Global Warming Deniers

(Note: Non-IPSC content.)

Have you been following the Global Warming controversy? Are you in the "Ho-Hum" stage yet? If so, you might be a Global Warming Denier.

Okay, I'm one of 'Them'.

I'm not sure whether I'm of the "there is no Global Warming" school of thought, or "Global Warming is merely a natural cyclic event" school, or the "Global Warming may or may not be a fact, but it has nothing to do with the Greenhouse Effect as affected by Human Actions" school.

All I can say is, when this became a matter of ideology, when science was overwhelmed by Politically Correct speech, when the Main Stream Media decided that there was no controversy here, and most important when the Weather Channel announced that weather persons on TV who failed to enthusiastically embrace Right Thinking should lose their accreditation ... I opted out.

Well, I didn't completely opt out. I decided that if these useful idiots embraced the concept of Global Warming Is Real, And It's All Your Fault!, then I rejected it.

I've resisted writing about this for several weeks, but I read a lot of articles about it and (sneaky bastard that I am) I saved the links.

Heh heh heh.

The single event that caused me to decide that the Global Warming Freaks (hereafter GWF) wer just wrong, wrong, wrong was when I read Michael Crichten's 2004 novel "State Of Fear". While I don't necessarily consider Crichten a Climatologist, an atmospheric physicist or a scientists of any kind, his citatations were credible and his reasoning persuasive.

Besides, it was a good read, even though Crighten is not without his detractors.

That set me up for Mark Steyn's article in Jewish World Review: "Don't ruin economy over tiny temp rise", which featured Steyn's typical charm and wit. It convinced me that it was time to unleash the power of all the articles I've saved.

Have you read the Steyn article yet? Go ahead, read it. We'll wait for you to catch up.

Done? Okay, let us continue.

Going back to 2 feb, 2007, the United Nations "International Panel on Climate Change" released its "Climate Change 2007" report. Summary: we're in deep doo-doo, and it's all your fault.

The Center for Science and Public Policy replied: "The Panic Is Officially Over". Which is a nice, British-style way of saying "you people are SO full of it, your eyes are brown".

Fortunately, the Contra Costa (California) Times had already weighed into the discussion by announcing that "Global warming is nothing but a paper tiger".

Oregon's Governor, The Egregioius Ted, fires an OSU professor from the purely symbolic title of "climatoligist" because his scientific opinion doesn't meet Ted's preconceptions about climatology.

Why fire him?

"His opinions conflict not only with many other scientists, but with the state of Oregon's policies."

Whoa! Guess what? It's no longer a matter of scientific theory, it's Politics!

And in my home (red) state. Who could have predicted THIS?

In the meantime, Al Gore (failed politician, failed climatologist, failed progenitor of The Internet, failed anything-he-has-ever-tried) accused President Bush of paying money to scientists in an effort to encourage them to become Global Warming Deniers.

Finally, and most interesting, the Czech president Vaclav Klaus on February 9, 2007, explained his views on the IPCC panel.

This was high-lighted on The Drudge Report (the link is transitory) . Read the entire interview here.

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

• Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...•

A: ...I am right...•

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say..

Range Equipment Failure

Got a new one for you.

A "clamshell-type" target (hitting the steel plate pops up an IPSC target) fails to activate the object target on a 'good hit'.

Major power cartridges take it down easily, but Minor power cartridges can't make the reactive target function.

What do you do?

Here's some background.

The stage features "Classic" targets (eg: "Turtle", "Stop-Sign", "Amoeba" etc.) design targets.'

It's a rainy day, so targets are replaced frequently.

By the time THIS squad reaches the stage, the targets have been replaced at least twice.

The hitch is, the previous competitors aren't accustomed to shooting this target type so instead of ripping the 2nd (replacement) target off before replacing it, the previous squad just ... stapled another target over it.

Did I mention it was a rainy day? I thought so. The cardboard is fairly well saturated, so there's a lot of weight counterbalancing the initiating steel plate. This changes the dynamics of the target array.

As a consequence, the last squad (of six) to engage this stage learned the hard way that a counterbalanced target array is subject to the changing dynamics of one, two, THREE targets stacked up on the counterbalance.

Worse, the shooters don't always know how to handle it when the increased weight causes the reactive target array to fail.

This video demonstrates how important it is for the competitors (never mind the RO) to know the rules of competition.

If you hit the initiator plate fairly with a minor-caliber round, it should fall. If it doesn't, the fault may not be yours even if the Major-caliber rounds don't seem to have any problems.

Uh ... another point?

Don't shoot Minor.

Email from The Hobo Brasser

We've all got friends like him.

You know the guy (His name might be Larry D., or "Big Dawg".) He's the one who sends you all the funny emails that are making the rounds. The stuff that is part of the Internet culture, which you would NEVER proliferate by sending to on to your own circle of friends ... mostly because he's already sent it on to them, or received it from one of them. But you dutifully open the email, and laugh like crazy, and never NEVER tell anyone how much you enjoyed the not-so-subtle social/political points they illustrate.

I keep thinking I ought to resent this intrusion on my privacy ... the arbitrary take-over of my personal 'bandwidth'. But then I realize I don't know why I should object, because I enjoy reading them and I'm glad I have friends who think of me when they find something 'special'.

As I said, I never pass them on.

Until today.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the usual content of this website, but today I'm going to impose my silly sense of humor on you all even though I don't know your email address.

This is Silly Email Gone Mad, Geek Style.

You may not agree with the politics here.

Deal with it.


First offering: "Let's Say I Break Into Your House"

Let's say I break into your house

A lady wrote the best letter in the editorials in ages!!! It explains things better than all the baloney you hear on TV.

Her point:

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let's say I break into your house.
Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.

But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors.
I've done all the things you don't like to do.
I'm hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).
According to the protesters:

You are Required to let me stay in your house
You are Required to add me to your family's insurance plan
You are Required to Educate my kids
You are Required to Provide other benefits to me and to my family. (my husband will do all of your yard work because he is also hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part).

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.

It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself.

I'm a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house.

And what a deal it is for me!!!


I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.



Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you learn MY LANGUAGE!!! so you can communicate with me.

Why can't people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America .if you agree, pass it on (in English). Share it if you see the value of it.


If not blow it off......... along with your future Social Security funds, and a lot of other things.

Next: Passenger

If you're on a plane and....you are sitting next to someone who irritates you (and let's be honest, we've all been there)...

1. Quietly and calmly open up your laptop case.
2. Remove your laptop.
3. Boot it.
4. Make sure the guy who won't leave you alone can see the screen.
5. Open this message
6. Close your eyes and tilt your head up to the sky.

7. Then hit this link : HERE

USPSA Presidential Elections: Candidate Forums

Dave Thomas, Executive Director of USPSA (United States Practical Shooting Association), recently announced to Presidential and Area Director Candidates that he has directed WebMaster Rob Boudrie to establish an online Forum for each Candidate at http://www.uspsa.org/forums/. He'll soon "... be posting a notice on the front and member pages announcing that this election specific option is now operative."

(Actually, as of this date the notice has already been posted.)

He has encouraged each candidate to visit these forums regularly as he "would expect that there will be messages directed" to each Candidate.

The general public announcement of these forums is available at http://www.uspsa.org/

If you are interested in the next leadership of USPSA, and you would like to learn more about the people running for office, please take advantage of this opportunity to quiz the candidates.

USPSA Records A Fourth Consecutive Year of Sustained Growth

(USPSA Press Release as reported by The Shooting Wire, subscription information here.)

Sedro-Woolley, Washington - After four years of sustained growth, the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) just posted another all-time membership record, the latest in a string of records dating back to June 2005. The numbers aren't very interesting; instead, it's the trend. After years of flat memberships, USPSA has grown, continues to grow, and now continues at a historic high. All this is happening in an unusual competitive environment, where USPSA and its competing organizations are increasingly working together. USPSA's magazine Front Sight featured their arch-rival's president on the cover, lauding his early contributions to the sport. Richard Heinie's Single Stack Classic became the USPSA "Single Stack" nationals last year, and shooters from all the organizations are increasingly moving among the various sports, enjoying them as opportunities arise.


Why the growth in USPSA?


Changes in 2001, and again in 2005 opened USPSA to shooters using simpler equipment - most notably the advent of Production Division. Brand-level competition in Production has become especially intense, with Glock, CZ, Sig, and others vying for titles around the United States.

Last year USPSA launched a provisional "1911 Single Stack" division, joining forces with Richard Heinie to put on a USPSA "1911 Single Stack Nationals." (The second annual happens April 26-28). Heinie's "Single Stack Classic" has a strong history, but last year's match under the USPSA banner became the biggest "Classic" ever held. Here again, brand-level competition has become intense, with Springfield holding a strong lead against competitors Kimber, Dan Wesson, Smith & Wesson, and others.

Symbiosis in Practical Pistol?

Warmer relations between the various Practical Pistol organizations has helped USPSA's growth. After some early hostility, those relationships have matured into a fulfillment of Rodney King's infamous statement "can't we all just get along?" At USPSA, we're seeing significant numbers of "crossover shooters" joining the sport from other organizations - without leaving their "native" sport behind. They shoot USPSA one weekend, then return to Steel Challenge, IDPA, GSSF, or SASS the next. Seasoned USPSA competitors are doing the same thing in reverse, donning "concealment garments" or cowboy duds to play the same game under a different set of rules. While the various organizations still compete for sponsors and "name" shooters on specific weekends, the lowering of social and technical barriers has encouraged cross-fertilization and net growth. USPSA's six divisions provide ways for most any defensive handgun owner to participate, regardless of equipment type. Go to http://www.uspsa.org/ for additional information.

