Today's Electrical Engineering Question

For a sheet of 12 gauge steel one foot wide and 10 feet long, how much heat will be produced by passing 100 W at 12 V through it?  This page says "The resistivity of steel is on the order of 10−7 Ωm."  That seems to imply that the total length of the sheet of steel, not area or mass is what matters.  That is counter-intuitive.

Question answered and a better solution offered.  My objective is melt enough snow at the edge of the driveway to expose a little asphalt to sunlight.  Exposed asphalt absorbs heat and rapidly clears the rest of the snow.  Instead of building my own heater, deicing cable was suggested.  This puts out 5W per foot and nestled up to the edge of the driveway will likely do the job.  Two 100W PV panels and an inverter should be enough for a 30 foot section.  The 200 foot cable will require six cables to do all 1200 feet of driveway, but even doing some of it should get the rest largely clear on the sunny days that follow most serious snowfalls.  A 200 foot cable will gobble at least 1000 watts (with losses from the inverter), so that might be a big investment in PV panels.

When Did Parents Decide Being Cool Meant Exposing Their Children to Drag Queen Story Hour?

10/30/19 Post-Millenial reports:

On Oct. 17, non-binary drag queen Sasha Sota performed at a Library in front of a group of children. In one of the photos from the event, Sota’s spread legs can be seen briefly flashing the group of toddlers.

The unedited photo shows a clear crotch shot, with Sota wearing some type of pantyhose or leggings to cover his genitals.

Are universities really this effective at brainwashing?

Why Successful Astrophotographers Have Winter Homes in Florida

The teeth of my winter boots are chattering.  Worse, when I got out there I discovered that I had neglected to turn off the clock drive the last time I used it.  Fresh AA batteries tomorrow.  It needs to be above freezing to do astrophotography.

I also just realized why in all the years that I operated Scoperoller, I made two sales in Idaho.

Now if could just win the Powerball, I might buy that winter home in Florida, the land of giant bugs and criminals too stupid to not become Florida Man stories.

Colt Mustang Upgrades

I mentioned a while back buying an ambidextrous safety from Cylinder & Slide for my Colt Mustang and discovering it was not dead simple, like a 1911.  So I took it to QPR Gunsmithing who seems to not only know his trade, but is a very nice person as well.  (My experience on this with other gunsmiths has been mixed.)  Here it is:

The safety is stainless like the rest of the gun.  And extended as well, making it hard to miss.

Milt tested it at a range, and I verified the safety worked before I left the shop.  I was surprised to see that if yoiu have the trigger depressed and you take off the safety, it fires.  My other Colt .380 works identically, so this is just part of the design unlike the 1911 which I believe requires you to release the trigger first.  Still, under what conditions would you pull the trigger, keep it depressed, and take off the safety.  When you realize that the bad guy was not impressed with a trigger pull because the safety is still on.

I also bought a stainless steel recoil spring guide to replace the plastic one that is factory.

The only claims made for stainless steel is more durable than plastic.  I do wonder if it might stay straighter under recoil and reduce barrel flex.  Time to go shooting!

Robocop Watched Star Wars Too Many Times

Why Democrats Are Anti-Gun

They have armed police not only protecting them, but their kids too.  10/28/19 New York Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio ordered his NYPD security detail to repeatedly take his son back and forth from Yale University during his first years at school, the Daily News has learned.

Executive Protection Unit detectives drove Dante de Blasio to or from New Haven, Conn., at least seven or eight times, the sources with direct knowledge said. Members of the detail also took Dante to visit his uncle, who lives nearby, sources said. Dante faced no security risks at the time, the sources said.

And they moved his daughter as well.  Must be nice being powerful, right?  Why they want to disarm the rest of us.

Snap Caps

I would love to buy a tiny number of snap caps fror dry firing and function verification: two .380 ACP; two 9mm; two .45 ACP; two .22LR; two .223; two .308.  But these are only sold in packs 5, 10, etc.  Have any of you bought one of these packs and are willing to sell one or two?  If not, would you be interesting in parting out a pack?

Yup.  Just buy a pack.  I grew up poor and it still affects my brain.

North Korea is Running Out of Patience

10/26/19 AP:

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Sunday said it’s running out of patience with the United States over what it described as hostile policies and unilateral disarmament demands, and warned that a close personal relationship between the leaders alone wouldn’t be enough to prevent nuclear diplomacy from derailing.

In a statement published by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency, senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol said there has been no substantial progress in relations despite warm ties between leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump. He said the persisting hostility means “there can be the exchange of fire at any moment.”

At which point about 500 megatons will detonate over North Korea and they will cease to be the protection racket that they are.  Trump is driving them mad, and any steps they take will likely leave Short Fat directing a nation of ashes from his underground bunker.  Attacking South Korea or Japan are not safe; the U.S. would incinerate North Korea.  Any attack on the U.S. could be damaging since at least one ICBM might arrive and destroy an American city, but North Korea would cease to exist with 20 minutes.

Cold-Induced Asthma

I have battled this for several years.  I bought a hunter's mask intended to solve this; a copper mesh over the mouth causes exhaled air to warm so your next inhale is warmed air.  My wife and I took the Springer Spaniels for a walk this evening at Eagle Island State Park, and pain in my lungs and rapid exhaustion held mne back on a flat and not terribly brisk pace.  The mask did little good.

It isn't cold air alone, I think, because without the mask, I was no worse off.  I worried that my aortic valve is giving up the ghost and this is oxygen deprivation, but 30 minutes at 2.1 mph on my treadmill in a nice warm house is not a problem.  I suspect that while cold air is a problem, the mask is adding a different problem.  It traps exhaled air so you are inhaling air that is now 4% carbon dioxide. The oxygen content is this reduced to 15%.  This is not enough to provoke the asphyxiation response from CO2 buildup in the blood, but I suspect the reduced oxygen is straining my system's cardiovascular capability.  The mask is no longer going to be used; if there was a mask that warmed incoming air (likely battery powered) but did not cause use of exhaled air, it might be worth trying.  Otherwise, I will not walk in cold weather.

