Back in X/Twitter after a week of re-education.
I am back from my week of re-education for using language that may have hurt others and I am completely rehabilitated.
Tuesday Tunes
A small boy and his friend run through the yards, they are 5 or 6 years old. They slide partially down a hillside and slowly peek over the top, looking for “Charlie”.
The one boy turns to the other and asks, “What are you going to do when you are drafted?”
War comes to them on the TV every night. They know about those that ran to Canada. They know those that stayed. They know of the bodies of what were once vibrant young men arrive day after day from that horrible place, Vietnam.
They talk of their grandfathers. Of those that served in WWII. They speak of the silence of those veterans who returned.
Today, I remember my Great Uncle Joe talking about all the heroes he knew. Some of whom died in the skies over Germany. He was never a hero. He flew in the same plane, he put his pants on the same, he ate with those heroes. According to him, every man aboard his plane was a hero, except him.
He was a hero. He was a bombardier of a B17 Flying Fortress.
Today, Vietnam is ancient history. Desert Storm, V1 in 1991 is ancient history. The war on terror is what is remembered by men older than their years.
“All gave some, some gave all.”
Thank you, I remember you. We remember you.
Success!
After more than a week, success was had.
The number of subprojects that went into this one simple little gear boggles my mind.
- Locate a reasonable rotary table
- Document what was needed for it
- Clean and restore 8″ Cushman Chuck
- Make chuck key
- Locate dividing plates for the rotary table
- Make T-Nuts for rotary table
- Make socket-head replacement screws for chuck
- Make socket-head attachment screws for chuck/backplate interface
- Make backplate
- Make retaining collar
- Make MT3 alignment plug
- Modify eccentric to have a retaining grove for U-Spring
- Make grooving tool
- Make nose cap for spindle
- Thread eccentric for tensioning ring
- Make a mandrel for holding gear blanks
- Make gear blanks
- Read the section in the 1914 Machinery’s Handbook about gears
- Create Emacs spreadsheet to calculate gear cutting parameters
- Create a Python program to create a dividing plate table
- Incorporate dividing plate information into Org-mode spreadsheet for single point of information (Enter DP and Number of teeth, get out cutting parameters and which dividing plate to use along with dividing plate setup)
In addition to that, I have 3 toolholders almost finished, I’m still waiting for the dovetail cutter to arrive and then to drill and tap the adjustment screw plus the retaining screws.
For those that might wonder why 14.5° PA, 16 DP instead of a more modern 20° PA, it is because this is what my lathe uses. With a single purchase of the 8 involute cutters, I can make any gear my lathe might need.
I’ve taken up smoking
For Christmas, I got Miguel a Sig P365.
He, in turn, gifted me a Cuisinart vertical propane smoker.
It’s been sitting outside since December because winter in New Hampshire sucks.
With the holiday weekend and the weather being beautiful, I decided to try it out.
I picked up a brisket, boneless leg of lamb, and boneless chicken thighs, as well as a bag of hickory chunks.
The brisket was dry rubbed with a mix of kosher salt, sugar, brown sugar, paprika, and black pepper, and left in the fridge for 48 hours.
The other meats got dry rubbed for three hours with some dry rubs that were gifted to me.
At noon, the brisket went in.
Three hours later, the rest of the meat and some Vidalia onions went in too.
At dinner time (about 7:00) everything came out.
Man cannot live by meat alone (he probably can, but his wife makes him make vegetables), so I did corn on the cob and potatoes on the grill.
After the meat rested, the spread was ready.
It was delicious.
I need to work on the timing a bit better, the thighs got a tad dry, but this was my first time.
We are going to be eating smoked meat for the next couple of weeks.
Thank you Miguel.
P.S. I need to refill my Atorvastatin.
When a Judge gets it right
As Americans, we have every reason to celebrate our rights and freedoms, especially on Independence Day. Can the senseless crimes of a relative few be so despicable to justify the infringement of the constitutional rights of law-abiding individuals in hopes that such crimes will then abate or, at least, not be as horrific? More specifically, can PICA be harmonized with the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution and with Bruen? That is the issue before this Court. The simple answer at this stage in the proceedings is “likely no.” The Supreme Court in Bruen and Heller held that citizens have a constitutional right to own and possess firearms and may use them for self-defense. PICA seems to be written in spite of the clear directives in Bruen and Heller, not in conformity with them. Whether well-intentioned, brilliant, or arrogant, no state may enact a law that denies its citizens rights that the Constitution guarantees them. Even legislation that may enjoy the support of a majority of its citizens must fail if it violates the constitutional rights of fellow citizens. For the reasons fully set out below, the overly broad reach of PICA commands that the injunctive relief requested by Plaintiffs be granted.
—No. 45 Harrel v. Raoul, No. 3:23-cv-00141, slip op. at 3–4 (S.D. Ill.)
—No. 45 Harrel v. Raoul, No. 3:23-cv-00141, slip op. at 3–4 (S.D. Ill.)
Some compelling prose from Judge McGlynn, District Court Judge, S.D. Ill. He gets it.
He does the right thing and grants the preliminary injunction. The state runs to mommy, the Seventh Circuit court.
There, Woods and Easterbrook make a mockery of judicial decorum, judicial precedents, and show their utter disrespect for the Supreme Court. They decided that icky guns aren’t arms under the Second Amendment, so there was no infringement.
As the Amici said in United States v. Kittson
The parties and the lower court mischaracterized Bruen as requiring a two-step analysis. Appellant’s. Br. (“AB”) at 35; 1-ER-46-47. Unfortunately, lower courts and reviewing courts have been similarly mischaracterizing the breadth and application of Bruen’s analysis, to the point that the myth of a two-step analysis has become pervasive, including in this Circuit. See United States v. Alaniz, 69 F.4th 1124, 1128 (9th Cir. 2023) (asserting that Bruen abrogated one two-step test but then adopted another); see also United States v. Duarte, No. 22-50048, 2024 WL 2068016, at *4 (9th Cir. May 9, 2024) (also erroneously applying the new two-step test). This panel should use this opportunity to correct this error.
By its plain language, Bruen eschews a two-step test and calls for a one-step test: “Despite the popularity of th[e] two-step approach, it is one step too many.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 19. It would make little sense for the Court to expressly abrogate a step as unnecessary only to then reinsert a substitute.
Because the district court fundamentally misunderstood the approach Bruen requires, this case provides an excellent opportunity for this Court to clarify that the simple requirement that a Second Amendment case implicate the right to keep or bear arms is not a significant analytical “step,” and thus, as the district courts and other courts have transmuted it, an imposing hurdle. Rather, it is a simple qualifier. This is critical because courts have cynically transformed this manufactured first step into a barrier relieving the government of its burden of the historical analysis altogether, unfairly shifting burdens from the government to civil plaintiffs (or criminal defendants), and reinserting the interest balancing derided and forbade by Bruen under the guise of a purported “plain text” analysis that allows lower courts like this one to treat obvious arms-related questions as though they are not.
Memorial Day
