Stepper Motor Failure

Chilod mortality on the Z axis stepper motor.  Groan!  There might be a case for spending three times the money for an industrial CNC mill.

What Educrats Do When Not At Work

From May 29, 2015 Toronto Sun:

TORONTO - Ontario’s former deputy education minister was sentenced to three years in prison Friday for child porn offences.

Ben Levin, the former award-winning educator, scholar, and University of Toronto professor received six months for creating and possessing child pornography, a year for making child porn and 18 months for counselling to commit a sexual assault.

He pleaded guilty to the charges in March.

Levin, 63, was a globe-trotting education expert and public speaker who counselled provincial premiers and leaders in the field — including a stint as deputy education minister in Manitoba.
But court heard Friday that during his off hours, he frequented an online incest chatroom and counselled single moms — three of whom were undercover police officers — on how to sexually assault their daughters, including one case where he “suggested that the mother penetrate the child with implements,” and that it was “important to make the child cry.” In another chat, Levin claimed to have sexually assaulted his own daughters as well as other children.

Ontario Court Justice Heather McArthur, however, made it clear “there is no evidence that (Levin) ever had sexual contact with a child.”

In her ruling, McArthur also pointed to 15 digital images seized after Levin was arrested in July 2013 — images that included sexual activity between children and “penetrative” sexual activity between children and adults. Two videos were also seized. The stills and videos made up 79 files of child pornogaphy found by police, McArthur said.

Count on government officials and academic experts to do the wrong thing.
Another lesson in what happens when you believe that right and wrong are culturally determined and therefore have no real meaning.

Truly Useless Error Messages

I was wondering about upgrading to Windows 10, but this example error message from Small Dead Animals suggests that I might want to wait:

What Progressives Are Setting Up For America

The July 31, 2015 Daily Express reports on chaos in Calais, where illegal immigrants are trying to get into the Chunnel to enter Britain:

The protest has taken place after negotiations with the French government over job cuts broke down.
Fires, which are currently blocking access to the harbour, have plunged the crisis zone into further chaos.

It comes after Britain's borders faced more disruption last night as hundreds of migrants including children stormed the Eurotunnel.

David Cameron has said Britain is threatened by a “swarm” of foreigners and the migrant crisis in Calais was likened to a “warzone.”

Migrants were pictured  clinging to a lorry as they left the port of Dover, while others in Calais were seen clambering over fences with children in tow.

More than 4,000 increasingly aggressive and desperate migrants largely from war-torn failed African states have stormed through fences in a bid to clamber aboard trains to ‘El Dorado’ UK.

Slavery Was Immoral

because it involved selling people and forcing them to work: picking cotton, as prostitutes, and other horrible jobs.  Planned Parenthood has now been caught negotiating the sale of aborted body parts, and offering to perform abortions to keep bodies intact for this purpose.  How is this different from  slavery?  Oh that's right: it is in support a woman's right to choose.  That makes it all okay.

Everyone Needs A Robot!

My Sherline 5400 CNC mill finally moves up to aluminum!

These are 0.01" slices; I could perhaps be more aggressive, but it doesn't get bored, so why look for trouble?

CNC Machining Learning

Much of what I am learning is stuff I needed to know with my manual mill.  I have discovered that along with the Chia pet fur from cutting acetal, aluminum is a struggle.  It appears by unpleasant experimentation that I can mill .030" of 6061 aluminum with my fine 3/8" end mill; more and it grabs the workpiece out of the vise.  But it produces a gorgeous mirror like finish.  The rough mill is the next experiment.

Odd Request

My wife has wriiten what might be considered an updated for modern times & technology version of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters.  One difficulty is finding a Christian publisher.  Most Christian publishers simply will not consider unagented works, and our last attempt at finding an agent specializing in Christian books was discouraging.  Typical reaction was "If yoo aren't already nationally known, there's no chance."  (This is before seeing the manuscript.)  Anyone have contacts?

I Thought Opposition to Open Borders Meant You Were a Racist Hater

Bernie Sanders, the Socialist tryoing to get the Democratic nomination for President calss open borders a "Koch Brothers" idea:

Ezra Klein

You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...

Bernie Sanders

Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal....

Ezra Klein

It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders

It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.

Imagine if tens of thousands of college-educated English-speaking East Indians were illegally entering the country taking jobs as journalists and college professors.  Would the Democratic Party activists with bylines being fawning over "undocumented workers"?  No.

Some Forms of Arrogant Stupid Seem Like Satire

did you see Mel Brooks' The Producers?  The novie or the play.  You know that Springtime for Hitler (the play guaranteed to lose money so the producers make money on an oversubscribed play) is parody.  There's a protest going on in D.C.

The murder of nine black people in a South Carolina church by a man who flaunted the Confederate battle flag spawned a campaign against Confederate symbolism and historical monuments. Now, the recent mass shooting at a Louisiana movie theater by a man who liked Hitler has prompted a campaign against Nazi symbolism, even when used as satire. From the Washingtonian:

Global Warming Hypocrites

Instapundit is partial to saying that he will believe global warming is an issue when its proponents start acting like they believe it's an issue.  From July 28, 2015 Daily Mail:

Just hours after Hillary Clinton unveiled her presidential campaign's push to solve global warming through an aggressive carbon-cutting plan, she sauntered up the steps of a 19-seat private jet in Des Moines, Iowa.

The aircraft, a Dassault model Falcon 900B, burns 347 gallons of fuel per hour. And like all Dassault business jets, Hillary's ride was made in France.

The Trump-esque transportation costs $5,850 per hour to rent, according to the website of Executive Fliteways, the company that owns it.

And she has used the same plane before, including on at least one trip for speeches that brought her $500,000 in fees.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3176630/Video-shows-Hillary-Clinton-boarding-private-jet-just-hours-launching-global-warming-push-s-using-FRENCH-aircraft-burns-347-gallons-fuel-hour.html#ixzz3hEhRLdRq
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Exhaustion

Whenever I wonder if I have recovered enough to return to software development, I have days like yesterday. I spent the day writing gCode and C to produce gCode, and by the end of the day, I was utterly drained.  Something similar happened Friday, getting the mill operational.

Agile Development Process & Unreasonable Pressures on Developers

Part of why I am writing my own gCode to run the CNC mill is that AutoDesk's Fusion 360 product, as cool as it is does not work reliably. Lots of hangs, and not just for me. I have noticede in the last few years a very dramatic reduction in the reliability of commercial software, and I blame it on two related factors: Agile development and pressure to ghet out new releases too quickly. These are connected issues. I like the theory of Agile development, and it has some real advantages over traditional waterfall software development. The downside is that it encourages putting out new releases so often that there isn't time to gather failure reports from users and get everything fixed before the next release. The greed of the industry sees Agile as a method for pressuring more frequent releases, new features, etc. The fact is that Thunderbird is up to release 38, with some problems, at least under Windows. More pressure to get out new releases means pressure on developers to get something out the door, and the results are often not pretty.

