Access to the dashboard comes and goes.  I'll keep plugging along as long as I can.  If it doesn't get back to normal, I'll just resume operations back at my old Blogspot blog.

Does anyone know how to get Scribefire to work with Blogger?  I know it's supposed to, but I can't get it to.

I haven't gotten a reply to my tech support email yet.  Not even an auto-response.

And I don't know if this post will actually show up.

The contact form for Eponym support was still working, so I asked what's going on.

It doesn't look good, though.  I'll be taking a break until I figure out what to do next.  Right now I'm looking at WordPress.

I don't know if I'll just continue with my blogging as it has been.  I make take this opportunity to go undercover and start blogging anonymously.

We'll see...

UPDATE:  The dashboard is back.

I've noticed some minor recurring problems with the blog lately, and in the last couple of days they have gotten worse.  I can still post (I think) using Scribefire, but I can't bring up my dashboard.  Right now I can't even bring up the blog itself.  The Feedburner feed is still working as long as I can still post, apparently.

Eponym's main page has almost nothing on it.  Bummer.  I wonder if they're going belly-up.

I was never a big comic book reader when I was a kid, mostly because there just wasn't any place to buy comic books.  But I found this article interesting and the conclusion kind of fascinating.

Elf with a Gun was created by Steve Gerber, who is also known for creating Howard the Duck and other oddball comics.

The armed elf would simply show up in various of his comic books, kill someone, and that was it.  No explanation, nothing ever brought to a conclusion.  These violent elvish interludes were not even a part of the stories in which they appeared.

But later in interviews, Gerber explained it.

[Gerber revealed] that the Elf was nothing more than a backhanded metaphor for the chaotic and inexplicable nature of everyday existence, the "beast in the jungle" that you can spend a lifetime planning for but which still comes as a surprise or maybe never comes at all.

Via meine kleine fabrik.  More here.

The Republican YouTube Debate will be hosted by CNN in November.

That gives us a lot of time to mobilize.

Go to CNN's website contact form and request that they play Tom Gresham's and Clint Smith's question for Republican candidates.  The YouTube url is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FI4LwjbEyg.

Via The War on Guns.

I'm going to try and bring back my regular weekly posts:  the vintage ads and a selected pipe smoker on Saturdays.  So here's the return of the Wednesday vintage gun ad.  Ammo this time.


I think Junior is trying to figure out a way to talk dear old Dad into letting him try out that scoped semi-auto.  And Rover is about to go for a sandwich.

An article by Robert Knight in  The Washington Times:

Another tactic that the media are using in their assault on gun ownership is making selective, misleading comparisons to other nations. NBC anchor Brian Williams noted on April 17, the day after the Tech massacre, that Great Britain "outlawed handguns, and anyone caught with one faces a minimum prison sentence of five years. They are so opposed to guns here that not even police officers on routine patrol carry them. Now gun violence is rare."

Mr. Williams ignored the rise in knife violence and other crime amid Britain's long history of strict gun laws and unarmed "bobbies." He also declined to mention countries like Switzerland, where male citizens are required to be armed with assault rifles and ready for militia duty, but where there is little gun violence. Or South Africa, which has some of the most stringent gun laws but has a rate of gun homicides of 74.57 per 100,000 population, contrasted with New Zealand, with weak gun laws and only a 0.18 rate of gun homicides per 100,000 people.

Mr. Knight rips the MSM a new one (as if they didn't have enough already).

Via Oscar Poppa.

Thanks to Micah Nelson.  Via Bill St. Clair.

Buy a gun or ammo today!

UPDATE:  I ordered two boxes each of #000 buckshot in .410 and 20 gauge from Cheaper Than Dirt.  I needed an excuse to get back on their mailing list, anyway.  For more reports on ammo purchases, see August 28 Ammo Buy at The War On Guns.

UPDATE 2:  From JPFO.

Today in 25 cities, shameless self-promoter Jesse Jackson is staging a gun-store protest. Jackson said the nationwide rallies would represent a grassroots effort to press state and federal legislators into passing “common sense” legislation to stem the flow of handguns and military-style automatic weapons.

