I'm not speaking of firefight in SHTF situations, I'm speaking specifically of home defense. I'd break this down into two categories: home defense in a city, and in a rural area.
City, to my thinking, you're somewhat restricted. Most rifles you'd consider as fighting tools are too powerful; unless you use some type of frangible bullet that'll break up on hitting a target, overpenetration cannot be avoided. That leaves two categories: .22 or other rimfire rifles, or rifles chambered in pistol cartridges.
A .22 isn't much, but as it's been said "A .22 in your hands is worth a lot more than a .45 you don't have with you". Probably a semi-auto would be best, you could keep the magazine loaded/chamber empty until needed. And half-a-dozen 40-grain bullets in the boiler room is going to slow ANYBODY down unless you're dealing with a true nutcase or someone wigged out on drugs or something. In which case, you keep firing until the threat ends. With something like a Marlin or tube-mag you can have up to 15 rounds of .22lr; that's a lot of damage in waiting. And three advantages of a .22: first, you can get a good-quality rifle for less than $200 new; second, someone with recoil-management problems can handle a .22 with no difficulty; third, good ammo is cheap which means someone on a tight budget can afford to practice more. Big downside, not a lot of power there in each shot, which means practicing firing multiple shots into a vital point(see here for some good info on that).
Now, rifles(strictly speaking, carbines) in pistol cartridges. Now you're into a whole 'nother deal. You've got everything from .38 Special up to .44 Magnum available, in semi-autos like the Ruger and slide-actions like the Taurus and lever-actions from a bunch of people. A .357 Mag out of a handgun is hot; give that load a 16" rifle barrel to come out of and you've got a real boost in velocity & power(you might have to consider over-penetration with some of these loads; probably hollow-points, no soft-points I'd think). Like a .22, you can keep the magazine of any of these loaded & chamber empty, very fast to charge. It's easier for most people to learn to shoot a long gun accurately than a handgun; you've got really effective cartridges available; and in some cases, like a .357 chambered rifle, you can shoot .38 Special loads for most practice(lots less expensive).
Type of action depends on your preference. A semi-auto you don't have to worry about short-stroking a slide or lever in the heat of the moment; lever or slide you don't have to worry about getting picky about functioning if some ammo isn't quite up to par. Whichever you choose, practice. Make sure the ammo you choose functions smoothly, all the time. Turn the rifle sideways and upside-down and make sure it works that way; you might by lying in bed or leaning out around the dresser to shoot.
Rural area, all the above holds true except you have somewhat less to worry about with over-penetration; no house next door, though you still have to consider other rooms in your house, or the barn outside. All the arguments over 'the best self-defense rifle' have been fought over and over, and I am NOT getting into that. Be it said that if you have the light to aim by, you have very long reach if needed with a rifle, and can pick anything from the above noted choices to a varmint bolt-action to a battle rifle.
Just my thoughts on it.
Additional: few years back read a column by Jeff Cooper about a guy who came to one of his Gunsight classes from Chicago. He couldn't have a handgun, so he'd picked up a Winchester Model 94 'Trapper' version- 16" barrel & chambered for .45 Colt- and cut the stock down to make the thing minimum legal overall length to make it a little handier indoors. Cooper said he was somwhat surprised at how well it worked out.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
I just can't say this any other way,
Fucking idiots who worship animals will get someone killed
Was looking at Instapundit and found this post, which had a number of links; in particular this one about a cougar who has a: killed their cat right in front of them, b: A week after the first encounter, Carrie and Shaffer were smoking outside when they heard the lion screech.
Carrie made it inside the front door first. The lion crossed a 60-foot dirt road in a few seconds. Carrie Warner slammed the door just as her husband got through. The lion's head was caught in the door. She slammed the door on its head again and it backed out." and c: "But what disturbs the couple the most is that the big cat has crouched outside the bedroom window of their 6-year-old son Schylure and stared at the boy.
"We're scared out of our minds," Carrie Warner said. "There is something very strange about the way this lion is hunting us. I'm at the end of my rope." . Disturbed. They're disturbed.
And what is their reaction to this? Summed up in two parts:
Shaffer Warner was building a metal cage around his back porch for protection on a recent evening. He figures he can videotape the lion from inside the cage to show officials how dangerous the animal is."
and
The Warners don't want the animal killed. Shaffer Warner said he wishes the animal to be tranquilized and relocated.
Tranqed and relocated... the damn thing has made an attack on them, and is stalking their kid, and they build a fucking cage around their porch to video it and want it relocated.
"Oh, don't hurt the poor animal, it's just following its' instincts! Just take it somewhere else so it can eat someone else's kid, we don't want its' death on OUR conscience!"
Just God-damn. I'd have had a rifle or shotgun handy after it took the cat; when it made the pass at me I'd have killed the damn thing. If not then, if I caught it stalking one of my kids I'd have administered a permanent tranquilizer, .30 caliber or 00 buck. But these idiots are building a cage around their porch to prove how dangerous this cat is after it attacked them and started stalking their kid!!! I can't put it any other way; God-cursed fucking IDIOTS!
Ms. Warner, I present you with a solution to the problem: boomstick, cartridge, rug. Or, if you don't want to upset your 'progressive' neighbors, boomstick, cartridge, shovel. Your choice.
Was looking at Instapundit and found this post, which had a number of links; in particular this one about a cougar who has a: killed their cat right in front of them, b: A week after the first encounter, Carrie and Shaffer were smoking outside when they heard the lion screech.
Carrie made it inside the front door first. The lion crossed a 60-foot dirt road in a few seconds. Carrie Warner slammed the door just as her husband got through. The lion's head was caught in the door. She slammed the door on its head again and it backed out." and c: "But what disturbs the couple the most is that the big cat has crouched outside the bedroom window of their 6-year-old son Schylure and stared at the boy.
"We're scared out of our minds," Carrie Warner said. "There is something very strange about the way this lion is hunting us. I'm at the end of my rope." . Disturbed. They're disturbed.
And what is their reaction to this? Summed up in two parts:
Shaffer Warner was building a metal cage around his back porch for protection on a recent evening. He figures he can videotape the lion from inside the cage to show officials how dangerous the animal is."
and
The Warners don't want the animal killed. Shaffer Warner said he wishes the animal to be tranquilized and relocated.
Tranqed and relocated... the damn thing has made an attack on them, and is stalking their kid, and they build a fucking cage around their porch to video it and want it relocated.
"Oh, don't hurt the poor animal, it's just following its' instincts! Just take it somewhere else so it can eat someone else's kid, we don't want its' death on OUR conscience!"
Just God-damn. I'd have had a rifle or shotgun handy after it took the cat; when it made the pass at me I'd have killed the damn thing. If not then, if I caught it stalking one of my kids I'd have administered a permanent tranquilizer, .30 caliber or 00 buck. But these idiots are building a cage around their porch to prove how dangerous this cat is after it attacked them and started stalking their kid!!! I can't put it any other way; God-cursed fucking IDIOTS!
Ms. Warner, I present you with a solution to the problem: boomstick, cartridge, rug. Or, if you don't want to upset your 'progressive' neighbors, boomstick, cartridge, shovel. Your choice.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
The Sixth of June, 1944
62 years later.
One of my great uncles was in Pattons' Third Army in Europe. I don't know if he made the D-Day landings, or entered after that; he never spoke of it to the family. I do know that he was there from somewhere in France to the end, and some of the things seen and done haunted him. To him, to those who made it back and to those lying in a piece of ground they made their own, we owe much. Raise a glass to them, one andall.
A few years ago I ran across an article on Patton's speech in England just before the invasion. Being new to computers at the time I didn't save everything, so I don't have where I found it. In any case, here it is, including some history about it and about Patton:
Herein follows a copy of General Patton's (unabridged) speech to 3rd Army on the eve of D-Day. Although not Politically Correct by contemporary standards, in the context of the pending invasion of Europe and the human losses anticipated, it communicated an important message to his target audience.
General Patton's Address to the Troops Part I The Background Research
Anyone who has ever viewed the motion picture PATTON will never forget the opening. George Campbell Scott,portraying Patton, standing in front of an immensely huge American flag, delivers his version of Patton's "Speech to the Third Army" on June 5th, 1944, the eve of the Allied invasion of France, code named "Overlord." Scott's rendition of the speech was highly sanitized so as not to offend too many fainthearted Americans. Luckily, the soldiers of the American Army who fought World War II were not so fainthearted. After one of my lectures
on the subject of General Patton, I spoke with a retired Major General who was a close friend of Patton and who had been stationed with him in the 1930's in the Cavalry. He explained to me that the movie was a very good portrayal of Patton in that it was the way he wanted his men and the public to see him, as a rugged, colorful commander. There was one exception, however, according to the Major General. In reality, Patton was a much more profane speaker than the movie dared to exhibit. Patton had a unique ability regarding profanity. During a normal conversation, he could liberally sprinkle four letter words into what he was saying and the listeners would hardly take notice of it. He spoke so easily and used those words in such a way that it just seemed natural for him to talk that way. He could, when necessary, open up with both barrels and let forth such blue flamed phrases that they seemed almost eloquent in their delivery. When asked by his nephew about his profanity, Patton remarked, "When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little
old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight it's way out of a piss-soaked paper bag." "As for the types of comments I make," he continued with a wry smile, "sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence."
When I appeared on a local San Diego television show to discuss my Patton
Collection a viewer living in a suburb of San Diego, was very interested for personal
reasons. Her husband had been a lieutenant assigned to General Patton's Third Army
Headquarters, code named "Lucky Forward" and he had known General Patton quite well. He had recently died and had left to his wife a box that he had brought home with him from the European Theater of Operations. The lady invited me to her home to inspect the box to see if there was anything in it that might be useful to me in my search for "collectibles."
Opening the box, I immediately thanked her. Inside was one of only a couple hundred copies printed of the Official United States Third Army After Action Reports. It is a huge two volume history of the Third Army throughout their 281 days of combat in Europe. She said that she had no use for it and that I could have it. I left with my new treasure. When I arrived at my office and removed the foot-thick, oversized books from the box, I had an even greater surprise. Under the Reports lay a small stack of original Third Army memos, orders, AND a carbon copy of the original speech that had been typed by some unknown clerk at Lucky Forward and had been widely distributed throughout Third Army. A few years earlier, I had
discovered an almost illegible Xerox of a carbon copy of a similar speech. This one came from the Army War College and was donated to their Historical Library Section in 1957.
I decided to do some research on the speech to obtain the best one possible and to make an attempt to locate the identity of the "unknown soldier" who had clandestinely typed and distributed the famous document. I began by looking in my collection of old magazines, newspapers, books that have been written about Patton since his death, and dozens of other books which had references to Patton and his speech. I discovered some interesting facts. The most interesting probably being that George C. Scott was not the first actor to perform the speech. In 1951, the New American Mercury Magazine had printed a version of the speech which was almost exactly the same version printed by John O'Donnell in his "Capitol Stuff" column for the New York Daily News on May 31, 1945. According to the editors of the New American Mercury, their copy was obtained from Congressman Joseph Clark Baldwin who had returned from a visit to Patton's Headquarters in Czechoslovakia. After publication, the magazine received such a large reader response asking for reprints of the speech that the editors decided to go one step further. They hired a "famous" actor to make an "unexpurgated"
recording of the Patton speech. This recording was to be made available to veterans of Third Army and anyone else who would like to have one. The term "famous" was the only reference made by the editors about the actor who recorded the speech. In a later column they explained, "We hired an excellent actor whose voice, on records, is almost indistinguishable from Patton's, and with RCA's best equipment we made two recordings; one just as Patton delivered it, with all the pungent language of a cavalryman, and in the other we toned down a few of the more offensive words. Our plan was to offer our readers, at cost, either recording." Unfortunately, a few years ago, their was a fire in the editorial offices of the magazine which destroyed almost all of their old records. The name of the actor was lost in that accident. Only one master recording of the speech was made.
The magazine Editors, not wanting to offend either Mrs. Patton or her family, asked for her sanction of the project. The Editors explained the situation thusly, "While we had only the master recordings, we submitted them to our friend, Mrs. Patton, and asked her to approve our plan. It was not a commercial venture and no profits were involved. We just wanted to preserve what to us seems a worthwhile bit of memorabilia of the Second World War. Our attorneys advised us that legally we did not need Mrs.. Patton's approval, but we wanted it." "Mrs.. Patton considered the matter graciously and thoroughly, and gave us a disappointing decision. She took the position that this speech was made by the General only to the men who were going to fight and die with him; it was, therefore, not a speech for the public or for posterity." "We think Mrs.. Patton is wrong; we think that what is great
and worth preserving about General Patton was expressed in that invasion speech. The fact that he employed four letter words was proper; four letter words are the language of war; without them wars would be quite impossible." When Mrs.. Patton's approval was not forthcoming, the entire project was then scrapped, and the master recordings were destroyed.
Patton always knew exactly what he wanted to say to his soldiers and he never needed
notes. He always spoke to his troops extemporaneously. As a general rule of thumb, it is safe to say that Patton usually told his men some of his basic thoughts and concepts regarding his ideas of war and tactics. Instead of the empty, generalized rhetoric of no substance often used by Eisenhower, Patton spoke to his men in simple, down to earth language that they understood. He told them truthful lessons he had learned that would keep them alive. As he traveled throughout battle areas, he always took the time to speak to individual soldiers, squads, platoons, companies, regiments, divisions or whatever size group could be collected. About the only difference in the context of these talks was that the smaller the unit, the more "tactical" the talk would be. Often he would just give his men some sound, common sense advice that they could follow in order to keep from being killed or maimed. From innumerable sources; magazine articles, newspaper clippings, motion picture biographies and newsreels, and books, I have put together the most complete version
possible that encompasses all of the material that is available to date.
Part II The Speech Somewhere in England June 5th, 1944 "Be seated." Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful
to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes , every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.
All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call "chicken shit drilling." That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did. An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world.
Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do. My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man! All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits.' Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?' He answered, 'Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!' Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable. Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Someday I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.' We want to get the hell over there." The quicker
we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit. Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake! When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win
it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do! I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing
regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!
From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, 'Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him
straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a- Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!' "That is all."
Side note: my great-uncle did not like Patton in the least. Though he did think that a redeeming quality was that if his troops needed something, he'd order, borrow or steal to get it. But he still didn't like him.
Note: corrected the date at the top; when I'm tired I can't count.
One of my great uncles was in Pattons' Third Army in Europe. I don't know if he made the D-Day landings, or entered after that; he never spoke of it to the family. I do know that he was there from somewhere in France to the end, and some of the things seen and done haunted him. To him, to those who made it back and to those lying in a piece of ground they made their own, we owe much. Raise a glass to them, one andall.
