That’s cool!
Bruce C.
August 10, 2013
After detonating his first Boomer (and he stopped laughing).
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Liberal Canards
Anyone know of a canonical list of “Liberal Canards”?
Catch-phrases like “it’s for your own safety,” “let the [trained] professionals handle it,” and “you shouldn’t fight back” are what I’m looking for. Things that sound good at first, and appeal to an “emotional common sense,” but fail to actually work or be correct as applied in real life. If there are no lists, comments are welcome, trying to build a list.
Quote of the day—Pat L.
I used to think I would die from an angry father. Then I thought it would be from an angry husband. Now I just worry about an angry wife.
Pat L.
August 9, 2013
[This was at our high school reunion last night.
I’m pretty sure there is more to this story and that I know what it is but he wasn’t sharing it so I won’t speculate here.—Joe]
Another Quote of the Day – USAA Insurance claim representative
“We don’t make decisions based on common sense” – USAA Insurance claims representative, total loss department. That was pretty obvious by the time he said it. I told him it was going to be a quote of the day.
In June an old man pulled right in front of us in his pickup, from a cross road on our right, while we were at speed in our pickup on highway 26 in central Washington State. WHAM! My 15 year old daughter was driving on her learner’s permit. She could not have done anything to prevent a hard hit, but I think she saved that old man’s life.
You never really know what you’ll do in a situation like that, but I tell myself not to swerve for deer or anything else unless there is a real need to. Hit the damn deer and stay on the road, or hit that car in front of you and avoid a head-on, if it’s a choice between the two. I’ve seen it go very badly when people swerve. She swerved. If she hadn’t, if she’d gone in a straight line, that old man would have been squashed like a melon, I think. As it was we hit corner to corner instead of hitting him in his driver’s door.
I was telling the claims rep that since I had the trans rebuilt and replaced the engine, the hubs, the breaks, etc., that 309K odo reading meant very little, that the newer and shinier pickup I replaced it with actually has “Less useful life left in it, it cost me more than twice what I’m being offered for the totaled truck, and that I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that the injured party (I) should be made whole, within reason, to the fullest extend possible, and we’re not even talking about our ruined vacation.”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He asked in reply.
“What do you mean?”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He repeated. Well how do you answer that question? He seems to think that I’m reading from some book, or repeating someone else’s words, which I wasn’t. So rather than argue about that;
“It’s common sense” I told him. That’s when he came out with the money quote.
Yeah, so I’m out thousands of dollars after I take their settlement. Insurance markets, and the whole set of industries surrounding them, like the towing business and the body repair business, medical care, et al, are completely distorted. In a proper world it would be between me and the offending party, and if things fell apart there it would be in the courts, and the insurance company’s role would be to write a check afterwards (or up to the value of the policy). But this is the messed up world of scammers, politicians (but I repeat myself) and Progressives (and again I repeat myself) and so the party writing the check is the same one determining the value of the loss.
I guess that what we were supposed to do, rather than tell the EMTs at the scene that we were all OK and happy to be alive, if a little bruised, and go against their advice to take a ride in and get checked out by doctors, was instead to complain about pain, act all messed up an carry on and so forth, get some prescriptions and braces and all that, like most people, and scam the insurance company for all that pain and suffereing, woe-is-me-I-have-to-take-three-weeks-off-work-and-I-might-have-to-file-for-disability crap. But we didn’t, and won’t.
Gun Song – Trigger Happy by Weird Al Yankovic
Time for something lighter. “Weird” All Yankovic has been doing spoofs and take-offs almost as long as I’ve been listening to popular music, and I’ve usually likes his versions as good as the original. And, he plays a mean accordion. If the embed below doesn’t work, try this link to Trigger Happy.
If you like spoofs, and making fun of artists who take themselves way to seriously, Weird Al is you guy.
Quote of the day—NightShade09
Karl Marx hated the USSR and what it did under the claim of his ideas.
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
NightShade09
August 4, 2013
Comment to The Invention of Ideology
[I’m quite suspicious of people who claim they can “channel the spirit” of someone. Defending the claim that it doesn’t happen is trivially easy. Hence I think the only look up required is that Marx died in 1883 and no government could claim the title of USSR until sometime after the revolution in 1917.
