What gets prosecuted

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Next time someone says they are OK with the NSA spying because they are “keeping us safe” and “if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear” or some such fantasy, here’s something to consider. According to this, the most commonly crime prosecuted in the former East Germany in the five years before the unification was failure to report a crime you knew about. When the state knows everything, then NOT being a rat becomes more dangerous than being a criminal giving the police a cut of the action for protection, because you have no leverage. That thought should terrify folks when they realize what it really means.

(BTW – I think the Judge likely believes what he says when he reports that, but I do not have an independent verification of his reported fact- anyone know for sure the stats on that? Even if it’s not the number one “crime,” if it’s anywhere in the top hundred it is bad.)

(Later Edit: How big a step is it from “see something, say something” to “see something, you are required to say something” with some sort of nebulous protections that may, or may not, protect you if you do say something?)

Quote of the day—Gregory Morris

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I played with it some… took me a minute to figure out how to position the shooter/target spots on the map… but then I found the elevation tool, and… whoa, totally cool.

Top notch stuff here.

Gregory Morris
June 28, 2013
Comment to the blog post Field Ballistic about my app for Windows Phone.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

The Stars Came Back -105- News

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Fade in

EXT – NIGHT – Deep Space

Three ships hang in the near black darkness. A supply ship, Tajemnica, and Borealis. The three are all “snuggled up” together, airlock to airlock, supply ship in the middle. In the far background, stars and the Milky Way turn lazily by, making the three ships seem insignificant. Continue reading →

Gun Song- Julie Brown – Homecoming Queen’s got a gun

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Interesting how the media and some of the other things are portrayed.

Quote of the day—Ralph Fascitelli

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The overwhelming research shows that buybacks generally don’t work well and are a waste of resources and are mocked by the NRA.

Ralph Fascitelli
Washington CeaseFire President
January 2013
McGinn’s office ignored leading gun control group in buyback effort
[There you have it. A gun control group admits what we have been saying for years. Gun “buybacks” are a waste. And “overwhelming research” supports this conclusion.

H/T to Ry.—Joe]

Brad Huffman autopsy

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Since I see people searching for this information and brother Doug posted it on Facebook last week (June 19th) I’m posting it here for better visibility:

The autopsy on our son Brad was performed in Pullman today. The preliminary results showed nothing. The coroner told me they did a very detailed autopsy, organ by organ and found no aneurysms, no blood clots, and no abnormalities that could explain his sudden death.

They are sending vials of body fluids to a lab for a wide range of toxicology tests, but he said nearly all toxins will leave some type of physical symptom that is noticeable in an autopsy (and they found no such tell tale signs). They have removed the electrical conduction paths from his heart and if the toxicology report comes back negative, they will examine the heart tissue with a scanning electron microscope and they might possibly find a defect in that.

Julie’s father had a defect in the routing of the nerves controlling his heart muscle. It caused him problems most of his life, but he died in his mid 70s of lung cancer. The coroner said Brad did NOT have that defect.

It will take about two weeks to get the results of the toxicology report.

Daffodils, Boomershoot, and the super moon

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Last Saturday Barb L. and I were at the Boomershoot site to “go on a daffodil rescue mission”. As I mentioned a few weeks ago there are some daffodils near the shooting line that get abused pretty badly by the fireballs.

We figured it would only take an hour or two of our time and we’d be done with the project. We dug up about a half dozen clumps of the wilted daffodils and got a five gallon bucket full of bulbs.

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To get so many bulbs from so few flowers was surprising to us. Then we started digging holes in the front of the shooting berm. After we had dug about 10 holes we knew this was going to take a LOT longer than an hour or two. After about three hours we started on “Plan B” which was to just dig a ditch in front of the shooting berm to dump the bulbs into so they survive another year and we could move them again when we feel up to it. We made the length of the ditch match the width of the berm we put daffodils in. This was about 60 feet which is only about one third of the width of the berm.

After about 4.5 hours we had all the bulbs back in the ground, fertilized, and watered.

We then went to look at some luxury accommodations my brother Doug offered us for the night:

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We declined this time. It was too upscale for our tastes.

We went back to Boomershoot Mecca and made our bed under the stars and the super moon without a tent so we could see the sky better:

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To the northwest we could see a beautiful sunset (at 9:38 PM) (see also this sunset picture taken a few minutes earlier from a different location):

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To the southeast we could see the super moon:

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The glowing sphere in the field is just a friendly UFO* which was visiting.

I got better pictures of the super moon earlier in the evening when we visited the Big Eddy Marina on Dworshak Lake:

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The next morning what I believe to be a Western Meadow Lark sang several songs to us. I recorded some of them and will probably make a post about that someday.

*Actually it was an internal reflection in the camera lens.

