Monday, February 08, 2010
Today In History: A little off the top, please.
On this day in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was barbered to the collarbone for getting cross-threaded with her relative, Elizabeth.
The Parable of the Stick:
Once upon a time, the chief caveman of the Ug tribe decided that his guys didn't have effective enough sticks. They just didn't have that authoritative *thwack!* he was looking for when whopped over the head of neighboring Thog warriors, and some of their womenfolk even struggled while they were being dragged off by the hair.
So Chief Ug put out a contract for a million new sticks for his guys. His chief stick contractor put his head together with his chief R&D guy, and announced they could deliver the new Fifth Generation sticks, made of superstickium and guaranteed to have 50% greater *thwack!* than any forseeable enemy stick, for fifty-one clams each. Chief Ug was delighted, and the program got underway.
Unfortunately, the clam harvest was bad that year, plus a new peace treaty and trade agreement was signed with the Thog tribe, and suddenly the chief realized that maybe he didn't need a million shiny new sticks, and so he cut the order to 100.
"Sorry, Chief," said the guys at Stick Dynamics, "But a lot of this program is sunk costs already: engineering the superstickium, planting the superstickium orchards, training guys to whittle superstickium, cleaning up the superstickium waste in a way that won't piss off the Cave Protection Agency... Those are gonna be some mighty expensive sticks."
The Stick Dynamics accountant started counting on his toes, always a bad sign. "For a hundred-stick production run, you're looking at... um... carry the little toe... About five hundred thousand and one clams per stick."
The chief was apoplectic. "You promised me fifty-one clams a stick! The shamans are going to go ballistic when they hear this; they'll be joking about gold-plated sticks and hundred-thousand clam stick whittlers from now 'til when the moon is eaten by the night dragon!"
"That was based on a million stick contract, Chief. Actual production costs are only about a clam per stick, the rest is amortizing the R&D and developm..."
Nobody heard the rest because the chief whacked him over the noggin with the sole prototype stick and stalked off. It did *thwack!* just as promised.
The Chief never used the stick in war again, though: A stick that cost fifty-million-and-one clams is just too valuable to risk in combat. If it broke, the bad press would be horrible.
So Chief Ug put out a contract for a million new sticks for his guys. His chief stick contractor put his head together with his chief R&D guy, and announced they could deliver the new Fifth Generation sticks, made of superstickium and guaranteed to have 50% greater *thwack!* than any forseeable enemy stick, for fifty-one clams each. Chief Ug was delighted, and the program got underway.
Unfortunately, the clam harvest was bad that year, plus a new peace treaty and trade agreement was signed with the Thog tribe, and suddenly the chief realized that maybe he didn't need a million shiny new sticks, and so he cut the order to 100.
"Sorry, Chief," said the guys at Stick Dynamics, "But a lot of this program is sunk costs already: engineering the superstickium, planting the superstickium orchards, training guys to whittle superstickium, cleaning up the superstickium waste in a way that won't piss off the Cave Protection Agency... Those are gonna be some mighty expensive sticks."
The Stick Dynamics accountant started counting on his toes, always a bad sign. "For a hundred-stick production run, you're looking at... um... carry the little toe... About five hundred thousand and one clams per stick."
The chief was apoplectic. "You promised me fifty-one clams a stick! The shamans are going to go ballistic when they hear this; they'll be joking about gold-plated sticks and hundred-thousand clam stick whittlers from now 'til when the moon is eaten by the night dragon!"
"That was based on a million stick contract, Chief. Actual production costs are only about a clam per stick, the rest is amortizing the R&D and developm..."
Nobody heard the rest because the chief whacked him over the noggin with the sole prototype stick and stalked off. It did *thwack!* just as promised.
The Chief never used the stick in war again, though: A stick that cost fifty-million-and-one clams is just too valuable to risk in combat. If it broke, the bad press would be horrible.
Annoyance.
I haven't been much of a football fan for years. I think the last time I followed a football team with any sort of ardor, Steve Bartkowski was the quarterback.
