Monthly Archives: September 2007

Doublespeak from an airport police chief

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First a refresher course.

I don’t know if he actually believes this or not. Maybe he does and just doesn’t have a good imagination. Or maybe it’s just that it’s part of his job to comfort the sheepeople even if he knows he isn’t telling them the complete truth:

Chief Troyer has been a driving force behind all of the airport security changes that has especially been focusing on removing items from people’s luggage that could be used to make explosives.

But we get this doublespeak and I just get annoyed with him:

“I don’t necessarily see it as being stricter as it is begin responsive to the threat,” Spokane International Airport Police Chief Pete Troyer said.

Whatever. The guy is just an actor in a security theater. What can you expect from someone like that? He reads his lines and he entertains the public.

Playing in the dirt

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This last weekend Caleb and I went out to the Boomershoot site again. I needed to move some dirt and the bulldozer was going to be less than a quarter of a mile away so I borrowed it for a couple hours.

The photos with me in them are by Caleb. The others were taken by me.

The prime objective was to smooth some dirt we had roughed up putting in the “well”:


This is where we frequently park when working at the Taj.


It’s now much smoother. We also planted grass and raked the seeds into the dust to wait for the fall rains.

The secondary objective was to make the outdoor assembly line area more hospitable. The ground is uneven and if it has rained recently it can be muddy.


We put up a table in the foreground area and assemble targets here.


A close up of the signs above the door.

I moved more dirt in so there would be less of a step between outside and inside:


That old bulldozer is old enough it could retire. I think it is 63 years old now. I wonder if we could sign it up for Social Security benefits or something.


Here Caleb is putting the “decorative stones” in place where we walk and stand while assembling the reactive targets.


This is, essentially, the final result of our work.

After taking the last picture above we put in three more “Roman Cobblestones” for the legs of the canopy, spread grass seed around and raked the seeds into the dust.

I thought of one more thing that needs to be done before next spring. There needs to be some steps made to get from this top area down to the “well” pump. It’s a steep area that will be slick when it’s wet.

After playing in the dirt we tested out the new explosive grade ammonium nitrate.

All previous Boomerite was made with AN from a farm supply dealer. The explosive grade material has much smaller prills than the older stuff and the one batch we mixed up was not as sensitive as previous tests indicated with the old material. We’ll have to do some more tests sometime. It is probably good enough however.

It would not detonate with Federal American Eagle .22 LR ammo at a distance of 10 yards. This corresponds to an approximate target velocity of 1175 fps. It would detonate every time with CCI Stinger .22LR from 30 yards away which corresponds to an approximate target velocity of 1450 fps.

Things you maybe didn’t know

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There may be a surprise or two here for some people, Fifteen new things to know about sex, but mostly it’s old stuff or stuff you would figure out if you spent a minute thinking about it. But this, exercise unleashes a bounce bras can’t handle–Breasts fly up and down a distance of up to 8 inches, was new to me:

Scurr recruited 70 women, including students and faculty from the University of Portsmouth, with bra sizes ranging from A-cup to extra-large (DD, E, FF, G, H, HH, J and JJ were included).

Each woman walked, jogged and ran while wearing different bra types. During the exercise, Scurr took biomechanical measurements, including the amount of breast movement in three directions: up-and-down, side-to-side and in-and-out.

During walking exercise, the women’s breasts moved relatively the same amount in all directions. But when participants sped up to a jog or run, their breasts moved proportionally more in some directions than others: More than 50 percent of the total movement was in the up-down direction, 22 percent side-to-side and 27 percent in-and-out.

The overall pattern of the movement resembled a figure-8.

I guess I haven’t been watching enough breasts under a variety of situations. I’ll have to put that on my list of things to do.

Posted in Sex

The middle ground

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The anti-freedom bigots have pushed things so far that people don’t have a clue of where “the middle” is. Example:

What the two sides don’t acknowledge is that reasonable people can oppose civilian ownership of machine guns or .50-caliber rifles so powerful they must be shot using a tripod while still supporting hunting and owning guns for self-defense. Americans can support background checks on guns sold everywhere – not just by licensed dealers – without putting gun companies out of business. The United States can require registration of guns and proficiency tests for gun owners, just as we do with cars, without making it impossible, or even difficult, for law-abiding citizens to buy guns.

The name-calling and breath-holding have made us all forget that a middle ground is possible.

