Free Republic

Yes, the only thing that this poll proves is that people can be manipulated t give the answer that the pollster wants.

from the article: “There is no debate within the science community, based on the peer-reviewed literature, about the large changes occurring in the earth’s climate and the fact that these changes are occurring as a response to human activities, mainly burning fossil fuels,” said Dr. Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois.

Really? I wonder if Professor Don Easterbrook who recently addressed our state legislators here in Washington State would agree that there is no debate? Maybe Dr. Wuebbles can explain why their has been “no statistically significant” global warming for the past 15 years despite rising CO2 levels. Oh wait... none of his “climategate” buddies have been able to do that.

I agree... it does seem a little like deja-vu to me. I am comingat it from a different perspective however.

I worked as a “computer lab assistant” in the late 1980s. I was a computer “hobbiest” for many years prior to that. I worked on my first “radio shack digital computer IC chip kit when I was in the 5th grade in the early 1970s. I owned several “home computers” and put together a few XT and AT clones. I had also dabbled in programming and actually did have a small amount of formal training.

I had a very easy time helping students with their homework. So by the mid 1980s I had a good understanding of small computers from that time period. The main thing that I helped students with were Word Perfect, Lotus 123, DOS, Basic programming, and a couple of other introductory macro and programming languages. Graphical interfaces had been introduced but were still more of a curiosity to the business community so the community college didn’t really cover them.

I saw a lot of people with good jobs that they didn’t like who decided that they wanted to learn about “computers” and start a new career. Many of them had no understanding and worse... little aptitude for what they thought that they wanted to get into. What is different these days is that computers have become so ingrained in everything that we do that most people have an idea of whether or not they have an interest or aptitude for digging deeper into programming, web design, data entry or any other computer related field.

One of the students that I tried to help was a plumber with a god paying but unfulfilling job. He just wanted to get into “compuuters” and make more money. The poor guy had zero understanding and seemed to be unteachable but then he went on to a highly successful career at Microsoft... just kidding... he failed miserably. There are some people who simply have no aptitude for certain fields and others who can excell with almost no training at all.

I would imagine that most of the people who take these “boot camp” classes have already got some background and know a little about what they are getting into. It is hard to imagine someone spending $10,000 without cracking open a few books or watching a few instructional videos ahead of time.

The real incompetence is on the part of the “men” (again, I use the term loosely) who obviously don't know jack about teaching someone to shoot.

That is the same reaction that I always have when viewing these types of videos. Kind of good fun to watch, but sad that people are making their women feel like they are incapable of defending themselves. I want my wife to feel confident in her ability to defend herself. After a good deal of training she does.

She weighs right around 100 lbs.; She has been victimized by violent criminals in the past and is determined not to let it happen ever again. She takes a concealed pistol with her much of the time.

She has shot every gun we own and shows no apperant fear of recoil. This includings our 12 guage shot guns, so called “assault rifles” and also full powered battle rifles both bolt action and semi-auto. She uses a proper stance and a little shoulder padding. She enjoys shooting the bigger guns at the range. My goal has always been for her to have the proper respect for the weapons but to have fun while shooting them.

She is a very capable shooter; she has a number of options if she felt threatened at home. Her standard plan is to take cover in the bedroom and shoot any bad guys who get near her position. Her favorite rifle is still her trusty 30 carbine and would probably be her weapon of choice. Of course she has other choices with lasers and lights, but she would rather not reveal her position.

With the 30 carbine round there would not be a lot of over-penetration through our walls in the unlikely event that she missed... We live on an acre so the neighbors aren't real close anyway but that should still be a consideration. As far as stopping power... a 125 grain .357 mag clocks around 1400 fps or so from a pistol for approximately 550 ft. lbs. of force. The .30 Carbine shoots a 110 grain projectile at around 2,000 fps for approximately 967 ft. lbs. of force. Even Dirty Harry's weapon of choice the 44 mag only puts out approximately 1200 ft. lbs. of force when fired from a pistol.

I think that it is a good weapon for a woman who practices and has taken a defensive position inside of her home. I believe that my wife would act without hesitation and fire accurately. To give it a little better knock down power... I have assembled a couple batches of hollow points for her. We have spent some time at the range working on the recipe. They cycle fine and should expand and fragment when hitting their target. There is a good article about the 30 carbine and those types of reloads at: http://www.humanevents.com/2012/01/17/the-30-carbinenot-the-wussy-you-think/

I love how this type of story always seem to use pictures of the "teen" that were taken two to five years before the incident looking all cute... like this harmless little tyke...

This seems real simple to me — there was either a gun at the scene or there wasn’t. The story doesn’t say.

