CCAW

CCAW posted the anti-Wojcik flyer to Scribd, which is a free document hosting service. Let's hope this gets out there in time!

More P-B Comments

The American Hunters and Shooters Association is a bunch of lying, left-wing assholes. How disgusting that the P-B would publish this shit. AHSA has no credibility in among real gun owners.

The NRA is a moderate group. AHSA is a sham organization in league with the Brady bunch. If you want REAL pro-gun folk, check out the Gun Owners of America.

wamps: Right on with this comment - "The 2nd Amendment is NOT about Hunting!" 2A/RKBA is how we protect the rest of our rights from an increasingly hostile government!

cajred: The 2nd Amendment is the most important one in the Bill of Rights, and I would vote solely on a candidate's 2A record. Unfortunately both Obama and McCain are not friends of gun owners.

Maverick: I AM packing, if you know what I mean!

neo1: Gonna need guns if Obama wins, too -- for the 2nd American Revolution....

P-B Article on Wojcik

The Post-Bulletin apparently published an article on the Progressive Majority (the scum fucks—PageRank that!) support of Wojcik's City Council bid. My remarks:

Mike Wojcik says, "...it is sad that my opponent is trying to link this endorsement to partisan ideology." Marcia Marcoux has not tried to do this. The people who know Mike and/or oppose him noticed and rightfully tried to point it out. Marcia has been nothing but respectful to Mike despite his attitude, and hasn't made any negative statements about him that I've seen or heard. Obviously Mike has been making a lot of negative comments about Marcia regardless.

Mike did not disclose his affiliation previously. Furthermore, it's reasonable to assume that if an organization supports a candidate that, should that candidate be elected, the organization will expect something in return. It's illogical and unreasonable for Mike to say that partisanship shall play no part in his campaign. This is a blatant conflict of interests, and if he really is so concerned about ethics (as someone who knows Mike, I can say that he has no business talking about ethics whatsoever), he would've run without Progressive Majority's partisan support.

The only ethical thing for Mike to do now is to resign his campaign. But that'd be too much to expect from an ambitious, aspiring politician, wouldn't it?

To bloggin: The endorsement wasn't on Mike's website until recently; after he was "outed," I think. The Progressive Majority link was uncovered in mid-September via a Google search. (And no, it wasn't me that posted it to P-B, but I wish it had been!)

And:

To schmittts:
"...this just smells like a hatchet job at the request of the incumbents [sic]."

Wait a second, the P-B published an endorsement of Wojcik and you suggest that this afterthought was a smear? If the incumbent had the clout to instigate a smear, then for sure her opponent wouldn't have gotten the backing of the paper! Sorry, your conspiracy theory logic doesn't fly. Truth of the matter is, the media will publish anything they think will attract them eyeballs. Worked, didn't it?

Regarding individual activists, why would that be news? An individual helping a campaign is what happens normally. What isn't normal is a concerted effort by a large political group to alter supposedly non-partisan local politics and provide significant organizational support and training, which is the purview of decidedly partisan political organizations.

2nd American Revolution

So I was checking out this video I found on YouTube by this black guy going off on liberals. I don't like McCain, but I like this guy's arguments.

On his favorites list was a video by a guy imagining what Thomas Paine would say about our current state of affairs.

Although that video was about peaceful dissent, there was another video about non-peaceful revolution. That one is fucking awesome. Partway through they show the cover for Unintended Consequences. I might have to buy their CD.

DNS

According to /. comments:

DynDNS
FreeDNS
Dynect

CrossLoop

Walter Mossberg reviewed the CrossLoop service in the 9/25 WSJ Personal Journal. I'll have to check it out again when they have a version for OS X.

.50-Cal Uppers for AR-15

I thought I'd linked these here before, but they don't turn up in a search, so here they are.

