Don't Mess With This Girl!

Escherian Stairwell...

Via reader and friend Simon M.  Watch this video first:


Then for an explanation, watch this:

Oh, Noz!

Who would ever have thought that TV broadcasters would be allowed to show inaccurate cartoons?  Next thing you know, we'll find out that the Internet isn't truthful, either!

Metallic Snow...

Really!

Department of War Math...

The fascinating story of how a group of mathematicians helped the Allies win WWII.  It also tells the tale of the surprisingly efficient process implemented to get battlefield problems in front of the right group of scientists.  The urgent needs of the war successfully overrode the natural stifling of large bureaucracies.  The Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb) was another great example of this...

Somehow This Resonates More Today...

This clip from the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting somehow resonates more today than it did back then:

Trust Us...

People email me stuff.  This one's from Larry E., and I'm quoting it in its entirety:

They won't keep your data secret. There is a long track record of abuses already. Its seems that even low level employees, whether at the IRS, the Passport office, the DMV, the Hospital or wherever, can improperly look at your data and often do even if for their own amusement. The more data they have and the less segmented it is, the less secure it will be. This means they can look up everything they have about you, from your shopping habits, your gun purchases, your travel, who you know where your girlfriends are.

And I'm sure you know from being in the Software industry, that despite the best intentions about keeping customer databases secure, they get copied and accessed by multiple people for multiple reasons. Usually good, but that means that lots and lots of people get access to sensitive data. Sometimes account numbers, SSNs, addresses. A lot of stuff.

We can all be targeted at any point should we come under the scrutiny or run afoul or annoy some public employee or official.

At any point, because there are millions of laws and regulations on the books and thousands more every year. Despite our own best efforts we are all scofflaws of one sort or another.

And possibly more importantly is that this means that political opponents can be targeted subverting the entire free election process.

All it takes is for a “high government official” to decide they have reason to believe you are a terrorist and you can be disappeared. Without a trial. Without evidence. Nothing. Because this trustworthy official has decided.

Think about that. Your only safety is trying to keep your head down and not get noticed. Decidedly the opposite of free speech in a free society.

Trust us. We are doing this for your own good.

Trust us. It’s for national security.

Trust us. Those people we killed without a trial, they were terrorists.

Trust us. We can’t show you the evidence, its secret.

Trust us. We have determined that our own actions are legal.

Trust us from a government that is caught lying continually.

Trust us from a government that has proven itself incompetent at every level.

Trust us from a government that invokes executive privilege over matters they claim they had no involvement of.

Trust us from a government that hides behind state secrets at every turn.

Trust us from a government that despite all of the intelligence gathering, secrecy, destruction of liberty has show they still cannot keep us safe. Yet all of these abuses continue.

The Great Farm Bill Rip-Off...

An excellent primer (from Reason magazine) on just what's wrong with the farm subsidy bill currently moving through Congress...

FJ Cruiser: Platform Details...

Well, I've got two coats of orange paint on the platform parts, but they're not dry enough yet to work with.  That means I can't yet install the structural parts into the FJ, and I can't put the rubberized deck coating on the horizontal parts.  To (hopefully!) speed up the drying process, I've placed all the parts on a “rack” (sawhorses and beams) in the middle of our front yard, where they can bake nicely in the sun.  We'll see how dry they are after today, which is forecast to be hot and dry...

Meanwhile, in between dog emergencies (Race got a sudden case of the hives; we're still working out why and he's got a vet appointment today) I spent the rest of the day fabricating a couple of power distribution blocks.  I need these inside the platform to distribute up to about 200 amps of 12 volt power, to (especially) the 2KW inverter, the refrigerator outlet, and the air compressor.  I also want some room for adding devices in the future.

Power distribution blocks are common commercial devices, but I couldn't find one that could handle 0 gauge wire and small wire that was of nice quality.  Plus they were outrageously expensive.  So I decided to make mine, starting with 12" of 3/4" square brass stock.  That story is told in the photos below, but the bottom line is that they came out great!

The photos:

Platform parts baking in the sun...

Clamping rig for boring into the end of the brass stock (these are the big holes for the 0 gauge wire).  The limited travel of my drill press, plus the fact that the table can't rotate more than 40°, made this a little awkward.  A nice, square piece of oak 2x2 solved the problem nicely...

Boring a 7/16" hole into 3/4" inch stock doesn't leave much room for error...

After boring brass for a while, the shavings under the drill press were kind of pretty and sparkly in the bright sunlight...

Boring some of the smaller holes.  There were a total of 16 holes in each of the two distribution blocks that I needed to drill.  Nine of these holes needed to be threaded (for 7 set screws and two mounting screws).  That's a lot of holes to bore!  The holes for the wires and the holes for the matching set screws had to match up exactly, so precision was important here...

The finished result.  The left-hand one shows the top, with all the set screws ready to clamp down on the wires (the wires go in from the sides and ends).  The right-hand one shows a side view, with one of the 0 gauge holes showing on the end, and three of the 8 gauge holes showing on the side.  You can also see the nylon mounting screws (nylon so that the +12V isn't exposed on the mounting screw).

A slightly different view, showing the 0 gauge hole and the set screw poking into it (right-hand unit).  The 8 gauge holes were where the most precision was needed - if the wire hole and set screw holes were offset by more than about 1/32", things wouldn't have worked out well.  They all matched perfectly, with the set screws going right through the middle of the wire holes...