kimmy

It sounds like you're arguing that the banks did what they did because there was nothing stopping them. Congratulations, it seems that you grasp the necessity of regulation after all. Good for you. Maybe there's hope for you yet. -k

I had the SKS and SVT-40 apart yesterday to figure out the locking mechanism. No twisting, rotating, or camming is involved. Both guns work basically the same. When the bolt comes to rest against the chamber, the bolt carrier still has about a centimeter to move forward. During that centimeter of travel, a ramp the front of the bolt carrier forces the back end of the bolt downward. The back end of the bolt is resting on top of a spring-loaded button, but the forward motion of the carrier forces the back end of the bolt down, pressing this button. When the bolt is in this position with the back end tilted downward, the back of the bolt is solidly wedged against a heavy steel block-- it can't go backward, and it can't go up with the bolt carrier above it. That's how the bullet gets locked in the chamber in both guns. The trigger can't fire until the spring loaded button gets pressed downward-- it can only release the hammer once the bullet is securely locked in the chamber. Once the gun fires the piston pushes the bolt carrier back that first centimeter, allowing the spring loaded button to push the bolt back up above the metal block, and it can slide back too, bringing the empty casing with it. The whole system is ingeniously simple. I've really enjoyed figuring out how the mechanical pieces work. I found the sights on the Soviet guns kind of difficult to use. If I focused on the target, the lineup of the post and notch became out of focus. If I focused on the post and notch, the target became out of focus. The Marlin was better in this respect, I think because the red blade and the deeper notch made the sights more visible while I was focusing on the target. I saw an interesting after-market sight for the SKS that might help: http://www.williamsgunsight.com/gunsights/image_sks.htm Replaces the post in the front sight with a fibre-optic light collector, and replaces the rear notch with a ring. I think this would greatly improve the visibility of the sights while you're concentrating on the target. And the gun could be returned to completely stock condition by putting the original sights back in place. For the time being, I think I might put a dab of fluorescent orange paint on the front sight posts to make them more visible. -k

I think I explained that quite clearly. A CDS doesn't produce anything at all. It's a legal scam to make more money off of faulty products that should never have been sold in the first place. Democrats and Republicans are all to blame for allowing stupid to happen in the first place, but Republicans are the ones promoting flat-out lies about the causes of the housing crisis and promoting the idea that "we have to do stupid again to get America back to work!" Well, they've certainly bought themselves a regulators and a Department of Justice that has refused to punish them, and a Dodd-Frank act that has been watered-down to the point of being virtually useless. I think they've gotten good value for the money they gave the Democrats. Still better than what the Republicans are offering, though. That's not my job, it's the job of government officials who have, to this point, been reluctant to do anything. On the bright side, that is changing. The non-punishment of HSBC and the admission that HSBC is just too big and too important to punish was the straw that broke the camel's back. That fiasco has spurred widespread criticism, public outrage at the inaction of the DoJ, and cost Lanny Breuer his job. They're starting to figure out that the public no longer accepts the rationalizations they're being offered. The civil suit against S&P is no doubt an attempt to convince the public that the DoJ is actually doing something. The video of bank regulators' attempting to answer the question "when was the last time you took a bank to trial?" at last week's hearings went viral on the internet and was laughed at by an awful lot of people, and you can be sure that people high up in the administration are now painfully aware that the public thinks their regulators are, literally, a joke. I thought that "...and Justice for All!" was part of the American Way. "Justice for some; carte blanche for the wealthy" is the sort of thing that the colonists took up arms against way back when. And they'll be paid from settlements obtained against banks that deserve far worse than what's coming. I really don't care. As I said, we in Canada are just collateral damage; the real victims are your countrymen. -k

