Poverty is Relative

Whether one is poor or not is sometimes hard to determine. Not too many years ago, I bought a 50 lbs bag of barley for 8 bucks and change, which could have fed a family for several days in a pinch. At the same time, I paid for a burger, fries and drink about the same.

Normal people can't live on foodstamps, but if you ate a la 19th century you could and bank the rest.

VDH from his Works and Days:

The Great Disconnect

For all the holiday depression with the state of the world, there is great munificence and affluence around the globe, and especially here in the United States that have brought us a long way, for both good and evil, from our primordial existence of even the immediate past.

Part of the pre-January rhetoric of the Democrats is the notion of great inequality. Yet despite the budget deficits, the piling up of national debt, and amid the doom and gloom of the vast amount of US capital held by Chinese, or oil payouts to the Arabs, or a declining standard of education, there are signs of American wealth never seen before among any civilization on earth.

I live in one of the poorest sections of one of the poorer counties in California, but consider: there were near riots to get the latest PlayStation 3 video games nearby. I was looking at a 4-wheel drive truck recently, and passed up all the “extras” offered by the salesman—leather seats, GPS, DVD player, extra chrome, multiplayer CD—but that extravagant Toyota Tundra was snapped up by a family on welfare in the booth next to me. With a zero-interest loan package, and no money down, apparently almost anyone can walk into a showroom and drive out with a $40,000 monster-sized truck.

Then I drove into the local shopping center and walked through Office Max, Wal-Mart, and Food4Less where there were more signs of America’s new encompassing wealth. There were new Camrys and Accords all over the parking lot, nearly everyone was on a cell phone. Nearly everyone was also speaking Spanish and no doubt a first generation immigrant (legal or not from Mexico). But in terms of traditional notions of poverty and the ability to acquire material goods, food, communications gear, transportation, etc. they were hardly poor.

Perhaps this new prosperity that encompasses almost all social classes in America is due to the miracle of science that now gives us such cheap appurtenances, or the addition of 1 billion Indian and Chinese fabricators to the world’s work force that results in endless consumer goods; or the ability of low interest and almost universal instant credit.

We are not talking of European vacations, second homes, or SAT camps for junior, but nonetheless there is something very different from the past that I remember when the poor nearby lacked indoor plumbing and at school in the early 1960s students ate thirds and fourths at our noon meal of barely edible surplus cafeteria food. Surely something has gone right in eliminating elemental poverty that we never hear in the din of constant accusations and complaints about American inequality.

This summer I bought on sale an old-style color television, 32-inch screen (the kind with the big tube in the back and curved front) for about $130. A decade ago it would have cost $500. The surprise was that the clerk laughed about what he thought was the idiocy of wanting one of these now obsolete, but perfectly fine, televisions. He probably made about $10 an hour, but would never have apparently stooped to such sacrifice. Again, any discussion about this surreal world is entirely lacking in the current political debate.

A final note. I wrote about such anomalies about three years ago when I broke my arm and visited the local emergency room in Selma about three miles away. Nothing much has changed since then, which is good—however little the credit this country gets from its critics.

We also bought one of those $150 regular TVs recently, because we are waiting for the new technology to get cheaper and also new-technology sources to become more plentiful, i.e. cheaper, too. Our most recent TV before that, a WEGA, was supposedly HD ready, NOT! Lies, Lies, Lies--still a nice TV though. Next time, the TV, the DVD-follow-on, the cable, everything will be to hand BEFORE we buy.

Oh, and why was I buying a big bag of barley? To feed my family for weeks, of course, on Pilsner Beer. The 19th century---when technology peaked.

David Brin Serves Up

(Image looted from Lifeboat.com)

Dr Brin discusses the Singularity with its signposts and nightmares.

Hurrying or slowing it may be possible, but trying to do one might do the other in my opinion. He hammers on a point that always bothers me about calls from the extremes to use the coercion of government to shut off one avenue of research or another (left and right): in most stories and real life disasters it's the hidden, secret knowledge that spirals out of control and eats everyone's lunch.

I suppose you can spin anything

John Kerry went to Iraq recently after:

insulting the intelligence of the troops

meeting with enemies of the US whose minions are killing our servicemen as he chatted them up (something he's done since the 70's)--here he charms the President of Syria.

When he got to Iraq, he didn't exactly draw a crowd at breakfast:

He had to cancel a news conference to avoid an embarrassing, obviously low turn out...