The caption below the picture of the gun says, “THE WEAPON: Police say Kimani “Kiki” Gray pulled this gun on them before cops killed him.” So yes, there was a gun at the scene.

The global warming alarmists have infiltrated so many government agencies all over the world. How they can justify hiding their data, their procedures for collecting the data and calculating their results should raise red flags with everyone.

We purchased some very expensive phones while Qwest was still offering cell phone service. Qwest sold their towers to Sprint and from that point forward we were Qwest customers using the Sprint network. I assumed that our service would improve, but immediately the quality of our service became unbearably bad. Our calls were dropped repeatedly.

It was explained to me by customer service that Qwest customers on the Sprint network were given the very lowest priority, so that any time a tower was filled to capacity we were the first to be bumped off. For months we were promised that the situation would improve soon.

I assumed that if we went switched to Sprint which meant we would have to pay nearly twice as much per month that at least we would get better service. I also assumed that we would be able to use our expensive Qwest phones. Our service did improve, but Sprint said that they could not allow us to use our Qwest phones because of an agreement that the two companies had made to help prevent Qwest customers whose contracts were up from switching to Sprint. It was apparently part of the tower sale agreement. So we had to buy new phones to use the same network.

We purchased another set of expensive phones, and our service improved immediately. I still have those expensive old phones sitting in a closet and I am still mad about it. That is what this “unlocking” thing is about... keeping customers who own their phones and are out of contract from switching to the up and coming pay as you go providers.

The article makes some good points, however I always have a problem when someone starts preaching that only the “experts” are capable of accomplishing certain tasks. Many times it is the non-experts who are the ones who come up with revolutionary new processes... or figure out new ways to use older technologies.

I do know understand the point he is trying to make however about people not understanding the limitations of the 3D printing process. I do remember the excitement I felt when a friend of mine first showed me products he was able to produce on a $60,000 machine he purchased several years ago. I thought it was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, he misjudged the market and lost his shirt, he had to sell nearly everything he owned and eventually declared bankruptcy.

I come from a manufacturing background. For many years I ran a small lumber re-manufacturing business. We made mostly siding, paneling, flooring, and other specialty products. As an example of how the wood re-manufacturing business worked we could run our customer's wood through certain machines at 120 feet per minute and get paid approximately 2 cents per lineal foot. That comes out to $2.40 per minute or $144 per hour while the machine is running.

It sounds pretty good, but there is a lot more downtime than anyone ever figures. The machine is frequently idled while product is moved to and from it, and there are frequent break downs and constant maintenance and sharpening or changing of blades that must be performed. My point is that you hardly ever make even half how one might think that it should pencil out. With a newer technology people tend to overestimate how much they will be able to produce to an even greater extent. This kind of unrealistic expectation is what caused my friend to fail at his new business.

He already had a business that he was making a decent living at, but when he tried to expand into this new area, he was unable to make it work the way he thought. I think he actually was swindled by the people who sold him the machinery. He was dazzled by the products that could be produced. Unfortunately, even if he could have successfully marketed the output, the amount of production necessary to make a profit was far beyond his capabilities.

I will be suprised if we are not paying around $8 per gallon within the next four years. Even that may not be up to the level that Obama’s lackies would liketo see.

I have a pretty bad case of tinnitus also. It acts up the most when I am stressed or don’t get enough sleep and also when I have been exposed to loud noises. There is a pretty big difference in ear muffs. Sometimes out at the range I do wear both muffs and plugs especially when I or someone else is shooting something really loud.

I have some Peltor ear muffs that are considerably more effective than the ones I picked up for a dollar or two at Harbor Freight. I would assume that the same variability goes for the electronic muffs. Price may not be the best indicator of effectiveness, so I too will be anxiously awaiting a response to your question.

“Coal is burnt to provide the US with almost half its electricity. This is done in huge central power plants and the process is very dirty.”

A modern coal fired power plant burns its fuel at a very high temperature so that the products of combustion are reduced down to CO2, water vapor, small amounts of SO2, and fine noncombustible ash. The exhaust gasses are then further scrubbed and filtered to remove the SO2 and the trace amounts of other gasses and virtually all of the ash. Most of the ash and residue from the scrubbers and filters are then used for building materials such as wall board. Far less particulate matter is released into the atmosphere than what comes from a typical diesel locomotive, which so called “environmentalists” favor. Older coal fired plants have either been retrofitted or regulated out of existence.

So what do they mean by “very dirty”? They are talking strictly about the CO2 emissions. CO2 is of course a trace gas in the atmosphere that has been on the rise. It is of course... harmless to living creatures at the trace levels currently in the atmosphere. CO2 is essential for the photosynthesis process in plant life which virtually. Even if all known coal, oil, and natural gas reserves were burned over the next year, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would still not reach a level that would be close to being harmful for humans and animals to breath.

