November 2014 archive

Nov 06 2014

The Breakfast Club (Bang! You’re Dead)

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgMy late Uncle called the History Channel The War Channel because of it’s steady drumbeat of World War II documentaries and other celebrations of armed conflict which, along with the “Great Man” theory of history, Marx shows us is a mere outgrowth of underlying economic dynamics.

Not that he was a Marxist, nor am I.  I’m a proud Anarcho-Syndicalist and we kick Marxist butt from here to Barcelona.

Anyway among the objects of their fascination are guns of every shape, size, and description because big explosions are good Television.

Just what about bigger do you not understand?

So I’m a factoid factory about firearms even though I do not now and never have owned one (though I do have a dusty old NRA Pro Marksman certificate which attests I can hit a sheet of paper if it gets close enough to threaten me).

For the purposes of today’s story we’ll start off with the mechanics of basically every gun until 1808.

Now we all have this vision of a frontiersman in his coonskin cap carefully pouring powder from his Powder Horn into the Pan of his Kentucky Long Rifle, lowering the Frizzen and putting the Hammer on Half Cock, putting the Stock on the ground and pouring more powder from his Horn into the Muzzle, grabbing a Patch of cloth and a lead Ball from his pouch and carefully seating them in the Barrel, and finally pulling out his Ramrod and tamping it all down, returning Ramrod to its sleeve, then raising the Rifle, pulling the Hammer to Full Cock, aiming, and firing.

That’s completely wrong.

It actually matters a great deal just how much powder you use and if you want consistent results (and incidentally a gun that doesn’t blow up in your face) you’ll monitor that quantity quite carefully.

In fact since the 1500s most militaries haven’t used loose powder at all.

Well, except for priming the Pan and at that they’d have carefully crafted quills which they would dip like a cooking measure into flour to procure the desired amount.

Instead they have used a paper cartridge which has powder and ball enclosed in a waxed or oiled paper wrapper.  You tear off the seal (usually just a twist like a candy) of the powder end and pour that down the Barrel.  Then you seat the Ball end of the cartridge (with paper replacing the Patch) and ram that down.  The waxing not only contributes to waterproofing the powder (let’s keep it dry Democrats) but also makes it easier to slide down the Ball.  Rumours that the British were using Lard and Tallow to grease their cartridges was one of the proximate causes of the Sepoy Rebellion.

Still, it’s a pain in the ass.

Starting in 1808 we see the emergence of cartridges designed for Breech loading using Percussion Caps for ignition.  While many designs used paper and other self consuming material to contain the charge it was eventually found that Brass would expand to prevent leakage of the propellant into the Breech while maintaining enough integrity to be easily extracted to accept the next round, and they were waterproof to a large extent.

Plastics

By now you’ve heard all the panic about 3-D printed guns and frankly there’s a lot to be worried about.  They are 100% plastic and don’t show up on metal detectors.  They’re made of commonly available materials by reasonably ($400) priced machines according to specifications easily downloaded off the Internet.  All this technology is thoroughly dual purpose and essentially unregulatable.

Until now the only problem has been that they are single shot and have a tendency to blow up because the Barrel and Breech are not quite strong enough.

A machinist from Pennsylvania has solved that problem (well, the blow up part at least, but that’s the key).  Instead of using a Brass cartridge he uses a Steel one to contain the detonation at its highest pressure point.

Now his is machined and takes about an hour a round to make, but you can reload it and the design could just as easily be stamped (if you have an industrial stamping machine, Kalashnikovs are stamped for instance).

Now perhaps you think this a radical breakthrough, yes in some respects, not so much in others.  Behold the Colt Paterson 1836–

The revolvers came with spare cylinders and the practice of the day was to carry spare cylinders loaded and capped for fast reloading.

Yup, and that was without smokeless powder in a basically Ball and Cap design.

Technologically this is essentially a dead end.  Plastics with the requisite characteristics and the machines to create them will continue to evolve but don’t be too worried, even today if you know what you’re doing you can construct a fully automatic AR-15 out of a $35 receiver you can buy unregistered over the Internet and some “spare” parts.

Are you ready for the Zombie Apocalypse yet?

The Bullet That Could Make 3-D Printed Guns Practical Deadly Weapons

By Andy Greenberg, Wired

11.05.14

As 3-D printed guns have evolved over the past 18 months from a science-fictional experiment into a subculture, they’ve faced a fundamental limitation: Cheap plastic isn’t the best material to contain an explosive blast. Now an amateur gunsmith has instead found a way to transfer that stress to a component that’s actually made of metal-the ammunition.

