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Author Archives: Joe
Quote of the day–Sendarius
I know this will be decried by some as “an isolated incident, not worthy of attention” but believe me when I say that “a shiny silver CANNON” accompanied by the COMMAND “BACK OFF NOW!” makes a better deterrent than a chrome towel rail and BEGGING “Please don’t hurt me”.
Sendarius
April 7, 2009
Comment to Operators suggested they call a non-emergency number.
[This is closely related to John Fogh’s advise about asking not to be raped.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Markos Moulitsas
When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently, prefer to talk “revolution” and kill cops.
Markos Moulitsas
April 4, 2009
Twitter Badness: DailyKos Frontpager, Kos Joke About Pittsburgh Cop Shooting
[Typical leftest “thinking”. He is cherry picking the data to arrive at the desired conclusion. He “forgets” about last month when it was someone on the left praising the shooting of cops.–Joe]
Increasing the ammo consumption at Boomershoot
Who would have guessed?
I gave a friend of Barb and mine a ride to/from Idaho this weekend. She was visiting her boyfriend who was working on job site in Pullman, Washington for a few weeks. Pullman being about 10 miles from my home and on the way made it no big deal. There was a minor complication in that there was “some festival” in Pullman and all the hotels were full and his company had to put them up in a Clarkston for Friday and Saturday night. That added an hour to my trip Friday night but it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. Friends do that for friends. On the way back he was going to be in a Pullman motel and it would take zero extra time.
Over the weekend we learned the “festival” was actually “Mothers Weekend” at both Washington State University in Pullman and the University of Idaho in Moscow. So it filled up all the motels in both towns.
Barb working in the hospital reported that emergency room staff say “Mothers Weekend” is always the busiest of the year. They come in drunk, disorderly, and disgusting (a new meaning for triple D as applied to women). It was also reported that condom sales go up 300%*.
After I picked up our friend yesterday and began our trip back to Seattle I reported my findings on the “festival”. Our friend burst into laughter that seemed just a little more enthusiastic that was appropriate. She then told me that her boyfriend and co-workers had also found out it was “Mothers Weekend” but they called it “MILF Weekend”.
Update: More confirmation of Mom’s Gone Wild in Moscow.
Update2: Via an IM from Kris:
If they combined Mothers weekend and boomershoot (on the same weekend)… “ok sweetie, you have fun with the rest of the mothers… I’m going shootin’ with the boys ”
This was after Kris informed me he probably wouldn’t be able to attend Boomershoot this year. It sounds like I need to “sweeten the pot” a little bit for him next year if I want him to come. I’m all for him having a good time, but I’m not going to go that far just to get him to come.
*I questioned the source of the condom sales numbers and Barb asked around at the hospital. “Everyone” had heard it and believed it to be true but no one knew where it came from. I suspect it is an urban myth but it makes a good story.
Quote of the day–Martin Sieff
She hit it off with Nixon from the word go. Beneath her lovable grandmother veneer of course she was as tough, uncompromising, hard-headed, mean, selfish, and vicious as he was. He liked that.
Martin Sieff
Referring to Nixon’s meeting with Golda Meir in the ’60s.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East, page 127.
[I finished listening to this book on my recent trip to/from Idaho. Good book. He rips both presidents and advisers to both political parties for their naiveté and unrealistic view of the Middle East. It’s kind of depression to think that he might be right, the things we value the most such as religious tolerance and electing political leaders cannot work in Arab nations. He claims we have to accept dictatorial rulers for those countries to have stability. The people are not currently capable of handling representative democracies. It just a question of whether it’s going to be benevolent or murderous dictators.–Joe]
Live report from Boomershoot site
Currently the temperature is 48F, up from 46F about 30 minutes ago. The sun is out with only a few wispy clouds in the sky.
In places there are still 16 inches of snow or more in the shooters area. I’m sure there is deeper snow near the Taj where I am now. My biggest concern now is the transportation of 400 pounds of potassium chlorate from the road to the Taj. The shooters can bring appropriate gear and will be able to cope but if we can’t make the targets in a timely manner things won’t be near as fun. Worse case I can probably bring it in via ATV and trailer in five gallon containers. But overall transportation of people and targets to/from the Taj could be an issue. Another option is to bring the bulldozer over a week before the event and clear a road through the snow. Assuming the weather is decent the exposed ground should dry out.
At this point, three weeks from the event, I’m resigned to there being significant snow in places. It could be 70F and the sun shining on the day of the event but there, almost for certain, will be more snow on the ground than there was last year. And last year was the first time we had snow on the ground for Boomershoot in all ten years there has been a Boomershoot here. And we have held Boomershoot as early as April 15th before.
