We still great power! Our cars superior!

Mrs. Nevskaya showed me the hot new viral video in Russia; a little background, Pootie-Poot was pootie-pooting around in a Russian Lada car to show the strength and durability of domestic cars. The problems here are a) Putin took three yellow Ladas on his trip, presumably in case one of them broke down b) all the other cars in the ridiculously large entourage were clearly of foreign make, and c) the punchline occurs at around the 2-minute mark, where the third yellow Lada is on the back of a truck and the audience assumes (not unreasonably) that it must have broken down.

Here's a British blog article on the whole debacle, and those students of Russian language and linguistics will no doubt delight at the curse words thrown around.

8 Bits O' Nevsky - WTF am I supposed to do next edition

If you were concerned about purchasing Metroid: Other M because you had heard that it was a bit of a departure from past games, let me assure you that it is a Metroid game through and through.

Because I've played it for 20 minutes and it's already really fucking pissing me off.

No, I'm not a big Metroid fanboy. Not unlike the Final Fantasy series, the only game I've managed to beat is the first one on the NES. And I'm pretty sure I piggybacked on my brother's progress on that one to finish it. Unlike Zelda, I don't think I really got a handle of how I was supposed to progress. All those little nooks and crannies that encouraged exploration just confused the hell out of me, occasionally I'd trip through a hole and progress but more often than not I'd go back and forth between rooms clearly missing something but not taking the time to look as closely as I should have.

And things didn't improve so much when I bought the Metroid Prime Trilogy last year. I felt I had to buy the game the way semi-intellectuals purchase The Complete Works of Shakespeare, because it would look good on my shelf. And for fifty bucks MPT is an unbelievable bargain. It's either a testimony to the series or a condemnation of 90% of Wii game designers that the original Metroid Prime is still one of the best-looking games on the Wii. But I stopped about 25% into the first game despite the excellent level design and wonderful controls because...well, I'm not really sure why. Really need to get back to it.

So anyway, I pop in Other M, big cutscenes, check. Quick tutorial, and the Wiimote-only controls seem unnecessarily difficult. Why not use the nunchuk for moving around? Then you can use either the C or Z button to pop into visor mode. Fine, I get down to a room, defeat the enemies, and spend fifteen minutes looking for the next key. And I just can't fricking find it and it's getting on my nerves so much I decide to quit even though I wasn't able to save my progress which means I'm going to have to watch those cutscenes again and I just bet you can't skip through them.

So, this Metroid experience will be like just the others, I fear. You'd think I'd learn.

[Note: I have been terribly sick for days, with a high fever. I have all sorts of things I want to write about here and all sorts of email to catch up on, much of which is from readers of this blog and I apologize for my recent silence. Since I'm too out of it to think clearly enough to write new material, here's something very detailed that I wrote a few months ago about a .35 Whelen that Paul Fritz and I built during one of our classes. I had intended to see about submitting it to one of the trade magazines but not having gotten around to it yet, here it is.]

The .35 Whelen might be the most misunderstood rifle cartridge in America. American hunters and rifle enthusiasts have come to think of it as little more than a souped-up .30-'06 which is most appropriate for putting an especially big hole through a deer. It is true that the .35 Whelen is a necked-up .30-'06 and it is equally true that it will put a large hole through a deer but the cartridge was originally intended to do much more than that.

A deer and elk hunting mentality invites the frequent comparison of the .35 Whelen to the .30-'06 and .300 Winchester magnum. I believe that the more apt comparison would be with the .45-70 and the 9.3x62 Mauser. Each of these cartridges shoots a medium caliber bullet weighing between 200-300 grains at roughly similar velocities.

The 9.3x62 Mauser is widely thought of as a traditional cartridge for African hunting. This is for good reason, since the cartridge has been used since 1905 in Africa by knowledgeable hunters for everything from impala to cape buffalo. It is unquestionably a serious tool for hunting dangerous game.

Let us compare this dangerous game cartridge with the .35 Whelen. The 9.3 Mauser shoots a bullet that is 0.37" in diameter and weighing 250 grains from a 24" barrel at about 2,600 feet per second. The .35 Whelen pushes a bullet of 0.358" in diameter of the same 250 grain weight at 2,523 feet per second. Ballistically, these cartridges are more or less twins.

