Culture Not Understood by Americans – Ownership, Power, Humanity

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Brian

I stumbled across the Pineapple Story presentation by Missionary Otto Koning. The fact that he was a missionary is incidental to my observation, which has more to do with the realization that culturally, the tribes he worked with were different. Continue reading →

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Ballistics of Benjamin HB22 Pellet Pistol

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Brian

It was a sunny fall day in the south. I decided I would get out the old HB22 Crosman Benjamin pellet pistol and see if I could zero the sights. Actually, I wanted to do more than zero the sights. I wanted to calibrate the ballistic trajectory and figure out why I couldn’t hit anything when I aimed at it. Continue reading →

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3D-Printable Gun and Export Control Laws

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Brian

On 9 May 2013, Cody Wilson received a take-down letter for several CAD plans suitable for 3D printing an operable gun.  The letter was sent from the State Department threatening violation of export requirements since Cody’s website and company Defense Distributed was making potentially ITAR controlled documents available on the web.  That is strange in light of other documents bearing ITAR controlled statements, such as military aircraft test procedures (see page 2), that are available on the web.

DefCAD.org went off the web in compliance with the take down letter.  DefCAD.com is a new search engine dedicated to 3D printing plans.

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Military Strategists and Physics Theories

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Brian

Several weeks ago, I found myself in a discussion with military strategists about Schrödinger’s half dead cat . Then I came across Beyerchen’s description of Clausewitz as non-linear war, first published in International Security back in 1992. This proximity of these discussions took me to interesting places. Continue reading →

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Democracy: Tool or Goal?

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Brian

Stephen M Walts, in International relations: One World, Many Theories (Foreign Policy Spring 1998) introduces the idea that democracies are thought to be better because they bring peace, liberty, and prosperity. Continue reading →

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