Apparently Jackson is unfamiliar with the old saying, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

Since 1792, "gun control" laws were designed to keep black people disarmed and helpless. Black persons, whether slave or free, had to have a license or a judge’s permission before they could carry a firearm in Florida and Delaware. For black people, guns were banned entirely in several states. Florida laws empowered white "citizen patrols" to invade and search blacks’ homes for guns or other weapons. None of these policies applied, of course, to white people.

This is the vision Jessie Jackson has for the future? This is the government he trusts to protect him?

In response to his short-sighted and indeed, suicidal, belief that "only the government should have firearms," we offer our latest "Repudiate and Humiliate" handbill below [click to see the image --ed.]: www.jpfo.org/handbill-jackson.jpg

In closing, we would like to point out another quote to Rev. Jackson: "It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks." - Malcolm X

And the chick with the leopard has nothing to do with it.  Really.


More RPG Motivational Posters. Via LawDog.

I nearly missed it.  Actually, I left comment #1,000 myself in reply to another comment, so I'll give credit to JR of A Keyboard and a .45 for leaving the 1,001st comment.

Thanks, that comment included some good information regarding dealing with fire ants.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment here.

And here's why I don't really give a rat's ass about those lawyers getting fired.

At The Liberty Sphere: Priorities for the DOJ Without Gonzalez

In addition to the DOJ's failure to bring under control the nation's lamentable illegal alien problem, it has also failed to reign in one of the most dangerous, corrupt, and oppressive operations within the federal government, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Formerly known as the ATF, the BATFE, to put it bluntly, is simply not needed. It should be discontinued and buried quickly.

This wing of the Department of Justice has been the source of some of the nation's most memorable and unnecessary tragedies, such as Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound.

Today, their reign of terror is being conducted against gun shop owners and gun and ammo manufacturers.

Granted, these travesties of justice did not begin with the Bush Administration. Many of the present policies were initiated under George the First and exacerbated by the Clinton Administration. The problem under George the Second has been ineptitude and the failure to correct misguided policies of the past.

And for the newest twist in the ongoing saga, Red's Trading Post has found strong suggestions that the ATF is building an illegal database resulting in de facto gun registration.

Tomorrow is the day to buy ammo.  I have no confidence that it will send a message to the Bradys and their sycophants because hard, bitter truth hasn't gotten through them to so far.

This morning after I was up but before I left for work, a car pulled into our driveway and got about halfway to the house before they stopped.  We live out in the country, about 2 miles off the nearest farm road, and about 1/4 mile from the end of a dead-end county road.  We don't get strange traffic here.  Unfamiliar cars cruising down the road sends up red flags, and not just for me, but for all of the neighbors.

Our house is about 50 yards away from the road, so someone pulling halfway down the driveway at 5:00 AM did a lot more than send up red flags.  It sent me into full ballistic alert.

They sat in the driveway about 25 yards from the house for a few minutes while the dogs when apesh*t and I stood in the shadows and waited for movement with some reassurance in my hand.  They finally backed out and went farther down toward the dead end.  Since they didn't come back out for the next 40 minutes or so, I think they were there legitimately, but were not familiar with the road and had pulled into the wrong driveway.

However, the experience has helped me decide what to buy tomorrow.

Buckshot.

Not really any surprises here.  Seen at Ride Fast.  Rule:  if you have auto-complete on, just type in the letters of the alphabet and confess to whatever shows up on top of the list.