Field Ballistics is “Top Paid”

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I found this surprising*. Very pleasing, but surprising:

WindowsPhoneTopPaidSports

Field Ballistics on Windows Phone is in the list of “Top paid” sports apps after being out for only a week.

See my announcement here. Purchase it (or get a free trial version) here.

*Assuming no inflation, sales remain constant, and I saved and invested every penny then in another 1000 years I might be able to retire on the proceeds.

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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The man is obsessed and if he’s spent so much as a dime of public money on what amounts to a private crusade, Mayor Bloomberg needs to be held accountable for that.

If Eric Schneiderman won’t investigate Bloomberg for possible misuse of public funds we will. The mayor has been acting increasingly like a self-appointed monarch, but this still the United States, not Bloomberg’s personal fiefdom.

Alan Gottlieb
June 26, 2013
SAF ASKS FOR ALL BLOOMBERG-MAIG RECORDS FROM NYC AFTER REVELATIONS
[Bloomberg is like some proslavery politician in the mid-1800’s obsessed with the “problem” that there are states that are free. He wants all states and cities to put “people in their place”.

Bloomberg needs to be put in his place and it if takes lawsuits, courts, and Federal Marshalls hauling him off to jail I’m just fine with that.—Joe]

The Stars Came Back -104- Training

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Fade in

INT – DAY – Tajemnica mid-deck passageway, near a stairwell

Helton, looking tired, walks heavily down the stairs, and clumps down the passageway headed for the galley. He pauses and looks through a window into the cargo bay, where two formations with about one hundred young men are doing drills wearing armor and carrying shields. The formations face one another as shield walls layered four ranks deep, and they are practicing pushing forward against the other, while the other side falls back in good order on command. Shove, counter-shove, advance, fall back, bugle call, change direction, do it again. Through the open windows a crashing of metal and flesh, a grunting of men struggling to breath and keep going, corrections and encouragement from the experienced soldiers. Another short bugle call and they both fall back a few steps and then rest in place a moment. Kwon steps up next to him to watch as well. Continue reading →

The Stars Came Back -103- Recruits

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Fade in

EXT – DAY – Training field on New Texas

Aerial view of a vast grassy plain in full, bright sun. It looks like a really hectic Day One in a HUGE boot camp. On a large training field, there are thousands of young men in companies of a hundred or so running all sorts of speed, agility, and strength tests. Each company has a handful of guys in uniform, and they are racing individuals and teams against one another in a high-speed, highly competitive, multifaceted course selection. The guys in uniform are broad-shouldered, sold-looking, mature men with short hair and a serious look. Continue reading →

Quote of the day–Robert J. Avrech

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Liberty is too messy, too chaotic for the forces of the Democrat party. They yearn for conformity, for a uniform sameness that gives the illusion of a serenely content society. That’s why they want to get rid of cars and shove us all into railroad cars. Socialists just love cattle cars; they just relabel them high-speed rail.

That’s why Democrats want to get rid of the Second Amendment. An armed citizenry can resist an unjust government.

Robert J. Avrech
June 24, 2013
Climate Change = People Control
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

On the NRA’s political power

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The anti-rights movement frequently complains about the NRA’s political clout, such as it is. I think they over-state it, but the point is; those who complain about it are the ones who created it, as I so elequently put it over at Oleg’s place;

“You know that [firearms handling safety and marksmanship training for regular citizens] is exactly the reason why the NRA was founded, right? We tend to think of them as a civil rights advocacy group, but their original charter is all about firearms training and shooting matches…

“It wasn’t until the second amendment came under fire from the Marxists that the NRA was forced into political advocacy, and so for those who complain about their considerable political clout; Fuck you. It’s your fault. You anti libertarians started it. We didn’t ask for this shit. As soon as you quit it, and quit it for sure and for good, the NRA can get out of politics and go back to being purely a training and shooting match sponsoring organization.”

So next time you hear anyone complain about the NRA’s influence in politics, hit ’em with the truth– The leftists and their ilk started it, not us. Same goes for any pro liberty advocacy anyone doesn’t like– If liberty weren’t under attack we wouldn’t have to organize and defend it. See? We could just mind our business. It’s very simple. Stop your evil ways and we won’t be forced to get up in your face advocating for good.

The Stars Came Back -102- Charter

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Fade in

INT – DAY – Officer’s mess

Helton, Lag, Kat, Harbin, Bipasha, Allonia. On the wall and table screens is a lot of text, and a star-system planetary diagram with a dozen planets on it. The fourth planet is alone on one side of the star (at the 12 o’clock position), with most of the planets are almost completely on the far side (between the 5 and 7 o’clock positions). A gas giant is at the 3 o’clock position at the outside edge. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Don B. Kates

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If criminals and the irresponsible obeyed gun laws both gun crimes and accidental gun fatalities would virtually cease. Of course violent crime would continue with other weapons… In gun banning Russia criminals and suicides use other methods so successfully that both murder and suicide are four times higher than in the U.S.

