Paul Sellers
Published on 30 Nov 2018These instructions on setting up a bandsaw should get you going with your machine. Paul swaps the blade in his machine and then goes through the process of aligning the blade and bearings as well as adjusting the tension for a pristine cut.
For more information on these topics, see https://paulsellers.com or https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com
December 1, 2018
How to Set Up a Bandsaw | Paul Sellers
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CAFE killed the North American passenger car
The move by GM to close many of its remaining car manufacturing facilities in Canada and the US is a belated rational response — not to the market, but to the ways government action has distorted the market. In the Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon explains how, step-by-step, the CAFE rules have shifted drivers out of sedans and wagons and into minivans, pickup trucks, and SUVs:
Before the U.S. government introduced Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to increase the distance cars could travel per gallon of gas, sedans and full-size station wagons were popular and SUVs were unknown. CAFE, which effectively governed the entire North American market thanks to the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact, incented manufacturers to artificially raise the cost of large passenger cars in order to favour smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. It soon claimed its first victim: the full-size station wagon, whose flexible interior accommodated both passenger and cargo needs, and which, at its peak, came in 62 models to satisfy different tastes.
But, although CAFE priced the station wagon out of the market, the market still demanded a vehicle that offered its flexibility. Enter Lee Iacocca, the chairman of Chrysler, who helped develop the minivan and convinced the U.S. government to deem it a truck rather than a passenger vehicle, thus exempting it from the strict CAFE standards that killed the station wagon. The minivan took off — the first 1984 model, built in Windsor, sold 209,000 its first year — followed by the SUV, which also was deemed a truck rather than a passenger vehicle. By 2000, the passenger car had less than half the market. Today it accounts for only about a third.
CAFE standards didn’t only claim certain car models as victims, they also made the whole industry a victim by making it dependent on government whims and then handouts. CAFE also distorted the market by creating credits for ethanol and electric vehicles and by creating a lobbyist’s dream through ever-changing regulations that led car manufacturers to continually game the system to favour their own vehicles over those of competitors.
Perversely, by improving mileage, CAFE also increased distances travelled and emissions of pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. The 2025 CAFE targets (since cancelled by President Trump) ran to almost 2,000 pages and were estimated to add an average of US$1,946 to the cost of a vehicle. Tax loopholes also helped accelerate SUV sales — like all light trucks, they were exempted from the gas-guzzler’s excise tax and also given preferential tax treatment as business vehicles.
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California Arms Co 20ga “Defiance” Pistol-Shotgun
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 9 Nov 2018https://www.forgottenweapons.com/cali…
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Made to compete with guns like the Ithaca Auto & Burglar, the “Defiance” form the California Arms Company is a side-by-side double barreled 20 gauge pistol. Only about 300 were made in the late 1920s – note that this was before the NFA introduced regulation of short barreled shotguns. Unlike the Ithaca and most other guns of this type, the Defiance is not simply a standard side-by-side shotgun cut down in length. Instead, it uses a cast aluminum grip assembly with two manually cocked strikers (and storage for two spare shells in the grip) and a barrel assembly with an integrated aluminum fore-end. The Defiance is nothing if not robust, despite perhaps being a bit slower to use than an Ithaca. Interestingly, the marketing for the Defiance also included a strong focus on the use of tear gas ammunition in addition to standard buckshot – the Lake Erie Chemical Company developed a 20ga tear gas cartridge in partnership with the California Arms Company. It was almost certainly too small to really be effective, though, and was not able to induce enough sales to keep the Defiance on the market long.
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
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QotD: Toxic self-esteem
For a number of years I have been fighting a lonely one-man (or should I say one-person?) battle against self-esteem — not my own, of course, because I have just the right amount, but as the master key to human happiness.
Of the many possible human qualities, self-esteem, far from being desirable, is one of the most odious. It is much more closely related to conceit and self-importance than it is to self-respect or even self-confidence. People who talk of self-esteem do so as if it were an inalienable human right rather than something to be earned. In other words, self-esteem is like a fair trial: It doesn’t matter what you are like or what you have done, you have a right to it, at all times and in all places.
Of course, people who speak of lack of self-esteem know in their hearts that they are talking bilge. Sometimes patients would come to me and tell me that they had low self-esteem and I would tell them that at least they had one thing right. Instead of growing angry, as perhaps you might have expected, they would laugh, as if they had been caught out in an outrageous prank — which in a sense they had. As old-fashioned burglars in England used to say when caught red-handed by a policeman, “It’s a fair cop, guv.”
“Suppose,” I would ask, “someone told you that he had allowed his children to starve to death because he preferred taking crack to feeding them and that he had stolen all his aged mother’s savings, but that at least he had no problems with his self-esteem, what would you say?”
In fact, this was only just a rhetorical question because I had met many such persons, bursting with self-esteem and quite without any discernible virtues. Indeed, one of the sources of their bad character may have been their self-esteem, insofar as nothing could dent it, not even the hatred or contempt of everyone around them. If I were younger and more energetic, I would found a Society for the Prevention and Suppression of Self-Esteem.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Lose Yourself”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-11-10.
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