I always thought this was a bad idea…

So I had previously seen a lot of different coverage in different places about the “festival of colors“. For a quick background see this.

I always thought it intriguing yet weird because well my fascination with fire and explosives has taught me the dangers of such things as dust, especially in large quantities. Well my apprehension was evidently well founded.

An article on the incident had this to say,

Explosions and blasts continued to take or put human lives in danger across the globe over the past week as fun and frolic turned into tragedy in the space of minutes. In the Formosa Water Park in the Bali district in Taiwan, over 200 people suffered severe burns after a dust explosion engulfed an area where people were merrily dancing.

I learned about the wonders of dust explosions back in scouts and the ripe age of 13. Non-dairy creamer, flour, really anything in a powdered form that is combustable will produce fantastic results. The MSDS for white chalk further provides data that while it may be chalk, danger is a serious concern for fire and explosion.

So remember, trust your gut and just because a bunch of people are doing it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe.

I’m sure somehow we’ll be blamed for this…

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office are asking for help from the public in gathering information about the theft of approximately 559 pounds of high explosives from a USFS explosives bunker located near Red Lodge.

We’re not talking just blasting agent either.

Officials say that various emulsion-type explosives, explosive cast boosters and detonating cord were taken from the facility.

How serious is the ATF taking the theft?  They’re offering a $5,000 reward.  Their warmth and sincerity given the theft occurred with forced entry makes me feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy inside.  Doubly so given the propensity of the government, not to mention the BATFE, is more than willing to throw civil rights and liberties to the wind.

[Sarcasm] But remember, it’s me and you that they need to restrict.  The government could never fail us. [/Sarcasm]

Challenge Accepted!

Via Alan I found this.

New bombproof waste bins to be planted throughout London will address not only the city’s security concerns, but environmental issues as well.

Designed to absorb the heat of explosions, the armored receptacle collects trash and recyclable materials in separate compartments. It also displays a weather-proof LCD screen streaming news and travel information, according to a Times Online story.

Note they didn’t say bomb-resistant, they said bomb-proof.  I have the sudden urge to do an Idaho Stress Test.

The most interesting thing is it’s designed to absorb “the heat of explosions”.  Yes, most explosions are exothermic, but due to the rapidly expanding nature there isn’t much heat overall. If there is, that’s usually because of extra fuel in whatever was being used as an explosive.  Further you can’t even just evacuate air out of the tank because even then you can make explosives that can still detonate.  The pressure is the deciding factor and the hard part to defend against.

So,  to Media Metrica, if you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is, please feel free to contact me.  I know I’ll be stuck picking the bits and pieces out of the field but by god this would totally be worth it.  No matter what you can always engineer a solution to cause it to fail.

Quote of the Day–Unknown (01/06/2013)

I felt that in my balls.

Unknown

For full context:


[Yeah, that was awesome and I’m sure he did.  Funny story about that…

For you see, when I was about 4 years old my dad took me to an airshow.  This the day after I broke my ankle by repeatedly doing something stupid.  It was probably about the 10th time that I broke it but I digress.

You see it wasn’t a major break, didn’t swell up, I could still walk on it, it just hurt.  So when my dad took me to the airshow the next day I just rode around on his shoulders everywhere.  None of us knew it was broken until the next day when I had X-rays because it wasn’t getting better.

At some point during the day, I’m sitting on my dads shoulders and I point to the horizon.  Coming in just above the deck are two A-6’s hauling ass like there’s no tomorrow.    The go directly over us so close I could swear I could touch them.  If you’ve never seen a jet do a flyby it is loud and you can feel that through your whole body.

So there I am, sitting on my fathers shoulders, A-6’s are hauling ass over head and I am a small boy with no verbal filter.  Does anyone want to guess what kind of statement I made?  Anyone?  Bueller?

I said the following once the jets were far enough away:

Daddy, that made my penis tingle!

Before my dad even has a chance to erupt into laughter, the woman standing in front of him turns around and gives this nasty glare and says, “Sir, are you going to correct your son?”

To why my dad then replies along the lines of, “Why?  It’s the correct response for the son of a naval flight officer, and that boy knows what he likes!”

