There's Just One Tiny Catch

Researchers are hot on the trail of a promising treatment for spinal injuries. It really looks like a winner! There's only one thing: you'll turn blue.

Considering the downside, it seems a small price to pay.

More Freudian Than Thou

Update: Speaking of warnings and bans, guess what happens when you try to tell Turks "No fumar?"
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Freudianer than you? Heck, they're more Freudian than Freud!

Nathan Brindle links to news of a group that wants -- demands! -- a cancer warning on hot dogs. Yup, weenies, favored treat of many a youngster.

I was trying to relate this to L. Neil Smith's illuminating theory that the for-you-own-good crowd is afraid of fire: smokes, nukes, guns, smokestacks, smoked meats, fossil fuels, internal and external combustion engines, etc., etc. when it occurred to me that we have not one but two groups of nappy-wetters at work and what the other group fears and loathes most is, well, anything longer than it is wide, and doubly so if it happens to be cylindrical. There's a lot of overlap with the fire-haters (cigars, firearms, smokestacks, locomotives, fast cars and so on) but on a few issues their particular imprint stands out and the humble frankfurter is one of 'em. They're terrified of the penis.

All it takes is a quick glance at the body of feminist writing (or fifteen minutes of Oprah!) to recognize the source of this but it has roots even farther back, in the Mrs.-Grundyism of the Mauve decade and long before.

Well, 'scroom. I grew up eating hot dogs and -- to the possible consternation of the weenieworriers out there -- my favorite form of 'em was sliced into discs and cooked in vegetable soup!

Holy cow. Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, nitwits; even Rene Magritte would go that far.

More Things That Induce Monitor-Punching Impulses

PayPal, those stalwart friends of freedom except for, oh horrors, guns, pulled the plug on the charity Soldier's Angels, 'cos they were sellin' raffle tickets for a, sob, gasp, pistol. Yes, an actual shooty-go-bang thing, eww, ick.

...After some of what had to be interesting communication, they did reinstate all of Soldier's Angels PayPallage...except that horrid nasty raffle. Yeah, dang, some vile, uncaring, inhuman critter -- me, for instance -- might've been able to enter, win, have to do a full-on Federal Firearms Transfer involving Federally-licensed dealers at each end, undergo a Federal background check and -- if they passed the check and paid for the transfer -- take possession of an actual handgun. Odds are quite excellent that whoever does win will already own several additional handguns, shotguns, and/or rifles, both the evil black kind and the other sort.

But by gosh, PayPal is keepin' the Internets pure. For a fatheaded value of "pure."

"Lips that touch tobacco," they demurely aver, "will never touch ours." No, wait, you can PayPal yourself a smoke as near as I can tell; the other things they won't letcha use PayPal for are dope of any sort or dope-use hardware, porn rated "obscene" and adult hardware likewise, copyright and/or trademark violations and other ways to diddle privacy or intellectual property, anything illeeegal, racist or hateful or that profits off crime, or Ponzi schemes and the like. Yeah, gee, the right of free men and women to bear arms in their own defense and for the defense of the State just fits right in that list, dunnit? You bet. Just like a scoop of green-tea ice cream on a pile o' dusty red bricks.

PayPal: they strike me as fretful. Timid. Oh, I confess, I could well be wrong; still, I'm thinking of the nice little bald actor with the high-pitched voice who always played a bank teller in Westerns. Oh, yeah. Him.

He Makes Me Want To Punch My Monitor

...A fat-headed nitwit pontificating in the Christian Science Monitor, sneering at the free market he has never seen and looking down at a mercantilism he misnames "capitalism."

Old commies never die, it seems, they just make stuff up and then try to smear it on the minds of the young, using their own dung as ink. "Could the Great Recession lead to a Great Revolution?" he pleads of the Fates. Jeez, I hope so, just so you can get down with some home-grown Khmer Rouge. Er, Professor, you don't by any chance wear glasses, do you? 'Cos some of your buds, well, they are just not down with that.