Media Contact:
Dave Thomas, Executive Director
(360) 855-2245 (360) 708-6828
dave@uspsa.org

Playing With Fire: ARPC 200702 - IPSC Videos etc

A new shooter helps us to remember how EASY it is to DQ (Match Disqualification for violation of the Safety Rules) at a Club Match.

Match results here.
------------

On Saturday, February 10, 2007, 78 competitors gathered in the overcast morning to compete in a means-nothing local club match and take their chances of shooting in the rain.

We were not disappointed.

The weather held at cloudy-but-dry and about 50 degrees temperature until around10:30am, and then the rain started.

Nobody went home.

This was an astonishing turnout for this time of year. A year ago, 60 shooters was about as many as were likely to show up for a Points Match. This match was a definite "Means Nothing" match. No honors, no Points toward winning a slot to the 2007 Nationals (the next points match is at Dundee on the usual Fourth Saturday match) and no reason to show up.

Except ... it has been a long yucky winter, and we have been hungry for some IPSC shooting.

One more thing. Due to the aggressive marketting efforts of ARPC Executive Office Mac McCarter, there were 15 ... FIFTEEN ... New Shooters trying for their finish their Columbia Cascade Section IPSC Certification. They went through the training, now they have to finish one match without a safety violation to acquire their Certification Card which allows them to compete in USPSA matches in this section without being identified as a New Shooter.

The certification course is rigorous, of course, and includes both an extended lesson in the IPSC/USPSA rule book and some practical range work to insure that each applicant understands the practical rules of IPSC competition as well as special safety rules and practices, as well as the protocol and ethics of the sport.

Usually, this is a cheerful chance to meet new people with similar views and values. Unfortunately, it is also and always a challenge to meet the standards of gunhandling expertise which are not commonly enforced in a 'open range' environment.

Since there were 78 people at the match, and 15 of them new shooters, the inexperienced pariticpants were distributed among the SIX squads. Our squad had 3 new shooters, and we were glad to get them.

We love to see new people joining The Sport, and usually we have no problems helping them to assimilate the techniques needed to safely negotiate even the toughest stage.

Unfortunately, as we become aclimated to competitive shooting, we tend to forget that we're Playing With Fire.

We failed to adequately coach at least one of our new friends, with the sad result that he broke one of the primary safety rules ... keeping the muzzle downrange.

This was a personal failure which came home to me when the muzzle of his pistol swung lazily across the crown of my head during a reload. I was perhaps understandably disconcerted, and we were both unhappy with the situation and (he at least) with the resulting Match DQ.

The video of this event is included here, which is a 12MB compression of 44MB of video. For a much more compressed (and consequently less detail is viewable) version of the film, watch this:

Portland Barbie

If Barbie lived in your hood, would she look like this?



That's the question asked by the St. Louis Post Dispatch here.

There's a meme going around the Internet, asking what Barbie versions would look like if she were to be strategically prepositioned around urban areas ... such as Saint Louis, Mo.



Someone has taken a lot of trouble to convert this to the Portland, Oregon area. Thanks to SWMBO, I have received a copy of the Oregon version and converted it to my closest Urban location. Readers who live in Oregon may enjoy this.

The original document which I received is available as a MSWORD document here.

Your Oregon website version of this internet phenomenon is available at Geek Musing here.

PETA Resolution

I do realize that most of you don't subscribe to The Outdoor Wire.

I encourage you to subscribe.

In the meantime, here's the wrap-up from Jim Shepherd, who has been following the trial of PETA members, who picked up unwanted 'pets' from animal shelters, transported them a few blocks, then injectected the animals with lethal substances (for which they have no license to possess, let alone use) and tossed the bodies into Dipsy Dumpsters behind the nearest Piggly Wiggly store:

PETA Trial Ends

PETA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook were found innocent of the majority of charges brought against them for animal cruelty and obtaining property by false pretenses. Rather than facing criminal charges for picking up animals from an animal shelter and veterinarian's office and killing them, rather than taking them for possible adoptions, Judge Cy Grant reorganized the charges prior to sending them to the jury, dropping most of the felony charges and consolidating several charges into a single one.

If convicted of the criminal charges, the PETA employees, who had admitted picking up animals and killing them only moments after having told veterinarian office employees they were going to find them new homes, could have faced jail time. Instead, they have been found guilty of littering, receiving suspended 10-day jail sentences, 12 months' probation, 50 hours of community service, $1,000 fines and nearly $3,000 of restitution.

Their "death van" was confiscated by the town of Anhoskie, North Carolina.

The facts of the case made it completely obvious the pair had, in fact, committed all the offenses of which they had been accused.

