I ate my wafer...

In the news...20yr sentence for Internet Surfing

2008-10-21T12:38:00.002-04:00

So, in the latest roundup of BBC headlines:

A very unlucky "student-journalist" in Afghanistan dodges the death penalty for downloading articles about woman's rights & islam, but gets 20 years. Considering the former student journalists I know, this has to be the most innocuous material a student-journalist has ever downloaded. In protest, later this evening, I plan to view unacceptable internet material, such as uncovered women's faces, homebrewing , and heretical science, while watching decadent western TV, drinking a beer, and eating a BLT. (Correction, relatively normal evening apparently doesn't count as protesting)

The I ate my wafer 2008 energy platform

2008-09-08T15:46:00.003-04:00

I like ethanol, for drinking that is. For an automotive fuel, fermented and distilled from corn or the like, its damn near useless. Oh sure, when the price difference between E-85 and regular gasoline is large enough, I've used it in the past, but that's a stunning example of selling out principled objections for saving $15 or so. I know there are many decent articles already floating around explaining the math, but here's fast simple explanation:
1. Ethanol cannot compete economically or environmentally with gasoline, especially as straight ethanol has 34% less energy than gasoline. Sure, you can blend straight ethanol to make E-85, but if you do, you need to extract all of the water from the azeotropic ethanol, which is an energy intensive pain. Even then, if gasoline costs, say, $4.00 a gallon, E-85 needs to cost, without subsidy, ~$3.04 to break even. . More than likely, corn ethanol production is limited in the long term by inevitable price increases in phosphorus, etc. Oh, the other problem is that trucks and jet engines won't run on alcohol.

2. The focus on ethanol detracts money, time, and public knowledge away from better alternative energy sources. My personal favorites are oil from algae and butanol, though there are lots of other candidates. If I had to steer U.S. energy policy, I'd eliminate every incentive for corn ethanol immediately, pump research funding into algae, butanol, non-corn ethanol, and battery technology. On top of that, I'd build nuclear power plants as quickly as possible.

Return

2008-05-29T23:01:00.002-04:00

I return to blogging....As many of my friends might remember, I have learned the lesson of blogging too candidly, so I shall be brief: I am very gainfully employed in the Midwest, in a position that currently uses all of my skills and interests. I am still working on a variety of side-projects (which include airplanes, locks, guns, cars, motorcycles, and boats at the least).

Now with all the atomic-powered cars you want...

2007-11-12T14:45:00.000-05:00

So, back in the pre-internet era of my childhood, I liked reading old Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Mechanix Illustrated magazines. There was a pretty good supply of the 1960's and newer ones floating around at my grandmother's house, so if I was getting a bit bored or underfoot in the machine shop, I'd pick one up, sit in the corner by my bench and read them. Now, nothing against the modern incarnations of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, but they don't hold a candle to the mid-20th century ones. Even better, by the time I was 12 or so, I discovered that Popular Mechanics magazines from the 1920's and 30's were availble (rough shape w/o covers) for less than a buck a copy from Volume One books in Hillsdale.

The depression era magazines are highly facinating, from the somewhat economically desperate nature of the advertisements, "If you don't use Lifebouy Soap/Gillette razors you'll bomb the job interview" to the historically amusing features. I have a 1930's PM magazine that discusses safety features for future cars, including "steering wheels as thick as an axe handle" and "safety belts for all cars" which, come to think of it only took another 40 to 50 years to come about.

Anyway, I've discovered a VERY cool blog that consists mostly of scanned articles from this sort of magazine: Modern Mechanix: Tommorow's Technology Today

The Grey Truck Part 1

2007-10-19T07:27:00.000-04:00

So, quite some time ago, Silliman wrote a little blog piece about the end of his green S-10. I owe a similar piece about the Grey Truck, but I can only really do disjointed paragraphs on the topic.

The Beginning:
The grey truck was a S-15 Jimmy, with two-doors, 2.8L TBI, 700R4 Transmission, a NP207 Transfer Case, and 3.73 gears. After some very hard negotiation, I paid $2800 for it in February 1999. At the time, believe it or not, it had no visible rust whatsoever, though the A/C was inoperative, and the heat didn't work well either. The A/C turned out to only need a good thumping on the compressor clutch to free it up, and the heat only needed a new $4 thermostat. I was pretty smug about talking the dealer down so far on the price, then having the good fortune to fix the A/C and heat for a whopping $4.

The first summer I had it, I needed a trailer hitch installed, and spent a fun Saturday morning making one, after sneaking up to a parked truck to take measurements off its hitch. The homemade hitch would serve to pull incredibly heavy items over the next 8 years, from a stuck H2 Hummer to a large surface grinder/trailer combination that exceeded GMC's tow limit by a high margin.

I'm Sorry, but I was too busy building weapons to post

2007-09-19T22:53:00.000-04:00

So...long absence, no real explanation. Other than that I was busy trying to make stuff for my side venture here at shooting solutions.

(I have a new car, and will soon post a eulogy for the Grey GMC, stay tuned for it!)

2007-07-10T01:59:00.000-04:00

Random old news item: the Russian Federation apparently faces an immigration debate akin to the current U.S. one.

Arming sunni insurgents...a breif note from WWII history

2007-06-18T03:17:00.000-04:00

So, last week when I read about the recent U.S. attempts to arm selected members of the Sunni insurgency in order to harm al-Qaeda a couple of relevant thoughts came to mind:

A. Probably the best historical comparison is the German attempts to guide "Home Army" Polish resistance towards attacking Soviet allied partisans in eastern Poland. Probably inevitably, the home army (Armia Krajowa) attacked various Soviet oriented resistance groups occasionally, while using the German support to obtain intelligence information, gather weapons, and attack Germans on the side. At least as far as I know, the historical example is pretty good and relevant: occupying power supplies major resistance organisation in the hopes of attacking additional insurgent groups by emphasizing ideological differences between groups. Heck, Sadaam methodically avoided arming or supporting al-Qaeda since he rightfully believed it would rather weaken his regime than help control his Kurdish problems.

B. If we're going to mess with arming the "friendly" insurgents, we shouldn't be giving them 7.62x39mm AK's since the ammo is all over iraq. We should pick an unusual, and lower performance (i.e. sucks against body armor) weapon to minimize damage from misuse and theft and enable forensic tracking. I'd suggest pistols and submachine guns or carbines in 40SW or 45 ACP. Heck, buy 40SW Hipoints for ~$175/rifle or something like the M3A1 grease guns (still in US inventory?), but don't give them untraceable, easily resupplied AKs or other comblock weapons.

24 Hours of LeMons

2007-06-14T09:50:00.000-04:00

So, I was flipping through a an issue of Car and Driver, having exhausted the 2 month old news magazine selection in a waiting room last week. Hilariously, although Car and Driver has a more adult (as in reading level, unfortunately not as in violence and sex) tone than most car magazines, it also has some pretty unconventional content. A pretty amusing example, which I also read in a waiting room last summer, would be the article comparing sub-$1500 diesel used cars by racing them across country.

Anyway, the February 2007 issue of Car and Driver has an article in which several C&D staffers enter the 24 hours of Lemons automobile race. The race is, quite simply, the most brilliant sporting event ever conceived. Contestants enter cars that cost less than $500 in an 24 hour endurance race that mocks the famous 24 hours of Le Mans race. The rules are simple, and hilarious, including a secret ballot vote in which all contestants vote to pick a car for destruction, either by dropping from a crane, or in a pinch, by attractive women with sledgehammers. If you win, you get $1500 in nickels. If you cheat by entering a radically over budget car, you run the risk of the even promoters electing to purchase your car for $500.

Oh, and did I mention that besides a tech inspection with officials dressed up as English barristers with wigs, there's a qualification section that includes slalom through old lady mannequins and reaction/braking testing in which event promoters push baby carriages in front of your car?

Keep Moving Forward

2007-05-16T02:03:00.000-04:00

So, about a year or so ago, I heard about the polarization based, "Disney 3D" method of 3-D cinematography, and decided to see it, even if it meant watching a horrid children’s film. As it turned out, my efforts to watch Chicken Little in 3D were thwarted by my local movie theatre’s accounting department, which had forced a switch to the regular 2D version, resulting in my watching of part of Chicken Little without 3-D, then more or less forgetting about the entire Disney 3-D concept.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to see “Meet the Robinsons” in polarized, digital 3-D. It definitively was worth the obscene, $10/student discount ticket price, both for the excellent 3-D experience , and for the admittedly somewhat sappy plot.

Not to spoil the movie, but in my current position as a newly minted inventor, the memorable line from the movie, “keep moving forward,” was very amusing. If nothing else, it made me realize that as much as Cornelius Robinson uses that line, I use various versions of “It’s not what we can do with (the tool/item we wish we had), but whether we/I can figure out a way to do it with (what we have right now).” So...can anyone post a good comment involving my use of that phrase? The next time we meet face to face, I'll buy a beverage for each person that can come up with a good Mcguyver-esque story.

Beer crisis in Germany

2007-05-13T17:57:00.000-04:00

So, Spigel International has a fascinating little piece about the decline of the brewing industry in Germany. Coming from a long lineage of German brewers*, this is, of course bad news to my mind, and if German beer consumption drops below 100L/per person/year it may even be a sign of the end times. Besides somewhat reasonable health concerns, apparently much of the decline is due to German youth drinking evil hard lemonade "malt beverages". Frankly, it is fine with me if the various German states (and U.S. ones) taxed the crap out of Mike's Hard Lemonade to boost beer consumption. Besides tasting like effeminate cool-aid, the alchopop beverages have about as much tradition and variety as Kraft Easy-Mac.

*In my family, the German agricultural traditions are still strong, and can be simplified as: 1. Properly tile and drain your land. 2. Kill all rodent and insect pests. 3. Ensure adequate beer supply.

The Volkswagon Egg

2007-05-01T01:28:00.000-04:00

So, last Saturday I spent 14 straight hours working for the Pontiac area Christmas in Action, which is sort of equivalent to habitat for humanity except fixing existing homes rather than building new ones. To be fair, I only planned on spending about half that time, and I didn't realize that a good chunk of that time would involve breaking large rocks into little rocks on three hours of sleep, but I'm not complaining.

Anyway, at one point in the day, I desperately needed some 2.5mm and 4mm screws to piece together a light fixture, and decided to check out the dumpster for possibilities. Glancing down the length of the 20 cubic yard dumpster, I spotted an imac computer, and realized that computers often have metric screws. So....I grabbed the computer and with the aid of a hammer wielding Gunar, looked for screws in it. Unfortunately, the iMac designers made it impossible to get the screws we needed, so I redneck-tapped the light fixture's metric hole by filing a taper and notches in a SAE 8-32 machine screw, and used a self-tapping sheet metal screw for the second hole. Although the iMac sat in the rain for an hour or so, I decided to take it home, mostly because I was simply too tired to think straight.

So...today, as a long time Windows/Intel computer owner (yes, I did own a Commodore C64 briefly), I now own my first Mac. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but it already inspired this fun conversation:

Housemate A: Hey, (sarcasm) I don't think you're supposed to put computers on their faces!

Bob: Its not a computer, ahh.....ahhh...its a volkswagon egg.

So, now that I've dubbed it the VW egg, I'm going to try running OSX or linux on it and using it for simple internet browsing. Other suggestions for it are welcome. As a side benefit it irritates my microsoft worshipping roommates:-)

Blank firing guns

2007-04-02T00:41:00.000-04:00

James has pointedly requested a technical description of the various methods that are used to make blank cartridges cycle through semi-automatic and automatic firearms (and non-gun replicas). So, Here's the short version:

A. The non-guns that are capable of firing blanks typically have a very light breachblock, blowback mechanism, sometimes with a restricted bore to increase operating pressure. Usually, these guns are diecast from a light weight alloy such as Zamak, so the mechanism has the same outward appearance as the real version, but is light (and therefore easy to operate with blanks as per Newtonian physics). The obvious question is how a mechanism that is intended to work as a locked breach pistol for hot 9x19mm loads can be adapted, even as a diecast non-gun to run light impulse blanks. The answer is that usually the mechanism is adapted remove locking features, and the best simple example I know is the way that Glock adapts the G19 design to .380 ACP by removing the locking shoulder on the barrel. Additionally, to run blanks, a barrel restriction is usually needed to increase operating pressure (see below).

B. There are some non-guns that simply ignite flammable gases like propane to simulate firing. This approach is common to fake belt-fed machine guns used for reenacting. In essence, this method is sort of like a very special projectile-less potato gun that ignites fresh charges of fuel and oxygen multiple times in quick succession making flames and noise without having to use the explosion to work a mechanism.

C. Finally, regular semi-auto and full auto small arms can be adapted to function with blanks by simply adding a carefully engineered restriction to the bore. Within reason, it doesn’t matter whether a weapon is originally blowback, recoil, or gas operated, a restricted bore will allow function with blanks. To simplify, adding a restriction to the bore causes the gas from the blank to push backwards on the cartridge, and to pressurize the gas mechanism (on gas operated weapons) enough to cause forces as strong as incurred in firing live ammo. How much restriction is needed depends on the particular weapon’s requirements, the blank cartridge (how much gas is produced, and how quickly), and environmental concerns (what altitude/temperature).

D. Often, military weapons are adapted for training purposes by a plate temporarily attached to the muzzle, known in the U.S. as a blank firing adaptor. Now, most military blank adaptors are conspicuous when on the weapon for safety reasons, and reenactors prefer original appearing weapons. So, in an act of sacrilege, it is common to drill and tap the muzzle of full and semi-auto weapons to take a removable setscrew (which is predrilled with a small hole to allow some gas to escape). After a rifle or machinegun is mutilated by installing a setscrew it may shoot ball ammunition somewhat accurately with the setscrew is removed, but I wouldn’t recommend modifying a rare rifle (say a gas trap M1) then talking about it around serious collectors or shooters.

