Confirmation?

A huge pile of machining stuff will arrive today. Enco shipped the vise separately, so I don’t know when it’s coming, but at some point during the day, I will find myself in possession of things like parallels and 1-2-3 blocks. I can’t believe I did this.

There has to be a reason for this. It’s so strange; it doesn’t seem natural. I hope the purpose eventually becomes clear. In the meantime, I can’t wait to get started.

I started reading Josephus yesterday. He wrote a short autobiography, a history of the Jews, and a history of the wars between the Jews and Romans. The bio was like something Barack Obama would write. “I first realized I was a gift to the world when my mom told me the nurses in the maternity ward had used my halo as a reading lamp.” I skipped it and went to The Antiquities of the Jews.

This is interesting stuff. Josephus was the son of a priest, and he was born at around the time of the crucifixion. He had to be familiar with the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, as well as any other bits of history and wisdom the priests passed down to their sons.

Josephus says the angels had sex with women and gave rise to a race of evil people.

The modern Jewish position is that angels can’t do things like that. Most Christians agree. The book of Enoch, Josephus, and the book of Jasher contradict the current view. So who is right? Maybe the answer can be found in a principle of Jewish theology, which says–I hope I’m stating this correctly–that older authorities generally outweigh new ones.

Josephus presumably had some reason for making his assertion. A Jewish priest who was proud of his scholarship wouldn’t throw an item like that out without some basis. He must have received his information from those under whom he studied.

The Talmud is supposedly nearly impenetrable without experienced guidance, and presumably, a lot of orally relayed information that was known in ancient times has been lost. But it makes sense to assume that it can be accessed indirectly through the writings of people like Josephus.

I have to wonder what he left out.

Anyway, this tends to confirm my own suspicions, and it certainly helps the Bible (both testaments) make sense.

I better get started, wiring up the garage for the mill.

Reward Repentance With Self-Righteous Excoriation

I just saw Obama speaking at Buchenwald with Angela Merkel beside him.

Did I hear him right? I believe he listed the Germans’ evil deeds, including “using rape as a weapon of war.”

The memory of the Holocaust has to be kept alive. No doubt about it. But there is such a thing as tact. What does this amateur hope to accomplish by speaking in such pointed terms? The Germans have nearly turned repentance into an industry. The Holocaust ended sixty-five years ago, yet they are still gracious enough to promote its remembrance by allowing foreign heads of state to speak from the sites of concentration camps. Am I crazy, or could Obama have taken a more constructive tone?

It’s like Louis Farrakhan had a baby with Karl Marx and Steve Urkel. Obama can’t do anything right. Isn’t this exactly the kind of nationalist “arrogance” he himself complained of?

It’s hard to believe that any President would have the gall to be self-righteous about the Holocaust, while allowing Israel’s enemies to build nuclear missiles.

We’ll Teach Those Jews

Am I the only one who is loving the ongoing outing of B. Hussein Obama? He emphasizes “Hussein” when he addresses Muslims, so I guess everyone else is entitled to do it, too. I am distressed by Obama’s hostility toward Israel and his habit of embracing Muslims who support terrorism, but I am enjoying seeing his true nature exposed.

I realize Obama is inexperienced, naive, and undistinguished, but he shocks even me when he says the Iranians should be allowed to have nuclear power, as long as they use it responsibly.

This is like putting Charles Manson on the street via work-release. “Murder one more family, and we’re going to start doubting your sincerity.”

It’s a very simple policy. Let the Iranians have fissile material, and wait to see if they nuke the Jews. If they do, consider sanctions. I’m trying to be sarcastic, but that’s very close to Obama’s actual policy.

Reagan said “Trust, but verify.” Obama says “HOPE.”

Here’s what’s behind all this. Obama’s past as a young Muslim almost surely has something to do with it, but the main problem is that Obama is not a Christian. Sure, he went to “church,” but it was a political and social organization, not a true house of God. Jeremiah Wright very clearly hates Jews and loves socialism, and he thrives by telling black people nothing that happens to them is their fault, that everything they do is justified, and that the rest of us should give them stuff. None of that comes from the Bible. It has nothing to do with faith or obedience to God. It can’t be reconciled with the Old Testament, nor can it be reconciled with the words of Jesus or the Apostles.

Obama doesn’t pray sincerely in Jesus’s name every day. He doesn’t study the Bible. He ignored the National Day of Prayer. He supports late-term convenience abortion, as well as withholding support from abortion victims who are born alive. In all likelihood, he’s an atheist. Most liberal elites are. His church attendance was probably purely cynical; an act to pacify voters. Politicians have to be married, and they have to go to church. It makes winning elections easier. You can try to tell me it’s not right to judge another person’s faith, but you would be wrong. A person’s actions can be a very reliable index of the contents of his heart. Christians are required to consider such matters. It’s not forbidden at all. By Obama’s fruit, we can know him.