Ben was there.

I bet if you read the materials coming out of the Kerry '08 Exploratory Committee, they just loved him over there and really got where he was coming from.

This may or may not be about beer

Most of the Belgium beers I like are from the Northern or Flemish part of Belgium. Maybe this is why.

Today was a wine day. I had most, or maybe all, of a bottle of my homemade white.

A Christmas Story

Long before it would have occurred to me to build a Christmas Tree out of Grolsch Beer bottles(someone beat me to it anyway), I spent a few Christmas Seasons in an All-City Boys Choir.

Twas the Singing Boys of Houston, and as Houston is a large city and there were about 75 of us boys, it must have been somewhat of a select group I was in. It was not obvious at the time to me, but it was a big deal for everyone else that I was there.

I remember people mentioning that they had listened to me/us on the radio Christmas Eve and thinking Dang, I missed us on the radio.

One year, we sang in the lobby of a large downtown bank and the manager gave us all an un-circulated silver dollar in a plastic case. We all took ours out and played with them.

I was a second soprano, and therefore stood in the middle of the choir. We sang lots of songs, but being boys we liked the ones we could really project.

So, here's to the Christmas memory of standing, surrounded by 75 boys singing a very long Gloria.

If that doesn't do it for you, how about the Nutcracker Suit performed entirely on bicycle parts?

New Blogger

OK, I finally had time to upgrade to the new Blogger software. Everything is supposed to be the same---except better. Well, everyone could use some push, I guess (Image looted from Lucianne).

There are slaves and then there are slaves

Orson Scott Card, he of many words and author of famous SF, has a new interesting polemic---more or less comparing Rome to the USA. He does it in a good way, not the usual Rome Fell, so we Fall, etc.

On the way, he falls into to usual trap of saying that slaves were at the bottom of the economic system in terms of purchasing power. Well, some slaves were at the bottom: let's say salt miners. But, for example, Egypt was owned directly by the Emperor as his own personal property---therefore it was managed by one of his slaves. Now there is a slave with purchasing power. In general, slaves could have their own money, property, etc. During certain times of the empire, slaves---at least the better sort---had more rights than freemen.

OSC's article is a good read anyway. He's definitely a post 9/11 person.

I've had a bottle of my homemade wine so I laugh at barbarian invasions.

Beer Club Buys Engine

Real Ale is a reference to naturally carbonated beer fresh from the cask. To get real ale ready requires some effort. The final product is pumped--not pushed with CO2, as in regular beer taps--with a beer engine, which the young lass above is preparing to yank on. It takes a few pumps and some wait time to pour a perfect pint.

Credit for saving real ale and beer engines and everything that goes with it can be laid at the feet of CAMRA. The lore and love of real ale is explored in this short polemic at the Beer Advocate.

Now, our homebrew club is a great club, and we hold our meetings at Ice Harbor Brewing Company, a local brewpub. They have a cask-conditioned beer every Tuesday, but carbonated and pushed by CO2, as per regular American beer. To say thanks for hosting us for our meetings and special functions (like megabrews on their equipment), we bought them a beer engine. It might just be for us, but I hope they take the hint.

Pump me a beer baby!

Weekend Blitz

I've been working a lot over the past few months, missing beer club events and shooting opportunities galore, but this weekend I got to do both---beer club Christmas party on Saturday (more about that later) and local IPSC match on Sunday. Wow, maybe it's a sign of normality returning in my life.

The only COED NCAA sport is shooting (that I'm aware of), so it's probably doomed. Her team is doing well, however. I'm sure she wears eye and ear protection when actually shooting and not posing for photos.

The attack on Christmas as opposed to The Holiday Season continues. Mark Steyn has a funny/thought-provoking take on it as per his usual. Seattle is in the lead, duh, but they come out looking better than expected, probably by accident. Accident or not, a good outcome is good.

More Gas

A few days ago, I mentioned that some coal-seam fires in China put out more CO2 than US traffic. Now, we can see that Cows put out more greenhouse gas than all combustion. This is probably a thinly disguised vegan attack on steak and hamburger.

In other news, PM has 10 tech concepts you need to know about.

I really want to swallow that smart pill next time.

OK, What Would You Do?

If you had mostly unlimited power?


