The Role of Ron Paul

Comments on RP winning the CPAC straw poll:

Obama's senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, who's Iranian, said it best: "that president-elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one." The President's job as head of the executive branch is to see that the law as put into effect by the legislative branch is carried out, not to directly wield authority over the citizenry. The administration may suggest direction to Congress, but ultimately they are the lawmakers, not the President. Legislating from the Oval Office (via executive orders and other less overt action) should be abhorred even more than Supreme Court justices legislating from the bench.

Ron Paul makes sense, and the guy is on the money on just about everything. There are two issues: 1) he's too old to take office in 2012 (Reagan was the oldest to be inaugurated at 69) and 2) he's eminently un-electable, as evidenced by censorship of his 2008 campaign, not only by the liberal media, but the neo-con media, including Fox News and the NRA.

Make no mistake, if he got on the ballot, I'd vote for him. However, my take is that Dr. Paul's role is not to become President, but to reform U.S. politics, get the right kind of people in Congress, and to pave the way for when someone like him can actually get elected.

Save the Whales but Not the Universe

I've been posting too many CNN comments lately. On the idiot activist who boarded a Japanese whaler to affect a "citizen's arrest":

Treat these "activists" for what they are: pirates and/or terrorists! Shoot 'em and dump 'em!

And:

@Guest: Way to comment, anonymous coward! Like it or not, "terrorist" is a political term. The activists have no business harassing Japanese whalers. If they don't like the law, pursue changing it in a court of law. If they don't, they're operating outside the law (by definition) and are vigilantes (if the whalers can be considered objectively criminal, which is doubtful) or terrorists (the term used against people on the wrong side of the law). They've been watching Star Trek IV too much.

Chubs on Planes

Comment on a CNN article—I'm sure I'm gonna get some hate over this one ;-)

As a frequent international traveler, I admit that I dread being seated next to a person whose girth spills over into my space. On the other hand, I can appreciate that the seats are generally too small, both in width and in depth. I'm 6' tall, of average build, so I always have my knees in the seat in front of me. As such, perhaps the available width is unreasonable as well. (Furthermore, why are the armrests so narrow?! They're barely wide enough to put one person's arm on, much less share between two people! If the adjacent passenger is large, then by default you lose the armrest....) Thus both the airlines and passengers are culpable to some degree.

Personally, I advocate charging by weight of the passenger plus luggage. (I say this as a 195-lb male who tends to take a lot in luggage.) A 90-pound woman carrying only her 5-lb handbag shouldn't pay as much as a 300-lb man with 50-lbs of luggage. Clearly they contribute differently toward the fuel usage. (All eco-activists should be for this one, since it's clearly an incentive to be greener!) Granted other public transportation like buses and trains don't do this, but they're short hop (using less fuel) and have the need to quickly board and unboard passengers, making pay-by-weight impractical. For airplanes you already have to check in, and people already seem to be willing to give in to cavity searches to board planes, so why not step on the scale? Could it be that some people fear being weighed more than being rectally probed?! ;-)

Keep Tube

I was using TubeSock to download YouTube videos, but it doesn't handle the high-resolution MP4 versions. Thus I found a site called Keep Tube that acts as a gateway to pick up the MP4 stream. The direct URL is:

http://keep-tube.com/?url=XXX

XXX should be the YouTube "watch" URL.

More Shit

Further commentary on the shit thread of Demian's:

Finally getting back to this. What else am I gonna do when I'm down with a cold....

I was throwing the charity thing out there to counteract Demian's assertion that conservatives are cold-hearted SOBs. I've heard of a study (but haven't seen it myself) that indicates that conservatives, particularly midwestern ones, donate in much higher percentages than liberals, particularly the ones in California.

Charity for business may be, and I quote, "fucking bullshit", but it's not like that for me and, I'd wager, for most individuals. I feel like it's a social imperative: I am able to make a decent living developing HDDs because the social structures exist to support my specialization. As such, I can afford to donate from my salary to help as I see fit. On the other hand, much of my donations go to cancer research organizations.

The problem with sending aid to third world countries is that usually the dictator or whatever corrupt government is running things takes the spoils. How would you expect to "end poverty", though? There will always be poor people (despite what socialists will have one believe), and poor people beget more poor people. It's an unending cause, and to expect otherwise is purely unrealistic. Charity could be a means of preserving the status quo -- or it could be a good element to balance the tendency of things to go to shit. Your call. I prefer to believe that some good can be done. That said, some is never enough.