If you’re not a Jew or a Christian, to you, Israel is just like any other nation. It might as well be New Guinea. And if you’re a politician, you do what politicians do. You figure out which side your bread is buttered on, and you act accordingly. Israel doesn’t sell us oil. They don’t buy a lot of our goods. They consume aid dollars. And they make a lot of other nations angry, and that anger bleeds off onto us. So cut them loose. If there is no God, it’s the sensible thing to do.

Obama also knows that he has three blocs of voters to whom anti-Israel rhetoric plays well: blacks, Hispanics, and Jews. Blacks have a heavy-duty anti-Semitism problem, Hispanics are not too far behind, and Jews are afflicted with self-hatred and a crippling desire to appease. And modern leftists tend to be anti-Semitic regardless of race. To support Israel would be an act of considerable political courage. Obama doesn’t have that in him. He’ll continue doing whatever he thinks will please the most voters.

Our support for Israel is based on three things. Judaism, the Judaism-independent Jewish fear of facing a new holocaust without a refuge (Jews want Israel to continue to exist, while paradoxically supporting its dismemberment) and Christianity. Obama probably sees our support for Israel as a sort of cultural relic. An unfortunate lingering symptom of our mass delusions. Backward Americans believe in a fictional God, and for this reason, we maintain counterproductive and untenable ideas about Middle East policy. The right thing to do–the thing Saul Alinksy would do–is to make Israel understand that it’s unimportant. Not special. Because we’ve moved past all that silly religious nonsense. From now on, we’ll support Israel in the same way we support Ecuador and Laos. It’s all about fairness, right? Like socialism.

Obama is busting his butt to make us understand that Israel is not special. He is rubbing our noses in it. His people call it “even-handedness.” If the Iranians have nukes, it’s bad, but America isn’t Israel, so we can survive a Jerusalem atom bomb blast. The Indians and Pakistanis are always on the brink of nuclear war, and we don’t do much about it. I think that’s how Obama views the Iranian threat. American Jews aren’t raising a fuss; they seem to consent to it. So that’s how it’s going to go.

Iran will get the bomb. It’s probably too late for Israel to stop them. It’s not that hard to hide things in tunnels, and the Iranians know what happened to Hussein’s above-ground nuclear site. Bush didn’t have the guts to do anything, probably because of the way Americans betrayed him over Iraq, and Obama doesn’t care. He is probably worried about the possibility of an Israeli raid, which would be “an outrageous violation of sovereignty” or some such nonsense, but he surely accepts the inevitability of an Iranian nuclear arsenal. When the first test goes off, Obama will mumble a few words about what a bummer it is, and then he’ll get back to socializing industries. And we’ll see what happens.

The Bible says nations that slice up Israel will be judged by God. We are among those nations. We are in God’s crosshairs. Not a good place to be. But the more sophisticated we perceive ourselves to be–the less we realize that God is real and that we need him–the deeper into this mess we are going to plunge.

Give me Your Opinions

I ground a lathe tool. I just eyeballed it; I am hoping the guys who say the angles aren’t critical are right. It only took me forty-five minutes of intense effort. Think it will work?

76.Something

I might as well put up the stuff I wrote before I found out Mish Weiss was having a new medical crisis.

I received a funny answer to an Ebay inquiry. I asked a guy selling a mill if he had photos of the ways. He got back to me today: “I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of the table or ways but there is really no reason to as they will appear as new with the exception of a light use patina. No gouges, holes or any sign of wear.”

I love it. I don’t need to see the ways, because he has seen them. That’s what I call service. You don’t need to verify the condition of this guy’s merchandise to keep him from cheating you, because he’ll verify it for you. I’m sure he would be completely honest.

If you think Ebay protects you from crooks, think again. If you read the fine print in the Paypal “fraud protection” stuff, you will find that it boils down to “It is just barely conceivable that we will refund an inadequate portion of your money if you get royally screwed. But we will do our best to avoid it.”

Say you buy a milling machine for a thousand dollars (one of those imaginary low-mileage Bridgeports I keep hearing about), and you have it shipped for twelve hundred, which is a realistic figure (unlike the mill price). If it’s junk, you get a full refund. If you ship it back at your own expense. What a deal! And depending on the language in the ad, you may not get your original shipping fee back. And unless you’re very careful about checking the fine print before you buy, you may end up getting an item with no protection whatsoever.

I’m not sure what the EbayPal folks think “Buy With Confidence” means, but it definitely doesn’t mean you can buy with confidence, unless “confidence” means “confidence that I have no recourse if I get screwed.”

The new insulation in the garage worked. The result, when the AC is on, isn’t so much a lower temperature as a gentler temperature gradient. It used to be cold on one side of the garage and warm on the other, over by the garage doors. Now it’s cool all over.

With no AC, the picture is still very promising. I went in to the garage this morning; the outside temperature was around 85. Inside the garage, it was under 77. Amazing. I always thought the roof was the big heat source, but I guess I was mistaken. I was afraid heat would come in through the roof, and the insulated doors would hold it in, turning the garage into a Bridge-Over-the-River-Kwai-type oven. But that didn’t happen, so the roof must be the lesser problem.

