Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s interwebs connection appears to be working intermittently. He has a call in to his service provider - but no ETA on a technician yet. This little situation annoys your Maximum Leader because yesterday he had a few different items about which he wanted to blog. Alas, he didn’t actually type them out and save them - and now that moment has passed and he doesn’t want to go back and re-think those ideas.

He did, on the other hand, decide to write a little something that seemed to spring from an interesting serendipity of items about Spain. Yesterday night, before the interwebs started acting up, your Maximum Leader read this peice about Sephardic Jews leaving their genetic imprint on Spanish men. According to the AP piece:

From the 15th century on, Spain’s Jews were mostly expelled or forced to convert, but today some 20 percent of Spanish men tested have Sephardic Jewish ancestry, and 11 percent can be traced to North Africa, a study has found.

“These values are surprisingly high,” the researchers wrote in their report, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

…

Along with researchers from Britain’s University of Leicester and Wellcome Trust, the scientists analyzed DNA samples from 1,140 men in Spain, Portugal and the Balearic Islands and compared them to Moroccans, Algerians, and Sephardic Jews in Istanbul and Israel.

“The work shows that religious conversions and subsequent marriages between people of different lines had a significant impact on modern populations both in the Balearic Islands and in Portugal,” Elena Bosch of the University of Leicester said in a statement.

One of the most surprising findings is the percentage of Spanish genes whose origin can be traced to Sephardic Jews, although Spain had a relatively small Jewish population compared to its Moorish population.

Some of these genes may pre-date the Sephardic Jewish culture, the researchers said, noting that the Phoenicians also share some of the genetic characteristics.

Your Maximum Leader thought that this little bit of information was interesting to learn. Indeed, he was reminded of previous studies have found interesting genetic connections between people that one wouldn’t associate as being so close genetically. (To avoid the risk of citing something wrong, he is going to forego a discussion of some of the other studies that he seems to remember…)

The study of human genetics is a fascinating thing. It is amazing (and sometimes upsetting) to think of what we are learning and theorizing about our own nature due to our growing understanding of the human genome.

But, the AP peice started to upset your Maximum Leader… Not because of the genetics, but because of a little something else. Here is what set off your Maximum Leader: “The Moors invaded the Iberian peninsula in 711 and remained until defeated in battle by the so-called Catholic Monarchs in 1492.” “So-called?” That pissed your Maximum Leader off a little bit. Would you refer to Alexander of Macedonia as “the so-called Alexander the Great?” Would Tsar Ivan IV of Russia be “the so-called Ivan the Terrible?”

Anyone who knows anything about Spanish history knows that Ferdinand and Isabella are known to history as “The Catholic Monarchs.” Why would one throw that “so-called” in there? Is it just to be snide or is it to try and educate people? Sadly, it can’t be the educational option because Ferdinand and Isabella are never mentioned in the article. That “so-called” sticks in your Maximum Leader’s craw and he just can’t get past it.

Something else in this confluence of events… Your Maximum Leader, prior to reading the piece on the Sephardic Jewish genes, was thinking about the Catholic Monarchs. You may be asking yourself, “Self, why would my Maximum Leader be thinking about the Catholic Monarchs?” Well… He sat down and watched “Elizabeth the Golden Age” on his Tivo over the weekend. Your Maximum Leader wonders how he actually made it through the 2 hrs running time. Gawd what a waste of time and money. There were no redeming qualities to that film. Avoid it.

While watching the film you Maximum Leader got to thinking about Phillip II of Spain (the Great-Grandson of the Catholic Monarchs). At first he wondered if the actor portraying Phillip in the film had that weird little walk (small bowlegged steps) because Phillip was described to have walked that way - or if the very tight pants required him to walk that way. After a little contemplation, he decided it was likely neither of those choices but rather an attempt to characature Phillip as a sort of weird little religious fanatic with an odd gait.

Then your Maximum Leader started to think about the historical reputation of Phillip II, his father Charles V, and his Great-Grandparents Ferdinand and Isabella. Other than Isabella do any of them have a favorable reputation that isn’t significantly tainted by Protestant historicism? And frankly isn’t Isabella’s favorable reputation based on “financing” Columbus’ voyages?

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe that Phillip or Charles deserve their bad repuations if you try and look at them as actors in their times. Perhaps from a few hundred years (and secularized society) on we can scoff at their religious wars in Europe. But if one tries to insinuate your mind into their time their actions seem perfectly explainable.

