I just realized that I missed the Friday data dump

So here it is, call it a two-fer Saturday

It's turned a bit cold out there, which means

fine weather for data study, in the warm indoors

To everyone who booed this family:

Go have a crotch fire.


What passes for correct thought on far too much of the left:
I’m not even sure how to bust things up. We have to invent a new way. There’s a lot of old people who need to realize they’ve had a nice life, and it’s time for them to move on. Because they’re the ones who go out and vote for these assholes. If you look at the young people, between 18 and 25, if it was up to them Hillary would have been president. No offense to the seniors out there. My mom’s a senior citizen. But if you’re voting for Trump, it’s time for the urn.

For the female readers, a short data set

that might be more to their liking

I think the President's advice was to 'punch back twice as hard';

people he didn't intend to fight back are taking that advice.

AGs abuse their position and authority, sooner or later there'll be a reaction, and I'm happy to see it happen.


Concerns about student safety [stemming from potential confrontations] and potential disruptions prompted administrators at Lincoln Public Schools’ Career Academy to ask welding students not to fly U.S. flags on their vehicles from holders they made in class….
...
“[O]ut of an abundance of caution” for both LPS and SCC students, Career Academy administrators asked students not to fly the flags again in the parking lot.
If they're worried about a reaction, they need to tell people whining about the American flag to get over themselves.

Superintendent had the proper reaction:
“We respect the rights of students to display their flags. We should not have asked our students to remove them. We believe that decision was in error and we believe this could easily and understandably have been misinterpreted as infringing on rights of freedom of expression and speech.”
but the fact that the school actually thought this was a good idea is not a good thing.

No kidding

“You don’t get to appoint Eric Holder, Thomas Perez, Sonia Sotomayor, Ken Salazar, Ernest Moniz, Lisa Jackson and Tim Geithner and then turn around and criticize the Republican who comes along for going hard-core with his people. You really don’t get to do that. You lost. Shut up.”

Especially when you've appointed people like this in circumstances like this:
Vanita Gupta, the acting head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, apparently has been working in violation of federal law for more than a year and a half.
That may render all of the official actions she has taken during that period—lawsuits, demand letters, hires, you name it—“void” and of no effect.

Before the daily yelling about idiots in government starts, (added link)

some more pleasant subjects.

We made up some black powder loads for the .45-70.  Which I was a bit nervous about, as black has some things it won't allow.  Such as there cannot be any space between the powder column and the bullet; space will cause a pressure spike that can do unpleasant things.  And you need lube on the bullet a bit different from that used for smokeless, as one of its jobs is to help keep the fouling soft.  So bullets actually intended for black tend to have lube grooves both wide and deep.

There's a very good piece on getting started with black powder cartridge loading(pdf file), so started with that.  Five rounds with 60 grains of FFg, a cardboard overpowder wad and a 405-grain bullet, that load having about 1/10" of compression of the powder.  Wasn't able to set the Chrony up so don't know what the velocity was; recoil was softer than with smokeless, the cloud was impressive.  About 4-5" group at 100 yards(same sight setting as with smokeless loads), which could probably be improved quite a bit, starting with a little more powder and more compression.  Cleanup is a bit of a pain, cases included, but not horrible.

Added: in comments Arthur gave a link to this on cleaning cases after black powder

And in the comments on the video, someone gave this link for products that contain the sodium perborate he mentions.


You might remember the .338 project rifle.  It had an odd feeding problem on occasion: it didn't want to feed from the right side of the magazine.  From the left, the cartridge slid right in, from the right it'd get about halfway into the chamber and jam.  It got to be a more-often thing.  Lots of digging around and asking, ran across a guy who'd had the same problem with a AR-10 in .308.  His was under warranty so contacted DPMS, they sent a shipping label, off it went.  Came back with note from the gunsmith that 'chamber was tight, reamed, polished, tested with ten different brands of ammo.'

