Our household will fill out the census as is required, but again, we have some concerns about some of the questions. One of those deals with the races of individuals in the household. Mark Krikorian, on The NRO Corner suggests how to answer the illegal race/ethnicity question on the 2010 census.

Question 9 on the census form asks “What is Person 1’s race?” (and so on, for other members of the household). Answer Question 9 by checking the last option - “Some other race” - and writing in “American.” It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes.

The only thing the Founders required was a headcount. I despise giving anything beyond that.

UPDATE: Krikorian expands his thoughts.

Several months back (a year maybe?) my digital keyboard gave up the ghost. I have been thinking about a replacement, so I went on-line and ordered this one. It’s a Yamaha PSR E413 61-key synthesizer. It got very good reviews and was priced around $270 USD including shipping and accessories. Plus, it’s way more sophisticated than the 15 year old keyboard that crapped out.

I started playing piano when I was five years old and I have almost always had a piano or organ, so I sort of missed having one around. I’m looking forward to learning all the features of this nice new shiny rig when it shows up in a week or so.

I know this doesn’t relate to the gun and classics oriented discussion normally seen here, but it does have a built in gunshot sound effect. Does that count?

Clickable image.

By trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York City? Right.

The Better Half, no doubt, will steer the satellite tuner somewhere else during the interview, like the Outdoor Channel to watch some turkeys getting their heads blown off while the obamination shoots his mouth off.

This car reminds me of the 1937 Packard I remember my folks driving when I was a small child. Theirs was an old car by the time I was riding in it. Clickable image.

The article begins with this insightful quote from Founder James Madison:

“The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. … The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition.”
— James Madison

Toward the end of the article, the topic of how gun rights reduce the violent crime rate leads the author to this interesting conclusion about violence:

After all, violence is a cultural problem, not a gun problem, and certainly not a Second Amendment problem.

The article is certainly worth taking the few moments to read it.

But wait! There’s More! Chocolate ammunition, chocolate hand grenades and more. Pretty cool website.

From reading their website information, this was initially a joke until they test marketed some colleagues who were also shooters. The idea caught on.

Clickable image.

They have a funny tag-line “The Ultimate Near Death (by Chocolate) Experience.”

Clickable image - the assembled unit (photo taken today during burn-in)

I found the illustrated, step-by-step assembly instructions to be mostly clear and only a time or two I found myself re-reading a step and consulting the illustration again to clearly understand the action. The first stage of assembly was to build the cart. When that was complete, both of us had to lift the partially assembled grill box and cover unit into the cart - one person may have been able to do this, but having two people made it a more elegant process. After tightening up all the screws, hooking up the gas and electric igniter wires and installing the burner baffles and grills, it was ready for the gas leak test.

I made up a couple of ounces of soapy water and brushed a copious amount over each gas connection point. I opened the propane valve and watched for a minute or two to see if any soap bubbles appeared around the connections. I saw none, so the connections seem OK.

According to BarbecueLovers.com, the easiest way to burn-in your new grill is to just heat it up (~400 degrees) and let ‘er cook for ~30-45 minutes. This will burn all the solvents and impurities off of the heating elements, grill, etc. Let it cool down a bit, wipe things down to remove any lingering residue and you should be good to go. I took care of that today.

As I mentioned in the first article, we went the “cheap” route, paying around $200 for the setup - grill, tank and first four gallons of propane. Everything seems to be well-made and after the assembly, the rig is sturdy and everything worked the first time we tried it - burners, igniters and the works. I’m not yet ready to rate all aspects of the new grill, since we’ve never actually cooked anything on it yet. After the weekend, it will have a couple of beef tenderloin steaks to its credit - I’ll have a report on the food then.

I found what I was looking for, though, in a site called mouseguns.com. There, you can find a link to a catalog of diminutive weapons. The guns are listed with details as to their attributes:

• Lethality
• Volume
• Manufacturer
• Model
• Caliber
• Capacity
• Type
• Action
• Length
• Height
• Width
• Weight

According to the website, “Lethality” is derived from capacity and power:

Lethality = log (capacity) * power

I had not seen a lethality index before, but I found it very intriguing. A table on the page lists ammunition power from 1 for .22 short to 14 for 12 gauge. I attempted to work up lethality for a couple of our favorite guns, but ran into problems when I tried the above equation and got different results. I could get into the same order of magnitude by substituting natural log (initially assumed log base 10) but the results are still off.

Example: The listing for a Glock 26 lethality is 32.26; when using natural log, I calculate 21.58. The capacity is 11 rounds (10+1) and the power listed in the table for 9mm is 9.

Ln(11) = 2.397 * 9 = 21.58

The error between my calculation and that listed is off by about 30 percent. I may try and email the author of the table to see where I’m going wrong (or where he did). I’ll post any findings if and when I get feedback.

I saw an abstract of a study that listed body armor threat level for various firearms, but was not interested in paying to see it. Has anyone else seen a firearms lethality index?

At any rate, I would be inclined to change “Lethality Index” to “Self Defense Potential Index” when it comes to scoring firearms with regard to caliber and capacity. I would also score the projectile type (HP vs. ball, shot vs. slug).