A few years ago I ran across an article on Patton's speech in England just before the invasion. Being new to computers at the time I didn't save everything, so I don't have where I found it. In any case, here it is, including some history about it and about Patton:
Herein follows a copy of General Patton's (unabridged) speech to 3rd Army on the eve of D-Day. Although not Politically Correct by contemporary standards, in the context of the pending invasion of Europe and the human losses anticipated, it communicated an important message to his target audience.
General Patton's Address to the Troops Part I The Background Research
Anyone who has ever viewed the motion picture PATTON will never forget the opening. George Campbell Scott,portraying Patton, standing in front of an immensely huge American flag, delivers his version of Patton's "Speech to the Third Army" on June 5th, 1944, the eve of the Allied invasion of France, code named "Overlord." Scott's rendition of the speech was highly sanitized so as not to offend too many fainthearted Americans. Luckily, the soldiers of the American Army who fought World War II were not so fainthearted. After one of my lectures
on the subject of General Patton, I spoke with a retired Major General who was a close friend of Patton and who had been stationed with him in the 1930's in the Cavalry. He explained to me that the movie was a very good portrayal of Patton in that it was the way he wanted his men and the public to see him, as a rugged, colorful commander. There was one exception, however, according to the Major General. In reality, Patton was a much more profane speaker than the movie dared to exhibit. Patton had a unique ability regarding profanity. During a normal conversation, he could liberally sprinkle four letter words into what he was saying and the listeners would hardly take notice of it. He spoke so easily and used those words in such a way that it just seemed natural for him to talk that way. He could, when necessary, open up with both barrels and let forth such blue flamed phrases that they seemed almost eloquent in their delivery. When asked by his nephew about his profanity, Patton remarked, "When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little
old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight it's way out of a piss-soaked paper bag." "As for the types of comments I make," he continued with a wry smile, "sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence."
When I appeared on a local San Diego television show to discuss my Patton
Collection a viewer living in a suburb of San Diego, was very interested for personal
reasons. Her husband had been a lieutenant assigned to General Patton's Third Army
Headquarters, code named "Lucky Forward" and he had known General Patton quite well. He had recently died and had left to his wife a box that he had brought home with him from the European Theater of Operations. The lady invited me to her home to inspect the box to see if there was anything in it that might be useful to me in my search for "collectibles."
Opening the box, I immediately thanked her. Inside was one of only a couple hundred copies printed of the Official United States Third Army After Action Reports. It is a huge two volume history of the Third Army throughout their 281 days of combat in Europe. She said that she had no use for it and that I could have it. I left with my new treasure. When I arrived at my office and removed the foot-thick, oversized books from the box, I had an even greater surprise. Under the Reports lay a small stack of original Third Army memos, orders, AND a carbon copy of the original speech that had been typed by some unknown clerk at Lucky Forward and had been widely distributed throughout Third Army. A few years earlier, I had
discovered an almost illegible Xerox of a carbon copy of a similar speech. This one came from the Army War College and was donated to their Historical Library Section in 1957.
I decided to do some research on the speech to obtain the best one possible and to make an attempt to locate the identity of the "unknown soldier" who had clandestinely typed and distributed the famous document. I began by looking in my collection of old magazines, newspapers, books that have been written about Patton since his death, and dozens of other books which had references to Patton and his speech. I discovered some interesting facts. The most interesting probably being that George C. Scott was not the first actor to perform the speech. In 1951, the New American Mercury Magazine had printed a version of the speech which was almost exactly the same version printed by John O'Donnell in his "Capitol Stuff" column for the New York Daily News on May 31, 1945. According to the editors of the New American Mercury, their copy was obtained from Congressman Joseph Clark Baldwin who had returned from a visit to Patton's Headquarters in Czechoslovakia. After publication, the magazine received such a large reader response asking for reprints of the speech that the editors decided to go one step further. They hired a "famous" actor to make an "unexpurgated"
recording of the Patton speech. This recording was to be made available to veterans of Third Army and anyone else who would like to have one. The term "famous" was the only reference made by the editors about the actor who recorded the speech. In a later column they explained, "We hired an excellent actor whose voice, on records, is almost indistinguishable from Patton's, and with RCA's best equipment we made two recordings; one just as Patton delivered it, with all the pungent language of a cavalryman, and in the other we toned down a few of the more offensive words. Our plan was to offer our readers, at cost, either recording." Unfortunately, a few years ago, their was a fire in the editorial offices of the magazine which destroyed almost all of their old records. The name of the actor was lost in that accident. Only one master recording of the speech was made.
The magazine Editors, not wanting to offend either Mrs. Patton or her family, asked for her sanction of the project. The Editors explained the situation thusly, "While we had only the master recordings, we submitted them to our friend, Mrs. Patton, and asked her to approve our plan. It was not a commercial venture and no profits were involved. We just wanted to preserve what to us seems a worthwhile bit of memorabilia of the Second World War. Our attorneys advised us that legally we did not need Mrs.. Patton's approval, but we wanted it." "Mrs.. Patton considered the matter graciously and thoroughly, and gave us a disappointing decision. She took the position that this speech was made by the General only to the men who were going to fight and die with him; it was, therefore, not a speech for the public or for posterity." "We think Mrs.. Patton is wrong; we think that what is great
and worth preserving about General Patton was expressed in that invasion speech. The fact that he employed four letter words was proper; four letter words are the language of war; without them wars would be quite impossible." When Mrs.. Patton's approval was not forthcoming, the entire project was then scrapped, and the master recordings were destroyed.
Patton always knew exactly what he wanted to say to his soldiers and he never needed
notes. He always spoke to his troops extemporaneously. As a general rule of thumb, it is safe to say that Patton usually told his men some of his basic thoughts and concepts regarding his ideas of war and tactics. Instead of the empty, generalized rhetoric of no substance often used by Eisenhower, Patton spoke to his men in simple, down to earth language that they understood. He told them truthful lessons he had learned that would keep them alive. As he traveled throughout battle areas, he always took the time to speak to individual soldiers, squads, platoons, companies, regiments, divisions or whatever size group could be collected. About the only difference in the context of these talks was that the smaller the unit, the more "tactical" the talk would be. Often he would just give his men some sound, common sense advice that they could follow in order to keep from being killed or maimed. From innumerable sources; magazine articles, newspaper clippings, motion picture biographies and newsreels, and books, I have put together the most complete version
possible that encompasses all of the material that is available to date.
Part II The Speech Somewhere in England June 5th, 1944 "Be seated." Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful
to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes , every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.
All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call "chicken shit drilling." That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did. An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world.
Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do. My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man! All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits.' Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?' He answered, 'Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!' Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable. Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Someday I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.' We want to get the hell over there." The quicker
we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit. Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake! When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win
it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do! I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing
regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!
From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, 'Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him
straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a- Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!' "That is all."
Side note: my great-uncle did not like Patton in the least. Though he did think that a redeeming quality was that if his troops needed something, he'd order, borrow or steal to get it. But he still didn't like him.
Note: corrected the date at the top; when I'm tired I can't count.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Further evidence of how the nanny-state sucks
and not in a good way
Over at Kim's found this on how Scotland(SCOTLAND, for God's sake!) is both a: [T]he Scottish Executive… is warning landlords and bar owners that they may be forced to stop serving traditional pub meals. and b:Alcohol misuse has been identified by ministers as Scotland's next major health issue, it has emerged. And when socialist politicians speak of a 'major issue', it means they're going after another part of your life. For your own good, of course.
Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald said everyone must do more to tackle drink-related problems. An action plan will be published later this year. An action plan! BOHICA.
The Scottish National Party is calling for drink adverts to be banned on children's football strips. They advertise booze at kids soccer fields? Whose bright idea what that?
"Scotland has a well-known culture of drinking that dates back centuries and has a massive human and financial cost to our society," he said.
"While government will always have a role to play, we all must do more to tackle alcohol-related problems.
"Producers, the licensed trade and retailers as well as the general public have a responsibility to promote sensible drinking." Also read as "You're too stupid to control yourself, so we'll do it for you".
Help group Alcohol Focus Scotland said drink problems cost Scotland about £1.1bn a year. That's a hell of a lot of spillage.
He said: "Scotland needs a comprehensive debate on the way forward between the alcohol industry, the health sector, voluntary groups and the police.
"Simply legislating against irresponsible drinking will not work. A comprehensive solution will only come from a co-ordinated approach from all of these groups. It would work if it actually meant anything; of course, actually holding someone responsible and punishing someone committing a crime or something is so barbaric and cowboyish, don't you know? Can't expect that to happen, now can one?
Meanwhile, a doctor in Dundee has spoken of concern at having to treat 11-year-olds for alcohol poisoning.
Dr Bill Morrison, of Ninewells Hospital, said problem drinkers seemed to be getting younger. Well, let's see, if you actually discipline a kid you're liable to wind up in jail, the whole country has been force-fed "You can't take care of yourself or your kids, so we'll do it for you", and damn little, from what I've heard, is actually considered an offense against society over there, at least by the authorities, so why do they keep showing surprise when things keep sliding downhill?
Dammit, this crap is depressing.
Over at Kim's found this on how Scotland(SCOTLAND, for God's sake!) is both a: [T]he Scottish Executive… is warning landlords and bar owners that they may be forced to stop serving traditional pub meals. and b:Alcohol misuse has been identified by ministers as Scotland's next major health issue, it has emerged. And when socialist politicians speak of a 'major issue', it means they're going after another part of your life. For your own good, of course.
Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald said everyone must do more to tackle drink-related problems. An action plan will be published later this year. An action plan! BOHICA.
The Scottish National Party is calling for drink adverts to be banned on children's football strips. They advertise booze at kids soccer fields? Whose bright idea what that?
"Scotland has a well-known culture of drinking that dates back centuries and has a massive human and financial cost to our society," he said.
"While government will always have a role to play, we all must do more to tackle alcohol-related problems.
"Producers, the licensed trade and retailers as well as the general public have a responsibility to promote sensible drinking." Also read as "You're too stupid to control yourself, so we'll do it for you".
Help group Alcohol Focus Scotland said drink problems cost Scotland about £1.1bn a year. That's a hell of a lot of spillage.
He said: "Scotland needs a comprehensive debate on the way forward between the alcohol industry, the health sector, voluntary groups and the police.
"Simply legislating against irresponsible drinking will not work. A comprehensive solution will only come from a co-ordinated approach from all of these groups. It would work if it actually meant anything; of course, actually holding someone responsible and punishing someone committing a crime or something is so barbaric and cowboyish, don't you know? Can't expect that to happen, now can one?
Meanwhile, a doctor in Dundee has spoken of concern at having to treat 11-year-olds for alcohol poisoning.
Dr Bill Morrison, of Ninewells Hospital, said problem drinkers seemed to be getting younger. Well, let's see, if you actually discipline a kid you're liable to wind up in jail, the whole country has been force-fed "You can't take care of yourself or your kids, so we'll do it for you", and damn little, from what I've heard, is actually considered an offense against society over there, at least by the authorities, so why do they keep showing surprise when things keep sliding downhill?
Dammit, this crap is depressing.
Long guns for home defense
Been thinking about this since I read this at James' place. It's not a new idea, and it's a good one. I've told a few people who asked "Look, unless you're set on a handgun or have some particular reason to go with one, for home protection get a shotgun". If they live in a rural area I might lean toward a rifle, but the principles stay the same:
1. It's easier to shoot accurately with a long gun.
2. It's easier to teach someone to shoot accurately(generally) with a long gun, and
3. No handgun ever made can match the close-range stopping power of a shotgun. Period.
And it's not a general recomendation, but in very close quarters a shotgun or rifle can be thrust forward to ram the muzzle into someone, or you can butt-stroke them. NOT things I would recommend, but in a pinch it'll work. The muzzle ain't no bayonet, but all the force of your highly stressed body hitting someone in an area less than an inch square...
Right now, concentrating on shotguns, if someone cannot handle/won't work past the recoil of a 12 guage(and even with reduced recoil loads it can be too much for some), a 20 guage will do just fine; we're talking about across the room or down the hall ranges here, the bad guy won't know the difference. As to shot? The scattergun I keep in the house is stuffed with Hornady TAP 00 buckshot; it's a reduced-recoil load of 8 pellets instead of the normal 9 and it groups tighter out of my gun than anything else I've tried. And the recoil is noticably lighter. If I could find a reduced-recoil #4 buck load I'd give it a try; more pellets=more weight hitting the bad guy and even less chance of shooting through a wall to a neighbors house than 00. If you're really worried about overpenetration, go to a heavy birdshot; it'll probably have lighter recoil than most buckshot loads, too. And again, at the ranges we're talking about, the bad guy shouldn't know the difference.
Generally I'd recommend buck, but I do have to note that Peter Capstick once wrote of the lioness who charged him when he was out bird hunting, and all he has was, as I recall, some #8 field loads. He busted her in the chops at about twenty feet(can't find the piece right now) and reported that it did a truly fine job on her head and dropped her dead at his feet. If it'll kill a lion, it'll take out a man.
As has been written, if you decide on a shotgun get several different types of shells and try them out, preferably from a rest at a paper target; find out what actually hits where you're aiming and gives the most appropriate pattern. I like the TAP loads partly because they produce a tight pattern at home-defense ranges; I've known other people who used loads that spread out as much as possible, figuring that gave them a better chance at getting a piece of a moving bad guy in the house at night. I knew one guy who made up his own loads using a 'spreader' wad, at fifteen feet the 9 shot were in a pattern two feet across.
And, unless there's some special reason for it, DO NOT USE SLUGS! In a 12-guage most slugs are 7/8 ounce to 1 ounce in weight, overpenetration is what you WILL get. I read a while back of a police department deciding to test this on some houses scheduled to be torn down. They found that a standard 7/8 oz slug fired from the curb, unless it hit the water heater or something else heavy and solid, would go through the entire house and come out the other side with enough energy left to penetrate at least the outer wall of the next house.
If anyone out there is wondering about my expertise, I'm very happy to inform you that I've never shot anybody with anything; I'm going by what I've read and been told by people who've extensively tested it and, in some cases, used it for real. Generally speaking, what I've read has been split between 00 and #4 buck as being best, with some votes for sizes in between. Like I say, I think a reduced-recoil #4 would be just the thing. Anarchangel once tried some Federal loads(no longer listed, dammit) that were reduced recoil with a mix of 00 and #4; he said it was great stuff.