Yeah, I hated that story growing up… It was one of my dad’s favorites, I have since begun  to appreciate it and understand why. ~sigh~ –B]

ESS and Boomershoot – Part V

Previously on Masterpiece Theater:

For some extra humor, the blue canopy in the back ground is a couple of guys right next to the ESS crew that were shooting without eye-wear.  They even refused to try the stuff ESS had.  Yes, when I was told that story, I’m reasonably this was my reaction.

I chatted with Ari a bunch while at Boomershoot, awesome guy.  As I’ve said before, I highly recommend the Cross Series of products.  Just to show how much I like them, the FTC can suck an egg, I was paid nothing for saying any of this.  I got a free pair, no strings attached, but it wasn’t even really with a review in mind.

This One’s for Sean…

So, I kind of batted at Joan in my Priceless video but it wasn’t really a good solid hit.  It was more of just a fun video.  Joe took a good solid swing here which I felt was on the right track but the more I thought about it, more needed to be done.  I had piles of video of pumpkins blowing up between 2010 and 2012.

Sean posted a comment when Joe did his first post on Joan’s PSH stating we should have a self contained video that explained her break down and put everything in one easy to see spot.  Well I did just that.  Now while overall this really didn’t need to be made, it was more practice and work with the Adobe tools.  The learning curve is steep but doing projects, no matter how pointless is how you get over them.

So this one’s for Joan!

Besides, it’s quite fitting since it’s Halloween with the pumpkins and all.

ESS and Boomershoot–Volume 4

Yes I make a couple appearances… You can see me on the left as Rolf decides to juggle the explosives.  What I love is the story of the history of the anvil launch.

You learn something new every day… It does for some reason really make me want to get a cannon.  I wish I had 7 grand.

Priceless…

So last weekend Joe came out and did a private party for Barb L. and her son.  This had been planned for at least a couple of weeks earlier and since it was October we figured we’d do a pumpkin shoot.

The last two we actually did after the elections for one reason or another that’s just how it worked out.  The upshot was that’s when pumpkins end up being dirt cheap since it’s after Halloween.  Well I swung by the store the Friday before and picked up over 300lbs of pumpkins. The trick is to buy pumpkins larger than their scales.

Now why would I discuss our plans about pumpkins… Well it seems that Joan Peterson (link safe), went into full PSH(link unsafe) over a video from Hickok45Joe promptly stated that he was in agreement with Joan because there’s a better way to carve pumpkins, you just use the gun as the detonator!  So without further ado, here’s a new commercial I did…

Some things are absolutely priceless.  While certainly sending Joan over the edge to spout quotes like:

So wouldn’t it be great if families got together in their neighborhoods and carved pumpkins with handguns?

Or even better, Evil Black Rifles™ like we used here.  But you know what’s even more priceless, something her and her ilk can never recreate.  Go back and look at the smile on that kids face at the end of the video.

Or this smile:

DSC_0216

Or this one:

DSC_0217

And that was despite being soaked to the bone and freezing cold.  But wait, there’s more!

DSC_1516

Honestly I could keep on going with picture after picture and video after video of the grins Boomerite have created.  But since it’s Boomerite, that means a firearm has to be involved too!

We all know why Joan says these things, she’s a delusional Puritan who thinks the world revolves around her and her feelings.  I’m sure she would object to my method of celebrating the 4th of July as well.  (Not to mention this video has yet another grin and expression of happiness!).

The crux of Joan’s rant was that bullets go through stuff, evidently most bullets contain PFM that allows them to penetrate everything and keep going forever.  You see evidently, according to her, the bullets Hickok used after leaving the pumpkin were blood seekers and sought out his neighbors and killed them.  Evidently somehow the bullets can just go straight through the berm and then fly until they find a person.

Now she does use a couple of examples of people who violated the 4 rules and tries to use that as justification for disarming everyone.  First is this quote from Tam:

I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.

Second is that she’s in a world of denial, her side lost, and her only grasps for relevancy are when people break existing law and then she claims just one piece of paper would have stopped evil or stupid.  She’s wanting to prohibit exercise of this right by everyone for the actions of a few.

Honestly the thing I think she hates most about that video, is she knows there is no way for her side to compete with the joy that shooting pumpkins brings.  So I will bring that joy to someone new every chance I get.

*Now while I was actually going to spoof Mastercard to begin with, Joan’s PSH made finding a good punchline that much easier.