For Liberals, it Started in November

Here’s a funny question. Has anyone noticed how American troops stopped dying in Iraq after Obama was elected?

Seriously, when was the last time you read about “mounting death tolls”? When was the last time you saw a journalist quote the latest figure? We know journalists are honest and fair, so the only possible explanation is that Americans aren’t being killed any more.

I’ve also noticed that global warming has slowed down, the planet is no longer running out of oil, and crazy government spending is no longer a bad thing. When Bush spent billions, it was very, very bad! Bush was a bad man! Now Obama spends trillions, and we all realize it just makes life better for kitties and puppies and flowers and baby ducks, which is what government is supposed to do.

Hold it, I have to throw up.

I’m back.

Here’s another question. Has it ever occurred to anyone but me that if Bob Seger had turned his music five degrees in another direction, he’d be in the same genre as Christopher Cross and the Captain and Tennille? Just wondering. Same goes for Jimmy Buffett. Will I get in trouble if I say I think it’s weird that people compare him to Hemingway?

Not that this is a flattering comparison.

Yesterday I was bummed out because my lathe tools arrived, and the plastic case was mashed. But the guy gave me a partial refund, and now I’ve realized I have an excuse to make a box for them out of my garbage-pile mahogany. You’re supposed to season wood for a year before you use it, at least, but I think you can bend the rules when you’re making a crappy box to hold tools in your garage.

I’d appreciate it if everyone would shut up about Joe Biden lying. Yes, he lied. But it’s not a big deal. First of all, he’s a Democrat, and Democrats think morality is stupid, so in a way, he’s actually being consistent with the ideals he preaches. Second, we already knew he lied all the time. He had to bail out of a Presidential bid because he stole Neil Kinnock’s patronizing, maudlin ramblings about coal miners playing football. Hello? Earth to electorate: this is not news.

Finally, Glenn Beckside has posted an important update. Read it before “Them” sabotages the server!

It Shoots Itself

Last year for Father’s Day, I decided to give my dad a concealed weapons class. And we put it off until today. I took him to Ace’s Indoor Gun Range in Hialeah and got him fixed up. This is probably a better present than cigars or brandy.

While he was taking the two-hour class, I put in some range time. Trail Glades is where I usually shoot, and they won’t let you use buckshot, and I needed to try out the Saiga 12 and laser with my new police loads.

In a word, this gun is fantastic. The recoil is negligible compared to a high-powered rifle. And sighting the laser in took about three shots. At 50 feet, the pellets go right where the green dot is, and they make a pattern you can cover with your fist. How can you top that? This has to be the ultimate in semi-automatic home protection. A halfway decent shot will put all nine pellets inside your burglar, and after that, they all go in different directions. And you have eight shots in the magazine, plus one in the pipe. And you can replace a magazine in three seconds! Once you get it fitted right, I mean. The magazines are plastic, and sometimes they need a little filing.

I only shot it 9 times. I apparently dropped a shell into the bag I took with me, and I didn’t see it until later. You don’t really need to practice with this gun. At household distances, missing is nearly impossible. I just needed to be sure it cycled okay, and I had to adjust the laser. Now I’m ready to cut it up and turn it back into an AK.

The Vz 58 is hard to discount. It has the same easy short-range accuracy, the recoil is even lower, and it holds 30 rounds. Maybe when you add in all the factors, it’s the better choice. You can shoot it folded; that’s a big deal. It will also shoot through both sides of a car, and it will defeat some bulletproof vests. Although those qualities probably won’t be required in a home invasion defense.

Either gun will make your house one of the worst places a criminal can imagine being.

I don’t know which is best. I’m just glad my biggest home defense problem is deciding which gun to grab.

My next project should be a nice safe.

I’m glad my dad will have a permit. The biggest benefit for him, in my opinion, will be having to worry less about being hassled by the cops for violating Florida’s bizarre firearms laws. We have strange rules about how you can carry in your car and so on. You can’t leave it on the seat, the way you can in Kentucky. You can put it in your glove compartment, but only if you do it a certain way. It’s a pain. Once you have a permit, all you have to remember is concealment plus the list of places where you’re not allowed to take a gun.

Rasmussen Proves It

My Chinese (of course) carbide indexed cutting tools arrived yesterday. The price was great. But the lid on the little plastic case was smashed. The seller took the whole mess and shoved it in a Priority Mail envelope instead of a box, and naturally, something got crushed. He didn’t even sandwich it in bubble wrap.

I complained. Carbide tools are brittle, and you’re supposed to store them in a way that keeps them from touching other tools. One way to do that might be…a plastic case! It’s important. Granted, I can throw out the case lid and rig something up. But I shouldn’t have to.

What do you think? Am I being too picky? This guy could just as easily have used a box. Priority Mail boxes exist.

No response to my complaint yet. I can’t see giving someone a negative over this, but a neutral might be in order. If you’re going to ship people things, you should make some effort to pack them correctly.

Yesterday, unfortunately, I found something interesting on Craigslist. Another lathe. Wait! It’s not as bad as you think. It’s a little bitty lathe. Like Otisburg. The company that makes it goes as small as 4″ by 8″, and I think their biggest model has a 10″ swing. I’m not sure which model it is, but the description makes it sound really small. It’s a good lathe, too; not Chinese. And it has tooling. And the price is too good to pass up. Dang it.

It would be pretty cool to have a tiny lathe I could store in the closet, for very small parts. I could teach Marv to run it.

He’d make a lot of bells, I suppose. Bells are his bag.