The Piggly-Wiggly dumpster containing pets that had been picked up only hours before around Ahoskie were identified by the veterinarian and shelter workers who had handed them over to Hinkle and Cook.

The forensic evidence showing the animals had been killed by lethal injection of chemicals found in their so-called "death van" was never called into question.

Adria Hinkle testified under oath that they had, in fact picked up the animals, injected them with drugs, bagged them, and tossed them into the dumpster. She also testified that "maybe" they hadn't been forthcoming with the fact they had no intention of putting the animals out for adoption, it was "possible" they might have been misleading, and perhaps it was a "mistake" to toss the animals into the dumpster (an action she admitted having done previously).

So why were they found innocent?

Through what might be best called "smoke-and-mirrors" of their defense team.

After all, their lawyers argued, there had to be "malice" involved in felony animal cruelty charges. The pair of defendants had no malice, they argued, they were simply doing the "most compassionate thing possible" for animals no one wanted, sparing them lives of loneliness and confinement (hope my kids don't read about this when I get older).

Further, the animals themselves had no intrinsic value, so there were really no demonstrable damages in the case. For an organization that says it would oppose medical experimentation on laboratory animals - even if it meant not finding a cure for AIDS - to argue that the animals in question had no value should make your blood boil.

PETA raises hundreds of millions of dollars annually - allegedly fighting to defend the rights of animals - all animals. But their convenient manner of disposing of animals given to them by animal caregivers shows the total lie upon which their so-called pro-animal organization is founded.

PETA kills thousands of animals every year - and will continue to kill them for years to come. They purchased walk-in freezers for their Virginia headquarters to store animal carcasses and have paid thousands of dollars to an animal cremation service to dispose of them later. But they are acting out of "compassion" not indifference.

They dress up in outrageous costumes - or demonstrate in the buff - to draw attention to their animal rights movements - and collect funds from people stupid enough to believe they're serious about their so-called work.

They terrorize children with books which characterize parents who serve meat as mass murderers; they have drawn no distinction between meat processors and the Nazis who murdered millions of people in World War II, and they have no compunction about giving money to environmental terrorists.

When Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook were arrested and charged with felony animal cruelty more than 15 months ago, we had hoped this trial, if nothing else, would shed some light on the PETA organization.

It accomplished exactly that.

Hinkle and Cook will not be going to jail for killing animals given to them with the belief they were going to be placed in adoptive homes.

While it might look like a big win for PETA, it's really not.

This trial has forced PETA to admit that it does not rescue animals, it kills them.

The defense used by their attorneys to avoid felony animal cruelty charges was that these animals had no intrinsic value. That should make everyone writing a check to PETA for the "ethical treatment of animals" think twice - and maybe stop sending checks to an organization that isn't protecting animals - at least not when it's an expense or an inconvenience for PETA.

If that's a win, I can only wish PETA many more courtroom successes.

--Jim Shepherd

Note that you can subscribe to The Outdoor Wire here.

Sundie Funnies

Michael Bane
Michael Bane has finally got his Downrange.TV website pumped up enough to show some Actual Content. I expect this website to become a frequent site-of-interest for those of us who consider Guns not only a tool, but a means of spending a weekend at the range with friends. Among other features he has a forum set up (I've registered and actually posted. I didn't have anything particularly interesting to say, but I got to see my name in print.)

Superbowl
Did you watch the SuperBowl this weekend? I didn't. I don't like spectator sports, but perhaps I'm just weird. If you're among the thirty-plus million American Spectators (I can make up statistics with the best of 'em) who only watch it for the commercials, I'm reliably informed by Kim Kommando that this is where you can view the commercials online. Note that you may be enjoined to load some software to enable 'full-screen videos'. Great, if you like commercials ... which might very well be the Best Part Of Television.

Family
Frequent Readers may recall that last October I took a week hiatus to visit my son, Ben, in Utah. Ben is the father of Jake the Untouchable, uncle of The Alleged Jack and Samantha the Nailer. I'm happy to report that Ben, his wife and son in tow, has moved back to the Left Coast in search of a new career. Now living in Northern California, according to last reports (I spoke to him on the phone last night) he intended to drive to Oregon on this day to visit family. It's a six-and-a-half hour trip, so I asked him to phone me when he reached the home of his maternal grandmother so I would know it when it was a reasonable time to visit them. He originally cited an 8pm arrival time, then 10pm, then 1am. Since it's now after 11pm, I'm guessing that he won't be calling me for a couple of hours. I think I must have lost my mind when I asked him to call me on arrival. I forgot whose son (mine) I was talking to.

Blogging may be interrupted tomorrow as I will be out-of-town visiting family, and happy I am to be doing so.

Chris Muir and Day By Day Cartoons
Word is that DBD will be out-of-town toward the end of this month



and



(Click on the images to see the full strips.)