But Marxist defenders don’t really need facts. They just have to “understand” the benefits of communism even if they can’t understand the simplest and best tested of economics theories.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Lyle
If it could save the life of just one child, shouldn’t we all own guns?
Lyle
August 7, 2013
In a comment to Quote of the day—Michelle Schimel.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
You knew it was coming here
In California, no surprise, a ban has been proposed on:
…hammers, wrenches, slingshots, shields and presumably anything else with a blunt edge such as garden rakes or sticks.
I’m am surprised they are going after blunt objects first. I would have expected them to ban sharp objects first. But it really doesn’t matter that much to me which they go after first. The answer is the same.
CATs from Amazon
There have been some concerns that the tourniquets I linked to on Amazon in this post might have been counterfeit. I received the ones I ordered and I am pleased to announce they appear to be the genuine article. Here is a picture:
The way you can tell the real thing from a counterfeit, at least the ones we saw in class, was by the end. If it is stitched on the end instead of welded then it is counterfeit. See the little dots, slightly darker the rest of the material, in the red end? Those are the welds.
A useful form from the ATF
It’s rare that I’m going to suggest the ATF is good for something. But this, via an ATF Tweet, is a pretty good idea if you handle it right. It is a Personal Firearms Record. In case one or more of your guns are stolen you have the serial numbers to give the police to aid in identification and return. I don’t see much of a point in the “cost” or “purchase location” columns but you don’t have use them.
I don’t recommend using the ATF form directly, web bugs or the equivalent could cause you to self register as a gun owner. Printing it out while you are disconnected from the Internet should be fine. Or you might want to consider using this version (Mayor Joel emailed me a still different version in .PDF format with a space for pictures) which I created from scratch which has the same format.
And I would treat this document with more security than I did the guns themselves. If the police can find this document and decrypt it then you have just self-registered all your guns. I’m thinking this would be a valid application of encrypting the file, hiding it with steganography, putting it on a CD, removing all fingerprints and DNA, the burying it as a private “geocache” somewhere in the woods.*
Now that the ATF has finally done something useful can we disband them as a “poor return on investment”?
*Ry was referring to himself this morning in a much different context when he proclaimed, “I need to go get fitted for my tin-foil hat.” But he could have been speaking for me in many instances.
Quote of the day—Michelle Schimel
The New York SAFE ACT represents a tremendous step toward sensible gun control.
Michelle Schimel
Assembly Member, NY State 16th District
August 6, 2013
Exit Wound: Who Will Take on Gun Control?
[The New York SAFE ACT is some of the most repressive, short of a total ban, legislation this nation has ever seen. That she thinks of it as a “step toward sensible gun control” should tell you all you need to know. I can only conclude that in her mind “sensible gun control” is a complete ban on firearms.
What we really need is for “sensible politician control” to be enforced.—Joe]
New York City’s slippery slope
The New York City Department of Education is waging a war on words of sorts, and is seeking to have words they deem upsetting removed from standardized tests.
The words that could be banned include, alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, drugs, evolution, hunting, nuclear weapons, politics, slavery, terrorism, war, and weapons (guns, knives, etc.).
That’s going to make it rather difficult to write a test that addresses history and even the 2nd Amendment. But perhaps that is their intent rather than some sort of unintended consequence. It is New York City after all. They have put stunning restrictions on large sweet drinks, salt, and guns. Is it any surprise they now want to ban words?
Whether it’s sugar, salt, patrol rifles, or words the answer should be the same, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.
Don’t be stupid
I understand the joys of playing with things that go boom. But don’t be stupid. Especially felony stupid:
the Utah beauty queen was arrested over the weekend and charged with assembling homemade bombs and throwing them from a car, many of them at people, authorities said.
Forest service may ban exploding targets
Via email from Chet (and I think someone else Tweeted about it but I can’t remember who) we have this story:
Federal authorities on Monday cracked down on the use of exploding targets popular in the shooting community but blamed for seven recent wildfires in the Rocky Mountain region.
