Tag: Random Awesome Shit

I Feel Better Now

I take a great deal of pleasure in pissing off the enviro-nazis. Environ-nazi is a term I use for those who claim they’re environmentally friendly but in actuality are not because they oppose real methods to improve the environment. Needless to say it always puts a smile on my face when I can mention the average 17mpg my Ford Ranger gets to one of these individuals. With that said I’m not a fan of paying for gas and I do want to get some physical exercise so I periodically ride a bike. Riding a bike is a double-edged sword in my book because it does offer great exercise and transportation but only at the cost of gaining approval of the enviro-nazis. Thankfully some researchers have my back:

Substituting bicycling for driving is frequently promoted as a means of reducing energy consumption and the associated degradation of the environment. This paper estimates the magnitude of this effect. The analysis takes account of the first-order effects due to the dramatically lower energy requirements of transportation by bicycle relative to automobiles. The environmental benefits of human power are, however, strongly coupled to the environmental costs of increased population, due to increased longevity of those who engage in physical activity. Paradoxically, increased use of human power for transportation is unlikely to reduce substantially the use of energy because of this second-order effect. Human powered transportation is therefore less an environmental issue and more an issue of public health. The interplay between longevity and environmental impact is a central feature of the conflicting societal objectives of improving human health and increasing environmental sustainability.

Since riding a bike leads to a longer life it gives me more time to use energy and increase my carbon footprint. Therefore I can continue riding a bike in good conscious knowing it ultimately goes against everything the enviro-nazis support (which is to say it lets me increase my carbon footprint).

You’re All a Bunch of Socialists


Meme obtained from Facebook

Ludwig von Mises was the man when it came to economics. At a time everybody was preaching the great new planned economy Mises stood, at time, entirely alone in his advocacy of the free market. The Austrian tradition of economics is named so because Mises and his cohorts met at a bar in Austria called The Green Anchor to discuss topics related to economics.

Mises was a total bad ass who wrote large volumes about his theories in his spare time. He also didn’t take shit from anybody and the meme at the start of this post relates to an event where he got fed up talking about distributing income and stormed out of the meeting while calling the other attendees, “a bunch of socialists.” Here’s a short clip explaining Mises’s hijinks:

The man was right, knew he was right, and refused to submit to argumentum ad populum . Refusing to submit to ideas simply because a majority believe them to be true is something we can all learn from the late great Mises.

Synthesizing Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine

We all know getting cold medications with the active ingredient pseudoephedrine, like Sudafed, is a huge pain in the ass today but fortune has shined upon us as it is actually an easy to synthesize from N-methylamphetamine [PDF]:

A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost any time on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover, according to government maintained statistics, Nmethylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of Nmethylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2]. We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine.

I love irony. A hat tip goes to Uncle for this handy guide.

I Admit this Would be Fun

I’m a total nerd, which is obvious to anybody who has spoken to me for more than five minutes. As a nerd things like this excite me:

Excavating a basement using professional machinery is nothing new but doing it with radio controlled (RC) scaled models is something unheard of. Welcome to the little big world of Joe, from Saskatchewan, Canada.
For the past 7 years (!), Joe has been digging out his basement at an average annual rate of 8 to 9 cubic feet using nothing more than RC tractors and trucks!

And we’re talking about the whole nine yards here – he starts by transporting the excavator on an RC truck to the basement, unloads it, digs and uses other trucks to transfer the dirt up to the ground through a spiral ramp! He even has a miniature rock crusher!

There are photographs of the mans progress that are worth look up. All I can say is that this man deserves some recognition for simply being awesome.

Self Guided Bullets

Are you looking for an expensive, although wickedly cool, means of correcting your poor aim? Worry not for Sandia National Laboratories has you covered:

Sandia National Laboratories have invented a small caliber self guided bullet. The bullet contains an optical sensor, CPU, battery and electromagnetic actuated fins. It is able to track laser designated targets out to 2,000 meters.

Sometimes I feel as though I live in a science fiction universe. Sure we don’t have spaceships, flying cars, or man portable laser cannons but we do have extremely powerful computers that are so small the fit in your pocket, an effective worldwide communication network, and now we have self guided bullets.

When I stop to think about what this bullet entails I’m amazed at the human capacity for engineering awesome stuff. We’ve actually shrunk central processing units, batteries, and optical sensors down to the point that they can all be fitted into a single bullet. How cool is that?

As this technology is new it’s not ready for prime time but if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that technology only improves over time so I’m sure we’ll have extremely cheap self guided bullets in our future.

Exactly What I Need for My AR-308

I love my AR in .308 but it has one limitation; the 20-round magazines make it slightly harder to blow through an entire bank account during one range drip. Apparently XS saw the blight of AR-308 owners and is offering a ridiculously awesome solution:

Serious firepower in a small package. The X-25 is a .308 caliber 50 round single stack compact drum designed for AR .308 SR/25 rifles.

Now if they would just make a 100-round version of this.

Rick Santorum’s Nephew Endorses Ron Paul

Rick Santorum has been my personal punching bag for the last month or so. I can’t get over how much a douche that man is, in fact he’s so bad members of his own family are endorsing competitors:

If you want another big-government politician who supports the status quo to run our country, you should vote for my uncle, Rick Santorum. America is based on a strong belief in individual liberty. My uncle’s interventionist policies, both domestic and foreign, stem from his irrational fear of freedom not working.

[…]

It is because of this inability of status quo politicians to recognize the importance of our individual liberties that I have been drawn to Ron Paul. Unlike my uncle, he does not believe that the American people are incapable of forming decisions. He believes that an individual is more powerful than any group (a notion our founding fathers also believed in).

It’s no secret that I don’t like Romney or any other Republican candidate besides Ron Paul but Rick Santorum holds a special place on my list of people I strongly dislike. Somehow he’s managed to advocate war and hatred of gays more than even Michelle Bachmann, a feat that shouldn’t be matched. Either way when you can’t even get your own family members to endorse you you’ve got major problems.

Ron Paul may not have won Iowa but I think winning Santorum’s family member is a pretty good consolation prize.

A Real American Badass

More people should be like this man:

A 77-year-old Minneapolis man was determined to fight off four armed robbers recently. He was so determined that he fended off the criminals with a sledgehammer.

[…]

“I grabbed this sledge but he didn’t know I grabbed it because I acted like I was going into my pocket. I slipped it over I turned it around and I knocked the gun out of his hand,” Krier said.

He said he used his combat training from 1958 to fend off the attackers. Krier said the sledge hammer hit the robber in the hand.

“The gun went in the alley and the guy hollered,” said Krier.

Krier then chased the men.

“Then I grabbed another sledge and I went out the door and they ran out the alley,” Krier said.

One 77 year-old man fending off four men with a sledge hammer is nothing but pure badass. I’m proud of the fact that men like this live in my state.

Now For Something Uplifting

I apologize for making you guys suffer through my rant but to make up for it I have a nice story about anonymous people being awesome:

After a Good Samaritan helped her pay off the layaway bill she’d accumulated to buy Christmas gifts for her grandchildren, Lori Stearnes planned to collect her paycheck Friday and head to Kmart anyway.
Her new plan: Pay the stranger’s kindness forward by using the money she’d budgeted to instead support somebody else.

“It just gives you a warm feeling,” said Stearnes, 53, of Omaha. “… With all the things going on the world, just to have someone do that is so, I don’t know, it’s hard to put into words.”

At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents.

Fuck yeah. It’s always nice to read stories about people helping other people out without the coercive force of government being involved.