Skynet Moves One Step Closer

Found this at Uncle Jay's. You've probably seen the box that reverses the on switch for you. Well now they're running out of patience:

The next version won't let you near it. And they won't find your body either. Bwahahaha!

July E-Postal - Math

This months e-postal features a Venn diagram, famous for sorting characteristics and giving names to the combined subgroups. Here's an example:

O.K. maybe I should have found one with pistol, rifle, and shotgun shooters instead of  this one, but hey, it was there. Lucky you, it's not the target.
This is what the target looks like:

Don't use this one. Go here and print it out to get full size. NOTE: This target is displayed in landscape, NOT portrait. Be sure you tell your printer this before you hit Print.

This should be easy since the numbers serve dual purpose. The number in each zone is both the number of rounds you will shoot in that zone, and the points per hit for each round. So 3 shots in the '3' zone, 2 shots in each of the three '2' zones, and one shot in each of the three '1' zones, for a total of 12 holes in the paper.

Scoring: 3 points for each hit in the '3' zone, up to 3, 2 points for each hit in a '2' zone, limit 2 hits per zone, and 1 point for each hit in a '1' zone, limit one hit per zone. Hits on a line are counted in the shooters favor.  If, for example, you put 4 rounds into the '3' zone, only 3 of them will count for 3 points, but if one of them is touching  a line, you may count it as a '2' or even a '1' if it's on a corner.

Put your name, class, gun and caliber, score, and anything else that might be of interest in dark ink up by the label "Billlls Venn Diagram.", and e-mail your results to bllew at rmi dot net.

Max score is 24.

Shoot this standing, unsupported at 25feet/10 yards.

There are five different classes
1.  Rimfire firearms with iron sights
2.  Rimfire firearms with optics
3.  Centerfire calibers with Iron sights
4.  Centerfire calibers with optics
5.  Math Is Hard class

Class 5 is open. Airguns, blowguns, whatever. Just let me know what you used and from how far away. Optics implies magnification so red dots shoot with the irons.

Note that it is possible to get a perfect score by putting all 12 shots in the '3' zone as long as they strategically touch the boundaries in the right places. Doing this with a large caliber gun would probably make the target unscoreable but fun to look at.  Good luck.

Mags4Freedom

Magpuls last shot at making sure that no one in Colorado who wants a standard capacity mag  needs to do without. It turned out that I got there early enough to pick up a "free Colorado" edition mag for a gun I don't have. Yet. Those 80% lowers are looking better and better you know?

4-5000 attendees estimated. Seemed like everyone who wanted a mag or three got one although I heard of people buying mags for guns they didn't own. I figured the next 18 months were going to be a fight, but I don't expect a shooting war to break out.

The new laws will become a front-row issue with Republicans which if played right could get them back in power. One hopes they remember that while not everybody holds the gun issue up as a primary one, the way to sell this is to point out that it's a touchstone to how the pols think about YOU.

Sorry, no pictures. I need a new camera it seems.

Gun (Not So Much) Fun

To tell the truth I didn't expect this. The Marlin .22 plinker I bought should have been common and available, it not being an Evil Black Rifle and all. Getting the gun with only one magazine was mildly annoying.

So I go shopping for stock 10-round mags for the Marlin:
CTD                                        $12.12      Out of stock
Bass Pro                                $20.00      Out of stock
Sportsmans Warehouse      $14.99      Out of stock
Brownells                              $24.99       Out of stock
Midway                                 $16.99       Out of stock
Marlin Factory                     $21.xx        Out of stock

Even the rifle was listed as out of stock.

How about an extended mag? What I've read suggests that I'll have the best luck with the ProMag 25 round model:

Promag                                   $21.42       Not listed as out of stock, but...*
Natchez Shooters                 $16.99       Out of stock
Various other sources         $14- $18    Out of stock

*They say they can't guarantee delivery dates but at least won't bill my credit card until the order ships. Haven't seen a billing from them but the mags become illegal Monday. I'm going to have to make some friends in Cheyenne where I can pick up mail deliveries.

Checking for zombies outside in the street....