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been many times higher in previous times than it is currently currently. Where did it all go? Plant life, algae, and plankton absorb much of it and convert it back into carbon and oxygen, but an even larger amount is absorbed by the oceans especially during times when the planet is cooling as it did during the so called “little ice age” which from approximately 1350 to 1800.

When there is a warming trend as there has been for approximately the past two hundred years... the oceans release vast amounts of this stored CO2. That is most likely why there is a lag of a hundred years or more between the levels of CO2 found in ice samples found deep within glaciers in Greenland and proxy signs of increasing global temperatures.

There actually is no empirical data that shows that CO2 warms the earth's atmosphere. The theory that CO2 causes “global warming” is a theory that so far the data cannot confirm. Conversely, the empirical evidence from ice cores does show that when the planet warms CO2 levels increase.

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has steadily increased at the same rate... despite the world wide economic downturn that along with “fracking” has actually decreased the amount of CO2 introduced into the atmosphere by the United States and most other developed countries. Mankind is only responsible for a fraction of the CO2 released into the worlds atmosphere.

Despite cherry picked data suggesting otherwise... we have seen temperatures level off over the past 16 years. This has been acknowledged even by many of the main characters caught up in the co called “climategate” scandal such as Phil Jones head of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University. So why hasn't CO2 measurements leveled off as well? Think of when you open up a can of pop that has been shaken. The syrupy liquid continues to bubble out for a while even after the shaking has stopped. The natural cyclic global warming we have seen over the past couple hundred years may have taken a pause for the past couple of decades, but the oceans are still releasing far more CO2 than mankind and will continue to do so for many many decades after we enter the next cooling cycle.

Volcanic activity and natural decay from plant and animal byproducts also release far more CO2 into the atmosphere than mankind. But do not fret for if history is any indicator... it is virtually assured that at some point in the future the oceans will again cool and CO2 levels will decline. So in the mean time lets worry about something real.

At least the motivation behind the Great Global Warming Hoax is finally starting to bubble to the surface for all to see. For the leftist politicians it has always been about just one thing... redistributing the wealth through a tax system that people will support to “save the planet”. Now we learn that “95% of economists” believe that raising taxes on energy will be good for the economy also.

Never mind that even the conspirators in the “climategate” scandals agree that there has been no “statistically significant warming” in the last 16 years. Never mind that every disaster predicting computer model based on the assumption that increasing CO2 are increasing world wide temperatures has been shown to be wildly inaccurate. It doesn't matter because further increasing the price of energy through taxation will be good for us all.

I think that they are overplaying their hand. Our power company gives us a graph of our energy usage for the past year along with information on the average temperature for the previous month as compared to the corresponding month a year ago. In our area this data shows that over the past decade our average temperatures have been declining. That is because the data that the power company is using has not been skewed by “scientists” working for government agencies with an agenda. The same is true in most parts of the country.

Temperatures 80 years ago were warmer than they are today. Since that time we had a cyclic decline in temperatures and then an increase, then another decline, another increase and then a leveling off or decline depending on where you live for the past decade or so.

Most of the “warming” shock headlines originating from government agencies have been manufactured by manipulating data from both recent and earlier times. When they get called on it... they issue a partial retraction which is almost never reported in the major media. People are starting to pick up on this; when you mix in articles like this one which show the true motivation behind it... it is going to seriously erode people's confidence in what they are being told.

The climate is cyclic and it is likely we will see a continuation of the warming trend that started at the end of the little ice age a couple of hundred years ago. But I cringe at graphs produced using manipulated data that make it appear that we have had warming outside of normal natural variation. You would think that just the fact that the average rate of rise in the sea level has not changed in hundreds of years would be enough to convince most sober minds that we have yet to see anything out of the ordinary.

The police down there mistakenly have now opened fire on two other vehicles that they thought were occupied by the suspect. Two women who were in the one delivering newspapers were hit and their pickup was riddles with dozens of bullets. They had no connection with the suspect.

Nearby, A police cruiser ran into another pickup and the officer open fired on a man who he thought was the suspect. Fortunately, he missed since the man also had no connection with the suspect.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/la-times-2-people-shot-during-manhunt-for

It should be safe again now to drive your blue pickups in LA because they found the suspect’s after he set it on fire.

If my kid had been killed, and his face wasn’t totally blown off, then I would want to know if an EMS worker could have saved his life . No pulse people can be brought back to life. If the sole shooter just killed himself why not bring in the EMS????

