Pic of the Day

The Ameya by Robert Frederick Blum, 1893. Via Spoon & Tamago.

The American - George Clooney

 

I remember seeing the trailers for this movie when it came out and thinking that it might be pretty cool/fun, and it was, but not in the action-thriller kind of way that you might expect from the previews. George is holed up in a little Italian town, keeping a low profile. We follow him around town for a bit, and gol durn it, I think I read the book: A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth. Turns out I started it, but I wasn't able to finish it. George, being the manly man he is, cannot help but attract a series of beautiful women: Irina Björklund as his ill-fated Swedish girlfriend, Thekla Reuten as a fellow criminal-in-arms, and Violante Placido as the hooker with a heart of gold. They make it very easy to watch. 

    George has a job putting together a rifle with a silencer, and we get to watch him at work, including making the silencer (sorry, "suppressor") out of some metal scraps he picks up at a garage. When he demos the gun he tells us that the muzzle velocity is 360 miles per hour. Never heard it done that way. It is usually given in feet per second, at least over here in the USA. In Europe I expect they use meters per second. Anyway 360 MPH works out to 528 feet per second, which is pert near dead slow for a bullet, especially one coming out of a rifle. Rifles are usually upwards of 2,000 feet per second. The suppressor would slow it down some, but not that much. That's Hollywood for you.

    He also sabotages the gun at the last minute when his suspicions about his employer bloom. There is never any real clear indicator that he is himself a target, but we just have little incidents happening that let you know something it now quite right. Anyway, it turns out he is right and the sabotage has fatal consequences for his would be assassin. Kind of interesting since I was just reading about some lethal problems with guns.

Three of the towns mentioned in the film are just outside of  Rome. Another one that gets mentioned is another part of the country entirely. View 2014 January in a larger map

Some Kind of Door

Turkish Police try to break down a door. I'd like to meet the door maker.

Syria

 

Syrian army soldiers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

For a while I was convinced that Assad was a bad guy, a corrupt tyrant in the same mold as every other dictator we have ever decried. Then I started trying to understand just what the hell was going on with the Jihadists and I started paying a little more attention. My opinion of him is now more neutral because the people he is fighting are not any better, and could very well be much worse. Assad, bad as he is, might be the best option for Syria. And now we are sending guns and money to the rebels. I wonder what we are trying to accomplish. Are we trying to prop up Saudi Arabia's bid to gain an edge over Iran? Or perhaps we are just caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment and are "helping" by throwing more fuel on the fire. Burn, baby, burn!

Other posts that mention Syria.

Cultural Hegemony

Pete Seeger is dead and Tam had a few cryptic words to say, cryptic in that they are not machine related and so are therefor unfamiliar to this gear-head. So I had to go look it up, and when I did I found this, the intro to Wikipedia's article on Cultural Hegemony:

In Marxist philosophy, the term Cultural Hegemony describes the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of the society — the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores — so that their ruling-class worldview becomes the worldview that is imposed and accepted as the cultural norm; as the universally valid dominant ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.

The initial phrase "In Marxist philosophy" is superfluous. I think this definition applies equally well in any culture, East or West, Communist or Capitalist, Democracy or Dictatorship.

daily minutia trivia house hold item:

Iowa Andy reports:

    Our downstairs toilet seat broke, it caught my notice because it was unusually old and of sturdy construction. Looks like it may be almost as old as I. Removing it, I ran into springs, why springs???  looking on the internet the manufacturer, Sperzel in Minneapolis, was one of five toilet seat makers,  but is now out of business.
    I did find patent information.  As detailed as the patent is,  it doesn't say why there are springs, rusted necessitating a Sawzal cutting of the thick bolt while not cracking the bowl.
    This led to researching Recip blades,  Lenox being the best,  my craftsman blades were crap. While searching for blades,  I was reminded to use the 4.5" angle grinder,  which I did,  taking a about a minute on the 2nd bolt,  much quicker than my hour of hack/recip sawing on the first.
    Additionally curious is that the seat designed to have a limited swing is mounted on a standard tank toilet whose tank abrogates the need of a swing limit. My latest theory is this industrial seat  was taken from the hospital by one of the previous Doctor owners.
    Sperzel is also the name of a Cleveland company that makes guitar machine heads.

US Patent 2,814,048

Update September 2018 replaced missing picture.

Ay Caramba!

Two men and a woman allegedly responsible for making 15 shots in a residential complex.

Sunday, Jan 26, 2014 13:13

From a comment on Burro Hall. The picture was just too good to pass up. The caption is Google's translation.