NoCo Maker Faire

Since I like to make things, I'm going to be one of many exhibitors at the Northern Colorado Maker Faire:

NoCo Mini Maker Faire - October 4th & 5th, 2014 @ Rocky Mountain Center for Innovation & Technology in Loveland, CO

 

I'll be at the Denver Mad Scientists Club booth where we'll be demoing fighting robots, camera mounts for celestial photography, recumbent bicycles and the ever popular pedal air gun for the kids to try. Jewelry, electronics, crafts, a giant cardboard arena (I'm pretty sure that will be there) and much else.

Back Sunday night with pictures.

Gun Law - Sort of

Via the Colorado RKBA newsletter:

Since You'll Probably See This Elsewhere: Winchester Ammunition, which has manufacturing facilities in Oxford [MS], has won a five-year contract to produce ammunition for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Olin Corp. and its Winchester division have been awarded a contract worth up to $50 million to produce ammunition at its Winchester Centerfire Operations in Oxford for two DHS agencies. “The Department of Homeland Security’s wide-ranging border security and law enforcement missions require a significant amount of firepower, particularly for training. I’m pleased that Mississippi will be able to fill that need,” said Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who serves on the Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Homeland Security Department. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract [sic] calls for the procurement of 40 caliber Smith & Wesson training ammunition, with a maximum dollar value of $50 million. The ammunition is intended for use by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) for field-level training. (As I understand these contracts, they are for “up to” quantities.)

http://msbusiness.com/blog/2014/09/30/winchester-lands-50m-ammunition-contract-homeland-security/

I was unaware that either the DHS or the border patrol had any activities at all ongoing along the U.S. borders. Reports of various governments buying outsized ammo orders go back several years, and no real reason has ever been given for unusual quantities.

Optimistically, all that ammo will be hitting the surplus market in 2017.

Extinction

Just read a piece at Joe Huffman's noting someone decrying the possibly imminent demise of the pubic louse. Takes all kinds I guess.

To put this into perspective, let me note that in the last 40 years, half the human population of the world has died.

Let Me Rephrase That

Quoth the journo-hack in New Jersey.

We don't want to confiscate your guns, we're willing to meet you halfway with a manditory buyback:

The biggest problem with this approach, though, is that it tiptoes around the one reform that could really make a difference, but that Americans would never accept: Mandatory gun buybacks. That's what Australia did, after its own version of Newtown.

The Aussie population is now largely disarmed and if you're large and equipped with a table leg or a table knife, you're king of the hill.

For myself, I'm old, small, and feeble. Ask anyone. I like the idea of having a gun to keep things on a level keel until some young, healthy, strong fellow in a blue suit can show up and start the paperwork.

Kids and Guns

I had numerous opportunities to be an introductory firearms instructor a couple of weeks ago and it was quite the experience. First a bit of background.As a member of the Denver Mad Scientists Club, I sometimes get invited to show off stuff that I've made by way of encouraging kids to take an interest in STEM topics. My observation is that if the demo is sufficiently interesting and hands on, you can subvert the youth into fields like engineering and physics.

So we got invited to bring our stuff to the Natural History Museum and let the kiddies have a look.
I brought several items including the (in)famous Pedal Air Gun.

The expo was set up in a long, wide hall, nice but nowhere near enough room for the gun with heavy projectiles so I made some "nerf" type foam darts for the occasion. We were set up on one side of the hall, and I pointed the gun across the hall at an unused door to use as a target. Amazingly, people walking down the hall immediately recognized the apparatus and were careful to check the status before crossing in front of it.

Putting a kid on the seat, I carefully explained how the gun worked, and what they were going to be doing. With the barrel pointed upward at about 45 degrees at an unused balcony, they would pedal until the pressure gage read 20 lbs and NO MORE.

We would then warn anyone near the projectile path to stand aside, and when the path was clear, lower the barrel to point at the door, and push the small valve release switch down to fire the gun. All in that order. No doing anything until all previous steps had been done. This worked fine and everybody loved it.

Then along came Daddy with his twins, a boy and a girl, who gave off the vibe of Wednesday Addams on espresso. Would the boy like to try the gun? Of course, and his sister as well. Swell. Hop on and I'll give both of you the lecture, which I did. The boy was ready to pedal at 90 mph right now and hear the rest of the instructions later. I made him stop and listen. His sister who will someday doubtless outshine Lucreza Borgia, watched and listened like a Russian spy in an American Nuclear sub. They got the part about pedaling to 20 PSI, and the part about the trigger.