It is therefore mildly annoying to be dwelling someplace where you can't fricking escape the stuff; TeeWee news covers The Colts, politics, business, The Colts, weather, traffic, The Colts, and sports. The local catbox liner is much the same, with a slightly heavier emphasis on the Colts.
I am given to understand that the Colts lost the Super Bowl last evening.
I am given to understand this because I had to wait for them to interview everybody down to the water boy's third cousin's dog about how they felt about the game before they got around to the trivial news items, like the blizzard that's coming this way or the apartment building that burned to the ground nearby. (Which explains the helicopters orbiting overhead last night.)
It is therefore mildly annoying to be dwelling someplace where you can't fricking escape the stuff; TeeWee news covers The Colts, politics, business, The Colts, weather, traffic, The Colts, and sports. The local catbox liner is much the same, with a slightly heavier emphasis on the Colts.
I am given to understand that the Colts lost the Super Bowl last evening.
I am given to understand this because I had to wait for them to interview everybody down to the water boy's third cousin's dog about how they felt about the game before they got around to the trivial news items, like the blizzard that's coming this way or the apartment building that burned to the ground nearby. (Which explains the helicopters orbiting overhead last night.)
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Down the memory hole.
Anti-gun New York liberal Democrat Harold Ford Jr. (aka "the politician formerly known as pro-gun Tennessee conservative Democrat Harold Ford Jr.") once gave a speech for the NRA extolling the virtues of Guns, Mom, and Apple Pie. Except now it has apparently unhappened.
My new retirement plan...
Given the state of the economy, my new retirement plan is to buy shares of the jackass that claims to represent my best interests in Congress for what he's worth, and then sell them for what he thinks he's worth.
Given the fact that his P/E ratio makes the business model of the Underpants Gnomes look sensible and well thought-out, I can't lose.
Given the fact that his P/E ratio makes the business model of the Underpants Gnomes look sensible and well thought-out, I can't lose.
Simplicity by design.
In writing yesterday's post about pocket autos, I spent some time examining the actual pistols as well as exploded drawings. I also looked at the drawings of the two early American autos of which I don't yet have representative examples on hand, the Remington 51 and the Smith & Wesson .35. Most pocket pistols on the market after World War Two sprang from one of three evolutionary families: The 1903/1908 Colt/Brownings, the Walther PP, or the Beretta. That's what makes a look at the pistols from the Cambrian Explosion of self-loader design so fascinating: All manner of solutions to the problem of constructing a reasonably powerful, pocketable, self-loading pistol were tried before the market was thinned to the few that survive today.
The Colt is easily the most familiar, and not only because Colt's made more than half a million of the things over forty-something years. The basic structure of the John Browning design is elegant in its simplicity and several basic features have been copied down through the years by numerous handgun manufacturers.
The Savage is probably the second best known, and it should be, with a production run of several hundred thousand guns in a little over twenty years. The brainchild of one Elbert Searle, it's another simple and elegant design, if a little odd to our eyes, being somewhat of an evolutionary dead-end. Blowback-operated with a slight mechanical delay, its double-stack magazine was futuristic for the time and it contained even fewer parts than the Colt, but a combination of constant redesigns, overproduction, and a slumping market put paid to Savage's pistol efforts.
The H&R took a fairly simple, if odd-looking, Webley & Scott Police Pistol design and, through conversion to striker-firing and addition of a magazine safety, managed to up the parts count to 49; over a dozen more than the Browning design and almost two-thirds more parts than Searle's little pistol. They can't have been making money on those, and the fact that they disappeared from the market so fast suggests that they weren't.
Smith & Wesson, like H&R a revolver company, shopped for an outside design as well, finally settling on the Belgian Clement. With controls that were counter intuitive (the manual safety was a thumbwheel on the backstrap that pretty much could not be operated with the hand in a firing grip), baroque mechanicals (a parts count that far outstripped even the H&R), and extremely complex construction, S&W hammered the last nail in the coffin by arrogantly designing their own pocket pistol cartridge in 1913, when the rest of the market had already settled on Colt's .32ACP. Smith's .35 cartridge got Betamaxed, and the gun itself sank without a ripple; 8,000 were made in an eight year run at a time when Colt and Savage were selling tens of thousands a year.
