Gun Show Report

Not many people, not much business, but that's par for the course this time of year. When Christmas gets closer, traffic picks up. Meantime Joan Peterson, she of the "Twenty Questions" post, opines:

The "bust" pictures? Hand grenades and RPGs are sold at gun shows all over the country. They could be sold by private sellers who may or may not require background checks.

I worked the show on Sunday. I guess they all sold out Friday night or Saturday. Damn.

I've never asked for a background check on a grenade or an RPG that I sold, and now I don't have any. I need to replenish my stock.

Myth Busters

It seems Obama will be appearing on Mythbusters. At first I wondered why, that myth was busted long ago. Then I hear he'll be on a re-re-make of the Archimedes Mirror episode in which the story of setting fire to attacking ships using focused mirrors from the city walls was largely debunked.

A lot of people disagreed, to the point that Mythbusters opened a contest to the viewers in which the most promising proposals from the viewers would be aired on the program.

Someone evidently claimed the feat could have been accomplished had the Greeks only had Obie's own shining luminescence to draw upon.

Bad Luck

It appears that there has been a fire at a military base, which spread to a munitions depot, which turns out to be the main storage area for intermediate range ballistic missiles. Preliminary reports have the fire out of control and doing extensive damage.

The good news is that it's Iran's base at which they store their longest range missile, the Shahab-3 with a range of some 2500 miles. This is roughly equivalent of the old Pershing 2 system which we destroyed at the behest of the Russkies.

Bummer, dudes, but you really shouldn't allow smoking near the fuel dumps.

Election Day

It is for me, anyway, as my ballot has arrived and I get to spend the weekend muttering to myself while filling it out:

More money? NO!

Another project? HELL NO!

You want to be re-elected? BITE ME!

Keep you on the bench? IN YOUR DREAMS!

Questions on the ballot are usually requests for a tax increase for some splendid and worthwhile boondoggle, like the worlds largest toy train set, a new athletic venue, or modern seaport facilities for the City of Denver. Generically, if you don't want to read the details of what the question would actually do, it's safest to vote NO on all of them.

This year is different. One question, 63, asks if we would like to opt out of Obamacare. Finally! a question I can support.

3 others are attempts to hamstring the government and roll back spending levels dramatically. The opponents scream: "But it will cripple the government, and stop all the splendid and worthwhile (see above) things they do."

Hold it right there. You had me at "cripple the government".

I'm not sure these were written as well as they could have been, and the governments and unions are spending lots of money to see them defeated, but the sentiment is good, so they get my vote.

Meantime here's my favorite 'toon for the upcoming elections:
Time to bring out your inner barbarian and help make the results make the Battle of Little Big Horn look like a stunning military victory.
"It was, wasn't it?" S. Bull

Lasers

Lockheed Martin has a new laser developed for the military. It works by combining the beams of several lower powered lasers into one very powerful beam, much like the planet-destroying weapon on the Death Star. Other uses have been suggested in the comments:

This also has commercial applications in Earth Based Beam Energy where instead of the huge uncontrolled solar arrays in space that will cost trillions of dollars just to launch, we simply beam the energy from anywhere in the world off a reflector in space to the customer.

Process this work order for a couple of megajoules to be delivered to Mohammed AlJihadi in north-west Pakistan. Push the big red button, and voila! another satisfied, or at least no longer complaining, customer.

Imagine the reactions of the multitudes at the big speech by Achmadimijad as, halfway through the speech, and with no evidence of any outside influence, Achmed suddenly turns in to 150 lbs of well-done steak.

I want one! So the better sort of laser pointers delvers 350mW (.35W) for about $120, which suggests I need about 3 million of them plus a lot of duct tape to bundle them together to get to 1 megawatt. At $360M/MW that's probably no more expensive than the one Martin's making.

Sounds like a worthy project. Bwahahahaha! Fools! I'll destroy them all! Franchises available.

On an equally serious note, Blogger informs me that this is post #1000. Gee, time flies when you're having fun.

Science Marches Onward

The Ig-Nobel prizes are out and there are some worthy recipients:

PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.

This one was from last year:

MANAGEMENT PRIZE: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.

Which confirms a lot of suspicions.

The Future of Transportation, Milage

Volkswagen has poured a bunch of money into developing a rolling spaceship that delivers some 285 mpg of diesel with no help from batteries at all. Agin, My complaint is that they put too many wheels under it, which makes me ask what kind of mileage it gets sitting idling in the non-carpool lane with the rest of the peasants. With one less wheel in the back, I'd be down at the dealership, pushing money under their door until they opened.
Spiffy, no. Still, if you dig a bit you find someone has already been there. Here's a report of a car entered in a Shell Oil fuel economy contest in 1973 that got 276 MPG.
Not as spiff, but arguably capable of seating 4 adults.

I saw an ad, produced during the 1974 gas crisis, by Volkswagen, showing a VW Beetle that had been modified by the factory to get some outrageous number of miles per gallon using only the parts and pieces from a 74 Beetle. Admittedly not much was left of it, but I did appreciate the thinking that went into it. The finished car retained the outlines of the Beetle, and ran on a stock engine with 2 of the cylinders removed. Also removed was everything not absolutely necessary to hold the 4 wheels together, and support the jockey driving it.

Saving Lives

Virginia Postrel has a piece up that's near and dear to what's left of my head: Bicycle helmets.

It seems that while helmets do save lives, they aren't very efficient at it.

A new helmet law reduces bicycle deaths among the affected age group by about 19%. It doesn't affect older riders. Since serious bicycle accidents are rare, however, the absolute numbers are still small, about eight fewer deaths a year among kids 5 to 15 than would otherwise occur in the states with helmet laws. "It's not a ton of lives when you compare it to something like wearing your seat belt," says Prof. Stehr.