Proof That Guns Deter Mass Murder

The Sutherland Springs murderer was wearing body armor.  Why wear it unless you were expecting or thought it likely your victims might return fire?  (This was Texas.)  Police are going to show up with rifles, so it was not to protect him from police.

Anyone Recognize This Language?

Cari Situs Judi Online Terpercaya? Teraman? Banyak Bonusnya? Di Sini Tempatnya. ZumaQQ, Agen BandarQ, Domino99, Poker Online Terpercaya Hanya 4 Tahapan Kemenangan yang MUDAH di ZumaQQ Daftar > Depo > Main > Menang! Deposit minimal Rp. 20.000,- Anda Bisa Menjadi JUTAWAN? 

Readers say Indonesian.  Spam is a random approach, but spamming people in the wrong language?

Has It Really Been More Than A Year Since I Inflicted Memoirs on You?

I guess so.  So I went off to USC after my first summer job, writing inventory software in assembly language for a Mafia-owned car parts maker.  That one year at USC was actually wonderful, and I wish that I had been well-enough off to fit into the social milleu.  But I knew I was from a poor family, and it felt like I had a tattoo of dishonor on my forehead.  I was surviving on a $1000 student loan (back when $1000 was a lot of money), a Social Security check that I received because my father had become disabled (dependents received a small payment at the time), and the savings from my summer of working for the world's smallest and flakiest company.

As the fall semester closed (4 As and a B; how I ever earned a B in Calculus remains a mystery), a job opened up at the Santa Monica Unified School District where friends worked.  They needed someone to specify and develop a system for accounting how Maintenance Department workers hours should be allocated by school.  This was a full-time job while going to school full-time.  (Yes, that worked about as well as you might expect: second semester Calculus was a D, and even Chemistry was a B.)  But I was making good progress on writing specs when I decided that as nice as $800 a month was, I was doing a bad job at school.  So, two months in, I quit.  If only there were part-time burger-flipping jobs back then.

I had forgotten that I needed to inform Social Security that I was working.  About July, they noticed and stopped my check.  Of course, I was no longer working by then, but the machinery that ground so slowly at turning off the checks was no faster the other direction.  By the end of August, I had $30 in the bank, and my 1964 Chevy Malibu station wagon, decrepit but reliable.  (It never stranded me, which in the USC neighborhood might have been fatal, for a white kid.)

So I looked for full-time employment.  Projectionist an adult movie theater?  No experience with projectors.  A company called Telos Computing needed a software engineer.  My five months of experience made me completely unqualified for the job, and I was a not terribly mature 18-year-old, but I was able to talk, and talked myself into a $1200/month job.  I mailed my resume Monday; a week later I was working.  Where?  Telos had a contract with Jet Propulsion Labs, supplying workers for the Mariner 12 & 13 (later renamed Voyager) Telemetry Software System (TSS).

I worked for a very sweet lady named Judy Cohen who was a Lab employee.  My administrative boss was a very nice Telosian named Phil Schaefer.

Let me explain the work environment.  JPL had a lot of reasonably nice permanent buildings and a lot of trailers outfitted as really crummy offices.  I was assigned to a trailer up the hill from the building where most of our people worked.  I shared the west half of this trailer with a young man named Evan [something obviously Jewish].  Evan was a graduate of Fairfax High (a school for many years about 99% Jewish in popular and self-perception).  He kept me amused with stories of Fairfax High, and his time at UCLA getting a computer science degree.  He told me that when he started in 1963, freshmen would stand on the steps to the Student Union singing "The Hills of Westwood."  When he graduated in 1968, students were marching down those steps shouting, "On strike!  Shut it down!"

Anyway, Evan had serious self-esteem issues and only lasted a couple weeks before termination.  His mother naturally called our boss, Judy Cohen, to accuse her of firing him because she was an anti-Semite (much to Evan's chagrin).  "My name is Judy Cohen."  Short conversation after that.

I was moved to a trailer that I shared with Pete Winter, a nice German guy.  What was I doing when I arrived?  They gave me a task that was inflicted on all new hires without an assigned task: adding comments to code disassembled from the binaries.  A disassembler is a program that converts binary executable code to the equivalent assembler language mnemonics and addresses.  Yes, they had lost the source code.  So those addresses were just octal addresses (yes, octal, wait for it).  Previous victims had put in really useful comments like add 1 to register 6.  (I tried to do a better job of analyzing the general scheme and produce more useful comments.)  Fortunately, this mindnumbing task only lasted a few days until they found something for me to do.

The TTS consisted of four Modcomp minicomputers, a Univac 1616 and Univac 1530, linked together by who knows what?  These were originally military spec computers.  One was designated AN-UYK-20, the other AN-UYK-7.  I no long remember which was which.  They were antiques when the military adopted them, and I was told JPL had paid $250,000 to get Univac to build new antiques.  Why do that?  Remember that code that lacked source?  It ran on one of these beasts, and there were no surviving specs explaining what the data flow was.

The 1530 had 30-bit words grouped as 10 octal bytes.  The 1219 was 18-bit words of 6 octal bytes.   Wait, the weird gets weirder.  The 1219 had no subroutine call instruction.  It had a B7IJ command.  You said B7IJ subr, and it stuffed the caller's address at subr and started executing at subr+1.  At the bottom of the subroutine it did a indirect jump through that caller's address at subr.  Imagine trying to write recursive code.  Stack?  What's that?