akeyboardanda45.blogspot.com/
blogonomicon.eponym.com/blog (big surprise)
cheaperthandirt.com/
deuceofclubs.com/randumb/clothespingun/clothespingun01.htm
endthewaronguns.blogspot.com/ (seemingly now defunct)
www.firearmscoalition.org
groups.google.com/ (sometimes lurking in alt.horror.cthulhu)
help.blogger.com/
images.google.com/
jaredmclaughlin.wordpress.com
www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=6947036&nav=menu484_2_10
www.ligotti.net/ (another Lovecraft-related site)
my.eponym.com/ (another big surprise)
nancysgardenspot.blogspot.com/
onemonkeystypewriter.blogspot.com/
porcupinenine.blogspot.com/
www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
reformedchicksblabbing.blogspot.com/
s102.photobucket.com/albums/m102/alandp/
www.technorati.com/search/blogonomicon.eponym.com
users.lewiston.com/ghostpwr/MMM.gif (I don't remember what this was, it's gone now)
viewzone.com/milkyway.html
www.weatherunderground.com/
x --  Nothing.
www.youravon.com/ (My wife is an Avon rep, and I place her orders for her since she's computer-shy).
z  --  Nothing.

I do all my blog reading with Bloglines, so the only reason the blogs show up on this list is if I've recently loaded the actual site so I can leave a comment or look at something that doesn't show up in the newsfeed.

The Truth About Gun Control posts another great essay called The Problem of Collectivism:

Being told to rely on others (the police) to defend us, when that obviously does not work, is bad enough. Being told we MUST rely on others, though, is unconscionable. It is essentially telling us that we have a duty to die when a madman like Cho decides to commit murder, all in the name of a no-guns policy that is meant to make people "feel safe."

I find it very distressing that so many people don't get that pro-CCW people are suggesting that people must take responsibility for their own safety. When they talk of the odds that a CCW holder would be in the class to stop the crime, they illustrate very clearly that they are picturing themselves not as the person taking action to save himself (and thus everyone else as well), but as the helpless victim who expects others to protect him!

That would not be so bad if the people who cannot break out of the role of helpless victims only put their own lives in danger, but they're not content with that. They have to make ALL of us into helpless victims. In their simplistic logic, they think the only difference between themselves and people like Cho is that Cho had a gun-- and as such, they can't tell peaceable armed citizens from crazed murderers!

If this blog isn't on your list, it should be. Posting is infrequent, but always hits the mark.

"my pipe smokes damn hot"

I get the feeling he was attempting a smoke while typing those words.

There is no one right way to smoke a pipe.  There are, however, a whole lot of wrong ways.

There are so many things that can make a pipe smoke hot, I probably shouldn't even attempt a post on it.  But here goes.

The tobacco could be too dry, and it's burning too fast.  Try rehydrating the tobacco or get some new stuff.

The tobacco could be too wet.  Wet tobacco causes high humidity in the smoke and this is the most common cause of the dreaded "tongue-bite."  Keep plenty of pipe cleaners on hand and stick one down the stem every so often during the smoke to sop up excess moisture.

You could be puffing too hard.  The tobacco is only supposed to char during the process, right on the borderline of actually smoldering.  It should cease "burning" (for lack of a better term) very quickly if you stop puffing.  If it keeps smoldering for several minutes all on its own, something is wrong.

It could be packed too loosely.  A looser pack means more air inside the bowl and therefore, a better chance for the charring to become actual smoldering (or G-d help you, flaming).

Maybe it's just a bad pipe.  Pipes are just like everything else in the world.  Just because it's more expensive doesn't necessarily mean it's a superior pipe.  It might be more expensive just because of the name on the stem or because the seller thinks it should be more expensive.

Maybe it's the wrong tobacco for that pipe.  This is a strange one, and one that some people have a hard time wrapping their head around, but every pipe will have its preferred tobacco.  You might have to experiment, using that pipe for different blends and different cuts until you find the one or ones that work for it.

Is it an aromatic tobacco?  Or worse, a very heavily flavored aromatic tobacco?  Or something you bought at Walgreens?  Heavy flavors mean more gunk, and more tongue-bite.  Cheap drugstore stuff is saturated with propylene glycol to preserve the moisture, but it's usually too moist.  More moisture, more humidity in the smoke, more tongue-bite.

Perhaps the pipe isn't broken in well, yet.  It might need a build-up of cake inside the bowl before it settles down and starts smoking the way it should.  This is natural.  If it's a new pipe, don't clean it like you're planning on performing surgery with it.  Knock the dottle out and clean the shank and stem, but leaving some ash in the bowl so it can start building up cake.

