'07 Springfield-Style Sling Use

I'd posted one link on how to use the '07 sling before, but I came across an article by Walt Kuleck, who co-wrote the assembly guide for the AR-15 that I have.  I found the vintage instruction manual pictures used to be more illustrative than the pictures in the previous link.

Magazine Storage

Need a place to put your explosives?  Check out U.S. Explosive Storage!  Funky that they fabricate such containers, but somebody's gotta do it, eh?

Other Lowers

Found a couple AR-15 lowers of interest.  Still can't find any made out of steel, except the 80% ones that you have to finish yourself, or the $1k Spider Firearms one.

Aero Precision (I think they make the AR-57 as well)
Stubborn Mule Outdoor Supply (slick looking single-shot lower, except I prefer the standard trigger guard)

Another BMG

Another .50 BMG rifle is available, from Desert Tactical Arms.  Ronnie Barrett created a monster!

Ballistic Coefficient

The subject of ballistic coefficients has become of interest to me lately.  I found a site with information on bullets and their BCs with downloadable spreadsheets.

Blasphemy

The Old Testament is badass.

Large Caliber Miscellany

So I was searching for information on loading large caliber projectiles.  Though I haven't even gotten my .50 yet, I'm already looking at larger bores....  Having found a source for 20mm Vulcan brass, I was curious about what it takes to load the monster.  That led me to a site on THR that has a bunch of links that are useful, as well as information from a guy who shoots PTRD and PTRS rifles.

The useful links:

• Reloading the .50 BMG - Good info on how it's done!
• CH4D - Reloading equipment for eccentric calibers such as 20mm Vulcan, Solothurn, and Lahti.
• The Gatling Gun - History from an Army website.
• Bartlett Reloaders - For once-fired brass.
• Pat's Reloading - .50 BMG projectiles.
• Hi-Tech Ammunition - .50 BMG projectiles.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

We had to take the MBTI test at work.  Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia entry has this to say:

Voluntary
It is considered unethical to compel anyone to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It should always be taken voluntarily.

Confidentiality
The result of the MBTI Reported and Best Fit type are confidential between the individual and administrator and, ethically, not for disclosure without permission.

We were compelled to take it, and the results will probably be aggregated at the manager level.

Anyhow, I mentioned it to the wife, and she wanted to know more about it, so I dug up a test for her in Japanese.  I found a second source as well.  She was exactly what I had her pegged as.

20mm Ammo

I found a place to get 20mm Vulcan ammo online: Brashco Specialty Ammo!!  $6 for sized brass, and $0.85 for training bullets (probably hollow).  Might be cool to get a live round just to have!  I've got some dummy rounds, but those aren't nearly as interesting.

Article on Appleseed

Washington Post ran an almost-fair article on the Appleseed Project.

About Firearms Cleaning

In pursuit of .50 BMG action, I was looking for more advice on cleaning for accuracy.  A site called 6mmBR.com has information on bore cleaning as well as words of advice regarding brushing, as in whether it's necessary or not, from various shooting luminaries.

Henshold-Wetzlar

The Hensoldt-Wetzlar scope for the G3 is nice, but the lens covers are annoying to open.  I've been looking for a replacement, but it seems like the Butler Creek ones aren't quite the right size for the bells.  A discussion on HKPro claims that the #3 covers should work.  Midway's chart, however, says #3 is 35.3mm, whereas I measured 32mm using a ruler.  I'm going to have to break out the calipers.  In further searching, I found a site that details the 3 generations of H-W scopes.  I have the 3rd gen scope, it seems.

How Asians Desecrated the Peace Sign

Pretty hilarious stuff.

Amateur Radio w/o a License

I can't remember what I was looking for, but this link has been open for a while and I needed to get it off my tab stack.  Useful links were: Nets registered with ARRL (moved relative to the article) and searchable airport frequencies.

