Monthly Archives: October 2007

Ho hum

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Depending on what your definition of a robot is sex with robots is old hat. But what this guy has in mind is a taking it little bit further:

According to Netherlands University student David Levy, robots may become so human-like in the near future that people could fall in love with them, marry them, and have sex with them.

He recently completed his PhD on the subject of human-robot relationships. He stated that “At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once you have a story like “I had sex with a robot and it was great!” appear in a magazine like Cosmo, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”

Existing toys include these (not safe for work):

Quote of the day–P. J. O’Rourke

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. . . don’t I sometimes get called a Nazi?  Yes, name-calling, in which conservatives such as myself are loathe to indulge, is a favorite tactic of the liberals.  I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don’t let it bother me.  I don’t let it bother me for one simple reason.  No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.

P. J. O’Rourke
Give War a Chance
[He has a good point. And on a more practical note you can probably end the name calling if you use this line.–Joe]

Giving to a charity

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Mostly this is for the people at Microsoft that read my blog, but I’m sure there is application in other companies.

Here at Microsoft there is a big push during the month of October to sign people up for charitable donations. I think last year employees donated something like 72 million dollars. I’m pretty sure that is before the matching, dollar for dollar, funds from MS are counted. It is claimed MS employees donate more per capita than any other company.

This whole “giving” thing annoys some people. An argument could be made that is, barely, voluntary socialism. I’m not going to make that argument. Instead I think you just have to choose your charities carefully.

And of course there are organizations like JPFO and SAF that will help in our fight against the bigots that want to take away are civil rights but maybe that isn’t sufficiently “in your face” to suit you. There are other options.

On Saturday evening at dinner at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous Chuck told us his story of being wounded in Iraq and how Soldier’s Angels was such a huge help to him. I was glad I was in position such that nearly no one (I think Barb might have noticed) saw the tears running down my checks as I listened to his story. Barb and I bought $100 worth of raffle tickets but had to sell some of them to someone else because all the tickets were purchased before everyone had a chance to get some. Not only is that a worthy cause but supporting the “baby killers” might be enough to make someone in the Breasts Not Bombs crowd perk up and if you have seen any of the pictures you know that would be a remarkable and worthwhile accomplishment.

But if you want the ultimate slap in the face for the PC crowd you can play out this fantasy of mine–When you are asked to tell your story about why you donate you tell them its because you like to reach out and touch people you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. You don’t need to tell them you donate to Snipers Online–unless you really want to. They are already in the Microsoft database, Ry put them there a year or two ago.

Microstamping patent

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There has been a lot of talk (and here) about how the anti-gun bigots got pwned by a section in the microstamping bill that says it won’t take effect unless the technology is “available to more than one manufacturer unencumbered by any patent restrictions”. Furthermore those people dancing in the streets point out the primary patents won’t expire for another 15 years.

I hate to rain on everyone’s happy dance but check this out:

Question: Is microstamping a sole-source technology that would create a government-sanctioned monopoly for a single company?

Answer: The patent holder of microstamping technology has announced that a royalty-free license will be provided to every manufacturer in the United States on guns sold in California.

Tell me again who got pwned.

Could someone explain this to me?

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This (see the comments here) isn’t the first time someone has said something like this about me (see also this and this post in which I believe I contributed some to his conclusion). I could name off a half dozen people that said something similar. I’m not saying I disagree with them. I just don’t get what it is I say or do that causes people to arrive at these conclusions after a brief encounter.

About the only thing I can think of that might have given them this idea was that I explained how easy it was to get a knife through airport security (Sebastian said, “I’m glad you are on our side” after I did this). But then Uncle explained how to get a gun through which is a little more difficult but uses the same principles as I used in my knife example–so I’m not sure why I was singled out as an example.

I still don’t want to feed one

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This might help the “bullets on target” problem I have with machine guns but I still am put off by the cost of feeding such a device. At 1000 yards with my “Spud Gun” (some call it “insanely accurate”) will deliver a bullet just as accurately and with as much momentum as I could with this sub gun at 25 yards and with far less chance of receiving return fire.

It is a neat engineering advance in guns though. I applaud them for their ingenuity.