E. Non-repeating guns like bolt action rifles and muzzle loaders can shoot blank ammo without modification, since they do not need to tap energy the act of firing. For historical context, at Lexington, several members of the milita thought that the Birtish were firing blanks, and until they saw hits from musket balls, could not tell the difference between blank and ball loads (read the HIGHLY reccomended "Paul Revere's Ride" by David Hackett Ficscher for examples) .

Conservapedia: watch out for sea monsters!

2007-03-23T10:14:00.000-04:00

"Whatever the Loch Ness monster may be, nearly all mainstream evolutionist scientists are still unconvinced of its existence."

So, I just stumbled onto the conservapedia, which is Andrew Schlafly's attempt to build a counterpoint to the liberal bias he sees in wikipedia. Apparently many of the original articles were drafted by a group of home schooled history buffs, and subsequently controlled by some particularly closed minded editors. Having just played around with it for a few minutes, I can point a number of interesting aspects:

A. The science articles are unspeakably poorly written and biased. The loch ness monster gets a more balanced treatment than evolution. Granted, there are a few brave souls trying to fix the science, but they're basically screwed.

B. I suppose not unexpected, but there's a whole bunch of comstock-style moral censorship at the conservapedia. Not content with merely editing and locking sexually themed articles to keep content strictly encyclopedic, sexuality related articles are banned, and there's debate over the obscenity of Dick Cheney's name. The current menstruation article is only 4 sentences, but does have an important pointer: "...God does not approve of menstruation.."

Dog Barking Causes Child to Emit Lethal Noises

2007-02-27T00:15:00.000-05:00

Every now and again, I get disillusioned with the whole legal profession thing, and I get depressed thinking about how completely irrational the U.S. court system is.

Then again, in comparison, I'm pretty sure there's not a U.S. common law tort for "your kid screamed loud enough that all my chickens died". So, hell, its not great, but our system seems to work most of the time.

Science Scouts, etc

2007-02-20T00:02:00.000-05:00

I just found a great link to the Science Scouts merit badges, courtesy of my old friend gauche in my comments. (I would point out that even when writing a 5 line comment, gauche demonstrates an ability to write better than 99.5% of the general population. His blogging is almost always worth reading, though perhaps it requires an acquired taste for lyrical, clever, and sometimes melancholic prose.)

Anyway, I encourage everyone to comment as to which science scout merit badges I'm qualified for, or that they personally are qualified for. Although they certainly wouldn't be BSA official, my boy scout troop definitely worked on some of the Science Scouts badges, espicially those which relate to fire, electricity, explosions, and open flames. So perhaps the Science Scouts have quite a bit in common with their camping and hiking brethren. Additionally, in one of those weird strange accidents of history, boy scouts from my hometown are historically linked to science.

2007-01-30T17:26:00.000-05:00

Wisconsin Deer hunting with civil war artillery techniques.

Everyday Chemistry

2007-01-27T03:17:00.000-05:00

No human diet can be free of naturally occurring chemicals that are rodent carcinogens.
— Bruce Ames, Ph.D. and Lois Swirsky Gold, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

So, Peter Krupa very succinctly illustrates the level of science knowledge in the U.S. with his current post on sea salt. Since I fight similar, and probably futile, battles all the time, it is always nice to see someone else play science skeptic.*

If anyone is interested, I've started an argument (scroll down, my post is pretty obvious) at the Badger & Blade forums over the ridiculous assertion that herbal nostrums "contain no chemicals" and "contain no toxins". If, by some interesting quirk of fate, I ever teach high school or college science, there would be a substantial chunk of time devoted to the everyday science of evaluating alternative medicine health claims. Quite simply, until I see some serious evidence to the contrary, I strongly believe that:

A. A drug/food/whatever is essentially the sum of its chemical parts.
B. The scientific method, as applied in well-designed studies, and good analytical chemistry can tell us what chemical compounds are useful, dangerous, etc.
C. The dose makes the poison. Otherwise, damn near all foods would be lethal from the small quantities of toxic chemicals. Example: virtually all of the assertions in the silly "toxins" article at healing-scents.com are void for the low dose actually delivered in cosmetic products.
D. Placebo effect is an amazingly powerful device. (I believe I have an interesting way to demonstrate placebo effect in a classroom, using nothing more than a computer projector and 5 minutes of class time. If any teacher in the audience wants try it, let me know.)

In other words, unless a given sea salt product can be examined with analytic chemistry tools to explain exactly what non-NaCl components are present and actually useful, it is a complete waste of money.

*Full disclosure: Mr. Krupa and I were once lab partners. Since he knows at least one story from that time period, involving a bunsen burner, that would seriously degrade my credibility on scientific matters, I'm probably forever obligated to help him in internet science arguments.

Padlocks

2007-01-23T02:49:00.001-05:00

So, I've promised that I'd write about padlocks, and I believe that my background on the topic is pretty substantial. I've collected padlocks for years since they're often the cheapest and most available source of interesting locks for my lock addiction. I've also used padlocks to secure all manner of things, including exposure to heavy weather and marine environments. I have tested a great number of padlocks using tools from conventional lock picking to salt water spray. I tried to keep this list short and useful, reviewing common locks from low to high security, but I know that I've left out quite a few locks. If anyone desires my opinion on some lock that I've omitted, please let me know!

Here's the basics: the bigger diameter shackle that you can use in a given application, generally the more force-resistant the lock. If you can conveniently use a shrouded shackle lock, it will be more forced entry (saw and pry resistant). Most locks aren't defeated by Surreptitious Entry such as picking, shimming, bypass tools etc, but I'll rate common locks for that feature as well.

I've tried to cover most of the common padlocks below, rating them on a scale from 1-5 in the areas of Forced Entry, Surreptitious Entry, and Weather Resistance. The higher the number, the better the rating.

Master Lock Combination Locks
Forced Entry: 1
Surreptitious Entry: 0
Weather Resistance: 1

Although it is possible to gradually manipulate the lock and determine the combination to open the lock, the Master Combination Lock only locks on one side of the hasp, and are completely vulnerable to shimming. A bent open bobby pin can shim a master padlock in a couple of seconds, leaving virtually no forensic evidence on the lock. There is no good reason to use one of these locks anywhere where security is even remotely a concern.

Master Warded Locks
Forced Entry: 1
Surreptitious Entry: 1
Weather Resistance: 4

There are a variety of warded lock styles, but the one that concerns us here is the Master Lock model, and its Asian knock-off equivalents. Although the warded padlocks don't yield quite as readily to shimming with improvised tools, they're insanely easy to pick with a "skeleton" key that mere bypasses all of the warding for all locks of the same model. A retarded chimp could make a skeleton key from a regular warded lock key in 5 minutes. Avoid these locks completely, at least with the combination locks you don't have to carry a key, but there's no good reason to every use a warded lock for anything

Master Simple Pin Tumbler
Forced Entry: 3
Surreptitious Entry: 2
Weather Resistance: 3

Once again, the standard lock here is the Master Lock, such as the Number #3. Although these locks are nearly an order of magnitude better than the locks discussed above, they're basically the first level of lock worth using for anything. I'd point out that they're still pretty easy to cut off with bolt nippers or a dremel, and they're one of the simpler pin tumbler locks to pick. The asian knock-offs of this type of lock are usually serviceable, though not nearly as durable, and prone to rusting.

American Padlock

Forced Entry: 3
Surreptitious Entry: 3
Weather Resistance: 2

Traditionally, American has a relationship with Master much like Chevy/Ford. The standard American model is vulnerable to bypass tools used in the keyway, and to simply drilling out the rivet that holds the cylinder in, but they're VERY hard to pick open. I personally have had bad luck with weather resistance on American locks, but their still a very decent lock for the money. They beat the snot out the average Master laminated lock, and Menards often has them onsale for less money. The knock off American style locks are pretty decent usually, and not a horrible buy.

ABUS Pin Tumbler Diskus locks

Forced Entry: 5
Surreptitious Entry: 4
Weather Resistance: 3

Most Do-It BEST stores stock the cheaper ABUS disk lock for $14 or less, and its a heck of deal for the money. An experienced person can pick them, but they are not a trivial lock, and they usually take a significant amount of time to Surreptitious ly bypass . It is very hard to remove one forcefully without an acetylene torch, and compared to the non-ABUS knock offs, they're even hard to torch apart. The Master lock knock-off is quite inferior in all regards.

Rotating Disk Abloy-Types (ABLOY, ABUS Granit, etc)

Forced Entry: 4
Surreptitious Entry: 5
Weather Resistance: 5

These are probably the best padlocks around: the keys aren't easily duplicable, it takes very special tools AND experience to pick them, and the rotating disk mechanism is as weatherproof as mechanically possible. The problem is that the Abloy and Abus products aren't very cheap, running into the $100 range, though ~$20 from ebay. I have seen some knock-off models that are much cheaper, including a set of three, keyed differently with a master key that I got off eBay for $20. Virtually any rotating disk lock is superior to all pin-tumbler padlocks.

Webley Air Pistol Feeding and Care

2007-01-19T00:10:00.000-05:00

So, I started to write a long comment over at hellinahandbasket about air pistol pellets, then realized that I haven't posted here for a while, and I didn't want to hijack James's thread.

I've been a huge fan of air guns in general since before Kindergarten (the first gun I remember firing was a Benjamin 317 air rifle at age 4). One of the first, and best air guns that I personally bought was a Webley Tempest Airpistol, very similar to the one that James Rummel is discussing here. I bought my Tempest in about 6th grade for the princely sum of $150, and I've put around 50,000 pellets through it since then. I'm a bit biased, but I do think that it is one of the best values in firearms training available. Although the Webley design vibrates a bit much for serious 10m air pistol competition accuracy, it is blessed with higher velocity, long barrel length, AND durability which makes it very practical to shoot at longer distances, and for heavy practice. With the rear sight nearly at its maximum elevation, mine will consistently hit at shoe box at 40 yards (8 or 9 pellets out of 10 if I do my part).

The first place to look for any airgun info is the pyramid air blog, which is readable, concise, and very honest. Although it is written in connection with the pyramid air store, the blog critically reviews the very products sold in the store. I can't say enough good things about the pyramid air blog or store. For a quick example, here's one of their blog posts on the webley pistols.

What to shoot into:

I don't see anything wrong with shooting a cardboard box stuffed full of paper, other than having to change the paper ever now and again, but metal and putty traps are nice and simple. Anyone with some metal working skills and equipment can slap together their own metal trap in a hour or less, so that's also a possibility for the tinkering inclined.

Besides eliminating the clanking noises of a metal trap, the main advantage to a putty trap is the containment of lead dust. Each time a pellet hits the rear surface of a metal trap, it throws off some lead dust, which, if you shoot heavily enough in an enclosed area it can increase lead exposure. I've never built a homemade putty trap, but it sounds simple enough.

When outside, air guns should be treated similarly to a shotgun loaded with trap loads since they both have very similar maximum ranges (on the order of 200 yards, I used the free, and fun to use AL_Bal program to compute an approximate Webley max range). Now, the main reason I bring this up is for the edification of anyone tempted to shoot in the air, say at a bird in a tree with an airgun. If (excluding noise and legal reasons) you wouldn't feel comfortable using a shotgun loaded with cheap trap loads in the same environment, you might wish to reconsider using an airgun. Not very many people are injured by airgun and shotgun pellets falling from the sky at 200 yards, but you can certainly irritate your neighbors if you miss the starling you shot at.

What to Feed it:

I'd suggest that buying some decent pellets, lead bbs are so soft that they lead the barrel fairly quickly, and, well, every pass of the cleaning patch takes a little life out of the barrel, so I'd rather shoot pellets and clean less often.

Never, ever shoot steel bb's or darts through a rifled barrel. It will damage the rifiling very quickly, even not necessarily noticeably to the naked eye. Shooting Steel BB's through a good rifled barrel is the shooting equivalent to defecating in bathroom sinks.

I shoot RWS light weight match pellets (blue tin, ~$8/500) when I really want to shoot accurately with my webley (in part I keep them around to be able to tell when accuracy degrades from leading and I should clean.

Otherwise I shoot whatever's cheap at wal-mart OTHER than the rebranded "Beeman" Chinese pellets, which are just too crappy to bother with. Usually the bulk pack cheap crossman's are ~$3.75/500 and they're not bad. The Daisy offering isn't bad either, but usually their a bit more money locally to me, and somewhat lower in qualirty. A couple times a year Meijers runs a sale on air gun accessories for 25% off, and I usually buy 20 bucks worth, which is about 3 or 4 thousand cheap pellets or perhaps 2500 of the excellent Crossman "Premier" pellets.

The crappy pointed bulk pack pellets are a little disappointed to shoot bullseye with, but they'll still hit cans out to 50 feet or more.

I've played around a little with the plastic skirted Prometheus pellets, and while they're definitely accurate and flat shooting, I can't justify the price for general shooting.

If you order enough pellets to get the "buy 3 tins get one free" deal from Pyramid Airguns, they're definitely the cheapest online source for pellets.

