Still need to tinker a bit with the text on the webpage.
May 062009
May 042009
I could’ve sworn that I’d posted a link to this video before, but damned if I can find it. Anyway, this is to my mind just about the most powerful “9-11 YouTube” videos I’ve ever seen. If you can sit through it – especially the conversation from 2:50 to 3:01 – and not be moved, there’s something wrong with you.
I believe that the greatest failure of the Bush administration was not the bailouts or the prescription drugs travesties… it was the lack of use of nuclear weapons in the Tora Bora region. When bin Laden was confirmed there, we should *not* have done the diplomatic thing and let our Afghani “allies” try to take the region. We should not have sent in the Marines. We should not have sent in B-52’s with Daisy Cutters. We should have sent in the Peacekeepers and the Tridents, and reduced that mountainous region to fricken’ rubble. America’s response should have been massive enough that, 5,000 years from now, after civilization has fallen and risen and fallen and risen again, people on the Asian continent will still sit around campfires and tell whispered tales of how the foolish imps known as the “taliban” once taunted the great sky-god “America,” and how America struck down with the power of the gods, destroying the taliban utterly… and leaving the area filled with the scattered, broken remnants of the talibans dark evil magic, and that’s why anyone who ventures into that realm of blackened glass gets a sickness.
But instead, we went the “tepid” route. And as a result, the Taliban was never fully wiped out, and is resurgent, and moving into Pakistan in force. The reports are that the Pakistani nuclear program is being closely monitored by the US military, perhaps even having US Special Forces on site, ready to carry off the Pakinukes if the Paki government or military falls. So rather than exterminating the ideological garbage that is the Taliban, we now have to worry about *them* getting nukes.
If you think that nuking a thinly populated mountainous region would be a horrible over-reaction to 9-11… imagine what the US response will be if the Taliban gets nukes and takes out an American city. Or imgaine what the Indian reaction will be if Paki nukes are used on, say, New Delhi.
May 032009
Signed into law by Montana governor Brian Schweitzer on April 15 was House Bill 246, which exempts all Montana-manufactured firearms and ammo from all federal gun laws. in other words… the FedGuv can ban “assault weapons” all they like, but if you live in Montana, and there’s a company in Montana that makes, say, Uzis or AK-47s, you can buy one free and clear and the FedGuv can go pound sand.
A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Montana and that remains within the borders of Montana is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce. It is declared by the legislature that those items have not traveled in interstate commerce. This section applies to a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured in Montana from basic materials and that can be manufactured without the inclusion of any significant parts imported from another state. Generic and insignificant parts that have other manufacturing or consumer product applications are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition, and their importation into Montana and incorporation into a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition manufactured in Montana does not subject the firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition to federal regulation. It is declared by the legislature that basic materials, such as unmachined steel and unshaped wood, are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition and are not subject to congressional authority to regulate firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition under interstate commerce as if they were actually firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition. The authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce in basic materials does not include authority to regulate firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition made in Montana from those materials. Firearms accessories that are imported into Montana from another state and that are subject to federal regulation as being in interstate commerce do not subject a firearm to federal regulation under interstate commerce because they are attached to or used in conjunction with a firearm in Montana.
Freakin’ AWESOME.
Now, in all likelihood, the FedGuv will oppose this. Which means at some point they might drop the BATF hammer on some schmoe who buys himself a weapont he FedGuv decides he shouldn’t have. And then off it goes to the Supreme Court.
Hopefully, more states will adopt laws like this. I can easily see Texas doing so, and hopefully Utah as well.
The new law has some other points, both good and bad:
Section 5. Exceptions. [Section 4] does not apply to:
(1) a firearm that cannot be carried and used by one person;
Translation: new crew served weapons. I can live with that.
(2) a firearm that has a bore diameter greater than 1 1/2 inches and that uses smokeless powder, not black powder, as a propellant;
Damn. And I wanted to get me a one-hundred-fifty caliber rifle.
(3) ammunition with a projectile that explodes using an explosion of chemical energy after the projectile leaves the firearm; or
No RPGs or exploding bullets. Too showy anyway. However, it looks like they left the door open for atomic and antimatter munitions.
(4) a firearm that discharges two or more projectiles with one activation of the trigger or other firing device.
No fully automatic weapns. This, sadly, is a disappointment.
Amazingly enough, I didn’t see much about this on the news. Anyone else?
Apr 252009
On display at the Hill Aerospace Museum is an M-61 Vulcan, one of the most surprisingly durable aircraft guns ever devised.
Sure, it’d look a little funny fitted to a ring mount on top of my VW, but a man can dream…
Apr 232009
This is a relatively commonly reproduced drawing:
It comes from the English-language translation of Eugen Sangers report “A Rocket Drive for long Range Bombers,” which described a wartime German project to develop a global-range hypersonic rocket bomber. The graphic above is sometimes used to show that the Germans were working an atomic bomb… how else to explain the vast level of damage represented?