I believe that this demonstrates that the .35 Whelen is a serious all-around big game cartridge that, when properly loaded with the appropriate bullets, is suitable for everything from whitetails to buffalo.

It is my hope to hunt feral, non-native water buffalo in Australia or Papua New Guinea at some point in the next few years as part of my ongoing 'Eating Aliens' project. Feral water buffalo tend to revert to a form and a disposition very similar to the wild Asiatic buffalo from which they are descended. They are big, hardy beasts that are capable of rearranging one's person into a sort of splintery paste if angered (though they are not so aggressive as the African cape buffalo). This led me to look at those three cartridges as candidates for my next rifle project. The .45-70, .35 Whelen and 9.3x62 Mauser. I settled on the .35 Whelen for several reasons.

The .35 beats out the .45-70 for my purposes because there are good factory loads available in the event that I have to purchase more ammunition while on a hunting trip. Most factory-loaded .45-70 is anemically under-loaded out of fear that someone will use it in an original trap door Springfield and find that they are detonating a pipe bomb in front of their face. It is also difficult to get .45-70 feeding properly through the Mauser actions that I intended to work with. The bolt face and extractor of a 98 Mauser action are too small for the .45-70's head. The thing can be done but it requires a lot of extra work.

Between the .35 Whelen and the 9.3x62 I broke the tie on the basis of the .35 Whelen being based on the .30-'06 case. I intend to hand load some ammunition for this rifle and it happens that I am awash in .30-'06 brass due to the high volume of that ammunition that my deer hunting classes tend to run through. That brass can be easily necked up and turned into .35 Whelen. 9.3x62 brass is a lot harder to come by in the US. Factory-loaded ammunition is also at least seasonally easier to find in the US versus 9.3x62. Remington produces it and their enormous distribution system is more likely to reach into your local gun store than that of either Norma or Prvi Partizan (which are the notable producers of 9.3x62 that have any distribution in the US).

The .35 Whelen requires nothing more than rebarrelling in order to work well in a k98 Mauser. Both the overall length and the case head measurements are almost identical to the 8mm and 7mm Mauser cartridges for which the k98 action was designed. The .35 Whelen was designed by Colonel Townsend Whelen and gunsmith James Howe at the Frankford arsenal in Pennsylvania in 1922 in order to meet a set of well-defined technical criteria. Col. Whelen wanted a cartridge that could push a bullet of at least 250 grains to around 2,500 feet per second in order to take most African game. At the same time, he and Howe wanted it to be based on the .30-'06 case that was widely available in America and he wanted it to fit easily in both Springfield and Mauser actions. Col. Whelen required that a very specific quantity of whoop ass be placed in just the right size can.

Working with blacksmith Paul Fritz (Paul is my co-instructor for range sessions for my deer hunting classes and also the primary instructor for the deer rifle building classes that we are now offering), we selected a 24" Adams and Bennett barrel with a 1:14 twist rate. The 1:14 twist rate is better than the 1:16 twist rate commonly found on Remington's rifles in .35 Whelen for stabilizing the heavier bullets of between 220-310 grains.

I am grateful for the fact that Remington brought the .35 Whelen mainstream in 1988 by turning what had been a wildcat into a factory round. However, I think that they are largely responsible for the myth that it is just a big deer cartridge by choosing that 1:16 twist rate and offering the rifles with typically a 22 inch barrel. This combination leads to the need for lighter bullets and lower velocities that tend to defeat the purpose of the cartridge.

We also selected a barrel in an F34 contour. This is a heavier and thicker barrel then would normally be found on a hunting rifle. I intend to shoot 310 grain bullets at times and I want the extra weight to help manage the heavy recoil that will be produced.

The donor action was a 'Russian capture' K98 carbine. This was made in Germany in 1938 and captured by the Russians somewhere on the Eastern front during the second world war. I've had the rifle sitting around for 4 or 5 years with the intent of sporterizing it eventually. The rifling at the muzzle of the original barrel was poor and it never shot well for me in the original configuration.