This is one of the most peculiar aspects of the event. I have been to many many shootings over the years. I work in one of the most violent communities on the West Coast. The police here ALWAYS have us (EMS) verify whether someone is dead. As you said many people who appear dead can still be saved... ESPECIALLY KIDS. We almost never leave the scene until we have put the bodies in body bags and loaded them up. Other than occasionally helping us with CPR, in 24 years I have never seen a police officer touch a dead body.

From the article, “The shift from a U.S. work model to a more “European” one – which includes shorter work weeks and more vacation time — could cut as much as half of the expected global temperature rise by 2100, according to a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The study claims that scaling back on work hours could bring down greenhouse gases.”

There has been no statistically significant “global warming” for the last 16 years. This has been admitted even by Phil Jones the head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia; one of the primary conspirators in the original “Climategate” scandle. None of the computer models based on the theory that CO2 has a significant effect on the world's climate have accurately predicted the current trend. How long are we going to have to put up with billions of government dollars being spent on windmills and subsidizing ethanol production in the name of reducing CO2?

According to a “cost calculator” I found here, assuming the cost of electricity they provide, the cost of running a 100 watt bulb for 40 hours a week over a year is $127.02. While the cost of running a 12 watt bulb would be $15.24.

I used the same calculator. 40 hours a week comes out to 5.7 hours per day, I put in the national average of $.11 per kilowatt hour. Your cost calculator said that the cost to run a 100 watt light bulb for a year was $20. If you had your 100 watt light bulb running 24 hours a day for a year... the cost would still be only $96.36. What figures did you input?

http://www.citytrf.net/costs_calculator.htm

I am a big fan of LED flash lights, but I don't think that they make good sense yet for interior lighting. But if Comrade Obama gets his way and out rates "necessarily skyrocket" they may pencil out better in the future.

This is the event that the left hopes to use to end the 2nd Ammendment as we now understand it. They can allow no details out that might alter the official narrative before decisive political action has been taken.

Thanks for the compliments! I just tinker for fun; it actually takes only a small amount of effort to convert a bicycle or trike to battery power. I actually made money off of the one I put together and had thought about putting together more for resale, but was worried about the liability problems of selling something that has twice the power and speed of a legal variant.

I am not actually an authority but my wife and I have had two diesel cars, a diesel truck and a diesel tractor. And I know some of the history behind the 350 Oldsmobile Diesel. As you may be aware, although the engine did use the same accessories and could be bolted into the same spot as an ordinary 350, it was not actually a conversion but a new design and a completely new block even in the beginning. It did use many of the same parts as the gasoline, most notoriously, the same number and type of head bolts... which were not suitable for an engine with a 22.5 to 1 compression ratio.

My dad and I were very excited about them when they first came out in 1978. The first batch was SO BAD that it did great damage to GM’s reputation! In 1981 they came out with a new variant with numerous modifications and improvements that solved nearly all of the issues. By that time there were so many horror stories that the public soured on diesels in cars made in Detroit and diesel vehicles in general. It probably did do more damage to GM's reputation than the "step down V-8".

There is a short and interesting article here:
http://www.dieselhub.com/idi/olds-diesel.html

We started out hang gliding, went on to a homebuilt ultralight airplane, and then we shopped for quite a while for a general aviation airplane. Our friends in the ultralight club mostly went to experimentals and classic planes. For a couple years we looked mostly at fabric covered planes, but eventually found a Cherokee which was a better value than anything else we had seen.

We came extremely close to getting a Tri-Pacer; we really have a soft spot for Tri-Pacers and Colts.

That sounds like a neat scooter! I went through a scooter stage. My nieces, nephews and grandchildren would all come over to ride them with me. They were all cheap kid type scooters. We had a couple gas scooters and a couple of electric scooters. I also put an 80cc 2 stroke motor on a mountain bike. That was fun! Fortunately I sold it before I got a ticket. I sold all but one of the scooters, and one motorcycle.

We have a small airplane; the batteries for that cost a small fortune these days. Because airplane batteries sit for long periods between charges they often last only a couple years because of sulphating. The desulphting charger has really paid for itself many times over.

We are spoiled here in Washington... at certain times of the year and certain times of the day in California electricity is costing over 5 times as much... up to $.55 per kwh. That literally could cost you about $30 to drive your little Leaf 100 miles... that would be like filling your Prius up with gas that cost almost $15 per gallon. There is a reason the Japanese are giving up on Electric cars.

It was as bad as the 8-6-4 / V-8 Engine and the hastily converted Gasoline to Diesel GM 350 Engine.

Interestingly enough my wife and I owned a 1982 Diesel Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. It had over 250,000 miles on it when we finally sold it. The injector pump was replaced once and it was leaking again when we sold it. The GM 350 Diesel had problems for the first couple of years, but by 1982 they were almost completely ironed out. By that time however the damage to its reputation was done. I believe it was discontinued in 1983 or 1984.