Looks like we'll be spending some time at the DBD and SigArms websites in a few weeks.

Flash Drives
SWMBO was doing some market research (read: thumbing through the ad inserts of the Sunday Papers) this morning, and ran full-tilt into the Staples ads.

She's aware that I've been looking for memory stick (thumb drive, flash drive, whatever) and noted that a 2GB Microsoft Flash Drive was available for about $30. I've been looking for a hi-cap memory stick for some months, and I've been disgruntled that I couldn't find bargains much better than the 1GB SanDisk drive I bought 18 months ago for ca. $90.

Today she found a 2GB stick for $30. After mail-in rebate for $30.

An inch lower down in the newspaper ad, she found a 4GB stick (from MS) for $55, after a $75 "instant rebate".

Yah, sure, we trundled right down to the local Staples store and I shelled out $55 for a 4GB flash drive. I already have a 1GB drive (I know, I already mentioned it) which I use for transferring data between work and home puters, and whatever other purpose seems convenient ... such as instant backup of my work data.

The reason I wanted a new drive was to save all of my URL's, ID's and passwords. I figure there's less exposure to hackers if I cut&paste these private data items instead of typing them, in case someone has a keyboard memory software hack on my PC. Besides, I don't have to write passwords in my day-planner, right?

Chances are I'll transfer my password files to the 1GB memory stick, and keep the 4GB stick for backups. Whatever technique I finally choose, I'm happy with the transportable extended memory options which are available to me now for a very low price.

Remember when there were limited (eg: Zip Drive) options in transportable memory?

Remember when RAM memory was rule-of-thumb priced at $100 per MB?

Four GB is roughly equivalent to ... what, 4,000 MB? I just bought 4,000 MB of memory for $55 ... a resource which (if available "back then" would have cost me ... a lot of money.

I recall buying a 460KB hard drive, twelve years ago, for about three times as much money.

Two months ago, I bought a 2MB Sandisk memory chip for my HP camera for about $60 in a special marketting drive. This was, at the time, touted as "Top Of The Line".

I do love the computer industry. If you can't find the deal you want, at the price you want .... just wait a couple of months until the market catches up with your expectations.
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Bob the Nailer

Thanks to my friend Whitefish, I have been informed that the magnificent novels of Stephen Hunter are now to be introduced in the Cinematic versions.

The first novel to be so celebrated (no word on whether others will be created on film) is "Point of Impact", ... arguably the first book of the series .... renamed "Shooter".

Catchy title, ain't it?


Actually, this is "based on" Point of Impact, so don't expect that the book you know and love is the movie you will see. (Amazon dot com shows their NEW version of the book cover, shown at the right, which is dramatically different from the original, shown at left.)


The image for the movie shows that the re-release of the book is a marketing attempt to relate the book with the movie, which suggests that the movie will 'closely follow' the book. If it doesn't I'm gonna be pissed because (a) it means I'll have to rewrite this article, and (b) I'm gonna be REALLY pissed because I very much enjoyed the book!

The film stars Mark Wahlberg, which surprised me at first because I had always envisioned Bob Lee Swagger (AKA Bob The Nailer) as an older man. A man with more experience written in his face. But I'm looking at the trailer at the Internet website for the movie, and I'm thinking ... well, okay. Maybe. Let's reserve judgement until we get to look at the movie, even though the man whose face came to mind the first time I read the book is Tommy Lee Jones. Hell, he was even born in the same year as Bob.

In Theaters March 16, 2007.
Side comment here: "300", the tale of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae (a la Frank Miller's Gothic/Graphic style), will appear in theaters on March 9, 2007. Good thing they're opening a week apart.

The Swagger series (Bob, and his father Earl) is one of those series which I reread EVERY year. The only cinder in the stew is Havana, and I'm not worried about that blip in the creative process because it's only one of eight books and every author is entitled to a swing-and-a-miss now and then.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're looking at your bookshelf (just as I'm looking at mine) and HEY! There's only seven Bob the Nailer books up there.

Here's the really good news:

Amazon lists another Bob the Nailer book, The 47th Samurai, scheduled for publication on September 11, 2007!

A note about author Stephen Hunter (not to detract from your excitement at the news that A BOB THE NAILER MOVIE HAS BEEN COMPLETED!): if you're not familiar with him, he is a film reviewer. You can catch his reviews at RottonTomatos.com, which I assure you are as well-written as his books. (Note: his original reviews are for The Washington Post, which is a Liberal paper but I read it now and then because it is Mr. Hunter's 'Day Job' and you have to respect him for earning an honest living.)

Just as I don't like some of his books, I don't agree with some of his film reviews. Still, he's such an accomplished writer even his film reviews are worth reading on their own merit.

I wonder if he'll review "Shooter".