PS: here's a little more commynism for ya -- this group purports to be a bunch of lemmings happy to slash their own throats so bums can drink. Awwww. It's enough to make a hog gassy. Wanna bet none of them will ante up 'til Washington makes everyone in their (claimed) bracket do the same?

That I should be reaching my sunset years in such times...!

What Day Is It?

...Oh, yeah, it's the day where I have try to get done all the things I didn't do yesterday. Oops.

Headache continues, though either it is getting a little weaker or I have become accustomed to it and in either case, I don't have any choice; there are tasks I simply must accomplish. So it's getting-ready time for me.


Oldest Tomcat was quite ill yesterday, too, though he is better today. He's been affectionate this morning, perhaps feeling he had a pretty close call yesterday evening.


My thanks to Og for a pointer to a less-costly 1911 grip bushing tap (60 pitch, those threads are, which is scary-fine). Alas, I also saw this screwdriver set, which is what I will buy if I win the lottery. Um, if I played the lottery. It's funny, I don't think anyone makes a center-piloted driver to fit 1911 grip screw bushings, something akin to the "slot and dot" drivers used for similar screws on some Sony equipment and Phone Co. style patch cable plugs. (Update: Of course they make grip screw bushing specific drivers, just in a different way).

1911 Help?

Does anyone out there have a tap for the frame threads of a 1911 grip screw bushing? My Sistema Colt's got an issue -- I don't know if it was someone's staking job gone wrong or what, but one of the grip screw bushings was loose and turned out to be stripped (external threads on the bushing, not the frame). It was getting looser and looser and making the gun less fun to shoot.

No problem, right? Get another bushing, install, done. I picked up a few at the last Indy 1500 gun show and after our most recent trip to the range, had a try at swapping out the bad one, which was when I discovered it was essentially de-threaded.

The problem: there's a burr or something on the tapped hole in the frame, which very neatly eats up the threads of the bushing. The threads are too fine to clear with an X-acto blade (sneaky trick but sometimes it works on shallow tapped holes). So, I need a tap. $39.99 new at Brownells, ouch. 'Druther buy a used one, or borrow one (on pain of replacement if damaged, taps being what you might consider an occasionally consumable item).

Anyone?

Darn It

Home sick again -- migraine and other issues. Bedarned if I know what's going on; for sure I ate something I didn't agree with but this is ridiculous.

The spirit is willing but the flesh isn't up to anything more demanding than a trip to the kitchen for a glass of water.

The Stimulators

or "One Weak Week Weak Stimulus"

Or something; it's an AP story (motto: "Don't quote us! We'll sue! We'll sue!") but it makes for interesting reading withal. A significant fraction of those "stimulus" jobs are 40 hours or less of paid work, total. Not "per week," per the entire job: it takes forty hours and you're back on the sidewalk, tryin' to remember who you know within walking distance who'll let you sleep on their couch. But for Congress, this counts as a "job created by the stimulus, lookit how well it is working!" For this, they are picking your pocket. And your children's pockets and their children's pockets and on and on....

Forget reading for the law, kiddo; if you wanna be a politician when you grow up, take up prestidigitation.

Tuesday Assortment

As I type, I am being assailed by a very old tomcat who has convinced himself that he'd enjoy cinnamon toast. Probably not, old pal, and in any event, it's my breakfast and you've already had yours. It's not so much that he really wants it and he's certainly not hungry; but Mom's having it, so it must be good.

