Animation of the waves

Belmont Club has this link to an animation of how the tsunamis propagated from the quake site across the Bay of Bengal. Watch this, and watch the time count, it gives a feel for the speed of these things.

A while back Discovery Channel, I believe, had a show on these waves, and noted that in the open ocean they can travel as much as 500 mph. Think about that. A jet airliner doesn't make that speed, and fighters & attack planes don't unless they're actually on a strike run. An energy pulse moving through the water at 500 mph, then reaching shallower water and slowing/building in height until it's moving across the shore and is tens of feet high.

The power involved is amazing. I remember as a kid hearing about the big quake in Alaska in 1964. That was from a 9.2 quake, as I recall, and they've now settled on 9.0 for this one.

Tim Blair has a list of charities/agencies you can donate to for aid to the people in the region. Personally, as Steve puts it, after what came out after 9/11 I wouldn't give a wooden nickel to the Red Cross if their headquarters was on fire. But there are others who can help out.

Note: Confirmed death toll is now 55,000. Which means it'll be much higher.

Once more, why we should tell the U.N. to go to hell

I just read two things. One, they now think the death toll from the quake and waves may be more than 40 thousand. Two, some pissy little jackass from the U.N. says that the U.S. is being 'stingy' with our aid, and we need to raise our taxes so we will 'have' more money to give.

I have overall tried to be fairly civil in my language on this blog, but this calls for an exception. Mr. Egeland? FUCK YOU! You sorry, pissy little jerk! The U.N. would fall apart if we didn't keep funding it(and I don't know why we do). WE put more money into relief for many things than the rest of the world combined. And a lot of that does not come from the government taking money out of our pockets, it comes from citazens giving money and time to charities who help people in trouble. And you call us stingy?!?

WE, for the most part, don't want to give more money to the U.N. because a: it's a hugely corrupt organization, as the Oil-for-Food scandal has pushed into focus and b: we don't want to fund a bunch of thugs who will tell children that if they want to eat, they have to spread their legs.

As far as our taxes? Screw you, weenie. You, last I heard, have a stagnant economy largely because of your taxes and socialist government. We are overtaxed now, and still have managed to keep a growing economy going. Let me point something out to you: the less the government takes out of our pockets in taxes, the more people have to give to charities they trust to spend the money wisely. Unlike most government agencies, which when honest just waste a lot, and when corrupt(U.N.) steal most of it.

By the time this is done, probably the U.S. will have- again- given more money and food and material to relief efforts than anyone else. And assholes like you will still bitch and whine that we aren't doing enough.

Again, Screw You, Mr. Egeland, and the high horse you rode in on. This is one more reason we should tell the U.N. to move, and get along without our support, and we should start an organization of free nations to actually do something, instead of taking bribes and abusing children and adults and insulting the people who keep it going.

Update: Mr. Chickenshit has crawfished publicly on his comments.

21,000 and counting up

It's a hard number of bodies to comprehend. All in the space of a few minutes, caused by something that happened about 6 miles underground a long ways off.

The quake move the friggin' ISLAND of Sumatra about 100 feet, and shifted the rotation of the earth a touch. The energy involved has too many zeros for me to think about without getting a headache.

Waves moving in at more than 100mph, and building to many feet high as they move up the slope to the beach.

I was looking at the U.S. Geological Survey site at the info, and they're now saying it was a 9.0. There are five tectonic plates that interact in the region and produced this thing, and it says that about 600 miles of plate boundary moved in this quake.

A Small Victory has a lot of information for people who want to contribute to relief efforts.

That's about all I can say about this right now.

My response to people who don't like being wished "Merry Christmas"

Picture stolen from Denny

Christmas is done

and it was nice. It's always nice to visit family, especially this time of year. And I got stuffed, so there's two good things together.

Of course, the stuffing means I need to put in some extra time in the gym over the next week or so, but I needed to do that anyway, so...

I've decided that where I really, really want to be when word arrives that Fidel Castro died is Miami. Why? Check out what Steve and friends did for Christmas. I get the feeling Fidel-in-a-box will trigger the biggest damn party the world has seen in God knows when.

Anyway, hope your Christmas was good. If you do Hannukah or Mid-Winter or whatever, hope it was good. And if being wished Merry Christmas pisses you off, see above.

And we're supposed to like socialism because?

"In January 1849, months before he migrated to London, Karl Marx published an article by Friedrich Engels in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung announcing that in Central Europe only Germans, Hungarians and Poles counted as bearers of progress. The rest must go. "The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust."

Genocide arose out of Marx's master-theory of history -- feudalism giving place inevitably to capitalism, capitalism to socialism. The lesser races of Europe -- Basques, Serbs, Bretons and others -- being sunk in feudalism, were counter-revolutionary; having failed to develop a bourgeoisie, they would be two steps behind in the historical process. Engels dismissed them as left-overs and ethnic trash (Voelkerabfall), and called for their extinction.

So genocide was born as a doctrine in the German Rhineland in January 1849, in a Europe still reeling from the revolutions of 1848. It was to become the beacon light of socialism, proudly held and proudly proclaimed."

Found at Dissecting the Left

When is it time to be scared?

Smallest Minority has a piece on 'thought crimes', and ramifications thereof. And it's worrisome.

A few years ago I would not have been really worried about it; concerned, yes, but not worried. But things have changed. In all too many places- in this country- you can wind up being arrested for saying or doing something that hurts someone's feelings; that's a hate crime, now. Point out a few inconvenient facts, speak on opinion that's not PC, and you just might go to jail.

Over the years, now, official attitudes toward criticism have gotten worse. You could almost always get in trouble for actually threatening the government, or an agency, but now... say something someone decides is too critical, and various initial-agencies are looking into your finances, what letters and e-mail you send, what groups you belong to.

And I'm worried about it.

Government has become more, almost immune, to action by people who have been wronged. How may cases have we heard of over the last couple of years where some law enforcement agency raided the wrong house and killed someone? and then everyone involved walked away from any official action because 'departmental guidelines were followed '. The family may be able to sue, but it'll cost a fortune, and drag on... and in some cases, you may have to get a judge to give you permission to sue.
And, if you become a pest, the agency may decide that something they saw while they were ransacking your home(that they broke into by mistake) is enough to charge you with something. And so forth.

Add to that the fact that more and more, some people become actually scared at the thought of finding themselves on some government watch list because they said, or wrote, something some beaurocrat or law enforcement type objected to.

Sir Robert Peel wrote his Principles of Policing (scroll down a bit) in what was a fairly homogenous society, but the priciples worked pretty good here, too, for quite a while. Read Mr. Copper's whole post; what's gone wrong in Britain is wrong here, too. The biggest one, maybe, being the extent of the "Us-Them" attitude. It means people are less likely to cooperate with an officer/s who obviously hold them in contempt; it makes it a lot easier for a bad cop to get away with things, and makes a good cop more likely to do bad things. And a follow-on, judges who, more than ever, see themselves as Holy Men of the Law giving the peasants the word on how to behave.

This rambles on a bit, but it's connected. When various government reps feel they can put you on a list for saying something objectionable; when cops feel they can treat anyone like crap for what boils down to 'because I feel like it'; when judges can basically say the Constitution says what they think it does; when government agencies can make law with elected officials either not having say in it or not caring; and when all the above think that as soon as they show their ID you're supposed to abase yourself before them, no matter what, then we have some very big problems.

It remains to be seen whether enough of we the people care enough to use our votes to straighten it out.

Ignorance of this country

As in ignorance of what this country is and where it's been. Smallest Minority links to an article by a university professor about the truly abysmal ignorance of most of his students of American History. It really is appalling.

My daughter brought this to my attention when she was in eighth grade. That was when I found out she'd had Chinese, and African, and all the PC history, but not a single American history class. I was really pissed of by this, and proceeded to remedy it by telling her some things- over time- and showing her some materials I had. One advantage of messing with Buckskinning was having had a subscription to 'Muzzleloader' and 'Muzzleblasts' magazines; lots of articles on early U.S. and colonial history, generally told with good style, and she ate them up. Same for my son.

Another problem; she had a history teacher who was dismissive of anything he hadn't heard of, and if shown the proof got downright hostile. A teacher should be glad to learn of new facts, new stories, not mad about it.

I really don't understand how someone can look at this country, warts and all, and not like it. Especially I don't get those who speak of how awful we are and then heap praises on people like Fidel Castro. (and they get really hostile when you point out what a bastard he is. They also don't like it when you point out that the British and Canadian healthcare systems are pretty bad; they're FREE! and that's all that matters, apparently) Criticize problems, yes. Want to fix them? Sure. But to condemn everything about this country because it doesn't meet some intellectual definition of 'perfect' is a load of crap.