So removed barrel(DPMS) and sent it and bolt to guy with go/no-go gauges, a .338 reamer, and a lathe.  Headspace was good, so he just polished it very well(and threaded the muzzle while he had it).  Reinstalled, and the problem is gone.  Which is nice.


The outdoor range I go to was packed.  Closer it gets to deer season, the busier it is.  Give it another week, and it'll drop off a lot.

I would love to find a place where could get out to 3-400 yards with that .45-70, see how it'd do.  For that matter, some other things I'd like to try at longer range.


.22 ammo is more expensive(like just about everything else), and fairly available.  Best price I've found was for Federal Champion or American Eagle, $2.50/box.

Some smokeless powder that's been in short to nonexistent supply for a long time is showing up again; I'm guessing ammo manufacturers are getting caught up on backlogs and powder makers can start supplying more to the public.


I just ran through what all I need to load in the near future; damn.

Crap. That quake in New Zealand?

These incredible photographs show how New Zealand's 7.8 magnitude earthquake lifted the seabed two metres - and exploded through the sand. 

Dramatic aerial pictures reveal the scale of the devastation caused on the coastline north of Kaikoura, on the country's South Island. 

 Scientists say the seabed lifted an estimated two metres on the foreshore and admit they have never seen anything like it.

Here in the US, the Journal of American Medical Association has released the kind of 'research' that caused the CDC to get it's peepee whacked on the subject of 'gun research'.
By failing to distinguish between “murder” and “homicide,” the JAMA paper conflates unlawful and lawful killings. Indeed, it is quite possible that fully 100 percent of the increase in Florida homicides, which the paper attributes to the Stand Your Ground law, were in fact lawful acts of self-defense, the alternative to which would have been the murder, maiming, and rape of innocent victims. If so, the effect of the Stand Your Ground law has been to reduce the murder, maiming, and rape of innocent victims, arguably the very social good intended by its passage. For some reason, however, I see a remarkable absence of press coverage of this paper headlined, “Stand Your Ground Law Shown to Safeguard Innocent Life.” Odd, that.
...
The second fundamental error in this paper is that the authors have a basic ignorance of the legal principles they are purporting to study. This is perhaps not surprising given that their listed associated academic departments include “Social Policy and Intervention,” “Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,” and “Biostatistics and Epidemiology,” but nothing actually related to law. (Incidentally, I extend an open invitation to researchers desiring insight on these legal issues.)
...
In closing, I note that in the third-to-last sentence of the paper the authors write: “Our study examined the effect of the Florida law on homicide and homicide by firearm, not on crime and public safety.” Wait, what? And you waited until the very end of the paper to explicitly disclose this highly relevant fact?

Then, pray tell, what was the purpose of writing the paper in the first place? Indeed, the same question must be raised with respect to JAMA’s decision to publish the paper.

Well, hell the millenium done arrived

First Piers Morgan, then Jon Stewart say things I can agree with.  And they're both talking about leftists.

When those two are telling their own side how badly they effed up, and are continuing to do so, that just might reach someone.

Start with taking said diplomat

and throwing his ass out of the country.  Then take notice that a bunch of people planning
...“mass marches” on Inauguration Day in Washington and another one in Chicago on Saturday; the group hopes to “shut the streets down” at both rallies.
probably isn't planning for non-violent protests, and be prepared to deal with them.  They actually STAY non-violent protesters, fine; they start blocking roads, breaking things and otherwise rioting, to jail with them.

That got exciting

Will probably be expensive, but if you shoot subsonic

might be worth it.


Hand guns should be legalised and licensed, Nigel Farage has said 

The Ukip leader says the ban on the guns, which were made illegal in the wake of the Dunblane shooting, was a "kneejerk" reaction and should be lifted
He still wants all the licensing crap, because our system
...strikes me as being absolutely crazy that you can go and buy automatic repeating rifles down at a local gun shop that looks more like a supermarket.
Mr. Farage:
Our system works fine.  We like our supermarkets.
Your system is a control-freak nightmare that punishes the law-abiding.  And you need to learn the difference between automatic and semi.

