Saturday, September 24, 2016

Rainy out there; you know what that means:

Staying in to check out the data dump
















































All kinds of things turn up out there in the system

NASA teased a "surprising" announcement for Monday, based on Hubble Space Telescope images of the celestial body, which many experts believe could contain a subsurface ocean, even possibly some form of life.

The US space agency has already proclaimed that Europa has "strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its crust and which could host conditions favorable for life."
Interesting.  And water, even water ice, could make it a resupply point for ships going further out.


"But that's different!"
While Noah clearly doesn’t grasp the logical implications of his argument, his particular insight — that evil people who want to do evil things will find ways to carry out their schemes regardless of what signs you post or laws you pass — forms the foundation of the entire argument against gun control.

Bad people who want to murder you don’t care about your stupid signs and stupid laws.


Yeah, I don't think that's going to go well.
NEW YORK – Egyptian media leaders and distinguished members of the Egyptian parliament met with members of the American media and foreign policy community Tuesday to discuss how to mend the relationship between the United States and Egypt.

The Obama administration has been reluctant to accept the legitimacy of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after he assumed power following the removal of his Muslim Brotherhood predecessor, Mohamed Morsi.
Egypt- except for the MB people- isn't happy about it, and about some of Obama's actions for some reason(gee, I wonder why?)


Horsecrap.  He vetoed this because he wants to protect the Saudis who were involved.


President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday.
...
"Once informed that the sender's name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: 'How is this not classified?'" the report says. "Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president's use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email."
Now why would he do that, I wonder...

Friday, September 23, 2016

There is data

for a bit of relaxing study at the end of the evening








































Rioters blocking roads and sometimes attacking cars/people,

legal opinion on 'When can you use the car to go through?'
This post is linked in the article, but I'm linking it here, too: Surviving Mob Attacks on Your Vehicle

Well, the local NAACP has gone completely batshit:
But the president of the Charlotte chapter of the NAACP Corine Mack said ultimately it didn’t matter. “I think the most important part is the contrast in him having a book versus a gun. But in my mind and in most of the community’s mind, it really doesn’t matter if he had a gun,” she said.
Oh yes, madam it DOES matter.  Especially since it's come out he had a criminal record, and may have been a prohibited person.

“At the end of the day we have the right under the Second Amendment to carry here in North Carolina,” she said. “And [the police’s] responsibility was to engage him in a more deescalated way, to find out if he had a permit for his gun and allow him to go on his merry way and he would still be living today. That’s not what happened.”
NOW they care about the 2nd Amendment...


I suppose you could make a convoluted argument about how the protests were against white supremacy, and capitalism and the media are agents of white supremacy, therefore attacking those institutions are acts of “protest” or whatever. But if even violent attempted murder and destruction of property can be a “protest” so long as the motives are political, I don’t see why the same can’t be said of, say, a terrorist attack. But I’ve never seen a tweet or headline describing Osama Bin Laden as a mere “protester.”
What I suspect is going on here is that reporters are attempting to stay neutral. Calling the perpetrators “looters” or “rioters” or “attackers” carries a degree of moral condemnation with it. Normally that’d be fine, but there’s also a substantial percent of the country that sympathizes with the perpetrators, or at least their motives. To appease those who sympathize broadly with the Black Lives Matter movement or similar groups, they choose to call them “protesters” instead.
But this is a false neutrality. In an effort to please those of all political stripes, the media ended up misinforming their consumers. The men and women who looted that Wal-Mart and destroyed stores were not “protesters,” and if they had done so in a context divorced from politics, media outlets would have the stones to say so.


'Comforting' this is not.
Public, academic, and private laboratories that work with deadly diseases have mistakenly transferred highly contagious viruses and bacteria to unsecure locations at least 21 times in the past 13 years, a frequency more than double what government officials said their data showed, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. 

 In each case, the scientists and officials involved wrongly concluded that the deadly pathogens had been deactivated and thus were safe to transport elsewhere. One of the incidents, involving mistaken shipments by a Defense Department laboratory of live anthrax bacteria, attracted wide notice in 2015. But the GAO report said key government agencies have been slow to fix managerial and policy lapses that contributed to that event and might provoke additional errors.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Part of the range report

Once again tried some stuff in .45-70, and had a pleasant surprise. 

Few days before I'd found a small jar in the garage that was full of 230-grain roundnose bullets, sized .450, for .45acp.  Which made me think(sometimes a dangerous thing), and I cast some more: some sized to .452, some left as-cast.  All got the three-wrap paper patch with onionskin, then a wipe with lube and through the .459 sizer, then loaded to 2.54" overall over the same ten grains of Green Dot I've been using with the 255-grain semi-wadcutters.  Results, all at 50 yards off a solid rest.
Bullet sized .450"

Bullet sized .452"

Bullet unsized
Reasonably windy, but from this I'd say these bullets unsized win.  And, since I was able to set up the Chrony that day, I know the velocity averaged ~1225fps.  Which is moving right along.

Further experiment: took some of the 255-grain SWC bullets on which the sides were flawed(hadn't filled-out completely when cast*), I was curious if this would have much affect on accuracy, or if they'd still do reasonably well.  Same distance, over the same 10.0 Green Dot:
With perfect(within reason) sides
Yes, that's three in that bottom hole.

With flawed sides
BIG difference.  So from now on, no flawed bases(previous experiment) or sides for real accuracy.

And, just to see how they'd shoot, some of the .255 cast of pure lead
That spread is well within my error factor.  That soft a bullet, at that velocity, ought to expand pretty well on a soft target.

Reason for that test was something that came up once before using full-power loads with a 405-grain bullet.  Found that it shot that bullet with no patch, just lube in the grooves, quite well, but the same bullet of pure lead gave much wider group.  However, put that same bullet in a paper patch, and it works quite well.  Same thing with this rifle.
Lubed bullet, crimped in first lube groove, over 26.0 of A5744, 100 yards

Patched pure-lead bullet, same load and range,
For these the bullets were seated to overall length of 2.6", and the crimp was done with a Lee Factory Crimp die.

See why I like it?

One last thing I tried: 100 yards, three of the 255-grain loads, left hand resting on the front rest:
In no way am I going to bitch about that performance, which was a pleasant surprise.  And this was with the same sight setting as for the 405-grain loads.   No, didn't try the 230-grain loads, shot all those at 50.  There will be more.

By the time I finished this, put my stuff away, and scrounged for brass for a few minutes, I was about ready to melt. 


*Not flawed all over, mostly there'd be a place along one side where this happened.