Care:

A. Lube:

I've used air guns specific lubes before, and they work ok. Most of my experience has been with the Beeman products, but I can't find their chamber and spring oils on their website anymore. There are plenty of decent primers on airgun lubrication on the internet, so I'm not going to rehash them here. To be honest, I typically use Mobil One automotive oil for chamber oil, since it is as flash resistance as most chamber lube, cheaper, and already in my garage. Since it is easy to drip oil directly into the compression chamber on a Tempest, special needles and techniques aren't particularly necessary, and I typically just drip a drop or two or so through it every 2000 or 3000 pellets. I can't say that I really follow a strict schedule. Besides the chamber, I usually just drip some oil into the spring slot and in the various pivot points and call it good as far as lubrication. On my particular Tempest, the barrel's bluing has worn off (actually I reblued it and it wore off again) so I have to wipe it with oil often in hot weather to prevent rust (usually about every 500 pellets), and I usually tend to oil the linkages then as well. The Tempest is a pretty durable design, and pretty forgiving.

B. Bore:

A great number of firearms are worn out before their time by excessive and ham-fisted cleaning, and air guns are even more vulnerable since the rifling is much finer and usually softer. So, I personally don't clean my Tempest's bore until accuracy degrades from leading. It isn't particularly scientific, but if I suspect accuracy has dropped while shooting the usual crap pellets, I shoot a 50 yard rifle target at 10 meters with RWS pellets, and if the score is particularly bad, I clean the bore. I do this at approximately every 1,500 pellets, though if I shoot particularly soft pellets I may have to clean at 500 shots, and sometimes I get perhaps 3,000 pellets or more between bore cleaning when shooting high quality pellets.

Never clean any gun from the muzzle that you can clean from the breech.

My cleaning technique is pretty similar to this (pdf), but I typically use weedwacker string for the pull through (you can melt a ball on the end of the string to hold a patch). I occasionally use felt cleaning pellets, and they do save some time for light cleaning. I do have a .177" sized cleaning rod, but I've migrated towards using pull-throughs mainly for the silly reason that I feel the rod touch the rifling lands, and I don't feel the same contact with the pull through. It is a bit sloppy, but on the Tempest, I typically use any solvent I have at hand to wet the first few patches, from Hoppe's #9 to Ethyl Ether or Brake Cleaner. After the cleaning, I do run a lightly oiled patch or two through the bore, typically with the same Mobil One oil used for the chamber.

Water Quackery

2007-01-11T11:20:00.000-05:00

*Edited to fix Manufacturer/model of ionizer, without the ionizer in hand when I wrote the original post, I confused the KYK Harmony with the Jupiter Melody.

So, a couple of days ago, I had several minutes to play with a Jupiter Melody Water Ionizer At the time, all I really knew was that the toaster sized machine was supposed to filter and change the ph level of tap water. At least at that point I assumed that there was the vague possiblity that the machine worked, perhaps by adding a acidic or basic compounds to the water. Anyway, here's how I quickly tested the machine with household items:

A. Set the machine to ph3, poured a glass of water, stuck my finger in the water, felt nothing, added backing soda to the glass of water without a reaction, then finally poured a second glass of water to drink. Absolutely no acidic taste whatsoever.

B. Set the machine to ph13, poured a glass of water, stuck my finger in the water, felt nothing, added vinegar to the glass of water without a reaction, then finally poured a second glass of water to drink. Absolutely no alkaline taste whatsoever.

After that impromptu 5 minute experiment, I was convinced that the machine was quackery, and that the manufacturers were more than likely risking regulatory action since the ph setting buttons on the machine had absolutely nothing to do with the water produced.

So, according to Google, the machine costs nearly $1100, and is complete and utter quackery. The amusing part is that quack pseudoscience devices involving water are experiencing increased popularity at the moment. There's everything from people that believe cancer should be treated with alkaline water, to the prill bead nuts that think that love powered pebbles can purify all the water on earth. It never ceases to amaze me how much money can be made with fake science and useless medical devices.

*Fun Google news item found in preparation of this post: Apparently even crappy municipal water gets traded for sexual favors in Arkansas.

A Marriage and Flaming Woodchuck Bits

2007-01-03T12:20:00.000-05:00

So, I'm freshly returned from the Briggs-Nunn wedding in beer and cheese filled Wisconsin. Other than the somewhat depressing 9 hour drive home, it was an absolutely great experience, with large amounts of general merriment. I may write more about the wedding later, but in the meantime, I'd like to introduce my readers to The Rodenator (hat tip to Lee Nunn).

I highly recommend watching the Rodenator videos available on Google Video. Not only do they feature flying chunks of dirt (and or rodent bits), the company owner's description of the feeling of revenge the rodenator provides is straight out of Caddyshack.

Gun Control, Concealed Carry, and the White Elephant

2006-12-08T20:25:00.000-05:00

So, I've always felt that its admirable to be able to very skeptically review one's own position on a topic and subject it to the same or higher level of scrutiny that you put your opponents' positions.

When I attempt to do this with regards to gun control, I try to be equally critical of authors on both sides that have integrity problems, be it Mr. Bellesiles or Mr. Lott. Having said that, with regards to concealed carry laws, I believe that it is impossible to correlate an increase in crime to liberal CCW laws, and there is, at an absolute minimum, a possibility of correlating a decrease in crime.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, as long as it doesn't significantly increase crime, I'd much rather let people carry guns than not. There is, however, a big white elephant in the corner that no one talks about: illegal carry by law abiding citizens. There are a number of studies that show that people tend to speed when the speed limit is unreasonably low, and likewise, in states with restrictive CCW laws, otherwise law abiding, citizens will illegally carry weapons when in dangerous areas.

So, the problem is that it is hard to figure out to statistically account for the number of people illegally carrying guns that prevent crimes, but never report them. Do liberal CCW laws tend to let people that would otherwise illegally carry act to help other people when they would have held back in fear of prosecution? I've been searching the interweb for a while, and can't come to a strong conclusion.

Manipulation of the Media, Polish Weapons, and the Post Office

2006-12-07T12:35:00.000-05:00

So, I've sort of acquired a reputation as a cynical and skeptical jackass for relentlessly demanding sources and good statistically valid evidence. When I was home for thanksgiving, I realized a bit of a background how I got to that point might be interesting.

When I was very young, my parents subscribed to the local papers, both the weekly one that covered my hometown news (Montpelier), and the area-wide daily based in Bryan, OH. There's been a long running local political battle over what share of the state library funding should be distributed to Montpelier which is independent of the county-wide library system based in Bryan.

Now, from reading the daily paper, both my parents and I were pretty much convinced that the Montpelier Library was unreasonable, and probably should get less money. At the time, I was devouring the excellent military history section at the Bryan Library, and had pretty much exhausted the Montpelier library.

As it turned out in fine small town journalistic tradition, the publisher of the daily newspaper, who also controlled the printing of the weekly newspaper was a board member of the Bryan Library, and was printing a pretty biased version of the Library funding issue. I've never really trusted the media since discovering the truth on this issue.

Now, what the heck does this have to do with Polish weapons? Well, one of the military history books that I had checked out from the Bryan Library was a decent overview of the various foreign manufactured weapons that the Wehrmacht used during the Second World War. Following a change in directors at the Bryan library, this book, along with ~75% of the military history books were surplussed and removed from circulation. At the time, the newspaper published articles champaign the thinning of the History section as a great move on part of the new director, and the fact that most of the space freed up was used for trashy harlequin romances was completely whitewashed.

I can't figure out exactly what the title of the book in question is, but I'd love to look at a copy of it again. It had brief descriptions of each captured weapon the Germans used, its German nomenclature, and what they used it for. At the time, I was mostly fascinated by the weapons involved, and thought the German naming scheme that used a letter to indicate national origin was pretty cool. (b for British, p for polish, etc).

Anyway, one of the reasons that the book was interesting is that it showed what an amazing job the Poles had done in the 1930's to modernize their weapons and prepare for an inevitable war with the Germans. The Poles had developed one of the world's best anti-tank rifles, a close copy of the Kar98, a modern pistol, and a much improved version of the U.S. Browning Automatic Rifle. Much as the Finns adapted 7.62x54R anticipating the use of Russian supplies, the Poles adopted 7.92x57mm and 9x19mm weapons anticipating the use of German weapons. The Polish light weapons were arguably superior to their German counterparts in all respects, and eagerly adopted by the Germans.

Most overviews of the Second World War don't give the Poles enough credit (which ties in with my distrust of unsubstantiated media reporting), and gloss over the excellent defensive actions at Modlin and Warsaw. Probably the most overlooked small unit action is the battle for the Danzig post office, where ~50 civilian employees fought off the German SS, supported by armor for fourteen hours. After fighting to a standstill, the Germans eventually flooded the post office basement with gasoline and burned a substantial number of the remaining defenders alive, then executed those who surrendered, which is a pretty good reason to never laugh at polish jokes. I doubt that the fine employees of my local USPS post office could fight off the SS for a day with a handful of light weapons.

Quack medicine, Poisoned Beer, radation posioning, and other fun topics

2006-11-30T16:46:00.000-05:00

So, I've been following the highly suspicious death of Alexander Litvinenko for the last couple of weeks. There are plenty of decent articles speculating on the degree of Russian involvement so I'm not going to rehash that. However, I do think there's some interesting tangents to the story that are relatively unexplored:

One of the reasons that Russian involvement is fascinating is the likelihood that they would have used some sort of Spy vs. Spy device to transfer the poison. Certainly, the ricin pellet umbrella that the Russians (back when they were Soviets) used to poison Georgi Markov seems straight out of fiction. To be fair, the KGB just built the umbrella and conveniently let the Bulgarian Secret Police borrow it.

There's probably a lot of ways to use polonium as an assassination weapon, but the cheapest (in terms of isotope requirements) would be an inhalation device. I have no idea if Litvinenko had asthma, but an inhaler spiked with polonium would be simple and fast. There are probably other everyday items that could be spiked as well. Besides the Soviets, the major player in poison assassination weapons used to be the South Africans, who came up with all sorts of devices, and definitely used some of them, such as poisoned beer, to eliminate apartheid era domestic problems. Just a glance at the South African weapon list shows how many possible ways to use poison weapons exist, and what an horribly difficult job the British police have. (I'm slightly disturbed that most of the South African devices involved beer or chocolate, two of my major food groups.)

Now, on a lighter note, polonium has an interesting history, as it is part of the Uranium-Radium decay, and was originally called Radium F. Back in the dawn of nuclear science, Radium (usually bottled willy-nilly with decay products like polonium) was considered an the end all and be all of patent medicine ingredients, namely because it wasn't regulated via the 1906/1914 Narcotics laws, and it glowed in the dark. It doesn't take much of an imagination to see the potential marketing advantages of a glow in the dark potion, especially compared to the more painful competition from the prostate warmer and Dr. Kellogg's 15 gallons enema machine. With the exception of a few decent ideas involving diet (Corn Flakes) and exercise, Dr. Kellogg singlehandly came up with all sorts of medically-ideas, from heavy use of radium to an incredible obsession with preventing masturbation via surgical methods.

Coast Guard Catches DIY submarine...

2006-11-20T12:58:00.000-05:00

So Reuters has a news item about a group of Columbian that were busted using their homemade submarine to smuggle drugs. Which leads to the obvious questions:

A. Where can I get plans for a homemade submarine?

B. What the hell is the U.S. Coast Guard doing arresting people off the coast of Costa Rica and taking them to the continental U.S. for trial? No doubt, I was absent when that particular part of U.S. criminal law was explained. I suppose if there were documents in the sub that discussed the time and place of the cocaine delivery it might make some legal sense. Otherwise, even with the UN conventions about drug smuggling (1988 convention, I think), the initial boarding seems a bit fishy. Probably, the submarine was in Costa Rica's own waters, and they've cut a deal with the coast guard allowing searches. If it was in international waters, under a flag (Iran for example) that doesn't automatically allow USCG searches, it makes a much more interesting question.

C. Does the USCG only search unarmed, dinky little boats? I doubt the USCG runs around searching Cuban Naval vessels. Then again, the USCG did some boldly illegal stuff in the early days of world war two, including capturing a bunch of Norwegians, in Greenland, and charging them as illegal immigrants (all at least 6 months before Pearl Harbor!).

On second thought, since the Colombians weren't uniformed combatants, and drug smuggling is rather over-eagerly linked to terror, they're really lucky that they didn't wind up at Guantanamo.

(Does anyone have an url for the DEA's "Priceless" Mastercard parody ad that linked marijuana to terrorism? It was on during the 2002 superbowl)

So...apparently you can transplant arms into non-arm places

2006-10-23T23:13:00.000-04:00

So, I was poking around in the medical blogosphere yesterday and ran into a fascinating article over at Unbounded Medicine on Deferred Transitory Heterotopic Implant surgery. What exactly would that be? Well, apparently, the short version is that some poor guy had his arm amputated, then reattached surgically, then a couple of days later the surgeons had to operate to treat an infection on the surgical site. Apparently, since the arm had sat in a ditch for a while before reattachment, they needed to remove it completely, and graft it onto the man's groin for a couple weeks. Oddly (and somewhat hillariously), apparently when the man woke up from aneseia, the surgeons only told him that they had to attach the arm somewhere else on his body, and "After a couple of hours he realized that the arm was on his leg." (There's very little blood in the pictures, but they probably aren't for the squeamish.) First off, if I ever need a Deferred Transitory Heterotopic Implant, I'd just assume not play "where on my body did the surgeons hide it" while recovering from stupifying drugs.

I suppose to be fair, the possibilities for using this technique to add an extra arm shouldn't be underrated. Given the electronic control advances for parapelegics, it should be possible to control an extra arm, which has all sorts of possibilties for halloween, rewinding recoil starters, and last but not least, getting the damn rebound spring back into Astra revolvers.

Liability and ugly guns.