Two disturbing items in the news today. First, only 53% of Americans told the Rasmussen pollsters that capitalism is better than socialism. And 30% of Democrats think socialism is better. Big surprise there.

It looks like the liberals have won the education battle. Socialism has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, and it has never produced a good standard of living anywhere, and it is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. But a fair number of Americans, especially those who were “educated” after our school system was destroyed by liberals, think socialism is…pretty rad. No work! Free beers! Che T-shirts! If you want to be a lazy, flabby slouch all your life, socialism is the bomb. A lot of people are content to live that way. Clip your own wings and belly up to the trough.

This is how the killing fields in Cambodia happened. People didn’t know, or ignored, the clear and obvious lessons of history. They thought they could take something that had never worked anywhere and somehow make it succeed. And they ended up rounding up educated people, lining them up beside big holes, and machine-gunning them to death.

Here is the lesson conservatives should have learned from the last three elections, especially after seeing the impact of swing voters. The stupid are incredibly dangerous. The stupid make totalitarianism possible. Our kids are stupid, and they’re getting more stupid every decade. Look out.

The poisonous harvest of our most toxic decade, the Sixties, is a bizarre notion that the young are smart. In truth, the young are generally fools. I certainly was. But back in the Sixties, the left managed to seize on one or two things the old had been wrong about–things like racism and reckless pollution–and convince the young that the old were wrong about EVERYTHING. Since then we have been producing insolent, unprincipled, overconfident, weak children who think their tiny brains hold the keys to a bright and happy future where everyone eats tofu and and smokes free dope and has sex with no consequences.

It’s amazing; a human being will generally get smarter with age. But our nation, composed entirely of human beings, has gotten dumber. And we’re going to pay. Stupidity is an extremely expensive luxury.

I wasn’t raised very well. To some extent, I am part of the problem. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my parents, and I don’t blame them for my failings, but they made mistakes. When you have kids, you should give them the same kind of effort you put into your job, at the very least. There should be a plan. There should be discipline and oversight. I didn’t get everything I needed. Thank God, I am able to perceive the existence of the problem, so I can work to improve myself. But many people are not as lucky as I am. They think the neglect they experienced as kids was freedom. They’re grateful for it. They think it allowed them to grow up without the “backward” ideas that made their grandparents so silly. They don’t understand that restrictions can be great blessings. Rules aren’t like shackles, intended purely to deprive you of liberty. They’re like frames that guide tomato plants and help them produce more fruit.

Presumably, every book of the Bible has a purpose. I believe that one purpose of the book of Proverbs is to help people like me. There are lessons my parents failed to teach me. And I’ve absorbed a lot of counterproductive ideas throughout my life. Where do people like me go for guidance? Pastors don’t have the time to provide it. You can’t expect your friends to fill the need. You can’t just think it up on your own. The book of Proverbs can be very helpful. It’s like a frozen bone marrow transplant, waiting to be infused into lost generations, to heal them of the cancer of savagery. Wisdom is supposed to reside in human beings, but sometimes it misses generations, and it has to be stored somewhere so people raised without exposure to it can be reinoculated.

I went through this book systematically. I found that I already believed and applied a lot of it, so I deleted those portions. I put the rest in a Word file. Now I have it to use as a reference. The deletions left me with a targeted version that focuses on my specific gaps. I don’t look at it often enough, but I keep a printout handy. You might give this a try. Wisdom really is power, and it will take care of you.

Sometimes I look at that printout and alight on passages I wish I had read twenty years ago. I think of specific mistakes I have made, and the pain they have caused me, and I wince. That’s the kind of experience parents are trying to spare you when they tell you to pull up your pants, get a real haircut, stop watching MTV, and get your butt to church.

In case any kids are reading this, let me say this. Socialism is a horror, and it will bring only misery and death. And there is no such thing as safe sex. And piercings are generally disgusting.

The other thing that disturbed me today was a ridiculous essay by Juan Williams. Someone sent me a link to it. He comes out and admits he thinks gun ownership should be banned. Like it was in Washington D.C., that peaceful haven where crime is unknown. Unbelievable.

Here’s an incredible quotation:

In fact, in Nebraska there is a big argument in the legislature about guns. It is not about banning them. The debate is whether to allow security guards to bring guns into churches. To my mind the debate should be about how to keep all guns out of churches.

If Mr. Williams had had his way, Jean Assam would not have been able to shoot the man who murdered two people in the parking lot of New Life Church. If, on the other hand, Ted Nugent had had his way, that murderer would probably have been killed much earlier in the day, when he opened fire at another church. A churchgoer packing heat would have laid him out on the pavement. Whose way do you prefer? I prefer Ted’s. When I go to church, I keep a switchblade in my pocket and a pistol in my glove compartment. I’d carry inside, if I had the clothes for it.

Why is there any doubt about a church’s right to have armed guards? We don’t prevent stores and banks from using guns to assure security. Explain why churches should be different. Provide the basis for the state’s right to discriminate against any institution in this matter, based purely on that institution’s status as a religious entity. The disciples would not have been allowed inside a church run by Mr. Williams. They carried swords, on orders from Jesus himself. If Juan Williams ran the Vatican, the Swiss Guard would be ejected from the premises. They carry MACHINE GUNS. Not semi-automatic. Automatic. Most people in the Williams faction don’t know the difference. Their writings prove it every day.