Geek Thoughts

• I saw a flock of Oregon Ducks fly overhead today. How did I know they were Oregon ducks?

1. It's February.
2. They were flying EAST for the Winter!

• What's the difference between "Ecology" and "The Environment"? The Environment is the Stage. Ecology is the Play.

• This is my 10th year as Jerry the Geek. I created that nom de plume in 1997 when I began contributing to The Unofficial IPSC List. At first people asked me why I chose that particular nickname for myself. I spent a lot of time explaining that it was a take-off on "Jimmy the Greek", the (now notorious) Las Vegas Odds-maker. I explained that I'm a computer programmer ... a Geek ... and it seemed like an obvious nickname. People quit asking, eventually, apparently just accepting that I chose a name which is less obnoxious than that which others might choose for me. Since then I have pondered, and today I realize that I miss the obvious, TRUE answer:

"The Great One"
was already taken.

Area Denial

Last week, in "Gotcha Coming and Going", I mentioned that the military has developed a new vehicle mounted microwave transmitter to be used for crowd control. It's an interesting concept. It 'projects' microwave radiation with the effect, when directed at people, of causing their skin to heat up causing a burning sensation. They claim it has no harmful effects, it only distracts folks from whatever purpose they had in mind before the thingie was turned on them.

I'm a little dubious about the effects on very soft tissue such as eyes, but there's now a video available on YouTube showing the reaction of test subjects. One lady reporter Squeaked! and danced out of the path of the radiation. Nobody, including a platoon of Army volunteers, seemed to be otherwise harmed. Some even smiled in chagrin at their dancing avoidance of the radiation.

Here is the promotional video, where it's referred to as an "Active Denial System" (ADS). It has a range of 500 yards.

The explanation is clear, and it seems a reasonable non-lethal system with immediate applicability in places such as military urban perimeters in Iraq.

I'll warn you about the text accompanying the video. It was originally written by someone with an apparent case of the jaws against both the military and the current administration, but now I see that the text has been changed.

However, the comments are interesting. Here's the one I saw:

This weapon is still able to kill or torture ppl. Its a lie to tell its non-lethal. I saw other video and documentory on this new technologie weapon, it burn the skin without burning the material around. They did the tests on innoncent ppl in Irak, wich they are burned seriously (many are dead).

Ignore the limited English writing ability of the author (perhaps English is a second language -- I'm not being critical as I have not second-language skills at ALL!)

The charges made here are interesting. I haven't visited any of the other videos co-listed, so I can't comment on the validity of the assertions. I may say that almost anything can be mis-applied to caused effects for which it was not originally designed and I can't say I would be surprised to learn that this device would be deliberately mis-applied with destructive intent.

However, I'm dubious about the report of people dying in Iraqi testing. I've done a quick search of major news outlets (including among others The Guardian, the LA Times and the NY Times, AP, Reuters, USA Today) and I'm sure that a story like this would at least be as prominently displayed as the one about the Florida woman who claims to have found a razor blade in her Egg McMuffin.

UPDATE (The Next Morning):
I've done more reading on the so-called ADS.

Here's a bunch of people at BUZZFEED talking about this system which, we learn, isn't actually scheduled for deployment until 2010. And here's a PDF which explains it's not a MICROwave projector (my error, excuse the blunder, pay no attention ...) but a MILLIMETER Wave projector. It even explains the difference. With pictures.

Finally, the BBC weighs in with the vague 'feeling' that there must be something dibolical about the entire concept. Why? "Such a weapon also has the potential to cause panic and deadly stampedes." Even the Guardian (okay, ALWAYS the Guardian) has a negative impression to share: "According to papers released under freedom of information requests, mishaps during trials have caused blistering at least six times and one second degree burn when the beam was fired on too high a setting. According to the US military, the risk of injury is less than 0.1%."

Oh, well that wouldn't be good. Better throw the thing away, somebody might get hurt.

Frankly, I'm a little off-put by the whole thing.

No no no, I don't mean the ADC or the confusing terminology. I mean this early-morning blogging. I'm accustomed to doing all of my writing in the evening, even late late at night. Here it is 7am and I'm sitting at my computer waiting for the coffee to finish perking.

I've heard that people who write these weBLOG journals (surely not a serious attempt at communicating, just a diary that we leave unlocked for the whole world to read ... as if I could ever get that kind of traffic!) are to be referred to as Pajama Pundits because we spend all of our time online and never even have to get dressed all day. Sounds like my kind of job, I wish. Instead, judging from my mail, I stay up late so YOU can read exciting new (or exciting warmed-over for the next day) stuff like this while you sit around in your pajamas sipping coffee.

So what does that make you? Bathrobe Browsers?