Quote of the day–Dr William Gray

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It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong. But they also know that they’d never get any grants if they spoke out. I don’t care about grants.

Dr William Gray
October 12, 2007
Gore gets a cold shoulder
[Man is not causing global warming. Policitial correctness, desire for political power, and a hatred of capitialism are the driving forces behind the global warming scare.–Joe]

Quote of the day–The North State Sheriffs’

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As we see it, the technology to implement the micro-stamping is flawed, there would be an increase in the potential for civil liability for law enforcement agencies that continue to use handguns which will be placed on the “unsafe” handgun list, there would be an increase in law enforcement training costs due to not being able to reuse spent cartridge casings, the technology could be easily defeated since the stamping is only 25 microns deep and the cost of the technology would be passed on to law enforcement agencies and citizens alike.

The North State Sheriffs’
Bill Analysis, Senate Rules Committee, Third Reading, Bill No: AB 1471
[I’m not sure why the reuse of shell casings would be affected. Any ideas?–Joe]

On our way home

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Gun Blogger Rendezvous 2007 is now over and Barb and I are sitting in the airport waiting to board. I probably averaged about five hours of sleep each night and I haven’t had any caffeine for several days now. I’m starting to crash from the prolonged excitement and fun as well as the less than normal amounts of sleep.

I have 299 pictures from the event. I shared most of them with The AnarchAngel, Sebastian, Uncle, The Conservative UAW Guy, and Kevin. Keewee, Mr. Completely and US Citizen took a bunch of pictures too so look around if I don’t post enough for you.

Update: Our flight has been delayed a few minutes. You can track our flight back to Seattle in near real time here.

Gun Blogger Rendezvous Saturday update

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I can’t get WiFi on my computer so I’m using a cell-phone shared Internet connection. I don’t have much time either, otherwise I’d post a bunch of pictures. So I’ll defer to others you are faster and better than me on this:

The trip to the range was great. I brought my Spud Gun this time. So I put a couple rounds in a target at 200 yards just to make sure nothing had changed in the last two years since I had shot it. Pictures of that target will posted later. The “group” (two shots don’t mean a lot) was 3/8″ of an inch just under an inch left of the bull. I then went to 300, then 600, then spotted for Chris as he started hitting at what the range master said was 953. He spotted for me and I was able to connect on nearly every shoot too. I left it zeroed for that range and numerous other people who had never shot at those distances reached out and touched the metal at nearly 1000 yards.

Later (more about this when I get the pictures ready for posting) I shoot the Ko-tonics 6.8 SPC. Uncle has a red-dot sight on it zeroed for 400 yards and from the bench it was easy to hit the 400 (12 inch?) yard plate nearly every time so I shot a few rounds offhand at the 400 yard target. Much more challenging but I think I hit about 1/3 of the time.

It was a great day at the range!

Time for Barb and I to head to the banquet…

Live blogging GBR meeting with the NRA

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Glen Caroline and Ashley Varner are here and we having a great dialog even if the wheelbarrows of cash didn’t show up.

So far the best message coming our direction is they vigorously welcome our input. Pick up the phone, send an email, etc. They don’t have enough ears to pick up and filter all the useful information “out there”.

There is a lot of talk about internal bickering in the gun community. We need to improve things and there are some good ideas on how to deal with it better.

Update @ 15:35: We are now discussing the NRA support/non-support in the Parker/Heller case.

Update @ 15:41: NRA says, “How do we address the perception problem?” This is regarding the NRA being perceived as pro hunter and abandoning the black rifle crowd. Not to mention the NFA people. In other words the “NRA is Zumbo organization.”

Update @ 16:10: Ashley says she likes my blog and loved the pictures from Montana. She agrees the “Gun Porn” with Kim wasn’t a problem. The woman that was disturbed by it was disturbed before she saw it. Uncle suggested the NRA get the CMP program funded again and stop destroying the military surplus ammo.

Update @ 16:25: Glen talked about translating talk into action. We need to put links on our sites to congress critter contact information and NRA-ILA newsletters/action alerts.

Quote of the day–Charles Darwin

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False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the path to truth is often at the same time opened.