Damn you Al Gore! This is all your fault! [Just kidding.]
Update: More bad news.
- The “well” doesn’t appear to have any water in it. We will have to bring water for cleaning up the target manufacturing equipment. And I’ll have to get it fixed this summer.
- A family of mice got into the explosives magazine and chewed up a bunch of target boxes. I didn’t have as many boxes as I finally decided I wanted anyway. I’ll probably order some more tomorrow.
- The Internet connection is still flaky. Not as bad as I have seen it with the old equipment but it still drops out frequently even though the signal strength appears to be strong just before and just after it dies.
Quote of the day–Mark Wilson
As to guns in private hands detering invasions. The Japanese disagreed with you. During WWII, the Japanese were considering a raid on the Northwest US, in order to force the US to divert resources to defend this area. They decided against it precisely because they knew how well armed and trained the citizens were. This is not theory or conjecture, the minutes of the meetings were captured when Japan surrendered. During WWII, civilian patrols were quite influential in protecting British shores against sabuetors.
Mark Wilson
3/31/98
From http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/98/0326/iccon.asp
[This link now appears to be dead but if you do a search for some of the phrases you can still find the text on the web.–Joe]
Almost but not quite
Via Tam I found this article talking about the boom/bust cycle for the oil producers in Pennsylvania:
Even after 150 years of this roller coaster, we’re still far from implementing a better system to price this essential commodity.
An easy answer, and one often brought up in casual conversation, is some type of price control. The government would say oil prices can’t go below $50 or above $100, or some such number. Oil companies would have a guaranteed minimum price, and consumers would have a guaranteed maximum price. Everyone wins.
Wow! Just wow! Not only has that sort of thinking been shown to be a disaster in numerous countries around the globe for hundreds of years but President Nixon even tried it here in 1971 and it was a huge failure. Just think for a few seconds will you? To let that sort of thinking actually get to the verbalization stage shows a profound ignorance of reality.
The article eventually is skeptical of the idea but then goes on to only slightly obfuscate the fundamental flaw in their thinking and arrive at a conclusion that is equally ignorant:
A better alternative, experts say, is to encourage long term, stable policies that focus on both increasing supply and shrinking demand.
On the supply side, encouraging greater access to resources and a stable tax policy that gives breaks for oil production is what the oil industry is looking for.
On the demand side, stricter fuel efficiency standards, better urban planning, alternative fuels and a big tax on gasoline would help cut use.
“We’ve never had a real, long-term strategy to address the energy problem,” said Bruce Vincent, vice chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of American, an industry trade group. “We need to have a comprehensive strategy that works for America.”
More government intervention when you just got through coming to the realization that government price fixing probably wouldn’t work? They almost get it but not quite.
Now there is a government policy that would optimize supply and prices. And it would do that optimization in real time and completely without political favoritism. It’s a Free Market. But apparently they are too ignorant to have heard of it.
Quote of the day–Breda
We’re Americans. We bow to no one.
Breda
April 3, 2009
The Bow
[I’m sure others have said this before but this occasion to elaborate on it struck me as particularly appropriate. It’s part of the public servant/ruler thing. The United States does not have “rulers”. It has public servants. Public officials are delegated their powers by the consent of the people. The constitution does not grant rights, it guarantees them. It grants limited, enumerated, powers to the government. The people are the highest authority in the land. We do not bow to authority figures anymore than you would bow to your next door neighbor.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Lyn Nofziger
One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain’t.
Lyn Nofziger
[I have nothing to add.–Joe]
Accurate versus wind tolerant cartridges
[Alternate title: Freeing my inner geek]
Over at Kevin’s place in the comments to this post Ben was wondering if he should choose a bullet with a better Ballistic Coefficient (BC) for Boomershoot. The primary reason for making that sort of decision would be because, in most cases, it would be more tolerant of cross winds. But BC isn’t the only factor to consider. Accuracy and muzzle velocity are obvious considerations as well.
What isn’t so obvious and is difficult to calculate is at what point and under what conditions do you make the choice for one cartridge or another if the low wind tolerant bullet is more accurate than the high wind tolerant bullet? For example, imagine you have two guns to choose from. One is a .223 shooting bullets that, given no wind conditions, you can shoot with 0.5 MOA accuracy. The other is a .300 Win Mag that you can shoot with 0.75 MOA accuracy.
Obviously for any reasonable load in either gun the .300 Win Mag is going to have less wind drift than the .223. But it’s not as accurate. So when do the wind errors add up to enough difference to make the .300 Win Mag the more likely gun to get a bullet on target? It depends on the range of the target, the altitude, the temperature, and how accurately you can estimate the wind. If your wind estimation skills are perfect it doesn’t matter. But if you are perfect wouldn’t be reading this blog post because you already know all the answers.
