Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Guns, Health, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness, RKBA, Science Fiction, Travel, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: art, arthritis, ataxia, balance, black powder, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, fasciculation, genetics, guns, health, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Liberal Gun Club, Machado-Joseph Disease, medicine, MJD, MMJ, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, SCA3, Science Fiction, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Utah, vertigo, wabi-sabi, Wikipedia, www youtube
Recently I drove out to Las Vegas, for the first post-Covid national meeting of the Liberal Gun Club (I can be seen at several points in the video, wearing a red & white flannel shirt). It’s a drive I’ve made previously in two days (about 12 hours each day), but I decided that it would be wise for me to split it up into three days each way, to better reduce my stress and better accommodate the unpredictable episodes of MJD symptoms (since I didn’t want to take any of the painkillers or MMJ stuff that help me manage those episodes while I was driving).
It was a good decision. When I had an flair-up of symptoms, I knew that I could take a break without feeling a lot of time-pressure.
And it gave me more time to think.
To think about this past year, and where I’ve found myself. To think about the LGC event (particularly after it was over, and I could reflect upon what happened there). To think about the near-term future.
As I noted yesterday (and in this series of MJD-related blog posts generally), it’s been a challenging year. And there’s nothing like going naked (in the sense of not taking any meds) for a prolonged period of time to show you, honestly and clearly, what your real condition actually is.
Mine isn’t bad. But it is perhaps a lot worse than I had realized, in my day-to-day life. That’s because being able to take things that help manage it means that I can largely ignore the symptoms. Without those meds, though, the truth tends to be a little sharper edged (as is the pain). While teaching a black powder workshop I had hand spasms that were so bad I couldn’t hold onto the gun I was using at the time, let alone manage to load it. So much for the idea that being focused on a given task (which I was) would be enough to set aside that symptom. I verbally walked my students through the process, and we got on the other side of it fine. But it was a sobering moment.
A moment that drove home the idea that it was time for me to make some changes. Specifically, that it is time for me to pretty much completely retire from conservation work. As I noted in this blog post last May:
As a conservator, I can’t afford to celebrate my mistakes. There will of necessity come a time when I need to stop doing conservation work, out of respect for the items entrusted to my care. That time is rapidly approaching; indeed, it may already be here.
I think I crossed that line sometime this summer. So the time has come for me to (mostly) stop doing conservation work altogether, at least in terms of being hands-on.
That’s a big change for me. I’ve largely defined myself as being a book conservator for 30 years.
* * *
Western Utah is stunning. But also bleak. And more than a little alien to my Midwestern eye.
I think those vistas, and the mental space I was in on my drive home, helped me realize something else.
That I’m ready to start writing a sequel to Communion of Dreams.
I hesitate even mentioning this, since I had so many people after me about the long delays in writing St Cybi’s Well. But I decided to share it to help offset the seemingly ‘bad’ news that I need to retire as a conservator.
So here’s the deal: don’t ask how it is going, or when I expect it to be done. I’m at the very beginning of the whole process, and it is likely to take years. I may occasionally mention things about it. Or not. But asking me about it is not going to get any additional information beyond what I volunteer, and will just annoy me. You can wish me well with the writing, but leave it at that, OK?
Thanks.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Connections, General Musings, Guns, Humor, tech | Tags: ballistics, BBTI, black powder, blogging, firearms, Glowforge, guns, jim downey, laser
[For the AI’s own inscrutable reasons, Facebook considers my ballistics blog “spam”. Unable to get it resolved, I’m going to post partial info about new blog posts over there, here, so people can link it off FB. Please just ignore if shooting stuff isn’t of interest.]
A couple of weeks ago I posted about finishing a Liegi Derringer kit, then doing the laser work to customize the grips. It turned out well enough, so I decided to finish and laser a second kit, to use as a door prize for a black powder workshop I’m doing at the annual meeting of the Liberal Gun Club this fall in Las Vegas.
All went well until the time came to mount the grip to the receiver. The top mounting screw went in fine, after drilling a pilot hole. But the bottom one broke loose as I was tightening it. I took the top screw back out so I could see what the problem was. This is what I saw:
[The entire post about this project can be found here.]