One last thing: as a bugout gun, a shotgun has the wonderful versatility of using a mix of ammo. You could use buckshot in/around the house, but for longer ranges you can keep some good slugs handy; with decent sights and practice many scatterguns will give accuracy close to or equal to many rifles out to 100 yards or so with slugs they like.
My opinion, for what it's worth.
Note: in his book Last Horizons Capstick has an article he wrote for Guns & Ammo magazine in 1976 on buckshot for hunting; there's a good chance your library has it or can get it, and it's well worth reading.
1. It's easier to shoot accurately with a long gun.
2. It's easier to teach someone to shoot accurately(generally) with a long gun, and
3. No handgun ever made can match the close-range stopping power of a shotgun. Period.
And it's not a general recomendation, but in very close quarters a shotgun or rifle can be thrust forward to ram the muzzle into someone, or you can butt-stroke them. NOT things I would recommend, but in a pinch it'll work. The muzzle ain't no bayonet, but all the force of your highly stressed body hitting someone in an area less than an inch square...
Right now, concentrating on shotguns, if someone cannot handle/won't work past the recoil of a 12 guage(and even with reduced recoil loads it can be too much for some), a 20 guage will do just fine; we're talking about across the room or down the hall ranges here, the bad guy won't know the difference. As to shot? The scattergun I keep in the house is stuffed with Hornady TAP 00 buckshot; it's a reduced-recoil load of 8 pellets instead of the normal 9 and it groups tighter out of my gun than anything else I've tried. And the recoil is noticably lighter. If I could find a reduced-recoil #4 buck load I'd give it a try; more pellets=more weight hitting the bad guy and even less chance of shooting through a wall to a neighbors house than 00. If you're really worried about overpenetration, go to a heavy birdshot; it'll probably have lighter recoil than most buckshot loads, too. And again, at the ranges we're talking about, the bad guy shouldn't know the difference.
Generally I'd recommend buck, but I do have to note that Peter Capstick once wrote of the lioness who charged him when he was out bird hunting, and all he has was, as I recall, some #8 field loads. He busted her in the chops at about twenty feet(can't find the piece right now) and reported that it did a truly fine job on her head and dropped her dead at his feet. If it'll kill a lion, it'll take out a man.
As has been written, if you decide on a shotgun get several different types of shells and try them out, preferably from a rest at a paper target; find out what actually hits where you're aiming and gives the most appropriate pattern. I like the TAP loads partly because they produce a tight pattern at home-defense ranges; I've known other people who used loads that spread out as much as possible, figuring that gave them a better chance at getting a piece of a moving bad guy in the house at night. I knew one guy who made up his own loads using a 'spreader' wad, at fifteen feet the 9 shot were in a pattern two feet across.
And, unless there's some special reason for it, DO NOT USE SLUGS! In a 12-guage most slugs are 7/8 ounce to 1 ounce in weight, overpenetration is what you WILL get. I read a while back of a police department deciding to test this on some houses scheduled to be torn down. They found that a standard 7/8 oz slug fired from the curb, unless it hit the water heater or something else heavy and solid, would go through the entire house and come out the other side with enough energy left to penetrate at least the outer wall of the next house.
If anyone out there is wondering about my expertise, I'm very happy to inform you that I've never shot anybody with anything; I'm going by what I've read and been told by people who've extensively tested it and, in some cases, used it for real. Generally speaking, what I've read has been split between 00 and #4 buck as being best, with some votes for sizes in between. Like I say, I think a reduced-recoil #4 would be just the thing. Anarchangel once tried some Federal loads(no longer listed, dammit) that were reduced recoil with a mix of 00 and #4; he said it was great stuff.
One last thing: as a bugout gun, a shotgun has the wonderful versatility of using a mix of ammo. You could use buckshot in/around the house, but for longer ranges you can keep some good slugs handy; with decent sights and practice many scatterguns will give accuracy close to or equal to many rifles out to 100 yards or so with slugs they like.
My opinion, for what it's worth.
Note: in his book Last Horizons Capstick has an article he wrote for Guns & Ammo magazine in 1976 on buckshot for hunting; there's a good chance your library has it or can get it, and it's well worth reading.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
I forgot about this, but I remember it now
The Palistinians published a picture of a kid pissing on the Statue of Liberty.
Here's Denny's response:
Here's Denny's response:
Further thoughts on the early Americas
Been thinking about 1491, the book I wrote of here. Aught6 made a comment that brought an old question back to mind: WHY didn't any of the American Indians develop any metals technology beyond jewelry and decoration?
The craftsmanship in gold and silver and stone and pottery of many South & Central American nations was marvelous, but they didn't make use of iron that I've read of other than maybe an occasional meteorite hammered into something. In northern/northeast parts of North America were huge, rich deposits of iron and copper and other metals. One early explorer found iron outcrops that were essentially pure; break a piece off and it looked like refined iron inside, and there are copper deposits that were also of high grade. But they didn't develop the tech to use it.
Stone tools are not better except for not needing to be refined; a flint or obsidian blade can be incredibly sharp, but they're brittle, and while a well-made stone axe works pretty well, any decent iron or steel blade puts it to shame. These were intelligent, capable people, so how is it they never developed any real metals industry in the North? And Central & South no real tool or weapons use?
Yes, I know there were some pieces found in some places; that's not what I'm talking about. People who could refine gold and silver, and find ways to purify it, could have figured out iron, or copper and tin.
THE biggest trade good for the Europeans to the Indians was metal. Iron pots and pans, needles, axes and knives, flint strikers. The British shipped strikers alone over here by the keg and that was after the populations of many tribes had been chopped up by disease. If the Europeans had found a people with even a rudimentary iron industry, a number of things would've been different. And why, after exposure to iron and steel tools and seeing the blacksmiths working these metals, didn't anyone try working with those metals in the ground?
Steve Stirling wrote the Fifth Millenium series, much of it set in North America after a combination of war and natural disasters dumped the human race back to roughly late stone age/early iron age. People remembered/kept enough knowledge to keep some tech alive and it led to different developments. Think the Sioux tribes with compound bows('wheelbows') and armor and mounted lancers. Leave out the compound bows, and think of the early Europeans meeting tribes with iron and/or steel arrowheads and lance points and knives and axes and swords, and the armor that this would have led to... And once exposed to firearms, they'd have done the same thing the Japanese did; copy them, and quite possibly come up with improvements.
Makes me wish I was a better writer.
The craftsmanship in gold and silver and stone and pottery of many South & Central American nations was marvelous, but they didn't make use of iron that I've read of other than maybe an occasional meteorite hammered into something. In northern/northeast parts of North America were huge, rich deposits of iron and copper and other metals. One early explorer found iron outcrops that were essentially pure; break a piece off and it looked like refined iron inside, and there are copper deposits that were also of high grade. But they didn't develop the tech to use it.
Stone tools are not better except for not needing to be refined; a flint or obsidian blade can be incredibly sharp, but they're brittle, and while a well-made stone axe works pretty well, any decent iron or steel blade puts it to shame. These were intelligent, capable people, so how is it they never developed any real metals industry in the North? And Central & South no real tool or weapons use?
Yes, I know there were some pieces found in some places; that's not what I'm talking about. People who could refine gold and silver, and find ways to purify it, could have figured out iron, or copper and tin.
THE biggest trade good for the Europeans to the Indians was metal. Iron pots and pans, needles, axes and knives, flint strikers. The British shipped strikers alone over here by the keg and that was after the populations of many tribes had been chopped up by disease. If the Europeans had found a people with even a rudimentary iron industry, a number of things would've been different. And why, after exposure to iron and steel tools and seeing the blacksmiths working these metals, didn't anyone try working with those metals in the ground?
Steve Stirling wrote the Fifth Millenium series, much of it set in North America after a combination of war and natural disasters dumped the human race back to roughly late stone age/early iron age. People remembered/kept enough knowledge to keep some tech alive and it led to different developments. Think the Sioux tribes with compound bows('wheelbows') and armor and mounted lancers. Leave out the compound bows, and think of the early Europeans meeting tribes with iron and/or steel arrowheads and lance points and knives and axes and swords, and the armor that this would have led to... And once exposed to firearms, they'd have done the same thing the Japanese did; copy them, and quite possibly come up with improvements.
Makes me wish I was a better writer.
It sucks watching someone self-destruct
Continuing my parade of things I forgot over the last few days
Specifically, a lady I met a few years ago. Never girlfriend, there was something a bit manic about her, but friends. Very pretty, but problem 1 was she was never happy with how she looked. The "I need to lose ten more pounds" bullshit. Losing ten pounds would have made her look a little emaciated, but you couldn't tell her that; she was convinced she needed to lose it.
We'd sit and talk, and a lot of ground was covered. Including that from the time she was about 13 to about 20, she smoked a lot of grass. As in three joints a day many days. Personally, I think half her troubles could probably be traced to that, but that's a different story. I can't remember which happened first but she lost her job and started taking diet pills to lose that 'last ten pounds', and went steadily downhill from there. She started drinking some, too, and at about 5'6" and 110 lbs it didn't take much to get her fairly swozzled, and then she'd drive. Which scared me to death when I found out, for her and for any poor jerk she might run into or over.
This crap went on for a while and she'd make a point of driving past cops and flipping them off, taking walks in parts of town that it's either a miracle or something about her scared off the vultures that kept her from being raped and/or murdered; if she didn't want to wind up dead or in jail, I have no idea what was wrong with her.
She finally crashed, happily into a tree and hurt only herself. Which led to being arrested for DUI and jailed and all that happiness. Which led to counseling which I'd hoped would help matters out. Fat chance. After she was out she did admit that she had problems, but she also bitched about the cops and bitched about how her bosses had been unfair. And she started putting on weight. A lot of weight. Which made her more unhappy, and so on in one of the truest downhill spirals I've ever witnessed. At least she was off the diet pills and not drinking now, but her big plan for the immediate future was getting on disability 'because of her problems'. And since getting a job would hurt her chances at that, she wouldn't take one("It doesn't pay enough, they won't hire somebody with a DUI, I can't live on that!")
So now she's almost my age, living with her mother, taking a couple of prescribed meds that, among other things, make her shaky which makes it almost impossible to get a decent job(she did make it onto disability, after which "If I take this job I'll lose most of the disability and I can't afford it!") She bitches about her weight, but she won't get any exercise, and at this point I have little hope she'll pull out of it.
And I don't know whether to stay in contact with her in case I might be able to help her break the cycle, or whether to stop talking to her and get a sad case out of my life. I hate watching this.
Specifically, a lady I met a few years ago. Never girlfriend, there was something a bit manic about her, but friends. Very pretty, but problem 1 was she was never happy with how she looked. The "I need to lose ten more pounds" bullshit. Losing ten pounds would have made her look a little emaciated, but you couldn't tell her that; she was convinced she needed to lose it.
We'd sit and talk, and a lot of ground was covered. Including that from the time she was about 13 to about 20, she smoked a lot of grass. As in three joints a day many days. Personally, I think half her troubles could probably be traced to that, but that's a different story. I can't remember which happened first but she lost her job and started taking diet pills to lose that 'last ten pounds', and went steadily downhill from there. She started drinking some, too, and at about 5'6" and 110 lbs it didn't take much to get her fairly swozzled, and then she'd drive. Which scared me to death when I found out, for her and for any poor jerk she might run into or over.
This crap went on for a while and she'd make a point of driving past cops and flipping them off, taking walks in parts of town that it's either a miracle or something about her scared off the vultures that kept her from being raped and/or murdered; if she didn't want to wind up dead or in jail, I have no idea what was wrong with her.
She finally crashed, happily into a tree and hurt only herself. Which led to being arrested for DUI and jailed and all that happiness. Which led to counseling which I'd hoped would help matters out. Fat chance. After she was out she did admit that she had problems, but she also bitched about the cops and bitched about how her bosses had been unfair. And she started putting on weight. A lot of weight. Which made her more unhappy, and so on in one of the truest downhill spirals I've ever witnessed. At least she was off the diet pills and not drinking now, but her big plan for the immediate future was getting on disability 'because of her problems'. And since getting a job would hurt her chances at that, she wouldn't take one("It doesn't pay enough, they won't hire somebody with a DUI, I can't live on that!")
So now she's almost my age, living with her mother, taking a couple of prescribed meds that, among other things, make her shaky which makes it almost impossible to get a decent job(she did make it onto disability, after which "If I take this job I'll lose most of the disability and I can't afford it!") She bitches about her weight, but she won't get any exercise, and at this point I have little hope she'll pull out of it.
And I don't know whether to stay in contact with her in case I might be able to help her break the cycle, or whether to stop talking to her and get a sad case out of my life. I hate watching this.
Downtime for any big projects at the forge
Last couple of times I started to forge the stock for a good-sized blade, my elbow started telling me it wasn't happy with this activity, and I had to stop. So I've been stuck with making smaller stuff. Which is fine; there are a number of things I need to make a bunch of, but still...
Og told me about a stuff called Sombra that he uses, I got a jar and I'll give it a try.
I get a chance on my next days off, I'll use some small stock and forge a blade and take pics, start to finish and get it posted.
And so it goes.
Og told me about a stuff called Sombra that he uses, I got a jar and I'll give it a try.
I get a chance on my next days off, I'll use some small stock and forge a blade and take pics, start to finish and get it posted.
And so it goes.
I remembered!
Part of it, at least.
In the post on buttpack carry, in the comments Amouse asked " Have you done armed response/ self defence (what ever it's called) training? reason I'm asking, you seemed to have a very clear idea of what you were doing."
Back in the Interglacial Warm Period when I was young(it feels like that at times) I took a lot of martial arts classes. Kung Fu, karate and aikido. Enjoyed the hell out of them, but found later that they'd all suffered from the same flaw; they were mostly taught as sport/fitness styles, not as serious fighting methods. By 'serious' I mean by a teacher who says "I want you to be in one piece and walking if you ever have to defend yourself" and teaches based on that. I'd like to find one like that now. You could indeed use the methods, or most of them, for self-defense, but the focus wasn't really on that, and without it lots of people(like me) tend to get into the 'game' mindset of "how can I score points?" instead of the survival mindset. One thing they did teach me was the power of repetition; if you practice a motion enough, with actual mental focus on it, it becomes a reaction that doesn't require thought. Which is one reason to practice draw & fire, so in extremis you don't have to think about the motions.