Your Maximum Leader also didn’t realize, until pulling out a book and checking, that Phillip II was married 4 times. He could recall three wives (Mary I of England, Elizabeth of Valois and Anne of Austria - with Mary Tudor and Anne of Austria immediately coming to mind, Elizabeth took a little digging). But he didn’t know that before Mary I of England came Mary of Portugal. He should have known because he knew about Don Carlos of Spain, but he just thought that Don Carlos’ mother was Elizabeth of Valois.

Anyhoo… Your Maximum Leader was thinking about the Catholic Monarchs when he read that piece on the AP and that little “so-called” line annoyed him.

If you would like to share your thoughts on Phillip II, Charles V, The Catholic Monarchs, or human genetics; please feel free to do so in the comments or emails.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader remembers being told growing up that “Tang” was a “space age drink.” It was, afterall, developed for our astronauts. Tang. Velcro. Pens that write while inverted. All tangible commercial products brought to us by the research that went into putting a man on the moon.

Occasionally the unexpected outcome of science makes for a good commerical product. Take for example beer made from million year old yeast. From the Washington Post:

Raul Cano is the real-life “Jurassic Park” scientist. Yes, there is one.

A day before that movie opened in 1993, Cano announced that he had extracted DNA from an ancient Lebanese weevil entombed in amber, just as the fictional employees of InGen do with a mosquito to create their dino-amusement park. One newspaper account said the “achievement” refuted “the long-held view of many biologists that DNA of so great an age” couldn’t be preserved.

But Cano was less interested in extinct reptiles than in Homo sapiens now roaming the earth. He next revivified ancient bacteria from the gut of an amber-encased bee and hoped to turn the strains into new antibiotics. That didn’t work, and Cano, who has a doctorate in medical mycology, put his 1,200-specimen organism collection on the back shelf and returned to more fruitful microbial endeavors, like assessment of petroleum-degrading diversity in sand dunes and the bioinformatics of Lactobacillus acidophilus.

And then, last month, a breakthrough.

The product?

Beer.

“I was going through my collection, going, ‘Gee whiz — this is pretty nifty. Maybe we could use it to make beer,’ ” says Cano, 63 , now the director of the Environmental Biotechnology Institute at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

The result is Fossil Fuels Brewing Co., which ferments a yeast strain Cano found in a piece of Burmese amber dating from about 25 million to 45 million years ago. The company — in which Cano is a partner, along with another scientist and a lawyer — introduced its pale ale and German wheat beer with a party last month at one of the two Bay Area pubs where Fossil Fuels is made and served.

Very cool. Your Maximum Leader has been trying to find some of this beer available for sale recently. To no avail yet. But he’ll keep trying.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the Large Hadron Collider has been shut down.

Why you ask?

Fear of the collider creating a singularity that sucks the Earth into it?

Nope.

Bad cooling mechanism.

Your Maximum Leader supposes that this means we will not have to live in fear of being sucked into a black hole of our own creation in the next few weeks…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to add to this graphic other than “Yup. This is all awesome stuff.”

Okay… Your Maximum Leader will add that he doesn’t quibble over most of the elements. But he does think that Elements 32, 33, 37 and 95 aren’t all that awesome. But that is likely just a personal bias. Your Maximum Leader isn’t all that excited about antimony, bromine and selenium either…

Many thanks to the totally tubular bloggers over at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader laughed at himself for the title of this post. As you surely know, the question in the title is that of Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick.” Your Maximum Leader is laughing to himself because whenever he thinks of “Moby Dick” he thinks of a line that he believes is attributed to Gore Vidal who said words to the effect of “‘Moby Dick’ is the greatest American novel; it’s just a shame that Herman Melville was not America’s greatest novelist.” That always makes your Maximum Leader laugh because it is so true.

Anyhoo…

This post really has nothing to do with “Moby Dick.” It has nothing to do with white whales. But it does have to do with another white animal.

The white stag.

According to the news wires, a white stag has been spotted in the wild highlands of Scotland. According to the article:

The rare white stag, from the red deer species, is believed to be among just a tiny handful living in Britain, according to a conservation group.

The John Muir Trust is now keeping the stag’s location secret for fear of poachers.