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Connections, General Musings, Guns, Humor, tech | Tags: ballistics, BBTI, black powder, blogging, firearms, guns, jim downey
[For the AI’s own inscrutable reasons, Facebook considers my ballistics blog “spam”. Unable to get it resolved, I’m going to post partial info about new blog posts over there, here, so people can link it off FB. Please just ignore if shooting stuff isn’t of interest.]
As anyone who has read much of this blog probably knows, I (and the other BBTI guys) like weird guns. Anything that is innovative, or unusual, or uses a transitional technology, is likely to catch my eye.
One of those I got to try this past weekend is a reproduction Sharps Pepperbox. It was designed by Christian Sharps (of Sharps Rifle fame) in the middle 1800s , and proved to be a popular little hide-away gun in early .22. .30, and .32 rimfire cartridges.
In the 1960s Uberti produced a little .22short reproduction with a brass frame and plastic grips. Here’s one recently listed on Gunbroker which has an excellent description of both the reproduction and the original: Uberti Sharps Pepperbox 4 Barrel Derringer.
And here are some pics of the one we shot this weekend:
[The entire post about this little gun can be found here.]
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Connections, General Musings, Guns, Humor, movies, Predictions, tech | Tags: ballistics, BBTI, black powder, blogging, firearms, guns, jim downey
[For the AI’s own inscrutable reasons, Facebook considers my ballistics blog “spam”. Unable to get it resolved, I’m going to post partial info about new blog posts over there, here, so people can link it off FB. Please just ignore if shooting stuff isn’t of interest.]
Last week I posted about a little Liegi derringer that I finished and did a laser design on. Well, over the weekend I got together with the BBTI gang and, among other things, had a chance to shoot and chrono the little gun.
Here’s a short slo-mo vid of shooting the Liegi:
[The entire post with pics of shooting this little gun can be found here.]
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Augmented Reality, Ballistics, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Fireworks, General Musings, Government, Guns, movies, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, UFO, Violence, Wired, YouTube | Tags: ammunition, augmented reality, ballistics, blogging, Boeing, Cold War, drone, drones, guns, Guns.com, jim downey, laser, movies, North Dakota, predictions, Science Fiction, space, technology, The Thing, USSR, video, Watch the skies, www youtube
That’s from the 1951 classic The Thing from Another World, one of the first (and defining) science fiction movies which set the stage for much of what was to come even to the present day.
It was also very much a product of the early Cold War era, reflecting the fear* of the USSR and atomic weaponry. This is typical — science fiction usually is a reflection of (or commentary on) the technology and social conditions of the era when it was created.
So, what to make of two news items which showed up this week?
Here’s the first:
First State Legalizes Taser Drones for Cops
It is now legal for law enforcement in North Dakota to fly drones armed with everything from Tasers to tear gas thanks to a last-minute push by a pro-police lobbyist.
With all the concern over the militarization of police in the past year, no one noticed that the state became the first in the union to allow police to equip drones with “less than lethal” weapons. House Bill 1328 wasn’t drafted that way, but then a lobbyist representing law enforcement—tight with a booming drone industry—got his hands on it.
And here’s the second:
Welcome to the World, Drone-Killing Laser Cannon
Hang on to your drone. Boeing’s developed a laser cannon specifically designed to turn unmanned aircraft into flaming wreckage.
The aerospace company’s new weapon system, which it publicly tested this week in a New Mexico industrial park, isn’t quite as cool as what you see in Star Wars—there’s no flying beams of light, no “pew! pew!” sound effects. But it is nonetheless a working laser cannon, and it will take your drone down.
* * *
Instead of a massive laser mounted on a dedicated truck, the compact system is small enough to fit in four suitcase-sized boxes and can be set up by a pair of soldiers or technicians in just a few minutes. At the moment, it’s aimed primarily at driving drones away from sensitive areas.
I’m already seeing posts by friends on social media complaining about drones being operated by annoying neighbors, with discussion about what possible solutions there might be to deal with them (both by legal recourse and um, more informal approaches). There have been a number of news items already about people who have shot down drones, and there’s even a company advertising a specific kind of shotgun ammunition for just that.
