Donward

I live with these guys.  The one in the middle is a pure breed Jack Russel.  Like most Jack Russel terriers, he acts much bigger than his size.  He is the alpha dog of the bunch.  The other two are dogs came from the shelter.  The one on the left is a terrier mix of some sort, and possibly the most submissive attention seeking dog on the planet. She is a cuddle monster, she has to be touching either me or my wife at all times.   The dog on the right is a bull dog beagle mix.  Why someone would want to mix and bulldog and a beagle is beyond me, but he needed a home and so we took him in.  He is pretty cool, although he farts a lot.  But then, i just remember what Tammy Faye Bakker said: "love has no nose." 
 

As the documentary "Red Dawn" even states, we had 600 million screaming Chinamen on our side.
Americans have been bred for decades to view everything as a bilateral conflict of us versus them, good versus evil, white hat against black hat. NATO vs Warsaw Pact in the Cold War, Allies vs Axis, North vs South, Redcoats vs Continentals. We have a two party system of politics that pits Republicans vs Democrats. Our favorite pop culture movies follow the same theme (Star Wars, Avengers, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings).
Now to be fair to 'MURICA, this isn't a trait found just in ourselves but has permeated Western culture for centuries (Crusades, Napoleonic Wars, Reformation) and is no doubt a result of our collective Judeo Christian worldview.
Nor is it surprising that "sophisticated" terms like Byzantine and the alleged Arabic proverb "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" are ascribed to foreign races from the "Orient".
Conflicts with multiple and competing factions are a clusterfuck. As one of you said, one need only look at the belligerents table on the Syrian Civil War Wikipedia article.
Getting back to Asia, it is difficult to make heads, tails and middles out of the 21st Century edition of The Great Game, with China, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, the other Stans, Myanmar, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines all thrown in the mix. The latter four entities are what I personally care about. And now that UBL has achieved room temperature, Afghanistan has zero strategic value (contrary to popular opinion) and should have been vacated two years ago.
I'm somewhat more pessimistic on the longer term. China is building itself to be the regional hegemony, reversing five centuries of decline. If I were a neighboring country without a nuclear program I'd be very concerned. Even if I were a country like India, I'd be looking to rapidly mobilize given the number of border incursions committed by the ChiComs.
As for the US we are at (or past) the transition stage where we are so confident that no one will mess with us (and our friends) because our military is so Skookum. Instead we are relying on the logic that surely it wouldn't be in the best interest of China to start a conflict, why we're trading partners and we owe them so much debt.
As we've seen throughout history, countries often act illogically, irrationally and in ways that are counter to their GDP when it comes to foreign policy. If our economy gets hurt twice as much as China's as the side-effect of a trade/shooting war, isn't that a net win for the People's Republic?
To end this meandering length of text, I'm always for being militarily prepared, a show of force being cheaper than actually using force in the long run. Plus it allows us nerds a chance to drool and debate over new airplanes, tanks and ships.

I can be the "expert" with bad hair and dubious acedemic credentials who sets up applied experiments that don't apply to the actual situation.
In other words I can shoot toy tanks with my 30-30 to show penetration values.

I can be the "expert" with bad hair and dubious acedemic credentials who sets up applied experiments that don't apply to the actual situation.
In other words I can shoot toy tanks with my 30-30 to show penetration values.

Nonsense. When Robert Heinlein died, his body became FOOD and we ate him.

I can be the "expert" with bad hair and dubious acedemic credentials who sets up applied experiments that don't apply to the actual situation.
In other words I can shoot toy tanks with my 30-30 to show penetration values.

trudat

As I mentioned, I've literally just opened the book. Finished the forward, and am looking at John Carter's first chapter, "On the Arizona Hills". And similar to the movie, Burroughs does write himself into the story as he re tells his encounter with "Uncle Jack".

It's because we've outsourced personal responsibility to third party sources. Since you've alluded to open carry, I don't mind it per say in the case of handguns or long guns in a rural settings and while protesting in front of government buildings. Conversely, fat neck-beards brandishing loaded assault rifles in family restaurants and coffee shops piss me off for a variety of reasons. If I saw one in person, I would probably automatically assume they were a mall shooter since the majority of the sort of folks who carry assault rifles in coffee shops look like the sort who would snap because the world is out to get them.

I know YOU'D think its crap. But we've already established that you're an anti-American commie. Plus you have that entirely Platonic relationship with Colli!

I know YOU'D think its crap. But we've already established that you're an anti-American commie. Plus you have that entirely Platonic relationship with Colli!