“To see him amongst the other stags was truly thrilling because he does look like a ghost: you do a double-take,” Trust Partnership Manager Fran Lockhart, who filmed the stag, told Reuters.

White stags are seen as a magical and powerful force in many mythologies.

The animal’s ghostly glow comes from a recessive gene which causes leucism, a condition which reduces the normal brown coloring in hair and skin. They are not albinos, which have red eyes due to lack of pigment.

In Celtic traditions, white stags represent messengers from the afterlife. Arthurian legend has it that the creature can never be caught — King Arthur’s pursuit of the animal represents mankind’s spiritual quest.

It is also said that for those who set eyes on the animal, a momentous moment is near.

Your Maximum Leader would like to see a white stag in the wild. He would especially like to travel to Scotland to see one. Alas, that doesn’t appear to be in the cards. This photo will have to suffice.

Beautiful animal.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wishes all of you, his loyal readers, a very Happy New Year. He hopes that you are all well and not too hung over. Your Maximum Leader, as is his habit, didn’t do too much to celebrate New Years. Indeed, for many years the extent of his celebration consisted of hanging around with his best buddy Kevin. We would watch movies, and then switch over to Dick Clark at about 11:55. We’d watch the ball drop in Times Square, then we would go back to watching movies until we drifted into the clutches of Morpheus. Now that Kevin is in Korea, our old plan is not practical. So, your Maximum Leader stays at home with is family and watches movies and then switches to Dick Clark at about 11:55 and watches the ball drop.

Pretty exciting huh?

Excursus: Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure how he should feel watching Dick Clark. On the one hand, Clark has made great progress since his stroke a few years ago. But on the other hand, your Maximum Leader feels badly watching him. He is overwhelmed by a feeling of being voyeuristic when watching Clark.

You know who your Maximum Leader misses on New Years Eve? Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. He went out and bought a copy of Auld Lang Syne on iTunes to satisfy this nostalgic feeling.

Anyhoo, your Maximum Leader generally does indulge himself with a bottle of Pol Roger on New Years. But this year he opted to go with an Italian sparkling wine from Veneto. It was very good (he should say it is very good, as he hasn’t quite finished the bottle yet). The Processo he bought is dry with undercurrents of fruit (apples or pears). This sparkling wine has the benefit of only being about $17 a bottle - as opposed to the $50 a bottle your Maximum Leader is used to spending on the Pol Roger. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that he is enjoying the Italian wine as much as he has enjoyed the champagne in the past; but it is still pretty tasty.

Speaking of tasty…

The Almond encrusted pork loin was quite delicious. Your Maximum Leader took is massive pork tenderloin (featured in the post below) and cut it into thirds. He went ahead and prepared two of the three pieces for Christmas. He and his family wound up eating one third on Christmas day. The other prepared third was itself divided into thirds and divied up between your Maximum Leader’s in-laws, parents, and hungry self.

The third portion of tenderloin is thawed out and waiting to be prepared tonight. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t heard from anyone on a good preparation (NB to Mrs P: You teased me with a promise of recipe…). So he thinks he will do a typical rosemary and garlic marinade for a few hours then roast.

In unrelated news, Your Maximum Leader should tell you all that he’s been thinking recently that there is some big question in his life to which he knows the answer. The answer is (apparently) Venice. Yes, the city in Italy. He isn’t sure what the question is, but feels that Venice is the answer.

Anyhoo…

On to New Years resolutions. Your Maximum Leader will share a few of his with you all.

In 2008 your Maximum Leader will bring peace to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

In 2008 your Maximum Leader will compete as his own nation in the summer Olympics in Beijing. He will not finish lower than fourth in every event. He will accomplish this feat by using his heretofore unknown ability to warp the time-space continuum.

In 2008 your Maximum Leader will win every Nobel Prize available when he completes his “Grand Unified Theory.” This theory, which will be ultimately be confirmed by scientists from the Gamma-Zeta 294 system 8,433 years from now, will unify all practical questions of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and literature. The key to the unification of science will be the proto-electroneuquark partical - also known affectionately as “The Maxy”.

In 2008 your Maximum Leader will end global warming by meditating for 72 hours straight under a blossoming tree surrounded by dancing wood-nymphs.