The idiocy in question was not capitalism or free enterprise. The idiocy in question was tearing down well-proven regulations, and it was letting financial institutions invent a whole new set of rules that only they even understood. The "Credit Default Swap" is not the same as Edison's light bulb or Ford's Model T. Yes, deregulation that happened under Clinton was part of the problem. And the Clinton administration shares blame for failing to regulate derivatives as well. But fast forward to present-day, and we find that it is Republicans who are advocating on behalf of the banks. Whether it is Willard during the campaign saying "Let's scrap these job-killing regulations and get America back to work!" over and over again, or Marco Rubio last week telling America that it was government policies that caused the housing crisis, it's clear that these people just didn't learn anything. In the case of the housing bubble, fraud. In the recent HSBC case, willful breach of the law. In the ongoing LIBOR investigation, fraud. Private investors are bringing civil cases to trial. The State of New York is bringing a civil case to trial. Eric Holder and his crew of spineless cowards are belatedly getting in on the act by filing a civil case against S&P, which isn't a bank but at least it's something. As these cases make their way through court, some of the evidence that the lawyers have been able to obtain has been fascinating. The one that I found particularly amusing was reading about brokers at Morgan Stanley trying to decide what to name their new CDO in 2006. The suggestions included "Subprime Meltdown", "Nuclear Holocaust", "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out", and "Shitbag." "Shitbag" was given the official name "Stack 2006-1" and sold to investors as "Better than AAA!" Of course not. Canada will just be collateral damage; the primary victims will be American taxpayers again. If Rubio and his ilk get their way. -k

What makes them twisted? Why the belief that they are jaded? Why be so judgmental? I disagree with the premise that people whose tastes differ from the mainstream are defective or damaged in some way. To me it appears that your objection to this might be because you're uncomfortable with the gender politics aspect of it-- the idea that some women are aroused by sexual submission is scary and threatening to our cherished values of gender equality. I disagree, and I can't get behind that anyway. To me, saying "this is wrong because it's not politically correct and it's gross" isn't much different from "this is wrong because our god condemns it and it's gross." -k

One of the premises in this thread is that this kind of activity should not be done in public because it might be confusing or disturbing to children. How do you explain it to your young daughter when she sees an adult woman being treated in this degrading way? And... I'm just wondering whether that argument scales. For example, for the sake of argument, suppose adherents of some religion believe that women must be completely covered in a bag-like garment when they venture outside. A lot of people might find that to be degrading as well. Would they again feel uncomfortable with their young daughter seeing something like this? -k

For sure. Still, I think you're greatly underestimating the economic consequences of one of these giant entities going down. They were obviously unwilling to risk it at a time when the economy was already losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every month. I don't see why. I believe that proper regulations and application of existing regulations would have prevented the meltdown in the first place. I believe that individuals and institutions could have been punished. I believe that the fiction being presented about the causes of the collapse has to be confronted. I believe that the truth should be known so that people don't elect a guy like Willard or Rubio to repeat the same mistakes. I don't see how any of those positions implies support for bailouts. -k

If this idiocy takes hold in America again, we'll feel it in Canada again. -k

What do you base this observation on, aside from the appearance of a few lurid news items? There does "seem to be" an increase in homosexuals lately. Use to be that we hardly ever heard about them; now they're all over the place. Must be that Ellen on TV, turning everybody gay! The point isn't whether Betty Page's lesbian bondage and spanking photos were tame by today's standards, it's that this isn't a new topic. The point isn't whether Freud was right or wrong, it's that this isn't a new topic. -k

I think you're greatly underestimating the significance of these mega-banks if you think they can be replaced in a week with no harm to the economy. "Too big to fail" wasn't just a catch-phrase invented by politicians, it was also a conclusion reached by analysts. As I said before, I agree with whoever it was who said "Too Big To Fail is Too Big To Exist". They should have broken them up. Regardless, I'm not interested in defending the bailout. I'm more interested in confronting the lies that people like Shady continue to spread. Especially because it's not just Shady saying this crap, it's future presidential candidates. Marco Rubio is apparently among those trying to rewrite the history of the financial crisis to blame everybody except the banks. This response to Rubio summarizes who he and those who believe him are in denial of reality. -k

It's a British trash tabloid. It's an example of how just because something is British doesn't mean it's classy. How many other stories about domestic violence did you see while you were browsing The Sun? How many incidents of domestic violence do you think might have occurred in that nation of 62 million people during the same time frame that The Sun didn't find newsworthy enough to report? Some time ago Michael H and I had a discussion about what makes an unremarkable story (parking-lot fight) into a News Item (parking-lot fight caught on video while participants shout racial epithets, in the example we were discussing back then.) I proposed a list of factors that make an uninteresting story into a News Item. I can't recall the exact list, but your news story contains two obvious examples of such factors: -lurid details (kinky sex; woman has dude's name tattooed on her privates.) -chance to link story to a trending topic (story will attract interest of people interested in 50 Shades.) In short, you're not reading about this because S&M-related domestic violence is suddenly sweeping the land. You're reading about this because The Sun knew you'd click on the link. Fascination with kinky sex didn't start with 50 Shades. It didn't start with the internet era. Look up Betty Page some time. Freud was trying to figure out why some people are excited by S&M a century ago. -k