U.S. Attorney John Walsh and Forest Service regional forester Dan Jiron issued a prohibition on unpermitted explosives in 22 million acres of forest and grassland in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Violators face fines of $5,000 and up to six months in prison.
The Forest Service likely will impose a nationwide ban within a year. Meanwhile, other regional foresters are expected to issue similar prohibitions.
My experience is that it’s tough to ignite things with an exploding target. But these guys were able to do it and have the video to prove it. Ry and I worked on and off for over a year trying to ignite gasoline. It it was only by putting Titanium or Magnesium shavings in Boomerite were we able to get fairly frequent ignition. The type of targets these guys were using is different than Boomerite. These targets are made with flash powder and rapidly burn more than detonate.
About one out of every two or three thousand Boomerite targets will ignite rather than detonate. We don’t know why this is. We think it might happen when there is an edge hit. In any case we schedule Boomershoot to be sometime other than fire season because of the risk of fire. Even then we have had numerous fires.
The bottom line is that I understand the concern about exploding targets in the forests during fire season. It’s not very wise to take that sort of risk.
Chet asked if this change in regulation would impact Boomershoot. The answer is, “It might.” But probably not in the way most people might think it would.
Boomershoot is held on private property, not public lands, so prohibitions against exploding targets on public lands isn’t going to be a problem for us. The way it might change things is if it more people attend Boomershoot to get their “fix” of shooting exploding targets that they previously satisfied by buying their own targets and shooting them on public lands.
Pretty
Shiny one ounce silver coins rounds are some of the prettiest small objects I have ever seen. The design on these makes them even more attractive.
Tactical First Aid learning points
As I mentioned the other day Ry and I took a “Tactical First Aid” class. His mention of it is here.
This is not your standard first aid class. This is a class for dealing with traumatic injury. Heart attacks, drowning, choking, and even head injuries were not specifically addressed. I took this class to address the potential for gunshot and explosive injury at Boomershoot. The lessons learned are also applicable to automobile and industrial accidents.
There were some very interesting points made in class. Here are the ones that stuck in my mind:
- One sentence summary of the class, “This is how you properly apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding until expert help takes over.”
- Poor tourniquets or ones applied incorrectly actually increase the bleeding.
- Most bullet wounds are survivable. This includes some head and heart shots.
- If you can survive most bullet wounds and keep fighting so can the bad guy.
- Ballistic gelatin gives you a good idea how deep a bullet will penetrate a large muscle.
- The tensile strength of Jell-O is not comparable to most tissues and hence the temporary stretch cavity observed in gelatin is meaningless when applied to the wounding of flesh.
- If the victim will be in the hospital within two (and perhaps as long as six) hours the limb will not suffer permanent damage from the tourniquet.
- Keep the victim very warm. Cold blood doesn’t clot well.
- Don’t get hurt yourself. If someone has been deliberately injured (stabbed, shot, explosive injury, it doesn’t matter) you first job is to not get hurt yourself. Consider not giving aid or at least neutralizing the threat before giving aid and putting yourself at risk.
- Direct pressure on an artery high on the limb can completely stop bleeding of an arm but not an adult leg.
- Children are soft and squishy* and it is relatively easy to stop extremity bleeding.
- Learn how carry and/or drag someone with and without help.
- The Gabby Gifford shooting could have gone much worse due to misguided response by the police (details in private, not on the blog).
- We got very, very lucky with the Boston Bombing (details available in private, not on the blog).
- Use this tourniquet and this bandage after you get training.
*This was mentioned several times and I kept expecting to hear, “and tasty with ketchup.” I was disappointed but didn’t want to be known for contributing that to the conversation.
You can’t make this stuff up
All I know for certain about this person is they are ignorant, an Android user, and Sitemeter captured their visit to my blog. My hope is that those vectors are orthogonal. Their entry page to my blog is here.