One of the things that helped me the most in mental preparation was a book, something like 'Secrets of a Barroom Bouncer'. It was actually a very good book, based on first, watch what's going on and see the threat before it fully develops, and second if you can't defuse it/walk away, fight to end it. No "This secret technique has been handed down" crap, very simple things like developing punching ability that will actually do damage, and mental preparation. That got me, more than before, planning scenarios out. "If I'm in the store and somebody does this, what can I do? If I'm walking through a parking lot and somebody approaches, what options?(which is where the response I wrote about came from), If I'm in a bar or restaurant and (fill in the blank) happens, what do I do?" Or, for that matter, "I hear something in the house at night that I shouldn't hear, what steps do I take?" . Not 'grab a gun and run into the hall', but what specific steps do I take? Think about the first actions, then what can follow if someone is approaching the bedroom or if you have to leave the room and check it out. What can go wrong, what can go right? If you actually work through that, it can scare hell out of you because you plan out what all can go wrong that ends up with you or someone you care for winding up hurt or dead instead of a bad guy run off or put down.
I think most training is basically that: make your mind work out what to do if faced with X situation and practice dealing with it. Which means if X happens, you're acting on the situation with motions/your own actions that are already in your mind & reflexes.
Back in those days of yore, I met with a lady from the aikido class to practice one day. We spent a while working on locks and throws, and when we took a break I started talking to someone who came by. While I was talking, she got one of the plastic knives I had in my bag, snuck up behind me and stuck the point in my back. With no thought I spun, elbowed the knife aside and started a backfist at her temple. As the fist was snapping up, my conscious mind clicked on practice partner/fake knife/oh shit and while I couldn't stop the strike I was able to relax enough to take a lot of the force out of it. She still got a perfect two-knuckle backfist in the temple and went down like a bag of rocks. Happily only stunned, but she rested there on the mat for a bit, and it scared hell out of me.
It boils down to observation/threat stimulus/reaction when you get down to it. Nice & simple. If you see a threat/potential threat as it develops you can bypass it or prepare to strike if needed; if the trained reflexes are there, if something pops up out of nowhere you can act without having to see/analyze/decide what action/act. Nice & simple, like in the 'Murphy's Laws of Combat' rules: The important things are always simple; the simple things are never easy. The only way to be prepared is to work through it both physically and mentally, and it is work.
If there's a good class around that you can take, take it. Learning from a professional is always good. If there's not a good class or money/time prevent your taking it, read the good stuff out there and work through things in your mind.
It's like the comment "ANY gun, even a .25, is better than no gun in time of trouble"; ANY practice/preparation is better than none.
Side note: for shooting, try to find one of the life-size targets that's an actual picture of a bad guy, with the target zones marked so you can't see them at shooting ranges. Seeing a target with a face and no lines can be a surprise. I read a few years ago when the first 3D targets came out(a head-down-to-hips plastic body shell) a firearms instructor took one of those, put a shirt and hat on it and had that pop up instead of a standard silhouette one day. Almost everybody hesitated, and when some of them-normally good shots- finally fired, they'd either be all over it or even miss it completely, from the shock of a target that actually looked like a human.
In the post on buttpack carry, in the comments Amouse asked " Have you done armed response/ self defence (what ever it's called) training? reason I'm asking, you seemed to have a very clear idea of what you were doing."
Back in the Interglacial Warm Period when I was young(it feels like that at times) I took a lot of martial arts classes. Kung Fu, karate and aikido. Enjoyed the hell out of them, but found later that they'd all suffered from the same flaw; they were mostly taught as sport/fitness styles, not as serious fighting methods. By 'serious' I mean by a teacher who says "I want you to be in one piece and walking if you ever have to defend yourself" and teaches based on that. I'd like to find one like that now. You could indeed use the methods, or most of them, for self-defense, but the focus wasn't really on that, and without it lots of people(like me) tend to get into the 'game' mindset of "how can I score points?" instead of the survival mindset. One thing they did teach me was the power of repetition; if you practice a motion enough, with actual mental focus on it, it becomes a reaction that doesn't require thought. Which is one reason to practice draw & fire, so in extremis you don't have to think about the motions.
One of the things that helped me the most in mental preparation was a book, something like 'Secrets of a Barroom Bouncer'. It was actually a very good book, based on first, watch what's going on and see the threat before it fully develops, and second if you can't defuse it/walk away, fight to end it. No "This secret technique has been handed down" crap, very simple things like developing punching ability that will actually do damage, and mental preparation. That got me, more than before, planning scenarios out. "If I'm in the store and somebody does this, what can I do? If I'm walking through a parking lot and somebody approaches, what options?(which is where the response I wrote about came from), If I'm in a bar or restaurant and (fill in the blank) happens, what do I do?" Or, for that matter, "I hear something in the house at night that I shouldn't hear, what steps do I take?" . Not 'grab a gun and run into the hall', but what specific steps do I take? Think about the first actions, then what can follow if someone is approaching the bedroom or if you have to leave the room and check it out. What can go wrong, what can go right? If you actually work through that, it can scare hell out of you because you plan out what all can go wrong that ends up with you or someone you care for winding up hurt or dead instead of a bad guy run off or put down.
I think most training is basically that: make your mind work out what to do if faced with X situation and practice dealing with it. Which means if X happens, you're acting on the situation with motions/your own actions that are already in your mind & reflexes.
Back in those days of yore, I met with a lady from the aikido class to practice one day. We spent a while working on locks and throws, and when we took a break I started talking to someone who came by. While I was talking, she got one of the plastic knives I had in my bag, snuck up behind me and stuck the point in my back. With no thought I spun, elbowed the knife aside and started a backfist at her temple. As the fist was snapping up, my conscious mind clicked on practice partner/fake knife/oh shit and while I couldn't stop the strike I was able to relax enough to take a lot of the force out of it. She still got a perfect two-knuckle backfist in the temple and went down like a bag of rocks. Happily only stunned, but she rested there on the mat for a bit, and it scared hell out of me.
It boils down to observation/threat stimulus/reaction when you get down to it. Nice & simple. If you see a threat/potential threat as it develops you can bypass it or prepare to strike if needed; if the trained reflexes are there, if something pops up out of nowhere you can act without having to see/analyze/decide what action/act. Nice & simple, like in the 'Murphy's Laws of Combat' rules: The important things are always simple; the simple things are never easy. The only way to be prepared is to work through it both physically and mentally, and it is work.
If there's a good class around that you can take, take it. Learning from a professional is always good. If there's not a good class or money/time prevent your taking it, read the good stuff out there and work through things in your mind.
It's like the comment "ANY gun, even a .25, is better than no gun in time of trouble"; ANY practice/preparation is better than none.
Side note: for shooting, try to find one of the life-size targets that's an actual picture of a bad guy, with the target zones marked so you can't see them at shooting ranges. Seeing a target with a face and no lines can be a surprise. I read a few years ago when the first 3D targets came out(a head-down-to-hips plastic body shell) a firearms instructor took one of those, put a shirt and hat on it and had that pop up instead of a standard silhouette one day. Almost everybody hesitated, and when some of them-normally good shots- finally fired, they'd either be all over it or even miss it completely, from the shock of a target that actually looked like a human.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
I had something I thought real interesting to post,
but right now I can't remember what the hell it was. Three hours sleep in the last, uh, 32 does that to me.
Right now I've got about an hour to clean up and do a couple of things around the yard before I go to bed and get up at midnight to pull another 12-hour shift; two people called in sick yesterday, so... If I'm lucky, I'll remember whatever it was I was going to write about and I'll write it down so I don't forget it.
By the way, that Indian restaurant, 50th & May? Kha Zana.
Right now I've got about an hour to clean up and do a couple of things around the yard before I go to bed and get up at midnight to pull another 12-hour shift; two people called in sick yesterday, so... If I'm lucky, I'll remember whatever it was I was going to write about and I'll write it down so I don't forget it.
By the way, that Indian restaurant, 50th & May? Kha Zana.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Reason Number , I forget, Why The UN Sucks
Bigtime.
In this case it's not the corruption, the child molesters, the pimps and so forth. Oh, no, the same assholes that sat on their hands during Rwanda, who're sitting on their hands in Darfur, who always whine to us for money and power, are having their newest gun-ban conference on July 4. On U.S. soil.
I'm sure most of you can already recite the many reasons why we should tell the U.N. to get its collective corrupt ass off of our soil, preferably yesterday. The nice gentleman at The Conservative Voice has this address for Kofi Annan:
The Honorable Kofi Annan
Secretary-General of the United Nations
UN Headquarters
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017
Although I would get a palsy and choke trying to write 'The Honorable' in front of his name. It couldn't hurt to write, though I doubt it'll do any good; Annan is one of the nanny-statists who thinks we just don't know what's really good for us. At The High Road, I also found this site which has an address for the chairman of the current gun-ban conference. I'm afraid he's probably in the same mindset as Annan. What might be better would be to write here:
The Honorable John Bolton
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
799 United Nations Plaza
New York, New York 10017
John Bolton is OUR ambassador to the U.N., and (happily) has shown little hesitation at telling them- in proper diplomatic language, of course- to kiss our collective ass. Couldn't hurt to remind him of what we think of these clowns coming onto OUR soil and trying to screw with OUR Constitution to suit them.
And it goes without saying, write your congresscritter.
And as a guy at High Road says, "Buy guns. Buy ammo. Train."
In this case it's not the corruption, the child molesters, the pimps and so forth. Oh, no, the same assholes that sat on their hands during Rwanda, who're sitting on their hands in Darfur, who always whine to us for money and power, are having their newest gun-ban conference on July 4. On U.S. soil.
I'm sure most of you can already recite the many reasons why we should tell the U.N. to get its collective corrupt ass off of our soil, preferably yesterday. The nice gentleman at The Conservative Voice has this address for Kofi Annan:
The Honorable Kofi Annan
Secretary-General of the United Nations
UN Headquarters
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017
Although I would get a palsy and choke trying to write 'The Honorable' in front of his name. It couldn't hurt to write, though I doubt it'll do any good; Annan is one of the nanny-statists who thinks we just don't know what's really good for us. At The High Road, I also found this site which has an address for the chairman of the current gun-ban conference. I'm afraid he's probably in the same mindset as Annan. What might be better would be to write here:
The Honorable John Bolton
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
799 United Nations Plaza
New York, New York 10017
John Bolton is OUR ambassador to the U.N., and (happily) has shown little hesitation at telling them- in proper diplomatic language, of course- to kiss our collective ass. Couldn't hurt to remind him of what we think of these clowns coming onto OUR soil and trying to screw with OUR Constitution to suit them.
And it goes without saying, write your congresscritter.
And as a guy at High Road says, "Buy guns. Buy ammo. Train."
Book Review
1491, by Charles C. Mann
The subtitle is 'New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus', which covers it. Lots of information I'd never seen before; some fairly newly discovered, some old but either ignored or covered over in the past.
Short version,
1. The populations of the various tribes and nations were a lot higher than previously accepted,
2. They messed with arranging the land a lot more than some thought possible and some(read 'enviroweenies') want to believe/admit,
3. They were a lot more advanced in some ways that previously known/accepted; in modifying territory to suit them, in textiles and pottery among others.
It covers too much to try and excerpt the whole thing, I'd leave too much out. I will cover some things, though. Such as:
1. The fact that Indian populations were hammered incredibly hard by diseases brought over by Europeans has been known; generally I don't think the full extent over all the Americas was realized. In some areas they're looking at death rates, from disease and follow-on problems, of as much as 90%. So high not just because of no acquired immunity by the people hit, but by a recently discovered immune system liability. Human Leukocyte Antigens are a big part of the immune system, allowing cells to 'recognize' an intruder and take action. Believed to be because they developed from a relatively restricted gene pool, Indians studied show a much lower number of types, no more than about 17 main classes compared to European populations having at least thirty-five main classes. So not only did they not have any previous immunity to the diseases, their systems were not as able to recognize and fight a new disease organism(no, this is not an in-depth analysis, I'm skimming it).
2. In the case of the Spanish in particular, one of the biggest problems was pigs. Their expeditions took them along not only on shipboard, but on land expeditions as walking meat supplies. And what's the species we still have lots of problems with because diseases often go from animal/bird, through this species, to us? Pigs. So while in the original situation a disease might have burned through the expedition and them been noninfectious when they came in contact with a new people, the pigs may still have been carrying it in infectious form. And some went wild, adding both a new species and new disease organisms to the environment.
As a side note, apparently zoonotic diseases were fairly rare in the Americas, the Indians having few domesticated animals. Mann brings up the scary thought, what if they had been more common in the Americas? The Indians would have had a somewhat better immune system, probably, and a much wider range of infectious diseases, which the Europeans would have been exposed to and taken back to Europe. What if some of those organisms had hit Europe like smallpox and such hit the Americas?
3. Much of what was written of as 'virgin forest' and such was no such thing; the various tribes and nations had been modifying the earth to suit them for thousands of years. By burning to clear land, by planting crops that suited them, by diverting streams and rivers and so on. To quote: "Planting their orchards for millenia, the first Amazonians slowly transformed large swaths of the river basin into something more pleasing to human beings... In Ka'apor-managed forests, according to Balee's plant inventories, almost half of the ecologically important species are those used by humans for food. In similar forests that have not recently been managed, the figure is only 20 percent. Balee cautiously estimated, in a widely cited article published in 1989, that at least 11.8 percent, about an eighth, of the non-flooded Amazon forest was "anthropogenic"- directly or indirectly created by humans.
Some researchers today regard this figure as conservative. "I basically think it's all human created" Clement told me. (page 305)
Lots of information, well worth reading. He also notes that the laws and attitudes of the tribes had a definate effect on the settlers, especially in North America, quoting many comments of admiration by our founders. And I'll throw in a couple of things he notes from, let's say, 'less impressed' sorts:
"The savage does not know what it is to obey," complained the French explorer Nicolas Perrot in the 1670's. Indians "think every one ought to be left to his own Opinion, without being thwarted," the Jesuit Louis Hennepin wrote twenty year later.
"There is nothing so difficult to control as the tribes of America," another Jesuit unhappily observed. "All the barbarians have the law of wild asses- they are born, live and die in a liberty without restrain; they do not know what is meant by bridle and bit."(page 334)
Ah, America; the natives have been pissing off the French from the very beginning.
The subtitle is 'New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus', which covers it. Lots of information I'd never seen before; some fairly newly discovered, some old but either ignored or covered over in the past.
Short version,
1. The populations of the various tribes and nations were a lot higher than previously accepted,
2. They messed with arranging the land a lot more than some thought possible and some(read 'enviroweenies') want to believe/admit,
3. They were a lot more advanced in some ways that previously known/accepted; in modifying territory to suit them, in textiles and pottery among others.