Our Cutlass was the most fuel efficient vehicle that I have ever owned. It literally got around 40mpg on the freeway. It wasn't a super zippy car, but we took it over the mountains many times. It had no problem climbing hills or even passing at high speed. The only thing it didn't do well was taking off from a stop. With our mix of driving we typically got over 30mpg. If I found another in good shape I would buy it.

Getting back to the subject at hand: I am a tinkerer... a couple of years ago I put together an electric bicycle using a 750w 36v hub motor. It topped out at approximately 25mph and had approximately 20 miles of range which could be extended if one pedaled while riding. The only time that the motor was atually using 750w was when you were starting out, climbing a hill, or going into a head wind.

There were no brushes or gearing in the motor I used. It is essentially silent. The speed control worked by creating a rotating magnetic field within the hub. There were approximately 36 small coils and a corresponding number of rare earth permanent magnets embedded in the outer rotating part of the hub. There is not a great deal of torque developed, but it would be possible to get a higher top speed by modifying the control circuit.

More expensive controllers are programmable and have regenerative circuitry... the hub will act as a dynamo when braking or going down a hill. Many home made windmills use the same type of hub motor to generate power.

I used three 12v 18ah Sealed Lead Acid Batteries which cost around $.15 to charge here in Washington. I used the bike for a few months after completing it and decided on some modifications that I would make for the next project and sold it. Basically I would like to someday assemble another one with a lower center of gravity and more power. The electric bikes that you can buy which are "street legal" only can do around 15mph under their own power and have almost no hill climbing ability. My next one will do at least 30mph and have enough torque to power over a steep hill.

The problem with electric cars is that they weigh many times more that me and my bicycle and need many times as much power and many times as much storage capacity. The 2011 Nissan Leaf is rated at 34kwh / 100 miles. If the charger was 100% efficient that would be $3.40 here in Washington.

I am very skeptical of the claimed efficiency. I would bet that the actual power usage is closer to $5.00 even here in WAshington. My guess is that my electric bike was costing me around $.75 to go 100 miles. In some parts of the country electric power costs multiple time more. So if you live in Hawaii and you are getting charged $.25 a kwh I will bet that it would cost approximately $12.50 to drive 100 miles. If you were paying $4.00 a gallon for gas and your Prius was getting its rated 50mpg it would only cost you $8 to go the same distance.

Our house was once raided by the King County SWAT team. I was at work; my wife was in a cast after having foot surgery shortly before. She was held against the wall with guns pointed at her head while men heavily armed men ran around our house searching every nook and cranny. She was concerned about the safety of our three dogs... She was told that the officers had the “right” to shoot them.

They never showed her a search warrant or even ID. When they didn't find what they were looking for... they left without giving any apologies. I called the sheriffs office to find out what it was all about, but never received any coherent answer.

I was told that they were looking for a young man who had just gotten out of jail for having an underage girlfriend. The girl's dad called the police when he found that the two were planning on seeing each other. The young man had apparently given the authorities a phone number that had been associated with our address before we moved in. We bought the house from an elderly couple who had no association with the young man. We were told that the SWAT team raided our house based on a reverse directory search of a bogus phone number.

The entire episode illustrated to me that your rights can be trampled on. And even if you make a stink... nothing will be done about it. The responsible parties will not get in trouble. We didn't have any guns in the house at the time, but if we did I have often wondered if they would have been confiscated.

They probably didn't use this picture because it shows Obama has a real preference for high capacity magazines, or “clips” as they refer to them at the white house.

If Sprint did use SIM cards the phones most likely still would not have worked unless they were “unlocked”; that is the whole point of “unlocking” the phone. Even if your phone is using the same towers the phone is still tied to the provider and will not work with any other provider. In my case I felt betrayed by Qwest whose service took a radical turn for the worse after I had purchased expensive phones and accessories.

Sim cards are used only on GSM networks. Sprint is CDMA. From what I have read this ruling affects Sprint customers who want to use their older Sprint phones on Cricket, Boost Mobile or other pay as you go providers using CDMA networks. To me it appears to be a typical government one size fits all solution to what is basically a non-problem.

All of the carriers I know of have early termination fees that make it difficult for people to profit from selling subsidized phones, or advantageous to leave before their commitment is up and go to another carrier. I actually think the article misses the mark by a bit.

the rule change doesn't really affect my wife and I much because we don't switch carriers or get a new phone very often. Our phones are all several years old and we have been with the same carrier for longer than that. But I do have a story that can illustrate a little closer what I think that the real issue is. Ten years ago we were using the same carrier that we had our land lines with for our cellular service. We were satisfied with the price and service up until they sold of their cell towers to Sprint.