In 2008 your Maximum Leader will be elected President of the United States without receiving a single popular vote. He will win a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. After his inauguration in 2009, Canada, Great Britain, Mexico, Brazil and Lichenstein will voluntarially surrender their national sovreignty to your Maximum Leader and the Mike World Order shall begin.

In 2008 your Maximum Leader will wish the previously dreamy Jennifer Love Hewitt a happy married life; he will move on to the passionate Lola Astanova as the object of his platonic affections.

In 2008 your Maximum Leader will try to improve the quality (if not quantity) of blog posts here at Naked Villainy.

There you have them. Your Maximum Leader is pretty sure he can keep up with at least two of them…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is out perusing the interwebs and found this little tidbit on the wire.

7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe.

Among these myths are old canards like you have to drink 8 glasses of water a day (which your Maximum Leader tries to do even though he has known for a few years that this is a myth); and reading in dim light reduces your eyesight.

There is one of these myths with which your Maximum Leader will take exception. The one about humans only using about 10 percent of our brains.

Go to a shopping mall a few days before Christmas and you will see proof that people rarely use more than 5% of their brains.

Q.E.D.

(Excursus: Your Maximum Leader did happen to pass through a shopping mall today. He was walking through the Pentagon City Mall on his way to the Villainmobile. He was getting on/off the Metro on his way to see the “Patterned Feathers Piercing Eyes” exhibit at the Sackler. He will have to back in January by the way… Due to conservation requirements and limited space, only about half of the collection can be shown at a time. By late January, much of the exhibition will have been rotated.)

Carry on.

Your humble Smallholder is both a Christian and an evolutionist. The first because of faith and the second because I can think logically.

I’ve often thought (and I have no theological grounding in this) that the story of the apple isn’t really about one particular woman choosing to try the forbidde fruit, but an analogy to the point where our brains evolved to the point that reason and not instinct drove our actions. The apple, I thought, was a symbol for free will. And then we could make moral judgments (in the Bible we knew we were naked). You don’t condemn a crocodile for eating a man. You do condemn Jeffrey Dahmer.

Over at Jason Rosenhouse’s Evolution Blog, commentor (commentator?) James McGrath has an interesting observation. Perhaps the point of evolution was the creation of free will.

I still think that one can make a better case for why a God of the sort traditionally envisaged by Christian theology (not necessarily popular thought in that tradition) would create through evolution than for some other method. If God’s aim was to create free beings, then it is unclear how else that could be accomplished. If one creates a first ‘Adam and Eve’ as adults, then they must be pre-programmed with all the things humans learn growing up. If they are created as infants, then what? Raised by wolves? Raised by angels? Evolution certainly makes sense as a process that can produce this end, even though it is clearly extremely wasteful in the process.

Interesting…

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will point out two articles that he will broadly categorize as being from the world of science. (cue Thomas Dolby…)

The first article is about superbatteries. Apparently a Texas-based start-up has patented an ultracapacitor battery. If the claims of the patent application are borne out in testing and fact, then this could revolutionize just about everything using stored power. Frankly, it could revolutionize items that generate their own power (like cars) and turn them into items that run on stored power.

Some highlights:

An Austin-based startup called EEStor promised “technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries,” meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline.

By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute. And the popular hybrids on the road today still depend heavily on fossil fuels.

[…]

Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch the bounds of existing technology to the point of alchemy.

“We’ve been trying to make this type of thing for 20 years and no one has been able to do it,” said Robert Hebner, director of the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics. “Depending on who you believe, they’re at or beyond the limit of what is possible.”

EEStor’s secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor’s proprietary material.

The result is an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and releases energy quickly.

Batteries rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to charge and release energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and radios hold less energy but can charge or discharge instantly. Ultracapacitors take the best of both, stacking capacitors to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simple capacitors.

[…]

Previous attempts to improve ultracapacitors have focused on improving the metal sheets by increasing the surface area where charges can attach.

EEStor is instead creating better nonconductive material for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.

ZENN Motor [a financial backer of EEStor] pays EEStor for passing milestones in the production process, and chemical researchers say the strength and functionality of this material is the only thing standing between EEStor and the holy grail of energy-storage technology.

Joseph Perry and the other researchers he oversees at Georgia Tech have used the same material to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold. Perry says EEstor seems to be claiming an improvement of more than 400-fold, yet increasing a capacitor’s retention ability often results in decreased strength of the materials.