What do you want to bet many/most of those students in the article saw 'Farenheit 9-11' and believed it? And probably never saw any of the listings of falsehoods in it?

One of the things that struck me in the article was how the students thought having to open a book 'is an exotic and particularly cruel form of punishment'. Oh, God, how can you NOT like to read?!?!

If I didn't have to go to work I'd head for the range.

Some years have gone by when...

...you refer to a new music release as an 'album' and people look at you funny.
...one of your daughters high school friends is dancing in a nookie bar to help pay her tuition.
...you notice some of your favorite music is only played on 'classic rock' stations.
...you look under the hood of a car and think, "Jeez, what is al this crap?"
...you first hear the word 'blog' and think it's some D&D critter.
...you realize many of the Saturday morning cartoons were made for adults, not kids.
...somebody tells you you dress 'retro'.
...somebody freaks out because you carry a pocketknife.
...they'd REALLY freak out if they knew about the .45.
and so on...

The San Francisco idiocy

in wanting to ban handgun ownership and forbid transfer of other firearms has been well and truly whacked on by a number of people. Alphecca not only does that, he ties in a lot of other news, including a really flawed study on firearms ownership. Read it, I'll not try to condense.

Smallest Minority hits on the issues, too. Including the memorandum from the Justice Department affirming that the 2nd Amendment right to arms is, indeed, an individual right. As a lot of people have pointed out for a long time, there are two dangers with the 'collective-right' argument; first, that somehow language that speaks of individual rights in all other amendments somehow morphs into a 'collective' right in this case; and second, that the same arguments could be used by others to trash our other rights as only being 'collective'.

I still find it amazing how people who call themselves 'progressive' seem to think that means 'we are for all freedoms(except the one's we don't approve of, bacause they don't really count, you see)'.

Cat as alarm clock

If I could put a timer on the little furball, she might actually come in useful. As it is, when she thinks I'm about to wake up- or thinks I should- she jumps up on the bed, sits by my head and starts patting me on the eye.

The patting beats the other thing, though. If a hand or shoulder is showing, she starts ticking at it with her claws. Which does wake me up, and also causes her to levitate when I yell and jump.

Let's see, a nice purr instead of paws/claws, timer so you can keep her from starting this crap when you don't need to get up ("I'll feed you when I'm awake, dammit!").

Or I could get a water pistol.

I hate wrapping Christmas presents

One of the things I picked up is going to be hard to wrap, and I'm about out of paper anyway, and I hate winding up with rolls of the stuff to put away 'till next time...

Crap on that. Some of this stuff is going in bags. Brown paper bags. Or something simple.

Also, it's about to get cold again. Which has nothing to do with wrapping paper, but Steve was bitching about how cold it was in Florida a couple of days ago. "It's only 50-something, I'm freezing!" Suck it up, man! Our HIGHS the last while have been 40's & 50's. For Thursday & Friday this week they're saying highs in the 20's. Why don't you pluck Marv and stuff the feathers in your shirt? That'll give you some insulation. Although with all the habeneros you eat, I'm surprised you can get cold.

Last time I went to the range I discovered that the ventilators blow out from the firing line toward the range. Therefore, in December, you get a damn cold draft into the back of your neck and head. That does not aid in good shooting.

I will, however, stop saying nasty things about Steve if he invites me to ManCamp. Sounds kind of like what my great-uncle used to do with a fish fry on occasion.

I now have to find enough paper to wrap one thing, it's too small for the paper bag, and leaving it in a glorious wrapping that announces "Wal-Mart" just doesn't seem right.

How to clean your guns

First, you require a dirty gun. You should not drop one in the garden or the vacuum cleaner bag; you need one dirty from shooting; not only is this the proper way to get your gun dirty, it's a lot more fun. And noisy.

Now you need cleaning supplies. Oil and/or bore cleaner, cleaning patches, a cleaning rod, the jag to hold your patches, and a large flat space to lay things out on. This surface should not be one that is easily stained or damaged, or should be one you can hide. If you're married, you already know why(if you're not, you'll find out one day)

First, make sure the firearm to be cleaned is unloaded, with no cartridge left in the chamber. Not doing this could be noisy, and lead to more damage-cover problems.

Second, take it apart enough to clean it. There are two levels of this:
Field-stripping means taking it apart just enough to clean things off.
Detail-stripping means taking the whole damn thing apart; barrel, screws, stock, springs and all. This method is much more fun, allowing you to clean everything and giving much more opportunity to lose things and practice your language skills. Especially if you've lost the directions to put it back together.

For most needs, field-strip the thing and lay the parts out in order.
Remove the cat from the table.
Wet a patch with your chosen cleaning agent and wipe things off, setting them down in order. Put a patch on your cleaning rod, wet it down, and run it through the bore. Repeat, and set aside.

About this time you'll find that either a: the cat has returned to the table, or b: you're out of patches. Take a moment to either throw the beast off or dig out some more patches. You don't have more? Find that old t-shirt and start cutting. By the time you finish this, you're thirsty, so you have to wash your hands and get a drink. Do wash first; gun oil/cleaner does not help the taste of any drink known to man. And put the bottle down, you can have that after you're done.

Return. If you detail-stripped the piece, you'll likely find that either the cat came back to visit and is batting things around, or you bumped the table and things rolled around. This is your first opportunity to practice your language skills. Which, if you have kids, may also get you a lecture you really don't need right now.

Take a rag and wipe all the parts off, hopefully taking off all the fouling. Then wipe them down again with a clean patch & oil. Push a couple of clean patches through the bore, hopefully wiping all the crud out of the bore. If not, run a couple more wet patches through and wipe out again.

You should also have a couple of spare rags handy, or a roll of paper towels. This is to wipe up the spill when you knock the bottle over. You will do this either when a: you reach for it, or b: when the !*(@)#*&^^@ cat jumps back up on the table. If yours is a really fiendish beast, it WILL jump up where reaching for it will cause you to knock the damn bottle over.

Wipe up spill, and mutter language lesson, then run clean patches through bore. Unless you're shooting really crappy ammo or have let it get really nasty, this should do it.

Wipe all excess oil off all parts, and reassemble. And you're done!

Unless, of course, you detail-stripped it. Then you get to look for all the parts that have rolled/fallen somewhere, and try to find your directions(which you then get to try to open up without getting oily fingerprints all over it, causing further display of verbal skill). After finding all necessary parts/materials, then you get to put it all back together.

And now, flush with success, you get to put the firearm away, head back to the sink to wash your hands off- followed by washing out the sink so you don't receive a language lesson.

There are variations on this basic routine. Usually involving parts not being found, falling over the cat/dog, and sometimes ending with screamed imprecations at the pet, the parts involved, and possibly the ancestry of whoever designed the damn thing in the first place.

Now is the time to retire to a chair with a bottle of suitable drink.

Wasn't that easy?

The Battle of the Bulge

Started 60 years ago. A site called Jewish World Review has an article about it.

Besides the stubbornness of some units- cut off from support, cold, short on supplies and ammunition- refusing to surrender or run, I read once that Patton managing to turn the entire 3rd Army and start it off in the new axis of attack in the time taken to do it was marvelous.
(I also read that Patton did not want to meet the German forces head-on; he wanted to run up their eastern flank for about 15 miles and then cut east, cutting the German forces off from support and resupply. Would probably have worked).

Take a look at it, and say a prayer for the memory of those men, and for the few who are still with us.

Ref the size of 'Oil, etc.'

Yes, I know the letters shrink as it nears the end. No, I haven't been able to fix it.

Dammit.

Update: Thank you, Noddy, it worked

Injuries on two wheels

I've been riding motorcycles since I was 14. I've burned myself on mufflers and header pipes, I've gotten cut and scraped working on them, but the worst injury I've ever had was a cut lip and some bruises. It took a damn bicycle to actually hurt me.

In good weather, when I've got time, I like to take my bicycle to the store, or the library. On this occasion I'd been working 0100 to 0900(1a.m. to 9a.m. for you non-24hour clock folks). It's Sunday evening and I don't have to be at work until 9a.m. There was a guitar magazine with an article on Heart- the group- that I wanted to get for my daughter. Nice weather, so I jumped on the bike and headed for Barnes & Noble.

Got there, they were out. There's a Borders about a half-mile away, so I headed for there. You either take back streets, or try to avoid being run over on two major streets, so I took the back way. And all was fine, until I cut through the hotel parking lot. Other times I'd have been fine, but I was tired and my reactions were off when I clipped the speed bump. Big sucker. Front banged and wobbled, but it was when the back hit that I lost it. I had one of those frozen moments when you know what has happened, you know what's going to happen, and you know you can't do a damn thing about it.

