Bill Clears a Jam and Praises God
It rained during the night
And two puddles formed in the dark
And began chatting.
One said,
"It is so nice to at last be upon this earth
And to meet you as well,
But what will happen when
The brilliant Sun comes
And turns us back into spirit again?"
Dear ones,
Enjoy the night as much as you can.
Why ever trouble your heart with flight,
When you have just arrived
And your body is so full of warm desires.
And look:
So many meadows of soft hair are
Planted upon you.
Why ever trouble yourself with God
When He is so unjudging
And kind
Unless you are blessed and live
Near the circle of a
Perfect One?
[
Eagle Sharpening His Talons shows three signs that I photographed near the half-way point of my daily trip to work. Click on the link or image to see all three and access higher-res versions.
Rex Babin at the Sacramento Bee - Airport Security - cartoon commentary on the gummint response to Bloody Tuesday. Too true to be funny.
I learned a bit more about my
Remington 870 Express shotgun last night. I was unloading the
magazine, which holds four shells. I sucessfully unloaded one of them,
but the second one would not come out of the magazine. Repeated
cycling of the action did nothing. So I looked inside. The right shell
latch had come out, moved up by an eighth of an inch or less, and
become jammed in the out position, blocking the shell. I tried pushing
the shell latch with my finger, but it wouldn't budge. I tried pushing
it carefully with a screwdriver and prying it out to try to dislodge
what I thought was something stuck in there, but it still wouldn't
budge. I didn't work very hard or long with the screwdriver, since the
end of the screwdriver was about a half an inch from the primer of a
live shotgun shell. I figured out that I could push the shell up with
my finger to get it out of the way of the screwdriver, but I still
couldn't get the shell latch to move. So I removed the barrel, which I
learned to do the day I got the gun. Then I got out my instruction
book and learned to remove the magazine spring retainer and the
magazine spring. This allowed the shells to slide up in the magazine
where they were out of harm's way. I still couldn't get the shell
latch to budge. So I learned how to disassemble the gun further. I
took off the fore-end and removed the breech bolt assembly. Finally, I
was able to get my fingers inside enough to free the shell latch. I
reassembled everything, and loaded and unloaded the magazine without
further incident. Whew. No warm fuzzies here, but should this happen
again, I'll know how to handle it without endangering myself.
The image below shows a shell at the end of the magazine with the left
shell latch holding the top (in the image) edge of the
shell. Normally, the right shell latch is recessed at this point,
which is why you can't see it here. When you cycle the action, the
left shell latch recesses, allowing the shell to be pushed by the
magazine spring (at the end of the other shells in the magazine) onto
the shell lift (held in here by my finger). My guess is that the right
shell latch comes out at this time and prevents the next shell from
following. Usually, the right shell latch recesses again when the
action is closed, allowing the next shell to move the eighth of an
inch from there to the stop provided by the once again extended left
shell latch.
In his book StressFire II: Advanced Combat Shotgun, which I continued reading after clearing the jam, Massad Ayoob writes (p. 151), while talking about the ill-advised method of clearing a "double feed" (which happens, I believe, if the right shell latch remains recessed) by prodding through a slot in the shell lift with a key or knife:
We pause briefly to consider a simple fact. The primer of the shotgun shell is located at its center. A key or knife-point pushed up through a slot in the follower against the shell will contact the primer. Done forcibly--and forcible impact is what causes a primer to fire a round--the shell can go off.Had I read this before the jam, I would likely have skipped the screwdriver until I had taken out the magazine spring. I will certainly never do it again. Praise the Lord for small miracles.
The shell is at this moment in line behind another whole magazine of shells. When the rear one goes, all the ones in front of it will go off in a chain discharge. This happens at a moment when both hands are in the vicinity of these shells, and one's face is looking down into the magazine area.
The result of this chain detonation is likely to blow both your hands to jellied protoplasm, burst both your eardrums, evacuate your eyesockets, and turn your face into something resembling a Holloween mask that was dropped into a meat grinder. When you wake up in the hospital you are likely to be a deaf, blind mute who no longer even has hands to kill himself with.
Criminals/Corruption is a letter from Linda Hamilton. She has been working towards filing civil suits against the corrupt injustice system in western Massachusetts. She has now found an attorney to help with this. She tells of some of her discoveries about the corruption.
I have been in contact with other people across the State who have been victims of crime and corruption and are fighting back. They all responded to the horrible evil act when America was attacked in the same way. The terror that Americans are feeling is how we have felt ever since we were violated by criminals and a corrupt injustice system-sometimes it overcomes you for minutes sometimes for days. But none of us had the outpouring of support from other Americans. As a matter of fact it was the opposite. The "I don't want to get involved syndrome."
...
If our liberties had not been infringed by this government that is out of control there would have been armed citizens on those planes and this terrible tragedy would never have happened. Injustice will not be destroyed until those who are not affected by it are just as outraged as those who are.
Dave Horrigan at Wired - Palm's Tools of the Future - Palm's PDA of the future is called the SIU, Specialized Intelligent Umbilical device. Yech. [wired]
Andrew Orlowski at The Register - Mandrake revamps Linux distro - Mr. Orlowski likes the new Mandrake 8.1 distribution. Their server is swamped right now.