ウェブ飲み会

ヒトはまじでこういうことするのか？

「ネット飲み会」、「オンライン飲み会」とも。わざわざ出かけるのではなく、自分の部屋で1人でパソコンの前に酒とつまみをもってきて、ネットで会話を交わしながら飲むバーチャル飲み会。あるウェブ飲み会のたった1つの約束事は、自分の酒とつまみを申告すること。「水割りと柿の種」とか「焼酎とスルメ」といった風に自分が飲んでいる酒とつまみをパソコンに打ち込むだけである。そうした後は、パソコンのモニターの画面に好きな話題を打ち込んで行くと次々とそれについての話題がほかの参加者から打ち込まれ、酒を飲みながら楽しむことができる。ウェブ飲み会の特徴は、いつでも、どこでも、何かをしながらでも参加できること。「外に飲みに出かけるとお金がかかる」「会社の友人や上司との飲み会では、説教を聞かされたり、いつも同じ話題になってしまう」といったことから、こうしたウェブ飲み会を好む若者が増えているという。サントリーの開設した「ほろよい.com」は会員制だが、自分のアバター（サイト上の分身）を決めて、テーマごとの小部屋で好きなように話すことができる。実際に会って飲み会をすると、バーチャルとリアルのギャップが出てしまうので、あまりオフ会をすることはないとか。

Proper Use of a Rifle Sling

Great tutorial on how to use a sling with a rifle, with pictures.  I was wondering how the hell to use my Brownells sling!

Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun

While looking for information on sling use for the Appleseed Project shoot this weekend, I came across a brilliant piece, "Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun," by Eric Raymond, the Cathedral and the Bazaar guy.  Maybe I knew that he was a kindred geek with guns, but I don't think I'd read this particular piece before.

Indeed, consequence-avoidance has been the anathema of American society for the past 40 years at least.  Real choices, real actions, real responsibility.  For the flavor of this alone, I'd own a gun—never mind that it's fun to shoot!

Fouling of DI Actions

There's an interesting article in Defense Review that discusses the effect of fouling on direct-impingement M4s.  The claim of the author is that the problem is fouling of the bolt carrier group, but weak springs and light buffer weights.  Perhaps I need to look into those reliability mods, although the O-ring seems to be more for automatic fire.

xkcd on Freedom

You know, I've actually thought about this before.  What would it take to completely change your life for the better?  I'm not sure what the hell I'd do if I could "fix" everything.

How to Make Brass

Having started handloading, I was curious as to how metallic cartridge brass is made.  A quick search brought up an informative link. One poster made a few interesting comments:

The necking operation on cases is done with an external forming die, not unlike a resizing die. It generally takes two to three progressive steps, with the incoming parts prelubricated and dried. Before the necking operation, the cases body has to be annealed and pickled (washing in dilute acid to clean the anneal carbon and to etch the surface), then washed in a lubricant and dried.

There is no internal profile mandrel for the shoulder and neck angle, but there is a sizing mandrel which is pulled out through the mouth of the case after necking to make sure the ID of the case mouth is correct. Some processes pull the sizing mandrel out of the case mouth while the case is still in the necking die, as this gives a much more precise ID and OD of the case mouth, but the amount of metal working required results in very low tool life and further work hardening of the case mouth.

In any case, the case goes through “neck and mouth” annealing after the tapering operation to relieve the stress built up from the necking operation, to soften the neck so it can “obdurate” or seal the chamber against blow back, and to soften the mouth so when it is crimped to the bullet, stress cracks do not develop.

In the US military production, the neck and mouth anneal “corona” or annealing mark must be left as proof that the anneal was performed. For commercial brass and most other countries’ military brass, this proof is not required, so the brass is pickled after the necking operation. That is the main reason US military brass is normally not as pretty as everyone elses, but it is generally much better structurally.

Just a few clarifications of how ammunition cases are made. First, almost all brass cased ammo, if not all, is made by the drawing process. The only extrusion process I am aware of is for the aluminum cases made by the boys in Idaho, and that is a very special process. The cases are formed at very high speed so the metal does not have time to work harden. Special presses and special knowledge are required.