Several companies manufacture "uppers" for AR-15 rifles. The nice thing about AR-15 uppers is that they don't require an FFL to purchase, so even if the ATF is conducting illegal recordkeeping of firearm transactions (they're not supposed to retain that documentation except in the case of NFA items), there's no way they would know. That is, unless the manufacturer itself is reporting sales. The general idea isn't for criminal action on the owner's part (.50-cals have never been used in criminal activity), but rather that if a .50-cal ban occurred and confiscation were attempted, one wouldn't have to yield to the government's illegal actions. Just because the government makes a law doesn't mean its right. The existence of "jury nullification" is legal evidence of that.

Anyway, here are some selections:

• Advanced Long-Range Systems LLC's ALS 50 BMG: single-shot bolt-action, 33-inch barrel, 35 lbs (upper only)


• Safety Harbor Firearms' UltraMag 50: magazine-fed bolt-action, 29-inch barrel (19-in and 22-in also available), 15.5 lbs (upper only)


• Serbu's BFG-50 (Big Fucking Gun, get it?): single-shot bolt-action, 36-inch barrel (22-in and 29.5-in also available), 32 lbs (upper only)


• Bohica Arms' (as in, "bend over, here it comes again") FAR-50: single-shot bolt-action, 36-inch barrel (16-, 24-, and 30-in also available), 25.5 lbs (upper only)


• Ferret50's eponymous conversion: single-shot bolt-action, 36-inch barrel (19-in and 29-in also available), weight not listed


• Ligamec Corp.'s Ultralite50: single-shot bolt-action, 29-inch barrel (18.5-in and 22-in also available), 12.2 lbs (upper only)


• Watson's Weapons' .50 BMG Upper: no details on website (there are more details about the carrying case than about the upper itself!)


• L&G Weaponry's .50-Cal Conversion: single-shot bolt-action, no further details

Placenta

Some people do interesting things with their kids' placentas. In the end, we left ours at the hospital, partly because Sachie didn't know what to do with it, and Sachie's mom thought it would be too grotesque to stick in the freezer. (Plus, we don't yet have a deep freezer.) Maybe with the next one we'll have a plan.

There's a company called LifeBank that will store the cord blood and optionally the placenta for later use. The service is pretty spendy, though, so you have to be fairly loaded to even consider it.

MSI Wind

Hmm, there was a /. link to an article on getting OS X installed on the MSI Wind. $480? I'll have to give it some thought.

Hack A Day & Business Card Web Server

Hack A Day seems like a cool site to scope when one has time. A recent article on how to build a business card-sized webserver was slashdotted.

Insulation

Searching for the foam insulation my neighbor was using under the siding she replaced (unfortunately I forgot the name), I came across a Dow site on various building materials. They have a number of foam insulation products for various purposes. Home improvement has a lot of choices to consider, especially in the area of materials.

Cultured Stone

In the Think Bank "Swap & Shop" there was a post advertising "River rock cultured stone". I wasn't sure if this was a brand or not, but a quick search turned up an Owens Corning company called Cultured Stone. They make the River Rock type of "stone veneer". I rather like the ledgestone designs.

Fujitsu to sell to WD?

CNET had an article relaying the Nikkei report from last night.

Here's my commentary:

Fujitsu only makes mobile (2.5") and server HDDs. The 2.5" space has been getting crowded lately: HGST, Toshiba, Fujitsu were the main players, but now Seagate, WD, and Samsung have joined in and snapped up market share. It's inevitable that one would have to bow out.

WD doesn't really make server-class drives -- although they claim to, they're still 7200 RPM SATA, which is decidedly NOT a real enterprise model -- so acquiring Fujitsu would bolster their efforts in enterprise and eliminate a competitor in mobile. Sounds like a good strategy to me as long as they can capitalize on the server business.

However, merging corporate cultures is painful, as survivors of the HGST/IBM and Seagate/Maxtor acquisitions can attest to.

Incidentally, Fujitsu is denying the Nikkei rumor...for now:
http://pr.fujitsu.com/jp/news/2008/10/2.html