Category Archives: HIMEOBS

Instructions Included

Art, bizarre, CRAZY PREPARED, HIMEOBS, review, Science, Stuff, Technology

http://www.instructables.com/

I am addicted to this site.  Bored at home?  Slow at work?  Waiting for your friends to get ready to go somewhere?  Pull this place up and LEARN something.  While writing this, your author has learned how to make a forge from a torch and a can of beans, a set of beads to count kilometers while walking, and a “Boba Fett” helmet from old carboard. 

Practical, outdoorsy, or frivolous, Instructables is a great site for accumulating info and ideas no matter how much of it you actually make or use.

A chain-letter about HIMEOBS

HIMEOBS, Propaganda, Tin-foil hats

I’ve been noticing this appearing with increasing regularity in my various inboxes recently:

What do featherbrained lummoxes, brusque wonks, and HIMEOBS have in common? If you answered, “They all enable intellectually challenged, childish sybarites to punch above their weight,” then pat yourself on the back. With this letter, I hope to advocate social change through dialogue, passive resistance, and nonviolence. But first, I would like to make the following introductory remark: HIMEOBS’s planning to exploit issues such as the global economic crisis and the increase in world terrorism in order to instigate planet-wide chaos. Planet-wide chaos is its gateway to global tyranny, which will in turn enable it to funnel significant amounts of money to filthy bigamists. Despite HIMEOBS’s evident lack of grounding in what it’s talking about, HIMEOBS’s favorite buzzword these days is “crisis”. It likes to tell us that we have a crisis on our hands. It then argues that the only reasonable approach to combat this crisis is for it to inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people. In my opinion, the real crisis is the dearth of people who understand that HIMEOBS used to complain about being persecuted. Now it is our primary persecutor. This reversal of roles reminds me that if HIMEOBS can overawe and befuddle a sufficient number of prominent individuals then it will become virtually impossible for anyone to invigorate the effort to reach solutions by increasing the scope of the inquiry rather than by narrowing or abandoning it.

If HIMEOBS ever claims that it is the one who will lead us to our great shining future, we must answer only one thing: “No, the reverse is true.” HIMEOBS’s premise (that advertising is the most veridical form of human communication) is its morality disguised as pretended neutrality. HIMEOBS uses this disguised morality to support its jokes, thereby making its argument self-refuting. HIMEOBS’s “sincerity” is as transparent as the icy, uncaring look in its eyes. It is unclear whether this is because one loses count of the number of times HIMEOBS has tried to destroy our sense of safety in the places we ordinarily imagine we can flee to, because posterity will have little occasion to glorify its “heroic” existence in a new epic, or a combination of the two. Just because HIMEOBS and its co-conspirators don’t like being labelled as “biggety buffoons” or “anti-democratic ragamuffins” doesn’t mean the shoe doesn’t fit. I acknowledge freely and make no apology for the fact that I once considered it reasonable for addlepated cockalorums to seek temporary tactical alliances with stinking half-wits in order to muster enough force to criticize other people’s beliefs, fashion sense, and lifestyle. But now I know that it’s best to ignore most of the quotes that HIMEOBS so frequently cites. It takes quotes of of context; uses misleading, irrelevant, and out-of-date quotes; and, presents quotes from legitimate authorities used misleadingly to support contentions that they did not intend and that are not true. In short, HIMEOBS has, at times, called me “mawkish” or “hotheaded”. Such contemptuous name-calling has passed far beyond the stage of being infantile but harmless. It has the capacity to rule with an iron fist.

HIMEOBS sees the world as somewhat anarchic, a game of catch-as-catch-can in which the sneakiest grizzlers nab the biggest prizes. What does HIMEOBS have to say about all of this? The answer, as expected, is nothing. I will not quibble with HIMEOBS as to whether or not the essence of lying is in deception, not in words. Instead, I’ll simply state that the thought that someone, somewhere, might urge lawmakers to pass a nonbinding resolution affirming that HIMEOBS consistently falls short of telling the whole story or of making a solid point is anathema to it and leave it at that. Those of us who are still sane, those of us who still have a firm grip on reality, those of us who still feel that stopping HIMEOBS is front and center in my work, have an obligation to do more than just observe what HIMEOBS is doing from a safe distance. We have an obligation to go placidly amid the noise and haste. We have an obligation to bring strength to our families, power to our nation, and health to our cities. And we have an obligation to advance freedom in countries strangled by tyranny. In summary, HIMEOBS uses a rather shrewish definition of “saccharomucilaginous”. Is anyone listening? Does anyone care?