“They’re not saying a lot about how they’re making these things,” Perry said. “With these materials (described in the patent), that is a challenging process to carry out in a defect-free fashion.”

Perry is not alone in his doubts. An ultracapacitor industry leader, Maxwell Technologies Inc., has kept a wary eye on EEStor’s claims and offers a laundry list of things that could go wrong.

Among other things, the ultracapacitors described in EEStor’s patent operate at extremely high voltage, 10 times greater than those Maxwell manufactures, and won’t work with regular wall outlets, said Maxwell spokesman Mike Sund. He said capacitors could crack while bouncing down the road, or slowly discharge after a dayslong stint in the airport parking lot, leaving the driver stranded.

Until EEStor produces a final product, Perry said he joins energy professionals and enthusiasts alike in waiting to see if the company can own up to its six-word promise and banish the battery to recycling bins around the world.

These are the types of stories that fill your Maximum Leader with awe at the power of science. He hopes, nay expects, to see real improvement in these technologies in his lifetime. One hopes that the many companies working on ultracapacitors will have a major breakthrough with commerical applications very quickly.

And another item from the realm of “science” is this piece from Nepal. The Nepalese national airline is using unconventional means to “repair” the electrical systems on their Boeing jets.

Officials at Nepal’s state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal’s only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

“The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Local media last week blamed the company’s woes on an electrical fault. The carrier runs international flights to five cities in Asia.

It is common in Nepal to sacrifice animals like goats and buffaloes to appease different Hindu deities.

For some odd reason your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe that the people at Boeing put this type of fix in the technical manual for the 757. He is interested to see if the efficacy of this approach can be supported by some sort of testing. If so, one would imagine that other airlines would look into animal sacrifice to keep their airline fleets running.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is trying not to complain about the driving thunderstorms that have been hitting the Villainschloss. We need the rain. Mrs Villain’s garden needs water to bear fruits and vegetables. So the prospect of a few tenths of an inch of rain — however it comes — is a good thing. We are in a drought here afterall.

Of course, the driving thunderstorms (complete with theatrical lightning for effect) have been occuring precisely at your Maximum Leader’s peak blogging times. Your Maximum Leader has had enough electronic equipment fried from lightning strikes that he just shuts down computers and reads during the storms. So the plus side of these storms is that your Maximum Leader is edifying himself — at your expense loyal reader.

So… During one of these thunderstorms your Maximum Leader and his sainted father-in-law started to chat. (Father-in-law was visiting…) We chatted about this and that and then your Maximum Leader sprung the big question on him…

Now, your Maximum Leader’s father-in-law is a mechanical engineer by training and profession. Although he is retired now, he is more mechanically knowledgable and inclined than your Maximum Leader will ever be. Armed with this knowledge you will understand that your Maximum Leader didn’t just throw this question out to anyone… This man is a “SME” as the government would say. (That is Subject Matter Expert by the way…)

Question: Tools calibrated along “English” measure (as opposed to “metric”) come in increments divisible by two. (eg: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32). Why does one find no use of thirds in “English” measure tools? Your Maximum Leader has 5/8 wrenches, and 27/32 sockets; but he’s never even heard of a 1/3, 1/6, or 1/9th wrench.

We didn’t come to any conclusions that we would lay money on as being correct. Your Maximum Leader’s father-in-law speculated that when you are building something you can reduce the something by halfs with ease, but you can’t reduce a built something by thirds with ease. This is to say that if you were building a house, you could build a model to serve as your guide. You could build this model to half size, or quarter size, or even eighth or sixteenth size. It is almost impossible to reduce a structure by thirds. (This is assuming you aren’t using computer aided design where scale is just a click away. We’re talking building structures from antiquity onwards.)

If anyone reading this has an authoritative source in this matter that they can recommend, your Maximum Leader would appreciate it.

Carry on.

If this was real life, the police officer in question (an attractive single early thirty-ish police officer, would leave with the Minister of Propaganda. I’m not sure how he does it, but he does have the mojo, nimrod or not.

At any rate, although our resident rocket scientist has remained mum, I did get some responses to my query about stopping power/knock him on his ass power.

Polymath writes:

The story about the .45 during the Phillipine Insurrection is the reason I prefer it for a handgun. I am no Rocket Scientist, but I belive the many accounts of crazed fillipinos being knocked down by the .45.