Easter Eggs

When a piece of legislation exceeds 1000 pages, perusal frequently yields easter eggs. Thanks to Mark Steyn for this one from the Senates comprehensive immigration bill:

For example, Section 5(b)(1):

    Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall establish a strategy, to be known as the ‘Southern Border Fencing Strategy’ . . .

On the other hand, Section 5(b)(5):

    Notwithstanding paragraph (1), nothing in this subsection shall require the Secretary to install fencing .

An excellent essay as usual.

Are You A Libertarian?

And not just some kind of statist liberal trying to cover his spots? Here's an old Libertarian purity test. The folks at Ace of Spades decided to try it to compare their own membership. As I write this I haven't taken it yet, but the range at AoS was from 56 to 65. I call myself a Republican with a Libertarian streak. Let's see:

The wait is over! I got 54/160 which they describe as:

51-90 points: You are a medium-core libertarian, probably self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit talking about your views so much.

But hey, it keeps me in material for my soapbox. Besides I'm on the low end of the range, so anyone who objects to my positions is obviously a racist or something.

Pretty

I don't go for heavily engraved guns as most of them seem to be commemorative of some event of middling importance, but I like this one:

More pix at The Firearms Blog.

You're Crazy!

No really, you are. The American Psychiatric Association has released their new "bible" describing everything that could possibly be wrong with your head, on the inside at least, and has added a catch-all categore that overlaps everything else:

In previous editions, you the patient had to meet certain specified criteria in order to be diagnosed for any particular condition. For example, if I were going to diagnose you as having schizophrenia, then you had to have specific symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations. If you didn't have those symptoms, then I couldn't make the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Not anymore. Last month, DSM-5 introduced a new diagnosis, "Unspecified Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder." The only required criterion is that you have some distress from unspecified symptoms, but you "do not meet the full criteria for any of the disorders in the schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders diagnostic class." You don't have to have delusions. You don't have to have hallucinations. In fact if you do have delusions and hallucinations, then you probably don't qualify for unspecified schizophrenia. (You will find the new diagnosis in one short paragraph at the bottom of page 122 of DSM-5.)
Likewise for every other diagnostic category, including, for example, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Let's suppose that you occasionally don't pay attention to your wife. You don't meet the old-fashioned criteria for ADHD, which included impairment in multiple settings, like on the job or while driving. You are inattentive only when your wife is talking. You pay attention to everybody else. Hey, no problem. You now qualify for "Unspecified Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder."

The whole article is behind a paywall at the Wall St. Journal ('Unspecified Mental Disorder'? That's Crazy ) :-(  but you see where this is headed. Either you exhibit specific symptoms of some disorder or other, or you don't. In either case, you're suffering from a mental debilitation. So what? I hear you ask. Well if you've been diagnosed with a mental disorder, you're no longer allowed to possess firearms. Think about that.

In the past I had said that Testosterone makes you stupid, and Estrogen makes you crazy. No offense, it's how nature keeps us from becoming extinct. Now it's official: Testosterone gives you Unspecified Mental Degradation and Estrogen gives you unspecified everything else. The only recognized cure for any of this of course will be election or appointment to high political office.

Bike To Work

Back when I had work to bike to I made it a point to do so excepting only violent weather and sometimes even then. The first flyer I saw for this went on about biking to work without ever mentioning bicycles, so I fixed the graphic to make it more inclusive:

The image is from Easyriders magazine which I haven't seen in a good long while. No I don't look (very) much like that and I ride a Honda Sabre for the moment. The Sabre is motorcycle #45 for me.

Note that the fellow in the graphic is accomplishing all the stated goals of the program, with the possible exception of item 3 as that Harley flathead is probably not as clean as a modern bike. There is a drive-through emissions check on the ramp from southbound I-25 to Eastbound 6th Ave that tells me that my Sabre is clean as a hounds tooth as long as I stay off the throttle.

Search this site for the phrase "bike to work" to see how I've fared in the past.

Colorado Gun Law

Colorado Peak Politics is reporting that the recall petitions for Sen Giron have been found to be sufficient and the election may now go ahead. This is not entirely unexpected news as Sen Girons district is noticeably more rural than that of Sen Morse and less prone to some of the political hijinks found in the metropolitan areas.