Charles Darwin
[Think of how much mileage the bigots get with the erronous studies about a firearm being 43 times more likely to blah, blah, blah… versus some opinion piece in a newpaper.–Joe]

All my bags are packed

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I’m ready to go. Barb and I are leaving on a jet plane for Reno and the Gun Blogger Rendezvous this evening. That’s assuming the TSA will allow me, my guns, and ammo on the plane. Alaska Airlines will only allow me to take 50 pounds of ammo [heavy sigh]. That would have been enough for what I want to do except that with all the other stuff I’m taking (Boomershoot give aways, knives, spotting scope, tripod, range bag, magazines, holsters, guns, shot timer, eye and ear protection, laser range finder, binoculars, spare batteries, gun cleaning gear, walkie-talkie, altimeter, wind gauge, thermometer, exterior ballistics calculator, targets, and a clean pair of socks) I started running up against a different weight limit without bringing all the ammo I wanted.

I have enough match rifle ammo and if I decide I want some more pistol ammo I’ll buy it in Reno sometime tomorrow.

Update: We made it through security without incident. We are now sitting at our gate waiting to board. Pretty amazing considering all the electronics and cables I had in my computer bag. The holster in the computer bag apparently didn’t raise an eyebrow either. And the empty water bottle… I thought for sure they would want to open my backpack to make sure it was actually empty. They were cool with me wearing a shirt with the picture of a gun on it and the Boomershoot coat too. All nice to know. Maybe they are happy with just infringing on one constitutionally guaranteed right at a time.

So far the flight is on time. You can track it in near real time here.

Giving up on Andromeda

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James and I loved the first two seasons of Andromeda. Great characters, stimulating story line, it was wonderful writing and execution.

We got the first DVD of season three and episode after episode we looked at each other in confusion. What the heck was that? The actors were doing their job but the story sucked. We watched five or six episodes and gave up on Monday. It’s on to something else.

James read a synopsis of the remaining episodes declared they were all crap and made up his own ending, “Tyr takes over the ship, then conquers and rules the entire universe.” Works for me. It’s also entirely within character for Tyr. Some quotes to illustrate:

Tyr Anasazi: What would you like, Jaguar?
Charlemagne Bolivar: The usual. Hundreds of grandchildren, utter domination of known space and the pleasure of hearing that all of my enemies have died in terrible, highly improbable accidents that cannot be connected to me. And you?
Tyr Anasazi: [Laughs] The usual.

Tyr Anasazi: I have faith in nothing but this – when the universe collapses and dies. There will be three survivors – Tyr Anasazi, the cockroaches, and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches.

Quote of the day–John Gilmore

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We also need real control of identification. We need the right to be anonymous while exercising all other rights. So that even with our photos, our fingerprints and our DNA profile, they can’t link our communication and trade and financial activities to our person.

Now I’m not talking about lack of accountability here, at all. We must be accountable to the people we communicate with. We must be accountable to the people we trade with. And the technology must be built to enforce that. But we must not be accountable to THE PUBLIC for who we talk to, or who we buy and sell from.

John Gilmore
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, March 28,1991
[Another way of saying this is that government control of financial and communication identification fails my Jews in the Attic Test.–Joe]

No new ghettos

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Over the years I’ve had numerous queries about bringing a rifle to Boomershoot that shoots the .50 BMG cartridge. I’ve always told them it wasn’t a problem but they had to set up some distance from “normal people” so they wouldn’t hurt their neighbors with the muzzle blast. I put these shooters off to one end and it quickly got named “The Ghetto”. After I started running out of shooting spaces I explicitly set aside positions with extra wide spacing for the .50 caliber shooters and I called the area by the name given to it by shooters years before, the “.50 Cal Ghetto”:

Shooting areas.

Now via Tam I find there are “affordable” guns that shoot the manly 20mm cartridge. See the bottom of this page for a picture of the 20mm compared to the wimpy .50 BMG cartridge.

I haven’t had any requests to bring 20mm rifles to Boomershoot but they are welcome to come. They will be thrown into the same ghetto as the .50 cal guys who will have to just suck it up when they get embarrassed by the size of their tools compared to the newcomers.