Remington was the last player to arrive, showing up in 1917 with a graceful, futuristic-looking pistol designed by the great John D. Pedersen: The Remington 51. But its graceful, futuristic-looking lines concealed a funky, floating breech/indirect blowback mechanism and complex innards; Browning's pocket pistol contained five springs while Pedersen's had seven (S&W's Clement clone had nine!) Despite the greater complexity, Remington attempted to undercut Colt's on price, selling its offering for less than sixteen bucks when Colts catalogued for just over twenty. Late to the market, the Remington autos didn't survive the Depression.
And if you think there were some weird ones on the domestic market, well, that's just the start...
The Colt is easily the most familiar, and not only because Colt's made more than half a million of the things over forty-something years. The basic structure of the John Browning design is elegant in its simplicity and several basic features have been copied down through the years by numerous handgun manufacturers.
The Savage is probably the second best known, and it should be, with a production run of several hundred thousand guns in a little over twenty years. The brainchild of one Elbert Searle, it's another simple and elegant design, if a little odd to our eyes, being somewhat of an evolutionary dead-end. Blowback-operated with a slight mechanical delay, its double-stack magazine was futuristic for the time and it contained even fewer parts than the Colt, but a combination of constant redesigns, overproduction, and a slumping market put paid to Savage's pistol efforts.
The H&R took a fairly simple, if odd-looking, Webley & Scott Police Pistol design and, through conversion to striker-firing and addition of a magazine safety, managed to up the parts count to 49; over a dozen more than the Browning design and almost two-thirds more parts than Searle's little pistol. They can't have been making money on those, and the fact that they disappeared from the market so fast suggests that they weren't.
Smith & Wesson, like H&R a revolver company, shopped for an outside design as well, finally settling on the Belgian Clement. With controls that were counter intuitive (the manual safety was a thumbwheel on the backstrap that pretty much could not be operated with the hand in a firing grip), baroque mechanicals (a parts count that far outstripped even the H&R), and extremely complex construction, S&W hammered the last nail in the coffin by arrogantly designing their own pocket pistol cartridge in 1913, when the rest of the market had already settled on Colt's .32ACP. Smith's .35 cartridge got Betamaxed, and the gun itself sank without a ripple; 8,000 were made in an eight year run at a time when Colt and Savage were selling tens of thousands a year.
Remington was the last player to arrive, showing up in 1917 with a graceful, futuristic-looking pistol designed by the great John D. Pedersen: The Remington 51. But its graceful, futuristic-looking lines concealed a funky, floating breech/indirect blowback mechanism and complex innards; Browning's pocket pistol contained five springs while Pedersen's had seven (S&W's Clement clone had nine!) Despite the greater complexity, Remington attempted to undercut Colt's on price, selling its offering for less than sixteen bucks when Colts catalogued for just over twenty. Late to the market, the Remington autos didn't survive the Depression.
And if you think there were some weird ones on the domestic market, well, that's just the start...
Snowmageddon, Round Two:
The TeeWee weather gnomes are saying that if I liked Friday, I'm gonna love Monday night and Tuesday, because it'll be more of the same only maybe more so.
Since we ate all the sled dogs, we'll have to catch the neighbors and harness them to the sled to run to town for provisions before a fresh blanket of white death lands on us.
Since we ate all the sled dogs, we'll have to catch the neighbors and harness them to the sled to run to town for provisions before a fresh blanket of white death lands on us.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Contact your Congressman.
Our Representative in Congress asked for his constituents' opinions. Bobbi sent him hers.
I did not know that...
Frank Chadwick, the game designer indirectly responsible for so much wasted time in my adolescence, has a blog.