Programs were all given names imaginative named with five letters;  the first identified on which processor it ran and the three its function.  I was assigned NPEGS.  Data from the spacecraft arrived in frames of (I think) 512 bits (480 of which were data).  The rest was header information identifying source and time.  This 480 bits was mostly a general science data block.  There were also 24 bits of Engineering data contained therein.  NPEGS was supposed to take these 24 bit chunks from each General Science frame, as it was called, and accumulate these until I had a 480 bit frame of Engineering data and then pass that frame to the Modcomps.

This programming was all done on punch cards.  Yes, these things:

There was a keypunch service if you filled in coding forms, but it took a few days, and they were seldom flawlessly punched.  Also, keypunch was almost at the east end of the Lab, and I worked at nearly the west end.  It was a long walk.  I usually did my own keypunching.

One trick you learned early was to draw a diagonal line across the top of the deck.  If you dropped a program (as I once did when NPEGS had grown to 2500 cards), that line greatly speeded up getting them back in sequence.  You carried your absurd box of cards to Space Flight Operations Facility (SFOF) to assemble them to binary.  I think the binary was punched to paper tape.  

Then you loaded it into the antique to debug.  I remember nothing of this phase of my work.  After the dropping of the card deck (on outdoors, often windy stairs), I switched over to managing my source on mag tape drives.  

A series of commands that RCS users would recognize, let you insert, delete, or replace cards in your tape, which could then be read for assembly.  So instead of carrying 2500 cards and watching the cards get swallowed in, you just carried a few dozen cards at most to change your source tape.

It was a miserable year.  I had no friends in La Crescenta, where I moved after too many months carpooling from Santa Monica (although I did eventually make a few friends among my single workmates, some of whom remained friends for 20 years).  Young ladies?  Sorry, but I was so nerdy that I could bring myself to ask out a young lady who worked in an adjacent trailer.  (Nerdettes were still quite rare, and were rapidly allocated by nerds with more charm, and better looks.)  Most Friday nights, I bought a Straw Hat pizza, drove up Angeles Crest Highway to an overlook of Los Angeles and cried.

The job lasted about 11 months, by which time it was apparent that whatever technical knowledge I had, I was not getting NPEGS or its close relative NPGSI (General Science extracted from Imaging) to completion, and I was laid off.

Working there, in spite of the loneliness, was one of the best jobs that I ever had.  I worked on something of importance to mankind.  I got to stand in the gallery of the Mission Control room to watch several missions in progress, hang with the cool kids on the Viking Imaging team, ask impertinent questions like what star will our mission intercept after it leaves Sol for good, learn about Golay Encoding which still seems like magic (but then again so does Discrete Wavelet Transform coding), use the Lab library to prove to a friend that there were no pyramids on the Moon (there is a rebound peak that can be cropped to look like one), misuse the phone system to call my parents toll-free in Barstow by dialing Goldstone Tracking Station extension, then 9 for an outside line; loads of fun.

Swallowing Issue

I have been plagued the last two years by a swallowing problem known as globus syndrome, because it feels like there is a ball in your throat.  This apparently a common problem if you have had strokes on both sides.  The longer that I talk, the more annoying it becomes.  After an hour or so, I am exhausted, although I am told that I sound fine.

I mentioned this problem to someone at church who has been having this same problem.  "More water and chew gum."  And amazingly, it works.  I used to suck hard candy, which had a similarly beneficial effect (promoting saliva production), but it was hard to talk with candy in my mouth.  Gum, not so much.

Pistol Condition 3

You may be aware of Jeff Cooper's conditions:

• Condition 4: Chamber empty, empty magazine, hammer down.

• Condition 3: Chamber empty, full magazine in place, hammer down.

• Condition 2: A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer down.

• Condition 1: A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer cocked, safety on.

• Condition 0: A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer cocked, safety off.

On a modern pistol, there is usually a firing pin block that prevents a dropped pistol from firing, so Conditions 1 and 2 are very safe, but Condition 3 is attractive nonetheless, at least if you live somewhere like Idaho where robbery or random assault is rare.  My only reasons to carry a pistol are wildlife attacking my dogs, or mass murderers.  Both usually give you lots of warning, enough time to draw and rack the slide.

I understand that Israeli Defense Forces for many years carried Condition 3, and practiced drawing and racking the slide in one motion. Unless your other hand is busy with a steering wheel or cellphone, this does not sound like much of an obstacle.  And a fire could easily discharge that chambered cartridge.  The next round won't chamber; this is the ultimate weak hand shooting.  But a pistol stored in your car or house might be a hazard to a firefighter.

Racking the slide might well cause an attacker to run off to his suddenly remembered dentist's appointment.  Even a justifiable shoot will be a paperwork hassle as Johnny's next of kin sue because you just misunderstood Johnny; that knife and demand for your wallet was really was a form of aggravated begging.

Comments?

Victory in Montana

City of Missoula v. Fox (Mont. 2019) struck down a Missoula ordinance mandating background checks on private transfer under a preemption statute.  Very interesting as to motive:

As the Attorney General notes, the District Court’s interpretation of the exception in subsection (2) is overbroad. As the Ordinance offers, its background check requirements for firearm transactions is intended to be a “prevention mechanism to serve as a deterrent” to the possession of firearms. City of Missoula, Mont., Municipal Code § 9.60.010 (2016)

Missoula is a college town, so such an attempt is unsurprising.

Can We Stop Throwing Around the Word "Treason" So Lightly?

The left kept saying Trump's non-existent collusion with Russia was treason, and people on our side keep saying that this attempt to overthrow Trump is treason.    "Treason" is defined in the Constitution (Article III, sec. 3) quite narrowly:

1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

2: The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Now, if the Russians had tried to help Trump get elected, it would be bad, but even if Trump had sought their aid, this would not be treason.  We are not at war with Russia.  Trump would have to have given aid to the Russians for his actions to qualify as treason, and this is assuming that Russia is an enemy.  We are not at war with Russia; not even close.

