Take a good look:go to an internal hammer positioned very close to the cylinder (and non-Nerf, self-propelled ammunition) and you could move the grip and trigger up to be either exactly even with or even ABOVE the line of the bore. Perceived recoil would drop significantly.
To get you in shape for summer, I’ve got an excellent one: Pick a room in your home, take everything out of it and load it into a truck. Sit down for a half an hour and drink nothing but water. The load it all back into the room. Do this once a day. Double bonus calorie burning points for ever flight of stairs.
I am now residing in the new Casa de Analog, having done the above ten times in five days. Things are settling down now as all I have left to do is make three more trips with stuff, one from the old garden shed and two from the storage unit that I won’t be needing any longer, since the new house has a garage.
Pictures of the new RNS Blogstation Tacoma computer terminal/gun room will be forthcoming in a week or so, hopefully. I’ve still got to set up a few things and get the room cleaned up of all the packing material and bolt a couple things down.
I’ll be having the in-laws coming in from Montana tomorrow to see the place and help us clean carpets and paint at the old place and then I have to be back at work on Wednesday, so while blogging may be light over this week, it will not be non-existent. As soon as I get a spare hour to sit and write some things up, you’ll see them.
However, since I don’t have a lot of time, the “Quote of the Day” may skip a day or two as reading both blogs and books is lower on my priority list than usual. But the one for today is a socialist slayer, so soak that bad boy in.
I’d like to thank David for holding down the fort during my absence and it looks like y’all enjoyed his posts, which is why I brought him on. Just keep stopping by folks, the guy has full time posting abilities here and he posts whenever he has and itch to scratch and some time.
I hope everything is going well for everyone out there. I’m off to the old place and will be back later.
One of the things I did find before I signed off last week was this story about indie bands who refuse to take money from General Motors Hummer Vehicle Division to feature their songs in Hummer commercials.
Their sole reason for doing this is, if I may paraphrase, “because we don’t want our music to be represented along with those earth killing Hummer SUV’s”.
If Toyota called up and wanted the song for their Scion brand or the Hybrid Highlander SUV, they probably jump on it in a second, but when GM calls, they get a big nope. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that it is their music and wholly their decision as to what they want to do with it, but I always thought people made music to make money.
The electronica band Dirty Vegas made millions after their song ‘Days Go By’ was featured in those Mitsubishi commercials a few years back. They can make lukewarm records for the rest of their lives after all the money that single tune and all of the related remixes brought in. Sting releases his songs to car companies before putting them out on disc so that people will know them when they hear them on the radio.
But I suppose that if you want to keep your ‘indie cred’ (a codeword for: poor struggling artist who makes minimum wage and has few to zero actual job skills) you have to never sell your music except out of the trunk of your car while you and your band “wait to be understood/discovered for your genius”.
The truly hypocritical part of this whole thing is that if you look how indie bands get around to shows with all their gear, they do it in older, pollution spewing, trucks and vans. I really like watching when the bands start rolling into town for “Hempfest” in their VW Microbuses, spewing black smoke, and then go onstage to do an hour long set where they talk about protecting ‘Mother Gaia’.
It’s worth the price of admission. Oh wait, Hempfest is free, so I guess its worth twice the price of admission.
But hey, if these bandmembers want to remain poor, that is their right, in America.
If they were really smart, they would go into negotiations for larger quantities of cash and then donate a goodly sized chuck of the money to their favorite treehugging organization who is working on legislation to outlaw SUV’s.
But then again, they’re musicians. If they were smart enough to do that, they’d be record producers.
Government regulation is not an alternative means of protecting the consumer.
It does not build quality into goods or accuracy into information. Its sole “contribution” is to substitute force and fear for incentive as “the protector of the consumer”. The euphamisms of government press releases to the contrary notwithstanding, the basis of regulation is armed force.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paperwork which characterizes all regulation, lies a gun.
The Assault on Integrity – Alan Greenspan (1963)
Well, at least, I think you did, given that a Google search of “tasp” and “RFID” comes up with not much right now.