Bang. I went over sideways to the right, and had just enough reaction left to guide the fall a bit with my hand (thankfully, had gloves on) and take the impact on arm, shoulder and hip. I slid about three feet, and as I stopped and lay there my first thought was, "I'm going to have a hard time putting a shirt on tomorrow". This because I was in shorts and a tank top. However, when I pulled myself up I found only a couple of small scratches. Sore, but still ambulatory. So I got back on the bike(scrape on seat, no other damage), went into Borders- they were out of the damn magazine- then rode home, cleaned up and went to bed.

Morning comes, and I woke up and tried to sit up. 'Tried' because I could not really move my right leg, and could not raise my right arm. I had to roll to the edge of the bed and swing my legs over, hobble to the phone and call the doctor for an appointment, then call work to say 'I ain't gonna be there'.

Ever tried to drive a standard transmission truck with no right leg?

I had not broken anything, but had bruised my shoulder and hip so badly I was off work for three days. And my shoulder gives me trouble to this day.

Followup on this was I'd told my supervisor I'd had a bike accident, and everybody thought I'd crashed my new motorcycle.

I still ride bicycles, but not when I'm that tired.

Do you hate the weather weenies?

I'm talking about those idiots on TV and radio. I'm talking about the clowns who think they have to work in practice for their stand-up routine while they're supposed to be giving you facts.

I'm talking about the assholes who come on at the start of the news and say something like, "Nice weather for today, but is there a threat of death from the sky tomorrow? Details later in the broadcast."

I'm talking about the jerks who come on your radio and talk about how you should 'enjoy the weather today, because it's going to turn extremely cold next week' and worry the crap out of you. Until you find out that it's expected to be a bit colder than the average for this time of year. And that's it.

I hate these people.

There's a meteorologist here named Gary England. Overall he seems to be quite competent, but he has a tendency to do the above. What really used to tick me off was Spike the Weather Pig. He got a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig for a pet and gave it the above name. Now, I can see having a little blurb about it, but it didn't stop there. He'd come on to /supposedly/ do the weather report, and start off spending a few minutes showing pictures/video of Spike. In the spring/summer, when the sky looks certain ways and the air has a certain feel to it, people around here turn on the weather to find out if God's vacuum cleaner is about to lower a hose down on their neighborhood. One day when the conditions looked, shall we say, not good, I turned on the TV to see what was happening. No, I don't have cable or satellite for the Weather Channel. So I turned on channel 9 just as his report came on, and he spent the first few minutes with crap about that damn pig!

I'm wondering if we can expect the high winds, hail and maybe tornados the sky leads me to expect, and this idiot is spending time showing pictures of his PIG! He finally got to what I actually needed to hear- yes, the sky might indeed fall on us through tonight- but when it was over I was still steamed.

It was after this that I told a friend that the next time he pulled this crap, I was going to kidnap the pig and mail Gary a slab of ribs with a note: Stop showing Spike when you're supposed to be talking about the weather, or the pig gets it. Happily, right after that the pig stopped showing up; someone told me that it'd grown so big he had to send it to the family farm to live. So I was saved from becoming a pignapper.

But I'm still pissed at the weather weenies.

Just because I like it. 

Oil and grease and lube, oh my!

No, dammit, not that kind. For machinery.

One of the side effects of often not being able to leave things alone is experimenting. In this case, different oils, etc., for guns and knives. With a knife the main issue is protection from rust; since I sometimes have blades out for people to look over, and they handle them, this is a big issue. With folding knives(a drop in the pivot points) and firearms, lubrication is also important. And there's a lot of stuff out there.

There's Break Free, and TriFlow, and Militech, and Eezox, and Remoil, and Rig, and LSA, and the list goes on. Some say they're CLP- cleaner, lubricant, protectant- others are lube or protectant only. Cosmoline is a protectant only, it's not expected to lubricate. And it works, but unless you're storing something for a long time, you don't want it. Most of them will do some light cleaning, but if you have real copper or lead or plastic fouling in a weapon, you have to clean it out with a cleaner, then use the other stuff to finish off the cleaning and lube it.

There's Microlon Gun Juice. It's primarily a dry lube; shake it up well, wipe the parts and let them dry. Repeat four times, and it's done. It seems to slick things up nicely, and on .22 barrels it is a wonder; treat the barrel according to instructions, and fouling just wipes out. I had a pistol that fouled the barrel badly after about 50-75 rounds, and this cured it. Doesn't seem much of a cleaner compared to other things, but for bores and triggers and such, it's wonderful stuff.

I've used Break Free, and Triflow and Eezox. They all work pretty well, for cleaning and lubing (with the caveat noted above). I gave Militech a quick try. It's supposed to be a dry lubricant only, wipe it on, warm a bit, then wipe the excess off. Mad Ogre had a link to some tests that showed it did little as a corrosion preventive though, so I didn't use it much. I'm fairly chicken about blades that took a long time to make, or firearms I don't want damaged. Eezox seems pretty good. It's another 'dry' lube, you clean and lube, then let the parts sit till it drys, leaving a film of dry lube. Seems a pretty good protectant, does a decent job cleaning, seems a decent lube.

Recently I got a bottle of Corrosion-X. It's a CLP, and I'd read some pretty good reports on it. It's also supposed to be a very good penetrant, good at breaking loose frozen nuts, screws, etc. And that's what I really needed. I've been working on an old .22 rifle that was supposed to be a take-down; barrel unscrews from the receiver so it could be more easily packed when travelling. This one had probably not been taken apart for at least sixty years, quite likely more, and the barrel was frozen in place. I had oiled, soaked with different penetrating oils, and nothing seemed to do it.(yes, I did consider taking it to a gunsmith, but until/unless I had to give up, I wanted to do it myself) So I got a bottle of this. I stripped it down to barrel & receiver and sprayed a liberal amount at the joint where barrel meets receiver, and around the breech end of the barrel where it came through the wall, then propped it up and left it for a week. Every day I'd put a few more drops around the inside seam. After a week I took it to the post vise (heavy steel vise for blacksmith work) and clamped the barrel up, with the receiver just clear of the jaws and two pieces of 1/4" plywood for barrel pads. Wrapped a piece of thin leather around the receiver for padding and clamped a 12" pipe wrench to it. Then, with a slight prayer, took a steel rod I keep for such things and whacked the wrench handle.

And it moved.

Understand, I'd done this before with no result. I stood there looking at it for a few seconds, then checked to see if the barrel had slipped in the vise- it hadn't- then grabbed the handle and swung it around a turn. The receiver turned freely, and I finished removing it by hand. Surprisingly there was no trace of rust on the threads of receiver or barrel shank, and they were oily; they'd apparently been protected from the rust that had hit the outside of the piece, and it looked like the Corrosion-X had penetrated. Close examination showed that the rust that froze it had been the bit between the barrel shoulders and receiver, and it wasn't too bad. Cleaned everything thoroughly, lubed it, and put it all back together. It now takes down and reassembles with no problem.

This may have worked due to the other stuff, over time, having an effect, but I don't think so. I think the Corrosion-X did the job. I've tried it on a couple of seriously dirty- from firing- guns and it seemed to clean quite well, taking some lead fouling out of a pistol barrel as well as the best other stuff I've tried, so I'm going to keep working with it. If it takes copper fouling out, I'll be extremely pleased with it. I'm trying some things now to see how it works as a lube, we'll see how it comes out.

And I'm sure I'll hear of some other wonder product down the road, and I'll ahve to give it a try. For now I'm going to give the Corrosion-X a serious workout.

(no, they're not paying me for this. I wish someone was)

Why can't there just be a different viewpoint?

There's a /apparently/ large group of people out there, to whom there is no such thing as someone with a different viewpoint; if you oppose theirs, you're part of some group/conspiracy out there TRYING TO DO EVIL! Chrenkoff has examples.

I could put up with a lot of this, but when someone decides the only reason an Iraqi would say good things about U.S. troops is because they're being paid to-threatened into- part of some U.S.G. agency, well my tolerance goes out the window. It's in the same groupthink that says anyone who voted for Bush/supports the war is obviously too stupid to understand the truth.

Large loads of crap out there.

And the temp goes up & down & up & down...

Steve is bitching that it's only in the 50's! in his part of Florida, and he's about to pluck the birds to stuff a coat. Suck it up, boy. You're stuffed with ManCamp leftovers, heat some up and tell Marvin to hush.

Saturday & Sunday here were high 50's--low 60's, and people were walking around in shorts. The rest of this week they're predicting lows in the 20's-30's and highs in the 40's.