They seem to be getting more "interesting". I wish I could contribute more but I'm basically on a self-imposed RO because of multiple real life issues. Most good, it's just that there aren't enough hours in the day.
I'm surprised no one has gone for the GIs tossing down the empty clip bit. But on the whole, TFB commenters seem pretty good, just so long as the topic isn't about rich guys owning too many machine guns.

The Civil War was very much more complex.

As the documentary "Red Dawn" even states, we had 600 million screaming Chinamen on our side.
Americans have been bred for decades to view everything as a bilateral conflict of us versus them, good versus evil, white hat against black hat. NATO vs Warsaw Pact in the Cold War, Allies vs Axis, North vs South, Redcoats vs Continentals. We have a two party system of politics that pits Republicans vs Democrats. Our favorite pop culture movies follow the same theme (Star Wars, Avengers, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings).
Now to be fair to 'MURICA, this isn't a trait found just in ourselves but has permeated Western culture for centuries (Crusades, Napoleonic Wars, Reformation) and is no doubt a result of our collective Judeo Christian worldview.
Nor is it surprising that "sophisticated" terms like Byzantine and the alleged Arabic proverb "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" are ascribed to foreign races from the "Orient".
Conflicts with multiple and competing factions are a clusterfuck. As one of you said, one need only look at the belligerents table on the Syrian Civil War Wikipedia article.
Getting back to Asia, it is difficult to make heads, tails and middles out of the 21st Century edition of The Great Game, with China, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, the other Stans, Myanmar, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines all thrown in the mix. The latter four entities are what I personally care about. And now that UBL has achieved room temperature, Afghanistan has zero strategic value (contrary to popular opinion) and should have been vacated two years ago.
I'm somewhat more pessimistic on the longer term. China is building itself to be the regional hegemony, reversing five centuries of decline. If I were a neighboring country without a nuclear program I'd be very concerned. Even if I were a country like India, I'd be looking to rapidly mobilize given the number of border incursions committed by the ChiComs.
As for the US we are at (or past) the transition stage where we are so confident that no one will mess with us (and our friends) because our military is so Skookum. Instead we are relying on the logic that surely it wouldn't be in the best interest of China to start a conflict, why we're trading partners and we owe them so much debt.
As we've seen throughout history, countries often act illogically, irrationally and in ways that are counter to their GDP when it comes to foreign policy. If our economy gets hurt twice as much as China's as the side-effect of a trade/shooting war, isn't that a net win for the People's Republic?
To end this meandering length of text, I'm always for being militarily prepared, a show of force being cheaper than actually using force in the long run. Plus it allows us nerds a chance to drool and debate over new airplanes, tanks and ships.

Harryhausen has achieved the rare distinction of being a favorite of both movie-makers and paleontologists. A lot of people will argue it was Jurassic Park that brought dinosaurs to life for the first time; they clearly have never seen Valley of Gwangi.

Yeah I know. Big talk for someone who has failed at the basic level of not being able to use this forum's quote function...
Stop looking at me!
Gaaah!!!
*awkwardly leaves, tripping on a loose microphone along the way*

As the documentary "Red Dawn" even states, we had 600 million screaming Chinamen on our side.
Americans have been bred for decades to view everything as a bilateral conflict of us versus them, good versus evil, white hat against black hat. NATO vs Warsaw Pact in the Cold War, Allies vs Axis, North vs South, Redcoats vs Continentals. We have a two party system of politics that pits Republicans vs Democrats. Our favorite pop culture movies follow the same theme (Star Wars, Avengers, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings).
Now to be fair to 'MURICA, this isn't a trait found just in ourselves but has permeated Western culture for centuries (Crusades, Napoleonic Wars, Reformation) and is no doubt a result of our collective Judeo Christian worldview.
Nor is it surprising that "sophisticated" terms like Byzantine and the alleged Arabic proverb "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" are ascribed to foreign races from the "Orient".
Conflicts with multiple and competing factions are a clusterfuck. As one of you said, one need only look at the belligerents table on the Syrian Civil War Wikipedia article.
Getting back to Asia, it is difficult to make heads, tails and middles out of the 21st Century edition of The Great Game, with China, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, the other Stans, Myanmar, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines all thrown in the mix. The latter four entities are what I personally care about. And now that UBL has achieved room temperature, Afghanistan has zero strategic value (contrary to popular opinion) and should have been vacated two years ago.
I'm somewhat more pessimistic on the longer term. China is building itself to be the regional hegemony, reversing five centuries of decline. If I were a neighboring country without a nuclear program I'd be very concerned. Even if I were a country like India, I'd be looking to rapidly mobilize given the number of border incursions committed by the ChiComs.
As for the US we are at (or past) the transition stage where we are so confident that no one will mess with us (and our friends) because our military is so Skookum. Instead we are relying on the logic that surely it wouldn't be in the best interest of China to start a conflict, why we're trading partners and we owe them so much debt.
As we've seen throughout history, countries often act illogically, irrationally and in ways that are counter to their GDP when it comes to foreign policy. If our economy gets hurt twice as much as China's as the side-effect of a trade/shooting war, isn't that a net win for the People's Republic?
To end this meandering length of text, I'm always for being militarily prepared, a show of force being cheaper than actually using force in the long run. Plus it allows us nerds a chance to drool and debate over new airplanes, tanks and ships.