Don B. Kates
May 23, 2013
“Easy Availability of Guns” – – Not!!!
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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If an antigun person thinks that if someone is carrying a gun they must be “just looking for someone to shoot”, “looking for trouble”, “secretly want to be a cop”, or any other such nonsense then wouldn’t it be appropriate to ask them one or more of the following?

  • If you don’t carry a gun then you must be looking to be a carjacking/mugging/kidnap/rape/murder victim.
  • If you don’t carry a gun then you must believe violent crime cannot happen to you.
  • If you don’t carry a gun then you must secretly want to the police to rescue you.

Or, of course, they think their penis is so large and durable they can use it as a weapon.

The Stars Came Back -101- Borealis

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Fade in

INT – DAY – Bridge of star-liner Borealis

The spacious bridge is full of busy, stressed-looking people trying to figure out what their situation is, pouring over sensor data, internal system monitors and readouts, and status reports from throughout the ship. The captain, a slender, dark-skinned, dapper man in immaculate uniform sitting in the command chair, looks worried. A middle-aged woman, the FIRST OFFICER, approaches him in a uniform with several stripes on the sleeves, also looking worried. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Black Chuck Todd

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Quote of the day—Mayors’ Summit on Illegal Guns

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As Mayors, we are duty-bound to do everything in our power to protect our residents, especially our children, from harm and there is no greater threat to public safety than the threat of illegal guns.

Mayors’ Summit on Illegal Guns
April 25, 2006
[Interesting belief they have there. I guess they have never heard of “nuclear war.” Or that in the last century nearly 100 million people were killed by their own governments. But there doesn’t seem to be an organization called “Mayors Against Illegal Governments.”

Or if they want to just address deaths that occur at a fairly steady rate only in the US then how about these from the CDC for 2010:

  • Unintentional falls: 26,009
  • Motor vehicle traffic deaths: 33,687
  • Unintentional poisoning deaths: 33,041

Each of those dwarfs “the threat of illegal guns”. Because even if you include deaths from suicide and legally justified shootings you end up with numbers on the order of 30,000 per year. The number of deaths that are inflicted by people illegally in possession of guns must be lower than the number of firearm homicides per year which is on the order of about 9,000 per year. Hence each of the accidental deaths listed above is greater by about a factor of 3 or greater. Thus these mayors are either deliberately lying, and/or are ignorant of the facts, and/or delusional.—Joe]

In my other life I am also a mechanic

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I started repairing musical instruments in the 1970s. My hippie days. Started a business doing that when I was 19. Taxes and red tape slowly turned me, or helped turn me, into a conservative, if by conservative we mean someone who believes that people should stay the hell out of other people’s business.

Anyway it’s difficult to get away from the musical instruments completely. Below is a Yamaha 894– solid silver body and keys, and this one has a custom headjoint made by Drelinger in White Plains, NY. The Japanese have been making some fine instruments and this one is no exception. Each key is like a piece of jewelry, not in the sense that certain guns are said to be “jewelry” but literally.

Every key is fit to its pivots or shaft to perfection. Any tighter and it would bind with temperature changes. One key can have a half dozen or more parts, silver soldered together in a jig and hand polished. The soft pad each key holds must produce an air-tight seal with a light touch to the tone hole, it must do it quietly, and it must usually do it in mechanical combination with one or more other keys, so there is a fair amount of regulation of each key, and more regulation between keys.

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The soft pads are leveled to the tone holes by use of paper shims of various thicknesses. I work with .001″, .002″ and .003″ shims mostly. Mark, remove the pad, cut a shim, paste it on the back of the pad, reinsert the pad, and try. Repeat as necessary, which can be many times per pad. You can see the punches, of which I’ve made several to fit various pad cup sizes, and bits of round shims, and a razor blade for cutting them into pieces. Sometimes you use whole shims to increase the effective thickness of the pad.

If you’re not already crazy it can drive you there. Many, many attempts, by many people (myself included) have been made over the decades to come up with a pad that’s more or less self-leveling and that can still hold up to moisture and all the rest, without sticking or making more noise, and so far it’s still the old felt and bladder skin pad that’s generally preferred.

It takes hours and hours, but I love it when it all comes together and the instrument finally becomes a “single thing” again, rather than the many parts I’ve been working on separately. You could even say it’s music to the ears. Lately though I’m given pause, wondering what good any of this does for anyone.

This flute is one of several owned by the principal flutist in a Northwestern U.S. orchestra, and yes; she knows that her flute is being worked on by a gun accessory corporation president. We’ve known each other for decades. She’s also a university professor and so it is safe to say that our world views differ somewhat. Two worlds. We get along very well all the same.