Saturday, November 26, 2005

Assorted thoughts and links on a Saturday

Now that I'm out of the turkey-endorphin haze and have reasonably lucid thoughts. Smallest Minority has(again) two good things. First is a pro-gun article in- of all places- the New York Times! The second is called March of the Lemmings, which includes, among other things, one of the most nutcase level rants from DU I've heard of yet. I don't know whether to recommend the latter as a 'do you believe this shit?' read or as a 'know your enemy' read. And make no mistake, some of those people flatly are The Enemy.

Made it back to Uncle's place and found this on some clowns who call themselves the Gun Guys; standard 'guns are eeevillle crap coming from people claiming to be pro-gun. Then there's some idiocy in the name of law enforcement here. And to end it all, a link to an ATF letter in which they class a shoestring as a 'machine gun'. No, I'm not kidding. And, as a side note, evil days have come to Uncle's house; the kid can now say "No!"

Michelle has this on the resignation of the 'professor' who wrote the idiot letter threatening a conservative student and calling for troops to kill their officers. The school does get points for actually checking into this, but loses points as no tar and feathers were involved.

She also notes some of the crap going on in our schools. And these are the same idiots who say vouchers and school choice will hurt education. Damn.

Wizbang has this linking to "one of the better new bloggers on the left". It's an article on how we should not adjust our foreign policy to try to make others like us. In the overall I agree, but I get pissed off at things like "...its decision to wage war based on claims concerning the Iraqi threat which were false and inaccurate, are destructive and indefensible. " I looked at the rest of his site, and found, among other things, 'irrational attacks on ex-supporters of the war' and the 'chaos in Iraq', and so forth. It's better than some others in that he doesn't call anyone who disagrees with him vile names, but otherwise it seems a standard 'Bush is evil, conservatives are bad' lefty blog. If this is one of the 'better' bloggers on the left, sheesh.


I'm so damn sick of the "Bush lied!" crap. Especially when it's coming from senators and reps who are on defense committees and had full access to the intel. And I'm sick of these clowns in Congress throwing out words, calling for withdrawal, etc., then screaming like stuck pigs when someone quotes their own words back. Or, in the case of Murtha, actually making them vote on the measure they talked up. Since when it is dirty tricks to make you live up to your own words?

Screw it, this is ruining my good mood.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Ho, ho, ho, and damn! I'm still full

Thanksgiving was celebrated with proper amounts of stuffing with good food. Mom takes holidays when company comes as a chance to make the food she usually doesn't make for just herself and dad, which meant pies and turkey and ham and stuffing and gravy and... I lost track. Dad makes the dressing from his mother's recipe, and you could founder yourself on it alone.

Steve over at Hog on Ice described his dinner, and the aftermath with the birds. Happily, the dogs don't make noises like that in the house, so I don't have to listen to that.

Michelle Malkin posted a recipe for pie. I'm going to make some more fudge; I found some chocolate chips that are 60% cocoa, and they make damn good fudge. The first batch went pretty fast since I shared it at work; I think this batch is going to the guy who's working on my pc. He says it's either the power supply or the motherboard; if the power, he has one that'll work, and if it's the board I need to find a new pc. I'm hoping for the power supply, I don't want to have to get another pc.

Michelle also linked to this mess. I wonder, if they are indeed who they're suspected to be, how diligent will the authorities be in tracking them down and making arrests? After all, don't want to interfere with their religeous beliefs, now do they?

I had some plans for proper levels of yelling about various crap, such as that bitch Sheehan making another pilgrimage to Crawford, but I'm too narced on turkey still for proper outrage. So later, folks

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Did I ever mention I don't like working on ladders?

Or roofs? Well, down at my parents house there's a biiiig old cottonwood that's got some problems, especially in the biiig limb that stretches out over the house. So a chunk of today was spent in the roof helping dad take this limb down a piece at a time.

I did talk him into buying one of the power polesaws. That little chainsaw-on-a-stick is very nice for things like this, especially since you can whack off a section of limb without worrying about it falling on you.

However, that part is done. One more limb to help out with- it's not as heavy- and that'll be taken care of. Then I'm going to used dad's bullet sizing press to size and lube a few hundred .45 bullets. And mom has been cooking; God, it smells good around here!

This laptop keyboard is a bit of a pain, but the laptop is kind of handy, being able to check mail, etc., while I'm here. In any case, this is the only thing I plan to post until after Thanksgiving. Have a good day of it, folks.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Thanksgiving week

Let's see, various tv 'specials' I'll be skipping and, since I'm visiting my folks, probably enough food to founder me, Og and Kim together. Overall balance, a definate plus.

Over at Smallest Minority, read this letter to Sen. Kennedy(Dr. MA). Maybe someone can nail a copy to his door. If you can get past all the private security he shouldn't need since the police can take care of everything, right?

I tried my daughter's recipe for fudge, except I doubled the amount of pecans. Damn, that's good stuff! I found some chocolate chips that are 60% cocoa, which I think helps a bit.

I've got packing to do, and some stuff to pick up before I leave tomorrow, so...