Ever worked on a roof? They were re-roofing the house next door, and the weather was a blessing for them. 60's when on a roof can be pretty warm; 70's and you sweat buckets. Better them than I, I'm not fond of working on a housetop.

Side note: Stuff called Corrosion-X is pretty good penetrating lubricant.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done

And stuffed. Took my son for his birthday dinner tonight. He picked Johnny Carrino's for the third year in a row. The sign says 'Italian country cooking'; I can't say about that, but I can say that it's well done. Good food and plenty of it. This time I did stop eating while I could still walk out, as opposed to feeling like I need to be set on a dolly for the trip outside. Leftovers in the fridge.

My daughter, who's starting a personal chef business, checked out a book on pork recipes, as she's never done much with oinkers before. Considering the other stuff she turns out, good stuff in the offing.

As a side note, some of the people bidding on stuff on Ebay are insane.

Now, I think I shall wobble to the bathroom and clean up for bed.
'Wobble' being the operative word, pasta sneaks up on you.

You just can't trust 'em after they leave the force

Ravenwood notes that Chicago doesn't think retired cops are safe to own, let alone carry, firearms.

So the peasants aren't to be trusted, and once you leave the force you become one of the peasants. Wonderful.

One more reason never to want to live there.

Oh, the wonder!

I got a new screen, and the thing is marvelous! No blurring of letters the longer it's on! No fuzzy images! It's a 17" flatscreen monitor, and after the store discount and the rebates, it's $69.95 (plus tax, of course).

Hmm, maybe I should ask Steve where he finds his midget porn... Nah, probably not.

More idiocy from the TSA

What purpose is served by ordering air marshals to wear suits all the time? To blend in? Nonsense.

There once was a man in charge of a state law enforcement agency in Oklahoma who ordered that all agents had to wear coat and tie all the time- including those working undercover. When the undercover people protested that this could get them killed, they were lectured about the necessity of their being dressed 'profesionally' at all times.

Happily, they got rid of that clown before anyone died/not in the best of ways, that's a different story/; hopefully this nonsense will be changed, too. Sounds like one more bureaucrat who's more interested in 'policy and procedure' than in getting the job done.

Kind of like the U.N.

Why do I write so much on this?

Because self-defense is a universal human right, but it's also one of the most damaged by many governments.

My dad was in law enforcement for many years. One of the things I picked up as a kid was that on the occasions we ate out, he'd generally try to sit where he could see either the whole place or the register. I took it as a given that he'd often carry a sidearm when off-duty, and it didn't surprise me that many people did. If he and the other local authorities had arrested everyone who had a handgun in the car, pocket or purse, at some point they'd have arrested most of the people in the county I think. Generally it wasn't considered a problem; bad guys with any weapon were a problem. Rarely did anyone have to use them, because the knowledge that breaking into someone's home, or trying to grab them at their car, would get you shot kept that to a rare occurance.

Years later, it was really a surprise to me how many cops were very hostile to the idea of citazens carrying for self-defense. It still bothers me. The honest people are not a threat, and the bad guys are often unable to legally touch a firearm for any reason. But a lot of them REALLY don't like it. Even in the home.

Occasionally some agency will raid the wrong house and wind up shooting, sometimes killing, someone who lives there. And one of their excuses for the shooting is usually something like, "He came down the stairs/out of the room with a gun". Hell yes, he did. You smashed in his door in the middle of the night, he's scared for his family and himself, he sees someone in black with a gun and acts to protect his home. And you not only shot him, if he lives the prosecutor just might try to charge him with something. And then the chief and/or some jerk from the Brady group will speak sadly of how this points out the dangers of people having guns, and the department usually says something like 'they were following normal procedures, so no action will be taken against the officers'. And there damn well should be against someone, folks, you hit the wrong place and shot/killed an innocent! And every time it's excused, it makes more people mutter something about 'damn cops' and trust them that much less.

Yes, this is a bit of a rant. This is my place for it. I think a lot of agencies need to post Robert Peel's Principles of Policing, and make everybody read the damn things.

Mark Steyn says it very well

"That this most basic right should be something for which he has to organise a campaign is disgraceful."

He's speaking of self-defense, of course, in the wake of another victim being stabbed to death when he opened the door. Apparently this is a common method of home-invasion burglary in Britain right now. And why, even without a gun, do so few fight back?
'Four years ago, Shirley Best, proprietor of the Rolander Fashion emporium, whose clients include Zara Phillips, was ironing some clothes when the proverbial two youths showed up. They pressed the hot iron into her flesh, burning her badly, and then stole her watch. "I was frightened to defend myself," said Miss Best. "I thought if I did anything I would be arrested." '

One of the worst indicators I can think of for a society is people fearing to protect themselves because the government might charge them with a crime. It is also flat disgusting.

Found at Tim Blair's place.

More on hate crime laws

at Captains Quarters. As a commenter says, "When Mr. Bean is the voice of reason..."

More on self-defense in Britain

over at Smallest Minority. One of the key quotes;
At a lunch the other day a very senior member of the Civil Service said to me: "Your campaign will never succeed. It goes against the entire administrative culture in this country."

And God know you can't go against the 'aministrative culture' just because people are murdered in their homes.

Another thing; from some of the letters to the paper, people recognize that the most effective way for people to protect themselves is a gun, but no, can't have that! Someone might get hurt!

Read it all.

Note to Senator McCain

WILL YOU SHUT THE HELL UP?!?

This clown sees ANYTHING any more, he wants right in the middle of it so he can propose some new law.

AZ needs to start that recall petition back up.

And by the way...

I wrote earlier about attitudes toward firearms, and there's something I've never understood.

I used to play in the Society for Creative Anachronism a lot, did both heavy-weapons and light. I knew people who kept axes, swords and/or knives by the bed in case of burglars. One of the most popular stories was about a guy in Houston who met a group of burglars with a katana and cut them up. But many of these people professed to dislike (loathe, in many cases) guns.

I've never understood the apparent (to them) moral distinction between sharp steel and a bullet. Slice someones guts open with a sharp edge? Stick a point through them? Hey, no problem! But shoot them?!?! How could you hold such disgusting ideas? How could you do that?

Partly it was due to lots of people in the SCA being very PC in many ways, but it also seemed to be rooted in the ideal of 'honorable combat' and distance weapons being 'less honorable'. Which I thought was idiotic then, and still do. Honorable combat in a duel has not one damn thing to do with dealing with an attacker in your home. But it really seemed to be important to those who insisted on it. Myself, I reiterate; anyone who deliberately lets an attacker within arms-reach of themselves, when they have a choice in the matter, is a fool. Especially when you have others to protect.

More on self defense in Britain; changes coming?

Clayton Cramer links to an article in the Telegraph on proposed changes to give homeowners an 'unqualified right of self-defense'.

It's a good start for a major paper to be pushing for this, but at best they've got an uphill fight with the brakes on. The British government is mostly headed by people who don't think individuals should do much of anything without government approval, and they don't approve of the peasants taking such action.

And they have a further problem. As I mentioned before, all the BS aside, the best weapon for most people for self-defense is a gun; and the British government has spent years making it damn near impossible for anyone to own them. Especially when it is wanted for self-defense.

But at least it is a start. With the way the British crime rate keeps going, and with home-invasion burglaries at better than 50 percent guaranteeing more people injured, crippled and dead, there should be more pressure to make some changes.

IF they can force their government to make the changes.

Ways things change

I've been thinking about some of the ways things change, and the things that drive the changes.

Right at the moment, firearms are in mind. Lots of people get hung up on the 'guns are bad' idea and either cannot or won't see it any other way.

Once, armies were a core of nobles and attendants, supported by lots of peasants and slaves. When going to war they often took a lot of peasant levies along, but they were mostly for work parties and to get in the way of the enemy.

Then the gun arrived.

When they stopped being clumsy, unreliable toys, they became essential. First cannon, then individual arms. And they changed armies, and the society they were supported by/created by. It takes years to learn to use a sword and shield well; add in a horse and lance, longer, it's best to grow up learning it(nobles). The bow is the same, years of practice to become skilled enough to be useful. And able to handle a bow strong enough to be really useful in a fight. Think Welsh, and Mongol, growing up with stronger bows every year. /side note: it would be interesting to find out how many people wound up with repetitive-stress injuries; sword and bow and axe practice means a lot of the same motions/
But you can train someone to the point of useful skill with a musket in a few weeks. You don't need untrained peasants to wave sticks now, you need people who can take and follow orders and train to be steady under fire. Long term, that means more than changes in an army, it means changes in the society as well.