Blogger Mania

Sidebar Links:
I've received a sidebar icon from Cowboy Blob, which I'll install shortly. No complaints yet about the cheesy icons I cobbled together. Either the owners of those blobs blogs weren't concerned, don't have something better to offer, or haven't read Cogito Ergo Geek for a few days. Could it be?

I'll install Cowboy's icon later, when I have time to spend working on my Template. It looks a lot better than the one I tried to make. That should come as no surprise, as Cowboy's pretty good at building these gizmos.

New Blogger:
LawDog tried the New Blogger ... an updated version of the software which is used to run this and thousands of other websites in the Blogging Community. (I love that phrase, almost as much as I admire the word "Buttocks".) He reported that it came as a surprise to him. A comment on his post noted that other blogs had reported problems, such as a slow load of Comments.

Syd at Front Sight, Press emailed asking me to change the URL for his blog to a 'mirror site' he created for his press releases because "When Blogger did the "upgrade" it got so messed up that I put up my own on my snubby site because I couldn't post anything on the blogger site. I am still posting the news on the blogger site, but that's all."

I loaded Internet Explorer 7 when it was (another surprise) sent to me as a MS Update. I prefer NetScape as a browser because it has more of the Foxfire-type features I like, such as tab so you can have multiple websites open in one window. Since IE7 has added this 'new' feature, I decided to accept the update. The installation wasn't as error-free as I had been lead to believe. Just 'RESTARTING' my pc didn't make it work. In fact, when my system came back up nothing worked ... not even the clock on the tool bar. I couldn't even warm-boot the computer (either with Alt_Ctl_Del or by pushing the START button). Instead, I had to turn off the box with the power switch on my surge suppressor, turn it back on, THEN push the START button.

I took the formal tour, noted that there wasn't a lot of really exciting new features (other than the TABs, which seemed to be clumsily done) and then tried to blog in IE7.

First surprise: when I copied the URL for the web-address where I edit posts from my NetScape browser to IE7, it couldn't find it! Then I fiddled with it for a while until I got to the Dashboard (the central control area where ALL of your blogs are listed), and when I tried to open Cogito Ergo Geek it wouldn't allow me to do anything because I didn't have a Google account!

I know that Blogger is a free Google product, and I'm grateful for it of course, but now they're starting to put some controls in that don't provide any advantage to me. There's a reason that I don't already have a Google account (same reason why I use the clunky Comcast email system instead of GMail ... sheer ornery cussedness!) and I resented this attempt to force me into their corporate mold.

Worse, as I navigated through their list of options trying to 'sign on', I discovered that unless you were VERY careful you would end up allowing them to change your blog to the New Blogger. Essentially, it's an Opt Out situation.

Now, the 'Old' Blogger isn't perfect but I'm familiar with it and, finally, it has become relatively stable. Having been an Application Programmer for almost 25 years, I am reflexively dubious about new software releases. For example, (I installed IE7 only because I was fairly certain I could un-install it using Norton GoBack, if the XP recovery machine wouldn't work.

Judging from the horror stories I've been hearing, New Blogger is only "officially" out of Beta Testing. In fact, this stage might be considered what I've come to refer to as Gamma Testing. That is, the software vendor found enough innocent optimists to get beat up by the Beta Version to get the very worst of the real-world bugs worked out (or they developed "Work-Arounds" for the bugs which were too deeply intrenched in the system architecture for a quick fix), and now they needed a larger universe of dupes testers to give it a thorough workout so they could discover the problems created by struggling to make it work under a wide variety of browser/operating system combinations.

In the programming buz, we call these people Pioneers. If you'll recall your American History, these are the people who moved into a new territory not knowing the dangers and ended up with arrows sticking out of their backs.

No, I'm not going to convert Cogito Ergo Geek to New Blogger until they drag me kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I deal with buggy software every day at the office. I see no reason to spend my otherwise enjoyable evenings trying to figure out why their software doesn't work as advertised.

New Blogger is to Blogger as New Coke was to Coca Cola. I still drink Classic Coke (and so does the rest of the Coca Cola Drinking Community ... there's that word again.) And I'll continue to use Classic Blogger as long as the 'other' option remains an option.

BTW, don't get me started on the word "Classic"; it brings up memories of ranting for years against the IPSC Classic Target. I guess I'll have to say I use the "Metric" Blogger.

BTW, I'm writing this in the morning instead of the evening. Yes, I'm still working on my first cup of coffee. Apparently it isn't kicking in yet.

Template Changes: Links

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America Overreacting

David A. Bell wrote an opinion piece in the egregious LA Times on January 28, 2007.

In it, he postulated that America's response to the 9/11 attack constitutes an "overreaction".

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the "Islamo-fascist" enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler's implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy. The conservative author Norman Podhoretz has gone so far as to say that we are fighting World War IV (No. III being the Cold War).