It covers too much to try and excerpt the whole thing, I'd leave too much out. I will cover some things, though. Such as:
1. The fact that Indian populations were hammered incredibly hard by diseases brought over by Europeans has been known; generally I don't think the full extent over all the Americas was realized. In some areas they're looking at death rates, from disease and follow-on problems, of as much as 90%. So high not just because of no acquired immunity by the people hit, but by a recently discovered immune system liability. Human Leukocyte Antigens are a big part of the immune system, allowing cells to 'recognize' an intruder and take action. Believed to be because they developed from a relatively restricted gene pool, Indians studied show a much lower number of types, no more than about 17 main classes compared to European populations having at least thirty-five main classes. So not only did they not have any previous immunity to the diseases, their systems were not as able to recognize and fight a new disease organism(no, this is not an in-depth analysis, I'm skimming it).
2. In the case of the Spanish in particular, one of the biggest problems was pigs. Their expeditions took them along not only on shipboard, but on land expeditions as walking meat supplies. And what's the species we still have lots of problems with because diseases often go from animal/bird, through this species, to us? Pigs. So while in the original situation a disease might have burned through the expedition and them been noninfectious when they came in contact with a new people, the pigs may still have been carrying it in infectious form. And some went wild, adding both a new species and new disease organisms to the environment.
As a side note, apparently zoonotic diseases were fairly rare in the Americas, the Indians having few domesticated animals. Mann brings up the scary thought, what if they had been more common in the Americas? The Indians would have had a somewhat better immune system, probably, and a much wider range of infectious diseases, which the Europeans would have been exposed to and taken back to Europe. What if some of those organisms had hit Europe like smallpox and such hit the Americas?
3. Much of what was written of as 'virgin forest' and such was no such thing; the various tribes and nations had been modifying the earth to suit them for thousands of years. By burning to clear land, by planting crops that suited them, by diverting streams and rivers and so on. To quote: "Planting their orchards for millenia, the first Amazonians slowly transformed large swaths of the river basin into something more pleasing to human beings... In Ka'apor-managed forests, according to Balee's plant inventories, almost half of the ecologically important species are those used by humans for food. In similar forests that have not recently been managed, the figure is only 20 percent. Balee cautiously estimated, in a widely cited article published in 1989, that at least 11.8 percent, about an eighth, of the non-flooded Amazon forest was "anthropogenic"- directly or indirectly created by humans.
Some researchers today regard this figure as conservative. "I basically think it's all human created" Clement told me. (page 305)
Lots of information, well worth reading. He also notes that the laws and attitudes of the tribes had a definate effect on the settlers, especially in North America, quoting many comments of admiration by our founders. And I'll throw in a couple of things he notes from, let's say, 'less impressed' sorts:
"The savage does not know what it is to obey," complained the French explorer Nicolas Perrot in the 1670's. Indians "think every one ought to be left to his own Opinion, without being thwarted," the Jesuit Louis Hennepin wrote twenty year later.
"There is nothing so difficult to control as the tribes of America," another Jesuit unhappily observed. "All the barbarians have the law of wild asses- they are born, live and die in a liberty without restrain; they do not know what is meant by bridle and bit."(page 334)
Ah, America; the natives have been pissing off the French from the very beginning.
This Just In: Food Police Screw It Up
As if that's a surprise
Over at Instapundit found this link to a story- at the New York Times of all places- stating "Well-Intentioned Food Police May Create Havoc With Childeren's Diets". Besides listing a lot of the crap thrown out at 'fact' and the results thereof, it takes note of the other crap coming in as part of this mess: "Like the policies put in place by school systems around the country, this one was driven by anxiety — about food quantity, quality and safety — and by the ever-increasing pressure for children to look a certain way and to weigh a certain amount."
She points out that there are kids allergic to dairy and other stuff, but it's only peanut butter that gets banned, and this:
"I fear there's something else at work — a fear borne out by a flier my fifth grader brought home saying that at the monthly pizza hot lunch, no child would be allowed to buy a second slice of pizza. The district says the new ruling is to avoid bad feelings caused by "inequities": if everyone can't have extra helpings, no one can."
So it's school as 'Equality Police', too, surprise surprise. And she notes the nanny-state BS of the BMI squirrels:
"A look at what's happening on the state level confirms this. In Arkansas, for instance, children's report cards now include their B.M.I., or body mass index, along with their grades. The governor, Mike Huckabee recently lost more than 100 pounds and is passionate about stopping the "obesity epidemic." Maryland is considering a similar standard.
Over at Instapundit found this link to a story- at the New York Times of all places- stating "Well-Intentioned Food Police May Create Havoc With Childeren's Diets". Besides listing a lot of the crap thrown out at 'fact' and the results thereof, it takes note of the other crap coming in as part of this mess: "Like the policies put in place by school systems around the country, this one was driven by anxiety — about food quantity, quality and safety — and by the ever-increasing pressure for children to look a certain way and to weigh a certain amount."
She points out that there are kids allergic to dairy and other stuff, but it's only peanut butter that gets banned, and this:
"I fear there's something else at work — a fear borne out by a flier my fifth grader brought home saying that at the monthly pizza hot lunch, no child would be allowed to buy a second slice of pizza. The district says the new ruling is to avoid bad feelings caused by "inequities": if everyone can't have extra helpings, no one can."
So it's school as 'Equality Police', too, surprise surprise. And she notes the nanny-state BS of the BMI squirrels:
"A look at what's happening on the state level confirms this. In Arkansas, for instance, children's report cards now include their B.M.I., or body mass index, along with their grades. The governor, Mike Huckabee recently lost more than 100 pounds and is passionate about stopping the "obesity epidemic." Maryland is considering a similar standard.
Never mind that B.M.I. is only a measure of height against weight and does not take into account muscle mass, body type or other factors. (Tom Cruise has a B.M.I. of 31, which puts him in the "obese" category.)"
You ought to read it, it's worth the time.Sunday, May 28, 2006
Peace weenies
were out in force the other day. Not much force, but some. Bunch of empty boots lined up along the curb and the signs you'd expect: End Bush's Illegal and Immoral War, America Deserves Better, etc., and of course the dove banner and a 'Honk for Peace' sign.
Makes we wish I had a BIG damn set of speakers to put in the back of the truck. Pull up next to them and play March of Cambreadth at roughly 747 takeoff volume.
You've never HEARD the March? What kind of commie are you? Go here, slide down to the Midsummer album and you can play it.
Makes we wish I had a BIG damn set of speakers to put in the back of the truck. Pull up next to them and play March of Cambreadth at roughly 747 takeoff volume.
You've never HEARD the March? What kind of commie are you? Go here, slide down to the Midsummer album and you can play it.
Lawrence of Arabia
The movie with Peter O'Toole as Lawrence. Borrowed it from the library a while back, and I was thinking about it earlier, one scene in particular. Lawrence and a group from Prince Feisal's tribe are going to attack a Turkish outpost and wind up invited to spend the night and dine with Auda abu Tayi.
They've just finished eating and are discussing what Lawrece's group are planning, and maneuvering to get Auda to help, Lawrence says that Auda serves the Turks, who pay him to leave them alone, because 'the servant takes money'. From there, as I recall, Auda is enraged. He jumps to his feet and, half-crouched with one fist clenched says "I am Auda abu Tayi!" Turns to his closest tribesmen, "Does Auda serve?" They all cry no and he turns to the rest of the men outside, yells "Does Auda abu Tayi serve?" and all cry no. Then he turns to Lawrence and says:
"I bear twenty-three great wounds on my body, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I slain with my own hands, all in battle. I kill my enemies, burn their tents and scatter their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden ransom every month and yet I am poor. For I am a river to my people", this last to great cheering from his tribe.
It's a beautiful scene, to my mind possibly the best in the movie. Auda is absolutely enraged at the idea that he might serve anyone short of God; he is the tribes' head, and to him there is no one above him but God.
If you've never seen the movie, you should.
They've just finished eating and are discussing what Lawrece's group are planning, and maneuvering to get Auda to help, Lawrence says that Auda serves the Turks, who pay him to leave them alone, because 'the servant takes money'. From there, as I recall, Auda is enraged. He jumps to his feet and, half-crouched with one fist clenched says "I am Auda abu Tayi!" Turns to his closest tribesmen, "Does Auda serve?" They all cry no and he turns to the rest of the men outside, yells "Does Auda abu Tayi serve?" and all cry no. Then he turns to Lawrence and says:
"I bear twenty-three great wounds on my body, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I slain with my own hands, all in battle. I kill my enemies, burn their tents and scatter their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden ransom every month and yet I am poor. For I am a river to my people", this last to great cheering from his tribe.
It's a beautiful scene, to my mind possibly the best in the movie. Auda is absolutely enraged at the idea that he might serve anyone short of God; he is the tribes' head, and to him there is no one above him but God.
If you've never seen the movie, you should.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Flea market report
Ok, Xavier has the pawn shop circuit, so on occasion I'll cover flea markets.
There's a big one over in Midwest city called Mary's Swap Meet, went over there this morning. Today was a good day, found
1. A pair of 30-round M1 Carbine magazines for a friend,
2. A WWII or just after side-opening .50 caliber ammo can and
3. A bucket of lead.
The magazines showed no rust, and if I'm not mistaken they were the version made for the M2 select-fire carbine. The ammo can was a prize; no visible rust, and the seal is in halfway decent condition. Most of these have some rust and the seals are completely dried out or missing. The bucket was full of mostly wheel weights, a few 3, 4 & 5oz sinkers and a big chunk that looks like was dumped out of a pot after it cooled with some wheel weight clips stuck in it. I'm guessing about fifty pounds total for $5. Very good. Except for carrying the heavy damn thing halfway across the market and out to the truck; I'm surprised the bucket didn't break or the bail pull out.
Did a little forging this afternoon(very little as it turned out; a few light pieces only because my elbow didn't like hammering today) and after that got out the pot and started melting weights and casting them into ingots. I've got one of the Lee ingot molds that throws two 1lb and two 1/2lb ingots. When all was done,
27 1lb ingots and 26 1/2lb with one about 1/4 lb; total about 40 pounds. And I haven't started on the big chunk yet, I'll probably have to use the torch to melt it into the pot a section at a time; I'm guessing it's about 15-20 pounds.
That's not the most I ever found there; one day found 5-gallon bucket of assorted lead, worked out to about 75 pounds, a mix of wheel weights, battery cable ends and-prize of all- a bunch of stained-glass window channel, pure lead.
So today was indeed a good day there.
By the way, it's no damn fun carrying something like that with a bum foot. I was originally going to go to Muskogee today with friends, but begged off because of crap needed to do and having trouble walking. I know, going to the market wasn't the best idea. And I'm paying for it now.
There's a big one over in Midwest city called Mary's Swap Meet, went over there this morning. Today was a good day, found
1. A pair of 30-round M1 Carbine magazines for a friend,
2. A WWII or just after side-opening .50 caliber ammo can and
3. A bucket of lead.
The magazines showed no rust, and if I'm not mistaken they were the version made for the M2 select-fire carbine. The ammo can was a prize; no visible rust, and the seal is in halfway decent condition. Most of these have some rust and the seals are completely dried out or missing. The bucket was full of mostly wheel weights, a few 3, 4 & 5oz sinkers and a big chunk that looks like was dumped out of a pot after it cooled with some wheel weight clips stuck in it. I'm guessing about fifty pounds total for $5. Very good. Except for carrying the heavy damn thing halfway across the market and out to the truck; I'm surprised the bucket didn't break or the bail pull out.
Did a little forging this afternoon(very little as it turned out; a few light pieces only because my elbow didn't like hammering today) and after that got out the pot and started melting weights and casting them into ingots. I've got one of the Lee ingot molds that throws two 1lb and two 1/2lb ingots. When all was done,
27 1lb ingots and 26 1/2lb with one about 1/4 lb; total about 40 pounds. And I haven't started on the big chunk yet, I'll probably have to use the torch to melt it into the pot a section at a time; I'm guessing it's about 15-20 pounds.
That's not the most I ever found there; one day found 5-gallon bucket of assorted lead, worked out to about 75 pounds, a mix of wheel weights, battery cable ends and-prize of all- a bunch of stained-glass window channel, pure lead.
So today was indeed a good day there.
By the way, it's no damn fun carrying something like that with a bum foot. I was originally going to go to Muskogee today with friends, but begged off because of crap needed to do and having trouble walking. I know, going to the market wasn't the best idea. And I'm paying for it now.
Friday, May 26, 2006
I started to write on this this morning,
but by the time I finished beating out letters to congresscritters, I had to go to work. I was also too damn mad to do it then.
This being the abortion of a 'border security and immigration bill' that those smirking idiots in the Senate passed.
Now, not only do illegal aliens get a pass on various felony crimes that would put you or I in jail; not only does it give amnesty to illegals who've been here a while(and I don't care how much the assholes don't like the word, that's EXACTLY what it is); thanks to those two extra-sorry shits Dodd and Specter, we would have to 'consult' with the friggin' GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO before we could build a god-cursed FENCE on our OWN DAMN BORDER.
Screw politeness, screw nice, these bastards should be removed from office for acting against the interests of the United States and violating the oath they've taken- more than once.
God-DAMMIT I'm tired of this crap.
This being the abortion of a 'border security and immigration bill' that those smirking idiots in the Senate passed.
Now, not only do illegal aliens get a pass on various felony crimes that would put you or I in jail; not only does it give amnesty to illegals who've been here a while(and I don't care how much the assholes don't like the word, that's EXACTLY what it is); thanks to those two extra-sorry shits Dodd and Specter, we would have to 'consult' with the friggin' GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO before we could build a god-cursed FENCE on our OWN DAMN BORDER.
Screw politeness, screw nice, these bastards should be removed from office for acting against the interests of the United States and violating the oath they've taken- more than once.
God-DAMMIT I'm tired of this crap.
I just LOVE doing things like this
Decided to get some dies and some .284 Winchester brass to resize for 7.5 Swiss.
Check Midway and find several things I need.
Find the dies; there are several, but I've had good results from them in the past so I get the Lee set.
Order the brass while I'm at it.
They ship fast, so I got the stuff in today. Joy, joy, I can load!
Except...
Remember those dies? I forgot something: you need to run the .284 brass through a full-length resizing die like this set the first time because you need to both resize the neck and set the shoulders back just a touch. So now I have to 1. send the neck-sizing dies back and exchange for the full-length set(not a problem; Midway is very good on customer service) or b: keep the neck-sizer and order a full-length set, using the full-length die for new .284 brass and the neck-sizer thereafter.
I repeat: I just LOVE doing stuff like this.
Check Midway and find several things I need.
Find the dies; there are several, but I've had good results from them in the past so I get the Lee set.
Order the brass while I'm at it.
They ship fast, so I got the stuff in today. Joy, joy, I can load!