Michael Crumling, a 25-year-old machinist from York, Pennsylvania, has developed a round designed specifically to be fired from 3-D printed guns. His ammunition uses a thicker steel shell with a lead bullet inserted an inch inside, deep enough that the shell can contain the explosion of the round’s gunpowder instead of transferring that force to the plastic body or barrel of the gun. Crumling says that allows a home-printed firearm made from even the cheapest materials to be fired again and again without cracking or deformation. And while his design isn’t easily replicated because the rounds must be individually machined for now, it may represent another step towards durable, practical, printed guns-even semi-automatic ones.

“It’s a really simple concept: It’s kind of a barrel integrated into the shell, so to speak,” says Crumling. “Basically it removes all the stresses and pressures from the 3-D printed parts. You should be able to fire an unlimited number of shots through the gun without replacing any parts other than the shell.”

Last week, for instance, Crumling shot 19 rounds from a 3-D printed gun of his own design created on an ultra-cheap $400 Printrbot printer using PLA plastic. (He concedes his gun isn’t completely 3-D printed; it uses some metal screws and a AR-15 trigger and firing hammer that he bought online for a total of $30. But he argues none of those parts affected the gun’s firing durability.) Though the gun misfired a few times, it didn’t suffer from any noticeable internal damage after all of those explosions. Here’s a time lapse video that shows 18 of those shots.

…

Crumling’s steel-shelled rounds seem to control their explosions well enough to protect printed guns created with even the very cheapest printing techniques. “This guy has refined 3D printed firearms such that they can be reliably printed on very low end 3-D printers,” says Sullivan. “It’s so brilliantly simple. I love it.”

Science and Technology News and Blogs

Science Oriented Video!

The Obligatories, News, and Blogs below.

Nov 06 2014

On This Day In History November 6

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

November 6 is the 310th day of the year (311th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 55 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th President of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.

Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, Douglas 1,376,957 votes, Breckinridge 849,781 votes, and Bell 588,789 votes. The electoral vote was decisive: Lincoln had 180 and his opponents added together had only 123. Turnout was 82.2%, with Lincoln winning the free Northern states. Douglas won Missouri, and split New Jersey with Lincoln. Bell won Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and Breckinridge won the rest of the South. There were fusion tickets in which all of Lincoln’s opponents combined to form one ticket in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, but even if the anti-Lincoln vote had been combined in every state, Lincoln still would have won a majority in the electoral college.

As Lincoln’s election became evident, secessionists made clear their intent to leave the Union. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead; by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed. The seven states soon declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America. The upper South (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) listened to, but initially rejected, the secessionist appeal. President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy. There were attempts at compromise, such as the Crittenden Compromise, which would have extended the Missouri Compromise line of 1820, and which some Republicans even supported. Lincoln rejected the idea, saying, “I will suffer death before I consent…to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege to take possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right.”

Lincoln, however, did support the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which had passed in Congress and protected slavery in those states where it already existed. A few weeks before the war, he went so far as to pen a letter to every governor asking for their support in ratifying the Corwin Amendment as a means to avoid secession.

Nov 06 2014

Late Night Karaoke

Nov 06 2014

TDS/TCR (I’ll Bite Your Legs Off!)

TDS TCR

America Remembers It Forgot To Vote

14 / 2 == 8

The real news and this week’s guests below.

Nov 05 2014

Penny for the Guy

Remember, remember the fifth of November

When Daily Kos went to pot

Because they thought the Dems were all that

When really, they were not.

photo guy-fawkes-mask_zps402bb1b0.jpgAs a former (by compulsion) member it gives me great pleasure (in a schadenfreud way) to report that in the wake of last night’s debacle the Great Orange Satan is divided into roughly 4 camps.

The first, represented mostly by Mr. Moulitsas and those beholden to him by salary, contends that this is merely a bump in the road of inexorable demographic victory, only to be expected and predicted countless times by him and his “experts”.  Work harder, contribute more, go 2016 and Hillary Clinton!  Nothing to see here.

La, la, la, la, la.

The second group is the delusional suicidal types.  Those nasty voters.  How can they not recognize our vast accomplishments?  Don’t they realize the Republicans are evil?  Evil, evil, evil, evil, evil!  Voters is teh stoopid and until we get them to think gooder we are Doomed!  DOOMED!

This is my last post until the stoopid people think gooder.