About the only thing I can say with fair certainty, based on my experience, is that the thinner the bowl walls on a pipe, the more likely it will smoke hot.  Thicker bowl walls provide more mass for heat dissipation.  Pipes with sandblasted or rusticated finishes theoretically have an advantage in heat dissipation because of the increased surface area--just like the fins on a radiator.  Or just like the fins on a pipe.


That's a Porsche pipe, and yes it was designed by that Porsche.

Don't be afraid of re-lighting.  Some people will began to "billows" the pipe with stronger breaths if they notice that it's about to extinguish itself.  Bad idea.  This causes uneven charring.  Stock up on matches, lighter fluid or butane and don't worry about it.  Just lightly re-pack it and re-light it.  And when re-lighting, light it all the way around just like you did the first time.

Someone on alt.smokers.pipes once remarked that if you re-light your pipe more than 5 times per smoke, you will burn out the bowl.  This is nonsense.  I replied that if that was true, I should have burned out at least 150 pipes (he caught it from several other posters there, too).  Sure, it's cool not to have to re-light a pipe, and it happens sometimes, but it isn't necessary for a pleasant smoke.

And if it takes you more than two lights to start a pipe going in the beginning, don't worry about that either.  The theory is that after the pipe is packed, there is first a false or "charring" light to get an even char all across the top.  Then you lightly tamp the char flat and light it again.  I often have to go through 3 or 4 false lights before I get it just right, the way I want it.  However, I tend to be very picky about this because I often smoke a pipe while driving and I don't want to have to relight it on the road.

A rambling post, but maybe it will help someone.

This past week I received a snail mail from my best friend and cohort in sci-fi/fantasy/folklore nerdism.  Hadn't heard from him in a long while, since he's been without a computer or internet access for some time.


Not only did he send a letter, but also a massive tome entitled The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla.  A pleasant surprise.  I've always thought I should have something about Tesla in my library.  I only hope the technical stuff isn't too far above my head.  Sure, I graduated from electronics tech school as the valedictorian with a 4.0, but that doesn't mean I'm up to Tesla's level.

So how did I end up a meter reader if I have an associate's degree in electronics engineering?  I spent pretty much all of the 90s putting the education to good use.  In the very same month that I made my last education loan payment, I was laid off.  I took it as a sign.  I was already completely burned out on working a bench job for several years, and I think I was going a little nutty being cooped up in a radio-proof cage for all that time.  I decided it was time to take a turn toward the kind of life most of my male ancestors lived (who I know of), and started looking for something that would keep me outside and improve my physical conditioning.  So here I am.

My father worked for the highway department pretty much all of his life.  His father and my great-grandfather were pretty much jacks-of-all-trades, doing what they had to to provide for their families.  On the other side, my other great-grandfather was a carpenter.  In fact, carpentering has been prominent on both sides of my family, but I seem to have not much talent in that area.

Anyhow, here's hoping he gets his email set up soon, and if you're reading this, I will try to write a letter back pretty soon.

Media Mythbusters comments on AP’s Bogus Ammo Shortage Story:

Reality, however, shows that the assumptions made and biases held by the Associated Press reporters may have led the story to having been built on an entirely faulty premise.

To understand the ammunition shortage being experienced by some police agencies today, we shouldn’t look at September 11, 2001, but instead, begin with February 28, 1997.

It was on that day in North Hollywood, California that Larry Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu, two-heavily armed and armored bank robbers, engaged in a 44-minute shootout with an out-gunned Los Angeles Police Department. The two suspects fired more than 1,300 rounds of ammunition, and each was shot multiple times with police handguns. the 9mm police pistol bullets bounced off their homemade body armor. Phillips eventually died after being shot 11 times; Matasareanu died after being hit 29 times.

In the aftermath of the shootout, the LAPD, followed by police departments large and small nationwide, began to feel that rank-and-file patrol officers should be armed with semi-automatic or fully-automatic assault rifles or submachine guns in addition to their traditional sidearms, anticipating an up-tick of heavily armed and armored subjects. The trend has failed to materialize more than a decade later.