“Watch the skies!”, indeed.
Jim Downey
*As good an explanation as any.
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, ACLU, Babylon 5, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Guns, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Mark Twain, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, RKBA, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Terrorism, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Boston, firearms, guns, jim downey, literature, Mark Twain, Nevil Shute, police, predictions, Roman, Rome, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, terrorism, Tom Wolfe, violence, writing
Any work of literature is, to some extent, part of the society in which it was written, and needs to be understood within that context. Whether you’re talking The Bonfire of the Vanities or On the Beach or Life on the Mississippi or just about any novel you care to name, it is, to some extent, a reflection on the culture surrounding it.
Writers react to the events around them. Even science fiction authors like yours truly. We really can’t avoid it.
I mentioned events in Boston the other day. Just a blog post. But it is some measure of what has gotten my attention. So it would be safe to assume that to some degree it will show up in St. Cybi’s Well. And it will. But perhaps not exactly as you might think.
Almost five years ago I wrote this:
This is nothing more or less than the peace of the gun. This is the abrogation of civil liberties as a solution for incompetent governance. Of course people like it – let things get bad enough that they fear for their lives more than they value their liberties, and you can get people to do almost anything.
Now, I don’t think that what happened in Boston was anything like what led to that blog post about HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. in August of 2008. In that instance, it was chronic problems with crime rather than a couple of domestic terrorists which brought about de facto martial law.
And I think that the police agencies involved in determining who was responsible for the attacks, and then seeking the suspects in a major metropolitan area did a very professional job. Just compare it to another recent dragnet and you’ll see what I mean.
But I keep coming back to that earlier blog post. Why? Because seeing a major city shut down, and then para-military operations going house to house searching for a suspect, gives me pause. I certainly can’t fault the police for taking precautions intended to protect their own lives and the lives of citizens. SWAT equipment and tactics have been shown to be very effective.
Yet …
… I feel somewhat like the owner of a couple of highly trained and massive guard dogs, who has just watched those dogs chase off/control a threat. There’s a satisfaction in watching them do the task so well. But there’s also a nagging fear that maybe, just maybe, things could be bad if they ever decided that they no longer wanted to obey commands.
Nah – no need to worry. That has never happened before.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Flu, General Musings, Government, Guns, Iraq, NPR, Pandemic, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, RKBA, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: 2nd Amendment, Afghanistan, blogging, Communion of Dreams, fire-flu, firearms, flu, gun control, guns, influenza, Iraq, jim downey, NPR, politics, predictions, RKBA, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Syria, writing
From a news story this morning:
A rebel fighter stationed here says the two sides are so close they talk to each other at night, yelling across the front line. They even know each other’s names, he says.
Right now this cold front line is lot like the fight for Syria: Both sides think they can win, but neither side is winning, so neither side is going to back down.
* * * * * * *
From Chapter 4 of Communion of Dreams:
“Thanks, but I checked your file. You saw fighting during the Restoration. You can figure this stuff out.”
“Yeah, but those are old instincts. And what I learned was mostly just practical survival.”
“Worth its weight in gold.”
Jon smiled. “See you in the morning.”
* * * * * * *
Politically, I don’t fit into any neat little boxes. I tend to describe myself as “left-libertarian”, which is to say that I am generally left-of-center on a lot of social issues, but I also tend to think that the lives of people should be largely be their own to determine with minimal government or corporate intrusion. Both government and business can be very great sources of good, but they can also both be great threats to the individual if unchecked, particularly if their power and interests are aligned.
What this means for me practically is that I tend to be in the center of the political spectrum, keeping a wary eye on everything. And since I like to stay informed, I tend to read more political blather than is probably good for my blood pressure. Combine that with my interests in firearms, and, well, let’s just say that I have seen an awful lot of extreme rhetoric on both sides of the current debate about gun control.
* * * * * * *
One of the interesting things about working on St. Cybi’s Well is that I have to keep in mind details of the larger story. Partly this means making sure the story of the current book meshes with the story of Communion of Dreams. But it also goes beyond that. It also means making sure that I set the stage for other books I might write someday.