The affected age group is kids under 15. She also doesn't say if the reduction is overall or per state. Either way it's not a very big number. In any case helmets reduce death and injury in another, probably unintended way: They take a big bite out of the numbers of kids who actually ride bikes.

One reason for the drop is, of course, that more kids wear helmets when they get into accidents. But another is that many give up cycling altogether. Using surveys of parents, the professors find that about 650,000 fewer children ride bikes each year after helmet laws go into effect. That's about 81,000 fewer riders for every life saved. Helmets may save lives, but the dork factor also takes its toll.

People conduct their lives to a perceived level of risk. Get into a car, for example, with a full suite of crash protective devices, plus a 4-point seat belt and a mandatory helmet, and you'll be as safe at 100 mph as you used to be at 60. So you drive 100. It also helps that at 100 mph, fewer people see you swaddled in a rolling rubber room. If you think a mandatory helmet law would somehow benefit you by making cyclists wear them, think how much less likely you'll be to hit one if all the helmets were required to be bright pink.

Tax Time

Found this over at Theo Spark. I haven't done any checking on the provenience of this, but I seem to remember it's been proposed before. Got shot down the last time after too many congressmen began receiving death threats.

Starting in 2011 ”next year ”the W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are provided. It doesn't matter if you're retired. Your gross income WILL go up by the amount of insurance your employer paid for. So you'll be required to pay taxes on a larger sum of money that you actually received. Take the tax form you just finished for 2009 and see what $15,000.00 or $20,000.00 additional gross income does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year. For many it puts you into a much higher bracket. This is how the government is going to buy insurance for
fifteen (15) percent that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases, but it's not really a "tax increase" as such, it a redefinition of your taxable income.

Health insurance was originally provided to workers when FDRs wage controls held wages down to nonviable levels. It was not considered part of the wage because the benefits were pretty much the same across the board. If this actually happens, and your original insurer doesn't go out of business, your employer would be doing you a favor by dropping your insurance altogether, and throwing you to Obamacare.

Of course since unemployment insurance payments are taxable as income, I see no reason why federally provided health care should fare any differently.

The Wit and Wisdom Of Harry Reid

In an interview, featuring strictly softball questions, Harry Reid sets some records.

When asked who the greatest living Americans might be, he unhesitatingly selects Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. You're too modest, Harry. I was sort of hoping you'd be right up there with them. Or down there with them, depending on your theological bent.

The consummate politician, when he needs dirty work done, rather than dirtying his hands, he farms it out. Wouldn't pay a dime to see a cage match between Chuck Schumer, age 60, and John McCain, age 72 and unable to raise his arms over his shoulders, but figures McCain might be the winner. I'd go with McCain too, but only if we spotted him a .45.

Reid is currently 4 points behind among likely voters in his re-election bid, which is not too bad after you factor in the 3-5 points vote fraud can get you.

Control

California got caught cooking the books in order to strengthen their air pollution bureaucracy.

The pollution estimate in question was too high - by 340 percent, according to the California Air Resources Board, the state agency charged with researching and adopting air quality standards. The estimate was a key part in the creation of a regulation adopted by the Air Resources Board in 2007, a rule that forces businesses to cut diesel emissions by replacing or making costly upgrades to heavy-duty, diesel-fueled off-road vehicles used in construction and other industries.

If the overstatement has any basis in fact, construction must be about 1/3.4 or 29% of what it was projected to be.

I suppose if you choke an economy sufficiently, fuel usage will go down, as no one will be going to work any more, and the air will magically get cleaner. Just like in Zimbabwe.

Polls 2

Gallup has a poll out that suggests that both unemployment and underemployment are about a point each higher than the official government figures.
The nice thing about polls like this is that it doesn't matter if you're an adult, a registered voter, or a likely voter when the question is asked, you're either working or you aren't. Gallup is also influenced by part-time workers who say they are not looking for full-time work. These folks would likely take a full-time job, but why bother looking if there aren't any?

Gallup says the U-3 is now 10.1%, and the U-6 is up to 18.1%. Government figures are due out tomorrow. Any early bets on the "official" rates?

Three-Party Elections

I've talked about this before here, how three party elections most usually elect the least popular candidate, barring allowances being made, such as runoffs. Here in Colorado, we have one of those for Governor, as the Republicans have picked a really weak candidate, Dan Maes, and the Dems have a fairly popular one. The odd man in is Tom Tancredo, Constitution party candidate, who is within 6 points of beating the Democrat, with the Republican getting 15%.

A Republican who had the peoples best interests in mind would drop out, and throw the election to the Constitution party candidate.

As I understand it, if Maes drops out or otherwise polls less than 10% of the vote, it reduces the Republican Party to the status of a minor party, and reduces some sources of funding.

You would think that if the Republicans take back the Colo house, maybe the Senate, and Tancredo takes the Governors seat, that some kind of arrangement could be worked out.

On the other hand, perhaps that would be the first step in the disappearance of the Republican party from the political scene, and the rise of either the Constitution Party, or the establishment of the Tea Party as a bonna fide political party for the 2012 elections.

Make history, Danny Boy. Drop out.

Quote of the Day

"Folks, people are angry with good reason," he said recently in California. "Through no fault of their own, over 8 million people essentially woke up to find out that they don't have jobs."
Joe "Plugs" Biden

The other 9,021,976 have only themselves to blame for helping to elect the root cause of their current problems.

Quote of the Day

From Ace:

I had an astronomy prof way back in college who described the size of the Earth in this way: "The solar system is composed of our Star and the gas-giant planet Jupiter. The remaining 1% of the mass is miscellaneous leftover crap."

Gotta keep things in perspective, now.