I’m wondering if there is some kind of cheap rigid insulation I could staple to the roof. Putting rolls of fiberglass up there would be a month in hell, but there is probably some board-type product that goes on with staples and does an okay job. I know there are spray-on products. I can just picture that crap raining down on my tools.

Maybe it’s overkill. The roof is white, so it reflects a lot of heat, and hot air likes to rise, so maybe the open space over my head is not a big problem. A guy who worked in commercial real estate once told me that square footage was more important than a room’s height. I don’t know if that’s true.

After I get done praying for Mish, I’m going to go out there and just…not sweat.

Prayer Needed

Mish Weiss had a terrible nosebleed and is still not doing well, even after the blood was replaced. Please pray.

The Great Wall was Nothing

I have succeeded in creating an insulated garage. Kneel before my tool prowess.

Now I have to see if it gets any cooler.

Fiber is my Middle Name

There is a lizard in the kitchen.

Yesterday I harvested a bunch of Orinoco bananas from the yard. I cut the stem and left the bunch outside. Banana trees are full of sap similar to latex, and I knew it would drip out of the cut and turn into glue wherever it landed. This morning I brought the bunch in and cut the hands off on the kitchen counter.

While I was cutting, I thought I saw something shoot out of the bunch and into a cluster of canisters. Big roach? I dismissed it. Probably my imagination.

As I cut, I saw movement under the bunch. I lifted it, and there on the counter I saw a lizard tail, squirming and jumping. But no lizard. Gross. I figured I had cut the lizard up with the knife, and that the rest of it would eventually fall out of the bunch. I eventually realized the lizard was not in the bunch. He must have been the mysterious moving object. I probably trapped his tail under the bananas, pulling it loose.

So now he is in the kitchen somewhere, grousing about having to grow a new tail. His old one is in the garbage disposal.

I actually got a few mangoes this year, and boy are they good. The best mangoes imaginable. It’s almost like eating ice cream.

I will never understand why people raise the big round bland varieties, like Hadens and Tommy Atkins. My trees are Carries. Infinitely superior. The mangoes never turn red; maybe that makes them less appealing to growers. The best varieties are green and yellow, but they don’t catch they eye in a produce aisle.

Last year the squirrels cut all the mangoes off, without exception, and the possums ate them. Green. We still have squirrels and possums, but the mangoes have been spared. And it looks like I’m going to have a good first-year crop of ponkans, which are loose-skinned tangerines. What a relief. I was starting to wonder if I would ever get fruit other than Persian and key limes.

I also have a big pepper crop, including a lot of Trinidad Scorpions. How many of my neighbors have those? Very few, I’ll wager. They would combine well with mangoes. And my dragonfruit cactus has several tiny fruit on it. Those things are fantastic. What kiwis would be, if they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. When they mature, they should be about the size of a navel orange.

The tool news is good. I finally have everything I need to do basic machining. Or at least it’s on the way. I went with a Parlec vise instead of a Kurt D675. The price difference is small, but the design has some improvements, including a bigger screw, a wider opening, and more clamping pressure. Machinists speak highly of them, so I don’t think it’s much of a gamble. The manufacture is Taiwanese, and the design is American.

A new Kurt is a little over $400. People said I should buy a used one, but the prices are insane. You can get one for $200, if you don’t mind holes and worn jaws and missing paint. That’s just stupid. If a product sells new for $400, a good used example should be $150, and a risky piece of junk like the ones on Ebay should cost $75. Some used tools tend to be very reasonable; I got a beautiful Jacobs Super Chuck for $50, and you can get a nice Albrecht for twice that. But used Kurt vises are generally a ripoff.

I bought fly cutters, a small set of import end mills, the chuck, an arbor for the chuck, collets, parallels, 1-2-3 blocks, edge-finding stuff, a 1/8″ corner-rounding mill, a roughing mill, some blanks for the fly cutters, a clamping set, and a few other doodads. A lot of this stuff was dirt cheap. The vise is what killed me.

I emailed the mill dealer and asked if I should go for the optional work light, but he said they’re overpriced and not as good as a light with a magnetic base.

I drove myself crazy yesterday trying to find good deals. I keep feeling guilty for buying a mill. But I know that’s stupid. It will have no effect on my financial future, and it’s something I’ve dreamed about for decades.

I have to finish insulating the garage today. Then maybe I can try to grind some turning tools. It looks like I should get a few new tool holders for the Phase II tool post. Otherwise I’ll have to switch tools all the time, which will be a pain. The post came with five tool holders, and two (the 201 and 202 holders) look exactly the same. It would be nice to have a few extras, but right now, I am equipped to use the lathe. I even have Ridgid oil for the mill.

I forgot to buy V-blocks. Guess I will put them on the list with the tool holders.