But it is a step forward to have him pushing to get rid of the ban.

Science! 3D printing version

An innovative surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, though, has turned his life around. Last month, the first-grader received a 3D-printed skull implant that fits perfectly with his existing skull bone structure. The implant is no ordinary plastic — it’s made from a material called PolyEtherEtherKetone (PEEK), which has roughly the same physical properties as a real skull.

The surgery was successful and Teddy is now back to being an active kid.

And

With the help of an imaging specialist, Pilbrow and her team used the scans to create a 3D-printed replica of the mummy’s skull. Then, the scientists studied the specimen’s facial-bone features, such as the size and angle of the jaw and characteristics of the eye sockets, to determine that the head belonged to a female. The researchers are calling the specimen Meritamun. They say she was probably not more than 25 years old at the time of her death and was important enough to be mummified.

Charges on the Minnesota officer who killed Philandro Castile

There's always politics, but I'd guess the video and so forth looked really bad. 
“No reasonable officer knowing, seeing and hearing what Officer Yanez did at the time would have used deadly force under these circumstances,” Choi said at the news conference Wednesday morning. “I have given Officer Yanez every benefit of the doubt on his use of deadly force, but I cannot allow the death of a motorist who was lawfully carrying a firearm under these facts and circumstances to go unaccounted for.”
That is a pretty flat "He screwed the pooch and somebody is dead because of it" statement.

If I'm remembering the video correctly, as someone noted, the officer sounded a bit like someone realizing just how badly he'd blown it.  Well, he did, and lots of people are suffering because of it, and he just might spend a bunch of years in prison.

More higher education crap

Guys, preventing speakers from speaking is not a good idea.


"How dare you let someone we don't like eat at your restaurant!"


I don't care what the defense is, any cops who spend that much time killing dogs need to have that badge removed; not only are they dirtbags, but who knows what other crap they're doing?


No, mobs of Trumpites are not running around committing hate crimes.
And every time one of these idiots makes a fake report, it poisons the air even worse.

If you're not familiar with Sarah Hoyt,

books or blog, may I suggest you make a start with this:
No, I’m worried about our international image and also, to be honest about our more ignorant, backwards, incapable of thought co-citizens — in other words, those indoctrinated in the most prestigious universities in the country — because both foreigners and glitteratti seem to be blissfully unaware of a) reality b) that they’ve been spun and c) about the SIZE of our magnificent beast of a country.


Speaking of, some fine examples of good progressives scaring the crap out of their kids.

Remember the NYeffingTimes announcing they were dedicating themselves to honest reporting?

Yeah, we can trust them.
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper's movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called "the narrative." We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.

Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: "My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?"

The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper's daily Page One meeting: "We set the agenda for the country in that room."

More Higher Education idiots

University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan is being asked to refrain from quoting Thomas Jefferson because of his racist beliefs, according to The Cavalier Daily. 

A letter, signed by 469 faculty members and students, was sent to Sullivan on Nov. 11 protesting the use of a Jefferson quotation in her email calling for unity after the presidential election, the student newspaper reported. 

“We would like for our administration to understand that although some members of this community may have come to this university because of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, others of us came here in spite of it,” the letter read. “For many of us, the inclusion of Jefferson quotations in these e-mails undermines the message of unity, equality and civility that you are attempting to convey.”
Because nothing must interfere with their feels being protected.



The daughter of one of the Dallas police officers killed during the July 7 ambush was told she was no longer invited to hit an honorary serve at a volleyball game at Southern Methodist University “in light of recent events and diversity within the SMU community.” 

The university has since apologized and re-extended the invitation, but it did not explain why the invite was spiked in the first place.
Let's translate that: "The university, having been drowned by citizens asking what the hell is wrong with them, decided to backtrack and apologize."

Think about the level of stupid involved in this, and marvel that these idiots are in charge of a university, and teaching this shit to the students.


