Thaddeus Kosciuszko

I only became aware of Kosciuszko via kmk, but this "advice to youth" is insightful as to the means for right living:

To do honor to your family and yourself and at my recommendation, you must reread what follows every day so that it will be engraved on your memory on which your well being will depend.

Rise at four in the summer and six in the winter. Your first thoughts must be directed towards the Supreme Being; worship Him for a few minutes. Set yourself to work with reflection and intelligence, either at your prescribed duty carried out in the most scrupulous manner, or perfect yourself in some science in which you should have true mastery. Avoid lying under any circumstances in your life, but always be frank and loyal and always tell the truth. Never be idle but be sober and frugal even hard on yourself while indulgent to others. Do not be vain nor an egotist. Before speaking or answering on something, reflect and consider well in order not to lose your point and say something stupid. Never fail to give due recognition under any circumstances to the person who is in charge of your well being. Anticipate his desires and his wishes. Pay close attention with proper humility. Look for an opportunity to be useful. As you are a foreigner in the country, redouble your concern and efforts to gain trust and preference over the natives legitimately by your merit and superior knowledge. If a secret is entrusted in you, keep it religiously; in all your actions you must be upright, sincere and open; no dissimulation in your speech, do not argue but seek the truth calmly and with modesty, be polite and considerate to everyone, agreeable and obliging in society, humane and helpful to the unfortunate according to your means. Read instructive books to embellish your mind and improve your spirit. Do not degrade yourself by making bad acquaintances, but rather those with high principles and reputation thus your conduct should be such that the whole world approves it and that wherever you may be it will be considered irreproachable.

I don't know if I can get up that early, though....

Cut Shells

Found this one on Sipsey St. and bookmarked it on YT, but forgot to add it here: "The lost art of 'cut shells'"...wisdom indeed!

CZ 52

Some links on accessories for the CZ 52 that I found on a forum post:
Harrington Products - replacement firing pins, rollers, and extractors
Buymilsurp - has a section for CZ 52 parts, including all small hardware and armorer's kits
Gun Parts Warehouse - has a section for CZ 52 parts, including a slide catch with external release

Also, I found a couple unflattering forum posts that discuss the relative strength of the CZ 52 versus the TT-33, on Gunboards and THR.

Another Reason to Avoid Leather Holsters

...They can deform and catch on the trigger of a DAO pistol, as evidenced by one man's experience. Of course, as we all know, an "accidental discharge" is properly termed a negligent discharge.

Injustice Everywhere

In the vein of Codrea's "Only Ones" category except more broad, there's the site Injustice Everywhere.  There's a lot of police misconduct nationwide....

Configurable Apartment

I may need to take inspiration out of this guy's design.

USB Stick PC

The Raspberry Pi USB Stick PC beats the hell out of a OLPC!  Sign me up.

Bad Shit

This is some bad shit.  Apparently a guy needs body armor when going after thugs breaking into his house. From the commentary:

Line up those psychopath SWAT bastards and give them "something".

If someone's at my door and claims to be the cops, they'd best give me time to call 911 to confirm. Otherwise they're going to get shot when they break down my door, because I don't know if they're the police or just some ballsy scumbags yelling "police!" And of course, the no-knock variety of warrant is just an excuse for the police to murder someone: if the house belongs to a gun owner, damn right he's going to shoot at whoever kicked down his door.

The homeowner who was murdered probably realized when they kicked in the door that they were SWAT and didn't shoot, but he was pointing a gun at him so they lit him up.

Why don't cops with a search warrant just knock on the door like a civilized person would? I mean, seriously, WTF! Jackbooted thugs, indeed!

Damn, I'd better go buy me some body armor.

Update 1: Tamara K.'s take on this:

The only people skulking in my bushes and forcing my locks in the middle of the night should be soon-to-be-shot bad guys, not cops with Clouseau-like map-reading skills; I shouldn't need a scorecard to tell the masked players apart.

Then there's one anonymous comment from VftP:

It's after 5pm, you're face is blacked out, you're armed, you're kicking in my door; you're dead. If you have a badge and you enter that way...you're still dead. We'll sort all that badge shit out at the morgue.

Did Col. Cooper say this?—'cause it's awesome: "It has long been my conviction that a masked man with a gun is a target. I see no reason to change that view."