As with most trends in law enforcement, the trend towards the militarization of police patrol officers to a level once reserved for SWAT/ERT teams was slow, though one that gathered momentum rapidly after September 11, 2001.

Today, it is this increased and on-going militarization of police forces and the associated training requirements that have caused the ammunition shortages experienced by some police departments, and the lack of ammunition is not related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in any meaningful way.

The Associated Press report is not supported beyond anecdotal evidence by real, objective facts.

Lots more details at the link.

In a nutshell, the ammo shortage is not because of international conflicts.  It is because of the increased militarization of domestic police forces.

I didn't mention it at the time, because I didn't do a whole lot of anything related to blogging this week, but this past Tuesday, August 21, was H.P. Lovecraft's 117th birthday (or it would be, were he still alive).

"[Games] are, in their superior forms, simply by-products of excess intellectuality, which I haven't the honour to possess. In their inferior forms they are of course simply avenues of escape for persons with too poorly proportioned and correlated a perspective to distinguish betwixt the frivolous and the relevant ... " - H.P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, February 3, 1932

The Escapist has a good article about Lovecraft's influence on modern gaming, from the text-based and now quaint The Lurking Horror to the recently-released Call of Cthulhu:  Dark Corners of the Earth.

Lovecraft has sparked the imaginations of countless horror enthusiasts since his death. The time you spent dreading the shadows on the wall after reading "The Call of Cthulhu" shouldn't embarrass you. You were affected, changed, by the words of a writer who knew that the shadows were more than they seemed. That night, touched by his words, you saw that there were things you didn't know and were shaken.  In a way, your love of gaming today may be because of a writer from
Providence. After all, the fun part of gaming is the mastery of the unknown, the conquering of the darkness; the stock and trade of Howard Philips Lovecraft.

Spread ant poison, overlayed it with one pass of flea and tick killer just for kicks, strategically placed a few ant traps, mowed the grass, sweated like a politically incorrect term.  Now the kids can play on their swing set again.

I need to buy more fire ant poison.  I usually use Amdro but any recommendations will be welcomed.  A couple of passes around the house twice a year keeps them at bay, but I'm behind schedule this year because of all the rain.

I'm done for the day, except for probably having to take some OTC allergy dope after mowing the grass.

Scientists drug-test whole cities:

Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city's sewer plant.

The test wouldn't be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

"It's a community urinalysis," said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of Washington drug abuse researcher who was part of the Oregon State team. The scientists presented their results Tuesday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Two federal agencies have taken samples from U.S. waterways to see if drug testing a whole city is doable, but they haven't gotten as far as the Oregon researchers.

I can't see what use such information could have, except to give some cities and states yet another excuse to institute even more heinous and oppressive measures all in the name of the "War on Drugs."

Classic line:  "Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete."

I don't know why, but today I got to semi-remembering the clothespin gun that I and a few of my friends played with when we were kids.  I can't remember how to construct it, so I Googled it.  I found Clothespin Match Gun.

A useful site, to be sure.  However, the ones we made didn't require a rubber band, and certainly didn't require as much modification.  Also the leftover piece was not discarded, it was used to cock the gun.  So I guess I'll have to keep looking.

We only fired big gooey spitballs with ours.  If my dad had caught me shooting flaming matches, he'd have tanned my hide.

Oh yeah, my dad showed me how to make one in the first place.  But it's been a while, he probably doesn't remember how either.

From Gun Law News we learn the plans for National The First Amendment is Good But the Second Is Not Day.

Once again the ninth largest city in the country is overlooked for participation, but I suppose they're more interested in preaching to their choirs than they are in reaching the populace at large.

Most people I know of in San Antonio are already ticked at Jackson for popping the "race card" in the Michael Vick thing.

At viewzone:

Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.

Except--as the article goes on to reveal--"our" Milky Way (or Mutter's Spiral, as some know it) is not "ours."  We are actually part of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy.

