... is the question of whether anyone has bothered to do any studies of the southern hemisphere? This study seems to focus on the northern hemisphere. Which makes sense since that's where most of the industry has been set up.

Yyeeaahh... spoken like someone that's never even picked a hand tool. Let along the tools needed to pull this rather involved project.

Honestly the person that made this weapon probably used a barrel plank given that's it's a real PITA to bore a barrel worth anything. And a smooth bore rifle is going to have crap accuracy.

Pretty cool. Pretty cool... But I have to say the project that impressed me the most is where someone made a working AK out of a shovel... Well a shovel, a barrel blank and some pare parts. http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/179192-DIY-Shovel-AK-photo-tsunami-warning!

Of course the somewhat ironic thing here is that ObamaCare has little to do with actual socialized medicine. Under socialized medicine you just end up having to pay a taxes and receive sub-par medical care for it. Under ObamaCare you get to pay whatever the insurance company decided to make you pay and hope that you get enough of a subsidy to not looks your house when you don't, can't, or won't pay it. Yes, yes, that's not ALL of it. But it seems to be the salient point of it all.

Well even if I, a so called 'EVIL TEA BAG NAZI' (somewhat ironic given that I DON'T support the TEA party) is willing to say that straight up capitalistic isn't the answer and more than socialism is. In all things there should be a balance. One of the big different between socialism and capitalism is that at least in the later there's real evidence that it just works better. There as in socialism you ends up with a lot of promises and no real results.

Well good on them for finding something that works. And at the end of the day that's what I want to see. Things that work. Sometimes socialism works. That 5% of the time it works great. The rest of the time it usually ends up being a textbook example of now NOT to do things. And as expected the average socialist will harp about these success stories incessantly.

Oh... as an FYI 'high speed rail' is a garbage idea for the US, the space race only happened because the USSR wanted to prove that they wanted to out do the US, and finally no one uses phage therapy or ground effects because they're crap.

Now that being said they USSR did to a LOT of good work with bio-medical technology. They invented laser eye surgery and organ transplants. Go check out images of the monstrosity they made while trying to figure it out.

Seriously... why try to replicate the original heart design when you could make something so much better? And why just ONE heart? What kind of engineer came up with this design? You'd do better to have MULTIPLE hearts pushing blood through your body. I'd have no less than three in me, if i had the option.

I think that was an option in a CyberPunk book. Replacing the heart with a system of small blood pumps located throughout the body. That sounds good to me.

I would also point out that the heart was made by a French COMPANY. It was merely installed by a university hospital.

Of course maybe the company that made it is in bed with the French Government, which might bring prudence to the idea that 'socialism did this'. But I doubt that given that socialism hates innovation, as a general rule.

For my money it's more likely a case of people succeeding regardless of the designs of their political masters.

It really should be pointed out that this guy's idea is in no way new. There has been calls for breaking up California into a number of smaller states for years. Mostly for the reason I put into my previous post. In short: having a very large population being nominally controlled by the whims of LA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(Pacific_state)

California is such a large state that it ends up having being ruled by the whims of the people of LA. Everything from gun laws, to environmental regulations, to labor laws... or put another way the only reason it's a blue state is because of LA. The number of counties hat end up being 'red counties' is fairly substantial. But they usually get overruled by their opposition. Of course IS how representative democracy works... but at the level of population containing with wildly different political ideologues as you have in California you start to have a good example of 'the tyranny of the majority'.

I'm more of a CZ critter myself. ,, But really... the 1911 design has been around for a long time for a very good reason. It works well.