I was an idiot to buy that old lathe. If I ever get a chance to replace it, I’m going Taiwanese. Unless it surprises me and turns out to be a jewel.

The mill should arrive next week, I guess. That means moving the compressor and running 30 feet of conduit over the garage rafters. Fun. A compressor is a hard thing to move because it rests on little feet a good distance apart. You can’t shove pipes under it and push. I have a Genie Lift, but it’s not really right for a compressor. I may have to give up and scoot the compressor on the concrete.

I have an idea for a writing project. I was thinking I might write a bunch of essays explaining why I’m a Christian. I am not a bona fide teacher or leader. The Bible describes qualifications for clergymen, and it’s not me. Established married men, with good habits and so on. But anyone can give a testimony. Something to think about.

Better get in the garage and get the insulating over with.

If it Moves, Outsource It

I am loving this. Reader Sally V. sent a link to a hilarious story indicating that outsourcing may be part of the solution to our health-care problems. In other words, as we have seen in other industries, when Americans charge too much, somebody else undercuts them and provides something better and cheaper.

Let’s see. Cars. Tech support. Machine tools. Electronics. Appliances. Cement. Can you believe we import cement? If we can profitably import something that heavy and cheap, we are in deep trouble.

What does that leave? Lap dances? Government? I guess you could say Barack Obama is outsourcing government to Tehran and Gaza, but the decisions are still filtered down through a lot of overpriced dead wood here in the States. It would be cheaper to have Abbas and Ahmedinejad run the country directly. No more $50,000 dinner dates for Obama and his wife.

Here’s the story. Guatemala has hospitals as good as our own, staffed by doctors trained in the US and Europe. They don’t have our Democrat-supported, parasitic tort problem. They are more efficient, because efficiency is too much to ask from the richest country in the world. And they need our business, and they are not taking our fees and dividing them up among strangers who don’t pay their bills. Or maybe they are, but the bite is much smaller.

You can fly there and live like a king while you get top-notch treatment, and when you come home with a nice tan, you’ll still be ahead by thousands of dollars. It’s cheap, even if they overcharge. What’s not to like?

I checked out medical tourism back when I was having gall bladder pains. I am not actually cheap, but I do resent paying more than I should. And American medical costs are obscene and unfair. Overseas treatment is a very good deal. You can go to places like India, for example. That may sound scary to you, but before you judge, maybe you should ask yourself how many turbans and dots you’ve seen at your local hospital. The Indians are not stupid, nor are they lazy or ignorant.

I guess medical people who read this will post self-serving comments, claiming I’m unpatriotic or that I need to support our ailing system with my dollars or that overseas care is risky. But the fact is, American doctors and hospitals charge much more than they’re worth, and they are not really better than foreign providers. I didn’t cause this problem. They did. Why should I put up with it? Buy your Mercedes honestly, if you want to keep me coming back.

I’ll give you an example which I have mentioned before. I had a kidney stone in 2003. I went to the emergency room. They gave me either an MRI or a CAT scan; I can’t recall which. I was there for maybe twelve hours. Cost? Over five thousand dollars. Treatment? None. They treated the pain (incompetently) and sent me home. I had to get leftover pills from someone else’s old prescription in order to get through the weekend.

Now, you can say I’m not a doctor, and that I don’t know what I needed. But that’s a stupid argument. Sometimes you have to be a doctor to know whether medical tests are justified, and sometimes you don’t. If I sprain my finger and someone tries to biopsy my liver, I am perfectly qualified to say he’s a crook or an idiot.

You don’t need expensive scans to diagnose kidney stones. Many, many thousands of patients have been sent home without even an x-ray. Doctors told them to wait and see if their stones passed. When they didn’t pass, the patients got surgery. In the meantime, they got antibiotics and painkillers. Today, they can give you an abdominal x-ray known as a KUB. Kidney stones show up on x-rays. I had a KUB in 2003, and it cost $250.

Where did the decision to get a KUB come from? A know-nothing disgruntled patient with no MD? No. It came from my urologist. After my hospital visit, I followed up with him. He gave me Percocet and Levaquin, and he told me to go home and pass the stone. After that happened, a lab looked at it for $40. He looked at the result and suggested a second expensive scan to make sure I was okay. I asked if that was absolutely necessary. He said a KUB would also be okay. The message was, “You can have a $5000 test or a $250 test. Either will work. Gosh, which would you rather have?”

If I hadn’t asked about the necessity of the scan, guess what would have happened? Five grand, down the toilet. For no reason whatsoever. I probably didn’t need the KUB, for that matter.

The urologist ended up charging something like $300, total. He even gave me sample antibiotics, for nothing. The hospital and drugstore got all the rest. And the hospital did very little for me. They even did the KUB. Maybe he got a kickback, but the fee went to the hospital.