Interesting.

It's not often that I read an article that reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft and James McMurtry at the same time.  In fact, I think this would be the only time.

This post at Baboon Pirates reminded me of something I saw once.

Back when I was a teenager I was fishing in the Cibolo Creek down south of Stockdale.  It was one of those hot summer days so I wasn't interested in doing much moving.  I hooked a small leopard frog and ran the float out so the bait would be several feet deep and let it drift into a big hole, going for a good blue cat or maybe a yellow.  So I was sitting there just watching the cork float when I noticed a squirrel walking out on the limb of a pecan tree nearby.

This limb was already hanging very low, just above the water, and as the squirrel got farther out on the end of the limb, his weight made the tip of the limb dip into the water a little.  He backed up, I guess not wanting to get himself wet.  I watched him for a few more minutes, and finally noticed what had gotten his attention.  A pecan had somehow gotten lodged in a fork between two twigs sticking out of the end of this branch.  Seemed like the squirrel had his heart set on that pecan.

But the trouble was, every time he walked out on the limb, it would dip down into the water again, and he would run back toward the trunk.  And then out of the water would come the end of the limb and that pecan.

Finally he must have screwed up his courage enough and went for it.  All the way to the end of the limb he went, and when he finally grabbed that pecan he was a good two inches or so deep in the water.

And that's when it happened.

An enormous blue cat erupted from the water and took that squirrel off that limb.  It wasn't much of a fight.  A big splash, a few bubbles, and that was all.

I was astounded.  I had never seen anything like it.  I had never heard of anything like it.  If anyone else had been there to talk to, it wouldn't have mattered, because I was speechless.

Well, I didn't have anything else to do so I just stayed there and left my hook in the water, although I didn't hold much hope of catching anything with a skinny little frog after seeing that catfish eat a squirrel.  And then something even more amazing happened.

That blue cat swam back up to the surface and stuck that pecan back into the fork on the end of that limb.

Hard work today.  I have no energy for blogging or even reading blogs.

I will say that I still have had no replies to the emails I sent out.

Oh yeah, I also got rained on today.  Of course.  And it stayed so humid and cloudy that I never dried off even when it stopped raining.  It was like working inside a pressure cooker.

The Firearms Coalition has posted an update on National Exercise Your Rights Day.

The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

--William James

L. Neil Smith explains why some people prefer victimhood in "I Need My Pain!":

They dearly love to whimper about what big government and even bigger corporations did to them yesterday, what big government and even bigger corporations are doing to them today, and what they think big government and even bigger corporations are going to do to them tomorrow. Almost never is there any consideration given to fighting back effectively, politically, right now, although they spend lots of time, energy, and money on weapons and survival equipment, getting ready for a physical fight -- which they will lose gloriously, of course -- in a future that usually resembles those bleak scenes in The Terminator where robot tanks are running over piles of human skulls and crushing them.

They need their pain because it's the way they define themselves. At one level or another, they're afraid they'll cease to exist without it. But it's time for these pathetic specimens to grow up and to start defining themselves, as the Founding Fathers did, in terms of their rights instead of wrongs, real or imaginary, they see happening around them.

Via JPFO.

I sent a letter to the editor of our local paper regarding National Exercise Your Rights Day.  So we'll see what transpires.

I feel a little odd sending it, because if they print it, it will expose my blog to people who know me but don't know about the blog.  Not that there's anything here I want to hide.  Like I said, it just feels a little odd.  I'm the guy who always sits quietly and listens but never says anything, so this blog may be a surprise to some people.

I also sent emails to a few gun stores and shooting ranges.  We'll see...

UPDATE:  24+ hours and no replies yet.

At Fractalus.

Via Reuters, Arms cache was actually scrap metal:

The supposed cache was discovered during a raid Sunday on an unfinished building in a town on the main road to Ivory Coast, fuelling [sic] speculation it was linked to an alleged scheme to smuggle weapons into the country.