One of those would be set during the “Restoration” — that period of time when a fractured, post-pandemic America is being again forged into a United States. As it says on the first page of Communion of Dreams:
The Commons had been borne of the fire-flu, with so few people left out in the great northern plains after it was finally all over that it was a relatively simple matter to just turn things back over to nature. Effectively, that happened a few short years after the flu swept around the globe. According to law, it was codified almost a decade later in the late Twenties, after the Restoration was complete and the country was once again whole — expanded, actually, to include what had been Canada, minus independent Quebec.
As part of this whole process, then, I’ve been thinking about what would lead to a splitting-up of the US. I’m not going to give anything away, but suffice it to say that the fire-flu is only part of the explanation.
* * * * * * *
When people argue about gun control, one of the things you can bet on is that at some point a variation on the following will happen: First, one side will say that the intent of the 2nd Amendment is to allow for citizens to resist governmental tyranny. Then the other side will laugh and point out that Joe Gun Nut isn’t going to resist tanks and jets with his AR15. In response, the pro-RKBA side will likely point out that in both Iraq and Afghanistan local fighters managed to do a pretty good job in resisting the might of US & Allied forces for years. Then the argument will dissolve into disagreements over logistics, not knowing the local culture, corrupt indigenous military units, et cetera. Laced through all of that will be those who hope just such a thing would come to pass, to finally resolve the issue and ‘show the other side’.
In these arguments, however, I think everyone is using the wrong examples. What would happen here isn’t what’s happened in Iraq or Afghanistan, with a cohesive military facing insurgents. It’d be like what’s happened in Syria: civil insurrection growing into civil war, with defections and confusion on all sides. From a news story this morning:
A rebel fighter stationed here says the two sides are so close they talk to each other at night, yelling across the front line. They even know each other’s names, he says.
Right now this cold front line is lot like the fight for Syria: Both sides think they can win, but neither side is winning, so neither side is going to back down.
Is Syria still too strange a place, too foreign, for you to map comparisons? Well, then how about Europe, just 20 years ago?
Careful what you wish for.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Reason, Religion, Society, Survival, Terrorism, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: jim downey, NPR, politics, predictions
“Did you hear about the fire in Joplin?” asked my wife, as she walked into my office. We had just gotten back from a nice lunch with old friends who were in town on business.
“Fire?”
“Yeah, this morning. A mosque burned to the ground. They had a smaller fire last month which was determined to be arson.”
* * * * * * *
Early yesterday morning I chided a friend on Facebook. She had posted that the shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin was another example of hatred and ignorance. This is what I said: “Don’t jump to conclusions. This could have been some kind of domestic dispute or something completely unrelated to the appearance of the people at the temple. Wait until some actual news comes out.”
Well, when actual news *did* come out, it was clear that the perp had in the past embraced the White Supremacist / Neo-Nazi movement.
* * * * * * *
From the end of Chapter 9:
Jon thought he should clarify. “Jackie’s got the gist of it, but let me try and explain a little more completely. Sometime during the chaos of the post-flu, there were two marginal groups that got together. One was the heir of something called The Order, a reactionary offshoot of the old Aryan Nation.”
“Ah, neo-Nazis. Yes, I know them.”
“Thought so. The other group was a splinter of the radical environmental organization Earthfirst!, sort of like the far-left fringe of the Greens. They managed to create a hybrid belief system: that true adherence to God’s natural law would bring man back to a state of grace, suitable to be readmitted to the Garden of Eden. To promote this belief, they want to see a complete restoration of the Earth’s biosphere to a natural state, with humans having almost no environmental impact.”
As I’ve said before, the prequel I’m working on, St. Cybi’s Well, is set right at the time of the onset of the fire-flu.
Guess what groups are going to play a part in that story. Right.
* * * * * * *
“Yeah, this morning. A mosque burned to the ground. They had a smaller fire last month which was determined to be arson.”
I clicked open a news article on my computer, glanced through it. I shook my head.