You can measure everything will good enough accuracy except the wind. But you know that you are probably within say +/- 2 MPH of the true wind speed. So now what? Which gun should you use?
It turns out I worked out the answer several years ago. The expression is not simple, but the calculation is much easier than testing at the range:
In the general case an expression for discovering wind estimation error Vw (in MPH) beyond which, at a given range (R), a less accurate but lower wind drift cartridge is the better choice. This equation is:
Vw = 1/7563 x SQRT(( Er22 – Er12)/(1/(MV1 x (F01/R – 1.5))2 – 1/(MV2 x (F02/R – 1.5))2))
Where for each of the rifles under ideal Boomershoot conditions (3000 feet, 70F):
BCc = 1.15 x BC
F0 = 166 x BCc x SQRT(MV)
Er = Error of the rifle in MOA.
MV = Muzzle velocity in fps.
So get out your calculators and start crunching those numbers!
Or you could just download the spreadsheet I made. But that would be cheating and you wouldn’t feel good about yourself for at least a week.
Boomershoot 2009 update
Sorry for the light blogging the last few days. Lots and lots of Boomershoot stuff to work on.
There are two positions that have just opened up. Positions 8 and 17, both in “Lowlands”, are now open. Sign up here.
Odds and ends:
- A quick update on the weather… it has been snowing about every other day in Moscow (400 feet lower than the Boomershoot site). They got six inches yesterday.
- I paid the deposit for the Saturday night dinner.
- I arranged for a bartender for the social hour.
We have a tentative speaker for the dinner–Sean Carlock.Carlock is the shooter in this video, is a “technical advisor” for Nightforce, custom rifle builder, and former Boomershooter.
- I’m really looking forward to seeing and chatting with all the bloggers that are showing up for Boomershoot Gun Blogger Day (schedule and outline of the events is here).
Update: April 3, 8:38 AM. Both open positions have been filled. One was taken by some people that attended regularly for a few years in the early days and were avid Blanchard Blast shooters. But I haven’t seen them in ages. I frequently look at the pictures of them on the web site (the three in the foreground) and wonder what happened to them. I got a call from one of them this morning and he was asking if he should bring hip waders to get through the mud. “No”, I told him, “But you might want to bring snowshoes.”
Update2: Sean says he can’t make it.
Quote of the day–John Longenecker
Gun control is more about control than anything else, accepting gun control is about abandoning our self-rule more than anything else. The armed citizen is not only a matter of personal self-defense or even ego, the armed citizen is a aggregate national defense as the safeguard of our supreme authority over our officials and their boondoggles. An armed citizenry means that so many programs simply are not needed. The problem with electing not to carry this personal burden is that it doesn’t end at your choosing to carry a gun or not–for, someone else is more than eager to replace our entire self-rule and rule over all of us, not just you.
John Longenecker
February 15, 2009
Gun Control: the very first pig with lipstick on it.
[The bearing of arms is a very individualist thing. There are many, many people in the world when asked, “Who is the ultimate authority?” would answer their god(s), or some ruler is. The true individual knows they are governed only by the consent of the whole people and should those public servants ever decide to change the relationship between servant and master the whole of the people must have a means of revoking their consent and enforcing it. And that is why the right to keep and bear arms is required for all free people. Those that wish to infringe upon that right either do not wish to be free or wish to be rulers.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Antal E. Fekete
The newly created money will follow the laws of gravity and flow downhill to the bond market where the fun is. Risk-free bond speculation will further reinforce the deflationary spiral until final exhaustion occurs: the economy will collapse as a pricked balloon. Instead of hyperinflation and the destruction of the dollar, you’ve got deflation and the destruction of the economy.
Denninger says that the “death spiral” will lead to fire sales of assets in a mad liquidation dash and, ultimately, to the collapse of both the monetary and political system in the United States as tax revenues evaporate. He opines that probably not one member of Congress understands the seriousness of the situation. Bernanke is risking something much worse than a Depression. He is literally risking the end of America as a political, economic, and military power.
Indeed, the financial and economic collapse of the last two years must be seen as part of the progressive disintegration of Western civilization that started with government sabotage of the gold standard early in the twentieth century. Ben Bernanke, who should have been fired by the new president on the day after Inauguration for his part in causing irreparable damage to the American republic may, in the end, have the honor to administer the coup de grâce to our civilization.
Antal E. Fekete
Professor of Money and Banking
San Francisco School of Economics
March 30, 2009
Why Obama’s Stimulus Package Is Doomed to Failure
[No. This isn’t an April Fools joke. But I don’t know for certain that he knows what is talking about either.