That and while Sen Morse seems to have Mike Bloomberg on his speed dial, Sen Giron does not seem to be quite so closely connected. No word as to weather Sen Giron will be mass calling everyone on the petitions to see if she can stir up some signers remorse.

So it looks like the people of Colorado have gotten halfway to a victory, successfully calling for recalls on 2 of the 4 targeted politicians. Perhaps the rest will get the message. One can hope.

IRS Humor

At some point you have to wonder how the Washington press avoids simply breaking into laughter at some of the pronouncements coming from the administration. Today the new IRS chief says his agency screened all applicants for tax-exempt statue equally including those with "Progressive" and "Occupy" in their names. This notwithstanding that no such group has been found to have gotten anything but the fast track from the IRS.

At the investigatory hearings Congressman Issa said:

... the review "fails to meaningfully answer the largest outstanding questions about inappropriate inquiries and indefensible delays. As investigations by Congress and the Justice Department are still ongoing, Mr. Werfel's assertion that he has found no evidence that anyone at IRS intentionally did anything wrong can only be called premature."

 Which is a polite way of saying that Mr. Werfel's statements are non-credible.

Reasoned Discourse

At the Denver Post. We're all familiar with this sort of policy in which dissenting views are systematically deleted from commentary, but here that policy has been raised to an art form.

Want to comment? Fine, just register. O.K. so I registered and commented.

Can't see your comment? Read this:

Hello. It's not an accident. Your comment isn't showing up because we only publish certain comments on our article page (Note: All comments are published on the article's corresponding forums page).

Note: The article in question does not appear on the forums page.

We do this to make sure new members aren't spammers, or someone who we banned and came back to post more of what we banned them for on our site.
To do this, we have filters on our comments so that only commenters who meet these requirements have their comments show up on the article page:

1. Have been a member for a minimum number of days (the minimum's fewer than 30, more than 15), and,
2. Have posted more than 15 comments.

Once you meet those requirements, you'll show up (provided you have fewer than two recent warnings on your record). You'll know your comments are showing up on the article when you see the "Certified Commenter" designation appear next to your name in your comments in the forums.
Also, we only publish the seven newest qualifying comments, and the seven oldest qualifying comments.
If you have any more questions or complaints about this policy, post them in the comments below. If you have questions about a specific comment of yours, please include a link to the comment in question.

So if you post enough comments, which will never appear, you will eventually get published. Briefly. Maybe.

Better to post a link to the article on the blog and comment there.

Fraccing II

Was the EPA able to "prove" that fraccing contaminates ground water? Yes*

*By drilling their own wells down through the ground water layers and into the oil shale layers below and letting the natural gas and drilling compounds bubble up through the water.

In reality, the study conclusively proved no such thing. The research was fundamentally flawed, with the conclusion being derived less from science than from politics.

Trust the government? Not across the street with a burnt match.

Fraccing

In this post below the nature and implications of fraccing came up in the comments and there were some technical issues which I'm certainly no expert on tossed around. I contacted a friend of mine who works in the industry, a PhD lab type directly involved with the process and asked him for information. He had mentioned the topic to me before, so most of what I remembered was correct. Here it is:

Anyway:

...geologically significant amount of poison they inject...

Most of a frac fluid is water.  The second most important ingredient is guar gum or a cellulose derivative that you could eat with a spoon.  In fact, you do eat guar gum with a spoon in many kinds of ice cream.  Some of the other ingredients are pretty nasty, but "geologically significant"?  I don't know how he defines that, but we're talking pounds here, not tons, and the stuff is dissolved in hundreds or thousands of times its weight in water.  Putting Drano in your sink or bleach in your laundry probably produces a more toxic solution.

...don't actually ever recover...

The amount of frac fluid recovered varies, but a large fraction is recovered.  Keep in mind that the fluid that is not recovered is in a hydrocarbon producing formation and is probably less toxic than the crude oil it mixes with.

...fraccing is a single shot process...

Not necessarily.  In some cases, wells are worked over many times during their producing lifetime and may be fracced numerous times.

...Fraccing gets a quick spike in production, but...wears out within weeks or months...

This is where an understanding of integral calculus would be helpful.  A well has a dramatic increase in its production rate after a frac job, and will continue to produce more than an unstimulated well for a period that depends on conditions but may well be years.  The thing to look at is the area under the decline curve.  Total production from a fracced well  is many times greater than that from an unfracced well.