Well, the damage does *not* come from a single bomb, conventional, nuclear or otherwise. It comes from a *lot* of high altitude conventional bombs. The “bell curve” graph shows the effect of a statistically large number of bombs being dropped on Manhattan, all aimed at the same point and a normal distribution “miss pattern” being introduced. What Sanger’s showing is the sort of damage/square meter that New York could experience if it was plastered with dozens or hundreds of bombs, not one single device.
As with light, sound and gravity, a bomb going off produces, to first order, an inverse square law damage graph. This means that the further away you get, the softer the effects… and it means that the *closer* you get, the damage becomes exponentially greater. In theory, the graph, even for something like a firecracker, would go to an infinite spike at zero radius. Something like this:
What stops that from being true is that bombs are of finite size; the graph begins to break down roughly at the surface of the bomb. So it’s a spike until you get in to the radius of the actual bomb (a meter or two for a truly badass bomb), and then it goes fuzzy. But the Sanger graph shows not a spike, but a bell. The “exponential spike” as you get closer to ground zero seems to crap out at about a radius of one *kilometer.*
Each Sanger bomb could in principle wipe out a few city blocks, perhaps take out a skyscraper or two. But as we saw on Islam Outreach Day in 2001, it doesn’t take a nuke to create that sort of damage. A nuke, even a small one, does *vastly* more damage.
The Silverbird, like the A-9/A-10, would have been a spectacularly ineffective weapons system without atomic warheads. The reason why these projects got the official support that they did is because as weapons of *terror* they could well have been quite effective.
Why is this graph shown occasionally to represent a nuke when a few seconds reflection shows that the idea is silly (and a glance at the actual source documentation utter rejects the idea)? Well, on one hand, there’s sheer laziness. Once someone gets it in their head that the Nazis were close to having nukes, anything they see that says “The Nazis were close to having nukes” automatically looks reasonable. On the other hand, there are motives less pure than laziness: the desire of many to suggest that the Nazis were much more advanced than they really were. Oddly, this drive seems to exist on both sides of the Nazi/anti-Nazi debate: the pro-Nazi tards want to believe that the Nazis really were some race of supermen, because it makes them think that *they* are supermen too. And some anti-Nazis – in particular, a lot of eastern European authors and the like – also seem to see the Nazis as supermen. How else to explain how a relatively small nation could rise so quickly from economic disaster to nearly dominate and exterminate the rest of Europe? Both views are, of course, wrong. The Nazis were just people – albeit people who accepted an evil and crazy economic and social philosophy. And they were people who were nowhere near having nukes.
And there’s a third motive… profit. It makes a better story if the Sanger “Silverbird” was to drop a nuclear device on New York City than if it was just going to drop a three-ton conventional bomb. All the better to sell “documentaries” and books.
Apr 232009
On occasion, ATK-Thiokol burns off large quantities of scrap/excess solid rocket propellant. This is often propellant left over from casting operations, or propellant that has been trimmed out of cast motors, or old test samples, whatever. They can fire off thousands of pounds of the stuff at a time. It basically just sits there blazing white hot and emitting vast clouds of smoke, which ranges from dirty-orange to pure white, depending on what’s being burned and the sunlight conditions. The clouds of smoke, largely composed of aluminum oxide, water vapor, carbon dioxide and some interesting things like hydrochloric acid, typically floats up into the sky and dissipates at high altitude. And sometimes they screw it up.
Returning today from Ogden, at 5:03 PM I noticed the clouds of smoke starting to rise over the hills (I noted the time because it seemed very late for a major rocket test… the RSRMs, for example, are typically scheduled for 1PM on Thursdays, then I remembered that propellant burns are typically done after normal working hours so that most of the employees are gone). It looked pretty normal at first. But as I got closer, it became clear that whoever was in charge of making sure that the weather would co-operate was apparently a little off. The cloud of acidic smoke drifted *downwards* through Faust Valley (a bit appropriate, that), and then continued down into the farms below. It continued to hug along the ground heading northwest past Thatcher and Bothwell, crossing Interstate 84. I drove to a few locations where I could get halfway decent photos of it; and even though I only skirted the edge of the fume, I got one *hell* of a headache. I shudder to imagine the poor schmoes who got the full force of it. It seemed to take five to ten minutes to blow past any one location.
Apr 222009
Right HERE.
Apr 172009
From the Evening Standard:
AN ALLEGED double killer, his accomplice and one of his victims were all carrying firearms at an anti-gun event in London, the Old Bailey heard today.
Shakah Anderson is accused of shooting dead Mohamed Korneh and Selorn Gbesenete, both 21, at the Tudor Rose night club in Southall at Unarmed 2, dedicated to stopping gun crime among young black people, the jury was told.
Clearly, the Brits need to close the Gun Control Rally Loophole. Think of the children!
Apr 112009
For a limited time (until I delete it… ha!) Space Document 3, “The Story Of Peenemunde, Or What Might Have Been. is on sale for $7.50 to download. Normal price… $15.00. Get it while the gettin’s good!
The only place you’ll see this sale is this blog posting, so if you want in, click the “Add to Cart” below.
SALE IS OVER. You should have checked back sooner!
Apr 092009
On display at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds Museum in Maryland was this unlabelled smallish tank. Any ideas?