We stripped the rifle down and discarded everything except for the bolt, receiver and trigger guard/magazine. The receiver was prepared by re-cutting the barrel threads to match those of the US-made barrel and refacing it on a lathe. We drilled and tapped it for a scope and then started on the barrel. I reamed the chamber of the barrel to SAAMI specifications and screwed the receiver on.

The bolt-handle was reforged to clear the scope rather than cut off and replaced. We placed the bolt in a heat sink and Paul heated it up cherry red with an acetylene torch while I banged it into shape with a hammer.

Because this project needed to be completed inside of a single weekend, I went with a composite stock rather than the walnut that I prefer. Inletting goes much faster. However, I did not want to end up with one more black rifle in a black stock that looks identical to a million other rifles. What I decided to do was to dress up the stock by removing the distinctive steel stock discs from the original German stock and incorporating them into the new stock.

Nothing says 'Mauser' to me quite so readily as those shiny, raised circles that ornament many military Mausers. The purpose of the stock discs was to make it easier to reassemble the rifle's bolt if it needed to be taken down in the field. The steel ring provides a bearing surface against which to compress the firing pin spring while the pin is pushed down into the hole through the middle of the stock. I happen to find this feature handy and always thought it would be fun and useful to put a set of stock discs into an aftermarket stock.

I installed the discs by first measuring and marking carefully to make certain that my holes on each side would be perfectly lined up. Then I drilled a hole through each side of the hollow stock of the outside diameter of the ferrule.

This is the part where things got tricky. The bottoms of the discs are flat, while the sides of the stock are curved. This means that the discs must be slightly recessed into the plastic. Paul had the brilliant suggestion that we melt the discs in.

The stock was laid flat on its side and I placed a piece of brass tubing upright in the hole so that it stuck up an inch or two. I held a stock disc in a pair of blacksmith's tongs while Nick (our student who was building his own rifle with us on the same weekend) blasted it with a blow torch until it changed color and was on the cusp of glowing. Then I quickly dropped the hot disc over the brass tube. The tube ensured that the disc would be in perfect alignment over the hole. I used the end of a cut pipe to apply even pressure around the disc as it melted a recess into the stock.

This process was repeated on the other side. Rather than using the original ferrule, I decided that the brass tube used for alignment would do the job better. I cut it off flush with one disk using a hacksaw. We held the stock up to the lathe and lined up the center on one disc and the chuck on the other. In this manner we flared the ends of the brass tube within the discs and press-fit it. All that remained was to clean up the extruded, melted plastic from around the edges of the discs using a sharp knife.

We were painting the rifles rather than bluing them, again on account of this project needing to be ready to shoot in a single weekend. In the past we have used black high-temperature paint of the same kind used for charcoal grills. As I said, I wanted this to look a little different. Paint is easy enough to strip off of metal if I don't like it. Paul happened to have a can of khaki paint on hand and I went for it. The barrel and receiver were done in khaki while the trigger guard/magazine, bolt, follower and other parts are black. I liked the two tone look right away and it has continued to grow on me.

The rifle was scoped using Leupold mounts and rings. Leupold makes a scope mount that fits the receiver of an unaltered military Mauser. This is a great option to have for a DIY project because you don't need to grind down the stripper clip hump. I had a Tasco 'World Class' 3-9x40 scope sitting around that we mounted on the rifle.

At the range that afternoon I was pleased with the rifle's performance. I was unable to fully assess accuracy because the stout recoil of the .35 Whelen shook the reticle of the scope loose and ruined it. I can say that it grouped about 1.5" at 100 yards, which is pretty good with a broken scope. This can only improve with new glass. The recoil from any one shot did not feel like much more than a .30-'06, although the cumulative effect of going through 20 rounds of 225 grain bullets left a more pronounced effect on my shoulder than any .30-'06 has.

The ballistic profile of the .35 Whelen is almost identical to that of the .30-'06 within the first 200 yards or so. I don't see myself taking field shots much longer than that.