I ought to mention that I think that if it were a man leading a woman on a leash, the public reaction would much less sympathetic. I think that the "they're just having fun" faction would be much smaller, and there would be a larger faction saying that it's unacceptable. I also agree that a public street isn't the right venue. I get that a big part of the excitement for something like this comes from having other people see it, but possibly an age-restricted venue like a night club would be a better place for it. Yes. Some people find this sort of thing extremely arousing. Some people are turned on by exhibitionism. Some people are turned on by playing slave or maid. Some people are extremely turned on by situations that most people would find embarrassing or degrading. I don't know why, but I'm sure many research papers have been written on the subject. It was (and still is) also practiced by people who for religious or cultural reasons believe that vaginal penetration must wait until marriage. It's also done by people who are interested in experimenting with different sensations. Some people are also excited by it for psychological reasons rather than physical. I think that you may be trying to examine sexual practices by looking at a present-day mainstream as the norm and attempting to rationalize what might cause deviations from the norm using pop-psychology. But there's nothing very rational about sex. Maybe. I think that people have ways of finding each other. They did, even before the internet. I wouldn't wonder about it; I would just accept that human sexuality is a weird and mysterious topic. I don't think people whose sexual interests are outside the mainstream should be looked at as defective, and I don't think they need to be protected or policed. -k

Standard & Poor's isn't too big to fail. They're just a bond rating service. The economy doesn't collapse if S&P isn't there to rubber-stamp Wall St's latest junk bonds. And they're just being sued, not put out of commission. I think I read that the amount they're being sued for amounts to a small fraction of their annual profits. It's just a slap on the wrist, like HSBC got for running money for drug cartels and terrorists. So it's not going to be the hammer of justice. But at least the public shame of having to explain themselves in court should give some satisfaction. -k

I believe that masochists actually outnumber sadists by a wide margin. It's more likely that the person on on the end of the leash is getting off on it than the person holding the leash. While there are no doubt examples of BDSM/S&M/dom-sub relationships that ended up in horrible ways, the same can be said of "vanilla" relationships as well. Power-exchange sex games are nothing new, and I see no reason for alarm over it. -k

Oh yeah! I just remembered something I was going to ask! Eye protection: probably the most trouble I had yesterday came from my protective glasses. I was pretty sweaty by the time I got to my shooting spot, and I had a lot of trouble with sweat and wet hair messing up my lenses. I kept having to stop and wipe them down, and they weren't exactly crystal-clear while I was shooting. Any suggestions for keeping precipitation and perspiration off my goggles? I'm thinking about wiping some Rain-X on them or something like that. I'm just using clear polycarbonate safety glasses that I use while I'm using my tools. Are there some good anti-fog, anti-glare etc glasses? Gotcha. thanks. I think it will be a while before I can hit a CD hole (or a CD for that matter) at 100 yards regardless of how good of a gun I have. Especially without the help of optics. I think that if I did buy one, I would want to try and class it up a bit, with a wooden stock at the very least. Other than that, it sounds like it would be a completely viable gun for hunting, chasing predators off my future acreage, zombie defense, or any other foreseeable circumstance. One definite appeal compared to the Russian guns is the much greater likelihood of finding ammunition on short notice. Speaking of not-quite historical guns... is there such thing as a Garand knock-off? It blurs each time I visit the Marstar web page. Still pondering the shotgun issue. Not in a big rush on that front. -k

The Catholic Church's cover-up of abuse is an objective fact, as is Ratzinger's role in it. Good riddance. -k