Check out the search phrase, “what is the red spot indicates whether a man is virgin r not”:
| Domain Name | (Unknown) | ||||||||||
| IP Address | 101.223.172.# (Unknown Organization) | ||||||||||
| ISP | Unknown ISP | ||||||||||
| Location |
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| Language | English en | ||||||||||
| Operating System | Linux Unknown | ||||||||||
| Browser | Safari 1.3 Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.6; en-gb; GT-S5360 Build/GINGERBREAD) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1 | ||||||||||
| Javascript | version 1.5 | ||||||||||
| Monitor |
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| Time of Visit | Aug 6 2013 7:48:46 am | ||||||||||
| Last Page View | Aug 6 2013 7:48:46 am | ||||||||||
| Visit Length | 0 seconds | ||||||||||
| Page Views | 1 | ||||||||||
| Referring URL | http://www.google.co…in r not&v=133247963 | ||||||||||
| Search Engine | google.co.in | ||||||||||
| Search Words | what is the red spot indicates whether a man is virgin r not | ||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | http://blog.joehuffm…ased-virginity-test/ | ||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | http://blog.joehuffm…ased-virginity-test/ | ||||||||||
| Out Click | |||||||||||
| Time Zone | UTC-1:00 | ||||||||||
| Visitor’s Time | Aug 6 2013 2:48:46 pm | ||||||||||
| Visit Number | 1,738,272 |
Quote of the day—John M. Snyder
American gun owners should resolve to drive gun grabbers into social and political oblivion. Gun owners and gun owner groups should develop, promote and implement an attack strategy against gun grabbing establishmentarians.
For over four decades law-abiding gun owners and gun rights organizations have fought the enemies of freedom generally from a defensive position, reacting against anti-gun proposals as they are advanced.
However, gun rights people and interests should go on the offensive. It’s time to attack ideologically and practically the gun-grabbing establishment and its spokesmen and adherents with vim, vigor and absolute determination.
John M. Snyder
April 25, 2013
USA Should Drive Gun Grabbers into Oblivion
[Other than “YES!” I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Steve Marmel
Steve Marmel
July 25, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
H/T to Weer’d Beard for the email pointer.—Joe]
A learning experience
Barb L. was spending the day with her kids doing a bunch of fun stuff so I could have just stayed in the clock tower and cleaned my guns or washed laundry. But no. I convinced Ry we should get up way too early on a Sunday morning and do something more interesting. We went to a part of town that I had only been to a couple of times. I’m not sure Ry had ever been there. And every time I had been there I heard gunfire. Are you getting the picture?
The morning was interesting but uneventful. Then late in the afternoon things got cranked up several notches as the gunfire became more frequent.
I was rather busy when things got exciting and didn’t have time to take any pictures until afterward. Still, they should give you a clue:
One of the more interesting things to me is that all that color is in the contact lens, not my eye. Here is what the contact lens looked like after I put them in the cleaning case:
My eyes look entirely normal after taking out the lens. I guess that is a good thing. Except those were brand new contacts this morning. They were supposed to last for a month and it looks like even after an hour in a hydrogen peroxide solution the color is staying.
I don’t remember how many tourniquets were applied to my arm but I do know that when Laurie put hers on the bleeding didn’t stop and she kept tightening it. I think the buckle tipped over and as she was cranking on it my skin got pinched. I now have a several bruises that are going to last for a week or more.
Another thing that was rather interesting to me is that out of 13 students in the class there were three women. The prettiest one chose me as her partner* to do “blood sweeps” on each other of the entire extremities.
We started at 8:00 AM and except for lunch I didn’t leave the West Coast Armory property until about 6:00 PM. Then as soon as I got back to the clock tower had lots of clothes to wash and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to wash all the fake blood off of my skin. I still have lot of red on my left arm and I suspect my face still has a red tinge to it.
I’m sure I didn’t have as much fun as Barb and the kids did but I think it was worth it. I just hope I never have to put my new skills to a real live test.
*This seems to be a pattern in my life ever since Terri R. (a cheerleader in high school who I had never talked to) chose me as her lab partner in chemistry. I don’t think there were any other girls in that chemistry class and of all the guys in class she chose me. I’m not complaining, but I do think it is odd.