I'm quite happy with how the rifle has turned out. It is powerful, accurate and eye-catching. I don't have the skills to turn out a custom Mauser with the detailed woodwork and metal engraving of a Suhl or Oberndorf gunsmith. That's ok because that level of craftsmanship isn't necessary to make an accurate hunting rifle. The basic idea of building something like this in a garage over the weekend as a non-professional is a very American sort of thing to do. Ditto for shrugging at a normal bluing job and painting the thing khaki. It is a very American sort of rifle (in spite of being built on a German action), chambered for a very American cartridge. I think that I could carry this rifle with confidence on an expedition for buffalo or even on a trip through lion country.

To be entirely honest with you, the first thing I'll probably use it for is a whitetail deer in my backyard.

Dede Smith joins Coy in studio to discuss the latest on the community water debate.

C-Ville Weekly, a local newspaper in Charlottesville, has profiled Holly Hatcher, an alumni of the Sorensen Institute's Political Leaders Program. A member of the Class of 2004, Ms. Hatcher currently serves as Director of Programs and Donor Engagement for the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF). Way to go Holly!

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Speaking of shriveled-up teats, what, you weren't speaking about that?

Times can be hard, we're all busy. We've all got our own responsibilities to ourselves, our loved ones, and society as a whole.

And despite being busy, I would be remiss in my societal duties if I didn't say fuck Alan Simpson. Sideways.

The experienced American diplomatist Chas W. Freeman, Jr, has issued a strong call for European and Arab states to work together to ensure speedy attainment of Israeli-Palestinian peace, arguing that "Only a peace process that is protected from Israel's ability to manipulate American politics can succeed."

Speaking Wednesday morning (September 1) to the staff of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Oslo, Freeman argued that, in their pursuit of a sustainable and final peace settlement, European and Arab states should be prepared to convene their own values-driven peace process outside the currently shackled UN system, if necessary.

At the core of this process should, he said, be an ultimatum that if the two parties can't reach a peace settlement within a year, the world's states would impose one: This would be either a call for recognition of a Palestinian state within all the Palestinian areas that lie beyond Israel's 1967 borders-- or, recognition of Israel's sovereignty over all of Mandate Palestine and a requirement that it grant equal rights to all who are governed by Israel.

On October 1, my company Just World Books will be publishing Freeman's first collection of writings on the Middle East, titled America's Misadventures in the Middle East. The book contains much new material, including a detailed account of how he saw the strategy and diplomacy unfolding during the US-Saudi-led campaign to liberate Kuwait from its Iraqi occupiers back in 1991, when he was the U.S. ambassador in Saudi Arabia. It also contains several chapters that analyze the mis-steps Pres. G.W. Bush made-- both when he ignored the challenge of pushing for a fair and sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and when he pushed the U.S. into the unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In his speech in Oslo, Freeman notes that many previous rounds of the US-led "peace process" between Israelis and Palestinians have proved to be only,

diplomatic distractions [that] have served to obscure Israeli actions and evasions that were more often prejudicial to peace than helpful in achieving it. Behind all the blather, the rumble of bulldozers has never stopped... When the curtain goes up on the diplomatic show in Washington tomorrow, will the players put on a different skit? There are many reasons to doubt that they will.

One is that the Obama administration has engaged the same aging impresarios who staged all the previously failed “peace processes” to produce and direct this one with no agreed script.
During his long career in the US State Department Freeman led the negotiation that resulted in South Africa's withdrawal of its troops from Namibia, and the holding of a democratic election in Namibia (South West Africa) that resulted in the Namibians finally attaining their long-held dream of national independence. (That complex peace diplomacy also resulted in Cuba's withdrawal of its troops from Angola.)

In his address in Oslo Freeman called forthrightly for Hamas's inclusion in some manner in the peace diplomacy, describing it (correctly) as "the party that won the democratically expressed mandate of the Palestinian people to represent them," and noting that "there can be no peace without its buy-in."