A gun means you don't have to be big and strong, or spend at least an hour a day practicing, to be able to protect yourself. Yes, bad guys used guns; they've always used the weapons available. Now you had a weapon that made you able to fight a big bad guy even if you were small. /side note: I don't care what people say about empty-hand martial arts, and stun guns, and batons; anyone who lets a bad guy get within reach, if you don't have to, is a fool. The idea is to protect yourself; leave ideas like 'honorable combat' where they belong, which is not in your head when someone attacks you in your home, or a parking lot, or wherever/

Much has been made of the Japanese being the people 'who gave up the gun' because it didn't suit their warrior ethic. Horsecrap. The Samurai used guns, and very effectively, when it suited them. Where the gun did not suit them was in the hands of peasants; it's hard to be a noble samurai, lopping the heads off insolent peasants, if the peasant can shoot you before you're in reach of your sword. They had already banned peasants having weapons of war, firearms were just included in the ban.

Especially as guns became more generally useful, you could tell more about the relative freedom, and respect for the individual, in a society by the attitude toward them. Many places, only military/police/nobles were allowed them most of the time(peasants; Britain, in contrast, pretty much integrated them as more of the arms a subject was supposed to have/know how to use in time of need (yes, I know they did have some restrictions, especially as to religeon of owners; it was still generally expected that a loyal subject of the crown had the right to arms and self-defense. It wasn't until the 1900's that British law began restricting the ownership of arms from honest subjects)

For a lot of people who emigrated to North America, it was a given that you would possess arms, and practice with them. It was considered important enough that when the 2nd Amendment was first proposed, most states though it unnecessary; the right of free men to arms seemed so basic to them that they thought it didn't even need to be mentioned. A couple of states insisted they would not ratify the Constitution unless it was, and so- thank you, founders- we have the 2nd Amendment. Otherwise we might well have gone the way of Britain and Canada and Australia.

This is a short & dirty bit of thought on the matter, but I think it holds true.
I may add to it later.

Status of the world

Well, Bambi is still in the forest, little bugger evaded me this time. (But wait 'till next time, hahahahahhaa)

We've now had several days of below-freezing lows, so hopefully I won't have to mow again. This does mean getting some gas stabilizer to keep the carb in the mower from gumming up over the winter. I may add some to the bike also, just to be on the safe side.
Interesting thing about Oklahoma, in the middle of winter you can get days where, with jacket & gloves, you can ride comfortably; sometimes chaps help. So I don't like to take it out of commission for the season, since I may get some chances to ride.

Cats are insane (see TwoLumps) A dog might decide "I'm gonna go check out the other room" and wander off to do it. A cat jumps up and screams "I've gotta be somewhere else RIGHT NOW!!!" and takes off like you just stuck a stun gun to their tail.

I wrote about the baby-killing in the Netherlands. There's probably no country more steadfastly opposed to the death penalty, for any crime, than the Netherlands. But they can quite calmly write a protocol for how to kill infants and children. Oh, those sophisticated Europeans, why can't we be like them?

The U.N. is trying to push new rules ordering /ORDERING, I SAY!/ that no country can take any kind of military action, no matter what, without U.N. approval. This from an organization that won't take action to stop actual genocides. "We won't do anything about the murder of your citazens, but we won't approve you doing anything, either!" This is one of the reasons why any U.S. politician who says we should subordinate ourselves to the U.N. should be thrown out of office- possibly at the end of a rope.
Further on this, the U.N. has been trying for years to totally ban the ownership of 'small arms' by private citazens of any country. They include all handguns, rifles and shotguns in that category. A big part of their reasoning is that this would keep insurgents from acting against existing governments.
Think about that; no matter how corrupt, cruel, oppressive a government is, the U.N. would rather have it 'stable' than see people have a chance to rebel against it. Oh, no, you have to to through the U.N. to do something about it! We won't act, especially if there's money in not acting, but they damn sure don't want the peasants to do anything about it.
Personal opinion, you have two things at work here. One is the attitude of an organization to gather power to itself no matter the consequences to anyone else. And I think the other is the carryover from a lot of European/royalist/communist attitudes that you cannot let the commoners do anything without approval. The mess in Bosnia was one demonstration of this, I think; remember all the countries that wanted someone(else) to do something, but at the mention of giving arms to people to protect themselves they practically gave birth to purple cows? They'd rather have seen that go on for years than actually 'allow' anyone arms with which to defend themselves. The U.N. has that attitude and is continually trying to make it impossible for anyone to do anything without their approval.
Screw the U.N.

I've got a big holly bush at each front corner of the house, practically covered with berries. I need to prune them back, but I'll wait 'till spring; the berries make the birds happy.

Have you ever actually moved through a house with a sword, seeing how you'd use one in the event of a burglar? I'll take firearms, thank you.

Stick that fork in Britain again

Check out Nanny Knows Best, for the latest in how the all-knowing minions of government are making sure the British subject is properly controlled- er, taken care of.

Can't trust peasants to change their own light bulbs, you know.

Up-to-date European Healthcare

At Wizbang, found this.

I am at a loss. That a society can slide to this and simply take it in stride...

Both my kids were premature. Both of them might well have been murdered by these 'doctors' because of their health problems. They are 22 and 20 now, and doing quite well.

If some doctor had informed me that he killed my child because 'their health problems would have kept them from having a proper life', or I found out about it later, said doctor better have his will made out. Because I would have killed him. No question.

Someone once pointed out that if a government does not/refuses to protect citazens from crime, the citazens have a right to take the law into their own hands. Well, if doctors/government decide they can kill your child and you have no say because
"A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors"
then a parent has the right to take what actions are necessary to protect their children. And other's children.

Yes I'm writing this in the heat of the moment. I hope I never lose that heat at the idea of such things being done.

Life do keep things busy

The weather has now dried out a bit, no rain for a few days, but with temperatures bouncing between 20's-30's for lows and 40's & 50's for highs, alternating dry north winds and humid southerly winds, the ground isn't going to dry out anytime soon. This means, among other things, that the grass will keep growing /I may have to mow again/ and the ground will remain soft, making it hard to mow in some places. Most of the time I could get out to chase deer, it was wet enough, or another front coming through, that the critters were bedded down and not moving. And the jacket that feels so nice in the morning may be damn hot in the afternoon.

I have a niece who in the past has had liver trouble. She's now basically in liver failure, as I understand it, and they're setting up to transfer her to Pittsburg. There's a world-class transplant center here in town, but the doctor they want to use is in Pittsburg, so...

So far, grocery shopping hasn't been too bad; either I've been there before/after the crowd, or the crowd is at the other end of the store. It won't last, but it's nice while it does.

I was going to send in a target for Neanderpundit's postal match, but with the above stuff combined with work, there won't be time/weather to get to the range. Dammit.

At least Day by Day is back up.

"Can I search your vehicle?"

Kim du Toit has a link to a story about a Brit who was asked if the cops could search his vehicle for 'training purposes'. They arrested him for having a Swiss Army knife in his case. That's in Britain, where owning damn near anything is illegal anymore, but similar things happen here.

A lot of agencies/cops are real big on "Do you have any guns/drugs/whatever in your car? Can I search it?". If you say yes, anything- ANYTHING- they may find can be used against you. A lot of them don't care if you're traveling through, and your offense is not having a legal firearm cased properly according to local/state law, they'll bust you.
And if you say no...
I've heard far too many stories- including from people in the law enforcement community- about how they bully/threaten people to push them into saying yes. And they can make you sit on the side of the road for a time while they summon a drug dog to sniff around the car, and if he alerts on anything- including prescription meds- they'll use that as cause to take the car apart. And from what I've heard, they'll use the various criminal history databases in ways they're not supposed to be used to try to find 'cause' for a search.

There's far too many people with badges out there who have gone completely into the "us vs. them" attitude toward EVERYONE; and it's costing all the way around. The cops look with distrust/contempt on anyone not a member of the club; citazens treated with obvious contempt tend to return it; and someone who gets their vehicle taken apart because they dared say 'no' to a search are going to have a bad attitude toward law enforcement ever after in many cases. Doesn't do to tell them 'it was just one jerk', because after that the attitude of other cops that they may have glossed over in the past now becomes obvious and resented.

In some ways the Patriot Act has made it worse. Yes, I know there's no record of it being actually abused(that I know of), but the fact that some agencies can do damn near anything and blanket it under that- even theoretically- really pisses a lot of people off. The actions of a lot of the TSA people at airports is a good example; they can do something really egregious, and if you object you can be arrested. Doesn't matter that they were wrong, WE'RE THE TSA, PEOPLE, and you better put up with anything we do or else! And it is abused, and people rightly resent it, and that takes things further downhill.