2006-10-17T15:13:00.000-04:00

Some of my older friends might remember that I was once involved in a heated argument in Tort Law over the technical features of the Winchester Black Talon bullet. For those that don't remember, the refresher version is that a fellow law student who happens to be a former Marine (and current reserve officer) argued that the "prongs" on a Black Talon bullet could defeat soft body armor by "cutting like a saw".(1) In the heated argument, my opponent won by virtue of a technically weak audience and his military trump card, and the class moved on to discuss whether using such a vicious projectile would incur greater civil liability. Remember, at this point, the herd of baby-lawyers in the room honestly think that the Black Talon both had greater wounding ability AND could pierce body armor. The consensus, and the correct legal argument, is that it would not matter in a legitimate shooting.

Since that uncomfortable day in class, I've seen all sorts of arguments about the potential civil liability caused by using or not using various bullets, firearms and accessories. I'm not completely sure where the myth comes from, but at least as far as I know, the critical criminal or civil liability issue in a shooting, be it police or civilian is whether the shot was justified in the first place. I do know of a single civil court case involving 00 Buckshot over penetrating a felon and striking a civilian, and I know of piles of cases that involve bullets that completely miss their intended targets. Otherwise, at least as far as I can tell, the critical issue is whether the shooting was justified or not.

So why am I writing about it? Mostly in response to a current comment thread at hellinahandbasket, and in part due to the very current msnbc article about a hiker that shot an unarmed man with a 10mm pistol. Now, this particular tragedy is interesting in part because the prosecution did try to cast the 10mm pistol as a particularly powerful and evil weapon. (2) At least to my reading of the facts, and the juror interviews, the case was still decided on whether the shooting was necessary, and even if Mr. Fish had carried a .22LR Bearcat the jury would have reached the same verdict. I'm open to discussion on the topic, especially with references to actual cases where the firearm or ammunition choice changed criminal or civil liability, but for now, my position is that it doesn't really matter much what the gun is, only what you do with it.

1. Winchester pulled the black talon from the market, and has since developed an improved version, Ranger T, which is arguably very slightly more incapacitating than the talon-less competition. Although Winchester doesn't distribute the Ranger T ammunition for retail, due to the miracles of the internet it is readily available online, often for prices somewhat lower than competing designs.

2. The 10mm has somewhat hotter ballistics, in some loadings, than more common pistol calibers. It still is balistically puny compared to virtually any rifle or shotgun.

A couple of new updates to links, etc.

2006-10-17T12:52:00.000-04:00

So, new updated links all around, hopefully in the anonymous format of the blog author's choice. In the newly returned bloggers, Adam is churning out excellent quality writing over at semiotheque. As if it wasn't already unfair that the man is a brilliant writer, he's in London for a semester of law school, which will provide endless material. With the return of Krupa, James, Dave, and Adam, my blog feed list is back up to normal in terms of quantity and quality. If I missed a link, or whatever, let me know

Signs of the end times: breakfast sausage and pancake on a stick

2006-10-03T14:23:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or is this the most disturbing prepackaged food ever?

Claustrophobia Part One

2006-10-03T14:10:00.000-04:00

So, last weekend while I was eating lunch with my parents, I happened to glance out the window and see an early 1990's ford minivan slowing to a stop in the ditch with steam pouring out from under the hood. As it turned out, the van had suffered a split heater hose, and the extremely elderly couple driving were on their way home from the hospital. To make a long story short, despite amusing miscommunications caused by hearing loss, my Dad and I repaired the van, sending the couple home with instructions to call us via cell phone if they encountered more problems in the remainder of their 30 mile drive.

The interesting part is that the woman involved bore a striking resemblance to a former neighbor, Mrs. Irene Simpson, who I hadn't thought about in years. Mrs. Simpson lived nearby when I was young, and had virtually no family in the area. In her early 90's, she was quite frail, and lived in a small house completely filled with cats and old person spoor, such as stacks of newspapers and various knick-knacks. One winter, one of her hot water pipes froze, and somehow or other, my Dad and I were called in to fix the problem. Since her house was small, the entire house was heated by a single furnace that sat in her laundry room blasting hot air through the house without the more common ducts and vents. Being that Mrs. Simpson was quite old and frail, she preferred the entire house to be heated into the 80 degree range, so the area immediately surrounding the furnace certainly pushed 95 degrees or more.

Unfortunately, the trapdoor to her crawlspace was located immediately next to the furnace, in front of the hot air vent. As far as crawlspaces go, it was fairly roomy, abet completely filled with fog, with a muddy dirt floor due to the broken pipe. Obviously, the temperature in the crawlspace was below freezing, and the temperature transition was less than pleasant. Anyway, as it turned out, the broken plumbing fixture couldn't be completely shut off, and as I was twelve years old, making me both physically smaller and too young to drive, I got to spend 45 minutes holding my thumb over the offending crack while my father tracked down a replacement part. Unfortunately, the pipe was located such that my head was directly underneath the trapdoor opening, bathed in 90 degree air, while the rest of my body was in 25 degree mud. Approximately, 20 minutes into the experience, Mrs. Simpson shuffled her walker over to the trap door and leaned down. Smiling, she said, "hee hee, you're just like the little dutch boy aren't you, hee hee." She then shuffled back to whatever she was doing, leaving me to my own little claustrophobic, fog-filled, thermally-schizophrenic hell.

With the replacement part in hand, it was an easy repair, and I didn't really suffer any ill effects from the experience. Hilariously, Mrs. Simpson called my Dad eight hours later at 3AM, panicked that she couldn't find "Buddy", and was concerned that the errant cat had somehow slipped into the crawlspace. So, my dad, wearing Carhartt overalls over his PJ's had to go back over at 3:30 AM with a flashlight to check for the cat. The cat turned out to be sleeping the in the laundry piles, but my dad did have to crawl around in the crawlspace mud first.

Mrs. Simpson passed away years ago, I have no idea what happened to Buddy the cat, and the entire situation is mostly just funny in retrospect. Thinking about the situation, I definitely want to post about claustrophobia in general, and possibly the evolutionary development of phobias in general. In light of the lengthy nature of this post, I'm saving all of that for part two.

Hmm, DDT anyone?

2006-09-23T01:09:00.000-04:00

So, Krupa just churned out another post in his "Cuba sucks" series, this time on Dengue Fever. All considerations of what's completely FUBAR'd about Cuba aside, I've been trying to figure out if DDT is really necessary as part of insect control in the developing world. Now, usually I'm a big fan of modern chemistry, be it better drugs, or better lubricants, but I have a hard time wading through the propaganda to figure out whether the DDT replacements are that much more expensive, or how many birds DDT really kills off.

Some preliminary thoughts on the topic:

A. I really hate it when people use the term "organophosphate" for the common DDT replacements as if it was a particularly evil group of compounds just from the name. I mean, DDT is an organochlorate , namely Chlorodiphenylnitrichloroethane which is just as scary sounding. Oh, and I'm really tired of hearing how organophosphates are close kin to nerve gas, because DDT is ALSO a nerve posion. There's apparently some evidence that organochlorates do all sorts of nasty things to small creatures, and probably people as well. Unfortunately, a good number of articles about human organochlorate poisoning are in Spanish, since they're mainly used in Latin America and I can't read a bit of Spanish.

B. I'm willing to sacrifice a few birds for public health, however, I'm more than a bit curious as to how quickly insects become resistant to pesticides. That is, if DDT only buys us 40 years before resistant super mosquitos drive us to organophosphates, I'm not as willing to accept using it.

C. Unfortunately, I didn't pay nearly enough attention in chemistry, mostly because I was busy snickering with Mr. Krupa about the football players accross from us, and I'm have a really hard time figuring out whether organophosphates should be much more expensive to synthesize than DDT.

So, does anyone have simple answers to the DDT question?

M1 Garand KB: be careful when reloading.

2006-09-18T15:32:00.000-04:00

Here's what was a nice M1 rifle after firing a single round reloaded with a fast burning pistol powder. The shooter walked away unharmed, though the rifle turned into little bits of wood and metal. I believe the load involved was a 150 Grain FMJ, with about 45 grains of a flake style pistol powder, I can probably find out exactly which powder if anyone cares, but in all honesty, 40 grains of ANY pistol powder should produce the same results.

I've posted the rest of the photoset here:

Geocaching, Sextants, and etc.

2006-09-13T20:17:00.000-04:00

So, I've played around with geocaching recently, which does have some of what I like about Urban Exploring, namely the whole sneaking around somewhere commonplace to do something relatively interesting and secret. This afternoon while in the process of waiting for @#$% Microsoft Access @#$% laboriously compact a large database, I was poking around on the internet considering the purchase of a GPS when I realized that I no longer own a sextant, and my celestial navigation skills are certainly getting rusty. Besides bidding on a sextant, I fired up google to see if someone had posted the relevant tables online.

When I found them, I realized that usually in situations where one would be navigating by the stars it is a bit hard to find a Wi-Fi hotspot. But then again, there's always that one time where you have internet, or perhaps text messaging from your sinking boat, but have no idea where the heck you're at.

As a side note, if I ever write a list of skills that all humans should have, ala Heinlein, celestial navigation will certainly make the list.

Gun Control statistics and other lies.

2006-09-06T15:14:00.001-04:00

Since Krupa's return to blogging, his output has been prodigious, and I've fallen slightly behind in reading his work. Rather than write a lengthy, and somewhat tangential comment what is now an old post, I've elected to post about the gun control issues here.

Let me preface this by pointing out that I have been involved in shooting since before I could read. Not only have I long owned a large number of firearms, I've been around their construction and repair both professionally and personally. However, some thoughts for discussion about the gun control issues that Peter raised:

A. I value honest science highly, and both sides in the gun control debate are involved in horribly misleading uses of statistics. Proponents of gun control use a variety of silly statistics, such as attempting to credit the 1990's crime decrease to the Brady Bill/AWB, and the asinine "43 times more likely" argument. To be equally condemnatory, I would give the examples of the gun lobby's use of the lying jackass Lott to insist that the 1990's crime decrease (pdf)relates to CCW laws and firearms ownership. Personally, I think the strongest thing one can argue is that the statistics do not correlate gun ownership with crime in a manner that supports any massive change from existing U.S. policy on the Federal level. Granted, given the lack of NFA weapons used in crime, I think a good argument can be made for removing the 1986 Machine Gun ban, and I can think of a number of state level changes I'd support, but I certainly would not feel comfortable arguing from crime statistics to support Federal significant level changes.

B. Gun control advocates seem vastly ignorant of the technical issues involved, especially the easy in which illicit guns can be manufactured and are willing to make completely outrageous technical arguments. This doesn't even touch on the areas in which deliberate fabrications are used, such as running television news pieces showing licensed NFA regulated machineguns to illustrate reports on the 1994 AWB.

C. A major pet peeve is the completely fabricated 1935 Hitler quote bumper sticker. The most relevant Nazi gun control legislation removed restrictions from the prior Weimar republic law and made it much more permissive of firearms ownership. To suggest that Nazi atrocities were enabled by gun control seems like a horribly misleading correlation. There's nothing more irritating than seeing the "Guns don't kill people.." sticker, which denies the correlation between guns and crime on the same car as the Hitler quote sticker which implies a correlation between restrictive gun control and Nazi atrocities.

Towards the end of the 3rd Reich, the Nazi's were arming pretty much everyone in Germany as part of the Volkstrum, which can be thought of as the Michigan Militia with better weapons and training. Likewise, Iraq has incredibly high rates of civilian firearms ownership during the entire Baathist era. In other words, it isn't necessarily safe to argue that civilian light weapons ownership inevitably prevents totalitarian atrocities. Only firearms (and more likely, heavy weapons) owned by people that have already decided to resist in mass deter atrocities.

Website of the week #2: My Science Project

2006-08-27T19:45:00.000-04:00

So, everyone needs to take a look at My Science Project, which features clever experiments on things as diverse as the Cheney quail hunt shooting and the economics of condom sales. Anyone interested in drinking should read the jello shots articles and anyone interested in shooting should read the ballistics gelatin articles.

So is .315" Indian equivalent to .303 British or 8x57mm?

2006-08-26T12:45:00.000-04:00

So, Jinx Magazine has an article about Phoolan Devi that mentions her weapon as a .315" Mauser. Now, being curious about such things, I sort of assumed that .315" must be the Indian designation for 8x57mm. A couple of minutes on google churned up some fascinating links with information on civilian firearms in India, and interestingly, showed what appeared to be a new manufacture, sporterized No.1 SMLE in the .315" caliber. Now at first glance, the picture seems to show a regular looking SMLE magazine for .303 tapered cartidges as opposed the squared profile type on .308 (7.62x51mm) SMLE's. But then, reading the text, it clearly indicates that the magazine capacity is only 5 rounds.

Since I happen to have a .303 No.4 rifle magazine to play with, I checked and it appears that it would be possible to feed 5 rounds of 8x57mm from one. I've dug up a couple of references to conversions to 8x57mm, so it certainly is possible that the Indan .315" SMLE is actually chambered in 8x57mm.

Additionally, I know that it is possible to feed tapered rounds in a modified 98 Mauser action, like the Siamese 8x52Rmm which have been rechambered in everything from 45-70 to 7.62x54Rmm so it isn't beyond reason that there would be .303 chambered mausers floating around in India.

So...does anyone have any ideas?

Embryonic Stem Cells

2006-08-24T11:33:00.000-04:00

Krupa has a post that touches on Stem Cell Funding that's drawing some comment attention from bright Hillsdale bloggers like Will. In this case, I think Will's guilty of some pretty heavy hyperbole about Embryonic Stem Cells (ESC), namely he's arguing that they haven't produced anything of value, and that the lack of private sector development indicates that ESC has no scientific value. To quote the philosopher Jagger, perhaps Will is blinded by love?