Update 2: There's helmet-cam video from the outside, with interesting analysis from an ex-military, ex-police blogger.

BDU Sizes

Today's Sipsey St. praxis has a chart indicating equivalents for BDU sizes.

Wiki Economics

Of interest:
Britain's Three-Day Week
Keynes' Bancor proposal...
...which lost out to the Bretton Woods system

Reverse-Ogive

Talk about a weird bullet profile.

Crypto Edu

I can't even remember where I got this from...but it's an educational link on crypto.

Log Books

This is kind of a link dump because it's been in my reader for a while and I need to cut down on tabs.

I have a Moleskine notebook that I got for recording data for one rifle in particular, and wasn't sure what I should log in it.  In my search for info, one useful forum thread popped up on PAFOA.

From the OP:

The data log for a given shooting session would include altitude, temperature, air density, date, time, wind speed and direction, the ammunition specs, number of rounds fired for the barrel used, point of aim, point of impact, range, group sizes, round count, scope elevation needed, windage adjustments, departure angle, light direction, etc.

Additional comments:

If you are reloading I would keep track of your load data, and so you can see how it performs differently at different temperatures and pressures, etc. You mentioend keeping track of air density, but you might also want to keep track of barometric pressure, they are actually slightly different, but both do increase and decrease in a similar fashion. I would also keep track of my throat length in the chamber in the log book (just whenever you measure it, not every page), so you can adjust the seating depth of your loads, etc as you need to. I know alot of shooters like to keep track of how they "feel" as well; like if they're tired, nervous, stressed, had too much caffeine, need a cigarette, etc, cold, etc.

He also noted cold-bore data should be logged if making that first shot is an objective.

AXTS Lower

Via the Defense Review blog, I found this bad-ass fully ambidextrous lower receiver from AXTS Weapons Systems.  The pattern above the mag-well goes well with those PMAGs....  The downside is that this lower only comes fully assembled.  The A-DAC-F is their stripped lower alternative, but it's not built the same.

Diatomeceous Earth

Funky.  It's interesting that this can be mixed with food to be preserved as an insecticide.

7.62x25 Stuff

Found a company selling gas-operated 7.62x25mm AR-15 uppers for $800.  Interesting that they're shooting corrosive ammo through it.

Also found a ballistic test of a 7.62x25mm round against a Type 2 Kevlar vest in front of a block of ballistic gelatin.  The bullet won.

RTAmerica Video

Featuring clips of Vanderboegh and Codrea, from the latter's GRE column.

I wish that the first guy interviewed had a better definition for tyranny, like the "where the people fear the government" one.

Minnesota Appleseed

On the Appleseed forums, there's a Minnesota-specific area, which has a list of Minnesota riflemen and after-action reports for shoots.  There's an AAR for the April 2011 Rochester shoot.

Also, there's an instructor selling Tech-SIGHTS on the forums.

Past history: AARs for the April 2010 shoot in Rochester and June 2010 shoot in LaCrosse.

4/20 Link Dump

I need to restart Firefox again, so here we go.

The Battle of Athens TN - What to do when there are election hijinks.

Making desiccant packs for long-term firearm storage - Doc on Scribd

The history of FOPA - Salient since McClure died this year.

Paper Jade

Somehow I came across a site called Paper Jade selling washi for origami.  They have aizome paper, which I'm interested in.

Battle Mug

I was checking out Magpul's Facebook page and noticed a comment about a "Battle Mug". My interest piqued, I did a search and found the item. The rails are sweet, but...it's $279!! WTF?! Also, it's aluminum and the coating isn't described.  Hero Gear looks like an interesting shop.

American Eagles

Searching for more info on American Eagles, I came across the US Mint's page that describes the requirements for becoming an "Authorized Purchaser" to order bullion directly from the mint.

The United States Mint charges a modest premium above the current market price of platinum, gold, and silver to cover minting, distribution and marketing costs.

• For the Silver Eagle, we charge the United States Mint's Authorized Purchasers the price of silver plus $2.00 per coin premium. Minimum ordering requirement is 25,000 coins.
• For the Gold Eagles, we charge 3%, 5%, 7% and 9% premiums for the one, one-half, one-quarter and one-tenth ounce coins respectively. Minimum ordering requirements are 1000 ounces.
• For the Platinum Eagles, we charge 4%, 6%, 10% and 15% premiums for the one, one-half, one-quarter and one-tenth ounces coins respectively. Minimum ordering requirements are 1000 ounces.