I had a second kidney stone later, because I stupidly insisted on drinking huge amounts of tea in combination with dairy products. This time I called the urologist first, because it happened on a weekday, and I didn’t have to go to the ER. He has a receptionist who is so nasty she probably needs therapy. After thirty seconds on the phone with her, I decided not to get treatment. And I was fine. Saved six grand. Risked absolutely nothing except a little discomfort.

The purpose of the scan was to make money for the hospital, pure and simple. And it’s very typical.

Here’s a fun story. The brother of one of my college buddies became an ENT, and early in his practice, he learned he shouldn’t tell people not to get surgery. People came in for second opinions, and he told them they didn’t need to be cut up. The local doctors sat him down and told him he was not going to continue interfering with their cash flow. After that, he changed his ways. He’s not the only doctor in the US who has colleagues like that.

Medical care is too expensive. That’s the plain truth. It could be cheaper, but providers don’t care enough to make their prices fair. So if I can get better treatment in Guatemala, for less money, I’ll do it. Contrary to what gadget-crazy doctors may say, you don’t always need The Most Expensive Machine in the Hospital or The Machine That Goes “PING” to cure your constipation or warts or strep throat. They overtreat us because it makes them more money. If they can’t spend my money wisely, I may as well go to a nice hospital on the beach and recuperate with a pina colada in each hand.

The great thing about this plan is that liberals can’t interfere with it. They are not allowed to meddle with anything that makes health care cheap, even when it goes against their agenda in some fundamental way. Example: they won’t touch Canadian pharmacies. The excess money drug companies charge here in the states presumably goes to subsidize the lower prices they charge in places like Mexico and Bangladesh; it’s welfare, which liberals love. But if they try to explain that to greedy retirees who want cheap pills, they’ll get absolutely nowhere. Medical tourism is probably unstoppable, and it’s a great thing. It could destroy the monopoly that makes American health care overpriced, and it will probably improve the quality of care. Competition has a way of making things better. Look at the difference between a 2009 Ford and a 2009 Toyota, and compare it to the same difference in 1980. Ford still loses, but the margin is much smaller.

America is in a steep decline, but the free market is as strong as it has ever been. It is an eternal, fundamental principle of the universe. Like thermodynamics, it has an existence independent of our own. It existed before we did, and it will exist after the earth disappears. In the end, it always wins. If it sends me to sunny Guatemala instead of the Miami Heart Institute, so be it. I will manage to cope.

Sometimes Works Better in Theory

You know how I always talk about the problem of black anti-Semitism? Here’s a great comment I just received.

When has Minister ever caused you damn jews ever harm, you are just upset that his words about you ring true. There is an old Negro saying ” If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs the only one that will holla is the ONE THAT GETS HIT.’ QUIT CRYING YOU GUYS HAVEBEEN BUSTED!

That came from “Mr. Lee X Slave.” He has a swell blog where you can read about his admiration for that idiot, Farrakhan.

This kind of garbage is not rare. The web is packed with it.

This is what happens when an entire race is exempted from criticism.

More on the Two-State Final Solution

Solomonia has a funny but sad post that sums up the problem with Obama and Israel. Take a look.

Let me know if you see any signs that American Jews are waking up. Somewhere out there, there has to be a self-hating Obama-voting Jew who is saying, “Wait, wasn’t mindless Jewish liberalism supposed to prevent this kind of thing?”

I can’t help thinking of Jewish World War I veterans who showed their medals to the Germans before being herded into the gas chambers. “Danke. Now move along.”

I was watching Perry Stone last night, and he was talking about his belief that the US is declining and Israel is going to rise to greater power. Speaking about our apostasy, he said the Bible says we have an obligation to speak up and warn people.

Whew. Got lucky on that one.

Parting Works!

I parted one of my aluminum bars tonight. I guess that will seem boring to most people, but I was in the garage for three hours, and they passed like ten minutes. I had a blast.

I fixed up most of the wiring on the lathe so I could push it back against the wall. This is not something you want to do every day with an 1100-pound machine. I had left the machine pretty far out because the wiring wasn’t done.

I decided to use plain old Alumaflex conduit instead of the expensive waterproof stuff. The upper end of the conduit was going to be open toward the front of the lathe, so it wasn’t going to stop fluids, and I have no plans to hose down the lathe anyway. And I already had a box of conduit.

I tried out my new 11″ back plate to see if it would clear the metal panel I made for the VFD, and I had like an inch of clearance. More than enough. That was a good Ebay score.

Once I got the lathe back closer to the wall, I decided it was time to try out the parting advice I had received. I tried indicating the 8″ aluminum bar, but just like last time, it was hopeless. It’s so heavy the weight pulls it out of line when you loosen the chuck jaws. I had to give up and mount the three-jaw chuck. Carrying that 4-jaw job around and holding it while trying to get the spindle threads to catch is not much fun, so I really did not want to take it off.

I mounted my new cobalt blade in my toolpost with around 1 1/4″ extending out. I had to do that, because the work was 2″ thick. I put the lathe in back gear, got the angle as close to 90° as I could, and fired the motor up.