Liberian police and soldiers from the U.N. peacekeeping force carried out the raid, which police officials said at the time had unearthed mostly new AK-47 machinegun [sic] ammunition.

"The fact of the matter is those items were just empty shells," Liberia's presidential press secretary Cyrus Badio told Reuters. "The person in question is a scrap dealer."

Also the photo accompanying the article has nothing whatsoever to do with the article.

An excellent article by Chuck Baldwin on Romans Chapter 13 at Lew Rockwell.

Notice that civil government must not be a "terror to good works." It has no power or authority to terrorize good works or good people. God never gave it that authority. And any government that oversteps that divine boundary has no divine authority or protection.

Civil government is a "minister of God to thee for good." It is a not a minister of God for evil. Civil magistrates have a divine duty to "execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." They have no authority to execute wrath upon him that doeth good. None. Zilch. Zero. And anyone who says they do is lying. So, even in the midst of telling Christians to submit to civil authority, Romans Chapter 13 limits the power and reach of civil authority.

Did Moses violate God's principle of submission to authority when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster in defense of his fellow Hebrew? Did Elijah violate God's principle of submission to authority when he openly challenged Ahab and Jezebel? Did David violate God's principle of submission to authority when he refused to surrender to Saul's troops? Did Daniel violate God's principle of submission to authority when he disobeyed the king's law to not pray audibly to God? Did the three Hebrew children violate God's principle of submission to authority when they refused to bow to the image of the state? Did John the Baptist violate God's principle of submission to authority when he publicly scolded King Herod for his infidelity? Did Simon Peter and the other Apostles violate God's principle of submission to authority when they refused to stop preaching on the streets of Jerusalem? Did Paul violate God's principle of submission to authority when he refused to obey those authorities who demanded that he abandon his missionary work? In fact, Paul spent almost as much time in jail as he did out of jail.

In my opinion, Romans 13 has been deliberately misconstrued for ages (ages!) to excuse cowardice and sheer laziness.

The Edge has a very interesting article written by Freeman Dyson, Heretical Thoughts Abut Science and Society:

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

That's just a taste of a long article that should be taken in in full.  Non-scientist sci-fi fans may recognize Dyson's name.  He's the guy who conceived the Dyson Sphere.

Some scientists tried watching animals with infrared video cameras, and they discovered something new about the California ground squirrel:

It's Californian ground squirrel versus rattlesnake in a potentially lethal showdown. But the squirrel has a secret weapon that until now has remained invisible to the human eye.

The ground squirrel heats up its tail then waves it in the snake's face - a form of harassment that confuses the rattler, which has an infrared sensing organ for detecting small mammals.

This defensive tactic remained invisible to biologists until they looked at the animals through an infrared video camera. Now they believe that many other animals might be using infrared weaponry to ward off potential predators.

Young California ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) are easy prey for snakes, so protective adults harass the predators while puffing up their tails and wagging them.

Graduate student Aaron Rundus and his supervisor Donald Owings of the University of California, Davis, wondered how this might affect the snakes’ interaction with the adult squirrels. So he borrowed a $35,000 infrared camera from another scientist and spied on squirrel-snake stand-offs.

He saw the adults’ tails heat up, presumably due to increased blood flow, when they were warning rattlers away – making the squirrel appear larger to the snake’s infrared organ.

Confronted with a gopher snake, which has no infrared sensory organ, the squirrels wagged their tails but didn’t bother to warm them up first.

Tests with robotic squirrels confirmed that a warmed squirrel tail made rattlesnakes more likely to act defensively, say Rundus and Owings.

The squirrels themselves do not see in infrared, so they cannot see another squirrel's tail heating up. But the snakes can, proving that the squirrels have evolved a specific way to deter rattlesnakes.

“It taught us to focus on the perceptual world of the animal we’re studying” rather than thinking only of human perceptions, says Rundus.

Amazing.

P.S. Robotic squirrels?

I know I haven't done much on the blog this week.  I've been kind of running out of steam.  Also I had to work today (Saturday).  One Saturday overtime per month isn't too bad.  It gives me just enough extra money to make the payment on the new air conditioner that I hadn't planned on buying just yet but had to anyway.