A. Science Successes:

Since ESC extraction has only been around since 1998, the technology is admittedly in its infancy. In contrast, research on adult hematopoietic stem cells has had a 40+ year head start. However, there have been a number of successful uses of ESC, from helping repair heart attacks in animal trials to growing human prostate tissue in mice. The most recent example that I know of is a recent piece in The Annals of Neurology about the successful use of ESC methods to restore muscle function in paralyzed rats .

At least politically, I suspect that the most critical success for ESC technology to date is the newly developed ability to extract stem cells without harming an embryo. Although the initial experiments discarded the embryos, it would appear that if enough women are willing to back their political convictions by donating their uteri, new ESC cell lines can be developed without any taint of discarded embryos.

B. Federal Research Funding:

Besides Will, I've heard a couple people argue that the lack of obvious private sector research funding for ESC somehow indicates a low scientific value for ESC technology. First, just to clear any misinterpretations that people might have, any current successes in adult stem cells have been backed by federal funding reaching back to the early 1960's. From a practical point of view, basic science research has long been heavily supported by federal funding, and at the very minimum it will slow research in ESC to require all funding to be raised from private sources.

Krupa returns.

2006-08-21T12:36:00.000-04:00

So, Peter Krupa has once again returned to blogging, and I'm updating my links to reflect that. If you want your link changed to something different, or added, etc, drop me a line at my gmail account.

Website of the week: Eyewitness History

2006-08-18T21:25:00.000-04:00

So, I accidentally discovered Eyewitness History the other day, and want to reccomend it. It is sort of like a quick, information dense version of a good History or Discovery channel program. For a couple of interesting articles to get started, I'd reccomend "Immigrating to America" and "Thoughts of a President".

2006-08-14T12:43:00.000-04:00

2006-08-02T12:27:00.000-04:00

Malawi politician victim of vampire rumors.

You know, I just spent 20 minutes trying to dream up a better introduction to the article than just hyperlinking the title, but I'm simply not eloquent enough. In all honesty, I think that Rousseau and Hume would have just given up on the whole Enlightenment and committed suicide if they had know that 200 years later, in a thriving multi-party democracy, politicians would be stoned for colluding with vampires. Then again, I suppose that those of us dwelling in North America really shouldn't laugh at the idea of politicians colluding with vampires when we have vampires threatening to protest and possibly sue White Castle for garlic based discrimination.

Since the white castle vampire lives in Ohio, I suppose I should buy my parents some silver bullets for Christmas?

2006-07-20T14:40:00.001-04:00

So...someone in Minnesota has a 14 foot inflatable sheep. That sort of speaks for itsself, though I supect that the completely clueless owner hasn't taken into account the prank possibilties inherent in a giant inflatable animal, espicially if there are any 30 foot fiberglass statutes in the area to intimately combine with the sheep.

Sort of like the animated christmas reindeer...

Lawyer Day Camp and flat tires

2006-07-18T11:54:00.000-04:00

So, last week I attended lawyer day camp, actually a weeklong seminar class mostly intended for people from developing countries. It literally did resemble day camp, with name tags, snack time, activitity time, and social interactions that were similar to a co-ed summer day camp for high schoolers. It was a lot of fun, a learned some stuff, met interesting people and made a cool macaroni picture in craft time. (Just kidding on the macaroni picture.)

Anyway, driving home in the GMC one night, I stopped to offer assistance to a broken down car, which is something I probably do once or twice a week. I pulled up behind the car, hopped out, and asked the driver if she needed anything, offering my tools/cell phone/knowledge. About halfway through my speil, I noticed that the passenger front tire was flat and asked if I could help change it. When I stopped talking, I noticed that the driver was staring at me in complete confusion and shock eventually mumbling that roadside assistance was already coming to change her tire.

It was at that point that I realized that I was still in full business attire with a dark grey suit, conservative red tie and white shirt. With my nametag from day camp hanging out of my shirt.

My Grandmother's Blacklist: Go Back Outside With A Gun And Kill It

2006-07-09T12:08:00.000-04:00

Since people seemed to like the Grow-A-Frog post, here's another weird Bob story from the same time period:

So, when I was very young, I spent quite a bit of time living with my paternal grandparents when my mother was ill. Somewhere, I have a photograph from one of these extended visits where I'm sitting on my Grandfather's lap running a 9" Logan Lathe. Once I got older and started school, my parents decided to move into the country, which mostly by coincidences in the 1986 real estate market happened to only be about 400 yards down the road from my Grandmother. The result of this is that I got to spend a lot of my formative years spending time at my Grandparents, especially Saturday mornings in the machine shop. (I've had a hard time as an adult figuring out how to explain on resumes that I'm a competent machinist and toolmaker, but that I simply grew up around it and never was part of a formal apprenticeship/journeyman program.) Anyway, during this time, as part of a 30+ year period, my Grandparents had a succession of Black Labradors, and I obviously got to spend lots of time playing with them. When I was 2ish and staying with my grandparents for extended periods, the current Lab, Haussa, was fascinated by my toys and apparently spend long hours exploring the mysteries of my "Busy-Box". The last Lab we got when I was in Kindergarten, and I named him Tiger, since he bounced around like Tiger from Winnie the Pooh cartoons.

I certainly liked Tiger, though admittedly, he was not perfect. He was a bit unstable compared to his predecessors, and prone to eating non-edible objects, drinking binges involving fermented apples, and destroying trees via methodical urination. On the upside, he was my dog, and his faults at least made him interesting when compared to the Grow-A-Frogs. Up to a point, as an only child in a rural area, that's about as good as it gets. I have all sorts of stories I could tell about Tiger antics, but mainly I just wanted to introduce him.

Likewise, a bit of background on my grandmother: she is the first generation of her family born in the United States, worked through World War II as a millwright eventually becoming a skilled machinist. Following the War, she met and married my Grandfather, and eventually bought a former Blacksmith's house and buildings, which became a small tool and die shop that she actively worked in alongside my Grandfather. Somewhat in contrast to her technical background, she retains a variety of German farm traditions and superstitions, including a secret, internal, blacklist of wild animals that simply shall not be permitted to live due to their propensity to violate her standards of cleanliness by spreading disease, or her standards of efficiency due to their propensity to eat garden plants.

I first discovered the blacklist during a Saturday morning visit when I was about 11. Apparently during the previous week, Tiger had been trying to communicate that there was "something" in the small barn that had originally held horses waiting for new shoes, but was now used to store the tractor and various lawn equipment. At my Grandmother's instructions, my Dad and I checked the building, and discovrered a very large Raccoon had taken up residence on the second floor. At this point, my Dad, either concerned about the urban setting, or out of ethical concerns about the possibly pregnant raccoon sent me to talk to my grandmother for instructions. I found her in the kitchen, merilly baking and cooking lunch. She was in kindly grandmother mode, with a spoon in one hand, smiling, looking every bit like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting:

Eleven-Year Old Bob: Ahh, Granny, we looked in the barn, and there's this big raccoon

Bob's Grandmother: GO…BACK…OUTSIDE…WITH…A…GUN…AND…KILL IT.

She enunciated it very slowly as if I was probably switched at birth, and at a minimum extremely stupid, that I even asked what do with a blacklisted animal. She then immediately turned around and went back to whatever she was doing, at which point I slipped out of the kitchen, feeling like I was a mafia minion just receiving instructions to whack an informer.

There's some funny parts about the events inside the barn when I returned, but in the interests of brevity, the actual mechanics of the raccoon's death were handled by my Dad while I backed him up with my grandmother's shotgun. Once we had removed the raccoon's bullet riddled corpse from the barn, my grandmother appeared, took a look at the raccoon (I assume to make sure that she didn't need to go kill it herself), presented us with a pie, and sent us home for lunch.

Mandatory word counts are of the devil.

2006-06-30T00:41:00.000-04:00

So, I'm writing a paper. I'm heavilly stressed, depressed, low on sleep, and simultaneously exhausted and overstimulated from the endless gallons of Diet Coke, the cans of Monster Drink and the, at least for me, inordinate amouts of nicotine.

As usual with the law school contrived version of legal writing, I'm struggling to meet the mandatory word count with a topic that simply doesn't require as many words as I'm required to produce. Like virtually every paper I've written in years, I've swiftly written 80% or so of the requirement, only to now face endless hours of scraping and digging to produce the last bit. That last 20%, as usual is taking at least 60% of the time. And, to face the truth of things, the last 20% is completely unnecessary crap, bloated legal phrasing, unnecessary citation, tangental footnotes, and even pointlessly novel arguments that a real court would merely be annoyed at.

If there's any light at all at the end of this particular tunnel it is the hope that someday I'll only have to write what needs to be said, with an upper page limit, not some contrived minimum.

Right, well, enough time wasting, back to the paper hell.

Quick Lube Places...oh how I hate them.

2006-06-29T00:15:00.000-04:00

So, I was driving to class yesterday and saw a one of those tragically funny things: a dead car stalled in traffic about 200 yards from a Quick-Lube place (hint to Lansing dwellers...it was on Grand River), with a couple of service techs from the oil lube place milling around it, and a trail of oil leading back to the Quick-Lube place.

I'm guessing that they forgot to put on an oil filter, though I suppose they could have figured out some other way to screw up.

Anyway, I know that I complain about it too often as is, but here's the standard quicky-lube rant:

A. Most quick-lube places have a target amount to upsell each and every customer. That is, the management typically pressures the staff to sell unnecessary, or barely necessary services on top of the oil change. There's a variety of flavors of this, but typical ones included flushes of various kinds, new air filters, etc. To be a bit blunt,I suspect that unscrupulous quicky-lube places love targeting women for the upsell crap. (I'd say that my male and female friends actually fall for the speil about equally, but the women get hit up more often.) Some of the particularly shady minions go beyond lying as to the necessity of a service and lie about whether it was performed or not.

B. A lot of quicky-lube places are technically incompetent, and a good number of engines meet an untimely death at the hands of their troglodyte minions.

C. Even if they don't immediately kill an engine, there's a tendency for the quicky-lube folks to OVER-tighten oil filters, strip drain plugs, etc. Usually the oil and filters used are pretty much the cheapest, marginal parts around (*cough* FRAM's cheap store-branded filters*cough).

D. The oil lube places have sold Americans on an pointless short oil change interval, which is both wasteful on a personal level, and environmentally bad. (On a related note I'd like to compliment the various automakers that have installed oil life monitoring computers of one kind or another.) When a car is under warranty, follow the owner's manual and keep records, but after that, generally speaking, most cars can run 5,000 miles or so on "SM" rated oil without a hitch, and probably 10,000 miles on any real synthetic. (I think it is really cool that Mobil is actually telling people this right on the oil bottle now, and backing it up both technically with good chemistry, and practically by warranting the engines.)

So, what's the solution? Well, the best of all worlds is to change your own oil, closely followed by establishing a relationship with a independent mechanic that you trust, even if you have to pay an extra $20 per oil change. If you insist on using quicky-lubes, you need to watch them like a hawk, and if they suggest ANY extra services you probably should consult someone else first. Heck, call me while you're in the waiting room at the quicky-lube. I'd much rather get a phone call than have to bite my tongue when my friends tell me about how the quiky-lube tech talked them into a flush.

(Note, most of the links above are in reference to Jiffy-Lube, but that's mostly because it was fast to google. Jiffy Lube is probably no worse than the competition, though that doesn't say much.)

2006-06-24T10:15:00.000-04:00

So, I've been debating the merits of publically discussing my 4th of July plans, which, while legal and reasonably safe are somewhat controversial blog fodder. Anyway, I happened to google a certain phrase that included "Public Discussion of X experiment", and got results on a totally unrelated news issue: the California teacher that was doing ballistic pendulum demonstrations with an M1 Carbine in class. One of my all time favorite science bloggers, PZ Myers, has weighed in supporting the teacher, and I completely agree with him.

*As a side note, I'm pretty sure there were more controversial experiments in my High School science classes.

Negligent Discharge #1: The Dryer Lint

2006-06-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

So, based on several conversations last weekend, I decided that I've probably unnecessarily avoided blogging, especially about some topic areas, in the last couple of months or so. Since apparently "weird bob stories" are desired, and I want to start talking about firearms topics more, I present the story of the flaming dryer lint.

So, one winter when I was 12 or 13, I went hunting with my dad over Christmas break. The first day, we went out in the late afternoon, in 15 degree weather, complete with blowing snow. After many hours of walking and sitting in the woods, we arrived home after dark, probably close to 9PM, planning on returning the next morning before dawn.

I had not fired my rifle the first day, and had brought it home, pulled the .50 caliber Maxi-Ball projectile with a ramrod screw, removed the nipple, blew compressed air through the nipple fitting on the drum to empty the pyrodex charge, wiped the rifle with a RIG rag, dried off the telescope with a dry cloth, the stored it for the night.

The next morning, before dawn, I began the somewhat laborious process of readying for the next round of hunting. As there was driving snow outdoors, I planned to load, saran wrap the nipple, then cap the rifle after the 2 minute car ride to the woods (Note, at the time OH law considered uncapped muzzleloaders to be "unloaded" for transport purposes.)

Before loading, I wanted to fire several caps threw the empty gun per good procedure, but it was snowing outside, and I decided to simply fire them on the front porch of my parents house…which unfortunately contains the laundry room.

Wandering out onto the porch, I saw the trash can full of paper, pocket spore, and dryer lint; promptly pointed the muzzle into it, loaded a cap, and pulled the trigger.

