CNN "Gun Control" Op-Ed Piece and Rebuttal

Thanks to Old_NFO, I found this site that gives the rebuttla to the brain-dead CNN piece.

Fisking a Gun Control Editorial
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Quiet, Relaxing, Goof-Off Day

We're in the midst of our next launch campaign, so I've been pretty busy at work the last week or so.

We busted our tails Thursday and Friday, with the result that we (my little RF group) didn't have to work this weekend.

SO....I slept in till 9 this morning (oh you sluggard!), and I've been just goofing off today. My son is coming over tomorrow so we can work on his car stereo/navigation unit, and I'm taking the Mrs out to dinner tonight to one of our favorite places, George's Greek Cafe.

If you *EVER* get in the Long Beach area, stop in for some of the best Greek food on the planet.  Friendly staff, excellent service, very reasonable prices, and as I said, most excellent Greek cuisine.

And I've been making some drawings and little fiddly bits for the all new-and-improved portable satellite station I'm going to use next year at Field Day.

I've got a super duty, 5' tall all metal surveyor's tripod that I bought for about $30. I'm going to make an aluminum mounting plate to bolt my Yaesu G-5400 Azimuth/Elevation rotator to it, separate the two rotator sections with about 3' of 2" heavy wall aluminum pipe, use one of my "spare" fiberglass cross-booms, a "spare" dual-band antenna, some preamplifiers I just bought from a friend, and I'll have an antenna setup that gives my 90% of the performance of my "big" setup, that's about 1/4th the weight, and 10 times easier to set up and tear down.

"Knucle Draggin' My Life Away" on Hiatus

Ken (wirecutter) over at "Knuckle Draggin' My Life Away" has decided to take a break for a while.

Although I'm sure 99% of the blogosphere knew this before me, I understand it.

C'mon back anytime, Ken.....you've got a lot of friends out here!

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You Didn't Build That

My buddy Jeffro found this, and it's amazing.

WELL on it's way to becoming one of the top websites of the year, I'd say....

You Didn't Build That

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20 Reasons Why It's Good To Be Barack Obama

1) It's all the golf you can play and as many free vacations as you want. The teleprompter tells you what to say to the crowd and if anybody makes a joke about you, someone calls him a racist!

2) You get a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up.

3) No matter how much worse black Americans do under you than George W. Bush, Kanye West is never going to say, "Barack Obama doesn't care about black people."

4) You can eat a dog and PETA will still love you.

5) No one seems to find it odd that you simultaneously repeat Harry Truman's famous line, "The buck stops here" -- as you blame George Bush, Republicans in Congress, greedy corporations, the European economy, and even ATM machines for your many, many failures.

6) The Occupy Movement still loves you despite the fact that you've shoveled billions of dollars in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street firms via bailouts and loan programs.

7) You can have a net worth of 11 million dollars, go on multiple 6 figure vacations per year, and hobnob with the wealthiest Americans at swanky 40k a plate fundraisers; yet no one bats an eye when you criticize Mitt Romney for being rich.

8) The press doesn't incessantly repeat the body count in Afghanistan in every article about the war, like it did when George Bush was in Iraq.

9) You get to keep Gitmo open, sign on to the Patriot Act, fight in Afghanistan and kill terrorists with drone attacks while leftists complain that you haven't tried to go after Bush for committing "war crimes" because he did the same things.

10) The mainstream press judges you not on what you've done, but on whatever you happen to be saying right this moment, even if it's different from what you were saying yesterday.

11) After creating jobs overseas with stimulus money, you can criticize Mitt Romney for having a Swiss bank account without being laughed at despite the fact you're holding fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, Paris and China.

12) The same press that was utterly uninterested in your background when you ran for office in 2008 considers Mitt Romney's religion, what date he left Bain Capital, and how hard his wife worked when she was taking care of their kids much more important than anything you did over the last 3 1/2 years as President.

13) You can simultaneously block the keystone pipeline and ANWR while you hold up offshore drilling in the Gulf and demonize oil companies, yet claim with a straight face that you're trying to reduce gas prices.

14) Despite the fact that you're conducting war across the globe and have never served in the military, nobody calls you a chickenhawk.

15) Even though your administration helped kill 300 people with guns, including an American citizen, gun control advocates have zero interest in getting to the bottom of it.