Ow.  25k coins times spot + $2 (currently about $42) is a lot more than I can afford....  At least I have a link to point people to whenever the overhead of bullion comes up.

Corrosive Ammo

On SurvivalBlog there's a post indicating which U.S. surplus ammo lots have corrosive primers.  There's also a link to an article on how to clean after shooting corrosive, which I need to know since I just bought some, as well as how to test to see if a given cartridge is corrosive.

M855 vs. M995

I was looking for information on M855: I'd read that it has a steel core penetrator in the bullet, but it usually isn't called armor-piercing.  So I found a page that describes the difference between M855 and the AP round, M995.  It turns out that M855 has a SC, but it's not considered AP.  The AP round has a tungsten carbide core inside the jacket.  Bad-ass!

C Products LLC

Aw shit.  C Products is going through a "transition"--apparently they've been sold.  Except there's a lot of hijinks going on as far as where standing orders are, and who's responsible for what.  LCJ Wholesale is apparently the new retail outfit.  At this point it's not clear who the buyer of the MFG operation is.  A thread on Arfcom has remarks from the old staff Larry (the owner?) and Chad (director of sales?).

This explains why CDNN doesn't really list C Products mags anymore.

Latin Proverbs

One of the LSI guys had in his sig for internal mail, "Clamo, clamatis, omnes clamamus pro glace lactis."  I didn't know what it meant, but knowing the individual, I figured it had to be humorous, so I looked it up.  Apparently it's Latin for, "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream."  Brilliant.

I found on a forum a bunch of other useless phrases translated into Latin which is good for a laugh.

Flares, etc. @ Sipsey

Just now noticed on Sipsey St. a praxis post regarding flares and other pyrotechnics.  Since I was looking at getting a flare gun, it seems like good background information.

USGI Web Gear

Sipsey Street has a post (actually, two) on USGI web gear that's quite informative and has several useful vectors.

Incidentally, "praxis" is application of theory, a term often used to preface Sipsey Street informational posts.

Ruger 10/22 Peep Sights

While searching for Tech-SIGHTS reviews, I found an article on 10/22 peep sights from someone who prefers an alternative:

So the recipe for my favorite final setup is as follows:

• Williams FP-AG-TK Receiver Sight (sold with adj. knobs now)
• Lyman Globe Sights: #17ATC @ .852″ height,”
• Williams Aperture 3/8″ Diameter with .050 aperture
• Weaver T0-9 top mount base ( one piece tip-off base )

Of course, this combination costs way more than the Tech-SIGHTS. I'd like to see what NDS comes up with for the Ruger receiver.

哀戦士

I haven't seen Gundam, but Ai-Senshi is a great song.  The few English translations I've seen online suck, so I'll have to give it a go one of these days.

The original lyrics:

哀戦士

作詞：井荻麟／作曲：井上大輔／編曲：井上大輔／
歌：井上大輔

哀　ふるえる哀
それは　別れ唄
ひろう骨も　燃えつきて
ぬれる肌も　土にかえる
荒野をはしる　死神の列
黒くゆがんで　真赤に燃える

哀　生命（いのち）の哀
血の色は大地にすてて
新たな　時をひらくか
生き残る　哀　戦士たち
荒野をはしる　死神の列
黒くゆがんで　真赤に燃える

死にゆく男たちは
守るべき女たちに
死にゆく女たちは
愛する男たちへ

何を賭けるのか　何を残すのか
I pray, pray to bring near the New Day

哀　かなしみの哀
いまは　残るだけ
名を知らぬ　戦士を討ち
生きのびて　血へど吐く
疾風（はやて）のごとき　死神の列
あらがう術（すべ）は　わが手にはない

死にゆく男たちは
守るべき女たちに
死にゆく女たちは
愛する男たちへ

戦う男たちは
故郷（ふるさと）の女たちに
戦う女たちは
信じる男たちに

何を賭けるのか　何を残すのか
I pray, pray to bring near the New Day

Theme song for a revolution?