Quite frankly, I find it odd that the Pope isn’t armed. If you require other people to bear arms for you, you are fully responsible for what they do, and you should be willing to do the same thing. If you’re not willing to do that, how are you different from Rosie O’Donnell, who preaches against guns yet pays armed bodyguards? If John Paul II had been armed when Mehmet Ali Agca attacked, he might have spared himself some surgery and prolonged his life.

Says Mr. Williams:

The roll call of death and suffering from guns continued earlier this month with the tragic mass shooting in Binghamton, N.Y. That followed one man killing ten people in Alabama before taking his own life. And that preceded the murders of eight people in a North Carolina nursing home, as well as one parolee shooting four policemen to death in Oakland, Calif.

Excuse me, but how is that “suffering from guns”? Isn’t it actually “suffering from criminals”? And which of these murderers would have obeyed a law banning gun ownership? The laws against murder, which have steeper penalties, didn’t bother them at all. And what do you think would have happened had the first three killers encountered armed civilians? Same thing that happened in New Life Church.

Reading this column, I learn two things. First, Juan Williams is never going to make it as a professional logician. Second, he’s a great target for violent crime. He chooses to be defenseless, and he makes good money. I think that if I were opposed to allowing civilians the means to defend themselves, I’d be smart enough to avoid bragging about it on national television, while working in a city known for street crime. It’s like begging to be mugged.

Williams says no change is in sight. I sure hope that’s true. Barack Obama and his awful Attorney General have done more to arm Americans in the last six months than the NRA could have done in ten years. I’d hate to see that wonderful progress reversed.

Proven Idiot Supposedly Deserves Chance Bush Never Got

I am sad to report a setback in the quest for the ultimate pillow. Night before last I tried a memory foam pillow and slept extremely well, and all day yesterday I felt almost as though I were on speed. It made a big difference. Yesterday I got a second pillow–a fake down product called Indulgence–and I thought my joy would be complete. But I had a little congestion anyway, and on top of that, I couldn’t get to sleep on time. It’s as if the extra energy from sleeping well made me more sensitive to caffeine. So today, no coffee, and I’m drinking my daily ration of revolting green tea as early as possible, to give the caffeine time to wear off.

I still feel much better than I used to.

I just skimmed Camille Paglia’s latest. I never read anything she has written in its entirety. She has not mastered the humane tool known as the paragraph, and she seems to write defensively, the way a lot of self-proclaimed intellectuals do. They’re used to hanging around with people who correct each other and whose big thrill in life is pretending to be much smarter than they really are. They always end up using bigger words than they need and giving unhelpful references to show you how much they’ve read. They do this to discourage other pretentious effetes from finding opportunities to show them up. Yes, Camille, we know you own four tons of books and actually made it through Ulysses. Just write like a human being, okay? Be like Billy Joel, who said he never wanted to work that hard. There’s a reference for you. I’m sorry it couldn’t be Krishnamurti or Ezra Pound.

Sooner or later, she’s going to snap and admit she’s conservative. She’s like Dennis Miller and Ron Silver. She keeps saying the same things about liberals that conservatives say. This is why a lot of liberals hate her. Eventually she’s going to break down and say, “Okay, I’m a lesbian, but I can’t take these hippies any more, and I am just not stupid enough to think socialism works.”

She’s secure enough to get herself in trouble by criticizing the left, but she’s not secure enough to abandon it. Which is all right, I guess, since we already seem to have enough conservatives who want nothing to do with God or morality. I refer to the actual God, not the one Joseph Smith made up.

Today she admits that Barack Obama is an embarassment. Hello? Where was she when he was using a childish gesture to give Hillary Clinton the finger on camera? Where was she when we learned that he belonged to an anti-Semitic church, and that the pastor was one of his closest associates? Where was she when we found out one of his buddies was a terrorist who belongs on death row?

Wake up, lady. Barack Obama has been an embarassment for a long time. And his wife is downright disgusting. You don’t grab the Queen of England with your big Amazon paws and wool her around like a puppy. You don’t go on TV and tell America you’ve been ashamed of it for virtually all of the four decades of your pampered life, which was made possible by America’s misguided generosity and bizarre notions of collective guilt.

Michelle Obama is like the relative you pray won’t show up at your wedding. And now she is the face our womanhood presents to the world.

Paglia says the “major” media has been remiss in not howling over Obama’s horrific bow the to the despotic ruler of Saudi Arabia. No duh. Thanks for pointing out the obvious and expecting people to applaud your remarkable insight. And where have you been, woman? How could you not expect this kind of thing, from a guy who spent most of his life as a glorified bagman for the chicago machine? He’s been kissing the rings of corrupt tyrants for decades; he probably bowed out of habit.

It’s revealing that Paglia admits that the mainstream press is unfair in Obama’s favor, but notice she won’t go the whole distance. She won’t call them “the liberal media.” She’s thinking it, people. This woman has only made it out of one closet. The other one is yet to burst open.

Too funny. Free thinking is good when it gets you attention and lands you book deals, but when it threatens your social life, suddenly it’s SCARY. Ann Coulter appears to be mentally ill, but give her credit. She isn’t afraid to say what she feels like saying, and as a result, she has probably lost more friends and eaten more gay-waiter boogers than anyone in history.

I will never be able to make the kind of clever references Camille Paglia makes, because I pretty much abandoned literature over twenty years ago. I realized that literature was unrealistic; it was written from the point of view of people who had great faith in despair and none in God. The world of literature is distorted, because God doesn’t exist there. Henry Miller said the first thing you scratch down when you start to write is “the cry of the wounded angel: pain.” How right he was. But here’s an equally accurate way to put it. To a large degree, literature is an elaborate form of whining. I don’t think that would have pleased Miller’s readers as much as the angel thing.