Britain is metric. He's pulling your leg. -k

Some of the major industries (notably construction and car manufacturing) depend on consumers having access to financing-- if automakers and homebuilders could only deal with customers who could buy with cash out of pocket, those industries would collapse overnight. Just about any new enterprise or expansion or investment or major project is done using financing rather than cash out of pocket. If business ventures and major projects only happened when somebody had the cash in the pocket to pay for it up front, hardly anybody would be able to start anything. I don't even want to get into that side of things too much, because it distracts from the larger point. Ultimately investing in anything is a risk, and people who lost money in mutual funds that contained Mortgage Backed Securities aren't really much different from people who lost money in tech stocks. But there is one difference worth mentioning. If you invest in a company that fails for honest reasons (changing market conditions, couldn't deliver their product on time, whatever) you have no reason to feel bitter, because that's how it goes. But if it turns out that the company you invested in had willfully duped investors with false information and run off with their money, then that's criminal. The Bre-X scandal is a well-known example. In Bre-X, geological samples were tampered with to make it appear as though the company had found an immensely valuable gold mining site. People put their trust in the geologist who reviewed these samples, but he was part of the fraud. With the MBSs, people put their trust first off in the banks' own due diligence process for reviewing mortgage applications, and secondly in agencies like Standard & Poor's, who were supposed to scrutinize these securities. But the banks and S&P were part of the fraud, just like the Bre-X geologist. Investors were duped with mortgage-backed securities, just as they were with Bre-X stocks, but it was done much more subtly. Instead of putting all the bad mortgages in one place, they "securitized" them into derivative-based financial products and used them to pad out other financial products. So that unless you were there in the hotel conference room where the due diligence contractors were rubber-stamping mortgages, you had no way to know what kind of crap mortgages were actually inside the MBS products you own. And because they were spread out among less risky investments, the performance of MBS products was not really that noticeable, up until the foreclosure avalanche hit in 2006. So while any investment carries a risk, I think there is an obvious difference between a good-faith enterprise that fails its investors, and an intentional attempt to deceive investors. The banks were engaged in the latter. The credit ratings agencies assisted them. Last week, after 4 years of doing nothing, the Department of Justice finally got around to filing a lawsuit against Standard & Poor's for their role in bilking investors. -k

When I got the SKS, I devoted considerable attention to making sure that the FP really does FF. Still, until I saw the gun actually function as designed, I was cautious anyway. I'd hate to end up in one of those "idiots with guns" compilation videos. I think I saw a video from a guy that manufactures an aftermarket pin with a spring, but it seems unnecessary. Part of the beauty of the SKS is how few parts there are in the action, and adding an extra part seems unfaithful to its mission. Cool! Can you help me what 1 MOA means, in real terms? I'm familiar with the concept, but if you could give me an example of what 1 MOA means in practical terms (ie, a CD at 100m) it would make it easier to grasp. I've seen the Norinco M14s on a few vendors, and the idea appealed to me but I had a lot of questions. Like "How would I explain this to Derek?" and "Is Norinco as crappy as Derek says?" and "is the stock as cheesy as it looks in the pictures?" and "would a replica M14 wooden stock fit this?" I think that sometime down the road, I would want to have a scoped bolt-action rifle in 308 Win, and when I do then one of these would be fun since I'd have the ammo for it anyway. But that's probably a long time away. Right now, the wish-list looks (tentatively) something like this: -a TT-33 -a 357 cowboy rifle -a 357 single-action revolver -a Mosin (to complete the set!) -a shotgun And then there's the "maybe someday" list that looks something like this: -a 9mm pistol -a 22 pistol, maybe a revolver -a scoped hunting rifle, probably in 308 Win -a manual action 22 -a Mini-14 Maybe if I get that manual action 22, I'll get another with a tube magazine. Ah! That makes perfect sense. I assume I am doing the right thing by storing my guns with the springs in un-compressed positions? Marlin actually recommends that the Model 60 be stored with the action open (and their lock in the ejector port) but the idea of it just sitting there with the springs compressed didn't sit well with me. Interesting video! Since I got my rifles, I've been interested in the mechanics of how they work. I figured out most of that on my own, but your video covers some finer points that aren't apparent just from studying the parts. The details are different... on my guns the spring is behind the bolt rather than under the receiver, and I don't think the locking mechanism works the same as on the M14, but the basics are pretty much identical. The camming and rotating portion was pretty interesting... I'll pop open the SKS and see if the locking mechanism has something like that. -k