Personally, I would never agree to a search of my vehicle. If they think they have legal reason to search my vehicle- or house, for that matter- they can damn well get a search warrant. I know I'm not a legal scholar, and there's so many complications in this/one of the damn problems/ that there's probably ways they can search without a warrant. But I'll not agree to help them, and if they go outside the bounds I will file a complaint, or get a lawyer if I think it's warranted.

I keep remembering Martha Stewart went to prison for "lying to a federal investigator". She wasn't under oath, wasn't in a courtroom, but they were able to convince a jury that she 'lied' to an investigator in an informal interview about a crime they can't prove she committed.

Ain't all this wonderful?

This ain't dissent

Insty has a link /no, I'm not going to put it up/ to a post saying the goal for the left is to make sure we lose in Iraq.

This clown is specifically wanting to see the terrorists and mideast Nazis win.

As somebody put it, there's a big difference between dissenting and being on the other side.

Ok, this is amazing!

This article tells about a woman who is walking, years after a spinal cord injury, after therapy using umbilical cord stem cells.

If this pans out to be more than a one-time thing, it's bloody wonderful. I've read that fetal stem cells have not really worked out well, but umbilical cells are a different matter. They seem to work much better, and don't involve the ethical problems with fetal cells.

I hope this works out.

Found at Instapundit

Evening thoughts

It's turning cold again after a nice day and-a-half, and there's a chance of more rain tomorrow afternoon. Oh joy. At least I got the yard mowed this afternoon before it got too dark, though I hope it'll be dry enough tomorrow to let me use the weedeater around the stone edging I built around the beds in front.

A cat in the lap is warm, but can make it damn hard to type.

The dog loves a thick bed of straw in the house, but drags a lot of it out as she enters and exits. Good thing I have the rest of the bale.

James Doss is a good writer, and Charlie Moon is a fine character. So is his aunt Daisy.

I could go broke in an evening on Half.com. Or Brownells. Or Museum Replicas. Or...

I'm so glad I got the furnace taken care of BEFORE it turned cold. And wet.

I got rid of a lot of stuff when I moved eight years ago, and again when I moved here. Ever notice how the crap multiplies?

I need to put a shed in the back yard for various tools. And I'd like to have some kind of storm shelter; sometimes the wind doesn't just sweep down the plains here, it vacuums too.

Celtic Crossing, just a shot or so, goes very well in pecan pie.

And I need to get to the range. It always burns off some stress, and I enjoy it.

I STILL want to see a good picture of Sondra K. Hey lady, I gave you one of me! How 'bout it?

That's it for now.

Interesting stuff

One of the odd things that's always interested me is the subject of poisons, and how they work. Lots of stuff in movies and books- most of that of little or no accuracy- and lots of folklore.

Barking Moonbat Early Warning System found an article about a poison old in its region, new to everyone else(which is often how it works). From a tree, effects much like foxglove, but not detected the same way. Next edition of 'Deadly Doses' is going to have to add this in.

Also at BMEWS, Christmas Controversies

The Wisconsin hunter murders

Gunwatch has some more info on the mess, and it adds a whole new dimension to it. Go there, and read the whole thing.

Hate crimes

Having finally digested the Thanksgiving dinner that some friends forced upon me/you don't think I'd eat that much all on my OWN, do you?/, I want to put some thoughts down.

Ann Althouse has a piece about a show 20/20 was doing about the Matthew Shepard murder. Basically, it points out that it was a lot less due to the supposed hate of homosexuals, and a lot more to do with simple robbery and murder related to drugs. And about all the screaming by people who've used the 'approved version' of the murder to push their political vision, and don't want their tear-jerking fund-raising story challenged.

For a lot of people, it's not enough that it be a horrible murder; it has to be a horrible murder committed for the 'right' reasons, so it can be used to push an agenda. Which is another reason I don't like the idea of hate-crimes laws.

This was, no mistake, a terrible act. But it's supposed to have been worse because, in the way it was originally put forth, it was committed because Shepard was homosexual. He's no more dead because the reason for the act was one thing or another; it was no more or less horrible a way to die; but we're supposed to be especially outraged because of what the murderers had in their minds when they did it.

This would mean that a: we're supposed to figure out exactly what someone was thinking when an incident happened, and b: that there are classes of victim that are more important than others. The one is usually impossible, and the other is despicable.

Someone punches another guy; turns out the guy punched was gay; therefore it's a worse crime than if a straight guy was punched? Horsecrap. Besides the fact that he's no more damaged than anyone else, how the hell to you prove what the puncher was thinking? He may have punched for some reason that has nothing to do with with sex, but it will be automatically assumed by many that it did. Especially by those who stand to gain; a prosecutor making a reputation as a 'defender of minorities', activists who need someone new as a victim to trumpet, and so forth.

There's a reason our laws are based on what you do, not what you think. Thinking about something is not a crime; actually planning an act can be. There's a big difference. If you commit an assault or murder, I don't really care what was in your mind, I care that the crime be punished, the punishment being for the act, not for your supposed thoughts.

Yes, I know that someone can plan to do something for a stupid/evil reason. Doesn't make what they did to someone any worse. If someone plans to torture someone to death because of something they are, it doesn't make the act any worse than if they picked someone at random. It can show that the actor had premeditated the crime, and that should affect punishment. But to me, that should be the extent of it.

For what it's worth.

Update: Althouse says the 20/20 piece was less than convincing to her. I didn't see it, so I can't say. Doesn't affect my opinion on the matter of 'hate-crime' legislation. Whether as part of a robbery or because Shepard was homosexual, or a mix of both, he's dead. And the ones who did it are in prison with the maximum penalties a jury would give. Saying their state of mind at the time of the crime was unapproved wouldn't change either the death or their punishment.
Another thing that bothered me was that when it was announced that 20/20 was going to do this segment, they caught a lot of grief from people, basically for daring to put out something that challenged the 'approved' version of the story. Happily, they went ahead. If their information is bad that'll come out, and if they put out information people should know about this, that's to the good. I do not like news being censored either by screaming or by people in a newsroom more concerned with being PC than with getting facts out.

Further update: Clayton Cramer has some more on this, and saw the 20/20 piece a bit differently than Althouse.

More: forgot about this article at Reason on the Shepard case

And a politician admits it

Next time you read something about how the media is prejudiced toward conservatives, remember this. Wizbang has the link to a Democrat politician saying this:
SANCHEZ: I agree with Jesse. I agree with my colleague. I believe that we made mistakes. The media certainly is not in our hands any longer, and, in particular, radio talk shows where that is completely in the opposition's hands, and they use it effectively against us.
BLITZER: But, Loretta, when you say the media -- when you say the media is not in your hands, are you saying that ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN are hostile to Democrats?
SANCHEZ: No, that's not what I said. I'm saying that -- if you would let me finish -- that the majority of people are now receiving a lot of their information out of radio. And the radio isn't in the hands of the Democrats anymore.

"The media is certainly not in our hands any longer". Here's a Democrat politician stating flatly that it was in their hands up 'till now.

As they say, 'Read the Whole Thing'

Rabies

is one of the diseases that tends to bring out the horror in people. It's one of the nastiest ones, with no real treatment.

'Till now.

Ann Althouse links to an article about a girl who was successfully treated for rabies after she had developed gross symptoms. Which is amazing; up until very recently, if you developed any symptoms before getting the vaccine, you were dead. In this case, she being too far along for the vaccine, they induced a coma to help her survive while the disease ran its course.

The vaccine for animals is now much better, there's even a form that can be given orally; I've read that they put it in bait and air-drop in areas to treat the wildlife in areas where it is/is becoming a problem. The vaccine given to humans before symptoms show is 100%. Some things are definately getting better.

By the way...

...how can one small cat produce so much stuff in a litterbox.

And so much smell?

Hard to hunt when you're sinking

Into the ground, that is. It's STILL raining off & on here, and the woods are as soggy as a sponge just taken out of the water. Was able to spend a few hours out yesterday. I can take wet, and I can take cold; when they combine, it gets to be a little too much. When the mist and the occasional drop or two turned to rain, I gave up and hiked in.

There's some real nice hunting rain gear out there, but it's a bit expensive, like a couple of hundred dollars. I don't have enough chance to use it to be able to justify paying that. Besides, when the weather kicks up like that the deer bed down, and unless you trip over one, you'll never see them. Woods that are normally alive with stuff, I saw one squirrel.

Well, the season continues for a bit, so there should be more chance to get out. And it's actually supposed to stop raining this afternoon, at least for the next few days. Damn time, too, according to what I've read we are now either tied or have surpassed some records for November rainfall.

Dan Rather is going!.....

eventually.