First Successful gCode Program

I have given up on Fusion 360; it is probably a good choice for a very complex part to machine.  But the fact that simple operations (like shortening a part by 1.5") are so hard that even AutoDesk's support people and developers can't explain how to do it, and the hanging problem that does not seem to concern them, has caused me to start coding directly in gCode, with some programmatic help from C.  My first attempt to program in gCode was simple.  I have a block of Delrin 2.260" by 2.00 that I will cut an X across the top and then a small border on the left side:



The first pass I had the Z-axis going up, not down.

The gCode:

Baby Steps: Machining

My first attempt at gCode did not work well, so I decided to take baby steps.  Part of the LinuxCNC control software lets you do jog on X.Y, and Z axes by 1.000, .100, .01, and .001" increments.  So this is the semiautomatic version of CNC machining; pull the trigger once per move.  Sorry, light is awful, and a black machine cutting black Delrin is not real visible.

UPDATE:  I have been playing with different feed rates and depths of cut as well as both coarse and fine end mills.  It is almost like video game meets mill, exce0pt there's no button to open fire or drop bombs.

UPDATE 2: For some odd reason, Blogger is not inserting videos:

What I Make

These are before screwing in the casters.

Another Argument For Beefsteak

The cattle herd climbed over the fence we had put up Friday, and consumed all of my wife's petunias.  (I know they climbed it because when it cametime  to chase them out, the calves jumped the fence quite gracefully, and mother climbed over, getting a rear leg stuck for a while on top rail.)  The AirSoft does not have enough impact to do more than annoy them.  Paintball time!  Recommendations?  Not too much money, I hope. Do you have one that you no longer use that I can buy?

Sinking the fence posts:

Heartbreaking Story of Child Sexual Abuse

Over at Ask the Bigot:

I was born into a family of famous gay pagan authors in the late Sixties. My mother was Marion Zimmer Bradley, and my father was Walter Breen. Between them, they wrote over 100 books: my mother wrote science fiction and fantasy (Mists of Avalon), and my father wrote books on numismatics: he was a coin expert.

What they did to me is a matter of unfortunate public record: suffice to say that both parents wanted me to be gay and were horrifed at my being female. My mother molested me from ages 3-12. The first time I remember my father doing anything especially violent to me I was five. Yes he raped me. I don’t like to think about it. If you want to know about his shenanigans with little girls, and you have a very strong stomach, you can google the Breendoggle, which was the scandal which ALMOST drummed him out of science fiction fandom.

More profoundly, though was his disgust with my gender, despite his many relationships with women and female victims.  He told me unequivocally that no man would ever want me, because all men are secretly gay and have simply not come to terms with their natural homosexuality.  So I learned to act mannish and walk with very still hips.  You can still see the traces of my conditioning to reject my femininity in my absolute refusal to give in and my outspokenness, and my choice of theatrical director for much of my life.  But a good part of my outspokenness is my refusal to accept the notion that “deep down I must be a boy born in a girl’s body.”  I am not.  I am a girl reviled for being a girl, who tried very hard to be the “boy” they wanted....

One day he  [her father] brought an eleven year old boy to stay with us for a week, with his mother’s permission, which horrified me. I made sure he had a room and bedding. When I saw my father holding him upside down kissing him all over, and saw the porn books out, I called my counselor who had already agreed to call the cops if I ever saw anything happen, and my father was arrested. For that offense, he was given three years of probation. However, word got around, and a man who had given him a place to stay in Los Angeles realized his son was of the age to be a target, and asked questions, which resulted in my father’s conviction on 13 counts of PC 288 A, B, C, and D. (Suffice to say that these are varying kinds of forcible sexual offenses that should never be committed on anyone, let alone a child!)

He died in prison in 1993, after my initial report in 1989. It should be noted that far from being a first offender, his first arrest had been in 1948, when he was 18.

Latest Release of Thunderbird (38.1) Is Broken

Send-to, reply-to, and subject, are empty in Sent folder and when it gets to your mail server.  Go back to 37.1 release or don''t accept the update.

CNC Mill

It's making all the right motions, although I have not tried cutting anything yet.

A couple of set screws on the Z-axis needed adjusting.

I Guess I Don't Have an Unreasonable Amount of Ammo

From July 22, 2015 CBS Sacramento:

LOS ANGELES (AP) – An attorney said Wednesday that the body of a mystery man was decomposing in his car in the tony Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Southern California for nearly two weeks before he was found by authorities on July 17.

Inside his home, detectives discovered more than 1,200 guns, scopes, 6.5 tons of ammunition, bows and arrows, knives, machetes and $230,000 in cash.

They also found eight of the 14 vehicles registered to the man stashed across Los Angeles, including a Toyota SUV designed to drive underwater.

Okay, 6.5 tons of ammo is a bit much.

It's 1935 Germany

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned an article I had wriiten that provided a persuasive body of evidence that homosexuality, at least for some, is likely a traumatic response to childhood sexual abuse.  I sent it to several law professors and bloggers I knew.  Most simply ignored it; one (a supporter of SSM) was surprised that the left hadn't already burned down my house.  One journal I tried to interest in it gave me one of those depressing responses that makes me think we are past the Reichstag fire:

I’m afraid that [journal title deleted] is going to fail that courage test when it comes to your article, “An Open Secret.”   I strongly suspect that you are right about one of the causes of homosexuality, although I have to add that my suspicion isn’t based on extensive knowledge of the research.  It is based on the observations of everyday life, which is famously an imperfect guide, though perhaps more reliable that advocacy-influenced “studies.”

As you know, [journal title deleted] has waded fearlessly into many contentious issues in higher education.  But we are not totally reckless. Some matters that can be and perhaps should be put forward as academic questions are so vigilantly patrolled by the stalwarts of orthodoxy that our publishing on them might well bring a level of opprobrium that even we could not endure. 

This isn’t an instance of my saying no to an article because I think the author has veered outside the lines of reasoned argument or good use of evidence, or has advanced a hypothesis that doesn’t warrant attention.  I am, rather, acting on the view that we are at a historical moment at which reasoned debate on this particular issue has been shut down by forces too powerful to be opposed by one small journal.  I wish it were otherwise. 

 

Huge Rally Against Iran Deal

From July 22, 2015 CBS New York:

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Times Square Wednesday evening in protest over the recent landmark nuclear deal with Iran.

As CBS2’s Jessica Schneider reported, some 10 thousand are rallying in solidarity with signs and voices raised against the nuclear deal.

Wish someone would organize one of these in Boise.

Embarrassing When You Forget A Skill

I was trying to square the end of a Delrin cylinder, and I can no longer do it!  I started the cylinder spinning, and then tried to run the cutting tool across the end.  At first, I blamed the tool not being shasrp enough, so I put in a new carbide-tipped tool.  Same problem: part way through the tip would grab the material and pull it out of the 3-jaw chuck.  Even using a dial micrometer to get the cylinder as close to square as I could did not help.  Is there something I have forgotten?