The third group is the die hard Obots.  You see those spineless cowardly Democrats ran away from this good President and his tanking poll numbers and insurance mandates and Lilly Ledbetter (did we mention Lilly Ledbetter?) and all the other wonderful things he’s done like the Catfood Commission (sorry about your Social Security, those T-Bills aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on because we have to pay off these other T-Bills that Billionaires own), Bailing Out the Banksters (with no prosecutions), a Jobless Recovery fueled by easy money (not that there’s anything wrong with easy money) and Speculative Bubbles in the great FIRE casino, and being tough on Foreign Policy by increasing domestic spying, deporting more immigrants, killing citizens without due process, continuing our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and starting 7 or 8 new ones (it’s just a co-incidence that they’re all against Muslims, we’re not the racists, you are), and covering up W‘s torture regime.

Ingrates.

And finally there are what remains (on Daily Kos) of the democratic wing of the Democratic Party and their argument goes something like this-

Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.

Needless to say I sympathize most with the last.  As for “inexorable demographic victory”-

Obama Manages the Rare Triple Play of Bad Politics on Immigration

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Friday October 31, 2014 10:26 am

Politics is fairly simple. There are actually only a few ways to disappoint a group that cares about a particular issue. The simplest is you can fail to adopt the policy they want.

Second, you can be caught lying to them. This raises hopes only to crush them. That can feel even worse than knowing a politician has always been opposed in a principled way to your idea.

Third, you can make them feel not valued or listened to. Voters can still respect politicians they disagree with, but being treated poorly is different.

With his recent decision on immigration Obama managed to do all three at the same time. He failed to take executive action on immigration reform like most Latino voters wanted. He lied about it by promising action by the end of the summer. Finally, Obama broke this promise for what seemed to be purely political reasons. This sends a message that Latino voters aren’t valued and Democrats think they can be taken for granted. It is a statement about where a group fits in the priorities of the party.

The final sin is that it was ultimately ineffective.  It didn’t save a single seat.  Cowardice never does.

The stoopid voters say things like this-

To Angry Voters, Washington Comes Out the Biggest Loser

By ADAM NAGOURNEY, The New York Times

NOV. 4, 2014

When asked if her vote would change anything, Ms. Dempsey glanced back at the empty sidewalk leading to the polling place. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know.”

…

“I feel like I’m in that class of people that’s kind of getting left behind in this whirlwind,” said Etrulia Byrd, 37, a waitress from Anchorage.  “I’m in that economic class of people that works really, really hard and will probably never get too far ahead, barely makes it, and kind of gets punished for it.”

…

“There’s no such thing as a good politician, I’m sorry,” said Christi Miller, 43, an Obama supporter from Hot Springs, Ark.  “They may start out that way, but I think once you get in and once you get painted with bribes, and you have to take care of the people who contributed to you. … ” Her voice trailed off. “They would care if they were actually running for office for the right reasons,” she said. “They’re running for office for money and power.”

…

“Since they’ve allowed all the money in politics, it’s gotten much worse,” said Scott Hasson, 40, a photographer who lives in Denver. “Everyone says our vote matters, but until we can check the system and start taking a lot of that money out, I feel like it’s just power, people with money have the power.”

The Democrats are spineless and cowardly-

A Victory for the Left

By William Saletan, Slate

Nov. 4 2014 11:25 PM

Republicans won big in the 2014 elections. They captured the Senate and gained seats in the House. But they didn’t do it by running to the right. They did it, to a surprising extent, by embracing ideas and standards that came from the left. I’m not talking about gay marriage, on which Republicans have caved, or birth control, on which they’ve made over-the-counter access a national talking point. I’m talking about the core of the liberal agenda: economic equality.

…

Republicans picked up other liberal themes, too. They harped on the injustice of cutting Medicare, the importance of educational opportunity as “the great equalizer,” and the folly of gambling pension money in the stock market. They endorsed health care as a fundamental right, ridiculed the description of wealthy people as “middle-class,” and championed midnight basketball.

No, Republicans haven’t become liberals. They still hate taxes and blame everything bad on President Obama, Obamacare, and big government. But their focus on wage stagnation and class stratification reflects the economy and the political climate. And when you use egalitarian benchmarks to indict the opposition, those benchmarks endure. In the next election, Republicans, too, will be measured by median income, black unemployment, and what they pay women. They’ll have to account for the poverty rate, the tax burden on low-income people, and the widening gap between investors and laborers. It’s these underlying benchmarks, not the partisan composition of Congress, that signal the fundamental direction in which the country is heading.