Relevant to the US and India and China as mentioned in the thread, just to mention one regarding Chinese/Russian/Indian/USA relations, let's settle the score.
 
Contrary to popular belief, China actually distrusts Russia far more then the US despite what certain media outlets and uninformed people would have you believe, and infact China and Russia back during the time of the USSR had several small scale conflicts and diplomatic rocky patches, and by contrast, several incidents where the US actually aided them and tried to open relations to fuck with the USSR. China and Russia may trade tech and sell to each other alot, this isn't because Russia suddenly liked China, rather tolerate them because they'd rather try to get their favor to fuck with the US (and the west in general) who they dislike far more and also want more stable and transparent relations with them, doing this puts China in a bind to sort of be neutral to both parties, even though Russia has been seen as a much bigger threat since the times of the USSR.
 
How does India tie in? well, China and India rather severely hate each other, (this is a big part of the reason why they're so close with Pakistan.), and China also hates Japan, distrusts South Korea, Tolerates North Korea sometimes because they make a nice buffer state, is often in tension with various countries in southeast asia and Oceania, but, unfortunately, with the exception of North Korea, these are countries the US has positive invested interests in so they can't really do much,by force or by diplomacy.
 
So, to sum it up, Russia and China are only sort of friendly, because they're nearby and getting favor with them hurts the US and the west, China distrusts Russia but builds up a modernized military to defend itself and its assets in the pacific and mainland and to make sure Japan and Korea don't try anything, and also because they hate India, who the US is trying to make friends with in a political juggle as seen in the original post, the US sees China as a threat, and although they could be, they trust the US more then Russia ironically, and....well, the politics of the far east are mostly just a clusterfuck.
 
Hows THAT for strange bedfellows? Oh, and just to make it a bit simpler, the only thing I changed from his original statement to add all these factors? I merely added the USSR/Russia to it.

What? You'll go a runnin' off to that half-mad German git? He'll be too busy talking to trees! Why I have more Royal Blood in my left gonad than the entire Royal Family put together!
No, I'm serious! Given that I'm related in a round about way to King Edward IV (the most battle winningest, sex havingest of the English monarchs) and the recent paternity issues that have cropped up after the discovery of Richard III.

Get that hippie-dippie Federalism crap out of here!

Part of the issue is environmentalists have been pushing the idea of indicator species as a way to affect action in terms of "protecting" the planet. You see this with polar bears and global warming where we're lead to believe that the Coke Christmas mascot will go extinct unless we stop driving SUVs. This is despite the fact that the species is increasing in population annually and has survived periods of climatic temperatures much higher than today.
It also presupposes that all extinctions of animals are related to human activity. This came to play with the sub-species of the Northern Spotted Owl in my neck of the woods. It was theorized that the Northern Spotted Owl populations were declining because of logging in old growth forests on - mostly - federal property. There's no need to go into the details but after much media attention and after many "Spotted Owl Tastes Just Like Chicken" bumper-stickers were put on trucks, the owl became protected, logging was prohibited on vast swathes of public land and communities like Hoquiam and Aberdeen (Union and Democrat voters btw) became ghost towns (later to spawn Kurt Cobain, Nirvana and Grunge).
It turns out later, that Northern Spotted Owls don't necessarily need old growth forests to nest. Also, the reason for their decline is because they were being out-competed by the Barred Owl.

