Spirit And Opportunity On Mars

The Washington Times:

Five years after the NASA rover Spirit landed on Mars, the six-wheel robotic geologist and its twin Opportunity are still on the job.

Expectations were far lower when Spirit made a bouncing landing in a cocoon of air bags Jan. 3, 2004, followed 21 days later by Opportunity: The goal was to try to operate each solar-powered rover for at least three months....

Took The Lights Down

Haven't put them away yet, though.

Walther On The Range

Starting from zero at the age of fifty-two, what I don't know about guns, as Philip Marlowe once remarked about another subject, you "could almost crowd into the Rose Bowl." Two years ago I began to learn a little about single action revolvers. Last year I began to study bolt action rifles. And today I started — just started — to learn about small-caliber blowback pistols.

Not being the sort that makes friends easily, I have few mentors outside of books and magazines. For all the epistolary virtues and vast knowledge of gun writers they have one major fault in addressing the neophyte such as me and that is that they have forgotten how much they once didn't know. They never state the obvious, and I still haven't guessed it.

Here's one fact I don't recall ever stumbling upon in my reading: pistols are filthy. The very nature of the blowback mechanism ensures that if you had any excess oil anywhere within the inner workings of your pistol that oil will, when the pistol, in effect, sneezes, be blown out every crack and crevice of the frame, grip, and magazine. As black, oily, snot.

What replaces the oil thus ejected is more nasty smelling blackness. I used to think that writers who advocated the "dunk and swish" method of pistol cleaning were just being lazy. They're not. They're being practical. Chandler has Marlowe sniffing the gun to see if it's been fired, and deducing how long ago it was fired, and so on, and cleaning the pistol to remove the evidence of its having been fired. Well, it's not working for me. I spent two hours cleaning it after I came home from the range and it still stinks.

Two. I may not know much about gunsmithing, but I know something about sharpening chisels. And no matter how fine the stone you use, when you've put a good edge on the chisel, that edge, if you look at it with a magnifying glass, will be as bristly as a pine cone. To finish it you need to strop it on a piece of leather.

The modern Smith & Wesson straight from the factory has edges, too, and as obtuse as they may be, that have not been stropped. Not on the $500 dollar models, anyway. On the first day at the range those edges will strop themselves on the thin leather of your palms. Ouch. I used to think that when they talked about "breaking in" a gun it was the gun that broke. Not so. It's your skin.

Three. If you want reliability stick to revolvers. I had two mis-feeds and two failures to chamber the first round (those were probably my fault, since the broken skin of my thumb and forefinger failed to snap the slider briskly). I see now that you need to carry an empty magazine everywhere you go for the express purpose of locking the slider open while you fiddle with removing the cockeyed cartridge. What a lot of bother.

Oh well. It's a learning experience.

Tomorrow I will go back to working with the rifle. I'm more dangerous at 100 yards with the rifle that at 50 feet with the pistol. I'm more experienced with it too. That's not saying much.

Genuinely Funny

The only must-read today is the Weekend Interview in The Wall Street Journal with Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

"Beneath the carefully constructed veneer of a blithering buffoon, there lurks a blithering buffoon."

Our own politicians may be funny in a gangsterish sort of way, but Boris Johnson is genuinely funny in a late-night comic sort of way.

That's It Until 2009

The PPK came in today.

I spent the afternoon field stripping and cleaning it. Pretty complex little piece of machinery. Tomorrow I'll take it to the range and try it out.

Leslie and I agree that if I restrict myself to one major purchase a year my hobby probably won't bankrupt us. This Walther was for 2008 though. What should I get next?

I'm kinda thinking the 870 Express in 20 gauge with the 26" barrel.

Bacon Fried Steak

steaks
¼ lb. bacon per steak
sweet mesquite seasoning

I use a deep pan to control the spattering. Fry the bacon until half done. Turn and move to the edge of the pan. Place the steak in the center and sizzle until browned. Turn and sprinkle with sweet mesquite seasoning. When the bacon is done — not too crisp — pile it on top of the steak.

Serve with knife and fork.

War Is Fattening

Faye Bittker tells of life on the front lines:

It could be the chemical high of the carbohydrates, or maybe the immediate kick of the sugar. It might even be the emotional pleasure of indulging in the chocolate in a guilt-free environment. I am no scientist, but my first-hand study has shown that when sirens are screaming, particularly if it is the second or third alarm in less than an hour, there is nothing more calming than a bite of fudge-filled chocolate cookie. Particularly when shared with the random gathering of strangers in the nearest bomb shelter.

More Christmas Loot

The package lost in the mail on Christmas finally arrived today, my gifts from Charlie: the Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, which will provide hours of rainy day amusement to a word nerd like myself, and Victor Davis Hanson's A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. I expect that, like Carnage and Culture, it will not be an easy read but it will be a rewarding one. I hope to report on it in my fourth Summer Reading List this coming June.

Thanks, Charlie!

Oh. And Happy New Year!

I Did Spell-Check It

Better check it again.

Shamelessly stolen from Robert Stacy McCain.

Money Ted Won't Get

It's an easy choice. You can wait until April 15th and give your money to someone who has your own worst interests at heart, or you can write a check now to someone who's fighting for your rights.

I mailed my check to OFF PAC, P.O. Box 556, Canby OR, 97013.

Tough luck, Ted.

Coquille At Flood Stage

According to the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, the Coquille River at Myrtle Point is already four feet over flood stage.

Bookmark that link and add it to your weather sites. You're going to get billed for it whether you use it or not.

An Encouraging Sign

Investor's Business Daily noticed it on Christmas Eve.

How often do you find liberal Democrats interested in hearing that tax increases bring forth "a large, rapid, and highly statistically significant negative effect on output"? Or in taking in the news that "tax increases have a large negative effect on investment"?

Or that previous analyses in recent years of the impact of tax increases on consumption underplayed their economic damage and that a "new measure of fiscal shocks support(s) the view that the effects are large and negative"?

These are the kinds of findings we saw come last year from University of California, Berkeley, economics professor Christina Romer, the president-elect's choice as chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers.