View From The Porch: It's turning into a meme...

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

It's turning into a meme...

More on the Obama-Lada.

One tingles with excitement, wondering which industry the Dear Leader will reform next.

14 comments:

Asphyxiated Emancipation said...: Medicine. It'll be medicine, with pay caps for doctors.; 9:48 AM, April 01, 2009
Anonymous said...: The Obama Mamas will drive Ladas.

The rest of us will take llamas--how Third Worldly, tre chic.

I can feel the White Guilt draining away with the lowering of the living standards!

Shootin' Buddy; 10:58 AM, April 01, 2009
NotClauswitz said...: As the Alien said in, The Day The Government Stood Still, "Lada Obama Nicktu."

Wonder what kind of crappy third-world bicycle they gonna build?; 1:12 PM, April 01, 2009
trainer said...: I'm sure the glorious leader will exhort us to build the best gol' darned third-world bicycle possible.

...and set what you can charge for it, and set your salary to boot.; 1:55 PM, April 01, 2009
Anonymous said...: So long as there is unimpeded access to modern machine tools, we can make guns, and as long as we can do that, we have the ultimate power.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Jim; 1:58 PM, April 01, 2009
Rabbit said...: I dunno, they seem to make adequate firearms copies in Peshawar with hand tools.

Regards,
Rabbit.; 6:08 PM, April 01, 2009
Gregg said...: Hey now JMB (PBUH) didn't have access to modern machine tools and he did just fine. Heck, his designs are still going strong a century later.; 6:21 PM, April 01, 2009
Anonymous said...: This is true, but with the way decent CNC mills are going these days, we can have interchangeability, too.

Jim; 6:22 PM, April 01, 2009
cma said...: reflectoscope said...
"So long as there is unimpeded access to modern machine tools, we can make guns, and as long as we can do that, we have the ultimate power."

Rabbit said...
"I dunno, they seem to make adequate firearms copies in Peshawar with hand tools."

Gregg said...
"Hey now JMB (PBUH) didn't have access to modern machine tools and he did just fine. Heck, his designs are still going strong a century later."

Making guns is the easy part, making ammo is the hard part.

I don't mean reloading, I mean really making it; bullets (the easiest), cases (more difficult), powder (really difficult, with the possible exception of black powder), and primers (the most difficult).; 7:44 PM, April 01, 2009
NotClauswitz said...: Are CNC machines ecologically friendly and Energy-Star Rated or do they cause Global Warming? If not they will be shut down and operated by bicycle-power.
Did JMB have a pedal-powered mill?; 7:53 PM, April 01, 2009
fast richard said...: Prior to electric motors, machine tools were powered by leather drive belts. The belts ran from a pulley on the machine to a line shaft, usually overhead. The line shaft was powered by either a steam engine or a water wheel. I would guess that JMB would have worked with line shafts, but would have converted at least some of his machinery to electric in later years.

Line shafts were still in use at least until WWII, and there were still a few of the old machines that had been converted to electric power, when I first worked in machine shops in the early seventies.; 10:00 PM, April 01, 2009
Anonymous said...: DaVinci's lathe worked off a spring mast. A pulley with a wrapped cord was attached to a long springy branch. As the spring pulled the cord, it would deliver about 20 revs, then the cord would over-run to wind the other way on the pulley, and give <20 revs the other way, and so on. After the pedal was added, this system was retained to aid in conservation of energy. Or "fewer kicks," as they put it then.

Each improvement in power or precision facilitated other breakthroughs. Newton made a lot of hay on his skills as a furniture maker.

You can watch a gunsmith bore and rifle a barrel with a precise (but wooden-bedded) lathe powered by a hand wheel, at Williamsburg.

Eli Whitney's mill was a full generation before Smith and Wesson, so it's reasonable to assume Browning , in the 1870's, had access to machine tools at least accurate enough to produce "engine" tolerances. His father had a shop.; 11:08 PM, April 01, 2009
Unknown said...: Smokeless powder is hard to make?

Nitrate some cellulose, dissolve it in acetone, partially dry, then extrude the slurry. Mix the results with graphite. Quality control will suck, but it will be good enough for reduced loads in large cases.

For component parts, nitric acid can be made from battery acid and fertilizer. Borrow the acetone from any teenage girl.

Sourdough bread is harder to make.; 10:19 AM, April 02, 2009
BobG said...: "One tingles with excitement, wondering which industry the Dear Leader will reform next."

Yep, and that tingling is my sphincter muscle, wondering what he is going to do next...; 5:39 PM, April 02, 2009