As most of you know, during the summer I work in an industry where conservation and stewardship of a natural resource is vital for that industry's continued survival. The Bristol Bay sockeye run is the largest and last natural run of its kind in the world with roughly 25-35 million fish returning to spawn each season. This has been made possible in part because the Bristol Bay region is largely devoid of human development. It's also because it is highly regulated with a limited entry permit system and rules in place stating when and where we can fish, with what gear, how big of boats, etc. They are (mostly) good rules. If they weren't in place fishermen would (by economic necessity) destroy the run in ten years, something that most responsible fishermen don't want to see happen.
We've also - so far - successfully fought measures to build the Pebble Mine - which would be the largest open pit copper and gold mine in the world - located smack dab in the middle of the region.
To me this is good environmental stewardship.
For the rest of the year I live near Seattle in the Pacific Northwest which used to have the largest salmon runs in the world. The advent of 10 million people living cheek-and-jowl next to riparian streams, overfishing, pollution, hydroelectric dams, agriculture and meddling with farm and hatchery fish has caused the runs to dwindle to a fraction of their former glory although runs have been increasing of late.
I've witnessed the debacles of the environmental movement here first-hand, watching dairy farms in Western Washington go belly up because they aren't allowed to graze their heifers near any creek, stream or ditch because of "pollution". The farmers then sold their land to developers who paid the state to let them build "Master-Planned Developments" with Mc-Mansions which they sell to California liberals who now are clamoring for locally produced farm produce and want to "Save the Salmon".
Such is the chaos inherent in the system.
Back in my days as a newspaper reporter I covered a story where a Seattle environmental group was suing farmers (Apple and Pear orchards) and their irrigation district for killing salmon in Chelan County, Wash. A hundred years ago, farmers built diversion dams in nearby streams and channeled some of the water to their fields. These dams were usually 2-4 feet high. A local do-gooder had found dead salmon in front of the dam and got this group on the case since the group had been bullying other irrigation districts with the same tactic. The farmers opted to fight the lawsuit. It turned out some plucky reporter found out that the dead salmon were actually left-over hatchery salmon that had been dumped there by the Washington Dept. Of Fish and Wildlife to help enrich the stream. The diversion dam wasn't killing salmon after all. I left before the story's conclusion, but the upshot is the farmers caved, agreed to modernize their canal (which they had planned to do anyway) while agreeing to pay "scientists" from the environmental group to monitor their progress.
To me this is bad science. But good organized crime.

A Decidedly Brief And Altogether Inadequate History And Description of The Small Caliber High Velocity Ammunition Concept: A Treatise On Extended Nomenclature And Extraneous Verbosity For The Individual Highly Valuing The Immediate Temporal Period

(THIS ARTICLE ASSUMES FAMILIARITY WITH BASIC SMALL ARMS TERMINOLOGY ON THE PART OF THE READER)

"Small Caliber; High Velocity" is nothing more or less than what it says. Relative to the contemporary norm, ammunition and the guns that fire them should be smaller caliber, while also achieving higher velocity; doing both will increase performance while decreasing weight, recoil, and materiel usage.

Why is this desirable? In brief:
 
1. The bullet weight of a cartridge is a major driving factor in that cartridge's characteristics. A lighter bullet weight is, from the perspective of the shooter, better than a heavier bullet weight. Lighter weight bullets will induce less recoil, all things being equal, than heavier ones. The bullet of a rifle cartridge also typically makes up a third or more of the total weight of the round; reducing bullet weight is a good way to reduce the weight of ammunition.
 
2. A faster bullet produces a superior trajectory to a slower one. Less adjustment is needed for distant targets, and the error possibilities for incorrect range estimation are lower. Contrary to popular belief, 5.56mm produces an excellent trajectory for its size; in fact, I have a hard time noticing a difference between it and 7.62mm NATO until about 800 yards. Ballistic tables bear this out; along its supersonic flight range, 5.56mm has a very flat trajectory. PEO Soldier sets 5.56mm's Maximum Effective Range when fired from an M4 at 500m. Compared to that, 7.62x39 lags behind by about 120m, despite having a very similar bullet shape, sectional density, and ballistic coefficient. Note that 7.62x39 produces 80% of the velocity of 5.56 when fired from the same barrel. I created a graph to illustrate the relationship velocity and ballistic coefficient have in terms of informing trajectory. It plots the ballistic coefficient necessary to produce the same drop at 500m as a .151 G7 BC bullet fired at 2,970 ft/s. Note that below 2,700 ft/s, a tremendously high BC is needed to achieve this level of performance. In short, muzzle velocity is the overwhelmingly primary agent in producing a better unadjusted sight trajectory at normal and even extended ranges. If sight adjustment is assumed, this changes, but that is not relevant for the discussion of modern military small arms.
 
3. For a given trajectory and specific energy*, a smaller-caliber round will be lighter and smaller than a larger-caliber counterpart. This is only true within a certain bound of performance, but the performance needed from modern military rifle ammunition lies well within this bound.

