On the goodness of the M16 rifle.

The M16 has been in service for better than 40 years now. Previous US rifles (Krag, Springfield, Garand, and M14) had much shorter service lives. The M16 represents a compromise between the full automatic Tommy gun and the semi automatic Garand rifle. Troops love fully automatic weapons. They figure firing off a full magazine improves their odds of a hit, and makes up for being out numbered or ambushed. The M16 is an improvement on the very popular Tommy gun in that .22 cal M16 ammunition is lighter than .45 cal Tommy gun ammo. Lighter means the troops can carry more of it, which is important when 20 rounds will be gone in one quick burst.
The privates may love full auto weapons but the men responsible for battlefield ammunition resupply don't. These men include everyone from the rank of corporal up to general officer. These guys all figure giving the troops full auto rifles means they will shoot off all their ammo in about 47 seconds leaving their outfit in the the deepest of doo-doo.
Looks like the Army hierarchy has won out on this issue. Unlike the Viet Nam era M16s, the new ones only fire a three round burst when the trigger is held down to conserve ammo. The old M16's would keep firing until the magazine was empty.
In order to get fully automatic fire from the M16, the designers had to reduce the power of the round significantly from that of the old .30 cal Garand rifle. The full power rifle rounds kicked hard. The recoil from such a powerful round throws the full auto weapon off target, sending the second and succeeding shots into the blue. The lower power .22 cal M16 round has very little kick, yielding a rifle that is easily controlled in full auto fire. The round has more power (and less weight) than the old .45 cal Tommy gun round, so in that respect the M16 is a step forward. But the .22 cal round doesn't hit as hard as the .30 cal rifle rounds in use in WWII and Korea. The troops in Iraq have complained of enemies picking themselves up and shooting back after taking an M16 hit.
The M16 trades off a lower power round for full automatic fire. This trade off is generally successful. A few soldiers would be willing to give up fully automatic for a more powerful round, but the bulk of the troops want full auto and will accept the loss of power needed to provide it. The competing AK47 makes the same tradeoff as the M16, a lower power round and full automatic fire.

Red Sox/Rockies at Denver. Game 3

The Colorado fans cheer as loudly as the Boston fans. There are fans in wild costumes, fans waving white handkerchiefs. Lot of spirit. The spirit seems to hold up even tho the Sox are ahead 5 nothing in the fifth inning.

Paint your pegboard.

My wood shop has a couple of modest sized pegboards for holding tools. The dark brown color of the native pegboard just radiated darkness and gloom thru out the shop. Today I finished giving both light sucking pieces a coat of off white, and voila, the entire shop is brighter. I can see to work the drill press, I can find the chuck key without a flashlight. Will wonders never cease.

Fashion Bullies attack, in middle school (WSJ)

Long and amusing piece in the Lifestyle section (Section D) of the Journal explaining the deadly serious business of selecting designer clothes for middle school kids. Wear the wrong designer label and get ostracized. "The better brands you wear the more popular you are" says an 8th grader from Alberta Canada. Cool.
Funny, I don't remember designer clothes being an issue at my daughter's high school just a few years ago. The "in" fashion was "urban grunge", to the despair of parents and faculty. It was inexpensive, but the kids looked awful all the time.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle crashes due to pilot error (Avation Week)

In the early morning of Apr 25 2006 a Predator B crashed roughly ten miles northwest of Nogales International Airport. The Predator was being flown by/for the Border Patrol (now US customs and Border Protection, under Homeland Security). According to the NTSB accident report the Predator control station featured two redundant Pilot Payload Operator consoles, PPO 1 and PPO 2. Shortly after 3 am a telemetry "lockup" on PPO 1 prompted the pilot to switch over to PPO 2. The NTSB found that the pilot didn't follow checklist procedures for the switch and failed to notice that PPO 2's fuel shutoff lever was set to "off". As a result the airborne predator obediently shut down its engine and crashed.
That's about as dumb as landing with the gear up.
Several questions come to mind. Like why hasn't the "telemetry lockup" (aka total failure) problem been fixed? Why does the console even have a fuel shutoff lever? It's not a very useful flight control, and in this case its presence destroyed a $3.2 million dollar drone.
And then the big question. Why is the Border Patrol flying super expensive UAV's instead of two place Cessnas which can be had new for $100,000? The only reason to use unmanned aircraft is to avoid risking the aircrew's life in dangerous airspace. Do the illegal immigrants come over packing Stinger missiles and shooting down the Border Patrol? I don't think so.
Two men in a light plane with plain old binoculars will do a better job patrolling the border than Predator ever will. And for a lot less taxpayer's money.

Anti-IED laser weapon ( Aviation Week)

"Boeing researchers say they have demonstrated the company's Avenger mounted laser system can disable improvised explosive devices and un exploded ordinance. During tests at Redstone Arsenal, the 1-kw solid state laser destroyed five types of explosives" That's all it said, no pictures, no more explanations.
Avenger is Boeing's Humvee mounted anti-aircraft system. Armed with guns and/or surface-to-air missiles (SAM) some 600 systems have been deployed. Boeing swapped out the conventional weapons and dropped in a laser for experimental purposes. The system also was able to destroy a couple of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) parked on the ground, not as impressive as blowing 'em out of air, but it does show the laser has enough zap to be dangerous. Presumably the IED's were likewise sitting out in the open, rather than buried under the road, although it didn't say one way or t'other.
Lotta things you'd like to know. Was the laser continuous or pulsed? Was it visible light, infrared, or ultraviolet? How long could it keep burning before running out of fuel or overheating? Does "solid state" mean something like a giant LED shaped into an optical cavity with one end half-silvered? Does "1-kw" refer to power into the laser or laser power out? How efficient is the laser at converting electricity to death ray? Can it run off the Humvee battery or does it need it's own engine generator? Is it worth searching the web for details or is everything classified?

Putting on a show for the World Series

Good old Fenway Park was all swept and mowed and looking fairly good despite its age. All the players were introduced. John Williams conducted the Star Spangled Banner. The Air Force did a flyover. Stands were full, enthusiastic fans were cheering at full voice. Boston took the lead early and increased it through out the game which made fans cheer louder. Mother Nature sent a light-to-medium rain, you could see it beading up on the batter's helmets, but everyone wanted to get on with it, no one wanted "game-called-on-acount-of-rain". I kept thinking of that famous Norman Rockwell cover shows three huge umpires, all dressed in black, looking at the sky and getting ready to call the game. Not a chance last night. Both sides played well. The Red Sox classic white uniforms looked very baseball. Colorado was wearing black shirts with white piping over gray pinstriped pants. Not an effective combination. If you are gonna wear black, you gotta go all the way, Colorado should go with black pants to match the black shirts.