I have long had a hot-button about people that want to be in “the middle” and those who create the perception of “the middle”. People, in general, don’t want to be considered extremists or even a short distance from what they perceive as “the center”. Most people are comfortable only when they are with the majority and when the perception of “the center” moves they tend to move with it. “Wimps” doesn’t begin to express my disgust for people like this who decline and/or refuse to think for themselves.

That aside as a inalterable trait of human nature we now must deal with it and perhaps use it to our advantage.

Perception of “the center” is created in at least three ways:

  1. Labeling your opponent, no matter how “moderate” their stand, as “an extremist”.
  2. Labeling your own position as “moderate”.
  3. Advocates for a position who attempt to “stake out the middle ground” and abandon the extreme position.

The anti-freedom bigots label the NRA as “an extremist” organization and claim they are advocates for “reasonable measures”. Check and check on points one and two. The NRA has, in essence, abandoned class three devices and agreed with the NICS background check. Check on point three. This makes it difficult for us to make progress in repealing oppressive gun laws due to the majority of people who believe “the middle” is somewhere close to the current state of our laws.

This “middle ground” mentality and the desire to stake out a more “extreme position” was an additional motivating factor for me to create Boomershoot. By being an advocate for long range precision rifles and recreational explosives I enable others to feel more comfortable with less “extreme” positions. I push as an “extreme” advocate for freedom to make it more comfortable for others to move in my direction.

But what is really missing in the debate is an identification of where the real extremes are.

Obviously one extreme is a complete ban on firearm ownership with a death penalty for even the slightest infraction for possession of a firearm or any component of a firearm or, plans, documents, or materials with the intent to make a firearm or component of a firearm.

So what is the other extreme?

The anti-freedom bigots would have us believe it’s allowing people to carry concealed firearms or teaching children or young adults how to shoot. But with only a small amount of thought most people will realize this isn’t all that extreme. It’s just that that position has been labeled as extreme.

How about the GOA who claim they are a “no-compromise gun lobby” and who want our gun rights back? Surely they are staking out the extremist position, right?

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Part of the other extremist position would be where firearms ownership, training, practice, and continuous (24 by 7 with no exceptions) possession of a loaded firearm is mandatory for everyone. The other part of this extremist position would be when government funds are used to accomplish those goals and it’s a death penalty offense for anyone who attempted to avoid or change these requirements.

With those definitions of extremism the “the middle ground” should be pretty clear–“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Not infringed in the slightest. No law that places any restriction or ownership requirement on anyone. That is the true “middle ground”.

Quote of the day–Rick Keene

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There are so many ways to game this technology, that’s the difficulty. This is not ready for prime time.

Rick Keene
September 11, 2007
Assemblyman, R-Chico.
Handgun stamping bill sent to governor–Spent shell casings would be imprinted
[Yup. Advocates of this are either exceedingly simple minded and/or just want to increase the difficultly of gun ownership.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Melanie C. Brandon

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It was amazing seeing something that was used for so much violence, hurt and destruction, to watch its power being taken away. This really hits so close to home.

Melanie C. Brandon
Fashion statement for gun control Designer Melanie C. Brandon has made jewelry from a machine gun and pistols seized in Phila. and melted down.
[Her tag-line: “With each piece made, another gun is taken off the street.” It must be like some sort of primitive religion that believes spirits inhabit inanimate objects. The “power” is in the gun. Maybe an exorcism ritual would just as well. Or if it’s not evil spirits inhabiting the gun then maybe it’s the shape of the piece of metal. Do wearing crosses or some other shape of metal ward off evil spirits? Maybe putting smiley faces on the guns would make them acceptable. Whatever it is, it’s not about the facts of gun ownership.–Joe]

Social engineering and Security Theater at it’s finest

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Via Bruce we find, once again, that if you look and act like you belong you can belong:

The skit had been approved by ABC lawyers, but it had been assumed they would be stopped at the first checkpoint, hundreds of metres from the President’s hotel.

Instead, they were waved through the first checkpoint, then a second that had sniffer dogs. They eventually stopped in sight of the hotel.

The ABC later released a statement saying the team had no intention of entering a restricted zone and had been wearing mock “insecurity passes” that stated the convoy was a joke.

“It was a piece testing APEC security and the motorcade looked pretty authentic,” the Chaser source said.

“They approached the green zone, and they just waved them through – much to their amazement, because the sketch was meant to stop there with them being rejected.

“They were then waved through into the red zone, but rather than go all the way through they made the call to turn around.”

“Apparently that was the first time the police realised it was not authentic and they swooped in and arrested everybody.”