Part Two:

Your argument about Venezuelan gun possession is bogus, by the way. Check your facts -- most of those 6M guns are illegal. Right now only law enforcement can legally buy guns there. They just don't have the gestapo environment that the U.S. has. Americans are in general too cowardly to revolt, otherwise we would've had a new government after the Waco massacre.

If you're talking "socialism" like Chavez and dictators like him -- might as well be Hitler or Stalin -- then you're really nuts. Democratic socialism is at least plausible in that they believe that non-totalitarian government can help the underprivilieged. Communist socialism has been completely discredited. Communism itself is an ideal that unfortunately cannot be implemented practically: anyone with a modicum of logical thinking can appreciate that in order to administer things fairly a class must exist that decides those matters, and such an administration is prone to corruption. Plus, a populace that puts themselves in a position of servitude deserve whatever they get.

Small-time tyrant socialists like Castro (who vehemently denied being a communist before rising to power...now he's unabashed about it) and Chavez needed their backers to be armed in order to execute their "revolutions". When they're in power, though, they aim to crack down on access to weapons of resistance so as to enforce their monopoly of force. That's precisely why the people shouldn't trust a government that disbars the use of arms: it's the first step down the road to totalitarianism.

Part Three:

You're right about Jefferson's support of public education. I think his heart was in the right place, but the problem with government involvement in education is that they then gain the ability to brainwash future generations. In this regard, homeschooling is a vitally important option to maintain. I don't see myself doing it (my kids will go to a private school if I can afford it, otherwise I'll shoot for a charter school) but it's every right of a parent to avoid government-mandated crap. Regarding private versus public, I went to a Montessori for a year in elementary and learned more in that one year than in any other two years in the public school system. (This coming from a kid who's been an honors student since 3rd grade.) Regardless of the availability of public education, private will always be superior because of less red tape and the presence of a business mandate (if the kids don't do well, parents quit paying for it).

In any case, the mandatory public systems instantiated by the government, regardless of good intent, are villainous. People shouldn't be forced to comply with someone else's idea of how they should spend their income.

As for the infallibility of icons such as Jefferson, of course he was human and had his failings, such as keeping slaves. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, eh. Abraham Lincoln, however, revered, was not as great as some make him out to be: he was the first to make extensive use of Executive Orders, which are used for vile purposes today. I'm a bit torn on the Civil War: while slavery was definitely a bad thing, the right of the states to secede should have been inviolate. (Yes, I'm solidly in the camp of the Anti-Federalists.) Slavery was an institution at the time, and while now it seems very antiquated, the whole colonial "white man's burden" was at a time the prevailing thinking. Kind of like smoking used to be atarimae, a sharp contrast to how it is villified today. Then there's that piece of shit Franklin Roosevelt who devalued the dollar, outlawed private gold ownership, created a raft of socialist programs including Social Security, and managed to get us embroiled in WWII, which set the stage for the U.S.'s interventionist foreign policy in the 70 years since. (Yes the Japanese attacked the U.S., but not until after we embargoed them, basically cutting off the lifeline to an island nation, to limit their aggression. The embargo itself was tantamount to an act of war. I'm not an apologist for what happened, but it's important to look at the entire context of the conflict. Plus, we had intelligence that the Japanese were planning an attack. Just clarifying my views on WWII -- basically one that pisses off both Americans and Japanese!).

Information on Venezuelan gun laws is hard to find, but the sources I've been able to find indicate that private ownership isn't legal (for example). From the link, dated 2006.11.25:

However, the Chavez government has tightened gun laws. Once it was easier to take out a gun licence than a driving licence, but now only police officers can buy guns legally. In spite of this, there are a number of gun shops nationwide and the evident levels of gun ownership would suggest that the law is not being implemented effectively.

Augmented Reality Wi-Fi Helicopter

Russ sent me a link to the Parrot AR.Drone site. I want. Of course the salient question is: how much does the damn thing cost?!

News Dump

Well, it's not news when it gets old. Maybe I should call my lingering browser windows "olds"....