16) You have the single most important job on earth and yet, most people seem to be thrilled that you're spending more time campaigning for reelection than you do working.

17) The mainstream media is much more concerned with the possible racism or bad motives of anyone questioning you than it is with whether your policies actually work.

18) No matter how much of an utter failure you are, most black Americans feel compelled to pretend you're not a disaster because they're afraid everyone will judge them by how incompetent you turned out to be.

19) You have a National Debt Charge Card with a limit of "Infinity" and you're not scared to use it.

20) Your biggest accomplishments so far after killing Osama Bin Laden are ending the manned space program, having the longest string of over 8% unemployment of any President since WWII, putting more Americans for food stamps than any other President in history, killing the work requirements in welfare, giving up on stopping illegal aliens, adding more debt in three and a half years than Bush did in eight, and decimating America's health care system with the least popular entitlement program in history. Yet, you still have a chance to be reelected. It doesn't get any better than that.

Go Kart Racing

A week or so ago when my son and I were were headed back from the range, he mentioned that we should go kart racing one of these days.

Well.....we went today.

Now I've done more than just a bit of racing in the past. I used to run SCCA B-Production cars, and even won the regional title back in 1974.
And I've done my share of after-hours racing out on the deserted two lane blacktops back in Illinois. We knew the roads very well, and blocked off both ends, and any intersecting roads, and went at it. Not "Street Racing" in the sense that you hear about in the news, but still pretty illicit. The cops knew we did it, and pretty much left the group I was with alone, as we NEVER did anything in town, and strongly discouraged all our peers from doing stupid shit on the main streets, side streets, or any other streets in town.
A few years ago, one of my buddies talked me into going to driver's school down at Lake Perris. My buddy continued his kart racing, and last I heard was doing quite well in the Denver area.

ANYWAY....we went to the K1 Speed  indoor track today, and I had an absolute blast. The karts are electric powered, with a 20 h.p. motor, and can reach speeds of 40~45 mph.

The facility is clean, well-equipped, and the staff are very friendly and helpful. If you have a question, or need some help, somebody is there pronto to assist you.

Now some people might say this isn't "real" racing, but then they've probably never raced anything in their lives.

Trust me, this IS "real" racing. The karts accelerate very quickly, have more than enough power to slide through the corners controlled by the throttle (NOT the fast way around), have hydraulic disc brakes, real racing tires, a 3-point harness, roll bars, and look to be fairly well built.

My first race had me throttled back electronically, but the second race they let me have full power. Took a few laps for me to get on my game (it's a perishable skill, just like marksmanship), and I started turning faster laps.

I'm sure we'll be going back, as my son wants a rematch after I beat him!
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Get OUT!

Courtesy of USA_Admiral

ZOMG!!! THE SUN EXPLODED!!!!!

This whole current flap about the Coronal Mass Ejection that happened earlier this week is a big ZERO.
We've had MUCH larger Solar Flares and CME's in the last several years, and there's been little to NO damage on the Earth.
The satellite operators have far more to worry about, but even they haven't seen anything from this one.
The fact NOAA and NASA can't agree on how big/damaging this one is/was/MIGHT be should tell you something.
Personally, I tend to favor NOAA, as they've always had a better grip on Space Weather than NASA.
The lead-in picture is from an M7.9 solar flare that occurred on 24 March 2012, and the bottom picture is from today, 14 July 2012, at 19:16 UTC.

Police Action In Downtown L.A.

Been listening to my scanner for a while, and there's something going on around 4th/5th and Spring/Broadway.
They were using an air unit (chopper) to vector the police around to try and box up a crowd that had attempted to roll over a van and torch it.
"Less Than Lethal" approval came through about 15 minutes ago, and I just heard them give the order to fire:
"Bean Bags Only, Target The Instigators".

Hmmm....wonder if this will make the news tomorrow?

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It's Raining.....

In Southern California.
In July.
Huh....must be GloBULL Warming!
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50 Years Ago Today......

Telstar was launched.

While not a Geostationary satellite, it never the less ushered in a new era in telecommunications.
Since it wasn't in a Geosynchronous orbit, it had to be tracked across the sky, using the Andover Earth Station, built by AT&T.

Launched from Cape Canaveral using a Delta rocket, it had an orbit with a perigee of approximately 590 miles, and an apogee of approximately 3680 miles.

Telstar I and II are both still in orbit, though they have long since gone silent.
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