This is the funnest part to me:

“The police only detained the Chaser motorcade when it was turning around and after Chas Licciardello emerged from a car dressed as Osama bin Laden.”

Good security is extremely difficult. It only takes one weak link to break the chain. But had APEC security been part of a Hollywood movie it would have been in the series The Keystone Cops. Again, from real life:

LAST week, a butter knife was a handy dining implement. This week, it seems, APEC security staff have declared knives and forks as potential terrorist weapons.

On the same day police won a court battle to stop protesters marching down George Street through the APEC security zone, it emerged yesterday that at least one cafe near George Bush’s hotel has been ordered by police not to set outdoor tables with silverware, lest it fall into the wrong hands.

And office workers in Bridge Street’s AMP tower have been told to stay away from the windows, draw the blinds and not to look at helicopters.

[…]

“On Monday an APEC security officer asked us to limit our outdoor furniture. He said if you are setting a table, don’t set it with knives and forks because they can be used as a potential weapon by terrorists.”

[…]

On Tuesday night, about an hour before Mr Bush arrived at his hotel, a police officer approached a Herald reporter and demanded to see what he had written in his notebook.

He told the reporter other police in the area might make similar demands. Two minutes later another officer made the same request.

Security Theater at it’s finest.

Quote of the day–Ray Ozzie

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I fear we are partying like it is 1984.

Ray Ozzie
Microsoft Chief Software Architect
September 6, 2007
Company Meeting 2007–Changing the world
[Ozzie talked about growing up in the 60’s and being in fear of “the man” and how the personal computer was believed to help restore power to the individual. He asked us to make sure private things could be kept private even when we are putting more and more information into “the cloud”. It was good stuff. I had planned to write up a big post on the meeting last night but got wrapped up in expressing my “sympathy” to Robyn.–Joe]

Xenia had a migraine

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Both Kim and Xenia appear to have inherited something besides their good looks from their mother. For several years Barb has had headaches that didn’t quite qualify as migraines but were stubborn and painful. Kim had some mild migraines, if there is such a thing, in High School. Last night Xenia had one. A scary event because it involved her loosing her vision in one eye for a while. She posted about it on her Live Journal. I wouldn’t have normally linked to that post but the video she made brought a smile to my face.

Sympathy for Robyn Ringler

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There has been quite a bit of talk about Ms. Ringler, the anti-rights activist, recently:

Mostly because of the Enough is Enough post by Ringler. If it is really true as she reports, “I’ve been told I should be dead and how my death should take place.” then I have some sympathy for her on that one point. If not directly, then almost for certain indirectly, I contributed to her feelings being hurt after being called a bigot.

I debated with myself how to write this post which is part of why I am so behind the curve on the topic. I considered doing an Alex St. John type “apology” (read the book) which resulted in his immediate termination of employment at Microsoft (he knew it would and IIRC cleaned out his desk before pushing the “Send” button on the apology email). I finally decided that there was a better approach.

First a taste of the Alex St. John approach–Ms. Ringler, I’m sorry. I forgot to mention you are a felon as well as a bigot.

In one sense I really don’t like hurting other people’s feelings–especially children and women. I feel empathy for them and I’m certain others that we might like to have on our side will feel empathy toward them as well. But how much sympathy should one have for those that don’t want “colored people” eating in the same restaurant as “white folk” or drinking from the same drinking fountain, or are not allowed access to the public swimming pool because “they would have to drain and clean the pool after the blacks had used it”?

How much sympathy do you feel for a KKK or Aryan Nation type person that gets ostracized in their community for their bigotry and leaves town? Or the bully at school that finally gets caught in the act and is disciplined? Ms. Ringler, of course, does not think of herself as a bigot. I’m certain she thinks of herself as just looking out for what is best for everyone. But the KKK think the same things about themselves. Ringler hasn’t said she wants us dead or living our lives as slaves. And I’m certain she hasn’t put a pillow case over her head and burned crosses in the yards of anyone’s home. She is much more refined than that. She just wants the government to put us in jail for exercising a right constitutionally guaranteed to not be infringed (refer to numerous state constitutions if she whines that the Federal Constitution doesn’t really say that–many state constitutions are not in the least bit ambiguous). She wouldn’t want to get her own hands dirty dealing with scum like us.

This last point may be why she is turning off the comments. As one person commented maybe she doesn’t want to be associated with people like me in any way.