A little fashion review of despots. Quaddafi really does have an all-girl troop of bodyguards. I guess these people are beyond parody, which is why, I suppose, plain ol' W gets all the attention of satirists these days.

Notes from all over

It's a question of magnitude:

Fires in underground coal mines in China consume an estimated 200 million tons of coal per year, putting some 2-3% of all man-made carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—or as much as that produced by all the cars and light trucks in the U.S. And whereas auto transportation has considerable economic value, all the pollutants from coal fires are completely and utterly useless.

Of course, to ‘global warming’ zealots the purpose of fighting ‘global warming’ isn’t to save the environment; it’s to bugger industrially-advanced nations, especially (indeed, almost exclusively) the United States.

...and no, I won't explain what "bugger" means.

Compare and contrast:
General Pinochet recently died and Castro, who he is sort of paired with, is on his death bed. Pinochet seems to be hated by many, yet he stepped down voluntarily in favor of a democracy and Chile is currently the richest in South America--even with a current socialist government. Castro is swooned over by the whole world and Cuba is a totalitarian basket case.

Deja Vu:
The Seattle school district has a racist method of deciding who can go to which school and why. They have defended it all the way to the Supreme Court. I won't link to their website, but here's a nice write-up by Sowell. I'm sure it's OK to send a white girl across town because her neighborhood school is too white. It's just not OK to do that to a black girl because, well, just because, Diversity ya know.

December 7th

A day that will live in infamy?

Fast Cancer on Demand

A little review of killing with radioactive poisons by communist leaders.

We're pretty careful with this stuff where I work. Feeding it to people is right out.

Time Out

As part of my moving towards 3-Gun or Multi-Gun shooting as part off my USPSA/IPSC hobby, I'm putting together a rifle.

I'm going for the Tactical division which lets me have one optic on the rifle, a shotgun with up to 8 shells in the magazine and a Limited class pistol. The rifle was the final component. Here's what I decided to start with:

Da rifle is a Bushmaster Varminter. Yes, I'm more concerned with my long distance shots than close in. So I've gone with a 24 inch barrel. I might add a compensator, but I want to try one with and without side by side before I add one. Yes it's a poodle-shooter .223, but I don't reload and I don't think I could afford to practice much with 6.8 SPC, 6.5 Grendal or 308 Win. I suppose once I got the lower shooting right I could add a 6.5 Grendal upper...and a long-distance scope. Hmmm, sweeeeet.

The rifle has a competition grip and trigger. I might want to add a JP trigger later, but for now I have a two-stage Bushmaster one.

The scope is a Leupold VX II 1-4x. I like the 1x cause I can keep both eyes open. Hopefully, this will translate into relatively fast close-in shots. I hope the 4x is ok for the 300 yard shots. I know it's mainly the shooter and not the scope...yeah well, maybe that's what I'm afraid of.

Oh well, I haven't been the worst one yet with a borrowed rifle. Maybe I can hide out in the middle for a while until I know what I'm doing.

I'm supposed to get two days off from work this week, so I can put it together---before I clean out the garage to get both cars in.

Take a seat

Recycled AK-47s...take a load off and lean back with the help of a magazine.

A couple o' links

Strategy Page is one of my favorite sites. It's a bunch of war gamers who look at the news feeds and rewrite them as "History."

Here's one on the uncontrolled women of Iran.

Here's one about the information war in the media.

Based on how Walter Cronkite spun the Tet victory and the almost total destruction of the Viet Cong into a defeat, we could credit old Walter with killing more Americans than Pearl Harbor and 9-11 put together by encouraging the North Viet Army---a pretty capable force. Walter used to be important, now he just works to keep electricity-generating windmills from being built off-shore of his vacation home.

An Embed Speaks

Here are the rest of the pictures from Ramadi.

Here's his report for the Daily Standard, but better on his site cause the pictures are in there along with video.

As you would expect in a static situation as our troops are exposed to in Iraq, sniping and counter-sniping are BIG. Our snipers are wining.

I've got a rifle and scope to set up as soon as I have a day off...

Family Snap

Young Saudi men in my dad's office referred to these as BMOs---for Black Moving Objects. You weren't supposed to take pictures of them over there either or the Religious Police would take your camera. However, duty-free shops in other countries used to sell cameras that pointed one way and took pictures in another.

No beer in Saudi, so I won't be visiting till civilization arrives.

