The Blag Switch

Here’s a slick machining hack to get around the (much lamented) shortage of .223 Rem and 5.56 NATO ammunition shortages: make your own bullets from .22LR cases and lead wire.  Now I’m a little skittish to try this myself (as tempting as it may be, since I have a beautiful Sig 556 which I haven’t taken to the range in far too long), but that’s mainly because I don’t trust my handloading skills enough to try something like this.

Still, I may show this to my dad (a cartridge collector and handloader extraordinaire) next I’m down his direction and ask if he thinks it’d be feasible to set myself up for it.

Of course, it doesn’t look like the .223 shortage will be getting better anytime soon.  And even if it did, there’s still high ammo prices to deal with.  Copper’s hovering at right around $3/lb according to COMEX, up from less than a $1 a few years ago.  Lead’s up by a similar factor.  For those of us who are morally opposed to running Eastern Block steel-cased, magnet-attracting ammo through our rifles, it means that a day at the range can be kind of a pricey proposition.

But hey, it least it means I’m getting PLENTY of trigger time on my trusty old Mosin 91/30.  Nothing like half-century-old Bulgarian Mil-Surp ammo to make for (comparitively) cheap shooting.

SpaceX’s Falcon One reached orbit today, making it the first privately-funded space craft ever to do so.  Welcome one and all to the era of private space flight.

Randall Munroe, the mad genius behind XKCD, serves up probably the best analysis of the “Airplane on a Treadmill” debate to date.  Money quote (after comparing interpretations of the problem):

So, people who go with interpretation #3 notice immediately that the plane cannot move and keep trying to condescendingly explain to the #2 crowd that nothing they say changes the basic facts of the problem. The #2 crowd is busy explaining to the #3 crowd that planes aren’t driven by their wheels. Of course, this being the internet, there’s also a #4 crowd loudly arguing that even if the plane was able to move, it couldn’t have been what hit the Pentagon.

Well worth a read.  He also links to some of the finest math/science paradoxes around, so be prepared for a heavy mental workout.

For the record: I’m firmly in the “plane takes off as normal” camp regardless of which interpretation of the problem one accepts.  Any physically plausible construction of the problem can be resolved by the fact that the plane’s engines push against the air and its wheels are merely to provide rolling friction against the ground, instead of having to just scrape the belly of the plane across the tarmac.  This  is the same reason why a plane could take off from a frictionless surface (with or without the landing gear down.)

Man, today was awesome.  It started with a long, relaxing early drive to the Tri-Cities (that is, once I got the van started) in my long-faithful van, Rosinante.  Alas, that was to be my last time driving Rosinante.  He’s a good steed, but getting old (175,000 miles) and he’s starting to fail.  He’s been getting hard to start, he doesn’t shift like he used to, and many of his engine parts are making increasingly concerning noises.  So today, I officially put Rosinante out to stud (read: he’s getting a tune up from my two older brothers, Bruce and Darrell, and then he’s being consigned to a life as a strictly around-town cargo van for Bruce, who often needs to haul around a lot of tools.)

In his place I went and acquired a brand new (2009) Subaru Forrester:

He’s a lot of fun to drive, and after a long drive through the hills this evening, I’ve decided to call him Montag.

(Side note: yes, I name my cars.  I come from a long line of mechanically inclined, blue-collar men, all of whom find it utterly bizarre to name them.  For some reason, I do it compulsively. Go figure.)

After signing all the paperwork and crossing the ‘i’s and dotting the ‘t’s, I brought Montag home, gave my parents a spin around the neighborhood, then took off to my good friend Matt’s bachelor party.  Matt’s recently back from Iraq and, in the many years since he and I graduated high school and the few years since we graduated college, our friends have mostly dispersed themselves to the far corners of the country.  As such, the bachelor party was pretty laid back, consisting of me, Matt, and our friends Mike and Charlie, who’d made it down from Bellingham for the occasion.  So after steak, a couple of beers, and a few hours of comraderie, Matt went off to other engagements and the party continued without him.

So a long drive, a new car, and a celebration in honor of my oldest friend.  Days like this are truly both wonderful and rare.

Courtest of Cyanide & Happiness and Overcompensating.  (Click on the comics to embiggen.)