Komrades! When they speak of the day that the vile Nazis zombies milk-jugs came to the mountains of British Columbia, they will say that Patriot Kimmy was there to greet them... with Soviet lead!! A great victory for the people was achieved, fellow workers! This morning I went snowshoeing off into the woods with all 3 guns strapped to my back and some milk-jugs to shoot. The Soviet guns both worked flawlessly! I started with the SKS, and I loaded just one round and racked it carefully, just to make sure it didn't slam-fire or anything like that. Worked as advertised. I hit the jug on the first shot, which I was pretty proud of considering I was wearing snow-shoes and was pretty exhausted from all the carrying. I loaded a couple more rounds and hit the jug with both of them, and they cycled and ejected perfectly. I was pretty excited about how well the SKS worked, and I moved on to the SVT-40. I proceeded cautiously, as with the SKS, because I was again concerned with the possibility of a slam-fire or accidentally going "full auto". I was glad that I started with the SKS, because if I had started with the SVT-40, I would have had nothing left to shoot. The SKS ventilated and crushed the jugs pretty good... but the SVT-40 shredded them. Literally. First shot with the SVT-40 was ... a miss, but the gun worked properly, so I loaded 2 more shots. Second shot, I hit the jug and it exploded and was literally ripped in half. Since that jug was no longer a viable target, I turned to the one that I'd been shooting with the SKS. I hit it, too, and it tore open and flew about 10 feet into the air. When I inspected the jugs, I found the 3 bullet holes left by the SKS in the one jug. The SVT-40 didn't leave any bullet holes; the jugs were just shredded as if claws had stabbed into them and ripped them apart. That gun is holy-shit awesome. I was surprised at how loud the SKS is. I had heard that the SVT-40 is incredibly loud, but to me it seemed like the SKS is at least as loud. Or perhaps by the time I started shooting the SVT-40, my ears were already too desensitized to compare. Anyway, they're both hella-loud, and I was glad I did have ear plugs. I had a couple of jugs left to shoot, so I loaded up the Marlin 60 and went to work. It also worked flawlessly, just as you'd hope for from a brand new gun. No complaints about it at all, other than that after the SVT-40, it was awfully anticlimactic. Neither jug was crushed or shredded, though both were quite ventilated by the time I finished with them. My shooting needs plenty of practice. From a distance of about 15 yards I was 3/3 with the SKS, 2/3 with the SVT-40, and 15 or 16 out of 20 with the Marlin. I think that's probably not bad for a complete beginner wearing snowshoes who'd just carried 40 pounds of water and 20 pounds of guns a kilometer in fresh snow. The guns are all cleaned and locked back in the cabinet. I'm really happy about how well they worked, especially the SVT-40. I mostly wanted it for historical interest and as a part of the collection, and given the gun's reputation for fickleness and the condition it was in when I received it, I wasn't confident that it was going to be very good. But it's just a delight. The ability to fire 22 short is not really a big deal for me. I don't think I've ever actually seen 22 short in a store, and it's not like 22 LR is expensive anyway. It would be a neat-to-have type thing, but I won't care if it doesn't work. What's the harm in dry-firing? I know it's "bad", and I haven't done it. (With the Russians, I have my snap-caps to use, and with the Marlin I don't even think it's possible to dry-fire it-- it won't close on an empty chamber unless you use the Bolt Close button, and the Bolt Close button seems to uncock the firing mechanism.) Still, I'm interested to know why it's bad for the gun. -k

Good grief. I called him out on this in the other thread, and instead of responding there, he jumps to a different thread and posts the same crap here. Monumental Intellectual cowardice. -k

...and many here are following some kind of fantasy version that doesn't correspond to facts, which is what I am arguing against. I continue to be amazed at the extent to which some people on this message board are psychologically incapable of accepting the reality that the financial crisis was of the banks' own making. I disagree that I am following a "mainstream interpretation". The mainstream has not talked nearly enough about the behavior that created the subprime crisis in the first place. And I'm not a supporter of how governments have handled this. It's been extremely disappointing. Letting the banks fail would have caused total economic chaos. I would have been all for letting reckless banks get what they deserved, but not if letting that happen destroyed every other sector of the economy. The problem is "too big to fail". I think the solution is "too big to fail is too big to exist." In the past, the US government broke up utilities and telecommunications companies. If a bank like HSBC is too important to be charged for flagrant violations of the law, then they're obviously too big, period. Maybe once the entire economy isn't dependent on a relative handful of mega-banks, then we can get back to a place where failure means death instead of a bailout. -k

Lobbyists working for US zinc producers hope to keep the penny in production for a long time! -k

YEAAAAHHH BOOOOIIII! That'll show them Canucks! BOOO-YAH! Whatcha gonna do now, frostbacks? USA! USA! USA! USA! Good to know that Americans are getting their money's worth for the $8 billion they spend on the TSA. -k

Case closed. -k