...a get rich quick scheme that only pays off in the short term...

Oil companies are willing to pay literally millions of dollars to frac their wells.  Obviously, they think it pays off in the long term.

...fraccing destroys their source of water...

Oil companies are required to cement steel casing in oil wells to isolate and protect ground water.  Honest, it works.  The other thing to keep in mind is that the aquifers are generally a few hundred feet down.  Oil and gas wells are thousands of feet deep.  In central Wyoming we're generally working at a depth of about two miles.  The stuff just doesn't migrate that far, especially since to have a hydrocarbon trap you need an impermeable cap rock.  It's kind of like the guy three blocks away complaining that his roses died because you sprayed your dandelions.

...rash of earthquakes that started shaking central Oklahoma...

I am not aware that earthquakes flattened any towns in central Oklahoma.  Commercial fraccing has been going on in Oklahoma since the late 1940s, so if there is a real problem it should be well documented.  I would be interested in seeing dates, places, and intensities for these supposed seismic events.  I suspect that most of them were detected by very sensitive monitoring instrumentation and were not as intense as the vibration created by a heavy truck on the freeway.  In fact, they may have been caused by heavy trucks on the freeway.  Also, we may be falling victim to the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.  Just because things are correlated doesn't mean they are cause and effect.

The facts are out there.  The American Petroleum Institute has information on their website, www.api.org.  Halliburton has information on its website, www.halliburton.com.  There are other sources.  It will, of course, be argued that these organizations are biased and aren't giving out the facts, but maybe people should at least make the effort to find out what information is out there.

I would also suggest that there is a balance that needs to be considered.  It is perhaps a bit hypocritical to insist on banning hydraulic fracturing while living in a house heated with natural gas or heating oil and lit with electricity generated in a power plant that burns natural gas, and driving a car powered by gasoline.  The risks from hydraulic fracturing are minimal, the benefits are immense.
A couple more points about the earthquakes...

On doing a little research (a process I would recommend to all), it seems that the increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma is real and is correlated with disposal wells and the injection of large amounts of water over long periods of time.  There has been some damage but it's the disposal wells, not the frac jobs that seem to be causing the increase.

Generally, areas with active faults don't make good hydrocarbon traps and would not be likely to be drilled or fracced.

The earthquake bit corresponds to the rash of small to modest quakes, magnitude 2-4, we had here in Denver in the early to mid 60's. It was discovered that a disposal well on the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was lubing a shallow fault. The quakes ended when we stopped doing it.

One more thing: Note the correct spelling of fraccing by the folks that do it for a living.

Gun Fun

A good day at the range is when you come home with more reloadable brass than you brought. At the club IDPA match, shooting buddy and I got placed with a squad of ammo trust fund folks in which only 3 of the twelve of us were reloaders. Big score.

Even better is coming home with more guns than you left with. It seemed that the rifle I had ordered had come in at Bass Pro, so we picked it up on the way back. I now have the Marlin 795, with 3-9x scope and rings. The bad news is that first, the gun comes with only one 10-round magazine. The mag capacity laws being what they are, only the tube-fed guns hold 15-17 rounds any more. An additional mag would have been helpful. Bass Pro had 3 hangers labeled for Marlin mags, all empty.

For Cat's sake people, the zombies are NOT scratching at your doors. Just let the dog in and leave a mag and a box of ammo on the shelf for the rest of us. No word on the 25-round mags I ordered from Pro-Mag. Presumably in 10 days the order will self-cancel and I'll have to get them in Cheyenne. Which brings up another thing. I'm going to need to find a shop up north or a friend up there to ship stuff like that through and pick it up there. At least until we can repeal some laws and oust some New Yorkers from the legislature.


It could always be worse. Jigsaw, in Perth, just bought a rifle through the Byzantine system that use down under that makes Australia the crime-free utopia that it is today. A 3-step process which she says worked noticeably faster than usual, putting the gun in her hands in only 3 months. FWIW, I got mine in only 2 months not counting the spare mag(s) and sling which I don't have yet.

 

 Plink, plink.