Product review: Vibram Five-Fingers Classic [barefootrunner.com]
Why a Big Meal Makes You Hungry [WSJ]
Newly-Found Windows Bug Affects All Versions Since NT [Slashdot]
Why do we give to disaster relief? [CNN]
Boogie Board writing tablet [CrunchGear]
Understanding Race - Human Variation

Plastic Port Buffer

Just found a non-marring port buffer for the HK-91. I've heard that the metal ones scratch the receiver when removed, which is undesirable. Might have to get one of these to try out.

Shit

One of Demian's scatological rants on FB turned political, prompted me to respond, which led to him questioning the manhood of gun owners and me to retort with the following piece of eloquence:

You can joke about gun owners compensating all you want, it's bullshit. We got more inches and testosterone than the pussy anti-gunners. We'll screw your girl and her friend and they'll be back in a week for more when they can walk again. =D

Wouldn't be surprised if he unfriends me this time, haha. That's ok, we weren't butt buddies anyhow.

Organic Homemade Ketchup

This showed up in my Facebook stream because Marigold commented on the author's wall picture. The recipe looks pretty simple:

INGREDIENTS

1 x 28 oz. Can Tomato Puree

1 x 6 oz Can Tomato Paste

1 Tbsp Vinegar (I like Unfiltered Raw Apple Cider)

1/4 Cup Water

1/6 tsp each Garlic & Onion Powder

1 pinch each Secret Spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice

1 tsp Celtic Sea Salt

1/4 tsp Stevia Extract Powder

1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum (optional natural thickener)

DIRECTIONS

In a large saucepan, pour in the 1st 4 ingredients. Stir, and bring to a simmer.

Add in the rest of the ingredients, and stir them in using a whisk.

Simmer for 10-20 minutes. The longer you simmer it, the thicker and more rich it will become.

Let cool,and pour into glass jar(s).

Well, that wasn’t too bad now was it.

You should have been making your own this whole time!

Will keep in the refrigerator for 7-10 days.

If you like tangier ketchup, add a little more vinegar. Sweeter? Add more sweetener.

You can play with the spices & seasonings to develop your own signature ketchup. Spicy sounds good, too.

What’s you’re favorite ketchup accompaniment to have with you’re new recipe?

How will you tweak it? I’d love to know how it goes for you :)

ENJOY!

Be Well,

-Maximillian Barry

Hmm, it uses Stevia. Did the FDA accept that finally...?

GI Joe Codenames

This is fucking hilarious if you grew up with GI Joe.

"Common Sense" Politics

Rebuttal to a stooge in CNN commentary:

Moron! The President has to "battle" for his stated policies because a large percentage of the population thinks the policies are stupid! Certainly you're not in any position to comment on anyone else's intelligence. This administration spent more in 2009 ($1.6T) than any single year of any prior administration, and they want to spend even more? You're not even smart enough to realize that no one knows whether the varied proposed solutions will work or not -- in every piece of legislation there are unintended consequences (as well as a mountain of pork). I don't trust the stooges in Congress, Democrat or Republican, to get it right. The solution? Quit monkeying with the economy, passing so much stupid legislation, and spending money we don't have. Pretty simple, but so many "smart" people don't seem to get it!

"Climate Change" My Ass

A bit of a blurb on a CNN article on U.S. opinion of climate change going the other way:

The "need to educate the American people" ?! Please, spare me the arrogance and self-superiority complex. Educate the people when you have something worthwhile to teach other than half-baked theories. The jury is still out on "climate change" -- yeah, they had to change the name because "global warming" didn't fit the cooling that's been seen. The alarmists are insisting the problem is now now now when science takes time. Yes, we should reduce consumption. No, that doesn't mean that Al Gore and his cronies who are getting rich off of the "green" movement (sweet deal using politics to corral dollars into one's pockets) are right about what they're pushing.

NFA

On occasion of getting fingerprinted for the first time, I got to thinking about SBRs. Specifically, if it's possible to register an AR-15 lower in multiple calibers and have multiple short-barreled uppers. Of course that's a popular question, and the consensus seems to be that for each short upper, one needs to have either an SBR lower or a pistol lower, otherwise the ATF might find that one is in possession of an unregistered SBR. One forum post has a letter from the ATF expressing this opinion (which is hardly the letter of the law, but it might as well be):

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO AND FIREARMS
WASHINGTON, DC 20226

MAR 29 2000


903050:GKD
3311

Dear Mr. :

This refers to your letter of January 22, 1999, requesting information on the legality of possessing a registered full auto AR15 and also possessing one or more semiautomatic pre-1994 assembled AR15 rifles. You appended a number of specific questions relating to this subject which will be answered in the order received.