Just heard on the news that he's going to step down- in the SPRING- but will stay on 60 Minutes.

Ok, so after one more piece of BS reporting, this involving counterfeit documents and coverups, there's still no investigation by C BS that we're aware of, and he's stepping down from the evening news in SEVERAL MONTHS but staying on the payroll on a NEWS SHOW.

To be blunt, I call bullshit. It's more 'now all you peasants go away and shut up'.

Ah, encouragement from your 'friends'

The neighbors of Iraq are saying they need to decide if the Iraqi elections will take place on time. Including the comment that "Dates are not sacred. What is sacred is the process.".

Number one, dipsticks, it's not YOUR decision to make, it is the decision of the Iraqi interim government.

Second, there's nothing 'sacred' about the process you want to follow, which is basically telling the Iraqis how they will run their country. Screw you.

Lastly, "If the elections took place but were boycotted, there would be a lack of equilibrium in the Sunni representation," he warned. That was from an arab delegate who requested anonymity. Again, screw you. If a bunch of the Sunni boycott the election, then they won't get to vote. Period. The people calling for the boycott are the same ones who support the terrorists who think torturing and murdering aid workers shows their devotion to God (and their devotion to staying on top of the country, let's not forget that part). They don't want to vote? Fine. They'll let the Shia and Kurds and Christians and Jews and whoever else select the national government.

And you think that government will be real tolerant of the crap the Sunni troublemakers are causing? Somehow, I don't think so.

Motorcycles...

...are one thing I do truly enjoy. At least when the weather allows.

I'm fairly flexible on weather. I don't like getting caught in rain- I have issues with traction- and hail is definately not fun. Too cold keeps me off; coldest I've ridden in is about 25F, had to get to work and the bike was my only transport, and yes, I DID freeze my bahoogies off(or at least it felt like it). I wouldn't like a serious highway trip below, say, 45; even with chaps, boots, etc., it gets too damn cold. But above that, not too bad, just put on the chaps, gloves, etc. Not going too far? Can do without the chaps, then.

I admit I'm a bit chicken about riding in cold anymore, may hands stiffen up. But cool is a delight. One of the finest mornings I ever had was coming back from Dallas. At highway speeds before the sun came up was a touch cool, almost uncomfortable. But the sun did come up and after that... it was wonderful. The wind was light, traffic on the interstate was light, no black&whites around, I repeat, wonderful. Especially going through the Arbuckle Mountains. Curves, uphill & down, and nobody in the way. I found that a Vulcan 750 will cruise at 80 through this with no strain, and on the level ground a throttle lock is very nice to have.

I've never had a Harley. Most of them, used in good condition or new, cost too much, and I haven't really cared for the styling; also, up 'till the last few years they tended to leak. I've owned Hondas and now a Kawasaki, the above-mentioned Vulcan, and they've all worked well. Now that Harley has solved the leakage problems I may look at one for my next bike; most of the cruiser-style bikes at other makes are big, heavy, and I don't really care for their looks.

I've been real happy with the Vulcan. In cool-cold weather, the liquid cooling lets it warm up better than air-cooled bikes I've ridden. The shaft-drive is very nice, no chain or belt to adjust and lube. The only problems I've had were a:, the seat and b: the charging system.
After one trip to Texas I swore I was going to replace the factory seat, and it now sports a Mustang; much better. And the charging system, especially in cold weather, doesn't seem up to keeping the lights running and the battery at full charge. I've found a site that has a fix for the electrical problem, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I do wish more after-market parts people made stuff for the 750; I'd really like some hard saddlebags, but the Kawasaki ones are small and won't hold much, and I haven't found any others that I can be sure would fit without a lot of fiddling.

Come spring, I'll be putting on new radiator hoses and a new clutch, and with any luck next summer will find me at Sturgis. I'd like to see that rally.

Neat sites & links

Just ran across FreedomSight, if anyone's out there they ought to take a look. It includes the following quote:

"Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the constitution they don't like."
Alan Dershowitz

and a link to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc.
He also had a nice takedown of one of those clowns who claims to be for gun ownership, and then goes on to say all the guns he thinks should be banned.

I'm sitting here adding these because it's raining lightly- again- and the fog has developed, and it's the fifth or sixth day in a row with some level of rain, and the bloody grass is going to have to be mowed again /if it ever dries out/ and I can't fire the forge, and .... to quote somebody, "Just Damn!"

Froggy Ruminations, a blog by a former SEAL and customs agent. Good stuff here.

What language in a country?

Clayton Cramer has a link to an article about the European Union calling for all immigrants to learn the local language and customs, and go by them. Which is reasonable. In fact, should be required.

If you came to the U.S. from another country, and with family & friends want to speak the old language, go ahead. You run a business and a lot of customers also know, and want to speak, that language, no problem. You're with friends in a restaurant and speak to each other in that language, doesn't bother me.

BUT, when you are doing any kind of official business- city/county/state paperwork, licenses, that should be done in English. You don't like that? Tough shit.

If I moved to Mexico, I'd be expected to learn Spanish. To Germany, German, and so forth. That so many come to the U.S. and expect all documents, business, etc., to be done in their language so they don't have to learn English, is disgusting. You should not get to take a drivers license test in any other language, and for damn sure a voting ballot should be in only one language.

If you want to live and work in this country, learn the damn language.

Or leave.

One more reason to like Condoleeza Rice

She has a firsthand understanding of one of the reasons for the Second Amendment. Smart, tough-minded, capable...

If not for Prez in 2008, then soon.

The 'lifestyle' dodge

My daughter was telling me about a woman who runs a site with pictures of women currently suffering from or recovering from (my way of putting it) anorexia and bulemia. Apparently the lady said she had decided that these two things were not a 'lifestyle', they were an actual problem. Well, duh.

I've noticed that that word is used to excuse a lot of things. Someone doesn't have a problem, they're not doing something wrong, it's their lifestyle. Or even better, an alternative lifestyle. There, now you aren't allowed to criticize it, who are you to speak of my Lifestyle?

Got news for you. Repeatedly doing something stupid does not mean you have an alternative lifestyle; it just might mean you're stupid. As the man said, "Here's your sign".

'Day of Destruction' part II

I taped the second half since I'd be out of the house when it was on, and I've rarely been so happy at being able to fast-forward through the crap. Which shortened the 2-hours to about 35-40 minutes. Yes, they were breaking for commercials about every ten minutes, and I could get through that, too.

As I said before, I like monster/critter/disaster movies, but I do require a fair amount of realism. One spot in particular; assistant says the highest recorded windspeed for a F5 tornado was 243mph. This is a new movie; you'd think they'd at least check for the information before writing something like this. Due to being at home wondering if the beast was going to turn right or come over my house, I kept close track on the May 3rd tornado outbreak in 1999, especially the F5 that came through town(note: there was more than one F5 that day, this is the one they got the readings from and that individually did the most damage). That was the first time the National Weather Service got doppler radar readings for windspeed-among other things- on an F5, and it read 319mph. Yeah, I'm something of a weather geek; however, I think a lot of people probably caught that, and it was one more inaccuracy added to the list.

Oh yeah, the Air Force pilot landing, picking up passengers and taking off IN THE EYE of the 'hurricane' that formed in the space of a day over the Great Lakes was another good one.

As Dax Montana says, "Just damn!"

Note: the doppler windspeed readings have a 7mph error factor. Therefore, the big one may have only been a lousy 312mph, or may have been a really nasty 326. Real difference there, y'know.

Prince Charles gets it right

For the most part, I have little good to say about the future King of England, but in this he hits it.

Key quote: "People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history."

When I first saw something in a headline about 'keeping to your station' I thought what has this idiot said now? But in the context of what he actually said, he's right.

If you want to be a fine guitarist, singer, writer, if you want to be a judge or whatever, you will have to work for it. And with all the work in the world, there's no guarantee you'll get where you want to be.

Talent is something you're born with, an innate ability to do something well. Skill is how you develop your ability to do something. I've known people with amazing talent, who never developed the skills to use that talent. And I've known people with no real talent for something, but they worked hard to develop the skills involved, and were pretty damn good. Talented people who aren't that good at whatever are fairly common; so are people who have no real talent, but work so damn hard that they're pretty damn good at it.

To reach the highest levels of most any field requires some degree of innate talent for it. And schools do not do kids any favors by telling them they can do anything as long as they wish it hard enough. They need to be taught that anything worth doing is going to require work- usually lots of it. The fact that they so often don't teach them that is one reason for a lot of the problems we have now.

How NOT to wake up all the way

Wake up(somewhat), stumble to kitchen, start water for tea. Decide you're conscious enough to feed the cat, and SMASH! The window in the laundry room smashes in. No cracks here, I mean glass all over the room.