(Unfortunately, the night before, I had let the rifle sit in a 70 degree workshop for an hour before I blew the pyrodex out, during which time condensation certainly occurred within the barrel, leaving perhaps 20-40 grains out of 110 grains of Pyrodex RS was clinging to the inside of the barrel.)

So, instead of the mild "pop" I expected, there was a roar of flame and smoke, the trashcan basically disintegrated, flaming chunks of dryer lint flew around the room, and I couldn't hear anything for 30 minutes or so. In a 8'x10' room, it was basically the end of the world, sulphur smell included.

So...I killed a $1.97 trash can, which hillariously opened up like a flower with each of the four "sides" only attached to the base. Before I threw the old trash can out, I did stick my unused deer tag to it, and my parents did made me buy another one. I also learned all sorts of lessons about gun safety from the experence:

A. Run a patch down an "empty" muzzleloader before loading.

B. Even if you unloaded it yourself, treat it like its still loaded. Just think about what would have happened if I had pointed the muzzle at something other than a $1.97 trash can.

C. Dryer lint is very flammable.

What goes "ribbet...slide...ribbet...thump" at 4am?

2006-06-20T13:01:00.000-04:00

So, yesterday, I was in the car with James and Chris when somehow it came out in conversation that I once owned some albino dwarf African clawed frogs, aka "Grow-A-Frogs".

My grandparents bought me one for my birthday, I believe in 1987, and after we sent in the little postcard that came in the Stage One habitat box, a couple weeks later a tadpole showed up in the mail, which looked pretty sickly. As I recall, my parents must have been concerned that the tadpole would quickly croak, leaving me upset, so they immediately ordered another one, as a backup tadpole. (They did let me know they were ordering a second one, contrary to tradition, since my mom's mother tried to swap out surreptiously swap parakeets when one died).

Anyway, so, at this point there's two tadpoles kicking around in their own little stage one habitats. They're albino, and transparent, so you can see all the bits a pieces that make up their innards, and they are sort of cool. However, relatively soon they start metamorphsizing in to adults, if I had to guess this started nearly immediately, and possibly one of mine even came out of his shipping box starting to change. Watching the change is interesting, though even as albinos, they get darker skin, so the internal organs get hard to see.

What's worse is that after the tadpoles have completely morphed into frogs, they just sit there suspended in their tanks, occasionally making noises, basically doing nothing other than eating and pooping. Then, they live for close to ten years in this nursing home state (some live to be 20+), which makes the Grow-A-Frog a highly evil gift to give to children whose PARENTS you dislike.

There were two exceptions to the otherwise horribly boring nature of my Grow-A-Frogs: the fighting and the escape:

After both of my frogs were completely transformed, my parents tried putting them both in the same aquarium for logistical reasons, and the frogs immediately started fighting. More than any thing else, it resembled underwater WFF "wrassling", with the frogs pushing off the opposite sides of the tank, then trying to choke each other, and kick each other, with a bit of biting. Although my parents quickly separated the frogs, and bought a pair of 3 gallon-ish tanks, it was repeatable on demand if one frog was dropped in with the other.

The other exception is the night of Willy's great escape. To cut to the interesting part, Willy's tank lid must have been left loose, and he bailed out of the tank, and to the floor, unfortunately falling immediately through a heat duct. Unlike the average heat vent of modern proportions, my parents had the kind with 1"x1" holes that a grow a frog could easily plummet through. Also, unlike modern 4" ducts, the giant gravity furnace in the basement had 12" diameter ducts, and no filters, so Willy was lost in giant tunnels of dust. Fortunately for Willy, my dad was woken up by feeble ribbeting and sliding noises, and eventually tracked the noise down at 4am and found the frog. (This process had started some 45 minutes earlier, and the odd noises had moved locations through the house as the frog shifted in the heat ducting while my dad tried to figure where and what was causing the noises.) Despite spending some hours loose in the heat vents, returning caked in dust, Willy survived and managed to outlive his less adventurous cousin in the other tank by a year or so.

Looking around the internet, it looks like you can buy similar African Clawed frogs, including non-dwarf models from people other than the "Grow-A-Frog" folks. But the Grow-A-Frog people have some nice syrupy literature that they throw in and a frog is only $20 from them including all of its Stage One equipment. Apparently some people really like them as pets, but frankly, they must have way more attention span than I do to find watching the frogs lethargically eat and poop interesting after the 8th year or so.

However, as more of my friends have children, they should be warned that if I'm sufficiently irritated, or simply amused at the concept, I'll buy their kids a frog that will live practically forever, while doing nothing interesting after the first 3 months. Oh, and did I mention that the frogs have a lifetime guarantee, so even if you kill one off, you're kid can get it replaced for $3 in shipping fees? Oh, and if you accidentally let it "escape" into the wild, you'll cause an ecological disaster, and possibly face legal problems? Not only will African Clawed Frogs outcompete native species, they'll kill off other amphibiious by means of a toxic fungus (biological warfare).

On the upside, if you get a female grow-a-frog, you can always use it as a reusable home pregnancy test. Sort of like a free giant box of EPTs with every frog. Though you probably want to make sure that the kids are VERY soundly asleep when you inject the frog with urine, and safely off to school the next day when you check for eggs. Actually, a Grow-A-Frog isn't much more expensive than a name brand pregnancy test, so maybe Grow-A-Frog should change their marketing scheme.

Typical Request for random esoteric and arcane stuff:

2006-06-12T00:45:00.000-04:00

(Blogger has been extra special annoying lately, and I'm posting some old saved posts tonight)

Current Bob needs list:

A. Info on spotwelder construction. I have some capacitors laying around, and a pile of AK recievers that need rails....

B. Flywheel for a 1930's 0.9 Horsepower Evinrude Elto outboard. Yes, I could TIG weld mine, but alas, I weld like a mentally deficient kindergardener, and welding an unknown composition magnesium alloy seems ill advised.

C. Straight razors (carbon steel, hollow ground, 6/8 size), strop, badger hair shaving brush. Older the better. Personal experence and knowhow with regards to these items also wanted.

D. Fossils. Well, specifically Trilobites. More Specifically Cephalopyge notabilis Zone trilobites.

E. Jarts. I played for the first time over memorial day weekend, and its nearly as dangerously fun as beer bottle baseball.

F. Info on building an air gauge...not the tire kind, but the kind for holes, preferably I want to use Kulite silicon sensors and maybe LabView. I want to combine this with one of my dad's more or less current projects.

G. An old high pressure gas cylinder of either 220 or 250 Cubic feet capacity. I don't care what gas the cylinder was for, or what valve, if any, it has. I don't care if the cylinder is way out of test date, though it needs to be structurally sound.

Homeschooling...Homechurching...is there a home version of anything I actually like?

2006-05-30T22:45:00.000-04:00

So, browsing the far reaches of the good old Hillsdale blogosphere, I find that there's an interesting post combining homeschooling and house churches up at "This Is Me". Rather than pointlessly hijack the comments, espicially on an old post:

House Churches:

Sure, the early Christians used the house church. They lived in a society that made it particularly practical, since they didn't have a dedicated infrastructure of churches, they were highly local community and family focused, and they, at least at times needed to keep a low profile. The big problem both for the early church, and later incarnations of house churches is that wildly stupid theology gets to spread quickly. A significant reason that western christianity moved to a more centralized model was the proliferation of heresy at the local level. Even now, this is a common complaint about current house churches. Also, everyone that likes to talk about how successful the Chinese house church movement should keep in mind that they operate with very simply theology, and under social and political pressures that make it the only viable option. I would imagine that given a shift to religious tolerance in China, many house churches would evolve rather quickly into larger, more conventional churches. Are house churches inherently bad? No, they're useful under sometimes, but outside limited circumstances there's little inherently good about them.

Homeschooling as "Tradition":

I really, really hate the argument that homeschooling has some sort of advantage based on the relatively short history of public schools relative to all of human existance. This is logically equivalent to arguing that everyone should grow their own wheat, mill it to flour with the help of their neighbors, then bake their own bread, just because its more traditional than buying a loaf from Krogers. Teaching high school phyiscs, art, english, pre-calculus, etc has been "traditionally" done in a public or private school, being that most of the above subjects have only been part of the general curriculm for the last 100 years.

Now, its not any big secret that I'm highly suspicious of homeschooling in general, mostly because it seems like an extremely large expenditure of energy to do well, and even if it is done well, it seems selfish to devote so much effort to it when simply being an highly involved parent, perhaps on the local school board would benifit ALL of the children in the community. I could elaborate ad nauseum about the benifits of a common social meme of high school, and the difficulties of teaching multiple high school subjects without resorting to merely setting kids loose with a text book, but ehh, its not necessary.

Hmm, maybe I just dislike the "home" versions of everything? Homeschooling, homebirthing, home churching? No...wait...there's homebrewing.

2006-05-30T19:11:00.000-04:00

There's more than one chemical compound in real vanilla extract, but the major one is vanillin, and it's responsible for most of the flavor. There's a variety of ways to make synthetic vanillin, but the most efficient (and cool, in a very nerdy way) method used in the U.S. involves some wild chemistry and wood pulp waste. A less elegant approach uses coal tar as the starting chemical, but the final product vanillin is completely identical to vanillin from vanilla beans in both cases.

So, the vanillin part of synthetic vanilla is EXACTLY the same as real vanilla extract, but the more subtle other flavors have to be added to the fake vanilla. One way to do this is by making an extract from Tonka Beans which unfortunately contains coumarin, which has nasty blood thinning abilities (it’s a really close chemical cousin to both Warfarin and rat poisons). Due to both the blood thinning properties, and causing liver and kidney issues, the FDA banned coumarin as a food additive in the 1950's. Unfortunately, most of the third world doesn't have effective food additive regulation, and Tonka Beans are one of the best ways to juice up synthetic vanillin to make fake vanilla extract.

Apparently, the percentage of coumarin found in vanilla extracts imported from Mexico and the Caribbean has significantly dropped as of late, which is good. There's still plenty of other nasty things floating around in fake vanilla, like red dyes that are banned in the U.S.

Anyway, the important part is all health concerns aside, virtually all "vanilla extract" that people bring home from Mexico is fake. During my food and drug law class, we had a guest from Michigan Department of Agriculture who said that he had yet to test a single bottle of vanilla extract bought in Mexico that was real, and it was completely safe to bet that every large bottle (i.e. the 16oz or so plastic ones) for sale to tourists, in all of Latin America contained fake vanillin with random additives.

My take on the matter is if you're going to buy fake vanillin anyway, you might as well buy it in the U.S. so you don't have to sweat the coumadin/red dye/additive issues.

2006-04-18T22:29:00.000-04:00

I've been being a bad blogger again, though most of that really isn't my fault, I've been extremely busy, and its not likely to get any better in the next couple of weeks. In fact, I've been so swamped that I didn't even drive back to montpelier for easter. Next weekend is completely tied up with a wedding somewhere down in Ohio (yes, I didn't get an invitation so I have no idea where, despite the fact that I'm the best man). Meanwhile, I'm currently dealing with some frustrating govermental minions, not the least of which involves a contradiction between two parts of ohio law with regards to the necessity for turn signals. (The relevant date for me is in early 1965).

Anyway, some links:

A. Since it is passover, it seems like a good time for a link about pyramids, or at least how the eygptians built them. There's some good info here and here. I was suprised to hear the modern estimates that perhaps no more than 600 men were working on a pyramid at a time, and as few as 20 men, in as little as 30 minutes could have moved each 2.5 ton block from the quarry to its location in the pyramid. I have to say that the "Drunkards of Menkaure" sounds like the name of an industrial league softball team instead of half of the construction crew for Giza.

B. Related to the pyramid stuff...I had a high school history teacher that once said that every educated person should know the seven wonders of the ancient world from memory. I'm ashamed that I had forgotten a couple, so I needed a refersher. Anyway, everyone should go vote on the seven wonders of the modern world website.

I voted for Angkor, the Eiffel Tower, The Great Wall, The Taj Mahal, Neuschwanstein Castle, The Kremlin, and Hagia Sophia. (I purposefully did not vote for anything that was in the running for herodotus's original seven.) I was a little disapointed about some of the notable things not listed as finalists, espicially the lack of any bridges (golden gate espicially), and dams (aswan high dam, hoover dam, etc).

2006-03-28T12:44:00.000-05:00

I did a couple of wildly irrational and stupid things last weekend. The milder of them involved the purchase and consumption of 10 gallons of ethanol, which, one has to admit, usually does lead to stupidity.

So, what happened? Wild drunken debauchery? No, I just filled up my car with straight e-85 ethanol. Believe it or not, I wanted to proove a point about the drop in fuel economy that non-high compression engines suffer on ethanol due to the lower energy content. DO NOT try this at home with a car not designed for ethanol. There are all sorts of potential problems, ranging from corrosion to excessive lean conditions that fry exhaust valves and melt pistons. As of today, I have 80 miles on the e-85, and at least from what my trusty WinALDL program is telling me, I'm not likely to fry any mechanical parts. However, driveability, when cold, is horrid. I'm extremely glad that I waited until spring to try this experiment, since my wet-intake TBI system seems to suffer from poor evaporation with ethanol.

Warmed up, driveability is OK, and the BLM/INT values show that the ECM is adjusting the fuel mixture to compensate for the alcohol. I'll compute mileage in about a week.

2006-03-28T11:36:00.000-05:00

I love Jack T. Chick, to the point where I've subscribed to his tract o' the month newsletter. Anyway, there's a new and amusing parody of the (in)famous Anti-Dungeons and Dragons Chick tract here.

(Someone more clever than I write a chick parody involving the Flying Spaghetti Monster. )

Gay Penguins...