You Are Known By Your Contributors

Imagine if this story involved a bundler for a Republican!  From July 16, 2015 Portland Oregonian:

A Lane County judge denied gay activist Terry Bean's request Thursday to settle child sex abuse charges by compensating the underage victim.
Bean, 66, and his former boyfriend, Kiah Loy Lawson, 25, are accused of having sex with a 15-year-old boy at a Eugene hotel in 2013.

They each are charged with two counts of third-degree sodomy, a felony, and third-degree sexual abuse, a misdemeanor.

Bean, who lives in Portland and is a prominent political fundraiser, proposed a civil compromise that could result in the dismissal of the criminal charges. Had the request been granted, the criminal charges against Bean would have been dismissed.

Circuit Judge Charles Zennaché said he was unaware of another child sex abuse case that has been settled by civil compromise.

In Oregon, judges have discretion to accept or deny a civil compromise.

In the Bean case, the alleged victim, now 17, supports the settlement and does not want to testify, said attorney Lori Deveny, who represents the boy.

"He has been as vocal as he can be and his voice still isn't being heard," Deveny said.

"There are certain social mores that we, as a society say, 'We are not going to let this happen,' " Zennaché said.

"I think it's bad public policy ... (and bad) from a public safety perspective," Zennaché said.

Terms of the offer were not made public. Zennaché cleared the courtroom while Bean's attorney, Derek Ashton, detailed the proposed settlement.

Bean is an Obama bundler.

I Want To Believe He Said This, But It Sounds Too Convenient

From Joe Huffmann's blog:

The Brady bill will make the streets of America so safe that our nation’s police will not even need to carry guns anymore.
William Jefferson Clinton
On TV, while signing the Brady bill in 1993.
Quoted in Sheriff Richard Mack’s book, The Magic of Gun Control.

Does anyone have video of this?  My readers have found thes signing ceremony and say Bogus.

Ubuntu Linux Is Becoming Less Useable to a Naive User

It used to be that Ubuntu Linux, for all its quirks, was almost a useful alternative to Windows.  Ubuntu 10.04 is not.  I just want to transfer a file from my Windows PC on my LAN and I can't see how to do so.  Samba does not work.  A USB drive does not show up.  For reasons I do not understand, gmail through Firefox is not receiving emails, apparently because this Ubuntu version is not current enough.

When Are Republican Leaders Going To Decide To Win?

Trump is not really anything very special.  But he is willing to speak about illegal immigration, and many Americans including many Democratic voters agree.  From July 20, 2015 Washington Post:

Businessman Donald Trump surged into the lead for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, with almost twice the support of his closest rival, just as he ignited a new controversy after making disparaging remarks about Sen. John McCain’s Vietnam War service, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The other Republicans should be doing likewise, instead of trying to ingratiate themselves to the next generation of Democratic voters.

Mental Illness & Mass Murder

Fronm July 20, 2015 ABC News:

But there is no evidence so far that Mohammod Abdulazeez, 24 -- whose family insists he was deeply troubled and mentally ill -- was inspired by or directed by ISIS to carry out a bloody attack on U.S. military targets of the sort the Syria and Iraq-based terror group has publicly called for over the past year, the officials said....

Four days after the shooting, the FBI has not found any connection to overseas terrorist groups, but Mohammod Abdulazeez's diary says that as far back as 2013, he wrote about having suicidal thoughts and "becoming a martyr" after losing his job due to his drug use, both prescription and non-prescription drugs, the family representative said. 

In a downward spiral, Abdulazeez would abuse sleeping pills, opioids, painkillers and marijuana, along with alcohol, the representative said.

Three months before the shooting, Abdulazeez was arrested on April 20 -- a day celebrated annually by marijuana users -- and charged with drunk driving. The arresting officer noted a smell of marijuana in the car. 

clearly, Obama never taught constitutional law

The Los Angeles Times reports Obama's trained flying monkeys now want to add any Social  Security recipient to the firearm prohibited list who has a "representative  payee," on the theory that if you can't manage your money, you cannot be trusted with a gun.  While there are certainly some SS Disability recipients in that category (because of mental illness), there are many who are not.  Obama needs to read the discussion of strict scrutiny and "narrowly tailored" in any law textbook.

Of course, while this proposal might prevent some mentally ill persons from obtaining guns, it won't do anything for mentally ill persons, using other weapons.  Heaven forbid we do something about our intentionally broken mental health system.

This Is Getting Boring

From July 17, 2015 Daily Caller:

After September of this year, the Earth will be entering its 21st year without statistically significant warming trend, according to satellite-derived temperature data.

Since September 1994, University of Alabama in Huntsville’s satellite temperature data has shown no statistically significant global warming trend. For over 20 years there’s been no warming trend apparent in the satellite records and will soon be entering into year 21 with no warming trend apparent in satellite data — which examines the lowest few miles of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Satellite data from the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) group also shows a prolonged “hiatus” in global warming. After November of this year, RSS data will be in its 21st year without warming.  Ironically, the so-called “hiatus” in warming started when then vice President Al Gore and environmental groups touted RSS satellite data as evidence a slight warming trend since 1979.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/17/satellites-earth-is-nearly-in-its-21st-year-without-global-warming/#ixzz3gFjJMLqZ

Unfortunately, my experience is that the under-30s don't let facts get in the way of a good guilt ttrip.

If Someone Named After The Prophet Murders Marines, It'S Because He's A Redneck, Right?

Desperately looking for a way to avoid pegging the Chattanooga murderer Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez as anything but a terrorist, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked a childhood friend of the killer what he liked to do in “small town Tennessee”:

“Were guns a big part of activities—social or other activities?” Mitchell asked her interviewee abruptly.

“What?” her interviewee responded.
“Did he hunt, did he shoot?” Mitchell prodded. “Was that just part of small-town Tennessee activity?”
“Um, he actually wasn’t one of the guys I heard about going hunting,” Abdulazeez’s classmate responded. “He wasn’t really that kind of guy.”

It can't be Islam, can it?

Temperature Compression

I build my caster product using a piece of aluminum tube with a piece of acetal that carries the caster and slides inside the tube.  Right now, because this is a 30 degree angle cut, I cut the acetal, then sand the edges of the nominally 1.75" plastic (actually more like 1.755") to fit into the nominally 1.75" ID tubing (actually more like 1.741" ID).  Once inside, I screw through the aluminum into the plastic to hold it there.  I am getting ready to switch to aluminum for the insert that holds the caster.  I can turn a rod of aluminum  to the required diameter on the lathe, then cut the rod into the 30 degree angle slices.

I am tempted to use heating and cooling expansion to get a more precise fit.  This calculator shows thermal expansion for various materials.  It looks like putting the interior part on dry ice (-78 C.) should shrink 1.741" OD to 1.7371".  Similarly, putting the 1.741" ID tubing in the oven to 200 degrees C. will expand it to 1.7482".  The cold piece then slides easily into the tube.  Then dunk everything into cold water, and the dry ice piece and hot piece expand and contract to a very tight fit at 1.741".  Question:  how strong is this?  Do I still need screws?   Eliminating drilling, tapping, and three 8-32 screws might justify the nuisance of using oven mitts for the hot from the oven and dry ice.

