Oleg Volk

Those horrible, terrible handguns...especially when they save somebody's life?

Rose boxes seriously.

Images originally taken for Michael Martin's excellent book.

Springfield Armory

New GRSC scope has "zero lock" for keeping the reticle perfectly rigid even on weapons with heavy recoil. It is late, so I'll edit the close-up photo of that part tomorrow.

Discussion of the scope

Reticle lock detail:

4-16x scope, now with turrets that can be re-set to zero. I prefer reticle-based rangefinding, but people who like their come-ups would find this scope more flexible. It does have mil-dots for actually finding range, but uses cross-hair adjustments for aiming.

People use that term as if it is a bad thing. If I cooperate with a Canadian colleague on a project and we form a joint company, we are now that evil "multinational corporation". What are the alternatives?

I could discriminate against Canadians and only work with Americans...but xenophobia isn't a virtue.

I could try to do business with Canadian customers without corporate presence...very difficult because most national governments make it hard for anyone abroad to serve their citizens with goods or services.

Now, multinational corporations are faulted for trying to subvert local cultures and politics. Sometimes they are in the wrong, but mostly they either show the locals a better way to do something (see Japanese car companies in the US) or are resisting outright brigandage, such as governments stealing ("nationalizing") their assets. Individuals can sometimes resist such brigandage effectively, but it is more common that groups of individuals trying to make a living together (corporations) resist more effectively and thus get noticed. The alternative is for companies to roll over, accept losses and simply avoid doing any business with countries which have uncertain political climate. That reduces the quality of life for the locals because they have fewer employment and/or shopping options.

So, hooray for multinational corporations! I like being able to buy Serbian rifle ammunition, Japanese cameras and Mexican avocados.