Ahem-

No Scapegoats. Time to Face Facts.

by Dallasdoc, Daily Kos

Wed Nov 05, 2014 at 07:47 AM PST

So here we are once more.  Another electoral drubbing at the hands of the most cartoonishly evil, corrupt, inept gang of thugs politics has served up since the days of Mark Hanna.  And we’re all shocked.  How could this have happened?  How can we possibly have lost to these freakshow escapees yet again?  

It must be the fault of the voters, for being stupid.  Or the non-voters, for being too lazy and stupid to show up.  Or the media, for always being in the tank for the Republicans.  Or the purist progressives, because they said bad things about Obama.  Or Ralph Nader, for who the fuck knows anymore.  Yeah, those guys are to blame.

…

Progressives and liberals have long hitched their wagon to the Democratic party, maintaining the delusion that it’s still the party of the New Deal and the Great Society at heart.  I’ve done this too.  But the New Deal was eight decades ago.  Our view of the party is almost as outdated as that of old African Americans in the 1960s, who stuck with the Republican party because it was the party of Lincoln.  Actually, they had better contemporary justification than we do, at least until Nixon’s Southern Strategy.  The New Deal Democratic party is as dead as the Whigs.  Our latter-day version is one more vehicle of corporate influence:  the Goldman Division of America, Inc.  We are locked in phony battle with the Koch Division for spectacles of Potemkin democracy, which offer changes and choices that cost the owners of this country nothing and usually improve their quarterly numbers.  Nothing can be done anymore that doesn’t pay off billionaire sponsors first and last.

Our political system is comprehensively corrupt, and it is almost impossible to participate in it, certainly not as an officeholder, without wallowing in that corruption.  In Washington those who have held themselves apart can be counted on your fingers.  Both parties are creatures of this corruption, and their bases know it.  Ask any average American if they think politics is corrupt, and you’ll get a resounding “No shit!” nine times out of ten.  Conservatives know this as well as liberals.  It’s only devout party followers who seem blind to the obvious.

Corrupt parties have to find ways to get their voters out, despite most of those voters knowing how corrupt they are.  It is almost impossible to make a positive, affirmative case for oneself when everybody knows your pockets are stuffed with cash.  Therefore, you have to point over there at how terrible the other guy is.  Hence we have almost exclusively negative campaigning.  Republicans are awfully good at this, and are bounded by neither truth, shame, nor basic human decency.  Democrats suck at it, despite having a lot more material to work with.  The problem for Democrats is that too many of the things they can truthfully say about the Republicans are just as true of them.  Want to point out how beholden Republicans are to the Kochs?  Yeah, just try it, when you’re getting so much “support” from Goldman Sachs or BP or Lockheed Martin.  Voters aren’t as stupid as most professional pols think they are.

…

The Democratic party will not change until it has absolutely no other choice.  The leadership has proven over and over again that it would rather lose to a Republican than permit a progressive Democratic insurgent to win a primary.  Losing to a Republican doesn’t threaten the leadership’s perks and position, for some unfathomable reason.  Seeing the Warren wing gain power within the party is a much more direct threat to most of their jobs, on the other hand.  The chimera of fighting the battle in the primaries is a lost cause:  they’ll make sure we lose.  When was the last time we won one?

Markos, Markos, t’was his intent

To Crash the Gates of government.

A big old blog of orange you know

To prove the DLC’s overthrow

But by his hubris he was catch’d

A sold out has-been and a site to match

Nov 05 2014

Cartnoon

Nov 05 2014

TBC: Morning Musing 11.5.14

I am tardy with this cuz I was up late watching the returns. But in light of the outcome, I think this is a good essay.

The Balance of Power

No Jump today!

So how you doin’?  ðŸ˜€

Nov 05 2014

On This Day In History November 5

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

November 5 is the 309th day of the year (310th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 56 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1938, Samuel Barber’s Adagio For Strings receives its world premiere on NBC radio

Adagio for Strings is a work for string orchestra, arranged by the American composer Samuel Barber from the second movement of his String Quartet. Barber finished the piece in 1936, and in 1938, it was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini’s conducting was recorded at 8H Studio for radio broadcasting. Toscanini took the piece on tour to Europe and South America. It is disputed whether the first performance of Adagio in Europe was conducted by Toscanini or Henry J. Wood. Barber has rejected many arrangements published by G. Schirmer, such as the organ arrangement by William Strictland.

The piece begins with a B flat played by the violins. Lower strings enter two beats after the violins. At practical tempo, the piece length is about eight minutes. The piece’s reception was generally positive, with Alexander J. Morin writing that Adagio for Strings contains “full of pathos and cathartic passion, rarely leaves a dry eye.” The piece can be heard in many TV shows and movies.