My only problem was that the blade wasn’t rigid enough to cut perfectly. When I got close to the center of the work, the blade flexed enough to sink under the work and leave a 1/8″ nipple on it. I suppose this is only a problem when you part something fairly thick.

I’ve been told to avoid parting things, because it’s slow and likely to break tools and mess up workpieces. I may get a cheapo portable band saw. There is no way I’d use my wood band saw on aluminum. I’d have to get a special blade and change the speed, and it would be a pain. The saw is supposed to be good for both wood and metal, but that doesn’t mean I have to use it on metal.

When the parting was done, I put a new face on the work with an AR tool. The face was gorgeous. You couldn’t get a prettier finish without polishing it. Then I turned the dial two thousandths and turned the whole cylinder down, to within 1/8″ of the chuck. I did this at about 1350 RPMs. The finish was not good. Lots of vertical lines. Maybe this is not the best tool for the job. I could grind a radiused HSS tool. I guess if I moved slower, the finish would be better, but it would take a week to go three inches.

I turned the post 45° and chamfered the work with the AR tool. I hope that’s kosher.

I love machining. It’s as much fun as using a good table saw, only without the sawdust.

I have to find out whether turning the dial one thousandth reduces the diameter by one thousandth or two. I didn’t see that information in the manual. I guess the calipers will tell me.

Crap Gone, Footrest Installed

Here’s a big shock. I’m currently feeling extremely smug.

But I have a good reason this time. I used tools competently again.

My dad had a problem on his boat. He had a helm chair with a footrest attached to the stanchion with a sliding aluminum collar. The footrest was toast, and the collar refused to come off. I posted about it here earlier.

He wanted to cut it off, but I insisted I had a better idea. I had a bunch of threaded rod and some scrap lumber. I cut a few holes, put it all together and ended up with this (now I have to see if the camera-phone photos worked):

I’ll bet everyone wants to know where to get a pair of boat shoes like that. I think Dad got the only pair made. You can also bowl in them.

That’s a better view.

I cut three pieces of threaded rod, attached nuts and washers, ran the rod through three holes in a piece of scrap wood, attached the rods to the collar, and used a wrench to raise the collar. The stupid thing didn’t loosen enough to slide, so I had to keep turning until it was way up the stanchion. Then I used a hammer, banging the underside of the wood. I would say it took 15 minutes, but it didn’t involve much exertion, it didn’t damage anything, and it spared the [admittedly worthless] parts.

Here is the new footrest. I really like Garelick helm seats and footrests. The old ones were Pompanettes. Pompanette makes horrible crap, at Bentley prices.

I had a better idea for a tool that would let me use an impact driver on a single bolt, but it didn’t occur to me until I was already at the boat, and it would have involved more parts, and it probably would not have raised the collar enough.

Dad was impressed. As if I had perfected cold fusion.

Smugness surrounds me like a warm, fluffly blanket. If you’ve ever worked on a big boat, you know how satisfying it is to defeat it when it tries to make your life hell with an insoluble problem.

His big Garmin GPS has a problem. When you turn it on, you have to hold the power button down to keep the power on. It shuts off as soon as you release it. Garmin suggested a factory reset technique, but it didn’t work. Helpful nerds are encouraged to opine. A repair costs $350 plus shipping.

That Appears to be the Choice

The Bible is incomplete. Everyone knows that. We don’t know much about Jesus’s childhood or the years between Malachi and John the Baptist. We don’t have verified versions of lost books like the book of Enoch or the book of Jasher. We don’t know everything that happened in the years leading up to Noah.

Our understanding of Christianity is incomplete, too. Paul said we see through a glass, darkly. We are told that God’s thoughts are above our thoughts as the clouds are above the earth. It’s very obvious that there is information God is withholding, for his own reasons. Sometimes he releases information in code, through prophets, and later we come to understand what it means. For example, the second psalm is about the crucifixion. We can see that now; it’s undeniable. But before the time of Jesus, it made very little sense. If God had made its meaning obvious, the enemy would have understood the significance of the crucifixion and would not have worked to bring it about.

The almost-funny thing about the second psalm is that it nearly taunts Satan. If Satan were as smart as he thinks, he would have understood it and avoided motivating Romans and certain susceptible Jews to bring about the sacrifice. The Bible often refers to the wicked being caught in their own nets or falling by their own counsels, and the crucifixion is the single biggest example. Satan can’t win for losing. When he is most convinced he has accomplished something, he is most defeated.

I think God is a little like George Bush. He does things for reasons he can’t reveal. And he is criticized for it, by people who have no understanding of how a chain of command works. Sometimes human leaders do things that are unquestionably stupid, like mortgaging a nation’s future with socialist bailouts leading to massive debt and bungling, conceited, oppressive authoritarianism. Other times, they do things that only seem stupid until all the facts are known. When in doubt, you support your leader, assuming he knows more than you do. That is particularly true in matters involving classified information.