I've also just started playing around with some freeware called Page Plus SE--the non-pro version--which is a desktop publishing program.  Several years ago I put together a sort of chapbook using nothing but Word.  It was a major ordeal, and in a computer crash (the old desktop) I lost all my custom formatted templates that I had made.  I'm hoping this Page Plus will make recreating the book a little easier.  I do still have a few copies of the old book still laying around here.  I think I managed to print up 7 or 8 copies.

Today I broke out an old fanny pack to try carrying work stuff in.  It's from Uncle Mike's, and is blue denim, like jeans.  Has a velcro quick-release pouch for a handgun, plus two other compartments.  Today I just carried a flashlight, my cell phone and some Sqwinchers in it, but it was actually pretty comfortable and didn't get in the way like I thought it would.  I've had it for years.  One of those things I bought to try out and never got around to it.  Now I'll have to see if it's easily washable.  It should be, since it's just denim.  I don't suppose washing will damage velcro, will it?  I think it would probably be a good idea just to hang dry it, and not put it in the drier.  I wouldn't want the velcro to get full of lint.

Maybe I'll come up with something more pertinent tonight, after I've had a nap.

David Codrea and The Firearms Coalition have both (independently) conceived this:  buy a gun or ammo on August 28.  Why that day?

On August 28, activists in cities across America will hold a national day of protest to focus attention on the scourge of illegal gun trafficking.

More at the Brady Campaign to Abolish the Second Amendment.

The Firearms Coalition is calling it National Exercise Your Rights Day.

So buy some ammunition, or a gun if you have the money.  Don't just buy a box of .22 either.  Get something scary with JHP in the description.  Or some good high-powered armor-piercing sniper hunting ammo.

Follow the links for more ideas on things we can do.

It seems to me that blogging is by nature quite insular, and although it may seem like a significant movement in the gunblogger nichosphere, no one else will even notice.  So maybe writing letters to the editor of the local paper would help bring attention to it, or posting fliers or something.  Even if your local paper is just a propaganda rag.  The effort won't amount to much if those on the outside don't know about it.

Just say no to the enemies of liberty.  Enough is far too much already.

Looks like a joke, but it's not.  This ad for an Australian movie to be released on August 16 kicks off a survey of mutant/monster animal terror films at Cryptomundo.

Such movies never did anything for me, I must say.  To me, they're all just sort of boring (and usually stupid) and not worth wasting time on.  However, the thought of mutant killer sheep really cracks me up.

Note they don't so much fly as plummet...

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.9
Mind:	7.5
Body:	8.4
Spirit:	7.6
Friends/Family:	7.2
Love:	9.1
Finance:	6.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Mind:  Put that one down for compulsive reading and high curiosity.

Body:  I exercise every day.  The job I have requires that I walk a lot.  I get a lot of exercise.  Sometimes too much, I think.

Spirit:  Growing up in a Christian home where we went to church three times a week and I was constantly schooled on the Bible.  So yes, I can quote from the Bible occasionally.  I can also quote from the Tao te Ching, if that counts as a "holy text."  There was a time when I could quote from the Bhavagad Gita, but it's been a while since I studied that one.

Friends/Family:  See above.  There's only one person who I now consider a very good friend, and I don't get to see him very often, but still...

Love:  The quiz results said my "love" score is much higher than average.  How did that happen?  Luck or destiny, take your pick.  I never dated in high school or even after high school.  I always thought that it would eventually happen, and eventually it did.  At one point I gave up looking and resigned myself to being alone for the rest of my life, and then I met my future wife.  It took a while, which is why I have kids in elementary school when all of my classmates that I know of have kids who are now adults.  So if you're looking for words of wisdom, I don't have any.  Some people might call it luck, but to me it was destiny.

Finance:  Not every bill is always paid on time, and I don't have a particularly high-paying job.  But we never get threatened with utility shut-offs, repossession or foreclosure, so it's not that bad.  So there you go.