Needless to say, such charges are ludicrous and do not even merit a response, laughter aside.

Musings on Surviving a Laser Gun Battle: Cram’s challenge, Part the Second

bizarre, CRAZY PREPARED, Film, HIMEOBS, Science, Technology

WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET A LASER GUN? 
(SEND ME ONE!)

All right space cadet, the author is not sure what kind of hardware you expect to have at your fingertips, and isn’t going to ask.  It may be best to address the topic of bringing a laser to bear as a hand weapon in two parts: hardware you’re likely to get your hands on (circa 2009), and a few ideas on using it. 

 

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume you have are dealing with a handgun styled setup, not a laser rifle, for reasons to be covered later.
Lasers are NOT effective handheld weapons currently.  Most commonly available lasers are a fancy way to make a red dot appear somewhere, and can’t do much more than blind someone briefly when they hit they eyes just right.  You can acquire models that will light a cigarette or burn plastic bags, but these would need long exposure on unprotected flesh to cause even minor burns.  Nothing with the power (equivalent to a firearm) has been developed into a handheld, much less man – portable, weapon just yet.  Weaponized versions are still confined to trucks or airplanes specially designed for the purpose, and require great resources to operate.  There are a few “less lethal” concepts that use lasers or other pulsating light to cause nausea, but they require a very different setup than a burning, cutting laser. 

It should also be mentioned, a laser is not an all trumping cutting / blasting tool.  A laser only makes things hot, by applying a lot of light to a very small point.  (Or a wider area when unfocused.)  They apply no force, and as such will blow nothing apart on their own.  Even with a very powerful laser, it takes the beam time on an exact point to heat the target enough to damage it.  For the time being, the best a laser could hope to do is damage by heat a target that will hold still long enough for it, or be tracked very accurately long enough, for this burning to happen.  Easy with an arrangement in a large jet or truck, but not exactly practical for a handheld model.

 
An actual “light fight”, to steal the term from science fiction, to the author’s knowledge, has yet to happen with fatalities.  (Heart attacks playing laser tag notwithstanding.)  The author is no gunfighter, and skill with a pistol may be one of the closest ideas to use of a handheld laser gun.  The basic idea, assuming a laser of sufficient strength to burn through a clothed human in 0.1 or less seconds, would be the same.  The dangerous area involved with the weapon would be a straight line out from the tip of the barrel when the trigger is pulled.  Unlike a gun, however, the laser would not involve a projectile, and would be dangerous as long as the trigger was held down.  No appreciable recoil either.  Imagine a rapier of indeterminate length that cannot be parried or blocked, has a blade that weighs practically nothing, and is sharp in every direction at once.   That’s basically what you have to defend against, or be offensive with.  Like with guns, the golden rule is “Don’t be in front of them”.  Outside of arm’s reach, you can be dead as quick as the opponent can draw a bead and pull the trigger.  Given the nature of the laser though, they can decide to “swish” the beam THROUGH you if they don’t target you right on the initial activation.  Inside arms reach techniques for defending against a handgun also work, as far as using your hands and body to get the tip of the barrel pointed away from you.  (In fact this may be easier, as you don’t have to worry about blinding from muzzle flash, deafening, powder burns or laceration from moving parts if it goes off right next to your head.)  At range though, find cover and keep moving.  Make sure it’s something that takes awhile to burn through too.  Mirrored shields would only be a temporary solution (No reflector being perfect, it would only be a temporary solution at best.) 

If you both have laser weapons, use yours first.  (This is the simple way out of any fight, armed or not.)  If you can’t then keep your head down, keep covered, and try to flank or lure the other guy out.  Trading fire is leaving things up to chance, and getting pinned down limit options fast, especially if they can burn up your cover.  If you both end up at arm’s length with laser pistols, then something’s really wrong.  Refer to Kurt Wimmer movies, and pray you have time after to wonder how you got into such a stupid fix.Â