Prophecy is full of classified information, encoded in such a way that no one can understand it except a human being guided by the Holy Spirit.

And not all prophecy takes the form of human language. Sometimes an object reveals God’s thoughts. For example, I suspect that the human uterus is designed to resemble the Ark of the Covenant. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The tabernacle and the temple symbolized a female body, probably representing the church (the body of human believers) as the bride of Christ. And the veil of the temple was intended to resemble a body part normally found only in female virgins. Notably, it tore at the moment Jesus died.

I think the nation of Israel is designed to reflect the nature of human existence. Like the snow that falls on Mount Hermon, our spirits come to earth from heaven. The water from Mount Hermon flows into the Jordan, and from there it goes to the Sea of Galilee, which represents the earth. The disciples were fishermen; the fish they caught symbolized human beings coming to Christ. The water that leaves the Sea of Galilee goes through the desert to the Dead Sea, which symbolizes hell. It’s a nearly lifeless body of water from which there is no escape except for evaporation. It’s no coincidence that this is a site where hell was literally manifested on earth. This is where human beings were destroyed by a rain of fire, for the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.

I suspect that the book of Enoch is corrupted to some extent, but I think it’s right about one thing. I think certain angels came down to Mount Hermon, and like misguided socialists, they tried to bring about a perfect age by their own efforts. They interbred with women and gave rise to a polluted race of rebellious freaks, and they gave human beings secrets of technology and magic and astrology. Many theologians think angels can’t reproduce, but the Bible tells us they take human form. Some of us have entertained them. It’s reasonable to believe that those temporary human bodies had all the usual parts, so why wouldn’t reproduction have been possible? The Bible does not say it can’t happen.

If you accept the notion that angels corrupted the human race, the Bible makes a lot more sense. For example, many non-believers think the Jewish God is evil, because he told the Hebrews to slaughter entire cities and peoples, including the old and small children. But that makes sense, if those peoples were overly polluted with the blood of angels. God was working to get rid of them for the sake of humanity, as he did in the flood (the book of Enoch makes this claim). It might also explain why there were so many people on the earth in Adam’s time. Maybe others were created first and became corrupted, or maybe some were fallen angels.

We see a repeated theme of spirit-guided eugenics in the Bible. Satan is constantly trying to exterminate the Jewish race (to keep prophecies from coming true), and God repeatedly reduces the numbers of peoples who oppose him. One of the great sins of the Bible was the refusal to obey God and destroy all traces of the Amalekites, who are believed to have given rise to the people currently afflicting Israel. The Holocaust was probably an attempt to prevent the existence of the Jews mentioned in prophecies about the end of the world. Pharaoh slaughtered Jewish babies to prevent the birth of Moses. Herod killed Jewish babies to prevent the birth of Jesus. And both were guided by astrologers, who were using forbidden knowledge provided by rebellious spirits.

The Bible makes a number of references to the destruction of the seed of the wicked. They will be destroyed, and the righteous will inherit the earth. Look at Psalm 37, as an example. Does the term “seed of the wicked” just refer to bad people, or does it also refer to people who are largely descended from angels, and who fail to accept salvation? In a parable, Jesus suggested some people were wheat sown by God, and others were weeds sown by Satan. Maybe he was speaking more literally than we realize.

The book of Enoch says part of God’s punishment for the rebellious angels was to destroy their descendants.

The waters of the Jordan don’t just come from directly from untainted snow. They also come from the Banias, “Pan’s Grotto,” at the base of the mountain. This is near Caesarea Philippi, an evil city which was a center of demon worship. Idolaters used to sacrifice animals and throw them into a foaming pool at the Banias, and the contaminated water joined the pure water from the other sources. Just as the blood of people descended from rebellious angels joined the blood of those descended from Adam. Is that really a coincidence? Hard to believe.

Pan’s image is the classical image of Satan. A goat with a man’s torso and head, plus horns and a tail. More coincidence. And Jesus began his earthly ministry at Caesarea Philippi, in what was ostensibly Satan’s earthly headquarters. A sort of Satanic Vatican City of its time. Coincidence upon coincidence. Where did Satan begin his earthly career? In the Garden of Eden. The center of God’s earthly efforts. It all makes sense.

Truthfully, I wonder if the Banias is the site where Adam and Eve were tempted. Descriptions of the Garden of Eden mention far-off rivers, but people who emigrate often name new lands and new geographic features after old ones. New York is named after York, England. Kentucky has cities named London and Paris. Who is to say that the rivers of Mesopotamia were not named after the streams near Mount Hermon, by people whose ancestors lived near the Banias?

It would make sense for Satan to turn Eden into his home base. It would be a fitting manifestation of his pride and the joy he takes in supplanting God. And Jesus’s remark about “the gates of hell” refers to part of the Banias. He said the gates of hell would not prevail against his kingdom. The Banias is a very creepy place. There is a giant hole in the rocks there; a dark cavity in the side of the mountain. Inside this hole is the pool where the animal sacrifices were dumped. This pool is still now, but the waters used to bubble as they made their way into an underground passage that led to the Jordan. This pool was called “the gates of hell.”