What we have here, in the case of Ringler, is her experiencing what I call the proper state of mind for defending the RKBA. We are just “gun niggers” in her mind and she has just realized we are going to stand up to her and Ringler is feeling the same pain as the old man in the book Negros with Guns who said (page 10):

God damn, God damn, what is this God damn country coming to that the niggers have got guns, the niggers are armed and the police can’t even arrest them!

To Ms. Ringler I say, again, I’m sorry if you received death threats or people said you should be dead. That was entirely inappropriate. The law provides for the death penalty for your type of crime only if it results in the death, kidnapping, or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill. I don’t believe you made it that far in your conspiracy against the rights of others and hence I believe the worst punishment that should be dealt to you is a fine and perhaps a few years in prison. But you don’t have any of my sympathy for having your feelings hurt. As Xavier said, “……….Oh good grief. Grow up.“

Gun Owners Without Borders

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Looking up Alan’s web page for my previous post I took a look at his blog for the first time in quite a while. Not because it rarely deserves my attention but because his stuff is frequently long and I postpone reading it “until I have more time” and then that just never happens. But this post thrills me. A sample:

Gun Owners Without Borders is a proposal for a new international human rights organization.

Gun Owners Without Borders recognizes a bond between individual human beings whose right to live is challenged by their governments or other forces.

Gun Owners Without Borders supports an inalienable right of people to resist any attempts to exterminate them, regardless of the source or justification for the attempted extermination.

Current United Nations policies do not prevent genocide and democide, because a nation’s sovereignty logically comes first. Internal policies are a nation’s own business. This holds true whether the rulers are elected, appointed, inherited or in charge through force of arms.

Gun Owners Without Borders recognizes that this is perfectly understandable and a normal state of affairs under the nation-state system.

Communist China, for example, could shoot its citizens who are drug addicts, or for political reasons, or to harvest organs or to turn babies over for adoption (and they do). The U.N. and others might object, or not, but it’s not within their realm to stop such abuse. Nor could they, as a practical matter, if they were of a mind to.

Gun Owners Without Borders therefore understands it falls only to individual persons to defend their own right to their own lives if they can, even if such defense would be viewed as illegal or criminal acts by the ruling parties. Under the doctrine of state sovereignty, anyone who shoots back at an agent of the government is by definition typically an “outlaw.”

If you ever think we have the gun-rights situation in the U.S. under control and you are looking for a more challenging political environment I’m sure there will be enough work available on this planet for a generation or ten of gun-rights activists.

It’s just a condition–NOT

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Uncle reports they can’t help it. It’s just a condition. Jed read the report and took away that people “become deaf to arguments of reason”.

I think it’s a fascinating insight into the human mind. And my take is different from both Uncle and Jed. My take is that we need to carefully word things to avoid reinforcing the very lies the anti-gun bigots are trying to convince people of. This is very closely related to something Alan Korwin shared via email over seven years ago. Here is just a sample of Alan’s brilliant, ahead of his time, insight:

Certain words hurt you when you’re talking about your rights.  People who would deny your rights have done a good job of manipulating the language so far. Without even realizing it, you’re probably using terms that actually help the people who want to disarm you.

To preserve, protect and defend your rights in this critical debate, you need effective word choices.

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
PRO GUN
It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
PRO RIGHTS

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
GUN CONTROL

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
CRIME CONTROL

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
ANTI-GUN MOVEMENT

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
ANTI-SELF-DEFENSE MOVEMENT

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
SEMIAUTOMATIC HANDGUN

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
SIDEARM

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
CONCEALED CARRY

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
CARRY or RIGHT TO CARRY

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
ASSAULT OR LETHAL WEAPON

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
HOUSEHOLD FIREARMS

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIALS

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
RACIST GUN LAWS

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
JUNK GUNS

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
THE AFFORDABILITY ISSUE

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
HIGH CAPACITY MAGAZINES

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
FULL CAPACITY MAGAZINES

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
SECOND AMENDMENT

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
BILL OF RIGHTS

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
ANTI GUN

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
ANTI-GUN BIGOT or ANTI-GUN PREJUDICE

They want you to say (and you lose if you say):
ANTI GUN

It’s better to say (and they lose if you say):
ANTI RIGHTS

Jason is back in the news

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Nephew Jason Scott lost his arm to an IED in Iraq nearly two years ago. He’s back in the news as the first recipient of a scholarship here:

Amputees from the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for the past year have been watching the progress of a new structure as it emerged from what used to be the hospital’s deeply sloped backyard. They are excited, anticipating the opening of the 31,000-sq-ft Military Advanced Training Center, which will help them resume productive lives.