Ahab ends up tied to the whale, sort of like a big dead suction-cup Garfield on a white minivan. The savage hangs himself because he can’t find his place in man’s squeaky clean, genetically engineered world. The smelly old Italian guy who hangs out at the whorehouse says, “It’s better to live on your feet than die on your knees,” because there is no divine mathematician up there, balancing the moral equations. My world isn’t like that. Is yours? Why should I read books in which my views will be shaped by unfortunate fictional people who DON’T GET IT? If I want to be pelted with wrongness, I don’t need a book. I can turn on Air America. Assuming it still exists.

Did I get the references wrong? If so, good for me. It shows I haven’t been wasting my time.

Speaking of ways to spend time, I’ve been thinking about the amazing tools I saw over at Practical Machinist. I linked to a thread started by a guy who says he’s a starting machinist. He made his own quick-change tool post set, plus other helpful machining items you would ordinarily have to buy. It makes me wonder if I should try to make a few tools for myself. Example: a Criterion boring head costs hundreds of dollars. The metal used it in can probably be had for two figures. Some people make their own boring heads with little mills and lathes. Maybe I could do that.

I wish I could make a milling attachment for the lathe, but that appears to be a milling job, so like I said in an earlier post, I think you need a milling attachment in order to make a milling attachment.

Someone posted a question here about small lathes, like Sherlines and Taigs. I’d recommend looking at W.R. Smith’s video about tooling up for clockmaking. He says Sherline now provides so much milling paraphernalia for lathes, you can do a ton of stuff without springing for a second machine.

I bought some lathe DVDs. Smartflix is useful, but they’re very slow. I can’t wait two months. Besides, I like to support the people who create educational materials when I can. Some video sets, like the ones from ATI, are obscenely expensive. Others cost a little over twice as much as Smartflix charges to rent them. I can swing that.

I hope more junk arrives today. I can sit in the garage and fondle it until the lathe gets here.

Oh Rapture

I have a knurling tool!

Actually, I have a whole quick change toolpost set. It arrived today. But to me, the knurling tool is the coolest part. You mash it into a part as it turns, and you get checkering all the way around!

But I still have no lathe.

Come on, freight truck.

Me, I Buy

I don’t know what to make of the way the new pillow has affected me. I must have slept really well last night, because I’ve felt like Buddy Love all day. So energetic I’m almost obnoxious.

I ran over to Bed, Bath & Beyond and got a second synthetic pillow and a mite-proof cover. This pillow is pleasantly mushy, and it some kind of down substitute other than the dreaded polyester fill. I think the most disgusting thing I saw over there was a tag that read “recycled polyester.” Great. A pillow made from old couch cushions sick kids have peed all over. No thanks.

Hey, you know that expensive lathe I ordered, and the toolpost set I had to get? And you remember how I wanted to get a Bridgeport? Look what this guy did with a couple of crappy benchtop machine tools. CLICK. He made his own toolpost set, and it’s magnificent. He refers to a Japanese site where he got the plans. The Japanese site is also a major humiliation. Some guy over there has a mill and a lathe in a 25-square-foot closet, and he makes amazing things.

Maybe the Millrite is not such a bad idea. Maybe you don’t need a big mill to be a metalworking superhero.

Of course, the toolpost set has already arrived.

The obvious question is, why would any hobbyist buy a toolpost set if you can make better ones in your garage?

I think I’ll go feel insignificant for a while.

Short

Today someone whose English is not completely up to speed informed me that there was a turkey in my yard.

Here’s what I saw when I looked:

I wondered if it would poop on the beautiful sheet of painted 3/4″ plywood I recovered from my dad’s abandoned warehouse. I had left it lying out there after moving it to get to a different sheet.

See if you can guess the answer.

When my dad and I went to breakfast today, this was parked next to us. I accidentally cropped the corner of the car off.

This phone takes pretty bad photos.

That’s one of my all-time favorite cars. You have to love a car that has a 500-plus cubic-inch engine and only two doors. It’s the perfect thing for offending liberals.

Synthetic Pillow Works

It looks like the foam pillow experiment was a howling success. I used it last night. I not only feel rested; I feel somewhat wired. I suspect that my sleep was seriously inadequate before I got rid of the down. I hoped I would feel better after beating the congestion that made me snore and woke me up, but I didn’t expect to feel this good.

For years I’ve had congestion at night, and I got up most days and coughed up fairly interesting things throughout the morning. I thought the second problem was normal for me. But last night, I was able to breathe, and today all the tubes seem clear.

I’m not sure who makes this thing, but I’ll review it. It’s the only ordinary-looking memory foam pillow they sell at the local Costco.

The pillow is heavy, almost as though it were damp inside. When I took it out of the box, it had what appeared to be small oil spots on the cover. I ran the cover through the washer, and they disappeared. The box said the pillow would smell at first, and that the smell would go away after one or two days. I put the pillow under a ceiling fan without the cover. When I went to bed, it still smelled sort of like house paint.

By my standards, this pillow is pretty firm. You can’t scrunch it up much or fold it. It keeps your head fairly high off the mattress, but not quite high enough to strain your neck. It’s not as comfortable as a feather or down pillow when you first put your head on it, but I found that it didn’t get less comfortable with time. When I use traditional pillows, I have to change position once in a while because the filling compresses and the pillows become less comfortable. With the memory foam job, that doesn’t happen. You can lie in one position for a very long time. You just don’t feel like moving.