I put a 6" long piece of 1.751" OD rod on the dry ice and it started moaning!  Now 1.739" OD. 
Last measure: 1.745" OD, perhaps because frost is accumulating on it, or chunks of frozen skin.  (Oven mitts do wonders!)  The tube this goes into is 1.72" ID at near room temperature.  I am confident that oven temperatures will expand it enough to take the rod, and heat transfer should do the rest. I may drill, tap, and screw anyway just to be sure, but at least there is no danger of the rod slipping out of the tube.

UPDATE: I baked a PIECE OF 1.7505" id tube at 450 deg. F., and  it grew to 1.754" ID.  Now, I have trimmed the piece of rod to 1.746" ID at dry ice temperatures.  This should slip into the oven-baked goodness tube, and then both ram into each other at 1.7505".  I still need to slice yhe rod inton 30 degree slices, and try this out.

Why Avocadoes & Knives Do Not Go Together

My wife has a technique for removing pits from avocadoes that involves sticking a knife point into the pit, then pulling out of the avocado.  I could not get a good stick into the pit, so I did it harder, went through the pit, the other side of the avocado, and into my hand.  Ouch!  And very bloody because of the warfarin I am taking to prevent clots in my brain.

Machining Question

The three jaw self-centering chucks that I have for my lathe won't hold a fairly long heavy workpiece without sagging a liitle, so I can't get the workpiece to stay centered.  I have tried centering a hole in the far end and suspending it between chuckm and live center in the tailstock, but it is never all that well centered because it droops.  I suspect a chuck with deeper jaws might do the trick.  Is there a name for such a chuck?

Exposing Frauid: Democrats Upset

July 16, 2015 Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senior Democrats pushed back Thursday against an undercover government probe of President Barack Obama's health care law, saying it didn't uncover any real fraud.

Investigators for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office signed up 11 bogus beneficiaries for 2014 coverage then got HealthCare.gov to continue benefits this year for all but one.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said these were "fictitious cases" and the GAO investigators themselves admit the findings can't be translated to the 10 million people getting subsidized coverage through the law's health insurance markets. Wyden spoke at a Finance Committee hearing on the investigation.

But GAO's audits chief Seto Bagdoyan said the investigation exposed real concerns. He said it was relatively easy for GAO's fictitious characters to get and keep coverage, even to get reinstated after HealthCare.gov terminated them. HealthCare.gov seems to put a higher priority on getting people covered than on verifying they are legally entitled to benefits, Bagdoyan said.

Democrats don't care about fraud if it serves their desires.

San Francisco Supervisor Thinks Videotaping All Gun Purchases Would Enhance Public Safety

From CBS San Francisco:

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A San Francisco lawmaker is pushing for gun control reforms that would require the videotaping of all gun and ammunition sales.

Supervisor Mark Farrell has asked the City Attorney to start drafting legislation that would tighten San Francisco’s already strict laws pertaining to the sale and possession of firearms.

“Even though San Francisco has some of the toughest gun control laws on the books in the country – there is more we can do to protect the public,” said Farrell.

Additionally, the proposed gun control package would require videotaping of all places where firearms or ammunition are stored, handled, sold, transferred, or carried. That could include locations as small as a safe, or as large as a parking lot. Anyone authorized to sell ammunition would be required to keep records for up to five years, and transmit the sales data to the SFPD weekly.

Now, remember, all gun sales in California require both state and federal background checks.  Just for fun, imagine if they required every sale of the North American Man-Boy Love Association's magazine BulliTEN (the TEN indicates an ideal age for them) to be videotaped.  (Some years back,  when one of the local stations had the guts to ask why BulliTEN was sold in four out of five gay bookstores in S.F., Roberta Achtenberg, one of the gay supervisors, replied that this was a free speech issue.  Apparently the First Amendment requires bookstores to carry every magazine.)  Such a videotaping requirement would doubtless help catch child molesters, but the ACLU would certainly sue because of the "chiiling effect" it would have.

Someone Murdered Four Marines in Chattanooga? Quick, What Was His First Name?

From the 07/17/15 New York Times:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Four United States Marines were killed Thursday after a gunman opened fire at two military facilities here, and the federal authorities said they were investigating the episode as an act of domestic terrorism.

The gunman, identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, was also killed, and several others, including a police officer and a Marine Corps recruiter, were wounded. (Earlier reports spelled the gunman’s name as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez.)

Lunatic Fringe

The Internet is full of interesting things, but there is a large lunatic fringe out there, who grew watching X-Files and letting it influence their view of the world.  Huge dark government conspiracies!  The latest example:

OUTER SPACE (INTELLIHUB) — For years it has been speculated by conspiracy theorists and some astronomers that Google Sky had been censoring what’s known as Planet X or Nibiru from the general public’s view online.

Now, shockingly, a massive swath of Google Sky that had been previously blacked out and censored has been made visible by Google for your viewing pleasure. The image below shows the system as censored by Google for years.

Now suddenly, Google has screwed up!  Thank goodness conspiracists are always incompetent.  When I look in my star atlas at 5 h 42m 21.0s 22° 36′ 45.7″, I find a collection of stars that might give that winged planet effect.  Remember this is high magnification above: 5 minutes of arc top to bottom.  It is hard to believe the ad revenue of these sites justifies the effort, so these kooks from the equivalent of Lone Gunman from X-Files must really believe this stuff.

Close the Police Car Loophole!

Imagine if this theft happened to a private party and what the gun control crowd would scream:

CASSELBERRY, Fla. –  Authorities say a submachine gun, a semi-automatic rifle, two pistols and a Taser have been stolen from an unmarked Orange County Sheriff's Office sport utility vehicle parked in a driveway overnight.

Casselberry police Sgt. Chris Pamatia said it's unclear whether the deputy left it unlocked. There were no signs of forced entry, but the deputy said he had locked it. Authorities declined to release the deputy's name.

The Orlando Sentinel (http://tinyurl.com/omtb7lf ) reports it's the second time in two months that someone has stolen weapons from a parked Orange County Sheriff's Office vehicle.

UPDATE: More evidence  that if gun control is needed for private parties, it is certainly needed for police.  From July 13, 2015 channel 4 New York:

An NYPD officer has been arrested in connection with a months-long firearms trafficking investigation after he allegedly stole guns from his precinct to be sold on the street and arranged drug buys while on duty, authorities said.

Nicholas Mina was arrested late Thursday and charged with conspiracy, grand larceny and sale of a firearm, among other crimes.  Information on an attorney wasn't immediately available. He and four co-conspirators who were also arrested were scheduled to be arraigned Friday.