This is one of the risks you run when your elderly cats -- Tam has dubbed them "geriatricats" -- take up residence on your desk; the advent of flat-screen monitors left a nice space on a slightly elevated shelf, which they have claimed, despite Slinky's inability to get on the desk by herself. (Tommy still manages, by climbing onto my chair or a cat-carrier stores beside the desk). What the heck, it's safe, warm, and they're close by.
* * *Finished Project Mars. Von Braun would've had a better yarn if he'd left his Martians out; there are several lumps of sententious moralizing that do nothing to advance the plot, though they are a fascinating glimpse at some of the inclinations that kept him playing along with the German army 'til it was much too late to back out. Interesting translation quibble: at one point, he's writing of the attitudes and drives that give rise to human and Martian behavior and names a couple of notions as the "sire and dam" of the urge to explore; but uses the words in the form "siring and damming..." Tsk. That does not play so well in English.
* * *Word is the next Indiana BlogMeet will be 9 August, just in time for Farmer Frank's sweet corn harvest! Probably at Broad Ripple Brew Pub.
* * *No time to check this for the inevitable typos, so enjoy 'em! More later, I hope.

Reading

[The rocket] had passed the transonic speed range and was approaching...10,000 m/sec without incident. Suddenly, the flight path began to fluctuate. Observers later reported that she had yawed to the left and that the contrail behind her fiery jet then became wavy. A few seconds later, the vessel broke apart. the aftermost portion blew up in an explosion whose shock wave was audible at the launching site much later. The smaller forepart of the ship continued upwards on a steep ballistic parabola, passed its maximum ordinate, and fell with still increasing velocity into the sea.

Is it:
A) A particularly vivid account of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster?
B) A news story about a troubled Soviet launch?
C) Werner von Braun, trying his hand at a science fiction novel in 1949?

If your answer was C, you win! I'm reading von Braun's Project Mars: A Technical Tale and the first part's not all that bad, especially for the time it was written, though not only is all the math, physics and astronomy right -- as was so proudly said of the crop of hard SF writers who came on the scane about then -- he has a tendency to show his work. In detail. On the other hand, while his assumptions can be broad, there's no accusing him of hand-waving.

His brave astronauts have now landed on Mars and the yarn has turned a bit...philosophical. I'm suspending judgement.

If you ever wondered what was behind the stunning Chesely Bonestell paintings showing an expedition to Mars, this is it -- and the book includes several nicely printed color plates of them.

The book gets savage reviews at Amazon. Dr. von Braun's characters are not that bad, being generally what you get when an engineer or pilot writes writes of his peers; non-technical readers often complain they are lacking in angst-filled depth, not understanding that the drama to be found in technical challenges. (George O. Smith's Venus Equilateral yarns, filled with people just like the ones I work with, have often been so criticized -- "cardboard!'' -- even though he was a working electrical engineer and wrote about the kinds of people he was around every day) . The book suffers from having been written in German and translated by a man who was not, as nearly as I can tell, a writer of fiction. All that said, the first part holds up very well if read as an outline for a film script. It remains to be seen if the finish will be as strong.

No link; if you'd like to buy it, go to Tam's and use her Amazon.com window!

Eagle Creek Park Pistol Range

The range at Eagle Creek Park is (supposedly) open from 0900 to 1300 today. Might be a good idea to show up and make use of our city's nice public range. It's a good thing to keep it busy on the few hours it is open. It's a good thing to remind the Parks Department that the range is a welcome amenity. --They appear to have gotten a little better, as the official page now admits there is a pistol range, lists the number for the range and includes a link to unofficial web page for it; at one time you would search indy.gov's park pages in vain for the info.

IMPD's habit of grabbing the range on weekends with little to no notice, despite having exclusive use of it the entire rest of every week, remains a problem. This weekend, if they do as they've promised the hard-working volunteer ROs, at least the incursion into public hours was scheduled well in advance and they're only taking a three-hour bite out of our time. (Am I too nice? Look, an inexperienced person with a gun is dangrous and does not get less so if you give them a shiny badge and a dark-blue tunic. The more range time IMPD's officers get, the better off we all are -- but you'd think they'd want us non-LEO types to be more aware of which end the bullets come out of, too).

So head on out. Rumor has it you might find a certain famous blonde stitching tiny, tiny groups in her targets there!

Unlikely

Yet it is true: Tam and Salon offer much the same read and same advice for the same highly charged situation.

I am soooo confused.