Except...
Remember those dies? I forgot something: you need to run the .284 brass through a full-length resizing die like this set the first time because you need to both resize the neck and set the shoulders back just a touch. So now I have to 1. send the neck-sizing dies back and exchange for the full-length set(not a problem; Midway is very good on customer service) or b: keep the neck-sizer and order a full-length set, using the full-length die for new .284 brass and the neck-sizer thereafter.
I repeat: I just LOVE doing stuff like this.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Buttpack carry
Or fannypack to use the more polite term. Especially in hot weather, it can be one of the best ways to carry a sidearm, but you've got to pick the right one.
'Right one' covers a lot of things. Size, color, and method of draw. Size, big enough to carry your piece and your wallet and/or phone and/or makeup(for the ladies, dammit, shut up) and keys or whatever. And you should use it for things other than your gun; that makes it a bag with stuff in it as opposed to a mostly empty bag that looks kind of heavy. Color because some styles, in the standard black, look like a gun-carrier; change it to yellow or brown or blue and it looks less like one.
Method of draw is what originally made me think seriously on this. I had a small pack I used for a couple of years; the main compartment fit a model 36 snubnose nicely, the smaller pocket carried my wallet & keys. But it was not a gun bag, just a small buttpack, so to get to the weapon you had to grab the zipper pull and pull it all the way across and then reach inside. This came forcefully to mind one evening when a friend and I were going into a bookstore. About halfway across the parking lot a guy started walking toward us. Specifically toward us, not past or near. Without really thinking about it I shifted my angle to put myself between him and my friend and scanned to see if there was anyone else(there wasn't) and, in the midst of this, realized that he was close enough that if he did attack, there was no damn way I could get to the piece before he reached us. Which kicked my mind into 'prepare for combat' mode, which means my body position shifted and I also thought about, if necessary, grabbing my knife(CRKT folder with the clip hooked over my pocket; unopened it stuck out just a touch beyond the outside of my fist, good to strike with). Turned out he was just a panhandler, but this is one of those 'maybe' situations. Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn't; maybe he had other plans but saw the change in my position/movements and changed his mind; who knows?
What I do know is I stopped carrying my piece in that bag, it was just too hard to get to it if you needed it fast. I found a new one. It's bigger(both good & bad), it's brown, it has a holster inside that's held in place with velcro, and the gun compartment has a zipper that runs almost all the way around with a pull tab on the outside on both left & right top corner; set it up for either left- or right-hand draw and you can grab the tab & pull to open it, exposing the grip for your draw. Much faster, and with a good bag of this design it doesn't stand out as a weapon carrier.
One of the things I like about it is that the holster can be set to hold the pistol right-side up or upside-down. May sound strange, but for my manner of carry I prefer the pistols upside-down in a bag like this. I don't like carrying it in front, it's uncomfortable and gets in the way when walking. With it in back, if the piece is right-side up I have to turn my hand palm-backward to draw, with the piece upside-down it's unzip/grab/draw without the twist.
Those are my thoughts on the matter, and how it works for me.
'Right one' covers a lot of things. Size, color, and method of draw. Size, big enough to carry your piece and your wallet and/or phone and/or makeup(for the ladies, dammit, shut up) and keys or whatever. And you should use it for things other than your gun; that makes it a bag with stuff in it as opposed to a mostly empty bag that looks kind of heavy. Color because some styles, in the standard black, look like a gun-carrier; change it to yellow or brown or blue and it looks less like one.
Method of draw is what originally made me think seriously on this. I had a small pack I used for a couple of years; the main compartment fit a model 36 snubnose nicely, the smaller pocket carried my wallet & keys. But it was not a gun bag, just a small buttpack, so to get to the weapon you had to grab the zipper pull and pull it all the way across and then reach inside. This came forcefully to mind one evening when a friend and I were going into a bookstore. About halfway across the parking lot a guy started walking toward us. Specifically toward us, not past or near. Without really thinking about it I shifted my angle to put myself between him and my friend and scanned to see if there was anyone else(there wasn't) and, in the midst of this, realized that he was close enough that if he did attack, there was no damn way I could get to the piece before he reached us. Which kicked my mind into 'prepare for combat' mode, which means my body position shifted and I also thought about, if necessary, grabbing my knife(CRKT folder with the clip hooked over my pocket; unopened it stuck out just a touch beyond the outside of my fist, good to strike with). Turned out he was just a panhandler, but this is one of those 'maybe' situations. Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn't; maybe he had other plans but saw the change in my position/movements and changed his mind; who knows?
What I do know is I stopped carrying my piece in that bag, it was just too hard to get to it if you needed it fast. I found a new one. It's bigger(both good & bad), it's brown, it has a holster inside that's held in place with velcro, and the gun compartment has a zipper that runs almost all the way around with a pull tab on the outside on both left & right top corner; set it up for either left- or right-hand draw and you can grab the tab & pull to open it, exposing the grip for your draw. Much faster, and with a good bag of this design it doesn't stand out as a weapon carrier.
One of the things I like about it is that the holster can be set to hold the pistol right-side up or upside-down. May sound strange, but for my manner of carry I prefer the pistols upside-down in a bag like this. I don't like carrying it in front, it's uncomfortable and gets in the way when walking. With it in back, if the piece is right-side up I have to turn my hand palm-backward to draw, with the piece upside-down it's unzip/grab/draw without the twist.
Those are my thoughts on the matter, and how it works for me.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Experiment: results to follow
One more reason I like gun shows
All the bits & pieces you can find. At the one last weekend there was a man with a table covered with a mix of crap and actual usable stuff. Scope bases, rings, parts thereof among others. Which gave me an idea.
I've been wanting to try putting a red-dot on an AK on a forward mount like the Ultimak. However, I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks on one before finding out a: if I like the setup and b: if the rifle would be accurate enough to make it worthwhile. I've fired this one before and had less than amazing results: at 100 yards it remided me more of a 'pattern' than a group(See, Gerry, it happens to me too! Damn grav anomolies). I couldn't be certain if it was that the rifle needed work/was hopeless, or the sights. That short sight radius with the very basic post & notch, with my eyes anymore, is not the greatest aid to accurate shooting.
On the table, among other things I picked up, was a beat-up old B-Square scope mount for some handgun. Too long, but it could be cut down in length, and messing with this would be easier than some of the other ideas I came up with. And, everything on the table was $1. Yes, that's right, one lonely dollar, so step right up! Lay down your money an- ahem- sorry 'bout that. So it and some rings & stuff went with me.
Finally got a chance to mess with it this evening. Cut to length, cleaned up the ends, had to spread it open a bit so it would fit onto the gas tube, and voila!
or however you spell it. Little closer view:
Seems pretty solid, and from just aiming & dry-firing I think I like it. It won't co-witness the iron sights, but that's not a big concern. If the light's good enough to use them, it has enough gap between the tube and the bottom of the base that I can squinch down to the usual position for this thing and see the irons. I should be able to take it to the range soon to sight in & try it out, so we'll see how well it works.
All the bits & pieces you can find. At the one last weekend there was a man with a table covered with a mix of crap and actual usable stuff. Scope bases, rings, parts thereof among others. Which gave me an idea.
I've been wanting to try putting a red-dot on an AK on a forward mount like the Ultimak. However, I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks on one before finding out a: if I like the setup and b: if the rifle would be accurate enough to make it worthwhile. I've fired this one before and had less than amazing results: at 100 yards it remided me more of a 'pattern' than a group(See, Gerry, it happens to me too! Damn grav anomolies). I couldn't be certain if it was that the rifle needed work/was hopeless, or the sights. That short sight radius with the very basic post & notch, with my eyes anymore, is not the greatest aid to accurate shooting.
On the table, among other things I picked up, was a beat-up old B-Square scope mount for some handgun. Too long, but it could be cut down in length, and messing with this would be easier than some of the other ideas I came up with. And, everything on the table was $1. Yes, that's right, one lonely dollar, so step right up! Lay down your money an- ahem- sorry 'bout that. So it and some rings & stuff went with me.
Finally got a chance to mess with it this evening. Cut to length, cleaned up the ends, had to spread it open a bit so it would fit onto the gas tube, and voila!
or however you spell it. Little closer view:
Seems pretty solid, and from just aiming & dry-firing I think I like it. It won't co-witness the iron sights, but that's not a big concern. If the light's good enough to use them, it has enough gap between the tube and the bottom of the base that I can squinch down to the usual position for this thing and see the irons. I should be able to take it to the range soon to sight in & try it out, so we'll see how well it works.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
This just in: Seattle plays Humpty-Dumpty
as in 'words mean what we say they do'. Ok, ok, people have noted this before, but this crap demands to be written about.
'Racism' is the believe that some race is inherently inferior/superior to others. What is the People's Republic of Seattle teaching now?
"Cultural Racism:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers."
Get all that? Only whites can be racist; teaching a kid to be a self-reliant individual is 'racist'; and they've added music in there, too! And what the HELL is 'having a future time orientation' and what does it have to do with 'racism', except in their addled little minds? Oh, and thinking that the English language shouldn't have 'different forms'(Ebonics, anyone?) is racist, too.
Jeez, nobody but a left-wing socialist racist could believe this crap.
Got the definition at Cam Edwards place
'Racism' is the believe that some race is inherently inferior/superior to others. What is the People's Republic of Seattle teaching now?
"Cultural Racism:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers."
Get all that? Only whites can be racist; teaching a kid to be a self-reliant individual is 'racist'; and they've added music in there, too! And what the HELL is 'having a future time orientation' and what does it have to do with 'racism', except in their addled little minds? Oh, and thinking that the English language shouldn't have 'different forms'(Ebonics, anyone?) is racist, too.
Jeez, nobody but a left-wing socialist racist could believe this crap.
Got the definition at Cam Edwards place
Monday, May 22, 2006
Idiot/craven/lying/etc. politicians, part, uh,
I've lost track.
In this particular case, Bloomberg, GFW mayor of New York 'effin City. Having just had his little "Let us get together and ban guns" conference, and having announced his 'sting' operation, over at Uncles' we find that
His bullshit 'sting' screwed up some actual criminal investigations, which may well- and SHOULD- get both him and his buttmonkeys in some real legal trouble(seems they may have actually violated the law as well as screwing up real LE investigations), and
so far, it appears that the shops may not have broken the law: ""It's the same scenario repeated many, many, many times," Farmer said. "Husbands buy guns for their wives, boyfriends buy for their girlfriends, fathers buy for their daughters."
and
"The woman filled out papers registering the sale and signed a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declaration saying she was the buyer and buying for someone else, he said.
Men routinely advise women on what guns to buy, Mickalis said, adding "I think they were specifically sent here to create a lawsuit."
Gee, you think maybe?
So we've got people doing things for Bloomberg that were quite possibly violations of law and that appear to have been falsely reported to say the shops were breaking the law. So besides the possible criminal violations, would falsely accusing some store owner/personnel of breaking the law be something they could take him to civil court for? As is 'sue the city of NY's collective ass off?'
If the bastard did this to me, I'd damn sure be talking to a lawyer about it.
In this particular case, Bloomberg, GFW mayor of New York 'effin City. Having just had his little "Let us get together and ban guns" conference, and having announced his 'sting' operation, over at Uncles' we find that
His bullshit 'sting' screwed up some actual criminal investigations, which may well- and SHOULD- get both him and his buttmonkeys in some real legal trouble(seems they may have actually violated the law as well as screwing up real LE investigations), and
so far, it appears that the shops may not have broken the law: ""It's the same scenario repeated many, many, many times," Farmer said. "Husbands buy guns for their wives, boyfriends buy for their girlfriends, fathers buy for their daughters."
and
"The woman filled out papers registering the sale and signed a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declaration saying she was the buyer and buying for someone else, he said.
Men routinely advise women on what guns to buy, Mickalis said, adding "I think they were specifically sent here to create a lawsuit."
Gee, you think maybe?
So we've got people doing things for Bloomberg that were quite possibly violations of law and that appear to have been falsely reported to say the shops were breaking the law. So besides the possible criminal violations, would falsely accusing some store owner/personnel of breaking the law be something they could take him to civil court for? As is 'sue the city of NY's collective ass off?'
If the bastard did this to me, I'd damn sure be talking to a lawyer about it.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
"Lines I'd like to hear"
Over at LawDog, including:
"Oh, my God, Mr. President, the Alien Overlords crashed a family reunion somewhere in Southwest Louisiana. Early reports indicate that the Conquerers of 10,000 Worlds made, and I quote: 'A damn fine jambalaya.' Unquote."
"Okay, so the house told us to GET OUT. Set off the napalm, darling."
"Instead of sneaking around a vampire infested house after dark, why don't we blow the place with dynamite at noon?"
And I'd like to add, "I am the great vampire- what is this 'magnesium' you speak of?"
"Oh, my God, Mr. President, the Alien Overlords crashed a family reunion somewhere in Southwest Louisiana. Early reports indicate that the Conquerers of 10,000 Worlds made, and I quote: 'A damn fine jambalaya.' Unquote."
"Okay, so the house told us to GET OUT. Set off the napalm, darling."
"Instead of sneaking around a vampire infested house after dark, why don't we blow the place with dynamite at noon?"
And I'd like to add, "I am the great vampire- what is this 'magnesium' you speak of?"
Ref the current idiocy in NO
Specifically the reelection of that incompetent guilty-of-manslaughter-through-negligence Nagin, I now officially say Screw New Orleans. Not in a good way.
Let's see, they bus people back to NO to vote, even though many of them had said they weren't moving back, etc., etc., from what I've heard LA politics in action. Pull the plug and drain that swamp.
Better yet, let it go BACK to swamp. A nice, productive, good-for-the-wildlife swamp with gators and water moccasins and so forth breeding again. And since those idiot levees- you know, the vitally-important ones they're building/repairing with ground up houses?- won't be needed anymore, some part of the Mississippi can go back to dumping silt where it belongs and building the Delta up.
About the ground-up houses: a while back I read a book called 'Rising Tide' by John Barry, about the monstrous floods along the Mississippi in 1927. There was a section talking about how levees were designed and built, and they were very careful to keep any wood- limbs, lumber scraps, whatever- out of the construction. They knew the stuff would rot and leave a weak spot in the levee, so fill brought in was inspected, including as it was added to the levee, to spot and remove anything of the type. And now these idiots are using ground-up houses, wood and sheetrock and metals(including all kinds of toxic-to-the-environment stuff) to build levees. I repeat, screw NO, let it go back to a nice, hunting & fishing-friendly swamp.