Good; that corrupt bastard needs to be thrown out.  And since he's lied under oath to Congress, prosecuted.

From Larry Correia: A Handy Guide For Liberals

Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership
 Judging by your social media over the last few days many liberals have been utterly terrified that your government might turn tyrannical or that evil people will now be emboldened to hurt you. I’m going to let you in on a little thing the other half of the country is familiar with to keep those unlikely, yet catastrophic, events from happening.

And that my lefty friends, is 2^nd Amendment.It's good.  Read it, and pass it around.

A few bits:
Since this is addressed to liberals, spare me the usual nonsense about “Victim Blaming”. We don’t have time for silliness. If you’re banking on the goodwill of evil people to keep you safe, you are a sucker. If I urge you to look both ways before crossing the street, I’m not victim blaming, I’m trying to keep your stupid ass from getting hit by a bus.


Just because you have a gun doesn’t mean that you can just go and shoot whoever you feel like. I see this pop up all the time amongst my liberal friends. Like if a redneck sees a black dude, he can just blast him because the redneck felt uncomfortable. First off, no, that’s not how the laws work. Second off, maybe if you’d quit proclaiming everybody who isn’t part of your clique is a racist murderer, you’d win more elections.

I may have to find this book,

it looks good.


Higher Education and leftist 'tolerance'.

WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical.

“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”

And these are the people training all the delicate snowflakes who think rioting and assault and arson is 'free speech'.


The New York effing Times now says "We'll become actual, unbiased reporters now, believe us and buy our stuff!"
Fat damned chance on both.


Only if they're as stupid as you are, Rye.
Don Lemon responded by pointing out that he had Sheriff Clarke on his show and that calling him “a terrorist” was a step too far. Rye tried to defend her position by claiming that Sheriff Clarke had referred to those protesting Trump as “whiny babies.”

She added, “To be honest with you, there are black people in Milwaukee that would say to you, ‘Yeah, he is very much like a terrorist.'”

A civil rights victory in the Dark and Fascist State of New Jersey

When the AG of that place concedes this, it means something(emphasis mine):
[T]he State agrees with defendant’s reading of United States Supreme Court precedent. To briefly recap Second-Amendment jurisprudence, the United States Supreme Court held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, TO ALL INSTRUMENTS THAT CONSTITUTE BEARABLE ARMS, EVEN THOSE THAT WERE NOT IN EXISTENCE AT THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 582 (2008), and that this “Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States[.]” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 750 (2010).”

Right there is a big reason Clinton lost: her attitude toward Heller was "We need to get rid of it, because Common Sense Regulation."  And I guarantee that caused some people to vote for Trump.

I'd just about pay to watch both of these

7. I will hope he is sufficiently Machiavellian to nominate Ted Cruz for the Scalia vacancy on the Supreme Court.

8. And then he could make a personal appearance there, shouting and waving his little hands. That could create three more vacancies.
And in general,
16. One learns such things from e.g. The Buchan Observer, published near where Trump owns a golf course. Hence their headline yesterday: “Aberdeenshire business owner wins presidential election.”

17. It is said that the President-elect scares people; foreigners especially. This is the good news. The more they fear him, the better chance of peace.

18. Have you noticed that people who accuse him of hate crimes are frothing at the mouth? … No? …
19. I have.


Higher Education...
Staffers at the University of Michigan Law School scheduled a post-presidential election event entitled “Post-election Self-care with Food and Play.”

The event, featuring Play-Doh, bubbles and Legos, has now apparently been canceled — possibly in response to heaps of ridicule.


The reason the attitude toward 'right-wing hate crimes' is 'Screw you, let's see the evidence": because so damned many of them are fake.


It's been kind of amazing watching some people I'd thought level-headed absolutely lose their shit over this election.  And more than a little disturbing.  Especially among people who've shown they'll ignore felony crimes and disgusting behavior to vote for someone because of her genitals(and the 'D' after her name).