Rogue Sci

Turns out that TPB has a good selection of firearm information. One guy who originates a lot of material, including AGI rips, is "Don't Tread On Me". In his postings, he plugs a site called Rogue Sci, which appears to have some educational information that the government control freaks definitely don't want their subjects to have access to. That is, it's the kind of stuff that a patriotic citizen should have, even if he doesn't ever intend to make use of it. Fight the power!

c|net commentary

Remarks to a c|net article on international SNSes:

mixi also now requires a Japanese cell-phone email address to confirm registration. This may not be too terribly effective in controlling one person having multiple accounts, since one could change one's email address and register again, but it certainly limits people who don't live in Japan from joining.

And another on DHS requiring fingerprints and photographs for permanent residents:

Japan does the same thing already. Even if you have a long-term or permanent visa, you get your fingerprints taken (just index fingers, though) and photo snapped. I think it sucks and does nothing to provide extra security, but who in the government is going to listen to foreigners' complaints? Resident aliens are pretty much 2nd-class citizens in Japan. Tourists are ok because they spend money then leave, but tourists don't have special visas.

This gripes me off, though. So why would DHS do this if the borders aren't sealed anyway? They're going to inconvenience people who enter via legal means, and ignore people who sneak in illegally? Brilliant. I feel safer already (that's sarcasm, in case you didn't catch it). The less government invasiveness the better.

.308 Ammo

I posted this link before, but to summarize on its own entry:

The site Rifle Company has a post on one of its forums that's continuously updated with the cheapest 7.62x51mm ammo on the Net, aptly titled "The cheapest 7.62x51mm Surplus on the Internet". The forum also has some interesting posts, like The 10 Golden Rules of Ammo and All About U.S. Military Small Arms Ammunition. Great stuff!

Follow-Up Comment

A follow-up to the previous comment:

Clarification: The AK-47s used for hunting that I was referring to are semi-auto versions of the weapon, not the full-auto versions. That is, the "assault weapon" version of the gun, not the "assault rifle" version. The problem with the AK is that it's not particularly accurate in its common incarnation, so it's not very well suited to hunting.

And one more thing about anti-gun legislators: they're not only acting illegally (in terms of the Constitution), they're twisting the arms of legal gun-owners. That is, law-abiding citizens are forced to comply with the illegal legislation (an oxymoron on the surface, but it happens a lot) or become criminals. The anti-gunners would then point to defiant *formerly* law-abiding citizens as further "proof" that their illegal laws are correct. A blindly law-abiding citizen can't preserve his rights in the face of that, and committing civil disobedience in the case of firearms would get one killed by a government out of control (BATFE and FBI). The irony is that people in power don't need to have their own guns because they have security who do the dirty work of protection for them. Kind of like that hypocritical racist Rosie O'Donnell, who railed against handguns and backpedaled when it came to light that her kid's bodyguard carried a concealed handgun.

I have yet to hear one cogent and compelling reason from anyone for restricting 2nd Amendment rights.

GOA Article Comment

The GOA sent me an alert on Facebook, vectoring to an article related to the AWB.

People can and do hunt deer with AK-47s (in certain states, with 5-rd reduced capacity magazines, and with hunting loads). Yeah, I'm against a renewed AWB partly because I really like guns. It's not just that, though, it's because I have the right to own them. The reason the 2nd Amendment exists is to protect the people from a hostile government. Think the colonists would've been able to rise up against the British if they had no rifles? (Or would you have been one of those who welcomed the British domination because they told you they had your best interests at heart?) Rack your brain a bit harder.

I'd love to own an assault rifle, except I can't afford the 20-grand that it takes to buy one because of stupid anti-gun legislation. Since you seem to be confused, assault rifles are machine guns. "Assault weapon" is a bogus term the anti-gun people invented to mean semi-auto versions of assault rifles.

I'm a law-abiding citizen with a permit to carry. (I'll state that I'm an employed, white-collar engineer in high-technology and not a redneck, since most of the anti-gun schmucks stupidly seem to equate armed citizens with the uneducated. Also I have two degrees.) I don't go around shooting people indiscriminately -- I'm one of the good guys. For sure I'm more upstanding than the police officers you see in the news who get caught selling dope from impound and beating on people just because they're not white. I'm probably also a better shot that most police officers, who are allowed to carry handguns most of the time. Handguns are used to save lives -- the lives of the owner and his family. If the police can have handguns, why not law-abiding citizens? What makes the police and military so special? Training? Citizens can get training, but they shouldn't need it to own guns on their own property. They should get training to carry guns in public, same as a driver's license. The real point of that is control: the perception is that police and military are on a short leash and are directed by the government, which is exactly what you *don't* want, at least if you value your freedom. A standing military and police state are the first steps to becoming a non-republic.

The point of carrying handguns out in public is because criminals don't follow laws saying that you can't carry a loaded semi-auto handgun, rifle, or shotgun. (Most states only allow concealed carry of handguns, not shotguns and rifles.) Even if you could carry a rifle, you want to get rid of semi-auto rifles, which probably includes magazine-fed bolt-action, so you'd have a single-shot bolt-action. It'd be tough to save your bacon against multiple attackers with that. Besides, rifle bullets have more penetration than handgun bullets -- or didn't you know that?