The attempts to overthrow Trump likely involve some crimes, which the Department of Justice is now investigating, but treason it is not.  Why is treason so narrowly defined?  Because having sex with the king's mistress ("violating the royal blood line") was one of the many acts define as "treason" under English law.  The Framers wanted to avoid that gaming of the system.

Forgot How Good Some of These 2011 Pictures Came Out

Sunset at Eagle Island State Park Today

It Is Official: I Cannot Install a Cartridge Fuse

Package of fuses arrived.  I installed the new fuses for X, Y, and A (which I do not use).  By accident, I removed and reinstalled the Z fuse.  Y and Z work fine.  X does not.  I tried swapping cables; Y cable talking to X motor works; X cable talking to X motor does not work; X has no output it appears.  I have inserted both leads carefully with tweezers to make sure there is mechanical resistance.  I also discovered (I think) that if not plugged in at both ends the fuse shows open circuit.  The fuse now in X is showing about 30-50 ohms, similar to the fuses in  Y and Z, which work.

Is there anyone in the Boise area that knows how to install a fuse competently?  I could bring the controller box to you, but it would be nice to verify functionality afterwards.  Besides, you get to meet me face to face.

No, the fuse that was in there was open circuit when removed from the socket.  New fuse accomplished nothing (as was the case with the previous fuse).  Some other part of the X circuitry has obviously failed.  I guess Sherline is the next step.

A Ways to Go on Astrophotography

1/3 sec., ISO 100, 2000mm f/4.5, 25mm projection eyepiece

1/2 sec., ISO 100, 2000mm f/4.5, 25mm projection eyepiece

Saturn is hard; not much light and tiny scale.

Jupiter again focus remains elusive.  Live mode helps, but I really need more power so that the image is largev enough in Live mode to see if I have a sharp focus.

Let's Get Small

I have been trying to make a 1/4"-20, 3/8" square bushing for the telescope rebuild.  The first attempt failed because getting the 3/8" part square enough to get a reasonably square hole was very hard.  Threading just went off the edge.

The Sherline mill vise has always been the most disappointing part of their mill.  The clamp is a socket head screw into a ball that engages a progressive set of notches.  The theory is that clamping force is more down than in.  In practice, it is not very effective at clamping.  Worse, it is 2" of workspace capacity.

So, I pulled out Frankenvise, a drill press vise that I squared up several years ago.  It has plenty of clamping force and can take a 4" workpiece.  But I have never found parallels usable on either.  They fall down on thee Sherline before I can get the workpiece in place, and because it is aluminum, the magnetic strips one of you sent won't stick.  They stick to Frankenvise's jaws, but there is a gap at the bottom of the vise that prevents the parallels from working.  I will mill that space between the jaws flat to solve that problem.  In the meantime, trying to get the right combination of square blocks 3/8" wide or less tall enough to expose the right amount of acetal is very hard.  The last attempt sliced through one side of the threaded hole. Still waiting on fuses, so I have a one axis CNC mill right now, on which I am learning a lot about mill rates.

Perhaps irrelevant.  The spider maker can make the right size bushing for $19.  Sold!

Soon it will be dark enough for astrophotography.

In retrospect, I should have used a 3/8" diameter rod, drilled through on the lathe.  I would have likely needed to turn it down anyway to fit so I could have still gotten a press fit.

39 Murdered: You Won't See Calls for Reefer Truck Regulation

10/24/19 Reuters:

GRAYS, England (Reuters) - Police were given extra time on Thursday to question a driver arrested on suspicion of murder after 39 people, believed to be Chinese nationals, were found dead in a refrigerated truck near London, in an investigation focused on human trafficking....

Paramedics and police found the bodies of 31 men and eight women on Wednesday in a truck container on an industrial estate at Grays in Essex, about 20 miles (32 km) east of London.

For years, illegal immigrants have attempted to reach Britain stowed away in trucks, often from the European mainland. In the biggest tragedy, 58 Chinese were found dead in a tomato truck in 2000 at the port of Dover.

And yes, this is murder.  You lock people in a truck and provide no exit path, it shows an indifference to human life.  And deaths in conjunction with a felony are murders.

Hitler's Children

Disturbing German-made documentary about the Hitlerjugend and related youth organizations of the time.  Two interesting items:

1. Repeated reference to how National Socialists denigrated class and parental status.  It did not matter if you lived in an apartment or a mansion:"you were all equal in their eyes.

2. The importance of propagandizing so young that by adulthood, they were so fanatical in defense of Hitler when the Red Army reached Berlin, that the Wehrmacht was almost prevented from surrendering.

If you recognize this going on today, this is why I teach.  If I taught for the money, it would mean that I was bad at arithmetic.

Where Environmental Fanaticism Takes You

This is not up there with carrying a rifle into Wal-Mart, but still pretty effective at pissing off people.

Why Gun Control Is Not Going Anywhere

Gallup polling:

Do you think the federal government poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens, or not?

	Yes, immediate threat	No, not immediate threat	No opinion
	%	%	%
2015 Sep 9-13	49	49	2
2013 May 20-21 ^	46	53	2
2011 Sep 8-11	49	50	2
2010 Sep 13-16	46	51	3
2006 Sep 7-10	44	54	2
2005 Sep 12-15	37	62	1
2004 Sep 13-15	35	63	2
2003 Sep 8-10 ^	30	68	2

Interesting Problem

I made so much money on the recent work for Baird v, Becerra as to make my social security duisability check perhaps subject to some reduction for a month or two.  Because this self-employment income, I could sink some money into a hexcore laptop with a 1TB SSD and 64GB of RAM and have a buttkickingly fast laptop.  Something like this.    I would still have a slight loss of disability pay for a month, but far less than not buyimng this monster.  I might keep my tiny notebook for travelling (it is tiny, and I would keep all files updated from Godzilla nightly).