2006-03-27T20:59:00.000-05:00

Everyone probably has already seen the Brokeback Mountain parodies over at Google Video, but they don't hold a candle to Brokeback Penguins. Why make a video parody about gay penguins? Because of the 6 gay german zoo penguins that keep refusing to procreate. (from the frink tank)

2006-03-23T12:36:00.000-05:00

So, I have a half-finished post about vaccination floating around, but rather than post it, I've decided to focus on the following quotation:

“there is no scientific proof that immunization prevents disease; that vaccinations cause more disease than they prevent; and that contracting an infectious disease is safer than immunization..”

Apparently, 1/3 of surveyed chiropractors agreed with that statement! What sort of new idiocy is this! I mean, the statement doesn't say that you're not likely, via herd immunity to contract a disease if you don't get the vaccination; it says that it is safer to contract, say polio, than to get the shot.

I've never been a big fan of chiropractors, frankly, I've long believed that what little good there is in manipulative therapy is limited to what a decent massage therapist or D.O. does. Besides the outright quackery, chiropractors try to set up patterns of repeat business that resemble psychological addiction. I've never heard of a financially successful chiropractor that didn't try to get his victims to come back every week, whether they needed it or not. There's a whole litany of other concerns, ranging from increased insurance costs and malpractice to lethal spinal injuries.

So, recommend that everyone checks out the various links and information available at chirobase (which is part of the EXCELLENT quackwatch family of websites).

Nuclear handgrenades

2006-03-16T10:21:00.000-05:00

So, what's the definition of a nuclear weapon? I suppose most people, dredging up memories from high school think it involves Plutonium or Uranium as part of a Fussion or Fission device? Maybe a few people would throw in dirty bombs designed to throw around radioactive particles? I would imagine that everyone has a *BIG* explosion in mind?

Currently, there is a ~10 year old Federal law prohibiting the U.S. from developing nuclear weapons that yeild less than 5 kilotons of power, but there have been a number of nuclear weapons tested much smaller than the 5 kiloton cutoff. I tend to like the development ban, being that if a nuclear weapon needs to be used, there's not a whole lot of point in using a small one. If there isn't moral and legal grounds to use a nuclear bomb, it doesn't pay to be tempted to argue that a small one is equivalent to just using a couple extremely large conventional bombs.

Anyway, at some point there's a cutoff at how small an efficient nuclear bomb can be and still reliably detonate. (That's the business about "critical mass " that most of us slept through in HS).

However, there's a possible endrun around the legal and scientific limitations in making small nuclear bombs: hafnium explosives. Greatly simplified, halfnium can *probably* be charged up with energy, on the order of 50 kilograms of TNT per gram, and can be used in any amount, large or small. Detonated, it does throw off gamma rays and some radioactive particles. Is it a nuclear weapon? I have no idea. If, and that's a big if, the whole charged isotope thing gets sucessfully developed, there's an interesting potential for the world's best batteries.

2006-03-15T13:43:00.000-05:00

Peter's new blog. Ask him before linking.

For male readers only...

2006-02-23T13:18:00.000-05:00

Another link from an email conversation: I always enjoy reading PZ Myers, the prolific and witty blogger that runs pharyngula. Anyway, he has a fun little post about the mating habits of giant Australian cuttlefish, from which, we can see a great lesson about clever, sensitive males.

2006-02-21T13:28:00.000-05:00

Through a friend (Jenn Bresnan) of a (Peter Wood) friend of a (Will Farnum) friend blogging connection, I just discovered the Gallery of Regrettable Food. Highly reccomended, though I wouldn't reccommend thinking too much about meat jello before meals. Most of the cooking instructions featured in the Gallery are shades of my Life magazine "Beer the Healthful Refresher" ad, and highly amusing even without the additional commentary. The "science" facts in some of the 1950's era promotional cookbooks are pretty similar to the Oscar Meyer periodic table from the Simpsons, or 1950's cigarette ads.

2006-02-21T11:05:00.000-05:00

So, I'm part of several interesting email conversations at the moment, and I realized that some of the websites involved might make an interesting blog post:

A. I've been aware of the German flak tower system since reading the IMPACT books in 5th grade, but just discovered that some of the giant, castle-like structures still exist. The extremely cool Urban Exploration website, UER, has a nice pictorial article on the flak towers, with a number of photos of the Berlin towers. If giant concrete castles with room for 20,000 people and massive artillery wasn't cool enough, enterprising Germans have converted the side of the Berlin G-tower into a climbing wall! Even though my climbing ability is not particularly impressive, falling somewhere between wine-tasting and welding on my personal spectrum of skills, I would love to try it.

B. UER also has a brief, though interesting pictorial of Ur. The archeology of Ur is certainly fascinating in and of itself, with religious significance and buried treasure, but I find the chemistry aspects particularly interesting. That is, various petroleum derivatives, such as bitumen were widely used by the ancient inhabitants of Ur.

Although at the time, the Babylonians were more interested in the waterproofing and cementing properties of bitumen, they exported a great deal to Egypt for mummification purposes. (I highly recommend The Mummy Congress, by Heather Pringle for an excellent, and very readable discussion of mummification).

Although the Egyptians and Greeks get all the press, the Babylonians had some pretty interesting chemistry of their own, such as, believe it or not, effective pH based home pregnancy tests. Not to mention that by 850AD, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia were distilling light-fraction petroleum products, such as naphtha in vast quantities. (Which means that you could probably get functional diesel for your car, and certainly fuel for your Zippo in a 9th century bazaar.)

But back to bitumen: due to a darkly-humorous, but gruesome, mistranslation of the Arabic word mumiya (bitumen) and confusion between mummification and medical uses of petroleum products, Western Europeans spent some 500+ years grinding up mummified corpses for consumption as a medical drug. Disgusting isn't it?

2006-02-20T15:41:00.000-05:00

In light of the recent decision in Kitzmiller, (pdf, 134 pages) Blandus has started a new round of Intellegent Design discussion. I've responded breifly.

2006-02-18T16:52:00.000-05:00

So, risk-taking behaviours prevent Parkinsons.

Valentines Day: lets talk about diamonds.

2006-02-14T12:04:00.000-05:00

So, since I’ve been bombarded with radio and billboard ads from jewelry stores for weeks, I feel compelled to post on diamonds. I like diamonds; they’re my second most favorite form of carbon after buckyballs. However, unlike buckyballs, diamonds, contrary to the jewelry industry, aren’t that rare. In fact, they’re kind of common in nature, but the diamond industry has carefully controlled production. Besides artificially increasing the price, the industry, espicially the deBeers group, has conducted a wildly sucessful marketing effort to supplant more traditional engagement gemstones with large diamonds, and to encourage women to avoid used diamonds.

Despite the fact that I am a budding member of the most capitalistic of all professions, I find the artificial market manipulation of the diamond industry irritating. So, the invention of extremely high quality artificial diamonds warms my heart. Not only are artificial diamonds a nicely ironic end-run around the contrived market value of natural diamonds, they avoid all of the nasty moral baggage connected with natural diamonds. Frankly, there's something close to a 1-in-20 chance of buying a conflict diamond in the natural diamond industry even with the Kimberly process, and it is practically impossible to check the origin of a polished natural diamond. On the other hand, the synthetic ones are serial numbered, and completely traceable.

So, if you're in the market for a diamond, consider a synthetic one from Gemesis, Chatham, or Appollo. Not only will your diamond buying dollar buy a larger and higher quality stone, you get to proove yourself smarter than the deBeers marketing, and avoid guilty feelings about civil unrest in Africa and AlQuida diamond money laundering.

I should mention that one of the companies that makes artificial diamonds alledgely allows customers to provide their own carbon. As much as I like the artificial diamond concept, making jewelry out of humans or domestic animals is completely insane. I would much prefer to think that lifegem was a scam than that people were walking around with fluffy or grandma on a ring.

2006-02-13T14:38:00.000-05:00

There's already a discussion of Cheney's Negligent Discharge over at Krupa's blog. Rather than totally hijack his comments, I wanted to link to Summers v. Tice for those not in the legal community. Those in law school probably immediately thought of this seminal torts case involving a quail hunting accident, but for everyone else, it is short as far as cases go, and reading it might even be fun.

Overall, yes, you can be civilly liable for a Negligent Discharge while hunting, and no, the fact that Whittington didn't announce his return does NOT change Cheney's moral or legal liability whatsoever. Every time you discharge a firearm, you are responsible for the terminal resting place of each and every projectile. When in doubt, especially when hunting a 6oz game bird, do not shoot.

2006-02-12T17:08:00.000-05:00

There seems to be a particularly virulent faulty comparison between Canadian and U.S. crime statistics floating around the internet at the moment. Since Ryan Thompson has caught it, and I went to the effort to dig out the links to disprove it (I used bugmenot to post the comment on Ryan's Xanga just to save time, since my usual iatemywafer xanga login has been acting up), I thought I'd post them here too.

The gist of the matter is that Canadian crime statistics count stuff that the U.S. ones do not, namely, the U.S. statistics do not include minor assaults and the Canadian ones do. So, the only workable comparisons are to homicide and robbery rates:

(2004)
U.S. homicide: 5.5/100,000
CA homicide: 2/100,000

CA Robbery rate: 90/100,000
U.S. robbery rate: 137/100000

So, the next time someone tells you that Canada has twice the U.S. crime rate, please, please debunk the myth. I have no great love for Canada, but this statistical false comparison is insane.

A quick update to the dog food business...

2006-02-09T09:52:00.000-05:00

I didn't mean to imply that Drummond was sending dog food in the post below, the stories I linked clearly pointed out that it was a different product. I'd guess that its not that dissimilar of a product, since Ms. Drummond originally planned on sending dog biscuits, then changed her mind due to the age of the children involved:

"The first plan was to send dog biscuits and change the vitamins then when I heard there were so many little children I could not send them a bicky..."

(I'd point out that I'm a bit suspicious of Ms. Drummond's claim that her dog food has miraculous naturopathic and homeopathic properties, but the biscuits sound much tastier than the brand-x powerbar I ate this morning.)

In any case, its not dog food. I can understand the random yokels thinking that it actually is dog food, but the attitude of the African journalists and government officials on the topic is insane. There's even an editorial in the Harare Herald (State-owned mouthpiece) that uses Drummond as an example of what's good about grain diverting, aid theifing, all around jackass, Robert Mugabe.

2006-02-08T12:15:00.000-05:00

A. Kenya suffers a two year drought, and enters a nasty famine.
B. New Zealand dog food manufactuer offers to send 42 tons of dried food.
C. New Zealand company called racist, etc.

Frankly, I don't get it. If Ms. Drummond wants to ship the stuff all the way to Kenya, and the orphans refuse to eat it, so be it. Otherwise, what business of the Kenyan government is it to interfer with the private shipment of food INTO the country?

If I were Ms. Drummond, I think I'd be inclined to very publically eat a meal of the stuff, and ship the rest of it. I've personally FedEx'd packages to kenya, and their border inspections aren't exactly the strongest in the world, so illicitly importing food shouldn't be that hard.

-As a side note, many dog food manufaturing companies also make human foods, for example, Nestle makes Alpo dog food and Infant formula.

I had 3 siblings, but they all died as zygotes...

2006-02-06T16:50:00.000-05:00

Lisa has a recent post (scroll down) discussing the inappropriateness of the term “Emergency Contraceptive” for anti-implantation pharmaceuticals. Since Krupa has been bemoaning the lack of controversial posting, I’ve decided to take the bait:

A. Conception, as a properly used term of art means implantation. That is, the board certifying society for Ob-Gyn, ACOG, defines conception as the moment that a blastocyst implants in the uterine wall. It is true that ACOG revised their definition some 30 years ago on the topic, however, historically, the term contraceptive has been applied to many early term abortificants. (Queen Ann’s lace, and mercury preparations in the civil war era).

B. As a practical matter, defining conception as taking place at implantation helps to deal with the unstable nature of the zygote. That is, zygotes may split into twins, or several (I think only 2) zygotes can combine into a single embryo. Not to mention the relatively low, probably best case, 50%, chance a zygote has at a successful pregnancy. Most people I know, no matter what their views on abortion, do not discuss zygote death in the same terms as embryo death. That is, very few people with say, 3 children, ever think about the 2-6 children that died as zygotes. Of course, depending on ones theological positions, there are all sorts of interesting questions about the ensoulment, salvation-status, etc of the 2-6 dead zygotes.

C. The commonly available emergency contraceptives work primarilly by preventing ovulation and fertilization, and in my oppinion definitely deserve to be called contraceptives. For example, “Plan B” works primarily by preventing post-coital ovulation in the time period where motile sperm are still present, and also helps produce a thickened cervical mucas to prevent fertilization. The FDA won't even let the manufacturers of Plan B claim that it prevents implantation, they have to add the "may" disclaimer to their product literature.

Rats on Valium, cat urine, and parasites.

2006-02-02T10:16:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder how anti-anxiety drugs are tested? Apparently, rats have little panic attacks when exposed to cat urine, so you dope up the rats, then expose them to cat urine. The Loom article has more to do with a particularly interesting cat parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, which spends part of its life in rats, hoping (well, one-celled organisms don't hope) for a cat to eat its host rat. To facilitate the eating process, Toxoplasma gondii makes the rat forget its fear of cats. Sort of like the liqour in The Little Brown Mouse song that everyone is forced to sing at summer camp. Now the really interesting part of all of this is that treating the infected rats with anti-schizophrenia drugs, reverses the parasite's effects. Which leads researchers to beleive that human schizophrenia may relate to Toxoplasma gondii infection. The bottom line for humans: don't eat cat crap, and order your meat well cooked. The bottom line for cats: eat only rats that run away.