In a standard round, the charge is more than a smaller caliber round would have, but the .45 is more massive, and so travels slower. I think it has more to do with energy dispersal into the target (why I like Glaser Safety Slugs for self-defense).

The Minister of Propaganda e-mailed me a link where my query was discussed (There is much more at the link):

The scenes in the movie where people are lifted off their feet and
knocked head-over-heels across the room when Clint Eastwood shoots them with his Colt .45 are entertaining concepts to some people, but in general they are purely theatrical and totally unrealistic. In my personal experience, if you shoot a man in the chest he will go into shock and fall down no matter what you shoot him with. If you shoot him with something big enough, he will fall down and die. Either way, they normally FALL down rather than get KNOCKED down.

The argument might be that a 200 lb. deer gets knocked down, so a human being should be knocked down too. The explanation there is three fold: First, a deer normally gets shot with a high powered rifle, which can certainly knock him or a person for a loop on impact, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. Second, a deer’s center of gravity and reaction to the impact is different from that of a human, and finally, while a deer has four legs rather than two, only a square inch or so of his hooves are on the ground at any given time, making him much easier to imbalance.

The safety officer at my school says that she was trained that people tend to fall down rather than get knocked down - and sometimes they don’t even fall down. Evidently, it is somewhat of a problem that policemen in a gunfight tend to relax after scoring a hit, assuming that the assailant is out of the fight. Police officers have gotten killed because the guy keeps going. She also noted that high velocity rounds that go through and through don’t have the time to effectively transfer their kinetic energy to the body. They just zip on through and keep going.

The Maximum Leader points out that recoil is less because of the weight of the weapon as balanced against the weight of the round.

The Browning M1911 was designed as a response to the army’s need for more stopping power, but the description here doesn’t explain what exactly is meant by stopping power: Hurt him so bad he falls down or knocks him on his ass.

Any other knowledgeable folks out there?

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Here are some links about stopping power and recoil for your consideration:

Ballistics from the Florida State University Medical Center. (This is a great link that your Maximum Leader is going to have to study further. Even if the first “chapter” has a decidedly anti-gun slant. The science appears to be quite sound.)
Stopping power from Wikipedia.
Recoil from Wikipedia.
The physics of firearms from Wikipedia.
A beginners guide to stopping power by Chuck Hawks.
Gun recoil by Sam Hokin.

Yes, this includes you, Foreign Minister, Polymath, and Air Marshal.

Over at Volokh there has been a sub-discussion about the stopping power of bullets. Some have argued that bullets cannot knock someone down. They say that the equal-and-opposite reaction (recoil) would knock the shooter down if the bullet had that much kick.

SayUncle says:

“Sorry, Eugene, but despite the movies, a hit from a bullet doesn’t knock you down (generally). you may fall or lay down but no knock down. If a round fired from a gun could knock someone down, the expulsion from the barrel would also knock the person doing the shooting down”

This just seems wrong to me.

First of all, I’ve seen my 307 round knock a deer clean over. I guess you could argue that the deer fell over when the round ripped through its heart and lungs. But my brain image has the deer falling over at the same instant the round arrives.

Secondly, I recall that the 45 was introduced during the Philippine Insurrection to counter the danger of the charging Filipinos. Wrapped in newspaper and stoned to the gills, the rebels would charge American lines with spears. The Americans would shoot, delivering fatal wounds, but the dying Filipinos’ forward momentum would carry them into American trenches where they would flail about with edged weapons as they died. My understanding is that the 45 became widespread because it knocked them on their asses and negated their forward momentum.

Thirdly, it seems to me that the recoil is distributed over a wider area of the body then the bullet.

Fourthly, I don’t think my shoulder absorbs all of that “equal and opposite reaction.” If the recoil translates the kinetic energy of the bullet to approximately twelve square inches of my shoulder and the round delivers all of its impact on .07 square inches of the target (.307 diamater = pi*.1535 squared) then my shoulder is feeling about 1/161th of the flesh at the point of round impact. The recoil is negligible, and even magnified by a multiplier of 161, it seems to me that it ought to hurt more. Doesn’t a fair amount of the energy released by the firing action exit sideways, expelling the spent casing as it goes?