1TB is all I need, and the Lenovo UltaDock 3.0 that I already have for sharing three displays is nice.

I was going to order one, but the more I thought about, the actual reduction in disability check is what I earned minus the difference between my net writing business income and minus my earned wages at College of Western Idaho.  That is far less than the cost of the Tim Taylor special..  If I replaced the current x140e, which works fine for everything but video editing, I would need to buy another license for Microsoft Office.

Fascinating Court Ruling

10/11/19 National Review: Federal judge rules that an AR-15 lower receiver is not a receiver requiring serialization and transfer as a firearms.  The guy who provoked this was running a factory selling complete AR-15s to prohibited persons in California.

Interesting Side Effect of Lautenberg Amendment

You may recall that the Lautenberg Amendment made domestic violence misdemeanor convictions into a gun disqualifier.  I used to wonder why misdemeanor convictions were so worthy of firearms bans.  Then I was out ego-surfing (finding cases that referenced my work) and I read a case from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v. Chester, 628 F. 3d 673 (4th Cir. 2010):

On April 26, 2004, Chester savagely attacked his 22-year-old daughter, Meghan Chester ("Meghan"). Apparently, their dispute arose over what Meghan had eaten for lunch that day. In this attack, Chester slammed his daughter on the kitchen table. Meghan attempted to leave but Chester followed her, threatened her, and punched her in the face. Meghan fell to the floor in pain, but Chester continued to attack her. He began kicking her as she lay on the ground, and also dumped buckets of water over his daughter's head. After her father "beat her up and assault[ed] her" for some time, J.A. 41, Meghan escaped from her father and locked herself in the bathroom. Eventually, Chester left the residence and Meghan's mother took Meghan to the hospital. Meghan had a swollen nose and a knot on her forehead.

Why this was a misedemeanor conviction and not attempted murder or at least aggravated assault, either a felony, makes me suspect that domestic violence is not taken very seriously in some parts of America.  My daughter's experiences working with thugs like this in court-ordered counseling suggests Idaho is also in that category.  (Judge asks wife if she really wants to pursue this matter because he won't be able to hunt, or for peace officers, lose his job.) Suddenly this weird extension of felony disqualifier makes tragic sense, especially because the defendant had learned nothing based on subsequent actions:

In October 2007, officers from the Kanawha County, West Virginia, Sheriff's Department responded to a 911 call reporting a domestic disturbance at Chester's residence. Chester's wife reported to the officers that Chester grabbed her throat and threatened to kill her after she caught him receiving the services of a prostitute on their property. In a subsequent search of the home, officers recovered a 12-gauge shotgun in the kitchen pantry and a 9mm handgun in the bedroom. Chester admitted both firearms belonged to him.

I am hoping that this was a subsequent wife.  Charming guy.  Anyway, all of this is leading up to this article at lidblog.com:

State law in Nevada prohibits people who have misdemeanor domestic violence charges from owning a firearm. But the state law forgot about a more universal law, the law of unintended consequences. 

The State Supreme Court has ruled that because removing a right is a big deal, they must have the option to be tried by a jury for their misdemeanor to save their gun rights.  The problem is that misdemeanors are generally tried in municipal courts, not large courtrooms. The smaller courts have no place for juries.

So cities are having to change their municipal courts to handle this question of adjudicating what results in denial of Second Amendment rights and deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" which requires due process under the 14th Amendment.

Where Can I Find of These on Sunday in Boise?

I am sure one of my former HP colleagues has one or several on a shelf.

It says 3A LE on the side.

But not with infinite resistance.

Why Trump Will Win Next Year

10/18/19 Rasmussen Reports:

Just over half of voters still believe in the likelihood of an illegal high-level effort to stop the Trump presidency, but not nearly as many expect anyone to be punished for it. Voters are evenly divided over which of the major 2016 presidential campaigns is more likely to have had illegal foreign help.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters think it’s likely senior law enforcement officials broke the law in an effort to prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidency. That includes 34% who say it’s Very Likely. Thirty-six percent (36%) consider high-level illegality as unlikely, with 22% who say it’s Not At All Likely. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Now, some people think Rasmussen is biased in favor of Trump, but these are the people who think Clinton won the election and have no explanation for why Trump is in the White House.

Idolatry or Blasphemy?

I ordered some parts from Cylinder & Slide recently, and they included this flyer.
For fans of the look of the early 20th century pocket hammerless Colts, this is really cool.

50 a year means very expensive I am sure.  

Who Says There Are No Bargains in Thrift Stores?

$0.99 for a wireless notebook!

Left Threatens Guillotine Use if Theaters or Churches Show New Film

At RedState:

“Fair warning,” it read, “several community organizations are planning to shut down your showing of the Jordan Peterson propaganda film. While many of us aren’t Christian and some even flat-out condemn the religion, we do not want any harm to come to your place of worship or those within. However, we cannot allow fascism to continue to rise and will not tolerate its presence in our city, whether it is on the streets or on the waterfront or in a church. Read some history books, read about eugenics, read about sex and gender and then compare it to Peterson. Pray on it if you must. Do the right thing. As much as we joke about it, we really don’t want to have to bring out the guillotine to fix society.”

Why I always carry to church now.

You MUST Read the Comments at Instapundit About ABC's Fake Coverage of the Kurds

Here.  There are so many examples of fake news coverage.  Example:

Here is a still from some BBC footage documenting the problem of soccer hooliganism in Britain.

And a picture from Braveheart.  The anime labeled Kurds counterattack hurts to watch.  The laugh muscles are complaining.

So Glad Puerto Rico Has Strict Gun Control

10/15/19 Primerahora has video of a drug dealer being murdered.  Someone doesn't care what bullets cost.  I expect to see this video on NBC's next Kurd report.

Do I Need to Make This?