4. Sectional density, a major factor in both penetration and drag, can be maintained as caliber is reduced relative to length. Sectional density is calculated, in common discussion, as mass/diameter^2. Imagine a cylinder .5" in diameter that is 1" long, made from steel. Now imagine another cylinder, also made of steel and still 1" long, but now .25" in diameter. Both cylinders have the same sectional density, but the second cylinder is one quarter the weight of the first.

*Specific energy, .5*mass*(velocity^2)/(diameter^2), is an important metric in approximating target penetration characteristics when assuming homologous bullet design.
 
Now, how is this bounded? Well, in a couple of ways:

A. In conventional rifle ammunition, the projectile diameter and bore diameter are both coupled together. Change the diameter of the bullet, and you need a wider or thinner bore to accommodate it. Because of this, you reach a limit where so much powder is being used to try to attain a higher muzzle velocity through such a small bore that the fluid flow rate is limited by the extreme necking down of the cartridge case. Therefore, for normal modern rifle ammunition, muzzle velocity does not typically exceed 4,600 ft/s. However, if bore diameter and bullet diameter are decoupled (as through a sabot), or unusually light projectiles are used, velocities at the limit of nitrocellulose's capability are possible, out to around 6,000 ft/s.

B. Military ammunition has other concerns that limit it further. One is the barrel wear of the ammunition; militaries are economical organisms, and they do not want to be throwing away barrels too quickly. Because of this, and because trajectory and weight gains are minimized beyond around 3,500 ft/s, velocity is limited. Another concern is weapon overheating: Beyond a certain temperature, rifles lose a great deal of their accuracy; thus ammunition is maintained below the heat flux threshold for a desired sustained rate of fire for the rifle. This doesn't limit velocity as much as it limits over-boredness, the ratio of the caliber squared over the chamber volume. A small caliber, high velocity round will want to be as overbore as possible, so this does limit the concept for military use.

C. Spin-stabilization only works out to a point, and that point is "about" a 7 caliber length-to-diameter ratio. For military use, the limit is closer to 5 calibers due to stability being absolutely essential from a wide variety of barrels and conditions. Remember our dieting cylinder example up there? Once it gets down below about .18" in diameter, it will begin to have problems.

Now, if one decouples the bore diameter from the projectile diameter, and drag-stabilized, instead of spin-stabilized the projectile, they would run into very different limits. Research into this area, which began in the early fifties with the SALVO project, resulted in micro-caliber finned flechettes fired at velocities up to 5,000 ft/s:
 

 
These high velocity flechette rounds weighed very little, while producing exceptional penetration and flatness of trajectory. So, they can be considered the ultimate evolution of the small caliber, high velocity concept.
 
A detrimentally brief history of SCHV:

SCHV has been around for a while. .45-70, .30-40 Army, and 5.56 NATO were all considered "small caliber" and "high velocity" for their day; all of the principles I describe above were known well before the 1870s. However, the term "small caliber, high velocity" doesn't really get used in official literature until the 1950s when experiments with .22 caliber military rifles really took off. In the context of today, small caliber high velocity refers to a cartridge optimized for low weight and a flat trajectory out to 300m, typically with a caliber under .24" and a velocity above 2,800 ft/s. However, it's important to remember that caliber does not inform performance; A 6.5mm cartridge may perform much the same as a 5.56mm one, if the velocity is high enough and the bullet weight low enough. It's better, then, not to group ammunition sharing a bullet diameter together, but rather group together cartridges that share similar performance characteristics.

I've covered the GPC before, several times on my blog. Feel free to click through these links and read that material, too:

The Case Against a General Purpose Cartridge
 
The New Caliber Mafia

The General Purpose Cartridge Revisited

It's at this point that I want to share the story of my brother's girlfriend's daughter's Chihuahua Mac'n Cheese. Don't ask me why a three year old was allowed to name a $1,500 "show quality" dog or why they had to spend that much on something whose highest and best purpose is to feed snakes. I came to learn that Chihuahuas are notorious for having a weak bladder and you can't house train them. They are also stupid as evidenced by the time it crawled up to sleep with me on the couch and then, in the middle of the night, pissed on the pillow I was sleeping on.
So we/they had a dog that you couldn't leave inside and you couldn't leave outside because it would die from the elements or be eaten by a raccoon. So my brother built a heated, lighted dog house for Mac'n Cheese (and their other two dogs). One night we had freezing rain at temperatures around 34 degrees. The other two dogs (a mutt and a Cockapoo) were smart enough to go into the heated dog house. Mac'n Cheese stood by the back door in the freezing rain, waiting to be let in and died of exposure.
The End

Isn't having the best bull pup design kind of like winning the world's tallest midget competition?