The box said the pillow would not warm up like a down pillow, and that is true. It stayed at a comfortable temperature. It didn’t heat up and make me sweat, which is a pleasant change. Nothing bums me out more than waking up and finding that one side of my pillow is wet. And I’m sure that contributes to allergies by encouraging things to grow on and in the pillow.

Because the pillow is hard, I’m going to run over to the mall and see what else is available. There is probably some sort of non-feather pillow that is easier to mash. I figure I can combine the foam pillow with something else–maybe buckwheat hulls–and get a system that works.

I wonder if this is going to improve my life. Poor sleep makes you fat, raises your blood pressure, and wrecks your memory and concentration. I had to quit playing the piano because I couldn’t remember pieces from one month to the next, and it was a very unpleasant disappointment. Maybe I can give it another whack now.

This morning I felt sharp as a tack. I had my usual Tuesday breakfast with my father, and in conversation, I felt like I was right on top of things. I didn’t hunt for words, and in my mind, I stayed ahead of the discussion. Maybe my brain isn’t turning into Jell-O after all.

We’ll see what happens. I’ll miss my down pillows, but I missed my brain more.

I do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell

I think I know what I want to make with my machine tools. Remember how I wrote about my sad efforts to create a crab-claw cracking tool that would wow the masses and replace things like hammers and pliers? I think I should go back and finish the job. Get a little closure. Perhaps literally.

I’m thinking stainless. Maybe tool steel; I don’t think it rusts much. And my requirements for the machine are that it has to crack anything a person can eat, except maybe coconuts, and it has to be fun to use, and people have to go “WOW” when they see it on your coffee table.

I already have an idea for a cam-action sort of thing, with the camming motion provided by a round cam with an off-center axis of rotation. And I want to put ball bearings in it so it will last forever.

It’s hard to describe because I haven’t actually designed it yet. But I’m positive it will work.

Why aren’t more people making cracking machines? This is a real problem. Nutcrackers, without exception, suck. They’re too small for walnuts. Half the time the nuts squirt out the side and shoot under the couch. They’re too small for crab claws. They’re worthless for Brazil nuts. Think how great it would be to have snazzy looking universal cracking machine, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I’m not totally sure how you go about designing things like this with no knowledge of drafting and zero CAD skills. I guess I can get a pencil and wing it.

By the way, and this is not really related to tools, did you read about how the French are giving someone a face and hands transplant? Drudge linked it today. They’re doing amazing things over there. What you may not realize is that they worked their way up from a simpler procedure. A lady in Marseilles had an armpit transplant. Apparently she could not face the world after a rare viral infection left her own armpits bald.

“Mon dieu,” she exclaimed, “my automobile has been eaten by rats!”

Wait, I’m confusing two different stories. Or obscure Seventies cartoons, as the case may be.

Here’s something interesting.

New Calipers!

I’m beside myself. My new dial caliper has arrived.

I guess it’s stupid. I already have two vernier calipers (is “vernier” supposed to be capitalized?) plus a Chicom dial caliper, but vernier calipers are a pain to read, and everyone says not to trust Chinese instruments for really precise work, so here I am with caliper #4.

I found a guy selling Mitutoyos for half price on Ebay, all fresh and new in the box. I already snatched it from the package and measured the only precisely made object within ten feet, which (because I was in the dining room) was a Cor-Bon .38 Super round. I got 0.356″, right on the button. As it should be. I guess I should compare the Chicom job and the vernier calipers.

Stuff I had to get in order to run a lathe is beginning to come in, and I am experiencing a form of glee I have not felt since I was finishing up my physics degree and I finally reached the point where I did not have to put any basket-weaving (liberal arts) courses on my schedule. I loaded up with quantum mechanics, optics, partial differential equations…I think that’s right. I can’t remember everything. I couldn’t believe I was free to do what I wanted, instead of babbling about whether we exist in philosophy class. I took five courses, and some were graduate courses, and others were top-level undergraduate courses. I found myself sitting in class beside the teaching assistant who taught my first year lab section.

I’ll never understand why physics didn’t work out. I just burned out, I think. You can’t do all that in three years, starting from scratch, without spraining your brains.

Now I’m about to start machining things! How on earth did I get here? How did this happen? I’ll bet I’m the only person in my law school class who is learning to use machine tools. If not, I’m the only one who is doing it by choice.

I love it. I feel like pouring assorted tools out on my bed and rolling around on them.

I’ll leave out the scribers and the scratch awl.

Yes, I have a scratch awl now. Sometimes I’ll be at a hardware store for something important, and I’ll look around, and I’ll say, “Oh, that looks useful.” And I’ll buy something. That’s how the scratch awl ended up in the car with me.

I need it! You don’t understand! My first machinist scribe is only steel–I’m pretty sure–and the other one, that goes in a shirt pocket, doesn’t have a cool wooden handle! I have to have all my bases covered. And it was only like six bucks.

Last night I watched the last ATI milling machine video. When Darrell Holland showed how the rotary table worked, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I have to have one of those things. Even if I never get a milling machine. I’ll put Marvin on it and rotate him to very precise angles, for no good reason at all. Chucking him may be a challenge, but there’s always duct tape.

I better go write up some notes on that video.

“Medical” = Markup

Man, did I get burned yesterday. I went to Vitamin Shoppe to get curcumin and green tea pills. I don’t take tea in pill form, but I like to mix it with soap and water and moosh it onto suspicious areas on my skin; it does a real number on actinic keratoses, and it sure beats paying a dermatologist to freeze them or slice them out, leaving big divots in my face.