They said that this would improve their coverage, but the Sprint towers we were now using gave first priority to Sprint customers. Even after several months most of our calls were dropped within a couple of minutes. It was explained to me that whenever all of the spots in the cell tower nearest our phones were filled up our calls would be dropped to make way for Sprint customers just coming on line.

We were quite happy with the expensive Motorola handsets that we had paid hundreds of dollars a piece for. We are careful with the things we own so they were in perfect condition and we had also purchased hands free adapters and external antenna connectors for our cars, along with extra batteries and cradle charges. We were out of contract... so after six months of frustration we decided to switch to Sprint. I assumed that we would be able to use our premium handsets that were already using the Sprint network.

No dice! Sprint forced us to buy new handsets. They did not offer the same type we had so we could use all of the accessories we had for them. We ended up getting phones that were twice the size of the ones we already had, but at least the problem with dropped calls went away. I almost decided to go with a different carrier, but we were already paying significantly more per month than we had been and I knew the towers worked where we lived... which can be a problem when you are in an outlying area.

I still have those expensive phones in a drawer along with a few others. Of course they are expensive paper weights if no carrier will let you use them. It bothers me that I cannot use products that I purchased for the use they were intended. This is actually about control. The contract carriers don't want you to be able to use even one of their older phones with one of the no-contract carriers. I am getting very tired of it and am about ready to give Sprint the boot.

I don’t have any scars, but I lost a few finger nails over the years. It certainly left me with a very healthy respect for prop safety when I got into flying the real thing.

Hi Paul,

Thank you for taking my criticism in the spirit it was meant. Sorry to call your website a blog by the way... I was looking at one of the preceeding posts.

Actually I should have put a portion of my post in quotes. “just 667 parts per million (0.067% of total gas volume) of carbon monoxide may cause up to 50% of the body’s hemoglobin to convert to carboxyhemoglobin, which may result in seizure, coma, and fatality” is almost a direct quote from an uncredited author from Wikipedia. The rest are my words which you are welcome to use in any way you like quoted or not.

I am very happy to see anyone posting the type of information you have on your website. Anything that does not fit the alarmist narative generally never sees the light of day. You are performing an important service... Thank you!

Sincerely,
Steve

Please excuse my typo... the proportions of the elements in Carbon Monoxide (Carbon and Oxygen) and Hydrogen Cyanide Gas(Hydrogen Carbon and Nitrogen) is not very relevant to their poisonous properties. Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen are just the building blocks that these gasses are made of.

Your blog is wonderful and has some very good information and explanations that I hope many people will see. I hope that you will not be offended... I only want your blog to be as effective as possible. As a member of a hazmat team I offer the following constructive criticism.

You might think about rewording part of your explanation about carbon monoxide. I think it is a little confusing and gives the false impression that carbon is a poisonous substance which plays into the propaganda of the alarmists.

“Carbon Monoxide is what cars and trucks give off in the combustion of gasoline or diesel. This has too much carbon in it for an animal to survive very long if no fresh-air is available.”

Carbon Monoxide actually makes up a very low percentage (less than 0.7%) of car exhaust even before it has gone through the catalytic converter. Most of the exhaust is made up of carbon dioxide and water vapor. The problem is that just 667 parts per million (0.067% of total gas volume) of carbon monoxide may cause up to 50% of the body's hemoglobin to convert to carboxyhemoglobin, which may result in seizure, coma, and fatality.

Just as with hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN), Carbon Monoxide (CO) kills because it is poisonous not because it has “too much carbon”. They kill through different processes but the proportion of the elements in their molecules very relevant.

It looks like a typical “training hill”. A lot of people feel more comfortable if they don’t get very far off of the ground. It is probably steep enough to get a good “sled run” especially if there is a bit of a breeze. Actually to me his technique didn’t look bad. I don’t think he had enough airspeed to get his nose up once he left the ground. A little more speed and he probably would have made it all the way to the bottom of the hill.

You see this type of mishap at every training hill. A guy I was taking lessons with broke his arm about the 4th time he made that same type of “landing”. I weighed about 50 pounds less than him and had a double surface glider. I made it to the bottom of the hill everytime and he crashed everytime. Even with “training wheels” he still managed to break his arm.

I would love to soar like a hawk.

That is why I love hang gliding so much and paragliding doesn't do much for me. A hang glider actually allows you to soar like a hawk given the right conditions. A paraglider feels more like a moving rope swing suspended from the sky.