No Tech Talk This Month

Well, it's early Wednesday morning and I've already worked 70 hours this week. Plus the Princess needs nursing. So I won't make the beer club meeting and won't have time to prepare a technical talk.

I barely have time to drink a beer (and only at 7 am).

No complaints though. It's tax-free week at Sportsman's Warehouse. Can you say "AR" fifteen times?

Meanwhile in Libya

If you pour three Pilsner Urquells into a liter mug, you can pretend you're somewhere else.

As our new Democratic masters settle in and go about signing death warrants for our light-dark friends in the Middle East---and probably for quite a few of us down the road---we move our gaze east where VDH is having a Libyan Holiday. You would think that a small country of six millions with all that oil would be doing well wouldn't you? Another indication that oil or any natural resource is not wealth in the modern sense.

Is it a coincidence that I have some books stacked that explore the '30s and the fruits of appeasement? Yeah, it's a coincidence---I already know what's coming for us---and I just like reading about what happened back then with some new volumes that have come out in the last decade or so.

How long is your rope?

Red Sea (Nov. 3, 2006) Explosive Ordnance Disposal 1st Class Christopher Courtney assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Six (EODMU-6), Det. 16 assist his team members during Special Purpose Insertion Extraction (SPIE) training from an SH-60 helicopter. The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) is deployed in support of Maritime Security Operations (MSO) and the global war on terrorism. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Miguel Angel Contreras

I'm pretty sure that this would exceed my limits for adventure.

Pictures R News

John Kerry was caught on tape sounding a theme that he has espoused ever since betraying our country with direct negotiations in Gay Paris with the Viet Cong and North Vietnam: that if you are stupid you will get stuck in Iraq. I guess the troops in Iraq noticed they were being dissed. Kerry cracks me up---you can go to his web site and read his "honorable" discharge, but he assumes you are too stupid to notice that the date falls in the range of the Carter amnesty and not when he actually left the navy. Oh well, I'm sure he lost his original copy.

The Democrats should assign someone to sit on Kerry for a few weeks before an election. Maybe have Mama Heinz can take him home to meet the family in Mozambique or something.

On the other hand, maybe these Marine robots will go over there and introduce themselves...

I definitely want to be behind those mofos.

Choice

So, would you like to control CO2 emissions at huge cost for uncertain benefit, or give everyone sanitary drinking water for much less?

I think future energy efficiencies will do more to cut our CO2 production before controls that don't include India and China do.

In the meantime, let's enjoy CO2 by dissolving it in beer.

Forget manning the walls...

...the enemy is already inside ;^)

Fijordman has battled PC with regard to Islamofascists for several years. I find his essays frightening and entertaining. Here just in time for Halloween is Caucasophobia.

2nd Lt, Air Force, Typical

Second Lieutenant Kelly George was selected as Miss Arkansas USA during the state pageant Oct. 28 held on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas. Lieutenant George is a resident of Sherwood, Ark., and is the deputy chief of Public Affairs for the 314th Airlift Wing at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. (Courtesy photo/Rhonda Garrett Gilliam)

From Strategy Page.

Hotel Reporters

There are reporters who get real news from Iraq, but virtually all the news you see come from tarted-up windbags who complain because their "four star" hotel is really only a two star.

Business as Usual

You may think that the Islamic Terrorism being waged against us is peculiar, but it's just business as usual.

Someday we may be ready to deal with these people in the fashion that they need to be delt with.

I'm ready now, but I'm willing to wait. Hopefully, not to wait for a sword, forged in nuclear fire---before that please.

Flavored Beers

I'm mostly a malt and hops man when it comes to beer. Yet, I can enjoy a kriek or frambozen occasionally. Wit with its bitter orange and other spices is also nice early on a hot day. Outside Belgian classics such as these it is easy to go astray.

Popularity of flavored beers can now be measured by the introduction of chocolate beers by Miller and AB.

Quirky marketing move or sign of the Apocalypse? You decide.

1974

I was only 21 in 1974, but I remember all of this.

I don't want to repeat what happened in the 30s either.

Nut Brown Ale

It's time for our monthly beer club meeting, and we are talking about a megabrew. That's what we call it when we make a brewery-sized batch of wort and parcel it out in 5 gallon carboys for fermentation into beer at home. This time we are talking Nut Brown Ale. That's Samuel Smith brewery in the picture.