1. Is it legal to own both?

There are no provisions under the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) or the National Firearms Act (NFA) that prevent an individual from possessing an AR15 registered machinegun and one or more semiautomatic AR15 rifles at the same time.

2. If legal to own both, which spare parts for the registered gun can you also own?

Any weapon which shoots automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger meets the definition of a machinegun in section 5845(b) of the NFA. An AR15 rifle which is assembled with certain M16 machinegun fire control components, and which is capable of shooting automatically is a machinegun as defined.

The definition of a machinegun in section 5845(b) also includes any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person. Thus, an AR15 rifle possessed with separate M16 machinegun components can meet the definition of a machinegun, if the rifle shoots automatically when the components are installed.

The fact that a person lawfully possesses a registered NFA firearm does not grant authorization to possess additional non-registered firearms. A person who possesses a registered M16 machinegun and a semiautomatic AR15 and a separate quantity of M16 machinegun components could be in possession of two machineguns.

We advise any person who possesses an AR15 rifle not to possess M16 fire control components (trigger, hammer, disconnector, selector, and bolt carrier). If a person possessed only the M16 machinegun and spare M16 fire control components for that machinegun, the person would possess only one machinegun.

3. Is it legal to use the upper receiver off of the semi-auto AR's on the registered AR if they are different lengths and calibers than listed on the Form 4's?

Before changing the caliber of a registered machinegun you should notify the NFA Branch in writing of the proposed change.

4. Can you have several short barrel uppers (less than 16 inches) for the registered AR and still own semi-auto AR's?

The definition of a firearm in section 5845 of the NFA includes a rifle having a barrel or barrels of less than 16 inches in length. An individual possessing more than one short (less than 16 inches) barreled upper receiver for a registered AR15 machinegun along with one or more semiautomatic AR15 rifles would have under their possession of control an unregistered short barreled rifle, a violation of the NFA.

5. If you change the barrel length or caliber do I need to notify your office if the change is not a permanent one?

This question was answered under Question 3.

We trust that the foregoing has been responsive to your inquiry.
If we can be of any further assistance, please contact us.


Sincerely yours,


[signed]
Edward M. Owen, Jr.
Chief, Firearms Technology Branch

The one pistol lower per SBR upper is a pretty ingenious solution.

I also found an SBR FAQ arfcom and an NFA FAQ on mdshooters.com. The latter has a bit on Pre-May dealer samples which was enlightening:

PreDealer guns are different. A Class III (SOT holder) can buy PreDealer guns, while these are cheaper but, they are not much cheaper. They are normally 2/3 the price of a transferable version. But once a SOT gives up thier license he/she may keep the Pre Dealer samples. They can not be sold to anyone other then a dealer or manufacturer when the owner is ready to sell them. People jumping through the hoops & paying the $500 yearly, to get thier SOT to buy these guns. It's worth the effort and cost, you can easily save thousands quickly on a couple guns.

Apparently the source of the Pre-May samples are MGs that were imported after 1968. Guns that were imported as semi-auto after '68 and then remanufactured in the U.S. and registered in the NFA are fully transferrable.

This NFA shit is tricky.

Haiti Violence & Pittsburgh Racism

Commentary on a CNN article:

Who's talking about Africans? Haitians may've descended from African slaves, but it's been a while now. Were you being racist, or do you just not know where Haiti is?

This street justice seems fine to me. A judge and jury may look more formal and take longer to get the job done, but you get the same result. Think of it this way: In that situation, losing your limited supplies of food and water may mean that you perish. Maybe that guy didn't have a choice because he had nothing, but that's what happens when resources are in contention. That's why people will never stop fighting.

And yet another article on racist cops on a power trip:

If the cops didn't identify themselves verbally and pull out their badges, which I highly doubt they did, then they were 100% in the wrong. I dislike pinning things on race, but how do you chalk this one up? Lucky for the cops that the guy didn't have a CCW. It's a lot harder to be a racist psycho when your victims are packing heat.