Authorities say the group allegedly trafficked at least 10 guns over a two-month period. The alleged ringleader of the group, Ivan Chavez, is accused of procuring firearms from various sources and removing serial numbers before selling them, prosecutors said.

Four additional firearms were recovered from his home when a search warrant was executed. Charges against him are pending and information on an attorney wasn't available.

Arms Sore

Workout at gym is making me stronger, but there are costs.

Fisher Investments Is Almost As Annoying As Rachel From Cardholder Services

I don't know who they are, but they sell annuities, I think, and I believe they keep sending me crap and calling me because I made a list of people rich enough that it is worth the effort to try and take advantage of.

Okay there are worse problems to have.  First World Problem!

It's A Good Day

I am sitting in the living room enjoying cool breezes blowing through the windows, reading Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian Life, blogging with smartphone and bluetooth keyboard.

The Leftist Arrogance: "What I Want To Do Is Really, Really Important"

The June 6, 2015 New York Times includes a journalist explaining why he defaulted on his student loans and why everyone should:

Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice that too many people have had to and will have to face. I could give up what had become my vocation (in my case, being a writer) and take a job that I didn’t want in order to repay the huge debt I had accumulated in college and graduate school. Or I could take what I had been led to believe was both the morally and legally reprehensible step of defaulting on my student loans, which was the only way I could survive without wasting my life in a job that had nothing to do with my particular usefulness to society.

I chose life. That is to say, I defaulted on my student loans.

As difficult as it has been, I’ve never looked back. The millions of young people today, who collectively owe over $1 trillion in loans, may want to consider my example.

Is writing fun?  Yes, more so than going to work every day to do a job that our society really needs done, as demonstrated by its high wages.  There is a reason that people who majored in journalism, women's studies, gay studies, etc. often have trouble paying back their student loans: because these degrees are for jobs that our society pays poorly because they are easy or contribute little to our society.  There's a reason that computer science, electrical engineering, and a few other degrees don't lead to these hard choices.  They involve real work.

Social Justice Warrior Starts to Think

From July 13, 2015 New York Post:

A few weeks ago, I was heralded as a “Social Justice Warrior” by an anonymous commenter on the Internet. The title was meant, of course, as an insult — but I was elated.

I imagined myself as a superhero, fighting one stigma at a time until the United States became a land of truly equal opportunity.

I suppose I’d prefer to be a Social Justice Ninja, because “warrior” lacks the intrigue and mystery that I always try to emulate in my Cat Woman costume at Halloween.

Nonetheless, to him, I was a warrior for pushing a politically correct agenda by using rhetoric that wasn’t my own, but instead airy slogans right out of the leftist playbook.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but he was right.

I’m a rising junior at Columbia, one of the most PC universities in the country. We consider ourselves a community of protesters that links arms to keep out anything “oppressive,” even when we don’t understand its complexities. Our favorite words are “problematic” and “privileged,” especially when they work hand in hand....

But as a country and a generation, we need to be more accepting of viewpoints different from our own.

Homogeneity in ideology isn’t unique to millennials, but it’s getting worse with us, and it inhibits any kind of growth in our ability to interpret and analyze social issues.

We can’t enter a second Age of Enlightenment if we don’t find spaces like those in the 18th century where (yes, white male) citizens gathered to educate themselves.

Atop our crumbling capacity to vocalize our values is a second tier of concerns: Because our energy is focused on how we present ourselves in a purely oratory sense, we’ve become superficial.

Instapundit has great fun with this:

It’s one thing to have the already enormous self-esteem that all kids these seem to have drilled into them by their teachers since kindergarten. But if you imagine yourself a superhero ninja Catwoman comic book character while a student in college, it might be time for a wakeup call. (Otherwise, it will arrive good and hard when you enter the workforce.) To paraphrase the line from The Incredibles, if everyone thinks he’s a superhero, then no one is.

Tragedy

I called Sherline today to find out repair of the Z-column on my mill was going, and the support guy told me that something went wrong with directions to repair and they disassembled it and returned parts to inventory, so they are shipping a new Z-column instead of a repaired Z-columjn.

This Is Scary

From an interview with a college professor:

My students today are much less obnoxious. Much more likable than I and my friends used to be, but they are so ignorant that it’s hard to accept how ignorant they are. You tell yourself stories; it’s very hard to grasp that the person you’re talking to, who is bright, articulate, advisable, interested, and doesn’t know who Beethoven is. Had no view looking back at the history of the 20th century – just sees a fog. A blank. Has the vaguest idea of who Winston Churchill was or why he mattered. And maybe has no image of Teddy Roosevelt, let’s say, at all. I mean, these are people who – We have failed.

 I try to fix that when I teach, but it is an uphill battle.

The Difference Between Hate Mongering Conservatives in the West and Elsewhere

From Small Dead Animals:

See, in North America, we argue over whether or not bakeries should be compelled to bake gay wedding cakes.In much of the Muslim world, the gay rights issues are different: they debate whether to hang gays, as they do in Iran; or throw them off the tops of buildings, as they do in the new Islamic State.

A New Label: Race As Social Construct

One of the great articles of faith to progressives is that race and sex are both social constructs: created entirely by our expectations and prejudices, and therefore flexible and mutable (unlike homosexuality, which is inborn and immutable).  Some of this is driven by the progressives having taken women's studies, gay studies, and philosophy in school, not sciences.  I have added a new label race as social construct for postings about evidence that progressives as usual are ignorant liars. 

Remember, Race Is A Social Construct

Nothing to do with genetics.  Just ignore articles like this:

San Diego, CA (Scicasts) - Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the School of Medicine have found that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex - the wrinkled outer layer of the brain controlling many functions of thinking and sensation - strongly correlates with ancestral background. The study, published online July 9 in Current Biology, opens the door to more precise studies of brain anatomy going forward and could eventually lead to more personalized medicine approaches for diagnosing and treating brain diseases.

"If we can account for a large percentage of brain structure based on an individual's genes, we're in a better position to detect smaller variations in the brain that might be important in understanding disease or developmental issues," said the study's senior author Anders Dale, PhD, professor of radiology, neurosciences, psychiatry and cognitive science, and director of the Center for Translational Imaging and Precision Medicine at UC San Diego.

In their study, the researchers found they could predict with "a relatively high degree of accuracy an individual's genetic ancestry based on the geometry of their cerebral cortex."...

"The geometry of the brain's cortical surface contains rich information about ancestry," said the study's first author, Chun Chieh Fan, MD, a graduate student in cognitive science. "Even in the modern contemporary U.S. population, with its melting pot of different cultures, it was still possible to correlate brain cortex structure to ancestral background."

Four continental populations were used as ancestral references: European, West African, East Asian and Native American. The metrics for summarizing genetic ancestry in each ancestral component were standardized as proportions ranging from 0 to 100 percent.

"We looked to see how well we could predict how much genetic ancestry they had from Africa, Europe and so forth," said study co-author Terry Jernigan, PhD, professor of cognitive science, psychiatry and radiology, adding that cortex differences between various lineages were focused in certain areas. "There were various systematic differences, particularly in the folding and gyrification patterns of the cortex," said Jernigan, also director of the university's Center for Human Development. "Those patterns were quite strongly reflective of genetic ancestry."