My wife read the article over my shoulder, asked: “First the shooting in Wisconsin, now this. Why do people have to pull crap like this?”
“They’re afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Yeah. Of change. Of not being in control. Of things which are different. You know, the usual.”
“Yeah, but it’s so stupid,” she said almost to herself.
“True. And just because they’re afraid doesn’t mean we have to give in to them, give in to their fear.” I sighed. “But it may mean that we have to defend ourselves from that fear.”
Jim Downey
(The travelog I intended on posting today will be delayed. Sorry.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Guns, Humor, movies, Reproduction, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: Adam Savage, firearms, guns, Guns.com, humor, movies, Science Fiction, technology, The Fifth Element, video, www youtube, ZF-1
Some of my readers here may not know it, but there’s another aspect of my writing life: I’m a regular contributor to Guns.com. And because of that I tend to keep an eye on what pops up on the site.
That scrutiny paid off with this delightful little item:
The Adam Savage Amazing ZF-1 Replica from “The Fifth Element” (VIDEO)
Adam Savage of Mythbusters is working on a perfect replica of the gun from the science fiction movie “The Fifth Element,” which stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman and little known actor by the name of Luke Perry.
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, the Zorg ZF-1 is the end-all, beat-all king of weapons. It’s an assault rifle complete with homing bullets, a rocket launcher, arrow shooters (with explosive and poisonous tips), a net launcher, a flame thrower and the “ice cube system” (freeze gas). To top it all off, it’s ambidextrous. Who wouldn’t want a toy like that?
There’s more, but the real treat is this video:
Have I mentioned recently that I love The Fifth Element? Serious geekin’ here.
Working on a second part to Sunday’s post. Probably have that tomorrow.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted from the BBTI blog.)
I had a bit of a temper tantrum the other day. I won’t apologize, because it was how I really felt. But I will say that a couple of things have happened which have helped me get past my grumpiness.
And those couple of things have been donations. Both of them were decided votes of confidence that our work on BBTI is valued, all our time and effort appreciated.
This may seem silly, because OF COURSE our site is appreciated. Except . . . well, I pretty regularly get emails or come across comments on forums which are complaints. Yup: complaints. That we didn’t test a particular ammo. Or that we’ve slighted some brand or model of firearm by not including it in our tests. Or that we haven’t put our data into this or that form of file so that people can just download it. Or that our data isn’t perfect – that we’ve made mistakes. Or that we haven’t conducted rifle cartridge tests. Et cetera.
It gets old. It gets a little demoralizing, to be honest. The sense of entitlement which some people have is pretty amazing – we’ve busted our asses, worked hard and incurred all the costs of conducting the tests as well as creating and hosting the data on our website, and people bitch because the data isn’t up to *their* standards or expectations. It is very much like we owe it to them to do exactly what they want, and right now.
I don’t mind the criticism. I don’t mind people pointing out where there are areas where we could improve our procedures or range of items tested. We fully recognize that there are more things we could do, ways we can make the data better. And we welcome suggestions on what particular improvements people would like to see – that helps us to make decisions about what is important enough to sink another big chunk of time, money and energy investigating. This isn’t a full-time job for us, after all.
So when I get a note from someone saying “thanks, and oh, have you thought about this…” I welcome it. When someone sends us a donation – of any size – that is a tangible statement that they think our efforts are worthy of supporting. And if someone does send a donation, along with this kind of message, it really means something:
I have used your website for the past two years as a reference tool, and I find the data available amazing. Thank you for putting all of that information together. I was able to donate $x.xx today and I hope the rest of your viewing public gets it and drops you a few dollars as well.
I am sure there is a tremendous personal expense involved in the guns and ammunition used, and I get that you use your personal guns.
Glocks are obviously absent from your data set. I get that you cannot test everything, however with the enormous amount of Glocks in the public, it would seem prudent to at least have one in each caliber and I am positive with your connections they could be provided to you for testing.
You can also just tell me to buzz off… 😉
Thanks again for the awesome data.
Now, *that* is how you make a suggestion which will be remembered.
So, thanks to those who have sent thanks, as well as the donations. It really does mean a lot.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 