Say something along the lines of "What the hell?!?" and check room. There's nobody in the back yard, so look at walls, halfway expecting to see a bullet hole. Nothing. Rock? You look down...

At the bird that flew through the window, and is sitting there with a "Uhhh" look on its face.

Bird of Peace my backside. Bird of pieces of glass all over the floor. Little feathered boob's lucky I didn't let the cat have him for breakfast.

Guess what I'm doing this evening?

By the way...

Ever noticed how warm a cat in the lap is on a nasty day?

Damn, it's wet out there!

It's been raining off & on for about four days now, with fog added in at night. My yard is so wet, the ground squishes when you step on it. If it weren't for the grass, you'd sink.

Upside, spent the morning scouting an area for deer season next week. Lots of sign, and some good places to set up. So, just maybe...

But it's still bloody wet out there.

That shooting by a Marine in Fallujah

Caught some info about in on the NBC news last night- just happened to be in a place where it was on- and based on the incomplete information they gave, my first thought was, "So what?"

Among the things I don't know;
Were his hands in sight?
If so, were they open & empty, or closed?
Did he react at all to commands?

If his hands are out of sight, you have no idea what he may be holding, gun, grenade or detonator.
If his hands are in sight, but closed, you have to look for anything he may be holding, and/or any wires.
If he can obviously hear you and ignores you, that factors in with the above.

You're in a place where the bad guys are booby-trapping the bodies of their wounded and dead(hey, NBC, that's not a new tactic, it's been around a long time), and the wounded themselves may well use a weapon- gun, grenade or bomb detonator- to try and take a few infidels with them. You do not take chances with them, not if you want to stay alive and whole.

So, based on what I do know, big deal. We're dealing with people who think cutting people's heads off on camera shows what true believers in God they are, and they want to die- preferably while killing one of us. I know a lot of people are going to scream about how horrible we are, etc. Screw 'em. Those marines are alive, and the bad guys are dead. And that is the point of this.

There are, from what I understand, basically three ways to win a war. 1, you outmaneuver the other side so badly they realize they can't win and either surrender or sue for peace. 2, you smash them so badly in battle- maybe several battles- that they give up. 3, if 1 or 2 don't do the job, you kill them until either the survivors surrender, or there are none left to fight. It ain't pretty or nice, but that's the way it works. The Nazis fought until the very end. The Japanese were set up to do the same, hoping to bleed us so badly we'd negotiate a peace leaving that government in power... until Fat Man and Little Boy shocked them enough to end it. The people we're fighting here are just as bad, they'd rather see the whole world blighted than not see their beliefs in control; and since being dhimmi, converted or dead is not something most of us will tolerate, it's on until the end. And stopping people like this, things like this will happen.

Semper Fi, guys.

'Day of Destruction'; it's a turkey

Now, I like good monster and disaster movies, but I've become more critical over the years. Which means I have to dump on this movie.

Massive storm systems forming, ok. Two of them meeting, ok. The rest of this? Crap.

Where to start? The head of the Severe Storms Lab in Norman is blaming global warming. They show a display of the 'polar jet stream', except the video is a mesocyclone that could be anywhere. And a severe storm system doesn't just 'appear', not one of the sizes depicted.
The Evil Power Company Executive is screwing several state's power systems up for profit, AND causing fish-kills by working a nuclear plant above safety levels.
The Dedicated Public Servant is bitching how nobody will listen to her, she's been warning them for years, etc.
The Crusading Reporter can't get her boss to approve her Crusade Against The Evildoers.
And there is the obligatory 'we need alternate power sources, coal and oil are dirty, nuclear is bad for the environment', but nobody mentions what these other sources are.

Steven den Beste has written a number of times on the subject of power sources, and what amounts to magical thinking on the subject. "WE NEED THEM NOW" does not translate to something appearing, no matter how hard you wish it. If you can find a new system of power generation that can, cost-effectively, replace oil/gas/nuclear, more power to you. And you will become very, very rich. Which means that if someone had found it, they'd be very, very rich, and we'd be replacing the old plants.

So what we have is another disaster movie with lots of politically-correct bitching at the usual villains, and the usual portrayal of the PC heroes. And lots of scientific inaccuracies. Hey, I'm not a dedicated weather guy, but I can still spot lots of crap in this, and it really takes away from the movie.

At least for me.

'First' Americans?

Clayton Cramer has a post touching on the question of 'who got here first?'.

Interesting question. And the piece points out the hostility that tends to be directed at those who question the 'accepted wisdom' on scientific issues.
As I recall, Jenner and his vaccinations were mostly stomped on by various eminent scientists and doctors, and the germ theory of disease almost got its discoverer run out of medicine- again, by eminent scientists and doctors who didn't like their beliefs being questioned.

Read a book called "America B.C." some years ago, and it presented evidence of Celtic contact with North America. It struck me then that a lot of the criticism of the idea sounded a lot like "It can't be, I tell you! So shut up!".

Not a good way to reasearch anything.

There has to be skepticism of new ideas, I have no problem with that. When new ideas, new evidence, are dismissed out-of-hand simply because they break with or contrast with what we already 'know', there's a big problem.

Communism-lite

Was looking at a blog run by, surprise surprise, a guy working for tenure in social studies(no, I'm not linking to it). He says that the blue-state types need to ally with red-state types because militant Islam is such a threat that working with the fascist-lite Bushword types is a lesser evil.

This blog annoys me no end. Here's a teacher, planning on tenure(think he'll have anything good to say in class about anyone with a conservative bent?) who says neither Bush-fascism or left-communism can save us, only socialism is the answer.

Sorry, guy. I think teachers like you are part of the reason we have some of the troubles we do, and I think socialism is, at best, communism-lite. I don't want you in control any more than the other nazis/communists/fascists(and don't yell at me about name-calling; all of them are socialist systems).

I have a number of disagreements with President Bush, but saying that he's pushing us into fascism does not come across a believable. I'm a lot more worried about various people in Congress and some judges than I am him.

Just how good do we have it?

Every once in a while I think about how much easier we have it in many ways. I'm not talking about political stuff right now, but simply physically.

How many people do you know who died of tetanus? None for me. My parents knew some, my grandparents more. But in any place where you can get that one shot, it doesn't happen unless someone doesn't bother to get it. And if there's a nastier way to die than tetanus, I don't know what it is; it's right up there with smallpox and plague and ebola.

How often do you have to skip fresh fruits or veggies because they're not available? Not because the price is too high this week, but not there? They're always there, now. And canned or frozen if you're not insisting on fresh.

Fresh meat? Go to the store, it's there. Or you can take some frozen out of the freezer; unless you messed up storing it, it'll be good.

Medical troubles? Appendicitus (I speak from experience) sucks; appendicitus without surgical help/including anaesthesia/ would suck a LOT worse. Same for a variety of other things.
Yes, I know paying for medical help can be a problem. But the treatment is there, and payment can be worked out. Not that long ago, most treatments just weren't there.

You can argue about guns all you want; fact is, if someone breaks into your house and isn't waiting for the cops to show up, a firearm beats hell out of a knife or club, or nothing. Yeah, yeah, martial arts are great; somebody comes into my home and offers threat to me, I want a boomstick. Beats hell out of having to get in arms-reach of the bad guy(what if his reach is longer?)

Books. Lots and lots of books. Not rare, not priced out of reach. New books, used books, BOOKS!

Transportation? My parents, and older relatives, remember a trip to the store being something that took at least a day, from the farm to town and back. My great-uncle can make what used to be a day-there-and-day-back trip in an hour or so each way. Motor vehicles of all types, mass transit, bicycles, and all on good roads.

Not even getting into the internet and such, God, we are so much better off in many ways.

Yes, there are drawbacks, which I'll touch on later. But in so many ways... Go back to the medieval period? Visit yes(with a .45 in my tunic, thank you very much), but to live there? No bleepin' way.

Stuff you should read

And stuff I don't want to forget where is

Smallest Minority has a lot of good stuff; self-defense, 'neckies', movie reviews, etc. Go there & work your way down.

And remember National Ammo Week! I got my first batch yesterday.

Velociman is one sick dude. Don't miss him.

And Cold Fury has a marvelous piece you should get to.

It's not just CBS a lot of people are mad at

And here's one of the reasons why.

When networks do stuff like this, and then insist that they have "no bias in what we report"... And then seem truly unable to understand why people don't believe them.

Found at Tim Blair's place

And by the way, what is CBS going to do about Rather and company? Or are they still hoping it'll go away?

Solve that crime!

If you can't use DNA evidence, then what good is it?