Now the first thing to consider is that in England where this style originates, nut brown refers to color. The beer is not originally supposed to have nuts in it. In brewpub parlance, however, Katy bar the door! Hopefully, the club will leave the addition of flavor extracts to individual brewer taste---and the secondary fermentation at home.

From the BJCP Guide:

10B. Northern English Brown Ale

Aroma:

Restrained fruitiness; little to no hop aroma. May have a caramel aspect to the malt character.

Appearance:

Dark golden to light brown color.

Flavor:

Gentle to moderate sweetness, with a nutty character. Balance is nearly even, with hop flavor low to none. Some fruity esters should be present; low diacetyl is acceptable.

Mouthfeel:

medium-light to medium body, with a dry finish.

Overall Impression:

Drier and more hop-oriented that southern English brown ale, with a nutty character rather than caramel.

History/Comments:

English brown ales are generally split into sub-styles along geographic lines.

Ingredients:

English mild ale or pale ale malt base with caramel malts. May also have scant amounts darker malts. English hop varieties are most authentic. Moderate carbonate water.

Vital Statistics:

OG: 1.040-1.050

IBUs: 15-30 FG: 1.010-1.013

SRM: 12-30 ABV: 4-5.0%

Commercial Examples:

Newcastle Brown Ale, Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale, Adnams' Nut Brown Ale.

Newcastle Brown Ale uses maize to lighten the taste, which will be pretty typical of UK beers in general---sugar or corn. It will be difficult to get the same gravity and light taste with an all-malt beer. So, just lower the gravity to 1032-6 and call it a nut-brown mild.

A Sam Smith page.

If you want to make a big all malt nut brown, here's one, or replace a pound or two of the malt with maize.

Here's one for extracts with an awesome name.

See ya at the meeting (I hope).

Eco-Friendly

Someone from the Defense Department has helpfully drawn political boundaries on a satellite picture of the Korean peninsula in darkness. The one pool of light in the northern half is where Kim and his bestus buddies live.

I doubt this eco-friendly lack of light pollution can make up for all the burning to cook and keep warm, etc. An extortion racket blown up to country size is not pretty. Here's Kim getting all misty-eyed with a former Secretary of State:

Picture care of the Pillage Idiot.

In other news, a person was seen wearing both a Mao T-Shirt and a Free Tibet button.

Not Your Father's Thunderbird

She wears that jumper better than the guys do already.

Fun in Glock Land, Part 1

I uploaded the pictures as 1024x768, so if you click on them you can get a closer look--if you dare.

This COF start is similar to a start at Area 1, but they learned from that one and required our heels to be on the top surface. At Area 1 I was shooting Production (10 rd limit in mags, none forward of hip) so I had mags in the back that I removed. Thus, I was hanging out if I dropped a mag or other mishap. Here I was shooting Limited, so I only had mags on front and side. I faced that way to not be looking at the rising sun. Yes, I'm wearing a Glock hat. My Glock is lying loaded on the table. I suggested maybe an unloaded gun on the table and the shooter lying loaded on the bed---lucky I didn't get DQd for an alcohol joke, I guess.


I'm usually not this alert when I wake up, but it is because I was sleeping with my rose colored glasses on. The mesh walls are pretend impenetrable. Real solid walls have problems in the wind if they are not anchored real good.


Stay outta da way, she's gettin A. The Princess is in the slow and accurate phase I was in last year. It's a good phase. I probably need to go back into it myself in a while.


The pistol range is built around a cinder cone. So all the bays face into a mountain. Six bays have a covered area, which is probably a pretty good idea in that part of Oregon--but it was beautiful weather for us.

Here's a link to the stage design (it's a PDF).

From the totally cool planes department

OK, it's just a truck hauling around a radar test module for Global Hawk development, but... what a cool looking plane!

Hmmmm, smooth

Combining two of my hobbies, I'm drinking some of my kolsch beer (hoppy like it is in Koln) and looking at autoloaders on da web.

I think I need one of these. H&K doesn't seem to care much for us civilians, but they make damn fine guns.

Homeland Security picked this P2000SK as one of its chosen few.

I don't hold that against it.

How did this happen?

Holy Smoke! I got second on a stage against 75 other shooters, including a Grand Master and several Masters at the 2nd Oregon Glock-Only Championships.