The researchers reported that the cortical patterns accounted for 47 to 66 percent of the variation among individuals in their genetic ancestry, depending on the ancestral lineage.

Marvelously Funny, In A Vulgar Sort of Way

A blog with a prize-winning name Hipstercrite:

Dear People Who Live in Fancy Tiny Houses,
Do you actually love living in a fancy tiny house*?

You look so freakin’ happy in that Dwell Magazine article or Buzzfeed post, but c’mon, you can’t tell me that you don’t lie awake at night, your face four inches from the ceiling because the only place your bed fits is above the kitchen sink which also acts as your shower, and think, I’ve made a terrible mistake.
Look, I’m not criticizing you. I commend you for making this giant leap. Since we humans seem comfortable with pillaging Mother Earth of all her resources, I believe more people should think like you. But 250 square feet? What the hell happens when your tiny house partner farts Mexican food farts, huh? Where do you escape to? Nowhere. You have nowhere to run. All you can do is walk three feet to the other end of the house and pray.

Why Antarctic Ice Is Melting

From an AAAS publication:

High geothermal heat flux measured below the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Abstract

The geothermal heat flux is a critical thermal boundary condition that influences the melting, flow, and mass balance of ice sheets, but measurements of this parameter are difficult to make in ice-covered regions. We report the first direct measurement of geothermal heat flux into the base of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), below Subglacial Lake Whillans, determined from the thermal gradient and the thermal conductivity of sediment under the lake. The heat flux at this site is 285 ± 80 mW/m², significantly higher than the continental and regional averages estimated for this site using regional geophysical and glaciological models. Independent temperature measurements in the ice indicate an upward heat flux through the WAIS of 105 ± 13 mW/m². The difference between these heat flux values could contribute to basal melting and/or be advected from Subglacial Lake Whillans by flowing water. The high geothermal heat flux may help to explain why ice streams and subglacial lakes are so abundant and dynamic in this region.

 

Why The Tesla Makes a Nice Toy for the Superrich and Other Progressives

Read Car & Driver's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Tesla Model S P85D Road Trip.  Neat cars, for those who only drive around town, but useless for anything else.  If you are rich enough to buy a Tesla, enjoy the toy.  For those of us who aren't rich progressives, we have to drive middle class cars like Jaguars.

More Reminders That Fascism Is Coming To America And It Has a Rainbow

From The Weekly Standard:

It’s safe to say that July 2 was not one of the Kleins’ better days. Brad Avakian, a commissioner with the state Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI), issued a ruling that upheld the $135,000 fine for violating state public accommodation laws suggested by an administrative judge in April. The couple were told to pay the fine by July 13 or the state would place a lien on their home. Not only that, but Avakian added an astonishing wrinkle. He issued a gag order that effectively prevents the couple from saying much of anything about the case: “The Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries hereby orders Respondents Aaron and Melissa Klein to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published .  .  . any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations .  .  . will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of their sexual orientation.”

The state insists that this is not a gag order, that it narrowly restricts what the Kleins may say about who they will serve. (Their bakery, Sweetcakes By Melissa, was shuttered in 2013 thanks to negative publicity surrounding the case, though the couple are trying to keep their business alive online.) But according to Grey, who is one of three lawyers working with the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom to represent the Kleins, the couple have never stated an intention to discriminate, only stated why they took the stand they did in the instance that got them into trouble. Besides, the Kleins have no problem serving gay customers. They had previously served the lesbian woman who filed the complaint against them. They simply decline to make cakes for same-sex weddings, since to do so, in their view, would betray their Christian conscience. ...

Another statement that Avakian singles out seems more clear cut: “We don’t do same-sex marriage, same-sex wedding cakes.” Yet even here, Avakian is being willfully obtuse. The transcript of the radio interview in which Aaron Klein said this shows that he was merely recounting what he told the customer at the time he declined to bake her cake, not announcing his future intentions. ...

The state ultimately rejected the idea of additional damages for suffering caused by negative publicity, but its raising the possibility is cause for alarm. The state is essentially saying that if it charges you with violating the law, you can’t speak out against what’s happening to you without potentially subjecting yourself to increasingly harsh penalties—never mind that the Kleins are the ones who seem to have suffered the most from the attendant publicity. Their once-thriving bakery is closed, and Aaron Klein is trying to make ends meet and take care of their children by working as a trash collector. ...

It seems that government authorities in Oregon have no desire to be impartial in clashes over gay rights. In 2009, the mayor of Portland, Sam Adams, admitted he had lied about sleeping with a teenage boy when he was a 41-year-old city council member. Adams, who had been seeing the boy since he was 17, claimed that they hadn’t become physically intimate until the boy’s 18th birthday—when a sexual relationship would have been legal. The state government’s progressive image, however, was heavily invested in Adams as the first openly gay mayor of a major city. So the state attorney general conducted a brief investigation in which no witnesses were placed under oath, and no charges were filed. Adams survived two recall attempts and served out his term as mayor. That the state would only casually investigate statutory rape charges against a prominent gay politician—but spend years and considerable resources throwing the book at a small business for refusing to bake a cake—is telling. 

Like Kafka's The TriaL,the process is the punishment.

In the discussion at Instapundit one progressive comment:

Oh, sure, they talk about "religious liberty". But you just TRY being an Aztec these days. It's not really the Aztec religion if they won't let you perform human sacrifice. Religious liberty, indeed. 

and a response:

First time I've seen refusing to participate in a patron's ceremony compared to ripping someone's heart out of his chest.

Arm yourselves, the gay activists won't be happy until everyone in America shuts up, smiles sweetly, and says, "I love gay marriage."

Windows 7 Slowness

My wife's Toshiba notebook runs Windows 7, and until recently worked very well indeed.  But for the last several months, it suffers periodic incidents of severe slowness, even when there are only one or two apps running.  I have installed Norton Security to protect from viruses, I run SpyBot S&D regularly to remove spyware, and the problem keeps reappearing.  It seems to appear after she visits websites that show song lyrics,  Occasionally I refresh Firefox, and that helps.  RAM and CPU use suggest that something is running in the background to cause the slowness, but when I show applications and processes in the Task Window, I see nothing obviously poisonous.  Any suggestions?

The Myth of Improving E/R Care Reducing Murder Rates

There is a myth very popular with the gun control crowd that the dramatic fall in murder rates since the 1980s is because E/R treatment has improved so much that gunshot wounds are less often fatal.  While I don't doubt that there have been improvements, the decline in violent crime rates is across all weapon types, and I can prove it.  I am planning to write an article dismissing this myth.  (There are gns that I want to buy with the proceeds from that article.) Now, I have yet to find the gun control nuts making this absurd claim in journals, but it appears so often in comments on news stories that I assume that they hear this from their wizards while skyclad in deep forests, dancing around the bonfire.  If you find such an example, please forward a link.

