt the combined power of Montessori and charter schools:

This is the work of a kindergartner:



Namely one Middlechild.

Not just multiplication, but the beginning of grasping exponents.

Fight for charter schools, if you don't have them where you live, even if you don't have kids, even if you never plan to, or cannot have, kids.

Kill it, kill it, kill it

I just called both of Colorado's Senators, urging them to kill S.1805, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Amendments have been added to it, both to reenact the assault weapon ban (renewal is a euphemism) and mandate Brady background checks on private sales at gunshows.

Don't trust the House conference to strip these provisions when the Senate and House versions are reconciled. Don't trust the NRA to hound the conference to do so. Let's see how many NRA A- or B-rated Senators actually voted for the amendments, or will vote for the full S.1805 as amended.

We can do without the lawsuit immunity if the present court track record continues, and more states enact immunity laws on their own. Rather than take a medium win with two huge losses inside it, let's take a medium loss on immunity and deny the banners their two wins.

S.1805 must die.

Redneck MP3 player

My wife and in-laws presented me with a gift lo three birthdays ago, a Rocket eBook model 1100. A nifty device about the size of a paperback, that would download, store, and display eBooks. I already had been spanking the Palm for two or three years, and was reluctant to begin traveling with yet another gizmo, its case, charger, and associated cables, so it went mostly unused. The choice of materials to read on it was underwhelming too, compared to AvantGo material I was already downloading to the Palm.

Years have gone by, and I'm thinking about an MP3 player, but too stubborn or stingy to buy one. The eBook has audio capabilities aboard, and a slot for SmartMedia storage, and it's otherwise unoccupied and in good working order.

Anybody ever hack into these devices and repurpose one into an MP3 player?

Help send a promising lad to CCW Instructor School

The usual Catch-22 that attends any liberalization of concealed-carry laws it that to get the CCW license, one must train under a certified instructor. But the State who will issue such licenses has not provided for the instructors themselves to be trained or certified. Any tactic they can use to delay the issue of the first license is justifiable, and the instructorship delay is the easiest.

Ohio is case in point. Good friend James Rummel has already trained hundreds of Ohioans, at his own expense, and is eager to earn his certification and serve his fellow citizens in that expanded capacity. He estimates he'll need $500 bucks.

Let's get it to him ASAP. I'm in for $20 if he tells me where to send it.

Unimportant and immaterial

If you find that the difference between voluntarily donating a cable lock, and being compelled by Federal law to give one away with every handgun purchase, is "unimporant and immaterial" you do not appreciate the danger posed by the people you are dealing with.

It is comparable to the difference between donating your time to a church, and being compelled to sweep the floors there.

Next the Feds may require you to donate forty hours of safety training, for example, then require you to collect the records of completion of that training, then certify the safety instructors, and so forth.

Repeat after me: "reasonable articulable suspicion"

Somebody makes the circuit among several Massachusetts Wendy's restaurants, takes notes on identifying characteristics of the hard-working taxpayers behind the counters, then calls the manager at each one. He impersonates a cop, instructing the managers to select one employee against the descriptions he has taken, and strip-search that employee under the suspicion of theft. A Bart Simpson-level prank, two or three evolutionary steps above demanding that Prince Albert be let out of his can.

But the managers actually did it. "Later, however, each manager became suspicious, and reported the call and the incident to local police." To their credit, we presume.

Here's the straw: "The managers who were duped are law-abiding citizens. They thought they were responding to direct orders by the police."

When did a 'direct order by the police' carry any obligation to do anything other than stop long enough for the cop to figure you out? It's bad enough that Dudley Hiibel needed to know the Magic Words ("Am I being detained, Officer?" "Am I free to go?" "What or who are you looking for, Officer?" "I do not consent to any search.") and got the snot kicked out of him because he didn't. He at least had a sense, an unarticulable notion of what a cop's boundaries are, and thought he was well within his own. These restaurant managers hadn't a clue. To say they were 'duped' is far too generous.

So we assert that, henceforth, no American shall consider himself or herself educated without having read and studied The Outlaw's Bible, which explains those boundaries in detail. It doesn't matter whether you're an outlaw yourself---if you homeschool your kids, for example, you'll want to teach them and yourself how to talk to cops or social workers if your state's Department of Education decides to sport wood for homeschoolers.

One Dudley Hiibel is too many.

Remember Amendment XVIII?

Rosie O'Donnell is mistaken that a proposed Constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage, or denying full faith and credit of one State's homosexual marriages by other States, would be the first Constitutional amendment to restrict individuals' rights rather than guarantee or expand them.

It was already done, it already failed, and it was already repealed.

It's called Prohibition.

Strange New Respect Award

With apologies to American Spectator, we borrow the term they use for public figures who present an unexpected, possibly even radical, turn of opinion.

"'I'VE NEVER HEARD HOWARD STERN. BUT WHEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GETS INVOLVED IN THIS, I GET A LITTLE FRIGHTENED. . . . I AM IN THE FREE SPEECH BUSINESS. ITS ONE THING FOR A COMPANY TO DETERMINE IF THEY ARE GOING TO BE PARTY TO IT. ITS ANOTHER THING FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO DO IT."

That's Rush Limbaugh, via Drudge.
His opinion on this matter did not surprise me. How he couched it didn't surprise me either. But it surely will surprise a lot of people who think he's a neocon first and a broadcast personality second.

What is more boring than a roomful of LtCols making amendments to a PowerPoint presentation?

Watching them make amendments to checklists in MSWord. But not by much.

Meet Dudley Hiibel

We do not continue to serve in America's armed forces to make this kind of abusive shit possible:

One balmy May evening back in 2000, Dudley was standing around minding his own business when all of a sudden, a policeman pulled-up and demanded that Dudley produce his ID. Dudley, having done nothing wrong, declined. He was arrested and charged with "failure to cooperate" for refusing to show ID on demand. And it's all on video.

A Terry stop gone very wrong. Into the blogroll with it. A tip of the hat to the Scout Rifles list on Yahoo.

Trendwatch---Vermont-style CCW?

In spite of failure to pass an unlicensed-concealed carry law here in Colorado, other States are trying. Alaska succeeded last year, as Publicola notes. Now it's New Hampshire's attempt. Is this a trend?

The choice of people to testify is somewhat narrowed, unfortunately:

"You don't have a lot of victims of violent crime come and testify on bills like this, because most victims of violent crimes are dead," [State Rep. Packy] Campbell said.

Rep. Cambpell testified because he still has pills inside him, shot into him while he was waiting for a CCW permit to come through. Let's get him out here to testify when Colorado gun owners try Vermont-style again.

Update: The Manchester Union Leader weighs in on the right side. Live free or die, baby.