Also indirectly, it was exposure to the '80s-era U.S. military through his games that caused me to predict, when a couple of older friends tried to tell me that the Gulf War was going to be a stalemated bloodbath and I didn't understand because I didn't remember Vietnam, that the whole thing would be over in "a week, tops, once the first tanks roll. It's going to be the most one-sided ass whuppin' in the history of modern warfare. Care to bet?" As you know, the Army beat the point spread and I won twenty bucks.
Also indirectly, it was exposure to the '80s-era U.S. military through his games that caused me to predict, when a couple of older friends tried to tell me that the Gulf War was going to be a stalemated bloodbath and I didn't understand because I didn't remember Vietnam, that the whole thing would be over in "a week, tops, once the first tanks roll. It's going to be the most one-sided ass whuppin' in the history of modern warfare. Care to bet?" As you know, the Army beat the point spread and I won twenty bucks.
Trapped beneath the Great Broad Ripple Glacier...
Supplies gone. Ate last of sled dogs early this A.M. For God's sake, send help. I hope this signal makes it out.
Actually, we got just over six inches of snow, and now we have some wind coming in behind it; out of Mordor to the northwest and gusting 25-35mph. It was a fluffy, wet snow, too, and when you combined that with the breezes that kicked up last night, you could hear the occasional branch letting go in the greenbelt along the Monon Trail.
On a related note, does anyone know why one is supposed to run to the grocery store and buy French Toast fixins when snow is in the forecast?
Actually, we got just over six inches of snow, and now we have some wind coming in behind it; out of Mordor to the northwest and gusting 25-35mph. It was a fluffy, wet snow, too, and when you combined that with the breezes that kicked up last night, you could hear the occasional branch letting go in the greenbelt along the Monon Trail.
On a related note, does anyone know why one is supposed to run to the grocery store and buy French Toast fixins when snow is in the forecast?
Friday, February 05, 2010
Only the lonely, Part Deux.
The Loophole Loophole.
“Loophole” = “People Doing Legal $#!t I Don’t Like”.
Later on, I will exploit the Carbon Footprint Loophole to take my Mass Transit Loophole to the Starving The Poor People Loophole and get some Unhealthy Food Loophole for dinner.
Because we don't like it, that's why.
More whining from the Indianapolis Parakeet Primer, this time on the issue of letting anybody other than muggers carry guns on the Monon Trail:
Why the sudden sloppy wet kisses for Ballard, anyway? The "No Enemies On The Left" editorial board at the Star hates his Republican guts, so the public hand-holding here is more than a little unusual.
We have made these points before, and that has not stopped government from permitting firearms in Indiana state parks or national parks. So Coleman has a precedent, albeit an unfortunate one."Unfortunate"? I must have missed all those stories about CCW permit holders flipping out and shooting up state parks...
Why the sudden sloppy wet kisses for Ballard, anyway? The "No Enemies On The Left" editorial board at the Star hates his Republican guts, so the public hand-holding here is more than a little unusual.
Speak, Clippy! Speak! Now roll over!
One of the more interesting jobs I've had was working as the dispatcher-in-all-but-name for a corporate flight department operating a fleet of Cessna twins out of a suburban Atlanta airport.
I'd sit in my office off the hangar and do my paperwork and coordinate couriers and suchlike until my second-to-last flight had landed at around 0100. (My last guy would already be homeward-bound from MSY by then, but even with a tailwind he wouldn't be on the ground at LZU 'til 0migod30...) Then I'd roll my motorcycle out of the hangar, lock the place up, and head home. Good times, good times...
But it'd get pretty lonely late nights at the airport, waiting for my last flight to get in on the far side of the Witching Hour. The FBO was all closed for the night and there wasn't a soul for a quarter mile in any direction except for the coyotes who lived out between the taxiways. And we had just had MS Office installed on the new PC.
As a consequence, I am probably the only person on the planet who has fond memories of Clippy the Annoying Anthropomorphic Paperclip. It was either him to keep me company, or the droids on the Weather Channel, and they weren't as lifelike...