But what do I know? I’ve come to the gun thing late and, being a humble servant of the soil, basic physics calculations are well beyond my tiny agrarian brain. So if all of you gun nuts and rocket scientists could enlighten me about whether bullets actually can knock people down, I’d appreciate it.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader started writing this post last week. Last week before he fell into his routine of watching “Scrubs” re-runs and going to be early. He decided to just slap it up here and see if it sticks…

Did you catch the headline off the Bloomberg News service? The one that reads: “Navy lacks plan to defend against “Carrier-destroying” missle.” The Russians have had the “Sizzler” missle for a number of years and have offered it for sale to the Chinese and possibly the Iranians. The missile, it is speculated, may foil the US Navy’s Aegis system. The Aegis system is the Navy’s current defense system against missile attack. According to the article:

Charts prepared by the Navy for a February 2005 briefing for defense contractors said the Sizzler, which is also called the SS-N-27B, starts out flying at subsonic speeds. Within 10 nautical miles of its target, a rocket-propelled warhead separates and accelerates to three times the speed of sound, flying no more than 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level.

On final approach, the missile “has the potential to perform very high defensive maneuvers,” including sharp-angled dodges, the Office of Naval Intelligence said in a manual on worldwide maritime threats.

The Sizzler is “unique,” the Defense Science Board, an independent agency within the Pentagon that provides assessments of major defense issues, said in an October 2005 report. Most anti-ship cruise missiles fly below the speed of sound and on a straight path, making them easier to track and target

Now, your Maximum Leader is not a rocket scientist (although he knows one or two); but even he can tell this is a very serious threat to US naval strength around the world. A supersonic missle that doesn’t fly straight is a potent (and reasonably inexpensive) deterrent to anyone who might want to thwart US foreign policy.

Of course, it is not comforting to know that the Navy has been aware of the threat for 6 years and doesn’t seem to have made a lot of progress is countering the threat posed by the Sizzler. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t doubt for a moment that the Navy (and the good people at Lockheed Martin - makers of the Aegis system) will figure out something they can do to try and neutralize this threat. But your Maximum Leader is not so naive to think that any system is foolproof. Certainly in the interim, the acquisition of a number of these missiles by Iran would have a chilling effect on US operations in the Persian Gulf.

By the way, did your Maximum Leader mention that the USS Stennis and USS Eisenhower battle groups are in the Persian Gulf now? No… Well they are.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must admit that he must have only read his Homer casually. You see, he always assumed that the island off of Greece known today as Ithaca (or Itaki) was, if not the same as - at least part of, the Homeric Kingdom of Ithaca ruled by the wise Odysseus. Apparently this is not the case and a group of scientists are now searching for the Homeric island of Ithaca.

According to the article on the AP news wire, the engineers and other researchers are examining the area of Paliki to see if it could have been the Ithaca of Odysseus. The theory that Paliki could be Ithaca has been advanced by Robert Bittlestone - an amateur archeologist and modern-day Heinrich Schlemann. Apparently your Maximum Leader must have missed the part where Homer describes Ithaca as not being particularly mountainous and was furthest into the sea. The place known now as Ithaca does not fit this description, but Paliki might - at least in Homer’s time.

…[E]ngineers and geologists will examine rock where Bittlestone believes a narrow sea channel once existed, possibly separating Kefallonia from a flat peninsula called Paliki. They hope to discover whether it is made of solid rock or debris, which would suggest Paliki was once an island.

Homer describes Ithaca as low-lying and “furthest to the sea” — but Ithaki is mountainous and is not the outermost Ionian island. Paliki, on the other hand, is generally flat and could theoretically have been the outermost island.

Your Maximum Leader will follow events as he can to see what the researchers come up with. This type of stuff does fascinate your Maximum Leader.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is always out there looking for the interesting news story to share with you all. In the category of “man bites dog” there is this headline from the Reuters news wire: Whale kills would be rescuer.

Apparently a “stray” Sperm Whale capsized a small fishing boat and one of the fishermen was drowned. Two other fishermen were rescued.

Now, your Maximum Leader doesn’t want to make fun of a poor fisherman’s death. Indeed, he has great respect for those who make their living on the sea. But really, wasn’t Moby Dick a Sperm Whale? Don’t we know by now that Sperm Whales have a taste for human blood? Aren’t old japanese fishermen really just sushi for Sperm Whales?

Lesson to you all. Don’t try to “guide” a “stray” Sperm Whale to safety. Kill it. Kill it before it kills you, or explodes.

Carry on.