As to brass case making equipment, it is readily available. Most of the major manufacturers in the USA us surplus ordnance factory equipment from WWII. This machinery was very heavily built and lasts forever. Even the US Army plant LCAAP still uses a lot of this equipment, though they have spent a great deal of money in the past 10 years on new machinery and new processes.

If you want to go into the case making business, let me know. We have quite a bit of machinery available, and we are constantly getting more in. The basis process is start from a purchases cup, draw it to length through two to four draws, trim is, head it once or twice, turn the head and extractor groove, anneal the body, taper for rifle cases, and final trim. Depending on what caliber you are making, the process is either simpler of much more complicated.

It’s not cheap to get into this business, and we are at the peak of the market now. If you start making cases now, you could be bankrupt in a year if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down. There will be a lot of surplus capacity on the market when that happens. That said, if you have the money, we will sell you the equipment and the know how.

Just a little more on how cartridge cases are manufactured. Worldwide, there are two similar but distinctive processes used to make most of the small caliber brass cased ammo. I am leaving out the aluminum case manufacturing as that is a unique process developed and used by only one major company, and it wouldn’t be fair to them to tell the little that I do know about the process.

What I refer to as the US process starts from coiled 70%cu/30%zn brass (cartridge brass) that is annealed, then fed into a double acting press where a round blank is cut, then a cupping punch pushes the blank into and through a forming die. The formed cup pops out the other side, where it is collected, washed, annealed, pickled, lubricated, and dried.

Cups are generally formed in multiple tooled die sets, with each stroke making five or more cups. The more cups made per stroke, the less percentage of scrap generated and the higher the production rate.

The cups are fed into the initial draw press, where a punch pushes them through a die stack, typically three dies high. The dies are normally lubricated with a constant flow, and it is common to put spacers between the dies with channels to allow the lube to flow to all of the dies during the forming. At the bottom of the die stack is a stripper made up of steel jaws and a spring to hold it together. The stripper generally mates into a conical stripper ring to add a bit of closing force as the drawn case component is pulled from the punch.

Additional draws are performed as required to reach the final o.d. and length, and in some cases, an interdraw anneal is performed to relieve the stress built up by the cold working in the draws. Generally, the components are washed before anneal to prevent the lubricant being baked onto the surface, and after the anneal, the components are pickled in a mild acid bath, then washed and dried. The acid bath can remove the carbon that would be on the component if it had not been washed prior to the anneal, but the pickling bath gets dirty quick as a result, and a carbon residue will often be left in and on the cup. Draws do not like dirty cups!

The pickling wash is a very critical step in the process. After the annealing, the grain size of the brass has grown, and the pickling etches out between the fully formed grains, leaving a microscopically rough surface. This rough surface helps to carry the drawing lubricant through the draws, reducing the surface friction between the brass and the draw dies.

On the subject of draw tooling, most high production operations use carbide dies for the forming operations. Punches are mostly steel, though you will find some unique metals being used in the heading operation, especially for the stem, or internal mandrel. When using steel, brass tends to load up on the surface during cold working, even with a flood of lubricant. The loading of brass onto the working surface of punches and steel dies will cause case scratching, high draw loads, and host of other undesirable problems. The loading can be reduced or eliminated by flash chroming the draw punches. Dies are not typically chrome plated as they are frequently polished or otherwise reworked (it is common practice to take the third die in a die stack, once it has worn our or become scratched, and rework it to the dimensions of the second die in the stack, and so on. This reduces the tooling costs and inventory required to support a production operation).

In modern production, such as for 5.56mm cases, the interdraw anneal has been eliminated. For 7.62mm, an interdraw anneal is still in general use.

After the final draw, the component is trimmed to length. Historically the trim is made on dedicated lathes, using either a pointed tool or a rolling cutter wheel. The use of pinch trimming has become much more common in the process as it can be combined into a drawing operation, eliminating a machine and a process step.