We live 70 miles from a place called “Dog Mountain” a few miles South East from a place called Morton, WA. The terrain and prevailing wind conditions make it soar-able most of the time spring through fall. This means that most of the time you can soar until you get tired. The only problem is that it pretty much have to set aside an entire day any time you want to go hang gliding. We actually live on a small airport surrounded by 116 homes. So I can fly one of the airplanes any time and only use an hour or two. We also live only half an hour from Tiger Mountain, a good paragliding spot.

We have four hang gliders, an ultralight airplane, and a Piper Cherokee airplane.

If the guy had hang glider training wheels he wouldn't have come to such an abrupt stop.

I found out about this the hard way. I caused a perminent injury to my lower back trying to teach myself how to hang glide.

Hang gliding is incredibly fun although the risk of broken bones on a botched landing is fairly high. The risk is fairly minimal if one finds a good instructor. You simply cannot imagine what a thrill it is to be soaring for hours in the mountains after jumping off a cliff. Our airplanes are a lot of fun but hang gliding is the most pure form of flying as far as I am concerned.

I have tried paragliding but I don't find it to be nearly as enjoyable although it is easier to learn.

Is anybody going to be there maybe like Wham-o Slingshot?

In addition to rocks... Slingshots can hurl ball bearings, lead balls, fragmenting explosive filled metal spheres and yes even machetes. They can also be painted black and and come in assault models. Much too dangerous for the show...

It is amazing to me that they keep beating this dead horse. The “scientist” have been caught red handed fudging the data. The uncorrupted data shows that there has been “no statistically significant” “global warming” for the last 16 years. Even Phil Jones the head of the CRU until he was forced to step down because of the “climategate” scandal was forced to publicly admit this.

They simply have so much invested in this sorry hoax that they must feel forced to come out swinging every day. The tactic most recently has been to release reports based on manipulated data with much fanfare. When when they are caught they issue some minor revision but no one covers it.

Thanks for sharing this revealing peak into the mind of a UN communist economist.

The four police officers were murdered just south of Tacoma in Lakewood, WA. It happened on Sunday, November 29, 2009. My wife and I had been to the Pull-a-Part junkyard a block away from the coffee shop where it happened just the day before.

To the rest of the country this area is basically all Seattle. And I agree with your assessment. The number of firearms in the hands of people who still believe in the principles this country was founded on... are still an obstacle to those who would ignore our constitution, take away our freedoms, and transform our country into a socialist nanny state. And it is exactly the tactics you mention that make freedom loving people the obstacal.

I only caught the last few minutes of the show, but I enjoyed the part that I did see. People are more fearful of things that they know nothing about. So if the earlier demonstration gave some small foundation it probably was helpful.

I work at a large fire station. It was difficult to keep myself from correcting a coworker who was schooling some of my other coworkers. He owns a lot of guns but obviously knows little about proper terminology and the fine points of one platform vs as another. It was grating to hear him use the terms clips and bullets where he should have been using the terms magazines and cartridges. I kept my mouth shut because his overall direction was good.

I did try to clarify some of the statements made when the discussion turned to “armor piercing” and “cop killer” “hollow Point” hand gun ammunition. And of course when the discussion turned to the size of the hole that a 12 gauge cartridge makes at extremely close range I tried to point out the difference between real life and a Sam Peckinpah movie. In the end it just doesn't matter that they still believe that a standard 12 gauge buckshot cartridge will make a 1 ft diameter hole that penetrates clean through a large male when fired at close range. They have seen it for themselves on the big screen.

And that is the primary problem. Most people believe everything that they see in the movies. They believe that a magazine that holds 20 cartridges will fire for an extended period of time in “full auto”. So why do you need more than “7 bullets in a clip”? Those of us actually reload our own cartridges and study the finer points forget how little the average person knows. So it is frustrating, but for the overall argument it may not be as important as it seems. Except that we have politicians just as ignorant who legislate by following the polls.

I hear that those Sonatas have plenty of engine. Problem is they run out of suspension at those speeds, and then...

BLAMMO!

I am not trying to be smart, but I don’t have a clue what mylife is talking about. Does he think the suspension blows up at high speed? In my younger years I took several cars north of 120. I doubt whether the suspension in those cars were any better than that found in a Sonata. Of course they all had several hundred pounds of detroit cast iron leading the way which may have helped add some stablity. (Heavy objects tend to want to go in a straight line.)

To me Christie represents the most reprehensible slice of the Republican Party. I am not really heavier than most men my age, but I am forty pounds heavier than I would like to be. I have to admit that I have a problem with a politician who is younger than I am, who is morbidly obese and most likely incapable of even changing a tire or cleaning out his own gutters. It just bugs me; I don’t know why. My favorite uncle is as fat as Christie, but he is 90 years old, a veteran of the Korean War and currently driving 3,000 miles across the country.