I got to the register, and the girl told me my total was a little over forty bucks. FORTY. For a hundred tea bags’ worth of tea plus a third of a pound of turmeric. Does that sound right to you? The only reason I take curcumin capsules is that turmeric is too disgusting to swallow in powder form. But at thirty-two bucks a bottle, it may motivate me to start using a spoon.

I usually use Vitacost.com, but I figured I could stand to pay brick-and-mortar prices for two measly items. Forget THAT. Today I’m going to Costco, and I’m going to make very sure I get a big jug of fish oil. That’s the only thing I’m missing right now.

I’ve also decided to get a memory-foam pillow. I can’t put up with congestion any more; I’m wondering if being around Marvin and Maynard has sensitized me to feathers. For thirty bucks, I can find out.

The other day I wrote about someone I know from Nowlive. He started having strokes. I don’t have all the details. I was told he was going in for an operation involving his heart and brain, and I was asked to put up a prayer request, so I did. I’m happy to report that he seems okay. Thanks, everyone who helped.

It seems like my blog is becoming a prayer clearinghouse these days. That’s fine with me. I can always use something positive on my record, to offset the bad things I do. I think it’s important to look for opportunities to do good deeds, because they won’t always come knocking on your door.

I got another request last week, but I didn’t post it, because a blog entry that goes up on a Friday is worthless. No one will read it. Here’s the draft I typed to keep me from forgetting:

Someone who frequents this blog sent me a prayer request. Had it arrived yesterday, I would have figured it for an April Fool’s joke, but since it arrived today, it must be serious. It sounds bad. I won’t say who sent it; if he wants, he can ID himself in the comments.

This individual has been suffering from Dupuytren’s contractures in his hands. This is a disease that causes the hands to contract and the palms to become tough. That has been treated surgically, and he is not happy with the results. Now he says he has been diagnosed with Peyronie’s disease. Look it up if you want. It’s a urological issue which can cause considerable suffering.

His wife has had cardiac problems and migraines. She has been treated successfully for a brain aneurysm. Now she’s having dizzy spells and falling for no reason.

On top of all this, they’ve both had cataract surgery.

These folks are having a bad time. I hope you’ll take a minute and put a word in for them.

I have to get on the road to Costco. I hope they have kosher Coke!

Can we Think of Anything MORE Tangential?

“Cop Killer Feared Obama Gun Ban.”

Have you ever seen a dumber headline?

I just read up on Richard Poplawski, the guy who gunned down three cops after his mother threatened to throw him out of her house. To look at the stupid, misleading headlines, you would think this poor fool shot three innocent people because he was upset about Obama’s gun-grabbing ways. The stories show that isn’t true. He was just a jerk. His mom was angry because his dog was urinating in her house, and there was an argument, and when she called the police, he decided to suit up in body armor and shoot them. Explain what that has to do with gun control. This nut was just trying to show his mommy she couldn’t push him around.

The stories say he didn’t like Obama’s gun-control policies. Show me a gun-owning civilian who does. You know the Vietnamese guy who shot up the immigration center? He didn’t like those policies, either. How do I know? I don’t, to be honest. But it’s a safe bet. Did objections to gun control have anything to do with either set of shootings? Clearly not. These men didn’t shoot up the Brady Center. They didn’t shoot up the offices of Democrat politicians or the BATF. One shot cops, and the other shot former coworkers at a business where he was systematically humiliated. These killers had problems completely unrelated to gun control, and there is no reason to believe that gun control was on their minds when they decided to commit murder.

I’m angry about Obama’s indisputable disregard for the Bill of Rights. No doubt about it. But I’m not going to shoot anyone over it. I’m not crazy, for one thing. For another, how is committing a massacre supposed to advance your civil rights as a gun owner? I can’t see the logical connection, and I think most rational, law-abiding gun owners, and even most homicidal loonies–including Richard Poplawski–would agree with me.

It’s disgusting that the press is making an obvious push to use this pathetic worm of a man as justification for banning guns. He is utterly atypical. And the harm done by banning guns far outweighs the good. Admittedly, privately owned guns could not have prevented or mitigated this slaughter. But that’s unusual. They could have put a stop to Jiverly Wong in a New York minute. He went into a place where he knew he would be the only armed person, and the results were exactly what you would expect. Contrast him with the idiot Jean Assam shot at New Life Church. Matthew Murray killed four people and shot three others, but the first armed citizen he encountered put him on the ground and rendered him helpless, and his only recourse was to shoot himself. And what about Charles Whitman, the famous University of Texas shooter who was pinned down by civilian fire until the police blew his brains out? What about the millions of gun crimes that are prevented every year by civilians? Finally, what about the fact that the cops are JUST TOO SLOW? In the time it takes to get a 911 operator on the line, a civilian with a gun can kill several criminals.

Do you know how long a Jiverly Wong would last in my presence? Exactly as long as I permitted him to last, and not one minute more. That’s the difference between me and an unarmed person, and it is a precious difference.

Get yourself a copy of the NRA’s monthly magazine, America’s First Freedom, and read the Armed Citizen feature. Our lying press buries these stories, but every month, several make it to print. Criminals try to take on armed civilians, and they end up wounded or dead. It happens over and over and over in America, and in order to hear about it, you have to look at an obscure magazine published by a nonprofit organization. Meanwhile, a man who shot three cops for reasons utterly unrelated to gun control is portrayed in headlines as a second amendment crusader.