I just love it when they write sexy stuff

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Among my daily browsing fare are articles on sex research. I love the tension between the passionate subject and the dispassionate terminology and phraseology. Example:

In addition, male preference for salivary exchange could function to introduce substances such as hormones or proteins into women’s mouths that may influence their mating psychology, and even make them more sexually receptive.

I hope it wasn’t taxpayer money dispensed as research grants to “discover” that a French kiss might make a woman “hot”–even if does provide me with considerable reading enjoyment.

Quote of the day–John Gilmore

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The whole conference has spent a lot of time talking about ways to control uses of information and to protect peoples’ privacy after the information was collected.  But that only works if you assume a good government.  If we get one seriously bad government, they’ll have all the information they need to make an efficient police state and make it the last government.  It’s more than convenient for them – in fact, it’s a temptation for people who want to do that, to try to get into power and do it.  Because we are giving them the means.

John Gilmore
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, March 28,1991
[See also my Jews In The Attic Test.–Joe]

Gun Blogger Rendezvous itinerary

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I finally stopped procrastinating and made our travel and hotel reservations for the Rendezvous. I’ll get our registration in to Mr. Completely later today.

We are flying in so that means even if the range would allow “Joe’s special recipe” for reactive targets I’d be blocked by the TSA from bringing my chemistry set.

Barb and I will arrive in Reno on Thursday morning and leave Sunday evening. I’m hoping to see the same participants as last year as well a bunch of new ones. Will you be there?

Enough columns on the spreadsheet

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For years Ry and I tested new reactive target recipes for Boomershoot. When our hypothesis for making an explosive which could be easily detonated with long distance rifle fire were proven false Ry would lament that we didn’t have enough columns on our spreadsheet. There was some variable, which we didn’t know existed, that was critical to our understanding of explosive detonation. Literally it was true that I had (have) a spreadsheet with lots of different variables that we thought might be critical to make our explosives better. Some of those included:

  • Flammability limits (acceptable ratios of fuel to oxygen where ignition can occur)
  • Heat of vaporization
  • Specific heats (including those for phase changes)
  • Flash point
  • Auto ignition temperature
  • Heat of combustion per unit mass
  • Heat of combustion per unit of oxygen
  • Heat of combustion relative to specific heat of the materials
  • Temperature of decomposition of the oxidizer

Our experiments yielded no obvious corelation between any of our hypothesises and the real world–until the last couple of days.

The title for the column on the spreadsheet we apparently were looking for is Ω. In explosive engineering terms (rather than electrical engineering terms which is what first comes to mind with that symbol) this is the weight ratio, expressed as a precentage, of the oxygen remaining or required (expressed as a negative number) for complete combustion of all the fuel in the explosives. For example, TNT, C7H5N3O6 has end products of CO, H2O, and N2. That carbon monoxide (CO) could have been converted into carbon dioxide (CO2) and more heat if there had been enough oxygen around. It turns out that Ω for TNT is -74%. For RDX (the active ingredient in C-4), C3H6N6O6, Ω is -21.6%. From my earliest attempts at reactive target explosives I started out with stoichiometric ratios. This would give me the most bang for a given mass of components. That is, no excess fuel and no excess oxygen left over after the reaction was complete. It was ultimately discovered via both experimental results and hints found on the Internet that maximum sensitivity was not achieved with stoichiometric ratios. It was more sensitivity when the explosive was oxygen rich. From some of my “new” books on explosives I found that “Ω” is a measure of that “richness” or “poverty”. I modified my spreadsheet to calculate Ω for various recipes.

Here is a partial (I have three times this number of recorded experiments) table of various Boomerite recipes and my best approximation of Ω:

Recipe Ω
Boomerite 1998 1.2%
Boomerite 1999 2.4%
Boomerite 2001 9.2%
Boomerite 2002 8.3%
Boomerite 2003 19.4%
Boomerite 2006 16.2%

There were other variables that changed as well such as packaging materials, fuel used, ratios of oxidizers, catalysts, size of the particles, and packing density which also affected the sensitivity. But the correlation with Ω is very strong. Each year the sensitivity increased and Ω, a measure of the excess oxygen, was a significant component of that increase in sensitivity. It also can be too high–obviously if there is no fuel at all and only oxiderizer it’s going to be a minor explosion at best. But this gives me a reason to revisit old fuels and try something a little bit different this time.

Side note: The most recent recipe on the web is not what we actually use. What I publish is always at least one “generation” behind our “latest and greatest”. Ω for the web recipe is 20.1%.