Bye-Bye FEC

Commentary on comments in this article:

Supporters of universal health care advocate mandatory use of individual income to fund a cause that many of those individuals object to. In other words, it's theft. If UHC is such a critical issue, why not create a mandatory venue for providing care for people who can't afford it? In other words (in case you have trouble with reading comprehension), make UHC a charity that people can contribute to according to their conscience and their cash flow. Most people would agree that it's more important to take care of their own families with their incomes first. So there's a solution for you, and one that doesn't involve stealing from the public.

Also:

Who's the brilliant person in the White House, the Presidential chef?

Seriously, though, you should be happy about this. It means that Hollywood and the bevy of liberal tech CEOs (Steve Jobs of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google come to mind) can spend their billions on their causes. Who specifically were you thinking of?

The fewer unnecessary laws, the better. We'll see how things go. SCOTUS can always reverse the decision in review of a later court case.

Also:

Hey, remember, the USA is a democratic republic, as in *Republic*an, and not a direct democracy. Hah! Also, your opinion doesn't represent that of everyone else, so keep your blanket pronouncements of disgracefulness to yourself unless you can provide a cogent reason as to why you think that is.

Festering Articles

Some stuff that's been stuck in my browser lately....

• Solar plant to store energy in molten salt [c|net]
• A review of the weirdest shoe ever [barefootrunner]
• Scientists create artificial meat [/.]
• Lotus Omnivore engine [autoblog] (so...can I piss in the gas tank for fuel?)

ACM Queue ICPC Challenge

The game is Capture. Looks like fun...too bad I don't have time to spend on it *sigh*

FIJA

A blog I read aperiodically had a link to an article at The Examiner regarding police harassing an activist who was passing out pamphlets. Not just any pamphlets, they were "A Primer for Prospective Jurors", from the Fully Informed Jury Association, ostensibly making mention of jury nullification. People really need to know about that, but judges certainly don't like it. Why would a former legislator want citizen juries invalidating unjust laws?

bile's treatment at the hands of the cops is reprehensible, too. Mala prohibita, indeed.

4A & The Cloud

How does the 4th Amendment apply to cloud computing? The law ought to err on the side of privacy. And I just had to make a comment:

@Demerit

Re automatic weapons v. the 2nd Amendment, it is very cut and dried. The people were intended to have access to the same weapons as the military, because the people themselves were intended to be the country's defense. The only fuzzy category of weapons is of the nuclear type -- most people couldn't afford those anyway, though. Hell, I don't trust the government to have military weapons! They have a monopoly of force. Things would be much better off if the thugs in charge couldn't muscle the people around so much.

Re Roe v. Wade: the issue is if the unborn infant is a full-fledged human or not, with all the rights and privileges thereof, because if it were, terminating it is malum in se. And since there's no practical difference between a child just before and just after birth, nor is there a logical and consistent way to delineate a clear point in gestation where one's humanity begins, it must in fact be at conception. However, as a society we make trade-offs: for example, we execute criminals who are a quantifiable threat to society (for non-supporters of capital punishment, an executed life sentence is virtually the same effect). Most of us do not consider that malum in se. If there's any argument for abortion it must be a rationale for trading an infant's life for a comparable objective (such as saving the life of the mother).

TED

I saw reference to this device called TED on c|net, and it looks pretty interesting. The Google PowerMeter software may or may not be good: if they're logging my consumption patterns, that could be unpleasant. ("At 2 AM power demand at his house spikes 150W, so he must be in the bathroom taking a whiz before he goes to sleep.") I'd rather keep some information off the Net, thank you very much. Still, it's an intriguing product.

News Dump

• Google hacked, may leave China [Google, CNN, c|net]
• Wi-Fi powered gadget charger @CES [c|net] - I had an idea a few years back on how to monetize wireless power...this is getting too close for comfort
• LPD displays [xconomy linked from /.] - seems like the phosphor-zapping technology found in CRTs just won't die?
• Genetically modified corn is bad for you [International Journal of Biological Sciences] - the paleos say plain corn ain't good for you, but then again the good stuff made from corn, bourbon whiskey, ain't good for you either

Full-Body Scanners

Of course the scumbags would have a way to store and forward the images from the full-body scanners. It's evidence, right? Plus, the TSA mofos need something to jack off to when they get bored. I mean, they even have a little room to do it in! Anyone who doesn't think that the body scanners are an outrageous violation of civil rights deserves to be decapitated with a dull knife.

