Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Richard Fernandez writes what I would like to have written

But sadly, have not the intellect.  Obama as Japanese Admiral Nagumo at Midway.  Win:
Yet there is a further dimension: the future  is never, as Barack Obama pointed out, completely blank. It is always imprinted with hopes and expectation. In 1942 the force which left Japan en route to the Central Pacific was hoping — unrealistically it now seems — to make an end to the Pacific War. But they did not realize this dream was even then beyond their grasp.  All they knew for a fact — an undeniable fact — was that they had the best aviators in the world.
But it did not save them. They were doomed from the start.
I guess that's why he's Richard Fernandez, and I'm, well, just Borepatch.  Sigh.

Oh well, I once wrote of Obama as King Ethelred the Unready.  Not quite the same, even if it does have Old English.  Sigh.

4 comments:

Atom Smasher said...

I just leave it as "Obama is the worst kind of college T.A."

-smasher

Beyond Anon said...

On a different topic, I have a question.

Recently at the range I ran into an old timer who has an M1 and reloads.

Anyway, he claimed that the pressures on the chamber on the M1 are lower that 30-06 bolt-action rifles, claiming that they are around 48,000 PSI for the M1 and in the 60,000s for bolt-action rifles.

Just today it popped into my head that this seems unreasonable. The bolt on the M1 is not unlocked until the gas bleeds down the port and operates the piston, which is not until the bullet is almost out of the barrel. The fraction of a second (around 11uS if the distance to the end of the barrel from the gas port is 1cm and assuming the bullet leaves the barrel at around 3,000 fps--sorry, bad practice to mix units like that) it takes for the bullet to leave the barrel after it passes the gas port should not make such a big difference, it seems to me.

Can you cast an opinion? How does the M1 chamber pressures compare to those in 30-06 bolt-action rifles?

Borepatch said...

Beyond Anon, unfortunately I have no idea. I expect that some bloggers like Carteach0 would have an informed opinion.

Ratus said...

Its not the chamber pressure.

But the gas system; loads with the wrong powder will bend the op-rod.