The problem with the anti-gun crowd is that they're illogical, and always appeal to the emotional side of things. "Why can't you accept 'reasonable' bans on guns?" What's reasonable? The 2nd Amendment is quite plain on saying that there's no such thing as a reasonable ban. In fact, I'd say that rules restricting guns are illegal according to the Bill of Rights. Anyone following the NFA, GCA, etc., is actually guilty of breaking the highest law in the United States of America! Of course I'm not saying to break those rules, because the ATF will kick down your door and shoot you if you do. I'm saying that our legislators can't even follow our own laws, so how can they expect normal folks to respect their stupidity?!

Criminals don't follow laws by definition. Any new anti-gun laws, therefore, will be ignored by criminals. The only people that will lose their guns are the people who follow the law. So you'll have criminals with guns and law-abiding citizens without guns. Who's at a disadvantage? Think about it. Can't be more plain than that.

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

Just to make sure that I was using the idiom properly, I googled "wait for the other shoe to drop" and found a site that explained the origin of the phrase:

This phrase means "to await an event causally linked to one that
one has already observed". In the form "drop the other shoe",
meaning "say the next obvious thing" or "end the suspense", it dates
from the early 20th century. It derives from the following joke:

A guest who checked into an inn one night was warned to be quiet
because the guest in the room next to his was a light sleeper. As
he undressed for bed, he dropped one shoe, which, sure enough,
awakened the other guest. He managed to get the other shoe off in
silence, and got into bed. An hour later, he heard a pounding on
the wall and a shout: "When are you going to drop the other shoe?"

I have no idea if it's apocryphal or not, but I liked the joke.

Tiptacon

A while ago I found a site with a guy offering to add a rail to an HK-91 wide handguard for mounting a vertical foregrip. For some reason I didn't post it here. The real interesting thing, though, was the technique of using a sling with the foregrip to minimize the effect of recoil. Apparently, with an appropriate sling tension, by pushing forward on the foregrip, one can better keep the rifle in line with the target. It certainly made me revisit my stance on foregrips.

Edsger Dijkstra

Joel sent me a great link to a paper by Edsger Dijkstra on "the cruelty of really teaching computer science" and notably "radical novelties". The paper wanders all over the place, but it's excellent in many ways, particularly in highlighting that people misconstrue digital computers to have analog qualities, and that metaphors fall short in almost every technological instance.

西行法師

From some checking I did earlier: Saigyo Hoshi on Wikipedia. A collection of some waka by Saigyo. A translation of the quote I was looking for.

Super Sniper Riflescope

My dad told me about this scope as a possibility for one of my black rifles. Granted, the name "Super Sniper" is a bit pretentious. Still, it's got decent specs and doesn't cost as much as a Leupold.

WaterMill

Not a water-powered mill, but a water producing element called WaterMill. Joel sent me the link, and it looks pretty cool. Too bad they don't have more details, specifically pricing at the moment. That'd be pretty fugly on the house, though.

Leather Belts

I found a couple places that sell made-in-USA leather belts.
Solesu
Leather & Things

NH & FL Carry Permits

The application for New Hampshire carry is available online.

Florida requires that an applicant send away for a packet.

Combat Shotgun

I've been thinking up ways to trick out a Remington 870 shotgun for home defense. I was thinking that the 18" barrel (since MN prohibits SBSes) with a pistol grip, metal pump foregrip with a rail to hold a vertical grip, extended tube magazine, and receiver attachment with a shotshell holder and rail to hold a red dot would be pretty good.

Then I got to thinking that it'd be neat to have a detachable magazine for a shotgun. Flipping through Shotgun News, I saw an ad for a Izhmash's Saiga-12, which is an AK-47 receiver converted to fire shotshells. A company called Alliance Armament makes modified Saiga-12s as well as 20- and 30-rd drum magazines. Sweet! The base gun itself is only $600 or so, but when one starts accessorizing it, things get expensive really fast. Alliance offers a "reliability service" which makes me think that the Saiga as-is has issues. Their rail system is $250, and the drums area $380 and $425.

Then again, semi-auto only could jam in a critical situation. The SPAS-12 can operate in either mode, which would be better. I think I'll stick with the cheaper pump option for actual defense, but I might buy a Saiga-12 just for the hell of it.

Demiforce

This guy I used to know at OSU from the Japanese Club apparently has "made it" in the game industry. CNN has an article about his game Trism.

I saw the link in my CSS reader and figured I'd skim it. The pic kind of looked like Steve Demeter, and his name was mentioned in the text. "Nah, it can't be" I thought, but when the text mentioned Demiforce, a handle he'd used in the past, that settled it. Steve was always pretty driven to write games, so it's not really a surprise. Pretty wild, though.

Google Blows

I've had to keep these pages hidden by blanking out the template since I posted about "CCAW". I realized that the phrase was sufficiently unique to turn up high on the list of a search of that phrase, so I deleted the post and submitted a removal request to Google. They pulled the page from the index, yet it was added again later by the crawler for some unknown reason, and linked to the page that was supposedly deleted. Fuckin' piece of shit! With the pages blanked I can still access my links, which is kind of all I care about. Still, it sucks the way this worked out.

Glass Blocks

I was considering making a glass block skylight, so I did a little search and found that a company IBP (Innovative Building Products) makes them. It wasn't quite what I was looking for, but amusingly enough, IBP is a Berkshire Hathaway company.

IBP also makes glass walkways and such, which is kinda cool, too.

Pittsburgh Corning actually makes glass blocks—the IBP skylights are a derivative product. They have a projects site as well. According to IBP's site, other vendors include Solaris, Mulia, and Weck.

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