I need to put a 1/4"-20 screw securely in a .385" square hole.  1/4"-2- to 3/8"-16 adapter show up when I ask for 1/4"-20 to 3/8" bushings.  I need a tight square, not threaded 3/8".  I could I suppose do a .38" x .38" square, then drill and tap it, but this does not seem this odd an item to buy.

I managed to make the square so it was a press fit into the spider.  Then I drilled a pilot hole in the center.  Whoops!  Not quite centered.  I could not drill the .203" hole for tapping all the way through because I had forgotten to put something under the block in the mill vise, so I went to the drill press and ended up with a hole out the side.  Let me try this again in the morning unless someone points me to a bushing.

McMaster-Carr, purveyor of everything, has female threaded standoff, aluminum, 1.4"-20 fully threaded, 1" long, 1/2" diameter.  So just turn it down on the lathe to .385" and press in, I think,

Checking True

When I bought the CNC mill, I had no obvious way to check how accurate it was.  I had dial indicators, but no obvious way to use them.  That is why I was asking about dial test indicator holders recently.  But after a bit of thought, I came up with a solution.

That is a block of acetal with a 1/4" hole across, through which a 1/4"-20 screw holds the dial test indicator, and a 1/4"-20 threaded hole through which a long screw goes.  The screw end goes into a drill chuck.  There is less than .0005" movement per inch of X motion; perhaps .0006-.0007" per inch of Y.  Good enough.

Too Many Hours

But I could not find one competently made.  This is what the diagonal mirror glues to. Cosmetically less than perfect, but flat enough to hold the mirror solidly, and close enough to 45 degrees that the adjustment screws should fix any defects.

If .50 BMG Bugs the Gun Control Crowd,m This Will Really Smoke Their Brains

Vintage Black Powder Harpoon Gun In Case

Doubt You Need Them

https://www.ebay.com/itm/202800146228

telescope rings

These came off a Photon Instruments refractor. They are 4.878" (122.84 mm) inside diameter at the hard rubber foam. The thumb screws that came with it were M6x1.0, but at some point I either cross-threaded or stared at them too harshly. I have tapped the holes to 1/4"-20 and put in thumbscrews. The hole in the base for mounting to your dovetail was also M6x1.0, but because I suspect my buyer will be in America, I tapped those holes 1/4"-20 as well.

Aluminum. black crackle finish. If you need too mount a 5" refractor to your Losmandy dovetail, a great choice. These will easily go in a Priority Mail box. Have them in 3 days or less.




But I just figured out a use. The little telescope rebuild has a 4.5" OD tube. Cut a couple of 4.5" ID, 3/16" wall pieces and glue them to the tube.  Apply rings.

Two Axis Mill

I have been having intermittent problems with my X axis.  They seem to have settled into permanent.  If I turn off the controller and use the handwheel, it works.  If I connect the X control cable to the Y motor, X controls Y just fine.  I conclude therefore that the motor has failed.  I need to order a new motor obviously.

In the meantime, I am finishing cutting the 45 degree diagonal mirror holder with 2 axes CNC and 1 axis CEC (Clayton E. Cramer).  I advance X about .050 by handwheel, then run a program that cuts in Y at .1 ips, then makes a cleaning cut backward at 1 ips.  It is slow, but with this depth of cut, it works.  I can get work done preparing next semester while it is cutting in the Y axis.

And I Thought It Was A Funny Cartoon

10/12/19 Fox News:

For a recently published academic journal, the professor, Holly M. Barker, wrote an article "Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom," in which she offers a different take on the affable sea sponge.

"SpongeBob Squarepants and his friends play a role in normalizing the settler colonial takings of indigenous lands while erasing the ancestral Bikinian people from their nonfictional homeland," the article reads.

Nice Collection of Videos Showing What We Are Going to Be Facing in Civil War 2

Here.

Building the Wall

Make a contribution.  I did.

Jupiter A While Back

At least it has bands.

With unsharp mask.

About to Buy Dial Test Indicator Holder

They come in an enormous range of prices and quality levels.  Pretty much all use magnetic bases.  But the tables and beds on the Sherline tools are aluminum.  How do you work around this?  Build steel parts that are held by T-nuts on the mill and do what for the lathe bed.  Similar solution that slides on the bed?

DQSH is Not the Latest Variant of Daesh

Interesting Piece About Drag Queen Story Hour:

Mr. Havranek, who performs in character as Venus Valhalla, was dressed to the nines: a flirty red party frock (think Early Katy Perry), sparkly stilettos, a Niagara Falls of a blonde wig, and enough stage makeup to supply all 14,000 extras in “The Ten Commandments.”…

The adults present loved Drag Queen Story Hour. They laughed at Venus’s jokes, and they sang the children’s songs along with her, rolling their hands and shaking their fingers Hokey Pokey-style as she did. When she stuck out her tongue during a ditty about a frog, so did the mothers and fathers. It was the children who . . . didn’t react at all. They either stared transfixed at Venus, squirmed restlessly, or crawled and toddled off to find their own entertainments. ...

I have an even better suggestion: Leave the little ones with the babysitter and have a Drag Queen Story Hour just for parents. Adults these days crave kid stuff—coloring books, Legos, cookie dough—and those moms and dads who stuck out their tongues for the frog song will likely jump at another chance to sit on the floor, try on jewelry, relive kindergarten, and virtue-signal. That should make everyone happy.

If public libraries really think this is an appropriate use of tax dollars and tax-funded facilities, I will start to wonder if they deserve any tax support at all.

Not Just Virtue Signaling

10/11/19 NBC News:

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said Thursday that churches and other religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status, taking the Democratic presidential debate into uncharted — and controversial — territory.

