The recent truck accident and resulting overpass collapse must have Rosie convinced that Bush has done it again, but here's the deal:

Even a C-average Jr. high school shop student knows that steel loses almost all of its strength when you heat it ('cause, you know, they actually work with the stuff).  I can't say this loud enough, but here it goes, "***The steel does not have to melt, nor will it melt in a typical structure fire, in order to fail as a support material***".

Get it cherry red hot, and its like putty, or molding clay, in consistency long before it gets hot enough to "melt".  Adding chromium and molybdenum will help reduce, but not prevent, this phenomenon, which is one reason why so many gun barrels are made of chrome/moly steel.

No matter; every account I've heard to date in reference to WTC, and this latest event in Caleeforn-ya, has used the word "melt" or "melted" to refer to the resulting structural failures, displaying in sharp relief the monumental ignorance of not just the average journalist, but every last one of them.

And not a single one of any import, it would seem, bothered to look up the properties of various steels at various temperatures on that there internet thingy, presumably because it would have taken a whopping fifteen minutes of one assistant's time.  Looking up facts is not in their job description, apparently, nor in Rosie O's.  Facts get in the way of so many things...

On a related note:  After hearing of the scope of the recent lorry crackup in California, "Republican" Gov., Arnold Schwartzenblather, who ran his campaign using conservative-sounding rhetoric, made the following statement in his response: "Everyone is going to get a free ride." (And he meant it)

That is a perfect example of why the Republican Party does not now own the House, the Senate and the Whitehouse for the rest of the foreseeable future-- they just cannot grasp the concept of Liberty, but instead merely talk about it as part of their shtick, offering themselves as the less socialist socialists in the big, socialist bag of nuts.

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better.  America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well pleased.

P.J. O'Rourke

If you going to do something you might as well overdo it.

Ry Jones
April 29, 2007
[That works on so many levels for Ry. This time it was in reference to his construction of the fireball target for Boomershoot 2007. It worked well. It was also more "entertainingly close" that I and some of the audience really wanted. None of the injuries broke the skin or required medical attention. See also Ry's blog post.--Joe]

Do you guys think that was even remotely funny?

Good!

That indicates you have at least a tenuous grasp on reality.

Sean Flynn
April 28, 2007
[I think maybe Rolf's and Tim's puns were a little over the top at the time. But when you've been making explosives for hours a little release of tension is required now and then.--Joe]

Today we started making the targets. It started with Scott, Barb, and I setting up the canopy, table, and other stuff. Barb brought Ben and Tim over then a little later when daughter Kim showed up Barb brought her over too. Together we built hundreds of targets. The worst thing that happened so far is that I printed some of the labels on the wrong side of the paper. Other than that everything has been going great. Gene Econ put on his Precision Rifle Clinic today finishing up with the consumption of 40 4" targets and 20 7" targets. The only ones that didn't detonate were the ones they didn't hit or a couple that were just nicked and the contents drained out.

Things are going very well so far. The weather today was great and the forecast is looking great for both percipitation and wind--actuallly the lack of both.

My cousin Julia from Santa Barbara showed up to visit for a while. She had lunch with us onsite and then hung around watching us build targets for a while before going on to visit my parents and brothers. Not the typical thing you experience when visiting your cousin. But then she did a little boomershooting of her own a few years ago.

Who would have thought? British targets.

Rolf Nelson
April 27, 2007
[At the time Rolf and Sean were putting lime in the targets to be used at Boomershoot on Sunday. With Rolf the puns materialize at about the rate of one a minute for every waking minute you are around him. At least he shares that many. It could be he only shares a fraction of the ones he comes up with. Whatever the case, Rolf comes up with more puns per unit time than anyone else I know by at least a couple orders of magnitude. The lime is to reduce the acidity of the soil to help control the lead from the bullets. It also make a more visual display as it is scattered by the explosion.--Joe]

Sean and Rolf helping make the "boomers" today.

Joe Huffman’s Boomershoot! 2007 is upon us — this weekend, in fact. This is a terrific, exciting event Joe puts on each year in Idaho. Be there or be square.