The SF author Larry Niven came up with lots of ideas in the ’70s. One of them was the ultimate high — an electric shock straight to the pleasure center of the brain. The zapper he named a “tasp.” Of course, Niven also postulated the inevitable addictive types (“wireheads”) who had special tasps, called “drouds,” surgically implanted so that they could plug into house current and blissfully starve to death.
Well, considering that RFID scanners are becoming so damn prevalent that they’re even going to be scanning our tires as we drive around (thanks to Congress. Gee, that’s such a surprise), that’s going to be a lot of localized RF generation in our environment pretty soon to power all those RFID tags. With all that “free” power out there, I’d imagine some bright person will come up with an RFID-activated droud. And once they do, trust me, there will be lots of buyers.
Retailers will like this. Hey, if I got a mild zap to my brain every time I walked through the scanners at the Wal-Mart exit, I’d be buying a lot more stuff at Wal-Mart!
Considering that the FDA seems to be getting ready to approve a real-world version of the droud for people suffering from depression, and that the Orgasmatron is already a reality, I’d say this is a lot closer than you might think.
(Another one of Niven’s ideas, forced organ donation by convicted felons, is a great idea, albeit one he thought would lead to a society in which things like jaywalking became felonies, because the demand for organs is so great. I don’t think it would be like that at all — frankly, this should be implemented immediately! We’d probably need a Constitutional amendment, though. Kinda hard to get around that prohibition on cruel & unusual punishments.)
Golly, with electric nonsexual orgasms, plastic women (and men — although Kenny Rogers’ publicist’s statement a few years ago about his pectoral implants seems to have mysteriously vanished from the Web)Â — why, it’s almost as if we’re living in the 21st Century! I want in on all this fun! TANJ!
Why did the Judge go to the U.S. Supreme Court this week?
To watch Anna Nicole Smith, of course! 
Given Judge Juggs’ proclivities, you knew that was coming, right? Sure you did!
…NOT!
(Although I have to admit back during her first run, her campaign handed out bright yellow Boxer shorts that were pretty kewl.)
Anyway, Kirk’s been monitoring the Kos Krowd in the Analog Kid’s absence, and found this lovely piss-and-moan post about dear Barbara voting for reauthorization of the Patriot act. Oh, the betrayal!
Money quote in my book:
On top of this betrayal, there is John Kerry who also voted in support of the Patriot Act. A man that had the incredibly bad taste to ask for donations on this site a day or so go — to then go forward and vote for the Patriot Act — Skull and Bones indeed.
Yeehaw! — had to get that seekrit society reference in there, didn’t we? Because we know it’s all part of that vast right-wing conspiracy, right?
 Anyway, the goldmine here is a Poll that YOU TOO can participate in and help shape California politics while you do it!
Now that Cindy Sheehan has been browbeaten into submission graciously declined to run against Senator Feinstein, seems like what we have here is a golden opportunity to help the Kos Krowd enlist either her or someone else against Dear Barbara. Go here, vote early and often!
(Copy of Kos Poll below for illustrative purposes only. Don’t click it! Instead, click here, scroll down and VOTE!)
Â
| Votes: 139 | ||
| Results | :: | Other Polls |
Â
Well, nephew-in-law, actually, but I can still brag on the mighty Antonio Banuelos.
The above slot machine is at the Palace in Lemoore, CA, where he will fight March 17th.Â
Okay, I’m finding all sorts of things as I unpack the files in the garage. Some of this stuff has been stored for a long time. Sometimes I can even figure out why I stored it in the first place!
For example, I ripped this ad page out of the September 2004 issue of Military & AeroSpace Electronics, and saved it in a file labeled “EMP protection,” because, well, that’s what they’re advertising.Â
Now, when I go to the company’s website, they don’t seem to be advertising EMP protection anymore, just lightning protection. Guess that’s more PC, or something.
Anyway, the whole reason I used to pick up journals like Military & AeroSpace Electronics, even though I have no electronics background at all, was for info like this. I mean, presumably if it’s discussed or advertised in a professional journal, it probably works, right?
Anyway, does anybody out there with a military or electronics background know about these little doodads in the ad? Do they work? (The ten-year warranty sounds pretty good to me.) Perhaps more importantly, do they cost more than your typical ham or VHF radio? Am I better off using the old store-your-radio-in-an-ammo-can Faraday cage trick?