The rural hills of Northern California actually have a higher proportion of conservatives than Western Washington where we both have always lived. We are already used to being surrounded by liberals; so it would not be a huge shock to us. Almost none of our firearms are legal down there however.

Grab my 12-gauge and light and head on down the hall....

I have to admit that is probably what I would do, because I am a hothead and don't want anyone to take our stuff. Most of the time they would probably run off if they weren't cornered after they heard you chambering a round.

But I have heard that uder most circumstances... the safer more reasonable thing to do would be to make sure that you and your family are safe in a defendable hidden place of cover then wait for the intruder(s) to come to you. Then blow them to pieces before they have a chance to come up with a plan to disarm and kill you and your family.

But what if I make my own bullets?

I always wonder about that. I have several reloading presses; I can easily put together thousands of cartridges in a day on either a progressive or turret press.

I suppose they would try to tax primers and possibly brass, powder, and manufactured bullets. I cast my own bullets. I reuse my brass. I have heard that it is a lot of trouble and I have never tried it, but primers can be reused. I have read discussions about making powder. If the authorities try to tax ammo out of existence... creative individuals will find a way to get around it.

My wife and I really would like to move to California next year after I retire. Her sister lives near Sacramento and we found a small community up in the foothills that we really like. I am quite concerned about all the crazy leftist politics and the state’s financial future. Also we would have to get rid of most of our guns, magazines, ammo, reloading equipment and supplies before moving.

Instead of concentrating on a bunch of pointed statistical questions... I think it would be more effective to ask how long it takes for all of the grociery stores to run out of food after any kind of disaster. And how long does it take for all of the gas stations to run out of fuel? If the authorities are overwhelmed how long does it takes before thugs start victimizing everyone else?

If you haven’t got and fuel and food stored you will be hungry, cold and probably stranded. If you haven’t got firearms to protect yourself and your family you will either be relying on family and friends who do, or you will be at the mercy of thugs who are always ready to take advantage of the helpless.

When I was growing up all the boys took wood shop, metal shop, and auto shop. The girls took home economics and learned to cook and sew. We had a gun club and a shooting team. None of those courses are even offered where my brother’s kids are going to school. They are all learning to use computers and modern technology. I don’t know if there is a school in the country with a shooting team these days.

I grew up on acreage with farm animals and we had a big garden. Every summer I baled hay and worked in the fields. I learned how to use and fix a tractor. I didn’t appreciate this part of my “education” much then, but I wonder if this knowledge might still come in handy one day.

I don’t know the answers to many of the questions that started this thread, but I am sure that we are headed for trouble. Most teenagers now don’t know how to change a tire... when I was a young man I could rebuild an engine. A lot of our population is going to get a sink or swim kind of education when everything does go to hell... It is going to be very ugly.

The questions I have are: Do Americans still have the can-do kind of spirit that our forefathers had? Can we still figure out how to accomplish what we need to during a crisis? Or are we a nation of people who mostly have no clue how to survive in a bad situation? How many could live through a “Grapes of Wrath” type of situation? Not many I fear.

I don’t think that we have no disagreement on any points. My observation is that the poor, and often misleading coverage is what sometimes causes people to react by getting suspicious and letting their imaginations get the better of them.

Sadly, the media and the Democrats have manipulated the details on this tragedy so much that there is plenty to be skeptical about. First we were told by CNN:

“Three weapons were recovered from the school: a semi-automatic .223 Bushmaster found in a car in the school parking lot, and a Glock and a Sig Sauer found with Lanza’s body, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said. The weapons were legally purchased by Lanza’s mother, the official said.”

Then it turns out that the weapon found in the trunk was a shotgun. Two weeks later we are told that most of the victims were shot with a Bushmaster AR-15 and not hand guns as originally reported. This is just one example of the conflicting stories coming out of this horrible disaster. Some of the other coverage has been much further out on the fringe. This is the story that the gun grabbers hope will give them the momentum they need to push the constitution aside.

It doesn’t suprise me at all that the story has been badly manipulated and that some who have been following it have become skeptical of the coverage.

He should be apologizing to Greg LeMond.

Thank you. I competed against Greg LeMond. When I knew him he was a true sportsman. Greg took a lot of heat in 2001 after he said it was troubling that Lance continued to associate with Dr.Ferrari. He was villainized and attacked by Lance and Lance's followers, but it went far further than that. He was attacked by even the head of the UCI. It should now be clear to all that Greg LeMond was trying to keep the sport from descending into this horrible mess.

Lance would have never been caught if he hadn't been such a jerk to almost everyone around him. Lance was caught because scores of people just couldn't take his antics anymore.