Oh, one last thing. Mythbusters tested the idea that a pickup with the tailgate down/off gets better mileage and with the gate up. Result? Gate up gets noticeably better mileage. Turns out that with the gate up a vortex forms behind the cab that tends to direct the airstream over the bed; with the gate down/off, the vortex either doesn't form or is very weak and the airstream tends to wind up hitting the rear of the bed, causing drag. So I need to put the damn thing back on before I leave.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

God, I wanna be on Mythbusters!

Come on, guys, I've got guns! I've got powder and can do metalwork! I wanna help blow things up!

But we'll use your gun for the stuff like I just watched. They decided to see if you could get a shotgun barrel to blow by sticking your finger in the barrel. So they took a 12 guage, made a synthetic bone/ballistic gel tissue hand, stuck the finger in the barrel, and pulled the trigger. Remotely, of course.

Result? One hand blown off of Buster, no damage to the gun. Twice. So then they used a ballistic wax hand(more rigid material) and managed to ring the barrel just back from the muzzle, but no 'banana peel' fracture. What next? They rammed the muzzle into a flowerbed and got a 8" dirt plug in the barrel, and fired with that. That split the barrel for about an inch or so and caused the vented rib to break loose and roll back, but no big split and no sign of damage to the ballistic gel head and shoulders in the shooters position.

So as a last resort, they cut the barrel back to get a square muzzle, ground a steel plug and welded it into the muzzle and fired it. And it blew the end off the barrel just behind the weld, and caused a small split. With still no damage to the 'shooter'.

So as a final test they took a Carcano rifle, pulled a bullet, hammered it into the barrel at the muzzle to simulate a squib and a stuck bullet, and fired it. It blew off about an inch or so at the muzzle(neatly amputating the bayonet mount), but not banana peel split.

Back when barrels were made of wrought iron I could see the type of split they were looking for happening; wrought iron is a lot softer than steel. But with steel barrels, especially modern ones, I much doubt it.

Damn, I want to work on that show.

Speaking of whining crybabies,

Powerline has this on the vote in the House the other day on Murtha's resolution. Result: take Murtha's idea and make the Dems actually vote on it for real, and they scream and moan about how it's a cheap attack on them.

Sorry boobs

Sunday morning thoughts

One of the things I've always treasured is the freedom we have here to scream and yell and state our opinions without fear of some clown in a trench coat asking for our papers and hauling us away. First time I really thought about it was when some court ruled that the communist party was free to put a candidate in an election. My dad was pissed, not thinking that a bunch of people wanting to destroy this country should be allowed to act openly on it. I tended to agree with him, but a part of me thought, hmmm, freedom of speech has to apply to everyone or it's in danger for all of us. I don't claim it as an original thought, I probably heard it somewhere in an argument or read it in an article(way pre-www), but it made me a bit uncomfortable; why should we let enemies of this country work openly to destroy it?

I thought about it at the time, and a lot since. I've decided I'm not an absolutist; I'd rather have people like the communists and socialists openly showing what they are so we can see them, but I do think there are limits. And I think actually calling for the death of our soldiers and our loss in war is over that line.

Oh, for the most part I don't like the idea of throwing people in jail for it; again, this shows us who the enemy is and how they think, it reveals the danger they pose. There is such a thing as treason and the other such charges, and when those laws are broken those who break them should be prosecuted.

What I am sick to death of is the clowns who scream "Dissent in the most patriotic act!" and so forth, when they don't actually dissent against a policy but against this country itself. The dipshits who scream "Don't question my patriotism!" to keep people from calling them on their most unpatriotic acts. Again, don't call for our troops to die, don't call for the enemy to win, don't call for censorship of those who disagree with you- don't try to silence those who disagree by trolling and spamming and hacking and shouting them down- and then defend yourself with that cry. And when you constantly call for various and sundry people to be killed and scream 'fascist' and so forth at anyone who argues with you, you're not in a good position to sound indignant over someone else turning it back on you(see Wizbang) I don't like it when anyone calls for killing someone else or destroying their life because they argue with you or have a different stand on matters, including someone on 'my own side' to some extent, I simply point out that the clowns at DU aren't in a good space to scream about evil threats when that's what makes up much of their idea of 'discussion'.

What brought this up was two things, this post at Michelle's and this one at Greyhawk. In the first, Michelle has posted some of the crap she receives, and it's the most vile racist garbage imaginable; it's like these idiots want to prove that if you appear to belong to some minority group you don't DARE speak out in any way that takes you off the reservation or they'll come after you. The other, Greyhawk has been posting tributes to troops who died in Iraq, and has received so many trolls etc. that she's decided to stop for now. These bastards can't argue with the policy, oh no, they have to redicule and threaten and demean those who are over there. Shitheads like this are the first ones who scream and whine when anyone challenges them on it. Got news for you folks; you ARE unpatriotic, and you ARE on the other side when you do crap like this.

I've apparently been lucky, the only such who've come by here have left one comment and gone away, but a lot of people have had all kinds of crap dumped on them for stating a non-PC thought. And our discourse has become somewhat nasty over the last decade or so, and much more so since 2000(gee, I wonder why?). And it's not helping. You don't convince someone that your idea is better by calling them names, or by ignoring their argument and attacking them personally, you just prove to them that your idea is no good; if it were good, you'd be able to argue it.