If Richard Poplawski were a Buddhist, would we see “New York Buddhist Kills Three”? If he were a vegetarian, would we see “Cops Slaughtered by Angry Vegan”? Of course not. Those things are irrelevant to his crime. And so is his support for the right to bear arms. It was not part of his motivation for committing this crime. He’s just an immature, underdeveloped, gutless half-man who blames the world for his glaring inadequacy and can’t stand to be told what to do. Just like Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski and Lee Harvey Oswald.

The issue of whether the laws preventing nuts like this from getting guns are adequate is a separate matter. The press tells us he was dishonorably discharged from the military. That’s one of the things they ask you about during a background check. So why did he have guns? A dishonorable discharge makes you ineligible to buy guns; presumably, it makes you ineligible to possess them. Sounds like the laws needed to protect his victims were already in place. If we don’t apply the laws we already have, what is the point of passing new ones? Wouldn’t enforcement of existing laws make more sense? How many laws do we need to NOT enforce before we’ll be safe?

Here’s a headline for you. “COPS MASSACRED DUE TO FAILURE TO ENFORCE EXISTING GUN LAWS.” You won’t see that one any time soon.

I don’t think Obama has the muscle to take our guns, but it’s still important to support the NRA and speak out against dishonest reporting. We are going to be buried in new taxes soon. The seeds of socialism are in the ground, and they are so big, there is probably no way to keep them from growing to maturity. Our lifestyle is never going to be what it used to be, except perhaps for temporary respites paid for by selling out generations yet to be born. If the US is going to shrivel and pucker until it resembles Europe, we should at least try to retain the ability to defend ourselves.

Decent Milling Machine in Miami?

I had assumed that my only machine tool buy for the first half of this year would be a lathe. Now I think I may have been wrong. Sometimes you see a deal that is so good you have no choice but to take it.

Last night I noticed a Bridgeport mill for sale locally. Nine hundred bucks. It doesn’t look great; it’s painted in one of the shades known to Internet forum users as “Ebay blue.” But it has a DRO, what may be a Kurt vise, a power feed, and a bunch of collets.

A used DRO is worth maybe 500 bucks. The vise is worth 250. The collets would run maybe a hundred. I could take the good stuff off of this, sell the rest for scrap, and break even. Or I could use it until something better showed up, take the good stuff off, put the good stuff on the better machine, and then sell this one for scrap.

Whoops! The same machine is on Ebay for $4500! What’s up with that? The bigger Ebay photos don’t look so hot. And it’s not local! It’s in Tampa!

Never mind. When you add $700 to get it here, it’s not so exciting.

Church was good today. They’ve been putting on an Easter show. It’s impressive. The acting is not Oscar-quality, and it would not be the end of the world if someone polished up the script, but most of the music was incredible. I don’t know where they find these people.

The best part came at the end. People who were at the scene of the crucifixion took the mike, and they gave their testimonies. One credited God with finding her a job. Another said God restored his business and his family after his wife died from cancer. And another said her daughter was healed of terminal cancer and has since gone on to have a recording career in Christian music.

I suspect that we focus too much on what God does for us, and not enough on what we’re supposed to do for him. But it’s extremely important for people to talk about the miracles in their lives. People who don’t believe point to “miracles” that have turned out to be false, and they make the bizarre claim that no one has ever been proven to have experienced a miracle. But answered prayers are all around us. People really do get healed of cancer from time to time. Folks have visions. Families are put back together. And you can find the witnesses. They’re real people, with names. Lots and lots of people pray for things they don’t receive, but they’re not the whole story.

I had a strange experience on Friday. Twice in my life I have literally felt the presence of God in the room with me, so powerfully that I could tell you its exact location. On other occasions, I’ve felt it in a more diffuse and general way, but that almost always happens in church, not when I’m alone. On Friday, I was sitting here in this chair, and I felt it descend on me. For no clear reason. Not in one location, but throughout the atmosphere of the room. If you know the sensation I’m talking about, you know it’s very, very pleasant. It’s something that doesn’t happen every day or on command, so when it happens, you stop what you’re doing and try to enjoy it and make it last. I sat here and concentrated on it and made the most of it.

I can’t figure out why it happened or what the point of it was. I wish it would happen more often.

Sometimes I’m suspicious of people who claim to have supernatural experiences and who say they know exactly what they meant or why they happened. In my experience, God is not obvious. He does things that seem to have no purpose, and he does them when you least expect them, and you are left grateful but also somewhat confused.

The thing that impressed me about it was that it appeared to have no connection whatsoever to anything I had done. I wasn’t fasting or writing a big check to help orphans or doing anything else that could be considered particularly righteous. In fact, I was feeling guilty about some bad things I had done. I always think slipping up will wreck my relationship with God and set me back, but it doesn’t always work that way. Maybe it never works that way and I just don’t realize it. In any case, I felt like I had received something of tremendous value. I’ll bet this doesn’t happen very often to people we all think of as lucky, like Bill Gates or Barack Obama. I think it’s better than the things they’ve received, and that I’m luckier than people like that. When those people die, the good things they’ve received disappear. Things that advance you spiritually can’t be taken away. I think this is why the Bible uses words like “vanity” and “leasing” to describe earthly blessings. They’re not permanent, and you don’t own them. I own the good things that have been given to me. Forever.