He concluded by asking Norway and its fellow Europeans to do four things to maximize the chances that this latest peace "process" might become an actual peace:

1. Get behind the Arab peace initiative...

2. Help create a Palestinian partner for peace. "Saudi Arabia has several times sought to create a Palestinian peace partner for Israel by bringing Fatah, Hamas, and other factions together. On each occasion, Israel, with U.S. support, has acted to preclude this. Active organization of non-American Western support for diplomacy aimed at restoring a unity government to the Palestinian Authority could make a big difference."

3. Reaffirm and reinforce international law. "If ethnic cleansing, settlement activity, and the like are not just 'unhelpful' but illegal, the international community should find a way to say so, even if the UN Security Council cannot. Otherwise, the most valuable legacy of Atlantic civilization – its vision of the rule of law – will be lost. When one side to a dispute is routinely exempted from principles, all exempt themselves, and the law of the jungle prevails. The international community needs collectively to affirm that Israel, both as occupier and as regional military hegemon, is legally accountable internationally for its actions. If the UN General Assembly cannot 'unite for peace' to do what an incapacitated Security Council cannot, member states should not shrink from working in conference outside the UN framework."

4. Set a deadline linked to an ultimatum. "Accept that the United States will frustrate any attempt by the UN Security Council to address the continuing impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. Organize a global conference outside the UN system to coordinate a decision to inform the parties to the dispute that if they cannot reach agreement in a year, one of two solutions will be imposed. Schedule a follow-up conference for a year later. The second conference would consider whether to recommend universal recognition of a Palestinian state in the area beyond Israel’s 1967 borders or recognition of Israel’s achievement of de jure as well as de facto sovereignty throughout Palestine (requiring Israel to grant all governed by it citizenship and equal rights at pain of international sanctions, boycott, and disinvestment). Either formula would force the parties to make a serious effort to strike a deal or to face the consequences of their recalcitrance. Either formula could be implemented directly by the states members of the international community."
JWN readers can get more information about Freeman's upcoming book, and about Just World Books's other October 2010 title, "Gaza Mom" (the book), from Laila El-Haddad, when JWB's website gets launched next week.

Watch this space for news on that! Meantime, you can follow Just World Books's news on Twitter, here.

Anyone looking for another opinion on that doughy douchebag?

At first, I didn't feel like commenting on the Beck sideshow in DC, he was so clearly a clown it was better for my blood pressure to ignore him.

But then I had a discussion with some friends who I consider pretty reasonable (i.e. Democratic) but told me the so-called Ground Zero so-called mosque shouldn't be built. Oh, no one was arguing they didn't have the right to build their center, but "they should be more sensitive" to others. I pointed out that it's difficult to be sensitive to manufactured fake outrage because there's absolutely no way to alleviate it, but it occurred to me that no one was arguing that Beck was being insensitive by appropriating a definite moment of the civil rights movement for something that was clearly wasn't.

Because, of course, that was the point. By associating his event with the earlier march on Washington, Beck was trying to provoke normal people into a response that would send his followers swaddling themselves in the cloth of false victimization. It was as disgustingly cynical a moment in our history as I'd ever hope to see, and my only solace in it is that Beck can't make himself any more noble by trying to redefine Dr. King's legacy just as last weekend didn't make Dr. King a posthumous douchebag.

Actually, it's not fair to call Beck that, those have at least known the touch of a woman...

A series of images from two Southside Series Speaker Events that the Sorensen Institute hosted in Danville, VA. The slideshow features pictures from Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Todd Haymore's address which occurred on August 24th and Governor McDonnell's Town Hall event that was hosted on August 30th.

 

Heh. Two corgis.

Bro sent me this link (via Warming Glow) of two corgis on a treadmill. Awwwww, the left one's a fluffie!



This almost makes me forget yesterday when Mr. Monty, in his anxiousness to run in for dinner, ran over my bare foot and slashed me with his short-but-motherfucking-sharp claws leaving a wound resembling the one on Simon Le Bon's neck in the Hungry Like The Wolf video (and no, I'm not linking to that oh fine here).

I want to be kind to Ken Mehlman...

And while I understand the righteous anger of all the commenters in this article I think we should applaud him for this, because the sooner we can get all the closet cases out of the Republican Party and let 'em know it's all good, the happier we'll all be.