The Stars Came Back -103- Recruits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote of the day—Mayors’ Summit on Illegal Guns

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

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.

image

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.

Quote of the day—James Porter

The anti-gun forces tried to win the battle politically and we beat them. So what did they do? They go to the states. They try to push their legislation there. We beat them. So now they’re in the international arena at the U.N., and, with all due respect, we will beat them there as well.

James Porter
NRA President
June 20, 2013
New NRA President: Anti-gun Executive Orders ‘Ill-Advised’
[“Due respect”? There isn’t much response due to them. Don’t commit any crimes against them, be sensitive to those that have lost friends and family members to someone using a gun, and don’t moon them. I think pretty much is the extent of the respect they are due.

However, in the cases of Senators Feinstein and Schumer those guys don’t deserve nearly as much respect as your run of the mill anti-gun person. You can moon them if you want and still be giving them too much respect.—Joe]

Are you a proud gun owner?

Emily Miller is asking for pictures of ordinary people with their guns. It’s for a book.

NSA data used for blackmail

If this report is true then I was right (emphasis in the original):

They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people.

The Stars Came Back -100- Full Moon

Fade in

INT – DAY – Robo-moon entry tunnel

Aerial shot following the ship.

The tunnel is a couple of times wider than Tajemnica. It is lined on all sides with dual turrets, rail-gun in the middle and a laser bump on one side. Dozens of them. They pass slowly down the tunnel, with massive doors opening before them, and closing behind, like a giant series of air-locks. They pass five sets of them, and the space between them is much longer than the ship. They are going deep inside the moon. After the last set of doors, it opens into a large domed room, at least a kilometer across. Tajemnica rotates and settles down toward the “bottom” of it, settling onto a large well-lit “X” on the floor, one of a half-dozen. There are a number of large hatches surrounding the room, both at ground level and higher up on the walls. The side ramp lowers slowly. Allonia walks down the ramp, and over to a nearby kiosk, and extends her hand. Continue reading

Gun Song- Kaylee Rutland – Daddy’s got a .45

Current country rock chick Kaylee Rutland has a song about a classic sort of situation – dad making sure his little girl is properly treated, and the guys that come a’court’n are worthy of their pride and joy. Cute, fairly predictable, fun.

 

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

If Bloomberg and his Mayors Against Illegal Guns are willing to make a martyr of a terror suspect to push their agenda it raises questions about the legitimacy of their campaign to disarm America, one legislative step at a time. Next thing you know, they’ll be calling Osama bin Laden a victim of gun violence, too.

Alan Gottlieb
June 19, 2013
CCRKBA BLASTS BLOOMY BUS CAMPAIGN FOR CALLING BOMBER A ‘GUN VIOLENCE VICTIM’
[Using the legitimate deaths of criminals shot by both police and private citizens to inflate the numbers, to justify advocating more restrictions on gun owners, has been going on for at least 20 years. It probably has been going on “forever”. It’s just that I have only be aware of it for the last 20 years or so.

This tells you both how weak their case is and how morally bankrupt they are.—Joe]

Field Ballistics is available on Windows Phone

I just received notification that Field Ballistics for Windows Phone has passed the Microsoft certification tests and is now available in the store. It may take a day or two before you can search for it in the store but you can install it now using this link.

Some of the cool features are illustrated with the following screen shots:

ScreenShotMap

The shooter and targets are placed on a map. The program automatically computes the range to the targets. It also automatically computes the direction of the wind relative to the bullet flight path. This means that if the wind is from the west and you are shooting at a target to the south you will get the correction the full value of wind drift. But if you then choose a target directly east (or west) of you the wind correction will be zero. Of course all the trigonometry is done to correct for shooting in all directions.

At the bottom of the screen are two columns. The left column is the ballistics solution to make the shot at the selected target. In the right column is data about the target and the bullet when it arrives at that target. Of particular note is that in the case above the bullet velocity is in red (the theme color of the phone). This means the bullet velocity is below the minimum you have specified in the settings. This is particularly important for Boomershooters because the targets won’t detonate if the bullets are going too slow.

Tapping the ‘S’ or ‘T’ icons at the bottom of the screen moves the center of the map to the shooter or the selected target. The down arrow icon moves the selected target (or the shooter if it was selected) to the location of the phone using the phone GPS. This means that you can set up multiple targets on the map, then the shooter can “run and gun” and get ballistic solutions quickly. By using the GPS to get the current location of the shooter the distances and wind corrections are automatically update for each position the shooter wishes to shoot from.

ScreenShotTargets

You can add as many targets as you wish* and give them user friendly names. If you tap the “Measure” button you can use the phone camera and accelerometer to determine the incline to the target from your current location.

ScreenShotIncline

This is the incline measurement screen using the camera. You put the crosshairs on the target and tap “Done” to capture the incline of the phone for this target. You can also zoom in or out and refocus the camera.

[Please note this is only to illustrate the incline measurement feature, not to advocate shooting in cities.]

ScreenShotConditions

The automatic weather conditions are obtained from the current location of the shooter. This doesn’t mean the physical location of the phone. You can position the shooter in another state and the nearest weather station to the designated shooter location will be used. When you define your own conditions you can even use the phone GPS to capture your altitude.

ScreenShotCartridges

Black Hills and Federal match ammo are predefined. Add as many of your own cartridges* as you desire.

ScreenShotRifles

Some predefined rifles are included but you can add as many of your own rifles* as desired.

ScreenShotHelp

There are pages and pages of easily accessible help on the phone.


*The trial version only allows one target and one each of user defined conditions, cartridges, and rifles.

Syria – a win-win thought

Just thinking out loud here. Why is the current Syria situation NOT considered a win-win? I mean, yeah, it sucks for Syria, but that part of the world has been in various stages of suckitude pretty much continuously since well before the first Persian empire threw up there. But consider a simplified view of it: LOTS of Islamic radicals go there to fight, and die in the process (i.e., they are not butchering civilians and imposing Sharia elsewhere). One side buys guns with profits from the opium trade from Russia, the other side buys guns with oil profits from us, everyone gets to export young male Islamic radicals there. Heck, seems to me Russia and the US should be ENCOURAGING it to fester in the name of national security and as a domestic jobs program…. I mean, if it’s OK for the Islamic world to deliberately leave the Israel “problem” fester and use it for  domestic political purposes, is this not simply a “balanced approach” to the region?

The Stars Came Back -099- Knock knock

Fade in

INT – DAY – Tajemnica Bridge

The usual suspects are in their places. Stenson stands in the doorway.

Helton: I’m just the captain. YOU two are the flying geniuses. What do YOU want to do to put her through her paces? Continue reading

Quote of the day—irish189

If this is what passes for winning in Washington these days, I have no idea what losing looks like anymore.

irish189
June 18, 2013
Comment to White House Officials Say They Are Winning Gun Control Debate, Will Again Push For New Laws
Obama-Biden
[I love that picture of V.P. Biden. Pouting like a three year-old characterizes the situation quite well.—Joe]