The recording of the 1938 world premiere, with Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, was selected in 2005 for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry at the United States Library of Congress. Since the 1938 recording, it has frequently been heard throughout the world, and was one of the only American pieces to be played in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Adagio was broadcast over the radio at the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s death. It was also played at the funeral of Albert Einstein and at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco. It was performed in 2001 at Last Night of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks, replacing the traditional upbeat patriotic songs. It was also played during the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. In 2004, listeners of the BBC’s Today program voted Adagio for Strings the “saddest classical” work ever, ahead of “Dido’s Lament” from Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, the “Adagietto” from Gustav Mahler’s 5th symphony, Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss and Gloomy Sunday as sung by Billie Holiday.

Adagio for Strings can be heard on many film, TV, and video game soundtracks, including Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning film Platoon, David Lynch’s 1980 Oscar-nominated film The Elephant Man, Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko, Lorenzo’s Oil, A Very Natural Thing, Reconstruction, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Oscar-nominated 2001 film Amélie. It has been heard in episodes of The Simpsons, Big Brother 2010 (UK), That Mitchell and Webb Look, The Boondocks, South Park, Seinfeld, ER (TV series), Big Love. A recorded performance by the London Symphony Orchestra was, for a time, the highest selling classical piece on iTunes. The work is extremely popular in the electronic dance music genre, notably in trance. Artists who have covered it include Armin van Buuren, William Orbit, Ferry Corsten, and Tiesto. eRa included this song in their new album Classics.

Nov 05 2014

Late Night Karaoke

Nov 05 2014

TDS/TCR (Live!)

It’s your own damn fault.

The problem with all those approaches are that they rely on something few voters have anymore- a crap to give.

The real news and this week’s guests below.

Nov 05 2014

Election Night Open Thread

Just as I said I would, I voted straight Working Families.  Yes on Absentee Ballots, No on any Town Charter revision.  The parking lot was full which might lead you to think turnout was high if you didn’t read the vote counter on the scoring machine.  Two Hartford precincts will remain open for an extra half hour because the voter lists were delivered late this morning.

This is an opportunity for you to record the debacle, which appears at the moment to be every bit as bad as the gloomiest predictions.  So Democrats, do you care about “electoral victory” or not?  Or only if the “right” kind of Democrats (meaning Blue Dog, Third Way, DLC, New Democrats) win?  Don’t be afraid to contribute your personal thoughts, we publish lots of stuff with which we don’t necessarily agree.

TDS/TCR Live at 11pm ET.

Nov 04 2014

Election Day is Here: Vote Your Fear

Finally, after today no more robo calls and no more political adds, at least for awhile. Voter turn out is expected to be low, as typical in mid-terms and as was seen in 2006, the party that is not in the White House is expected to take over the leadership of the Senate and further secure its majority in the House. Why voters will put the party that destroyed the US economy and got us into two unpaid for wars is pretty obvious, Americans are afraid and the Democratic party doesn’t exactly exude the confidence that they can lead. The GOP hung their hats on fear and won.

The Phantasmagoric World of Washington

By Tom Engelhardt, Huffington Post

Sometimes it seemed that only two issues mattered in the midterm election campaigns just ended.  No, I’m not talking about Obamacare, or the inequality gap, or the country’s sagging infrastructure, or education, or energy policy.  I mean two issues that truly threaten the well-being of citizens from Kansas, Colorado, and Iowa to New Hampshire and North Carolina.  In those states and others, both were debated heatedly by candidates for the Senate and House, sometimes almost to the exclusion of anything else.

You know what I’m talking about — two issues on the lips of politicians nationwide, at the top of the news 24/7, and constantly trending on social media: ISIS and Ebola.  Think of them as the two horsemen of the present American apocalypse.

And think of this otherwise drab midterm campaign as the escalation election.  Republican candidates will arrive in Washington having beaten the war and disease drums particularly energetically, and they’re not likely to stop. [..]

Keep this in mind as well: We’re talking about a country that has lived in a phantasmagoric landscape of danger for years now.  It has built the most extensive system of national security and global surveillance ever created to protect Americans from a single danger — terrorism — that, despite 9/11, is near the bottom of the list of actual dangers in American life.  As a country, we are now so invested in terrorism protection that every little blip on the terror screen causes further panic (and so sends yet more money into the coffers of the national security state and the military-industrial-homeland-security-intelligence complex).

Now, a terror disease has been added into the mix, one that — like a number of terror organizations in the Greater Middle East and Africa — is a grave danger in its “homeland,” just not in ours.

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