Jeff Soyer
April 26, 2007
Boomershoot!
[Technically it's the Lewiston Pistol Club's Boomershoot but if I got tired of doing it no one else would take it over. So, in a practical sense it is my event. Also of possible interest is that I'm sitting on the shooting berm at position 41 looking down range at the wind flags and steel set up for the Precision Rifle Clinic tomorrow and Saturday. Yes, free WiFi at Boomershoot.--Joe]

I'm back in Idaho early. Tomorrow I go on site and begin preparing. The weather forecast is great. The toilets are already on site. The helpers have all confirmed (with one in Orofino already).

It's going to be a great event. Spectators are welcome.

Directions are here.

Try firing a Lefty Prof for advocating socialist revolution, then sit back and listen to all the claims of violating civil rights, our precious academic freedoms being squashed, etc., etc..

Professor fired over class discussion of shootings.

This time however, you have a professor discussing a current event, with apparent overtones of support for the Bill of Rights.  So he gets fired (what "obscene epithet" was used is not made at all clear).

There's no real news here, in that most of you would have accurately predicted the outcome.

My question is; How is this going to be turned around?

My answer is; As soon as we get government out of the education business (you think that if people had a choice in the matter, they'd choose to fund this sort of bilge?)

And yet there is no apparent movement in the direction of a free market in education.  Why?  Will anyone, when pressed, actually stand up and proclaim that they believe a socialist institution will outperform a free market-- that a coercively funded, compulsory institution will find better and more efficient ways to serve the public than a free and unfettered marketplace defined by competition and choice?

Any takers on that one?  Hmmm?   Tell us how Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao had it all figured out, and how Jefferson, Washington and Franklin were a bunch of idiots!  Get it all off your chest!  This is your moment!  Stand up and make yourselves proud!  Include full details.

Update:  Yeah, I know.  It is defined as a Catholic Liberal Arts School.  Still--don't tell me this sort of thing would be at all common in a free market.

They have a "Campus Preparedness Committee " there.  One wonders what they do there for preparation.

Gun control is for sissies.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Beyond Chron April 24‚ 2007
[He is being sarcastic but I like to take the one line seriously. It's this sort of behavior that is conformation that we are winning. He doesn't even attempt to engage in an intellectual debate.--Joe]

Ry has a video of the Cheytac 408. Very impressive gun and cartridge.

The history was interesting to me as well. I did the same sort of thing with my .300 Win mag. I chose a bullet (the Berger 210 grain VLD) then built the gun around it. I also wrote a program for my calculator to do the trajectory calculations. I did not include the rotation of the earth into my program however. At the latitudes and ranges I expected to be shooting the rotation of the earth contributed less than 1 MOA so I figured I would just estimate that in my head if really needed.

Maybe it's just because I'm up way too late and tired but I thought this was funny:

If a healthy sexuality is something you desire, then you have a responsibility to know as much about yourself as possible and a responsibility to freely communicate that information with yourself and your partner. As responsible adults, we encourage you to pull your weight and masturbate.

I finished the Boomershoot 2006 history (at 24+ MBytes it's not for dial-up) video and started burning CD's last night. Other than the video there's not much new from last years CDROM.

I had new signs made for Boomershoot this year. The old ones were hand printed and since it was my printing it was horrid. The new ones are functional and professional.

With the creation of reserved shooting positions we now have the need for markings of each of the individual positions. Ry came up with the idea of how to do it. The sign company wanted $1400 for them. That being OUT OF THE QUESTION I had them sell me the plastic cut to size which cost $50. I then convinced Xenia to apply the $40 worth of vinyl numbers for just $20. $110 versus $1400. The results are good enough for who they are for:

If more gun control doesn’t mitigate crime, then what does it do? Look no further than any authoritarian state or society in history. Look no further than our own Southern backyard under the Jim Crow laws — laws that in many states still had a significant presence only 50 years ago. What was one of the first things these laws did to Southern blacks? They took their guns away. In a society where even the authorities were complacent with lynching and other hate crimes, whom else could a law-abiding citizen turn to for defense against a frequently racist government and society than himself? As in many other instances of the past, gun control was used to oppress people, to remove checks and balances on despicable government policies and, in short, to do what it implies: control.

David Lapidus
April 24, 2007
Gun control unfair to law-abiding citizens
The Badger Herald

All the gun laws in the world wouldn't have stopped a lunatic like Cho Seung-Hui.

Brad Bumsted
April 23, 2007
Extreme Gun Control
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
[This is from an article that implies more gun control would be a good thing. You didn't hear this sort of thing from anti-gun people after Columbine. We have made a lot of progress.--Joe]