Following final draw and trim, the component is washed and dried. Some processes apply a light lubricant prior to heading, or the component is not washed after draw and the draw lube dries on the case. Generally, the drawn part needs to be dry when it goes into heading as moisture on the heading bunter can cause distortion in the primer pocket during the heading operation.

Heading is generally performed on a horizontal toggle press, and most heading presses head one part per stroke. In the past, heads were formed in two steps, with a first step partially forming the primer pocket and also flattening the base of the draw component. This step is called by many names including bunting, pocketing, flattening, pre-pocket, etc. The second step forms the finished primer pocket and stamps on the headstamp, which can indicate the manufacturer, plant, year, and a host of other info. The US 5.56mm ammo from LCAAP made on the high speed equipment for years displayed a series of dots that were binary code for the station number the case was made on.

This second step is called heading, pocketing, bunting, etc., so it is not always clear what is being discussed unless you clarify the terms. The heading bunters can be made as one piece or two pieces where the pocket punch and the headstamp section can be separated. The headstamp can be formed on the bunter face by engraving (not easy or pretty), EDM (easy and pretty), or by a process called hobbing where a hobbing punch is used to form the bunter using a hydraulic press. Hobbing has the advantage of workhardening the bunter during the forming process, but EDM’s advantages have pretty much displaced hobbing.

The typical US heading operation forms a flange on around the head of the case as a result of the metal flow during the heading. Metal flow is critical to the internal hardening of the head of the case, and without proper flow, the primers have a tendency to fall out with regularity when fired. If you section a case head after heading, polish the surface, and etch it with acid, you can see the flow lines of the metal grains resulting from the heading. If the closed bottom of the drawn component is not fairly flat internally, the heading bunter can displace a plug of metal from the bottom before impacting the internal heading stem or mandrel, and little or no cold work of the head material will occur, and the head’s internal hardness will be too low to hold the primer or prevent other distortions during firing. To prevent this from occurring, the cupping tooling can be changed to reduce the crowning of the cup, or a flattening step can be used prior to final heading.

Internally the case is supported during heading using a mandrel or stem that has a profile that matches the internal profile of the post headed case. The stems can be of hardened steel or other dense, non-ductile metal. Ferrotic has been used with some success for these parts.

After heading is complete, the case is headturned on a dedicated lathe using a formed cutting tool that replicates the finished head form, including the chamber on the case head rim, the head diameter, the extractor groove, and the angle leading up to the case body. The cutting tools can be profiles ground into straight tool steel or profiles ground into round washers of tool steel. The round style cutters have the advantage of being easily resharpened, and they can be resharpened numerous times.

Following head turn, the cases are washed, body annealed, pickled, lubricated, and dried. The tapering of the case and the forming of the shoulder and neck can be done on horizontal taper presses, which are not common in large manufacturing operations, or on vertical presses with indexing table. The indexing table allows for multiple tapering steps on one press, and can include high speed milling spindles to trim the cases to final length before they are ejected from the press.

Following the tapering operation, the cases are washed, then neck and mouth annealed. For US military cases, the anneal corona is left in place as proof.

The flash hole in the primer pocket is typically pierced using a punch and mandrel die. In military operations and high volume commercial production, this is done at the primer inserting machine, but for case only manufacturers or for component sales, the cases can be pierced on dedicated punch presses. Failure to pierce a case is a critical defect in military ammunition, so redundant inspections are performed to assure that the flash hole is present.

The prior piece on US manufacturing process did not address the 5.56mm manufacturing at LCAAP. Back during the early 1970’s, a program called SCAMP (small caliber ammunition modernization program) was finally put into production. The basis model for case, bullet, priming, and loading was 24 station rotary turrets turning at 50 rpm for theoretical outputs of 1200 parts per minute. LCAAP has multiples lines for each component.