This isn't just virtue signaling.  I think O'Rourke is trying to gin up hatred of LGBTs among evangelical churches.  A bit late for that?  No.  I have attended churches that are more fundamentalist than with which I feel intellectually comfortable for more than 40 years now.  I have heard one sermon attacking homosexuality.  Generally, evangelicals regard homosexuality as equivalent to adultery, fornication, racial hatred, greed, lust, gluttony, gossiping, and all the rest of the sins prohibited in the New Testament.  The only difference is that there are no Adulterer Pride parades, no lawsuits demanding cakes be baked celebrating greed, no demands that the grossly overweight (5'11', 400 pounds) be given the benefit of antidiscrimination laws. 

My guess is that most LGBTs in America do not care that some churches and faith-based institutions disapprove of their preferences.  But if enough churches get upset about this discriminatory change in status to provoke real anger, the LGBT activists who care passionately about suppressing disapproval will manage to radicalize the LGBTs that simply want to be left alone.

Sounds Like the Stage Name for a Stripper

10/11/19 Washington Times:

CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson and the Democrats on stage for Thursday’s LGBTQ town hall were put on notice by the audience — misgendering or altering a transgender person’s name is tantamount to “violence.”

Singer Shea Diamond scolded the reporter and warned the nine presidential hopefuls on a Los Angeles stage that mispronouncing names can have devastating effects.

“I want to bring in Shea Diamond. A singer songwriter from L.A. She currently supports Mayor Pete Buttigieg. What’s your question?” Ms. Henderson said before being corrected.

“Uh, it’s ‘Shia’ Diamond,” the singer responded. “Put that on the record. Yes honey, it’s violence to misgender or to alter a name of a trans person so let’s always get that right first.”

Apparently pronounced  like "She a Diamond."

[I]t's violence...."  Of course, if you are confused about your sex, or think an atypical pronunciation of your name is violence...

Are Mass Murders Increasing?

Using the data from the USA Today/Northeastern University mass murder data base, we get the following data on mass murder victims by month for the period 2006-present.

The two recent peaks on the right are the Pulse and Las Vegas incidents.  And yes, the number of mass murder victims per month is not increasing.

I Wonder if Dick's Stockholders Are This Blase?

10/9/19 Free Beacon:

The CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods told CBS News this weekend that his decisions to stop selling certain guns and hire lobbyists to push for new gun bans have cost his company roughly $250 million.
CBS Sunday Morning host Lee Cowan asked Dick's CEO Ed Stack how much his company lost after the retailer decided to stop selling firearms to anyone under the age of 21.
"About a quarter of a billion," Stack replied. "Pretty close."
Stack also said the company destroyed $5 million worth of rifle inventory because Stack believed no one should be allowed to own them.

A quarter billion dollars.  Obviously gun rights is a tiny, lunatic fraction of America.

Always Be Wary of Stories This Crazy Until You Found the Original Reputable Source

Because this one is too stupid to believe.  Instapundit linked to PJMedia who linked to 10/9/19 Kansas City Star:

A 12-year-old Overland Park girl formed a gun with her fingers, pointed at four of her Westridge Middle School classmates one at a time, and then turned the pretend weapon toward herself.
Police hauled her out of school in handcuffs, arrested her and charged the child with a felony for threatening....

But according to Johnson County District Court documents, on Sept. 18, the girl “unlawfully and feloniously communicated a threat to commit violence, with the intent to place another, in fear, or with the intent to cause the evacuation, lock down or disruption in regular, ongoing activities …” or created just the risk of causing such fear.

Farther down we learn:

A person familiar with a more detailed incident report spoke to The Star on condition of anonymity. The person said that during a class discussion, another student asked the girl, if she could kill five people in the class, who would they be? In response, the girl allegedly pointed her finger pistol — like the ones many children use playing cops and robbers.

What clas was this?  Why did the teacher not stop it right after that question?  And why was this turned into anything more than an admonition to not be mean?

You have your kids in public schools?  Why?

Last month in the Shawnee Mission district, two 13-year-old students at Hocker Grove Middle School showed up with guns — the real thing — found stashed in their backpacks. Both were charged as juveniles in possession of a firearm, a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to one year in jail, a fine of up to $2,500 or both.

But possession of a loaded finger is a felony?  Where are the adults?

Mildly Interesting Task That Would Be Generally Helpful to the Gun Rights Cause

I have a CSV file containing the USAToday/Northeastern University mass murders 2006-17 data base that one of you clever readers extracted.  It would be very helpful if someone could convert the dead count per incident and dates into a graphical presentation showing mass murder victims per month.  I suspect that the results will be startling to the gun control crowd, and useful for an upcoming debate.

Two different readers are already doing a bangup job on this already.

Snow

Not at our elevation, but a faint dusting across the valley.  I do not remember this last October.

Detail on Moon

I recently rediscovered an awesome picture I took a couple years ago:

I also cropped the crater just left of center:

Amazing what you can get starting with a 10 megapixel camera (my K10D).  I plan to try again with my 20 MP KS-2.

Loose Clamps

I am cutting a 45 degree angle for the diagonal holder for the rebuild of my little telescope.  Here is some video.

It was running rough, loosening the workpiece from the screw holding it to the tilting table.  Why?   The tilting table was rocking slightly.  One of the T-nut clamps had been cross-threaded and was not locking the tilting table to the mill table.  Movement caused vibration, which loosened the workpiece.

German Gun Control Success

10/9/19 Daily Mail:

At least two people have been killed after gunmen attacked a synagogue in Germany on Yom Kippur - the holiest day in Judaism. ...

Witnesses said the attackers also used a submachine gun during the attack and threw a grenade into the Jewish cemetery, leaving several injured. 

I would never have guessed that submachine guns and grenades were not restricted in Germany.

If You Think Children Can Be a Hazard Around Guns...

Consider puppies.  10/7/19 NBC News:

An Oklahoma woman was accidentally shot in the leg by a puppy after the dog became frightened by a passing train and stepped on a gun in the car.