It’s all very interesting to me. I don’t think it’s just happenstance. Jesus himself created the metaphor of the Sea of Galilee as the earth, and the fishermen as evangelists. I didn’t make that up. He did.

In the end, it’s all going to make sense. The concept of a chain of command, entailing faith in the competence of those above you, is central to Christianity and Judaism, and if you can’t accept it, you will always have an uphill battle before you. I don’t make excuses for God, except to say that whatever he does has to be right. If you ask me why God would be upset with your fun gay hairdresser who is nice to everyone, or why he lets good people get cancer, or why he permitted the Holocaust, my answer is that I know that he exists, and I am satisfied that he is both good and competent, and I believe he has excellent reasons for everything he does. Some questions, unlike the non-issue of whether convenience abortion is moral, truly are above a human being’s pay grade.

I can’t change God, and I’m not supposed to try. I’m supposed to let him change me. That’s what I’m trying to do.

No More “Partiality”

A reader posted a comment linking to an important new story. Barack “83% of American Jews Voted for Me” Obama just froze helicopter sales to Israel, based on the fear that the machines might be used against terrorists civilians in Gaza.

The gloves are finally off.

Frankly, I’m thrilled. Sometimes you need to slap someone in the face to wake them up. I hope liberal Jews all over the US are gagging right now, on the putrid, weevily political meal they wolfed down in November. This grinning larval dictator is your boy. You own this. That faux tolerance tastes pretty good right now, doesn’t it? Electing a black President is a fine idea, but maybe you should have waited for one who wouldn’t respond by cutting your throats.

Who called this one? Damn near everybody who voted for McCain. “Obvious” doesn’t begin to describe it.

It is no exaggeration to say that talking to liberal Jews about politics is like trying to engage a psychotic regarding the validity of his hallucinations. Their bizarre, blind insistence that the left is more hospitable to Jews and Israel can legitimately be described as a delusion. Jews want everyone to think they’re friendly and harmless and generous and lovable, and they are positive voting liberal will create the desired impression. Where they got the idea that liberals are nicer or more moral is an impenetrable mystery.

The Nazis are gone. The Holocaust wasn’t your fault. Stop kissing up. Stop appeasing. It’s not going to save you. Your self-hatred is legitimizing the things leftists say about you and your homeland. I have a T-shirt with a big slogan on the back. Maybe each of you should get one. It says, “Peace Through Superior Firepower.” It worked for Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and David. Old Testament appeasers didn’t fare so well.

The US is not going to save Israel. God and individual believers and the Jews will save Israel. America is not Israel’s true strength. So while it’s very sad that we’re slowly cutting off Israel’s blood supply, it’s only sad for America. God will deliver Israel one way or the other. We, on the other hand, are almost sure to end up like England. We’re going from empire to backwater. God is giving our manufacturing might to the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians, and anyone else who happens to be handy. Petty dictators and jabbering nutjobs in khaffiyehs–the kind of people we used to squash effortlessly–are slowly dismantling our global dominance. We are embracing Marxism and authoritarianism, at the very time we need capitalism and freedom most. We are being ushered back to the cheap seats, and if we end up there, we will remain there. What empire recovers, after thumbing its nose at its divine sponsor and dropping its pants for its enemies?

Maybe as Obama’s hostility toward Israel becomes more obvious, American Jews will become fully conscious and understand that they should be enraged. Given their history, however, I think it is more likely that the majority will appease and kowtow until somebody starts building ovens. Until then only a small minority will get the picture. Thank God for Israel. At least we won’t see another S.S. St. Louis, cruising hopefully from port to port with a cargo of Jews nobody will accept.

JEREMIAH WRIGHT. Hello? Obama was his CLOSE FRIEND. He attended Wright’s church for TWENTY YEARS. Wright HATES JEWS and he puts this information IN HIS SERMONS, WHICH BARACK OBAMA SAT THROUGH AND APPLAUDED. He is a friend of LOUIS FARRAKHAN. If you’re a Jew, answer these questions. Would you let your daughter go to the prom with a kid who praised Louis Farrakhan? Would you want to be golfing buddies with someone who praised Louis Farrakhan? If not, why would you be comfortable with a President who spent twenty years listening to, and presumably giving tithes to, a Farrakhan crony? Are you insane?

Keep it up, Barack. Cut off the helicopters, the planes, the ammunition, the money, the cooperation…everything. Cut it all off. Let your supporters see the horror they elected. Stick your finger in their eyes, nice and deep. Make them learn.

Jews and Christians who had misgivings about this fool were right, and we’re going to look more and more right as years pass. We all need to pray that God helps Americans turn back to him and behave themselves. We just went through a big economic labor pain, and though it’s easing now, labor pains always return and get sharper and closer together.

Words can’t express my disgust. I hope we survive this idiot.