In order to reduce both capital cost and complexity, the SCAMP case making systems had some shortcuts in the process. Only two draws are used, with no interdraw anneal, and the final draw includes a pinch trim for the drawn part. The components are carried through the system in silicon bronze clips mounted on RC60 chain, and each process step (1st draw, 2nd draw, heading, headturn, piercing, 1st taper, 2nd taper, and final trim) are 24 station presses. A cup entering first draw at Station 1 will exit final trim from Station 1, and station identity is maintained through all the process steps including the washes and anneals.

Following the headturning and piercing, the cases are washed, annealed, and lubricated before going through tapering and final trimming. After final trim, the cases are washed, then neck and mouth annealed. A high speed gaging system is used to gage all critical dimensions and some surface flaws before the cases are ejected from the manufacturing system.

The truncated 5.56mm process operates very close to the theoretical limits of cold drawing from brass, and it took some time to fine tune the process to ensure that the cases produced were acceptable. That said, there is no competing system in the world that can produce 5.56mm at the rate produced at LCAAP.

As mentioned at the start, the other process commonly found is what I call the European Process. Manufacturing plants around the world use either the US Process or the European Process, depending on the sphere of influence under which that country falls. Reflecting the rather fluid states of influence, it is not uncommon to find both processes in use making different calibers of ammunition reflecting the real politic of the era the lines were installed.

I was raised on the US Process, and I have spent most of my life working with systems based on this process, but I honestly feel the the European Process is the better of the two. It flows more logically and is metallurgically more sound. Both processes make good or bad parts, but I have found the Eurpoean approach to be much more forgiving.

As in the US approach, most of the European Process is based on blanked and drawn cups as the input material. Through this step, the process is the same as the US Process.

That said, there are several systems in use around the world that cut and form cups from wire, using a multiple die, multiple blow header to form a cup, rather than forming the cup from coiled strip.

The big advantage of using brass wire as the input material is the lower cost of manufacture of the wire versus the strip, and the much lower scrap percentage of wire based cups versus strip bases cups. In the end, though, the main concern is producibility, and I have been in several plants in various parts of the world that had the machinery to make cups from wire, but they could not buy wire of sufficient quality to make ammunition. As a result, there are several heading machines to produce cups from wire sitting idle in plants from South America to the Middle East.

The case making process starts with cups, either blanked & cupped, or headed, which had been annealed and pickled, and passes them through a series of draws. The early European processes tended to dedicate one machine to one step, which resulted in a lot more machines and a lot slower production rate. Over the past thirty years or so, the Euro process has been refined and speeded up, so today, they are the best source of new machinery in the world.

Current technology would see the case cup enter a press where the draws and pinch trim were performed, the cases removed, cleaned, annealed, pickled, and dried, then re-fed into the same press but in later stations, where they would be headed, tapered, and pierced. For higher output rates, the process would be split, with the drawing and pinch trimming performed on a duplex tooled press so that two parts were made per stroke on that press, and then the annealed parts would be fed into a heading, tapering, and piercing press that made two parts per stroke. The “standard” stroke rate for new presses is 120 strokes per minute, so you could either make 120 or 240 ppm, depending on which approach was taken.

Note that by annealing the parts after the final draw and before the heading and tapering, a process step has been removed. Body anneal is not required, as the whole drawn case was annealed before the heading. The heading can now cold work the case head without effecting the anneal of the body of the case which will be subsequently tapered.

After exiting the press following the heading, piercing, and tapering, the parts are washed and dried, then fed into a combination headturning and trimming to length machine. This is the pivot point where the Euro and the US processes diverge. In the US process, the headturning is performed before the body anneal, while the Euro process waits until after the body anneal and taper to do the headturning. The US process uses the headturned extractor groove to hold the case during the tapering operation, while the Euro process does not rely upon this.

In addition, the US process uses an “open die” for the heading operations, which results in a flange being formed during the heading. Typically, the flange is a 45 degree angle out from the body of the case, allowing room for the metal to flow so that the cold working will harden the internal areas of the head surrounding the primer pocket.