Also, for a different look at FEMA and their response, check out these comments at the LawDog, specifically the one from Thunder. I admit, I always expect things to get screwed up when some government agency is involved, but the some of the crap I heard about FEMA didn't make a whole lot of sense. Unless, of course, people wanted someone to blame(in particular, someone connected somehow with Bush). As I commented about Day Quayle, if you've got that many people looking for any/everything you do that can be used against you, Einstein will end up looking like an idiot and Mother Teresa like a runaway Nazi camp guard.
Enough of this crap. I had a nice day with my daughter, and I refuse to let a bunch of idiots in NO mess it up.
Let's see, they bus people back to NO to vote, even though many of them had said they weren't moving back, etc., etc., from what I've heard LA politics in action. Pull the plug and drain that swamp.
Better yet, let it go BACK to swamp. A nice, productive, good-for-the-wildlife swamp with gators and water moccasins and so forth breeding again. And since those idiot levees- you know, the vitally-important ones they're building/repairing with ground up houses?- won't be needed anymore, some part of the Mississippi can go back to dumping silt where it belongs and building the Delta up.
About the ground-up houses: a while back I read a book called 'Rising Tide' by John Barry, about the monstrous floods along the Mississippi in 1927. There was a section talking about how levees were designed and built, and they were very careful to keep any wood- limbs, lumber scraps, whatever- out of the construction. They knew the stuff would rot and leave a weak spot in the levee, so fill brought in was inspected, including as it was added to the levee, to spot and remove anything of the type. And now these idiots are using ground-up houses, wood and sheetrock and metals(including all kinds of toxic-to-the-environment stuff) to build levees. I repeat, screw NO, let it go back to a nice, hunting & fishing-friendly swamp.
Also, for a different look at FEMA and their response, check out these comments at the LawDog, specifically the one from Thunder. I admit, I always expect things to get screwed up when some government agency is involved, but the some of the crap I heard about FEMA didn't make a whole lot of sense. Unless, of course, people wanted someone to blame(in particular, someone connected somehow with Bush). As I commented about Day Quayle, if you've got that many people looking for any/everything you do that can be used against you, Einstein will end up looking like an idiot and Mother Teresa like a runaway Nazi camp guard.
Enough of this crap. I had a nice day with my daughter, and I refuse to let a bunch of idiots in NO mess it up.
Doesn't matter how old your kids are,
they can go through .22's like a beaver through soft wood.
I took 400 rounds along today, and my daughter went through most of it. She'd have gone through all of it if a: her hands hadn't tired out and b: I hadn't left the red-dot on the Trailside turned on and run the !**^%#! battery down. In the past, with daughter and son both along, we've gone through more than a brick along with some other stuff.
Speaking of which, I need to stick the spare in and get some replacements. Assuming I can find the spare.
It had been a while since she'd gone out to put some wear on her rifle, took her a bit to get the hang of it back. Pistol she's fired much more recently, started off pretty good there. So I need to get another brick for next time.
Ever hear some idiot newsreader tell-with Great Concern and Emphasis- how some guy must have had something bad in mind because he had an 'arsenal' of three guns and 'at least' 300 rounds of ammo? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I don't think I've got LESS THAN 4 or 500 for any firearm I own. I know I've got at least 2000 rounds of .22, because a: it comes in bricks(there's a name for a new blog, hmmmm) and b: you can go through so much of it. I just number the bricks and use them up in order.
Friend of mine was in Britain about two years ago, about the time some poor bastards were busted by the police with the aforementioned 'arsenal'. They hadn't done anything, but in New Socialist Nanny-State Britain it was assumed that there was no good reason- in the opinion of the assholes in charge- for anyone to have such a HUGE supply of arms & ammo. He said something about how stupid that was and the folks he was with asked- he having mentioned having a couple of Enfields- how much ammo he had? When they heard "About 400 rounds of .303" they were shocked; whatever would you do with such a stockpile? Apparently 'shoot it at the range and then get some more' just didn't make sense to them. Let's see, last big gunshow I got a case of 800-something rounds to feed the Mosin sniper and the M38, and a 440-round can of 8mm and the last 500-round pack of 9x18mm the dealer had. They'd have had kittens if they'd heard something like that.
Let's see, today I fired about 30 rounds of 7.5 Swiss, about the same of 8mm, about 40 of 7.62x54r, and a box of .380. Daughter went through most of 400 rounds of .22's(taking her time; nice, slow day at the range). Gee, I guess that makes us some of those 'People Who Should Be Watched' according to the bedwetters. Who can kiss my ass.
Let's see, a brick of .22... need to get some .284 brass and 7.5 dies... batteries, of course(find out where has best price)... Things to see, people to do, but at least the guns are already cleaned.
I took 400 rounds along today, and my daughter went through most of it. She'd have gone through all of it if a: her hands hadn't tired out and b: I hadn't left the red-dot on the Trailside turned on and run the !**^%#! battery down. In the past, with daughter and son both along, we've gone through more than a brick along with some other stuff.
Speaking of which, I need to stick the spare in and get some replacements. Assuming I can find the spare.
It had been a while since she'd gone out to put some wear on her rifle, took her a bit to get the hang of it back. Pistol she's fired much more recently, started off pretty good there. So I need to get another brick for next time.
Ever hear some idiot newsreader tell-with Great Concern and Emphasis- how some guy must have had something bad in mind because he had an 'arsenal' of three guns and 'at least' 300 rounds of ammo? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I don't think I've got LESS THAN 4 or 500 for any firearm I own. I know I've got at least 2000 rounds of .22, because a: it comes in bricks(there's a name for a new blog, hmmmm) and b: you can go through so much of it. I just number the bricks and use them up in order.
Friend of mine was in Britain about two years ago, about the time some poor bastards were busted by the police with the aforementioned 'arsenal'. They hadn't done anything, but in New Socialist Nanny-State Britain it was assumed that there was no good reason- in the opinion of the assholes in charge- for anyone to have such a HUGE supply of arms & ammo. He said something about how stupid that was and the folks he was with asked- he having mentioned having a couple of Enfields- how much ammo he had? When they heard "About 400 rounds of .303" they were shocked; whatever would you do with such a stockpile? Apparently 'shoot it at the range and then get some more' just didn't make sense to them. Let's see, last big gunshow I got a case of 800-something rounds to feed the Mosin sniper and the M38, and a 440-round can of 8mm and the last 500-round pack of 9x18mm the dealer had. They'd have had kittens if they'd heard something like that.
Let's see, today I fired about 30 rounds of 7.5 Swiss, about the same of 8mm, about 40 of 7.62x54r, and a box of .380. Daughter went through most of 400 rounds of .22's(taking her time; nice, slow day at the range). Gee, I guess that makes us some of those 'People Who Should Be Watched' according to the bedwetters. Who can kiss my ass.
Let's see, a brick of .22... need to get some .284 brass and 7.5 dies... batteries, of course(find out where has best price)... Things to see, people to do, but at least the guns are already cleaned.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Gun show!
This weekend. Going Saturday. Two neighbors want me to try to sell something for them. One's a Dutch Mannlicher carbine, the other's a H&R .22 revolver. The Mannlicher is mechanically great, but the bore's pretty rough. It may be like the Mauser Kim cleaned up, but I don't have the time to soak the bore. So I scrubbed it out as best I could for now. If nobody offers enough to satisfy the neighbor, I'll do that next week.
The H&R is beautiful. 7.5" barrel, .22lr and magnum cylinders, in the original box. I'm halfway tempted to see if I have enough free and buy it myself.
It turned hot here very quickly. As in from highs in the 70's to highs in the 90's in about three days. So I stuck the window unit in the bedroom for sleeping comfort. The house has central(first house I've ever had that did) and I love it, but when I can just use open windows and a fan I do; lots of times I'm in & out to the garage or yard enough it's easier on me. Thus the window unit for sleeping.
Night, all.
The H&R is beautiful. 7.5" barrel, .22lr and magnum cylinders, in the original box. I'm halfway tempted to see if I have enough free and buy it myself.
It turned hot here very quickly. As in from highs in the 70's to highs in the 90's in about three days. So I stuck the window unit in the bedroom for sleeping comfort. The house has central(first house I've ever had that did) and I love it, but when I can just use open windows and a fan I do; lots of times I'm in & out to the garage or yard enough it's easier on me. Thus the window unit for sleeping.
Night, all.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
To return for now to firearms,
a few days ago had a chance to go to the range for a little while, and tried the Trailside/red-dot combo in daylight.
This sight has 11 brightness settings. 11 gave a nice dot easily visible on a partly cloudy day. I'd wondered about that, because the sight on the borrowed .22 I wrote about was fairly dim turned all the way up.
I had some clay pigeons and one of my scope targets set up at 50 yards, and this made it easy to hit both if I did my part. The dot covered the 2" square on the paper completely, so just centered the dot on the paper. It covered the center 2-3" of the clays, making it easy to hit them. Seemed that with this gun/ammo/sight combo it's dead on at both 20 yards and 50.
I'm really liking this setup. I'm going to try to take my daughter out shooting this weekend, I'll see how she likes it.
Speaking of the Trailside, it came with their oversized pakkawood 'target' grips. Very nice, but the plastic on the basic version actually fit my hand better. I've done a bit of rasping and sanding on these, and they're much better now. More comfortable, and easier to hold on target.
Now to try a red-dot out on a rifle...
This sight has 11 brightness settings. 11 gave a nice dot easily visible on a partly cloudy day. I'd wondered about that, because the sight on the borrowed .22 I wrote about was fairly dim turned all the way up.
I had some clay pigeons and one of my scope targets set up at 50 yards, and this made it easy to hit both if I did my part. The dot covered the 2" square on the paper completely, so just centered the dot on the paper. It covered the center 2-3" of the clays, making it easy to hit them. Seemed that with this gun/ammo/sight combo it's dead on at both 20 yards and 50.
I'm really liking this setup. I'm going to try to take my daughter out shooting this weekend, I'll see how she likes it.
Speaking of the Trailside, it came with their oversized pakkawood 'target' grips. Very nice, but the plastic on the basic version actually fit my hand better. I've done a bit of rasping and sanding on these, and they're much better now. More comfortable, and easier to hold on target.
Now to try a red-dot out on a rifle...
The 'free and universal' health care in Britain
apparently doesn't apply if you're offensive. Was over at Random Nuclear Strikes and found a link to this article:
"IT IS BAD enough that you can be refused medical treatment on the NHS for eating, drinking or smoking too much. Now it seems that you can be denied an operation for protesting too much in support of your religious or political beliefs.
This tells us that 1: British hospitals are staffed with a bunch of wusses with tender feelings, 2. Universal Health Care gives the government even more control over your health than you thought, 3: socialized medicine sucks.
Those are the basics, add more as they occur to you.
"IT IS BAD enough that you can be refused medical treatment on the NHS for eating, drinking or smoking too much. Now it seems that you can be denied an operation for protesting too much in support of your religious or political beliefs.
Edward Atkinson, a 75-year-old anti-abortion activist, was jailed recently for 28 days for sending photographs of aborted foetuses to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. That draconian sentence was not deemed punishment enough: the hospital has banned Mr Atkinson from receiving the hip replacement operation he was expecting."
No physical attack, no threats to blow up the place or shave some Noble Physicians' moustache without permission. Be offensive and go to jail AND be denied medical treatment.This tells us that 1: British hospitals are staffed with a bunch of wusses with tender feelings, 2. Universal Health Care gives the government even more control over your health than you thought, 3: socialized medicine sucks.
Those are the basics, add more as they occur to you.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
More on women
My experience with them, at least. The piece I posted a couple of days ago was written under the influence of booze and a certain amount of pissed-off, and I think it needs expanding on. No, I don't disavow a word of it; just expanding.
I don't hold #2 solely responsible for the mess; the way I put it to a friend was "I made one big mistake, I married her", which pretty much covers it. We went together for a little over two years before we married, and the warning signs were there, which is where my big mistake came in. She lied about having worked it out about #1 wife, and I let- or made- myself believe it.
Ever wanted something to work so bad that you didn't listen to that little voice in the back of your head? Not the one telling you to stay home and clean the guns, the other one. Said voice said to me the day before the wedding(and a time or two before) "This is not the best idea you ever had, and you shouldn't oughta do it", and I told it to shut up and ignored it. I really, really cared for her; I wanted her to have worked her jealousy out, I wanted it to work so bad I let her lie to me about it, I wanted it so badly I ignored my own knowledge of where this was liable to go. I never said I was all that smart.
And I ignored hints she'd thrown out before about my smithing and hunting. Mind you, being female she probably thought she was making blunt statements where all I heard was some vague mentions of the possibility of a problem somewhere down the line. This is where the 'do ALL women do this crap?' came in. I know all women don't; I've known of too many cases of it to think it's rare. In comments was brought up the saying "Men marry women hoping they never change; women marry men hoping they will", though in some cases it seems to be "planning" they will.
This whole mess led to me giving the kids a lecture that boils down to Don't expect someone to change from what they are. Barring something on the order of a religeous experience, it won't happen, and hoping it will is a path to big troubles.
Hell with it. I don't hold a grudge against Beth(#2), though occasionally a spark of pissed-off still flares up; I hope she's well. I just wish I had listened to the voice.
While back I ran across a site by a guy named John Ross, which has some real interesting columns. Some of which I wish I'd been able to read back when I was younger and single, the ones dealing with women, dating and marriage. I think he's got a lot of truth in them, which brings up a big problem for me so far as dating goes: I ain't gonna do it. Play the games.
Speaking of games, a while back there was a lady I dated who stopped answering the phone. I figured it was a case of not having the integrity or manners to say "I've changed my mind, I don't want to go out with you again". About three months after that a friend ran into a friend of the lady and asked what the hell happened; she said she didn't know, that the lady had been through a messy divorce and wasn't real stable(my word, can't remember exactly what he reported) about dating. Then about three months after that he ran into both of them, and the lady told him she'd lost her phone and didn't have my number anywhere else, and would he ask me to call her?
This was in town- he was here for a small fair and crashing at my house- so he decided to help things along and got the four of us together for a drink after the fair Saturday. It took her about half an hour to mention something along the lines of "I didn't want you to think I just stopped answering you", but really nothing beyond that. And implied she wouldn't mind me calling again. By the time it was over I was pretty sure this was a game; she didn't want to be the Bad Guy in this and it was her way of showing how really Caring and Nice she was.