A link on /. points out an issue in the UK that scanning kids violates child porn laws. Especially if the images can be stored!

As typical, some idiot from a repressed 2nd-world country (the UK) posted that guns are the problem in the U.S. An interesting viewpoint followed.

Oh please! can we just cut through the bullshit? You are probably from Europe, yes? Well let me explain how things are here in the USA: Here if you have a single dope bust the rest of your life is pretty much "deal or steal" since nobody will hire you for shit and many aid programs won't do jack for your junkie ass, so you have this HUGE underclass, that can't get any legitimate work, yet have their dope habit to pay for. How do you think they are gonna do that, hmmm?

By robbing your dumb ass, that's how!!! You wanna know what would happen if you magically made all guns disappear from the USA tomorrow? I'll tell you what would happen, you would have machete slaughters all over the news like you get in Africa, that's what. Here the middle class is all but extinct, the underclass is growing by the day, and many have no jobs, no future, and no reason to give a fuck about you and your ideals. Do you HONESTLY think making all the guns disappear if gonna make Johnny Junkie gonna forget about the pain gnawing in his guts because he ain't had his fix? Get fucking real pal. There are places in every major city here where even the cops are afraid to go after dark. You think no guns is gonna make those into happy places?

As long as you have huge masses of poor and drug addicts with no future and no reason to give a fuck you're gonna have violence, I don't give a crap if you ban guns or not. BTW drugs are illegal too, but I can score anything I want in under 30 minutes, you think I wouldn't be able to do the same with a gun?

Prepaid Smartphone

While researching alternatives to paying exorbitant fees for smartphones, I came across an article that notes a method for doing this on a GSM carrier. To wit: obtain a sim card from a prepaid service like T-Mobile or AT&T, purchase an unlocked phone like the Nexus One, and go. The downside is not having a data plan, but most smartphones can use Wi-Fi for that. It's another option, anyway.

RAS

Not Knight's Armament's "Rail Adapter System", but "Reasonable, Articulable Suspicion".

LAAW has an interesting seizure chart that summarizes the classes of police encounters. There's a standard encounter where they can talk to you like a normal citizen (although ignoring or refusing to talk to the cop would probably be construed as RAS). Then there are two types of "Fourth Amendment seizures": detention/frisk, as per Terry v. Ohio (aka the "Terry frisk"), and arrest. The former is based on RAS, the latter based on probable cause (PC).

The word "articulable" bothers me, as it seems like it should be "articulatable", as in a noun form of the verb "articulate". Of course, that's hard to say, so the lawyers had to make it "articulable". Apparently I'm not the only one that this bothers.

The Caring Tree

Behold all the good that the Hitachi Group does.

Government Intrusion

The difficulty with being a libertarian is that it's really neither traditional conservative nor liberal. Case in point, I find myself having to agree with ACLU types regarding government intrusion, which is more often than I'd care to based on some of their other positions.

From a c|net article:

"Who wants to live in a world where the government can listen in on every communication without any evidence of crime?" he said. "The consequences of that are that people won't communicate freely and the country would be very different as a result. Imagine how your conversation with a close personal friend would change if you knew someone else was listening. That's what is at stake. That's what needs to be protected."

The Decade From Hell?

A Cato Institute VP posits that 2000-2009 wasn't the "decade from hell". He does have a few convincing arguments. But what about things like intrusive full-body scanners in airports, irrational health care legislation, and arbitrary "hate crime" legislation, forcing the U.S. economy a leap further toward a socialist police state?

I for one am not counting on the country to remain stable. With all the insanity going on, it can't. Perhaps stability was only an illusion to begin with, though.

NHK World

Supposedly we could get NHK World in high-definition for free with a dish and HD tuner. Hmm.

Requirements: an LNB ("low noise block") converter, a satellite dish (2.5m-6m diameter), and a digital tuner.

IS-9 satellite, 4040 MHz, 26.59 Mbaud, FEC=1/2, polarization H. Azimuth and elevation are given, but for locations in South America. I suppose there're probably some ways to get more information about how to tune IS-9.

Speaking of which, there's some information on IS-9 itself on SatBeams as well as a channel list there and on LyngSat also.

Daren's Links

From Daren, dated 9/17:
BedBunker - a way overpriced box-spring replacement gun safe
TheReadyStore - emergency foodstuffs, etc.