User talk:Critic-at-Arms

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[edit] .45 ACP edit

Can you provide a source for the following remark? "It had also been determined that a .44-caliber bullet was the smallest diameter suitable for putting a wounded horse out of its misery." It certainly makes sense, but it would be nice to be able to point out an authoritative source. scot 16:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] =

I don't have a direct reference to this.

It was taught, in a small-arms course that I took about 20 years ago, that the Army had done tests to find the most reliable method for humane destruction of injured or wounded horses. They found that the .44-caliber ball would penetrate the brain case and do sufficient damage to provide one-shot effectiveness, but smaller balls (even from rifles) didn't have the mass necessary to do the job reliably.

OK, I'll go see if I can find any verification on the web.

This was the reason that the US Army issued the .44 revolvers during the Civil War to Cavalry, while issuing .38 revolvers to infantry officers. The .45 Colt was developed as a marketing ploy, when metal cartridges came along -- Colt's didn't want the Army to just bore out the backs of the cylinders, they wanted to sell them thousands of new pistols.

I think there may have been more than that involved; the .45 Colt didn't use a heeled bullet, like most of the first generation black powder cartrdiges; if it had, it would be using a .44 caliber bullet in non-heeled form (this is why the .44 caliber cartridges use a .429 bullet, and the .38s a .357 bullet).

The .45 ACP was derived from the .45 Colt, in the same way that the .308 was derived from the .30-06, to take advantage of improvements in propellant technology. The .45 Colt was a black-powder cartridge, the .45ACP used "Ball Powder" (a form of smokeless powder). Critic-at-Arms 06:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Ball powder is still around--smokeless powder comes in flake (fastest), ball, and extruded (slowest). And actually, the .308 was more the result of taking the slack out of the .30-06 case, that was left over from the .30-03. The .30-03 had a long, heavy round nosed bullet weighing 220 grains. Everyone else in the world was switching to lighter, faster pointed bullets of around 150 grains. The US realized that their brand new rifle was obsolete before they released it, so they decided to change it. The lighter bullet didn't need the large case the heavier one did, so it left some empty space. Fast forward to the late 1940s, and the military is trying to make a selective fire rifle out of the Garand. The select fire Garand derivatives have problems due to the case being too long for reliable automatic fire in the Garand's receiver, so rather than lengthening the receiver, they shorten the case to take out the .30-03's leftover slack. Thus was born the .308 Winchester. The .308 matched the .30-06's 147 grain military loading, but the .308 doesn't have the case capacity to take the bulkier, slower powders that you need to efficiently push a heavy bullet, so the .308 starts to fall behind the .30-06 about the time you hit 180 grains.
Now the .45 Colt to .45 ACP was a real leap--black powder to smokeless powder, which requires far less volume. What's entertaining is to compare the .45 ACP to the .45 GAP, which underwent the same sort of .30-06 to .308 transition. The .45 ACP was designed to work with the heavy 230 grain bullets, but the non-military loads often use much ligher bullets to moderate the recoil. The .45 GAP "took out the slack" in the .45 ACP case, but optimizing it for 200 grain and lighter bullets. You can push a 230 grain bullet out of it, but you'll just match the .45 ACP, and work at much higher pressure doing it. And you can forget about 260 grain bullets in the .45 GAP. scot 16:36, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article creation

I have been looking through the list of unwatched pages (available only to administrators) and found .376 Steyr. I see that you created this but were not watching it. You may want to go to your preferences and under the "editing" tab turn on "Add pages you edit to your watchlist". This will enable you to keep an eye out for any edits that are made to pages you create and help to revert vandalism. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 23:29, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Also if you decide to can you leave me a note on my talk page. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 19:21, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Starship Troopers

You recently made a change to the Starship Troopers article where you said "According to interviews with Heinlein, Rico does not survive the Klendathu drop which follows the final paragraphs of the book." That's a pretty serious statement, and since you didn't reference it I'm going to to have to remove it if you can't give me a citation. FYI, here is the link for the citation templates. Palm_Dogg 04:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Heinlein stated that Rico died in several interviews and convention appearances in the 1960s and 1970s. I believe this is quoted in the Penthouse interview (1978?), as a comment on both Stranger and Troopers, that one story is about a man who had died, and the other about a man who "is about to." He said pretty much the same thing in the NPR interview of about 1980, that Rico had never come back to report on Klendathu. At a convention talk, he mentioned that he had killed off several of his favorite characters in that period, and his publishers had forced him to save Podkayne "but didn't say a word about any of the guys I killed, like Juan Rico."
However, you are welcome to delete anything you like. I've long since given up on kissing the butts of people on Wikipedia who think that if it isn't in the Times, it isn't so.
I honestly don't care where it appeared. Your other stuff seemed pretty well-researched, so I was just curious as to where you found it. As you can guess, that REALLY affects the ending of the book so I had to make sure it was legit. Can you do me a favor and still add references for it? An online transcript would be even better, but I'm not choosey. I guarantee it will get removed by someone else otherwise. Palm_Dogg 14:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed by an automated bot. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. If you feel you have received this notice in error, please contact the bot owner // Tawkerbot2 07:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects

Just so you know, when you want to redirect a page (when you want something to a "see such and such") instead of keeping two articles the syntax #REDIRECT [[page name here]] is the accepted syntax. You got the bot auto warning because the redirect didn't match the pattery, I know its good faith and I've fixed it for you. If you have any questions feel free to leave me a message :) -- Tawker 07:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

I started the article based on an erroneous name referred to in other articles. The actual name of the site was the Topaz Relocation Center.

[edit] Juanita Brooks

Let's move the discussion on Juanita Brooks' position with regards to the LDS church over to her article. Wadsworth 21:31, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese American internment

The Talk page is a mess. I've been trying to clean it up as I can, but there is a lot of invective by an editor who appears to have gone underground or gone away. I know that you made at least a few edits during this ugly period, so you have some idea what went on. User:justforasecond was instrumental in toning down that discussion, and I would ask that you be civil and assume good faith among other guidelines. As I mentioned on the talk page, J4sec did not write the long posts to which you are responding, and I believe that you actually agree in large part. We're trying to build consensus, and I'm asking your help. Please feel free to post questions on my talk page, here, or on the article talk page. --ishu 19:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Whilst I agree that History Student is a pain in the behind, would you consider toning down the last apra of your recent post. It plays into his hands to some extent as it makes you look unreasonable, and could be construed as a personla attack on him (which could even see you getting blocked). Please think about it. David Underdown 08:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ham radio licensing article

I reverted because I'd put in a lot of work fixing something that was rather badly wrong, and it all went down the tubes. I had a choice: either spend even more time rewriting it again, or revert. -- Jay Maynard 10:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] waco siege

I reverted a pair of your edits at Waco siege because they were unsourced, [1] and [2]. Basically, those are personal interpretations of what happened, and are not backed by any WP:RS source for the claim. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Much better now :) It would probably need better sourcing, which the exact issue of the magazine, exact place where he made the declaration, etc., but I'll leave that to other editors, since I'm tired and don't have time to do the task (I'm supposed to be on a wikibreak right now) --Enric Naval (talk) 18:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)