The boy took off and had 20 psi in a matter of seconds. I told him to stop as he had enough pressure and his sister immediately reached up and pressed the trigger sending the dart upwards to bounce off the balcony and fall back harmlessly into the exhibitor next to us. Daddy immediately pulled Little Sister back and read her the riot act about taking turns and following directions. He allowed that the boy should get another try so I reloaded the dart, went back over the instructions and set him to pedaling. This time when he got to 20 psi and I told him to stop, he did and immediately reached up and pressed the trigger, sending the dart again up to the balcony and back to the floor.

At this point Daddy pulled Sonny off the machine and informed both kids that they were done here and they would "talk about this when they got home". Having heard this line once or twice from my own father, I imagine this didn't end well for the kids. I don't envy Daddy. Riding herd on those two is obviously a full time job.

When trying to teach kids about firearms, I suppose one could do worse than to start out with a Nerf gun although the Nerf people start you out at a disadvantage by using bad gun handling as a selling point. Still, you gotta start somewhere and the less potentially lethal the better.

Holder To Resign

Less widely reported:
Every hard drive in D.C. mysteriously crashes. Massive cellphone failures as well. At night you can hear ringtones coming from under the landfills.

The Future Of Transportation - Plastic

And why not? Practically everything is plastic of one sort or another any more including possibly your S.O.

So here's a car for sale you might like:

Or not.That's the problem with plastic cars in Florida. You leave them out in the sun and they melt. I wonder what it looked like originally.

PSA Contest

Make a politically incorrect PSA and win something.

Hey kids! When mixing Drano and bleach always remember to do it outside and be sure to do it downwind of your house!

QOTD

Without taking a position on the underlying issue, grok this:

I ‘Would’ve Died’ For My Aborted Daughter’s ‘Right To Choose,’ Just ‘Like She Died For Mine’

Found at I Own The World.

Safe Gun Storage

Here's why you should always store your revolvers and your semiauto pistols separately:

What happens in the gun safe doesn't always stay in the gun safe.

Pic found here.

Judicial Restraint

Not being exercised in the case of the Mayor of Peoria who had someone SWATted for making fun of him on Twitter. Read the sad details at the link, it's a short article and covers the affray.

From the article:

There’s a joke about how a grand jury will convict indict a ham sandwich, but is there a similar joke about how a judge will approve a search warrant for just about anything?

Well sort of, although it's probably an inside joke among traffic cops. It starts out with
Cop: "Got anything in your car I should know about?"
 Driver: "No."
Cop: "Mind if I look?"
Driver: "Yes."

The joke goes on to tell of the driver spending 1-1/2 hours in handcuffs at the side of the road while the cop calls in a dog that's trained to sit on subtle command, and a judge who's trained to sign a search warrant based on the dog having sat.

Science Marches Onward

Feeling down because you don't have a job? Don't have any prospects? No doctor will accept your insurance? Your car needs replacing but all the prospects were on the "Cash for Clunkers" list and are now gone?

Rejoice!

Scientists have discovered yet another mood altering drug that will make you shrug off your problems and vote Democrat the rest of your life.

“What we have found is a process that may dampen the brain’s sensitivity to negative life events.”

Putting the fun in funemployment for you. Insty reported this, and what do you know, practically every comment was suggesting that whatever this stuff is, it would soon be found in the national water supply. Great minds thinking alike I guess.

Up to now we've had to rely on alcohol. Maybe this stuff won't destroy our livers.

Economic Berlin Wall

When things get to bad in a country, the biggest symptom is an outflow of refugees. In East Germany it started with a trickle and quickly swelled to the point that the Russkies were compelled to build a great big wall complete with wire, lights, guards, and land mines to keep their happy citizens in.

Now the U.s. is reaching that point with the most successful being the first to fly the coop. They either individually renounce their citizenship to allow themselves to have a bank account in the foreign country they're already living in, or else arrange to live in one that treats them better.

At the corporate level, we now have the third highest corporate tax in the world and corporations are searching out ways to escape the tyranny. Since serious money is involved, the government is taking an interest and has announced policies (note: NOT laws) to discourage this much like the East Germans added extra rows of bricks and mines to discourage departures.

September E-Postal

Tried the September e-postal this weekend with the .22s.

For some reason the gator at the 9 o'clock position is near invincible. Also getting the perfect score of 120 isn't going to happen, at least not by me.

I'll probably try this again this coming weekend following the IDPA match with my center fire pistols but given that the gators aren't much bigger than .40 in wide, I'm thinking we probably won't see any center fire pistol scores over 60 points.

As a reminder, to get the full 10 points, your hole must be inside the gator. Touching the edge, even from the inside gets you only 5 points.

If your score is low, send it in anyway. These things are always trickier than you thing and if your score is low, it's because the target was hard.

Scotland The Brave

Better late than never I guess, but I've heard it suggested somewhere (sorry, no link) that now that the Scots have voted to keep living in England's basement, so to speak, the English should be allowed a vote on weather or not they should be allowed to stay there.

Seems fair to me.