Have a nice day.–Joe]
Only slightly less spin in real life
It’s an Onion video but those that remember the hatchet job done by the media and anti-gun bigots against Winchester “Black Talons” about 10 years ago will find this only slightly more outrageous:
Manufacturer Recalls Hollow Point Bullets That Fail To Explode Inside Targets
Thanks to hunter006 for the email tip.
What are the odds of getting shot at?
Unless you are in an usual occupation (combat military, high risk police, illegal drug dealer) the odds are generally pretty low to have someone shooting at you. It’s just certain occupations that are at serious risk of getting shot at.
What never occurred to me was that U.S. presidents get shot at a lot. Sure, I know, the Secret Service aren’t there just to keep the groupies away. But what are the actual odds of someone trying to shoot a U.S. president?
They are better than I realized:
- Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed on April 14, 1865.
- James A. Garfield was shot and killed on July 2, 1881.
- William McKinley was shot and killed on Sept. 6, 1901.
- John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on Nov 22, 1963.
- Ronald Reagan was shot and severely wounded on March 31, 1981.
- Andrew Jackson was shot at in the Capitol building on January 30, 1835, but avoided injury.
- Theodore Roosevelt was shot in 1912 while campaigning for president.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt was shot at on February 15, 1933, in Miami, Florida, just three weeks before his inauguration.
- Assassins attempted to shoot and kill Harry Truman on November 1, 1950 but were stopped in a gunfight outside the Blair House.
- Not one, but two, disturbed individuals attempted to shoot and kill Gerald Ford during his brief time as president.
That’s four dead and 10 attempts. Since there have been 44 Presidents the odds are 4/44 or 9% of being shot and killed and 10/44 or 23% chance of being shot at. Of course that assumes the odds are constant through all time–which is a very poor assumption. But still it makes me think that’s got to be one of the riskiest jobs we have in this country. Taken as a whole, as opposed to just those in the “boots on the ground” infantry, I’ll bet being in the U.S. military today is a safer job.
Another good guy at the ATF?
Far too often when I write about the ATF it is because they said something stupid or did something illegal. But here is an article that mentions an ATF spokesman saying something that I agree with. I had to read the entire article twice to make sure all the law enforcement types were saying all the right things. And apparently there are people in the media willing to not spin it to fit their agenda. Reading between the lines a little bit it appears the writer and/or editor might have had the usual agenda but law enforcement didn’t play along:
“Guns never start out illegal,” said Earl Woodham, a spokesman with the ATF. “A human being makes it illegal. A gun has never killed anybody without assistance.”
Woodham said “wannabe tough guys” illegally acquire guns in a variety of ways, ranging from burglary, to pilfering at a friend or family member’s house, to black market purchases. “Most times they will get them from someone they know,” he added.
“For a juvenile, if your goal is to get a gun, they are probably pleased with any gun they can get,” Woodham said. “A gun is a desirable gun if it will fit in your hand.”
I’m still of the opinion that ATF (and E) should be a convenience store but if we ever get to the point where we are prosecuting those working as regulators of a specific enumerated right a fair prosecutor should take evidence such as the above when deciding whether to press charges or not.
It wasn’t me
Yes, this is within my range of operations but I didn’t make the device:
An Army Ordnance disposal team destroyed a homemade explosive device Friday morning along a busy on-ramp to U.S. Highway 12 just north of Yakima.
The device was described as a plastic beverage bottle with shotgun-shell powder inside. The bottle was wrapped with electrical tape and a metal chain.
While I’m sure with enough shotgun shell powder such a device would be “interesting” Boomerite is much cheaper per unit of fun.
And if you are going to play with things that go boom don’t put metal near the explosives. The rule we use is that we don’t put anything between the explosives and your body that a surgeon or the medical examiner might have to remove from your body.
Quote of the day–Kimberly Frederick
I know that all of you as conscientious citizens want to protect our people. We need to band together and demand that the government protect us. We must demand that all chairs, even couches and sofas, are required to have safety belts, and that everyone be required to use them. If someone is caught not using their safety belt they should be required to pay a $1000 fine and with a three strike rule attached that on your third strike not wearing a safety belts that the perpetrator goes to jail. Repeated offenders should be taken to jail, because by not wearing their seatbelts they are endangering themselves, and as a community it is our responsibility to protect and care for each other.
Kimberly Frederick
We Must Protect Our Citizens
March 13, 2009
[Daughter Kim got an A on this piece of satire. I read the notes the prof wrote on the paper so I know he knew it was satire. I’m a little bit afraid some dimwit in government (but I repeat myself) will take the idea and run with it as a campaign issue. But I figure that if I put it up on the web with it clearly labeled as satire then we have a chance of embarrassing whoever might try something like that.–Joe]