As is sometimes said in the Hazardous Materials world...."The Solution to Pollution is Dilution".

Don't be too sure about the "fire fighting with grenades sounds too good to be true". We already have them:
http://www.statx.com/First_Responder.asp

Die Hard 2 isn't a great place to get your firearms information from.

Yes, there are at least half a dozen polymer frame pistols on the market (Glock, the xD family from Smith, etc...). Every single one of them has a steel slide. Every single one has a steel barrel. Read up on the entire Glock family....not one has anything but a steel barrel and slide, as there are not mainstream polymers that can take the beating. We'll ignore the springs, screws, firing pin, and a bunch of other parts that are metal and couldn't reasonably be replaced with anything else.

"The first flight of an SR-71 took place on 22 December 1964, at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California"

48 years is close enough to 50 for this discussion. We had big dreams back then, making things that only DC Comics would imagine. Now those dreams belong to other countries.

Camp Watonka.
http://www.watonka.com/cgi-local/wpage

I am making the assumption that you're male (which I realize may be incorrect); the camp is boys-only. It's a neat place with a very particular subculture. I spent 4 summers there when I was a little younger;. there were the best summers of my teenage life. They are very welcoming of teens from other countries (my last year there we had a guy, Eisa, straight off the plane from Japan. He spoke little English. We spoke zero Japanese. We made it work because that's the kind of kids that are there). It's a family run operation; the Wackers (no jokes; that really is the family name!) are damned nice people. The food is pretty good by camp standards; the instructors and counselors are generally excellent.

Do give it a look. It might be just the mix of things you're looking for.

"If I want to take the risk I should be able to buy something made of light weight bicycle tube and nylon."


Funny you say that. 4130 CrMo is a steel alloy very frequently used in roll cages of race vehicles of all sorts.

It's also very common to build lower end bicycles frames from it.

" The flag doesn't mean one fucking thing any more, and you know it. Bravery? Honesty? Are you fucking kidding me?"

There is a reason why every fireman, every officer and every solider wears one on their shoulder. They still believe in what it stands for, as imperfect as that idea may have become in recent years. Call them brave, call them stupid, but they still believe those colors are worth defending, and sometimes dying for.

History is cyclical; either the country, as a whole, will learn what that flag means, or it will pass out of existence entirely. I would like to think that we'll learn.

Lemmie See: - XP Box - Win 7 Box - Laptop x2 - Smart phones x2 - FreeNAS Box - Random POS NAS box - Firebox Firewall - Vonage Adapter - DVD Player - HTPC - Wii - Printer - Development Box - Fire Alarm (yes, it talks over IP) = 16 Hmm....and I wonder why my electric bill sucks!

http://www.tacxvr.com/en/products/tacx-trainer-software-real-life-video

or, perhaps:

http://www.computrainer.com/rm_inc/IRCVideos.htm

Both products have been available for many years. The Tacx unit has an available steering head, so while you can' t lean the whole bike, you can turn and interact with the course. While the forward/backwards tilting is a new innovation, the interactive virtual trainer certainly is not. Both calculate wind resistance based on height and weight, resistance, etc. Both offer both birds-eye and immersive views.

It's not the first time that Opera has approached a rival's rhetoric with class and humor:
http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2003/02/14/

For the lazy: MSN targeted Opera users by feeding them a broken page based on the browser id. Opera returned the favor by having a special version of the browser.....which turned the MSN page language into the language of the Sweedish Chef.

Bork! Bork! Bork!