I'd sit in my office off the hangar and do my paperwork and coordinate couriers and suchlike until my second-to-last flight had landed at around 0100. (My last guy would already be homeward-bound from MSY by then, but even with a tailwind he wouldn't be on the ground at LZU 'til 0migod30...) Then I'd roll my motorcycle out of the hangar, lock the place up, and head home. Good times, good times...
But it'd get pretty lonely late nights at the airport, waiting for my last flight to get in on the far side of the Witching Hour. The FBO was all closed for the night and there wasn't a soul for a quarter mile in any direction except for the coyotes who lived out between the taxiways. And we had just had MS Office installed on the new PC.
As a consequence, I am probably the only person on the planet who has fond memories of Clippy the Annoying Anthropomorphic Paperclip. It was either him to keep me company, or the droids on the Weather Channel, and they weren't as lifelike...
Next round in the magazine.
Leafing through this month's issue of SWAT Magazine
, I notice that next month there will be a review of the Awerbuck course I attended last summer. I hope there are no pics of me looking old and fat in the background.
(Erick Gelhaus reviewed the Guncrafter Industries .50 GI Glock conversion and, without coming out and saying "it sucks", basically said it sucks. This joins Denny Hansen's Nighthawk Custom review and Louis Awerbuck's Benelli M4 review as some of my favorite moments in gun review journalism...)
, I notice that next month there will be a review of the Awerbuck course I attended last summer. I hope there are no pics of me looking old and fat in the background.(Erick Gelhaus reviewed the Guncrafter Industries .50 GI Glock conversion and, without coming out and saying "it sucks", basically said it sucks. This joins Denny Hansen's Nighthawk Custom review and Louis Awerbuck's Benelli M4 review as some of my favorite moments in gun review journalism...)
Snowpocalypse Now?
So last weekend they were saying that this weekend would be nice, but cold. Then, early in the week they started making noises about rain. Or maybe some of that "wintry mix" stuff. By Wednesday, they had changed their predictions to "zomg it's teh snowmageddon!!!eleven!"
We are up early here at Roseholme Cottage because roomie has to go tend starship engines at some ungodly hour of the morning and when one person is awake in a tiny little house like this, well, then both people might as well be. And I'm watching the weather to see if Bobbi is headed off into howling white death or not.
The Full Color 360-Degree Ultra Doppler Weather Radar says it's busy wintry mixing already. My trusty Mark 1 Mod 0 Window says differently. I'm skeptical; we'll see.
We are up early here at Roseholme Cottage because roomie has to go tend starship engines at some ungodly hour of the morning and when one person is awake in a tiny little house like this, well, then both people might as well be. And I'm watching the weather to see if Bobbi is headed off into howling white death or not.
The Full Color 360-Degree Ultra Doppler Weather Radar says it's busy wintry mixing already. My trusty Mark 1 Mod 0 Window says differently. I'm skeptical; we'll see.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Stay away from the brown acid.
Courtesy of Snowflakes In Hell, I have seen the most incredibly dadaist political advertisement ever:
I was mildly disappointed that a flaming midget clown on a tricycle never pedaled furiously through the meadow yelling "Verboten!". Other than that, it was very nearly perfect.
I was mildly disappointed that a flaming midget clown on a tricycle never pedaled furiously through the meadow yelling "Verboten!". Other than that, it was very nearly perfect.
Oh, what the heck.
Overheard in the Kitchen:
Me: "Wow, Rannie made good time running across the house as soon as my back was turned. Quiet, too; I didn't even hear her."
RX: "That's what they were made to do."
Me: "Run silently across hardwood floors?"
RX: "Run silently in general."
Me: "Still, that's bothersome. I'm normally pretty solid at hearing the pitter patter of running cat feet up to no good. I must be getting old."
RX: "Well, Tamara, you know what it means if you stop getting old."
Me: "Yeah, you become a vampire and have to feast on the blood of the living."
RX: "Uh, that's not where I was going with that."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