Let Me Boast

I had my hired hand over machining a big piece of acetal down to 2.650" diameter on the lathe, and as part of instruction, I explained how I made an adapter for holding this piece of acetal.  He was surprised that I had made it; he thought it was commercially made.  What I needed was an adapter from the 3/4"-16 headstock spindle to a 3/8"-16 thread that goes into the end of the acetal.

This end I squared, then cut down the center to a cylinder the right size to die to 3/8"-16, then I used a die holder fora 3/8"-16 die in the lathe to thread it.  Then I drilled a spindle rod hole to make it easy to tighten or release.

This end, after squaring, I drilled a .3125" hole, and tapped the hole to 3/4"-16 with the lathe.

It Looks Like Something A Wal-Martian Would Wear

Man Is A Tool Using Animal

but the results are sometimes less than clever.

When In Doubt, Lie

Volokh Conspiracy reports on the gay left's newsest lie: that the outrageous fine levied by Oregon government on a cake baker was because they violated the privacy of the gay couple that sued them.

Now I think the Agency’s theory, presented in its capacity as essentially as the civil case equivalent of a prosecutor, is outrageous: People have a First Amendment right to publicize the complaints against them, including the names of the complainants, notwithstanding the possible bad publicity for the complainants (just as complainants have to be free to publicize the names of the people they are complaining about). And while it’s possible that rules requiring the redaction of the complainants’ home addresses might be constitutional (but see p. 1115 of this article), I know of no such requirement under Oregon law.

But, in any event, the Commissioner didn’t buy the Agency’s theory, unless there’s something about the decision that I’m missing.

Essentially, the leftist media is now claiming that speaking to the media about this complaint is the reason they were fined so heavily.  How much expectation of privacy do you have when you file a public complaint?  This is becoming like Kafka's The Trial.

It is crap like this that is the reason I say, "Homosexuality.  Freedom.  Pick one."

Cool Phone Accessory

One of my greatest disappointments of a smartphone is the lack of keyboard, and the voice recgnition stuff just doesn't work all that well.  So I saw this for $10, and I thought it was worth the gamble.  It's an iAnder Bluetooth Keyboard that has keys about the same as a basic computer keyboard (similar spacing and feel), and I am using right now.

It uses two AAA batteries, and connects very easily.

In spite being fullsized keys, it is 11" x4.5" and weighs 11 ozs. so easy to pack along under circumstances where a laptop might be too big and heavy, and at $10, a great purchase.  Let me emphasize that while well-suited to touch typing, my right hand is still not ready for touch-typing.  Watching me type is a bit comic.

The Class War Within The Republican Party

Ace of Spades has a very perceptive article about why Republican leadership is so vigorously PC and defensive of the Democrats.

The war is between two groups. My terminology may not be perfect, and there is lots of give in these terms, but the war is between the Middle/Working Class (hereafter just the Middle Class) and Professional Class, which I sometimes call the "Comfortable Class."

Both classes, frankly, disgust me, depending on the day of the week.

The Middle Class is naked with class resentment and don't seem to mind if the world knows they are seething angry at the Professional Class (whom they feel, correctly, disrespect them). They tend to push a "politics" which is less about actual policy and more about asserting the cultural class supremacy of the Middle Class.
 
The Professional Class is composed of both actual professionals, who are a fraction of the class, and the larger number of people who aspire to join the Upper Middle Class, but are actually Middle Class.

The Professional Class loves denigrating the Middle Class. One of its proudest achievements is that it's not the Middle Class, but something more.

Also, the Comfortable Class does in fact enjoy showing the liberals that they're not like that rabble, the White Working Class, by making a bigger deal than necessary over PC lapses by the Middle Class.

The Comfortable Class is very PC. It has, in fact, incorporated most of the mores and forbiddances of the Establishment Left. When people call members of this class "sort of liberal," they're 100% accurate.

This is why you'll never see true conservatism win in DC -- the actual representatives you send to DC are almost entirely members of the Comfortable Class, or soon will be (you become the fish you swim with). And they are in fact much, much closer to the Establishment Left than they are the mores and customs of the Middle Class they are nominally allied with.

New Paper

The most Politically Incorrect paper of the year, maybe the decade.

An Open Secret:
Child Sexual Abuse as One Possible Cause of Homosexuality

Abstract:     

There is considerable evidence suggesting that homosexuality is a response to the trauma of child sexual abuse. The failure to consider this possible causal relationship has lead to a widespread assumption that homosexuality is an inborn and immutable characteristic. Failure to consider this possible origin has also led critics of homosexuality to assume that homosexuality as a preference is a conscious choice

Number of Pages in PDF File: 16
Keywords: sexual orientation, homosexuality, child sexual abuse

You can also download directly  from here. 
 
UPDATE: Thanks for the corrections and additions.  Paper updated.

Federal Judge Not Prepared to Play, "Law? What Law?"

From July 7, 2015 Politico:

A federal judge up in arms about non-compliance with a court order blocking President Barack Obama's recent executive actions on immigration is demanding that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and four other top immigration enforcement officials appear in a Brownsville, Texas, courtroom next month to explain why they should not be held in contempt of court.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen issued an order Tuesday afternoon requring the five officials to show up for a hearing Aug. 19. However, the judge also said he would cancel the session if he's "satisifed" with the government's actions to limit or revoke 2,000 three-year work permits it issued to illegal immigrants after Hanen issued an injunction that limited new permits to a two-year duration.

"This Court has expressed its willingness to believe that these actions were accidental and not done purposefully to violate this Court’s order. Nevertheless, it is shocked and surprised at the cavalier attitude the Government has taken with regard to its 'efforts' to rectify this situation," Hanen wrote.
"The Government has conceded that it has directly violated this Court’s Order in [the government's] May 7, 2015 advisory, yet, as of today, two months have passed since the Advisory and it has not remediated its own violative behavior. That is unacceptable and, as far as the Government’s attorneys are concerned, completely unprofessional," the judge added in his order (posted here). "Neither side should interpret this Court’s personal preference to not sanction lawyers or parties as an indication that it will merely acquiesce to a party’s unlawful conduct."

I keep waiting for some of Obama's criminal minions to go to jail.  But I also am waiting for an opposition political party.

Maine's Governor Signs Constitutional Carry Bill

Shall Not Be Questioned pointed me to this article at WLBZ channel 2:

AUGUSTA, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Gov. Paul LePage signed a law Wednesday that will eliminate the need to have a concealed weapons permit in Maine.

One more state I don't need to renew a carry permit for.

Obama Wanted to "Fundamentally Transform" Ameriica

Success! 

After seeing years of decline in violent crime, several major American cities experienced a dramatic surge in homicides during the first half of this year.

Milwaukee, which had one of its lowest annual homicide totals in city history last year, has recorded 84 murders so far this year, more than double the 41 it tallied at the same point last year.

Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said the mounting homicide toll in his city of 600,000 is being driven by Wisconsin's "absurdly weak" gun laws (carrying a concealed weapon without a state-issued concealed carry is a misdemeanor in the Badger State), a subculture within the city that affirms the use of deadly violence to achieve status and growing distrust of police in some parts of the city.

And did this law change recently?  So why did this cause the problem?

Milwaukee is not alone.

Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis have also seen the number of murders jump 33% or more in 2015. Meanwhile, Chicago, the nation's third-largest city, has seen the homicide toll climb by 19% and the number of shooting incidents increase in the city by 21% during the first half of the year.

In all the cities, the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods. In parts of Milwaukee, the sound of gunfire has become so expected that about 80% of gunfire detected by ShotSpotter sensors aren't even called into police by residents, Flynn said.

"We've got folks out there living in neighborhoods, where . . . it's just part of the background noise," Flynn told USA TODAY. "That's what we're up against."

Criminologists are quick to note that the surge in murders in many big American cities come after years of declines in violent crime in major metros throughout the USA. Big cities saw homicides peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s as crack-cocaine wreaked havoc on many urban areas.

The excuses of course are amazing:

But other experts say the surge in killings suggests that the United States may be nearing a floor in reducing its murder rate as the federal, state and local governments increasingly are grappling with tighter budgets.

"Why is there a synchronicity among these cities?" said Peter Scharf, an assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health whose research focuses on crime. "One reason may be President Obama is broke. Governors like Bobby Jindal are broke, and mayors like (New Orleans' Mitch) Landrieu are broke. You don't have the resources at any level of government to fund a proactive law enforcement."

And why is this problem only happening in cities with large black populations?  Ferguson Effect.

This Is Scary

You can get trapped inside newer Corvettes:

We’ve heard of some pretty alarming stories about people being locked inside a Corvette, unable to get out as a result of the electric doors, but none as sad as this one.

A 72-year-old Texas man and his dog were found unresponsive in a 2007 Corvette parked at a Port Arthur restaurant on Monday afternoon. Apparently, when the car’s battery cable came loose, the man was unable to manually unlock the doors.

As many probably know here at Corvette Forum, Corvettes also have a handle next to each seat to force the electric doors open in an emergency such as a dead battery. But sadly, it appears there might be a lot more people out there who aren’t aware of the safety lever in Corvettes.

Why Only Law Enforcement Can Be Trusted With Guns

From July 8, 2015 S.F. Chronicle:

The gun used to kill a 32-year-old woman on San Francisco’s waterfront was stolen from a federal Bureau of Land Management agent in a car burglary in June, sources close to the investigation said Tuesday.

The .40-caliber pistol was stolen from the agent not long before Kathryn Steinle was shot to death July 1 at Pier 14 on the Embarcadero, said one source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the case publicly.

Other sources said the weapon was apparently not the agent’s official gun. It was reported stolen in an auto burglary in the downtown area, they said.

My Brain Is Exhausted

I have  been working very hard on gCode, and I am exhausted.

Banning Smoking: Liberalism At Work

Liberals claim to support legalizing pot while passing bans on toacco smoking:

Smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products in Seattle's parks became illegal on Monday, as the U.S. Pacific Northwest's largest city joined other American metropolises in restricting puffing in public.

Seattle's Parks and Recreation officials voted in May to ban smoking in all of its 465 parks. It had previously required smokers to maintain 25-feet minimum distances from other visitors in any publicly accessible park land, the city said.

On Monday, the city, on its website, encouraged park goers to "smell flowers, not smoke."

Their support for legalizing marijuana is not based on freedom, but their own addictions.

The Continuing Saga of the Sherline Mill

Technical support thinks the stepper motor is probably okay, suggested I remove the antibacklash clamp, which might have jammed it, and told me the self-reversing z-axis is that I need the parallel port amplifier.

Considering Rocky Mountain Lodge in Horseshoe Bend, ID?

The pictures on various websites are beautifully lush, but these show only the immediate house location.  Surrounding hills (which are all privately owned and not generally open to the public) look like this:

 

And yes, it is as dry and tinder-like as it looks..We sometimes get very impressive brush fires, like this in 2012.  And yes, it closed the only road to Rocky Mountain Lodge.

 

You also get to enjot the cultural diversity that rural Idaho is known for worldwide:

  Neighbor upset I didn't warn him so he could put up the really offensive flags.

Teaching myself gCode

This a is low level CNC control language. Roughly similar to teaching yourself assembly language so that more fully understood what the C compiler is doing when you write a Hello, World program.

UPDATE:  Not as bad as writing PostScript, and the LinuxCNC paxckage has a nice simulator for  testing while waiting for stepper motors to arrive.

Stepper motors arrived.  But the mill is sitting on the kitchen table during a church board meeting, so I am still writing gCode.  Fortunately, this part involves only a few right angle mill operations, so it is only laborious to write the gCode.It's a bit more laborious perhaps than it needs to be because I am only taking off .01" on each pass, because I am sure that the cutters and mill can take off that much aluminum with no hiccups.  I might experiment at some point with .05" per pass.

Unfortunately, while the x- and y-axes wre doing their robotic thing perfectly, the z-axis was behaving oddly, and even manually refused to rise.  This kit came with three handwheels to attach to the far end of the stepper motor shafts, allowing m,anual use as well.  There were two sizes, and it weasn't clear which axis the larger handwheel was for.  The attachment mechanism and shafts were identical, but the fact that the small handwheel will  not come off the Z-axis suggests that there is something special about this, and it may have damaged the z-axis motor.  Of course, Sherline is closed for the 4th weekend, so I will have to wait until Monday to resolve this.  In the meantime, resume gCode development!

This is what it looks like:
 %
(machine bottom of VHAL part)
g20  (inches)
g40 g49
g90 f1000
G1 Z0.010 x0.25 y0 G80
g1 y2.676 X0.25 g80
g1 Y2.676 x0.5 g80
g1 y0     X0.5 g80
G1 y0     X0.75 G80
G1 Y2.676 X0.75 G80
G1 Y2.676 X1.0 G80
G1 Y0     X1.0 G80
G1 Y0     X1.25 G80
G1 Y2.676 X1.25 G80
(last pass narrower because we are only cutting to 1.562)
G1 Y2.676 X1.312 G80
G1 Y0     X1.312 G80
(return to zero point and cut another .01" deeper)
G1 Z0.020 x0.25 y0 G80
g1 y2.676 X0.25 g80
g1 Y2.676 x0.5 g80
g1 y0     X0.5 g80
G1 y0     X0.75 G80
G1 Y2.676 X0.75 G80
G1 Y2.676 X1.0 G80
G1 Y0     X1.0 G80
G1 Y0     X1.25 G80
G1 Y2.676 X1.25 G80
(last pass narrower because we are only cutting to 1.562)
G1 Y2.676 X1.312 G80
G1 Y0     X1.312 G80
m2
%

Now writing bash scripts to produce gCode to speed up the process.