Every once in a while my plan works, and this was a good example. The three steel targets were hidden behind the donut-gong. Since they were lined up and take time to fall, it was a matter of addressing the two paper targets in sequence with the poppers, starting with the first popper. They substituted a small USP at the end of the line, so it was only partially visible through the donut hole.

I shot it all with the minimum round count, so that explains why I did well, but it's a mystery why the faster shooters didn't overtake me.

Course what isn't a mystery is how I tanked on a few of the other stages, but I ended up slightly better than my classification percentage against the overall field and B level (I'm a C) in my division against a Grand Master. So, yeah, I had a great time. Hopefully, a picture post is forthcoming.

Time to Retire, all right

Is Kofi Annan a war criminal? Well the UK Times article doesn't fully answer, but makes obvious that being in charge during genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur does not affect ones promotability at the UN.

He made it all the way to the top--and the largest scandal in modern times: oil for food.

The poodle that is chosen to replace him will hopefully lead the relocation of the UN to Chad and not the multibillion dollar upgrade the their present digs in NY.

Kofi-caricature by Cox at Cox & Forkum.

Fourth Rail

Picture of Pakistan's Leader by Cox & Forkum.

As we get ready to go to the Oregon Glock-Only match, I salute the awesome blogging skills of Bill Roggio. I have found his analysis to be dead on during the move into Anbar last year and this year, he's been to Iraq and Afghanistan, he won't blog on something that he can't back up. Anyway, he has some great posts on Pakistan's losering along the border, and Task Force 145 icing high-value targets. Just go to his blog, The Fourth Rail, and keep scrolling.

Task Force 145--its current name although it changes a lot--- restores my faith in America. Sometimes bad guys just need to be hounded into a corner and killed or humiliated.

Gotta go, the PC police are breaking the door down...

Guide to the Perplexed

Austin Bay helps us understand the CBS Ambush. He's not talking about 60 Minutes, at least not directly.

Raymond Ibrahim talks about how attractive a certain religion is to certain boys and bad men. I must admit that God has never given me slave girls, but that would certainly appeal to some.

On a sad note...my keg of very hoppy pilsner using the German Lager Yeast is...sniff...gone. Fortunately, the Princess bought me a few bottles of Pilsner Urquell to tide me over until my Kolsch is on tap--tonight.

Homeschooling is a crime?

OK, so we didn't homeschool our kids because we wanted them to live to 18 so we could boot them out of the house.

But in Germany it's illegal. Evidently Hitler helped pass the law against the practice and it suits the modern regime to keep it that way.

A Fairy Story

Strategy Page has a story posted that might make good bed-time reading.

The plane falling from the sky is completely gratuitous and was put in only to push sales.

I think his tunic sets off his cottontail in a particularly dashing way, what ho.

Not sure what the farmer was doing in a Tiger though.

OK, What I'm Really Thinking

Little Green Footballs has a post about some socialists making nice with Hamas. Any organization with International and Solidarity in it is pretty much Troskyite by definition. What is with these leftists that bond with 7th-century-enslave-women-kill-gays groups?

I could say they really, deep down, want to be dominated. Look at them, you know I could nail that argument. Or maybe that they'd heard about useful idiots and are trying to fill that role for dear Lenin. You know they're that, big time. Or I could say what I'm really thinking...

Hey look, chicks with guns!

I guess this is success

Variety talks about how the latest nightly news anchor, one Katie Couric, is doing at the bottom. Well, let's look back at another anchor that began at that lowly position. Tom Brokaw also began, naturally enough, at the bottom of the rankings. Yet by the end of his career, he was at the top. Sounds good, but he actually had more viewers when he started at the bottom. So, which is better when you are a news reader: more fans or the best of the bunch, all sinking in quick sand?

Give me internet news! I'll sort out what is believable without a newsreader, thank you very much.

on the range

Out on the range today setting up for our USPSA match next Sunday...too tired from dragging around steel and barriers. Back at it again tomorrow. Two of the stages are my design, so I blame myself for having so many props.

But, I'll get to shoot Sunday. Hooray!

11 September, not THAT one

But sorta related. 11 September 1683, when the Ottomans were at the peak of their expansion into Europe---gathering slaves, ravaging, converting at swordpoint, that is Muslims behaving normally. Vienna was saved by a Pole, when no one else could be bothered.