The Euro process has depended much more on a two blow heading process, so they typically use a “closed die” for the heading operations. Very little or no flange is formed during the heading operations, but rather they depend on a back and forth style of material flow, where the pre-pocket forms some of the primer pocket but also pushes the face of the head up. The following final pocket forms the finished primer pocket and the headstamp.

The origins of the difference in the processes probably relates to the use of “Boxer” style primers in US type ammo, and “Berdan” type primers in Euro ammo. That the Berdan in Berdan primers was a New York native and Boxer was an Englishman only adds to the confusion.

Most Euro processed ammo has the flash hole drilled, rather than pierced. This originally was due to the very small diameter of the Berdan type flash holes, which could not be reliably pierced due to the ratio of the hole diameter to web thickness. Skinny punch, thick metal, not good. Only the later machinery, tooled to produce the Boxer type primer pockets, can use the piercing method described above.

Now, the Euro cases are exiting the tapering operation without a headturn and without a final trim. The next step, following a wash operation, is the headturning and trimming, which is performed in a dedicated lathe. As the component is now tapered, it can be pushed into a fixed conical collet, and turned. Cutters for the headturn approach straight in to form the extractor groove and head form, while a single point cutter is introduced at the mouth end to trim the case to length. Many of the mouth trim cutters operate on two axes, so they can cut the case to length, then chamfer the inside of the case mouth to make inserting the bullet easier.

Following the headturn and trim, the cases are washed and a mouth and neck anneal is performed. Euro process cases are often washed after these steps, but it is not uncommon to see NATO homologated countries leave the anneal corona in place like the US military ammo.

All of the above commentary has been related primarily to the manufacture of rimless, necked rifle cases, with an emphasis on the military types, and all relating to brass. I have no experience, but I have been told the steel case manufacturing process is very similar, but a bit more strenuous. Additionally, steel cases must be either treated after manufacture, using lacquer, phosphate coating, copper washing, or some other sealant, or the case cups must be made from “clad steel”. Clad steel is steel that has a brass layer plated to both sides prior to the cupping operation. The cladding operation can be anything from explosively clad brass to electrochemical plating. The brass cladding acts both as a seal to prevent moisture reaching the steel, and as a sacrificial element to minimize corrosion.

Pistol case manufacturing is generally much simpler, but of similar process. Making rimmed cases of any type (.38 Special for example) is a bit more difficult as the case head must be formed out much further than a rimless type head, but it is easily done on available surplus machinery.

If you have any comments, corrections, or questions, let me know.

Edit: The link to Demsey MFG has a couple of good animations on punch operation and the draw process.  Also, cartridge brass is 70% copper and 30% zinc.

Gun Control Commentary

I should really quit reading CNN.  My remarks:

To all the mental midgets who want to ban guns, fine: I'll destroy mine when the police and military destroy all of theirs. After all, if guns only exist to kill people, then morally speaking police and military shouldn't have them either. Or does that badge or uniform somehow magically make them better than everyone else? Oh, I know, you wanted someone to protect you so you don't have to think about doing it yourself. Now that's sheer, irresponsible laziness.

"Benevolent law enforcement" is every bit as much an idyllic myth as "benevolent government." Gun-haters are typically the naive sort who think that trusting in a class of people with special power over everyone else is actually a desirable thing. Abuse of privilege is a truism: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

C&R Discounters

Some online sales places offer discounts to Crufflers.  I found a couple lists, one on The Gun Wiki and a more comprehensive one on 7.62x54r.net.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The artist has some serious issues with religion, but it's pretty funny stuff.  I blame Joel for pointing me at this web comic.

Curling Guide

Meant to post this graphic while the Winter Olympics were going on:

Flash for iPhone Camera

The iPhone's camera really needs a flash. Since there's no external trigger for one, there are several aftermarket devices that emulate flash capability.

Howto to build your own "flash" (actually a light) add-on for the iPhone.
FastMac iV battery pack and light

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.