2006-01-28T16:34:00.000-05:00

So...my current cell phone sort of disintegrated yesterday. I've ordered a new phone, but in the meantime, I swapped my SIM card into the phone that had the unfortunate hot tub experence last summer. Which means for the next few days at least, I can only recieve calls, not make them. If you want to talk to me, call me. And don't send text messages or voice mails, I can't retrive them.

2006-01-27T12:40:00.000-05:00

What would you do with $751 found in a muddle puddle?

David Karlotski used it to buy some 8,000 miles worth of gas for a ratty old KZ440 motorcycle, grabbed his laptop and rode around all of North America. Fortunately he writes well, and posted the whole experence serially on his website. Go read it.

2006-01-25T23:30:00.000-05:00

Patent Law Historical Note:

Some nameless patent attorney unknowingly prevented nerve gas usage in the second world war. Or at least helped.

The standard high school history version of events credits Hitler's personal experience with poison gas as the deciding factor in his decision not to use Germany's Sarin/GA stockpile against the allies. This is not completely untrue, but Hitler was likely concerned only about allied reprisals, not the suffering of allied troops. In other words, if he thought he could have gotten away with it, he would have tried it.

I.G. Farben chemists developed the first nerve gases, known as G-series gases in the 1930's in a search for improved pesticides. As THE chemical company of the day, I.G. Farben obviously wanted to protect their potential new pesticide from the likes of duPont, and hired some nameless (since pre 1976 patents are only searchable by # and class) American attorney to patent the nerve agents SA (talbun) and SB (Sarin) in the late 1930's.

Since the chemical compounds had published U.S. patents, I.G. Farben assumed that they were common knowledge in the field...which lead to Hitler himself thinking that the U.S. had nerve agents. In reality, none of the allies developed G-Series nerve agents until after the war.

So, some random patent attorney, in 1937 or 1938, saved thousands of lives by filing all of the paperwork for a patent on time.

2006-01-25T16:33:00.000-05:00

So, as in most academic institutions, my law school has several deans, who share a suite of offices, clerical staff, etc. The physcial location of their offices, in a fit of great imagination, is called "The Dean's Suite". Amusingly, (and with increasing frequency), actions of the school administration or individual deans are attributed to "The Dean's Suite". Example:

All of the classrooms yesterday had the following message on the blackboards:

"Please fill out the Orange survey form for the Dean's Suite and deposit in the box at the door for collection and return to the Dean's Suite."

I know, that seems like an innocuous enough thing, but still....who actually is behind the survey? Has the suite of offices assumed a sentient personality? Ala the black tower?

Hmm, paid by the word I see.

2006-01-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

So, I'm trying to form an opinion about military capital punishment law, especially the recent changes. In the process, I googled each of the current military death row inmates to compare their sentences with what they would have received as civilians, and found this horrid piece of journalism:

"There were no loud sobs or sighs from the audience."

Apparently, at the Macon Telegraph, the relatively low volume of sighing following a jury verdict is so newsworthy as to require a separate paragraph.

2006-01-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

So, I tried the infamous (at least on the internet) diet coke and mentos thing a couple days ago. It was reasonably amusing, now I'm curious about some variations on the theme. Which in turn got me thinking about dry ice making attachments for CO2 tanks. Being a law student, and therefore, cheap, I don't really want to buy one. Having access to machine tools, I want to build one instead. So, if anyone has a diagram, plans, or one that I can reverse engineer, let me know. I *assume* that the making devices just have an orifice above a screen or bag that catches the ice? Ideas?

2006-01-15T14:13:00.000-05:00

So. I passed.

2005-12-29T19:40:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or is there something a little cool about the high school kid that snuck into iraq for his high school journalism class?

2005-12-19T15:25:00.000-05:00

My next exam is open book, so I flagged out my book with post-it notes. Unfortunately, I did it at a friend's house with her post-it pad, so...I flagged it out with "Princess" notes. Which says, ahh, I'm confident in my sexuality?

Is law school high pressure?

2005-12-16T20:35:00.000-05:00

I just got out of a difficult exam, with fair questions, but far too many to be answered in the time allowed. I’m not complaining though, being that one of my classmates was barely conscious throughout the exam, having checked herself out of the hospital an hour earlier. She had been in pre-op for an emergency appendectomy, but stood up and walked out rather than take the grade hit for missing the exam. She had apparently forced her way out, even at some risk of the appendix rupturing during the exam, and was bent over from the pain, having refused pain meds that might compromise her performance. She still had the hospital bracelets on, and was seeking blood through the bandage where her IV line had been only minutes earlier.

Yet another step closer to the real world...

2005-12-12T12:49:00.000-05:00

MPRE scores are back. I passed.

2005-12-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

In the wacky pseudo-news corner, scientists drill into hell and record screams of the damned. ( scroll down ) I personally had no doubt that hell was warm and in the center of the earth, being that the law school heats the sidewalk with excess heat from the portal in the basement.

What's next, Air Suspension Cozy Coupes?

2005-12-09T10:44:00.000-05:00

I just saw an undergrad, in the snow, riding a bicycle with spinners. Unfortunately in this field, Family Guy apparently predicts the future. Where's the norplant cannon when I need it.

Still deep in paper purgatory.

2005-12-09T03:09:00.000-05:00

*more requests added*

I use Microsoft Word to write papers. It irritates me with default settings that require changing such as auto-formatting and the like, but openoffice rather is shaky about keeping footnotes coherent when changing formatting. Since I type everything in single spaced Times New Roman 10 pt, then blow it up to the required font and spacing later, it is a great irritation to continually wonder if open office is scrambling footnotes. Not to mention that OpenOffice likes the XML based formats that you can't open in word in an emergency.

Anyway, things I want to know about word, but am too lazy to figure out:

1. I want "Paste" or the keyboard Ctrl+v shortcut to always execute a "Paste Special"-unformatted text option. Otherwise copying url citations is a severe pain. I know that there is a keyboard command option for Paste Special, but that still pops up a dialog box.

2. Is there a nice way to open and merge OneNote files into Word? Or a way to insert excel tables into OneNote?

3. Is there a simple way to tell Word to disable all merging of changed documents? Or to save backup copies that it will stay away from merging, yet I can email to myself for insurance?

4. How does one disable ALL of the automatic Bold/Italics/Underline formating in Word 2003? That is, I've turned off everything I can think of, yet if I space down to a new line (Enter), then hit (Ctrl)+(b), sometimes Word refuses to give the new text bold formatting. This annoys me, and leads to thoughts of violence, not to mention increased obscenity usage. Which could kill us all.

2005-12-05T17:32:00.000-05:00

Current non-productive thoughts:

I'm reconsidering my current, post-law school, plan to buy a diesel liberty, perhaps it would make more sense to buy something more 3-season and keep the GMC around for bad weather. It wouldn't be practical, but it would be cheap and fun. Then again, a convertible roadster is a bit redundant given my existing, and currently under complete restoration, summer fun vehicle.

2005-12-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

So, with a nod to my likewise suffering friends in the HBC, the rest of my semester:

~~7,000 word, Food and Drug law paper.~~

~~Seven (7) page Rule 26(f) Discovery plan for Patent Litigation.~~

Take home Exam in Biotechnology and Pharma. Patent

~~Business Entitites Exam~~

~~Law and Religion Exam~~

~~Intellectual Property Licensing Exam~~

~~Patent Lititgation Exam~~

Law school, is, indeed, of the devil.

2005-11-29T22:37:00.000-05:00

I think I look the captain from Das Boot with the full beard...and the goatee is boring...but, I WANT commentary.

Maybe I'm getting due for a different car...

2005-11-27T18:32:00.000-05:00

So, on the way home for Thanksgiving, the roads were horrid, and a number of cars were stuck or disabled at the side of the road. Of the ones that I stopped for, only one stands out: an early 1990's Oldsmobile. It was a rusty, barely functional car, stopped at the roadside with the hood up. The owner was pouring brand X antifreeze into the radiator when I stopped:

Bob: So, hey, are you OK?

Redneck: Yeah...

Bob: You sure? You need any tools or anything? Can I help you with it?

Redneck: Naw...I just gotta add coolant every 30 miles or so.

Bob: Ok...You sure that we can't fix the leak or something?

Redneck: No....Hey, you want to buy another one of those?

Bob: Heh....Heh, no, I can only drive one at a time.

Redneck: Naw, you can put mine up on blocks for parts for that one you're driving. Hell I have it in my yard for parts, but I don't need it any more now that I traded up to this car. Think about it, you gotta need parts.

2005-11-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

Full Beard and Goatee pictures should be up within the week...

2005-11-22T18:51:00.000-05:00

2005-11-16T21:46:00.000-05:00

So. Starting sometime in the next week or so the inevitable end of the semester hell will descend. The entire month of December will be spent in near hibernation in the law library cramming my mind full of all the intricacies of Corporate Law that I should have learned in August when I wasted away lazy days without regard to the horrors I was postponing. As usual, the onset of fall exam hell corresponds with snow and crappy weather, which started today, simultaneous with the first small breezes of anxiety over a massive 7,000 word paper that I'm ill prepared for. I am desperately happy that law school is only 3 years long, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

In order to take a small, undeserved break from the studying, I'm moving a new and rather unique item of furniture in to my room this weekend. The idea is to methodically polish the heck out of it while studying. That is, if the 150lb weight doesn't break through the floor and kill the poor girl underneath me.

The whole 3L job hunt is scary, tedious, and at times amusing. Keeping with the cardinal rule of blogging, nothing about the topic will be posted here for some time, but when I can, I shall have some amusing stories to tell. In the meantime, I still haven't accepted a final offer anywhere, so keep your eyes peeled with regards to positions for patent attorneys.

I've gone from clean shaven, to a full beard and back to clean shaven this semester, with brief stops at goatee and trucker-stasch. I'm currently leaning towards a full beard again, though, currently I'm just a day scruffy. Opinions? (I don't personally have any photographs to post of the various options, but my friends do...so email them and I'll post them.)

2005-11-11T00:54:00.000-05:00

Interesting interview in Christianity Today about church/state relations. I know that Talcott and Jared Cook have hashed some of this out in the past, but I thought Ted Haggard had some excellent points.

2005-11-11T00:40:00.000-05:00

I need a 12 step program, or intervention, or something. I've been killing baby seals again.

2005-11-10T23:51:00.000-05:00

I read worldnetdaily about once a week...sort of like the onion. Like the onion? Yes, like the onion, because apparently the clever engineers at GM are Reagan conservatice, being that they install daytime running lights on pretty much everything. Oh, I know, perhaps the intrepid journalists at worldnetdaily factored out daytime running lights, but ehh, I doubt it.

Ice heathen from the north

2005-11-09T20:14:00.000-05:00

So I read Rolling Stone. I suppose it is the literary equivalent to inhaling ether: you can't really be proud of it in sophisticated circles, but it feels pretty good at the time. Anyway, usually the quality of writing is pretty decent, and the most recent issue has an interesting piece on the latest round of intelligent design court cases. I strongly disagree with the author's conclusion about the relationship between evolution and religion, but I have to admit, I'd love to be accused of being an "smart ass ice heathen from the north."

And in another attempt to get rid of Dean Barker via Heart Attack...

2005-11-06T17:33:00.000-05:00

Casual sex in Hillsdale.

Halloween

2005-11-02T16:50:00.000-05:00

A. I had a mostly normal childhood.

B. My parents are great people.

C. The somehow managed to screw up Halloween.

I never got to go trick or treating when I was young. I hadn't really thought about it for years, if ever, but this weekend I realized that I totally missed out on that part of American cultural tradition. My parents live some 3 miles from Montpelier, OH, a rather average small town of 4,500 in Northwest Ohio. Although I suppose I could have trick or treated at the handful of neighbors we had out in the country, it was never suggested, and I doubt they would have had candy to give out to the 2~5 possible children they might get each year. So, that left the possibility of trick or treating in Montpelier itself. Unfortunately, Montpelier was in the grips of some sort of candy-tampering paranoia at the time, and was conducting a school sponsored candy distribution.

The way it worked is that you showed up at the school on a designated night around Halloween with or without costume. You could participate in a costume judging contest, but mainly you stood in a long line with all the other children to receive your allotment of candy. (That's right, Children on the government's candy dole.) So, after standing in this line, in the cold, for an hour or so, you received a bag of candy and went home. In fact, as this was occurring near the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the USSR, whenever I heard about soviet or east German citizens standing in lines for food, I thought it was like the Halloween candy distribution. Sometime after I gave up on the Candy Distribution they either eliminated it entirely, or simply officially gave it as an alternative to the regular official trick-or-treat hours (daylight weekend only times near Halloween). At that point I was sort of, as I remember, too old to be interested, and wrote off the whole holiday.

Oh, I did carve the jack o' lantern (always outfitted with a flashlight, I only recently discovered that some families use real candles), and eat candy, but I never did anything else with the trick or treating.

2005-11-01T14:07:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I've heard conservatives complain that they are unfairly labeled as heartless jerks. For those conservatives that wonder why the heartless jerk label:

Ryan Thompson posts about food stamps:

"The food stamp program angers me a lot because those people end up buying better food than the average American. They have prime rib several times a week while the average American might only have it once or twice a month if they are lucky. Furthermore, people often use these programs to buy junk instead of feeding their children properly. They are just creating another generation of slobs who will drag down our healthcare system too."

My views on the topic are in the comments, but for those too lazy to follow links:

A. I don't care if you want to oppose food stamps for philosphical reasons.

B. Making up BS about prime rib ignores those pesky statistics that show that the average food stamp family is scraping by on $640/month while feeding 2.3 people.