Mind you, I'd liked her, and I almost called her four times. Twice I had picked up the phone and then put it down. If she'd actually given a crap about going out again she'd have been happier to see me, and would have said "Call me". Or so I think. In any case, it boils down to one reason I'm not doing too well on the dating front; I'm not going to play the damn games. Ross mentions a number of things to do to keep a woman off balance and interested, and looking back I can see how they'd work quite well. But I'm not going to do them. If I have to play games constantly to keep a woman interested, if I have to keep her off-balance to get her to go out again, Ain't Gonna Happen. All of which makes me wonder, how many women out there are demanding guys play these games, and spending nights alone because only the guys who care about screwing her and nothing else will play them? And bitching about how there are no good guys out there?
Yeah, I DO have a jaundiced view of this. Please prove me wrong.
I don't hold #2 solely responsible for the mess; the way I put it to a friend was "I made one big mistake, I married her", which pretty much covers it. We went together for a little over two years before we married, and the warning signs were there, which is where my big mistake came in. She lied about having worked it out about #1 wife, and I let- or made- myself believe it.
Ever wanted something to work so bad that you didn't listen to that little voice in the back of your head? Not the one telling you to stay home and clean the guns, the other one. Said voice said to me the day before the wedding(and a time or two before) "This is not the best idea you ever had, and you shouldn't oughta do it", and I told it to shut up and ignored it. I really, really cared for her; I wanted her to have worked her jealousy out, I wanted it to work so bad I let her lie to me about it, I wanted it so badly I ignored my own knowledge of where this was liable to go. I never said I was all that smart.
And I ignored hints she'd thrown out before about my smithing and hunting. Mind you, being female she probably thought she was making blunt statements where all I heard was some vague mentions of the possibility of a problem somewhere down the line. This is where the 'do ALL women do this crap?' came in. I know all women don't; I've known of too many cases of it to think it's rare. In comments was brought up the saying "Men marry women hoping they never change; women marry men hoping they will", though in some cases it seems to be "planning" they will.
This whole mess led to me giving the kids a lecture that boils down to Don't expect someone to change from what they are. Barring something on the order of a religeous experience, it won't happen, and hoping it will is a path to big troubles.
Hell with it. I don't hold a grudge against Beth(#2), though occasionally a spark of pissed-off still flares up; I hope she's well. I just wish I had listened to the voice.
While back I ran across a site by a guy named John Ross, which has some real interesting columns. Some of which I wish I'd been able to read back when I was younger and single, the ones dealing with women, dating and marriage. I think he's got a lot of truth in them, which brings up a big problem for me so far as dating goes: I ain't gonna do it. Play the games.
Speaking of games, a while back there was a lady I dated who stopped answering the phone. I figured it was a case of not having the integrity or manners to say "I've changed my mind, I don't want to go out with you again". About three months after that a friend ran into a friend of the lady and asked what the hell happened; she said she didn't know, that the lady had been through a messy divorce and wasn't real stable(my word, can't remember exactly what he reported) about dating. Then about three months after that he ran into both of them, and the lady told him she'd lost her phone and didn't have my number anywhere else, and would he ask me to call her?
This was in town- he was here for a small fair and crashing at my house- so he decided to help things along and got the four of us together for a drink after the fair Saturday. It took her about half an hour to mention something along the lines of "I didn't want you to think I just stopped answering you", but really nothing beyond that. And implied she wouldn't mind me calling again. By the time it was over I was pretty sure this was a game; she didn't want to be the Bad Guy in this and it was her way of showing how really Caring and Nice she was.
Mind you, I'd liked her, and I almost called her four times. Twice I had picked up the phone and then put it down. If she'd actually given a crap about going out again she'd have been happier to see me, and would have said "Call me". Or so I think. In any case, it boils down to one reason I'm not doing too well on the dating front; I'm not going to play the damn games. Ross mentions a number of things to do to keep a woman off balance and interested, and looking back I can see how they'd work quite well. But I'm not going to do them. If I have to play games constantly to keep a woman interested, if I have to keep her off-balance to get her to go out again, Ain't Gonna Happen. All of which makes me wonder, how many women out there are demanding guys play these games, and spending nights alone because only the guys who care about screwing her and nothing else will play them? And bitching about how there are no good guys out there?
Yeah, I DO have a jaundiced view of this. Please prove me wrong.
Taking the bad taste of 'Sen. McCain' out of my mouth,
I can look out at the garden. The tomatos have blossoms, as do the sweet peppers and squash; and there's one pepper about three inches long and several little squash. The roma tomatos aren't big enough yet, having been planted just two weeks ago, and the bell peppers just developed some buds. The habanero is about six inches tall, as I recall it won't really take off until it gets hotter. I need to plant a few more cloves of garlic to fill in the holes where some didn't come up.
I thought about expanding the garden a bit this year, but considering how little time I have to work on it decided not to. Ever bit into a tomato or pepper right off the plant? Beats hell out of hothouse stuff.
Last year I lost a lot of tomatos to birds, and some peppers to both squirrels and my idiot younger dog. I think I'll cut some poles and put netting over the tomatos; the birds did more damage to the them, and aside from fence and a .22 I can't do that much about the squirrels, the dog luckily seems to have learned that grazing in the garden gets her yelled at.
I thought about expanding the garden a bit this year, but considering how little time I have to work on it decided not to. Ever bit into a tomato or pepper right off the plant? Beats hell out of hothouse stuff.
Last year I lost a lot of tomatos to birds, and some peppers to both squirrels and my idiot younger dog. I think I'll cut some poles and put netting over the tomatos; the birds did more damage to the them, and aside from fence and a .22 I can't do that much about the squirrels, the dog luckily seems to have learned that grazing in the garden gets her yelled at.
Ref John McCain(Jackass/AZ)
Kevin has his opinion up, and I second it. He includes part of the oath McCain has taken more than once:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."
This from the idiot who recently said "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government." So if we didn't know before, we damn well know now what his word is worth.
I said it before: this man is as bad or worse than Al Gore in thinking that he deserves the Oval Office as his home address, that it's owed to him; and anyone with a mindset like that can be allowed nowhere near it. And I repeat, Arizona, get that recall petition started back up.
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."
This from the idiot who recently said "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government." So if we didn't know before, we damn well know now what his word is worth.
I said it before: this man is as bad or worse than Al Gore in thinking that he deserves the Oval Office as his home address, that it's owed to him; and anyone with a mindset like that can be allowed nowhere near it. And I repeat, Arizona, get that recall petition started back up.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Flint
One of the things I make is flint & steel firekits. Whole kit is a steel striker, a good flake of flint, some charcloth to catch the spark and a tin to keep it in. No problem to make except for the flint. Which you don't make, you find. And you need good enough quality flint that it'll strike a spark from the steel without breaking.
Lots of places to find flint(depending on where you are), and you can order the stuff. Dixie Gun Works carries both a bag of good flakes and flint nodules so you can try your hand at knapping. But I'd always wanted to go out and find some nodules and knock off my own flakes. No luck so far.
Then at Medieval Fair a gentleman came by to get a couple of strikers; said he'd lost the ones he got last year. Talked for a bit and found that he's an archeologist(retired) who knaps flint as a hobby and as a teacher for students at OU. When I mentioned I was about out of flint he said he had some pieces I could have.
So the other day finally got time to go by his place and get some. And he threw in a short lesson on flint knapping, and a short lecture on where in the state I could find some if I had a chance to go looking for it.
I'd bought a nodule from Dixie once before and tried knocking off flakes with, let us say, not the best of results. With a good hammerstone and his demonstration, earlier today I took one of the chunks and knocked off a number of good, usable flakes(as opposed to my earlier success in turning a flint nodule into sharp-edged gravel).
I get time I want to mess with this some more; try making some knives and arrowheads. Good flint or obsidian is brittle, but a flake can be unbelievably sharp. We're talking 'feel a tug and notice blood' sharp. Matter of fact, I've read that eye surgeons are using scalpel blades cut and polished from obsidian; the edge is smoother and sharper than steel, it can actually cut cells without tearing the edge is so fine.
He bet me a striker that within three months I'd want more flint to work on, said it's addictive. I need to make him a couple.
Lots of places to find flint(depending on where you are), and you can order the stuff. Dixie Gun Works carries both a bag of good flakes and flint nodules so you can try your hand at knapping. But I'd always wanted to go out and find some nodules and knock off my own flakes. No luck so far.
Then at Medieval Fair a gentleman came by to get a couple of strikers; said he'd lost the ones he got last year. Talked for a bit and found that he's an archeologist(retired) who knaps flint as a hobby and as a teacher for students at OU. When I mentioned I was about out of flint he said he had some pieces I could have.
So the other day finally got time to go by his place and get some. And he threw in a short lesson on flint knapping, and a short lecture on where in the state I could find some if I had a chance to go looking for it.
I'd bought a nodule from Dixie once before and tried knocking off flakes with, let us say, not the best of results. With a good hammerstone and his demonstration, earlier today I took one of the chunks and knocked off a number of good, usable flakes(as opposed to my earlier success in turning a flint nodule into sharp-edged gravel).
I get time I want to mess with this some more; try making some knives and arrowheads. Good flint or obsidian is brittle, but a flake can be unbelievably sharp. We're talking 'feel a tug and notice blood' sharp. Matter of fact, I've read that eye surgeons are using scalpel blades cut and polished from obsidian; the edge is smoother and sharper than steel, it can actually cut cells without tearing the edge is so fine.
He bet me a striker that within three months I'd want more flint to work on, said it's addictive. I need to make him a couple.
Carnival of Cordite #59
At Gullyborg. Actually up the other day, but being the organized sort I am, I'm just getting this up now.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Remember I mentioned K31's might be running out?
I just looked at the AIM site and they're not there anymore. The K31's, I mean.
And I'll wonder, did I have anything to do with maybe speeding up the disappearance? I'll never know.
And yes, I have been drinking. Just a little. And now I'm going to bed.
And I'll wonder, did I have anything to do with maybe speeding up the disappearance? I'll never know.
And yes, I have been drinking. Just a little. And now I'm going to bed.
Conversing with Og got me thinking about some things,
and sitting here having had a drink(ok, three), I have a question for the ladies out there who might read this: do most women want to change a guy they like, or is it just some of them? I don't mean "Stop leaving your underwear in the living room" or "Will you please stop telling Denise "I've got a little list, they'll not be missed"? I have to work with her, you know!" I mean big stuff, things that are important to you.
Once, a long time ago, I wrote about my second marriage and how it went down the drain. Two biggest factors in it; 1. I got along with my ex on friendly terms and 2. I forge.
As to the first, we went round & round on this once before the marriage question came up. Didn't matter if she was pissed about it or not, the ex and I had two kids- who were little at the time- and I was going to try to stay on friendly terms with her if for no other reason than to ease things on the kids. Went over it again when I asked her to marry and she assured me that she could deal with it.
On 2, she really liked the admiration and respect I had for my smithing, the blades in particular. One weekend she went with me to Texas to a Celtic Heritage festival and really enjoyed it, with the one exception being her mention of the fact that I smelled of coal smoke at the end of the day. I replied that that was what showers and washing machines were for and nothing else was said(no, I did not pick up the subtle female signs that she was pissed about it).
After the wedding(not immediately, but within a month) two things happened. First, she started getting really jumpy- sometimes nasty- about me talking to my ex about the kids. Second, she made it clear that although she hadn't really said so before, I really needed to get rid of the forge as the noise and smell didn't fit into the neighborhood I now lived in.
You can guess how this crap went. Especially after one somewhat memorable occasion when she informed me that the solution to needing to talk to my ex about the kids was to take her to court, get custody of the kids and not allow her visitation: "Then you won't ever need to speak to her!"
Can you imagine telling a judge that the mother should lose custody- and no visitation- because your new wife doesn't like her? My first thought was that any jurist with three working brain cells would say "Bailiff? Kick that man three times around the courtroom and throw him out of here for bringing such idiocy in here", and I'd agree with him. Second thought, can you imagine putting two kids through a shitstorm like that?
And the other, she KNEW that I planned on smithing for years to come. Not on a daily basis(had never had that) but when time & weather allowed. And now she made it plain that I needed to give it up.
Note: I really am clueless about some things. One evening she was bitching about my ex and, noting that one thing they did share was stubborn, I commented that one of the things that made this difficult was that in some ways they were much alike. Yes, I should have thought about that before saying that. No, I didn't realize how it would go over. Oh yeah, that really brought out joy in the evening.
The fact that I write about my second ex covers what happened in the end(those two things weren't the only factors, but they were big ones). And no dating since has gone on long enough for the 'changing you' factor to come out if it would have.
Well, ladies?
Once, a long time ago, I wrote about my second marriage and how it went down the drain. Two biggest factors in it; 1. I got along with my ex on friendly terms and 2. I forge.
As to the first, we went round & round on this once before the marriage question came up. Didn't matter if she was pissed about it or not, the ex and I had two kids- who were little at the time- and I was going to try to stay on friendly terms with her if for no other reason than to ease things on the kids. Went over it again when I asked her to marry and she assured me that she could deal with it.
On 2, she really liked the admiration and respect I had for my smithing, the blades in particular. One weekend she went with me to Texas to a Celtic Heritage festival and really enjoyed it, with the one exception being her mention of the fact that I smelled of coal smoke at the end of the day. I replied that that was what showers and washing machines were for and nothing else was said(no, I did not pick up the subtle female signs that she was pissed about it).
After the wedding(not immediately, but within a month) two things happened. First, she started getting really jumpy- sometimes nasty- about me talking to my ex about the kids. Second, she made it clear that although she hadn't really said so before, I really needed to get rid of the forge as the noise and smell didn't fit into the neighborhood I now lived in.
You can guess how this crap went. Especially after one somewhat memorable occasion when she informed me that the solution to needing to talk to my ex about the kids was to take her to court, get custody of the kids and not allow her visitation: "Then you won't ever need to speak to her!"
Can you imagine telling a judge that the mother should lose custody- and no visitation- because your new wife doesn't like her? My first thought was that any jurist with three working brain cells would say "Bailiff? Kick that man three times around the courtroom and throw him out of here for bringing such idiocy in here", and I'd agree with him. Second thought, can you imagine putting two kids through a shitstorm like that?
And the other, she KNEW that I planned on smithing for years to come. Not on a daily basis(had never had that) but when time & weather allowed. And now she made it plain that I needed to give it up.
Note: I really am clueless about some things. One evening she was bitching about my ex and, noting that one thing they did share was stubborn, I commented that one of the things that made this difficult was that in some ways they were much alike. Yes, I should have thought about that before saying that. No, I didn't realize how it would go over. Oh yeah, that really brought out joy in the evening.
The fact that I write about my second ex covers what happened in the end(those two things weren't the only factors, but they were big ones). And no dating since has gone on long enough for the 'changing you' factor to come out if it would have.
Well, ladies?
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