Fortunately, only .22LR.  Once the dog learns to pull the charging handle on an AR-15, things will get serious.

It Appears That the Russiagate Fraud Was Directed by Obama

CNN interview with Director  of National Intelligence Clapped had him saying that what he and the rest of the intelligence agencies did to organize this fraud was under Obama's orders.  https://pjmedia.com/trending/did-former-dni-james-clapper-implicate-barack-obama-in-trump-spying-scandal/

Could Obama be prosecuted for this, along with Clapper et  al.?  That would be rich.

How to Dramatically Increase Power of Gun Owners

Talk about confiscation so loudly that gun sales show a 10% increase over last year.https://freebeacon.com/issues/monthly-gun-sales-up-10-percent-since-last-september/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=c539f8fdf7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_06_10_31_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-c539f8fdf7-45580813

I mean all those gun owners are buying guns with the expectation of turning them in when ordered to do so, right?  So you think new gun owners are going to be more or less likely to vote progun or antigun next year?

Bolting the Mill Down

Instead of bolting it to the steel table where it currently sits with the laptop, I screwed it down to piece of 9/16" plywood.  This solves the problem of an extended mill table unbalancing the mill on its base, but still gives flexibility of position with the clear plastic dust shield around it.

Save the Date: Oct. 24th

10/2/19 American Thinker:

The Reliant, an action film coming to select theaters on October 24, is not a typical faith-based film and the secular community is taking notice. It was made apparent when the Motion Picture Association of America gave it an R rating. Although it had no foul language or sex scenes, and less violence than Disney movies given a PG-13 rating, the screenwriter and producer of the film, Dr. J. P. Johnston, had to appeal to the MPAA to get it changed. The hate mail the producers have received and the trash articles written by those opposed to the film’s nod to the right-to-keep-and-bear-arms is a hint of the size of the stronghold The Reliant is trying to tackle. The entertainment site, AV Club, wrote a review with the title, Watch Kevin Sorbo Fight Antifa in This Bat@#$% Trailer. When the mainstream “powers that be” come out in full force against a faith-based film, that’s when you know this movie is going to have real impact.

Christian films often are either ignored or summarily dismissed by the secular entertainment community. So why is The Reliant, starring Kevin Sorbo, Brian Bosworth, and Eric Roberts, already rattling Hollywood and secular entertainment’s cages?

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/god_guns_and_grit__why_america_needs_emthe_reliantem_.html#ixzz61flwBSaIFollow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

When Will This Madness Stop?

When the last transgender activist is strangled with the intestines of the last gender reassignment "surgeon."  (Sorry, Voltaire.)  10/5/19 Sky News:

Hundreds of young transgender people are seeking help to return to their original sex, a woman who is setting up a charity has told Sky News.

Charlie Evans, 28, was born female but identified as male for nearly 10 years before detransitioning....

Charlie detransitioned and went public with her story last year - and said she was stunned by the number of people she discovered in a similar position.

"I'm in communication with 19 and 20-year-olds who have had full gender reassignment surgery who wish they hadn't, and their dysphoria hasn't been relieved, they don't feel better for it," she says.

"They don't know what their options are now."

Sue the charlatans who promoted this craziness to young and impressionable kids?

Local News Only

10/5/19 NBC New York:

A homeless man was taken into custody after four other sleeping homeless men were beaten to death with a metal pipe overnight in Chinatown, authorities said. 

NYPD officers responding to a 911 call around 1:50 a.m. on Saturday found an unconscious man lying in the street with "severe head trauma" near 2 Bowery, Assistant Chief Stephen Hughes, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Manhattan South, said at a news conference Saturday morning. 

A second man with head trauma approached officers at the scene, Hughes said. Witnesses told the officers a man in a black jacket and black pants struck the unconscious victim in the head with a metal pipe several times before fleeing the scene. 

Another of those dreaded assault pipes!

More evidence Americans Hate Guns

Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2019

The number of concealed handgun permits has increased for the third year in a row. The figure now stands at over 18.66 million – a 304% increase since 2007. It’s also an 8% increase over the number of permits we counted a year ago in 2018. Unlike gun ownership surveys that may be affected by people’s unwillingness to answer personal questions, concealed handgun permit data is the only really “hard data” that we have. Sixteen states are missing from the data because people there don’t even need a permit to carry.

No Shame

9/30/19 Washington Post reports black 6th grader who was a victim of three white boys who held her down to cut off her dreadlocks made it up,  Having run out of rapes and racially motivated hate crimes, racially motivated hair discrimination is the new big thing.

We Still Have Work to Do

We had several people over from church last night for dinner.  The Second Amendment came up as we went around the table introducing ourselves.  (Guess who was introducing himself.)    One gal was born and raised in Detroit, and supported the right to self-defense, but asked why anyone needs an automatic rifle like an AR-15.  Another guest corrected her.  She explained that she had seen news coverage claiming such.  We then explained much news coverage is false.  She was of course unsurprised.

I should mention that she was uncomfortable in wilderness surrounded by wild animals "not stores and people."  And that was before we listed the local wildlife. If you have visited my home, stop laughing.  For a Detroiter this is wilderness.

Conspiracy or Lunacy?

10/3/19 [U.K.] Star:

An iPhone user is suing Apple after claiming an app on his phone turned him gay.
The plaintiff, identified only as D Razumilov, argues he became "mired in same-sex relationships" this summer after getting involved in a cryptocurrency app.
Razumilov said in his complaint: "I thought, indeed, how can I judge something without trying it?"

And so, because of this message, he said he began having same-sex relationships.
"I can say after the passage of two months that I'm mired in intimacy with a member of my own sex and can't get out," the complaint continues.
Razumilov explained: "I have a steady boyfriend and I don't know how to explain it to my parents."

Apple's CEO is gay.  The mind control rays are very strong in the iPhone.