The Ottomans and Arabs were big slavers. They took almost twice as many African slaves as came to North and South America. Look around the Western Hemisphere from Canada to the tip of Chile, you can see the legacy of that movement from Africa. Look around the lands of the ancient caliphate...where'd they all go?

Politically Incorrect Glock

I've seen hotter pictures of Glocks with accessories, but these are official publicity pictures from the normally staid Austrian company. The last picture explains why the full-sized Glock fits so well in the hand---and also why when they make the handle shorter for the subcompacts it's all tits and butt and no waist, as it were.

Plan Your Vacation Now

Zombietime has a map of Europe circa 2015. The British Isles look nice---much warmer than the old ones.

In a more realistic map, Sweden would be a Sultante.

My Kind of Imperial Stormtrooper

Actually, these are Femtroopers.


I'm pretty sure the Clone Wars would have been less decisive with more Femtroopers involved. The midriff is protected by the inability to take ones eyes off those big hard white mounds---armor is superfluous.

Luke, use the can opener Luke!

Golden Ear Decoration

Pillaging burial mounds has resulted in some spectacular finds. To bad the picture doesn't show how far down the chains go. This would look pretty good on a priestess. I think they had some pretty badass ones---at least if the written word of the ancient Greeks can be trusted.

Coppertone International

1st Sgt. Mario Terenas, from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, shakes hands with an Iraqi boy in Ribiyah during a patrol. Photo by Staff Sgt. Russell L. Klika

Need to get those tan lines low.

A Gun of Their Own

The Stryker is an infantry platform and there's a Combat Brigade of them semi-locally at Fort Lewis. Usually, they have grenade launchers or chain guns of some sort, but a new version has a 105mm gun. Since the aftermath of WWII, big guns have been controlled by artillery or armored brigades. A gun this big that is controlled by the infantry is a throw-back.

I like it.

Explanation Found

Above: How Israel was able to shoot through a rusted-out vent in the top of a Lebanese ambulance, blow off and then cauterize the foot of the driver without smoking the interior or opening the body shell.

No good to reference the articles with all the agitprop on the web, they keep getting edited as the howlers are pointed out. Check out the link and look at more recent posts for more.

Trappist Beers

Trappist beer is nominally brewed by or under Trappist Monks. The brothers evolved a very distinct style of beer, plus a unique beer, Orval, one of my favorites.

There is politics involved. The Dutch monastery, the only non-Belgian one, was denied use of the above logo for a while for getting too much commercial assistance.

Here's a Michael Jackson review of the newest Trappist brewery, and one of an Abbey beer, i.e. not official but in the same style.

Here's one of the mentions we got for our brewery. Though not for the same style of beer, it was great that the Beerhunter got what we were trying to do.

Seek out authentic Trappist brews and get in touch with your spiritual side.

The 24 Hours

Since I've been working from 4pm to 4am, I have to stay up 24 hours to shoot in a Sunday tournament.

I went to a beer festival in Belgium once called The 24 Hours---it was better.

Words Fail

Yes, this is an actual item. A gift from the US to the UK.

Too Late, but Wisdom May Follow

The BBC photographer, reporter, family, or Hezbollah PR man, pushed forward this kid to stand next to unexploded ordinance (UXO). This sort of behavior may be evidence that, locally, Hezbollah may have jumped the shark.

Globally, western media are still celebrating Hezbollah's great victory, but this fellow has been mentioned. Here's a more recent shorter biography from Wikipedia.

Maybe we can hope that although Hezbollah wins the infowar, democratic forces will win the peace. But hope is not a plan, as Ike famously said.

Zombie on Faking News

Zombie, who usually covers marches in San Francisco where protesters who really should don't wear clothes, analyzes a smear campaign against Israel. Having seen several of these in the past, I would say that you can't believe anything on TV that comes out of the Middle East from either Islamic sources or wire-service sources---ditto CNN, etc.

These guys look sharp

Yep, those are Iraqi flags on that rolling beauty. It's a photo of a tactics demonstration during a change over from American forces to domestic ones in charge of security for a region. These are 6th Army troops. We seem to only hear about the bad operators over there on our TV and Radio, but a lot of reports from the field say that a lot of these guys are pretty sharp---with some units up to our standards in tactics if not non-corruptibility.

OK, say you have a nice Stryker and you don't want to ding it up... well protect it with a dismount carrying a rifle. I gotta get me one of them thangs---but I think I'll shoot it in shorts, it's hot out.