Here’s something I’ve thought about a lot. If civilization somehow disappeared, and a group of people survived on an island somewhere, and some of those people had been rich and powerful beforehand, those people would no longer be anything special. They’d have no advantage over anyone else. Donald Trump would be no better off than a guy who collected garbage for a living. They’d be equals. But people who knew God would still know him, and they would still have all the advantages they had before the disaster.

I think about that, and it makes me wonder what’s real and what isn’t.

I guess I’m rambling. Marv is squawking for attention, so I’ll stop here.

You Can be an Expert Marksman for $40

If you’re serious about protecting your house from Obama Depression Zombies, as I am, get yourself a laser immediately.

No, not the big kind that vaporizes zombies with a satisfying “pop.” The kind you use to aim your gun.

Today George Moneo of Babalublog went with me, and I took the Vz 58 and its re-fastened bright green laser with us, along with other pleasing implements of destruction. It was amazing. I had low expectations because a lot of “experts” criticize lasers as gimmicks, but the shooting speaks for itself. You simply cannot miss unless you are a complete idiot. And if you are a complete idiot, you can’t hit anything without a laser, either, so it won’t hurt.

I’m not kidding. We shot at 50 feet because the laser is hard to see on the paper at 75 (bright sunshine, scattered clouds). George is not what you would call an experienced rifle shooter. For all I know this was his first time. He popped round after round into the same small area, over and over. Most of the shots went into a region the size of a golf ball. I realize big-time rifle shooters will not be impressed, and you might feel like pointing out that it’s not news when someone shoots that well at this distance. But before you make a fool of yourself, let me point something out. At fifty feet, in bright sunshine, it’s hard to see the dot well enough to keep it in an area smaller than a golf ball. It wasn’t possible to do much better. If we had been shooting at dusk, he would have put a lot of these shots literally in the same hole. In a dark house a burglar would be dead meat. No chance of survival.

I should have photographed the target. It was wonderful.

You can claim iron sights are more reliable in a gunfight, but you would be crazy. I watched George shoot, and at fifty feet, the bullet goes exactly where the dot was when the trigger was pulled. It’s a hell of a lot easier and faster to put a dot on someone’s chest than it is to squint through a peep sight. You can actually raise your head and come up completely off the sights, which gives you the ability to look around without interference. And you don’t have to sweat about trigger pull and sight picture or any of that other challenging BS. Jerk the trigger all you want. You’re still going to hit the burglar. My guess is that your biggest problems will be muzzle flash and target reacquisition, and the Vz 58 doesn’t jump much.

Man, it was a thing of beauty. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The lasered Vz 58 appears to be a phenomenal home defense gun. It has so little recoil you can fire it folded, which makes it fast and convenient. It’s small and light. It’s super reliable. It holds 30 rounds of ammunition, and you can get deadly, accurate Wolf hollowpoints for five bucks a box. All it needs is a strobe flashlight, and I have one on the way.

I guess there’s a reason why the Czechs chose this gun for combat.

I don’t know why people knock Wolf ammunition. I have always found it accurate and completely reliable. I can’t say that about PMC or some other American brands I’ve used.

One thing I love about using a rifle is that I don’t have to make the study of ammunition my life’s work in order to get the desired result. Pistols–even the much-worshiped .45 ACP–are inherently flawed; the bullets are slow, and some are also small. You have to put in a lot of effort finding a brand of ammunition that gives you half a chance of putting a criminal down with a center-mass shot. Rifles and shotguns are another story. Every brand of 12 gauge buckshot is a killer, and so is any 7.62x39mm hollowpoint. On top of that, the ease of aiming a long gun makes you much more likely to place shots correctly.

The shotgun has the advantage of better stopping power, and I’m pretty sure it’s less likely to pass through exterior walls. But the recoil and flash are a lot worse, and you can’t get a 30-round magazine. If such a thing exists, it’s a toy you can’t trust with your life. The Saiga nuts all recommend 8-round jobs. A Vz magazine gives you 30 projectiles, and a Saiga magazine gives you 72, but shotgun pellets stay very close together at self-defense distances, so the larger number of pellets doesn’t buy you a better chance of placing a shot well.

I’d still like to try an M1 carbine with the same laser on it. I think it would be very good for home defense. But the M1 round isn’t as nasty as the 7.62×39, which goes 25% faster. The M1 is about like a .357 Magnum. Very effective, but not AK-effective. The M1 might be a little easier to shoot, and that would be a slight advantage.

On the whole, I think the Vz would probably come out way ahead, since one hit to the torso can turn a criminal into a bag of warm meat sauce.

Unfortunately, the laser came loose AGAIN. The screws that attach the mount to the gun are okay, but the screws that tighten the mount around the laser refuse to hold, even with blue Loc-tite. I guess red Loc-tite is in order.

I give the laser a big thumbs-up. If I hear something go bump in the night, and the Vz or the laserized Saiga is ready to go, I won’t even think about picking up a pistol.

Try a lasered rifle before you knock lasers. I was surprised, and you may be, too.

Can’t Buy What You Can’t Find

I think the last thing I need to make a lathe work is a set of turning tools. Og recommended starting with indexable carbide tools.

I went to Enco, and they have like 3 million varieties. Right-handed, left-handed, AL, BR, BL, AR, E…I don’t even know what these terms MEAN.

Jim Dunmyer suggests I grind my own tools. Great! Let’s see how many types of blanks Enco sells.

Ah, this is less confusing. I can’t FIND them. So…ZERO. For the time being.

Maybe I can just wedge a paring knife into the toolpost. I could at least use the lathe for making ornamental fruit-rind spirals.