If I understand this correctly, Bell presumes that a World Power should not react as strongly as possible to an attack on home soil because they/we have too much military might to responsibly use it ALL in reaction to a casualty list which is 'too low' to justify the effort.

They don't "threaten the existance of the United States", so presumably something less than going to war is called for. He suggests that the threat is less than total extinction, but curiously fails to present his definition of a more appropriate reaction.

(What should America do? Kill 3,006 terrorists and then, suddenly, stop? This isn't any kind of resolution. It trivializes the Attack on America to nothing more important than a game.)

In justification, he points out that the casualty list (including non-combatants and combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan) amounts to "... roughly the same number of Americans die every two months in automobile accidents."

In all fairness, and with due respect to Professor Bell's position at Johns Hopkins University, I can only conclude that he is full of crap.

In this world, there is allowing your country to be considered a Paper Tiger, a soft target ... and there is a determination to never allow aggression against your country to go unpunished.

I support the "No Paper Tiger Zone" (with a red circle around it, and a bold diagonal slash) position.

The following is a comment I submitted to a Randon Nuclear Strikes post titled "Next Time, Kill More Of Us, Please!" (H/T also to John Donovan's post in Castle of ARGGHHH!)

Apologies for this non-IPSC post. (Full disclosure: opinion, supported largely by 'facts' from MSM and Internet Reference sources.) I'm trying to minimize the sociopolitical stuff, honestly. Sometimes, though, the Force is with me.

We hear a lot of complaints against the War in Iraq, not so many against the War in Afghanistan. I wonder why that is?

Nobody from Iraq or Afghanistan is accused of directly participating in the 9/11 attack on America (although Afghanistan is reliably said to be, or have been, the place where Bin Laden lives; the assumption is that warring in Afghanistan may someday result in the death or capture of Bin Laden.)

Still, some people insist that America has no legitimate reason to wage war in, at least, Irag.

They don't understand, and at least this one dimwit doesn't understand why America always "overreacts" to aggression.

The reason is that America, having an open society (nearly unique in the world, even today) can't defend itself against internal attack by keeping potential enemies outside its borders.

Well, can't or won't -- the reason doesn't matter, the result is the same.

The only viable alternative is to establish worldwide confidence in the sure and certain "overreaction" of Americans against ANY assault.

It doesn't matter if we attack the folks who attack us. We'll attack the country which sent the assailants, or the country which trained or otherwise supported them. If no better target is available, we'll attack somebody "like" the folks who attacked us.

This is retalliation, not revenge.

It's a pre-emptive move to insure that the world knows we will punish SOMEONE related to the attackers. If those "someones" fear reprisals, and know that they are a possible target, they may find it in their own self-interest to discourage any individuals or groups who might otherwise have mounted an attack on America.

There's another part of this:

While we're fighting Terrorists in Iraq, they aren't attacking American soil. Instead, terrorists and potential terrorists are lured to the killing ground in Iraq where their targets aren't innocent American civilians but armed and equiped and fully trained combatants.

Isn't it better to establish a beach-head in the Middle east to draw out these wanna-be terrorists, than to provide no better target than the American civilian population?

You bet your ass.

(Comment added to original post: Sure, as soon as America suffers another terrorist attack on home soil, we will read that "Bush's Plan Is Not Working!" from the Liberals and the MSM ... but I repeat myself. Five years of freedom from bombs in the subway and Anthrax in the mail will probably be seen as nothing more than a statistical glitch, apropos of absolutely nothing. Certainly not as the result of a resolute president inflicting an unpopular war on a left-leaning population of Ostriches.)

If we leave Iraq, we'll be seen as nothing more than a Paper Tiger, just as we have been considered after out non-reaction to terrorist attacks since the truck-bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut back in the '80s. Include in this litany of passivity the non-reaction to the slaughter of American troops in Somalia in 1993 ("Blackhawk Down"), bombing of the Khobar Towers in '96, the 1998 bombing of embassies in Africa, and the suicide bombing attack on the Cole in 2000.

As long as America would not react, its enemies continued to attack.

Oh, sure, there was the odd Tomahawk Missile attack which had no more result than the destruction of an aspirin factory in '98. That frightened nobody, and apparently served no better purpose than to distract the American publich from the Lewinsky affair. That was politics, not 'reaction'. Can you say "wag the dog?", children? I think you can.

"No Reaction" is an admission of a failure of will to defend our country.

"Ineffective Reaction" only invites contempt.

The only effective reaction is an over-reaction.

Hillary ... sings?

This video from YouTube just goes to show that:

1. I'm better looking than Hillary (Check the Profile Picture .. I'm the one with the beard)
2. I can sing better, too!

Well, can't everybody? At least most of us know all the words.

January Dundee Match: IPSC Videos

In keeping with my new policy of videotaping matches and displaying the resulting videos with ALL movies taken on a single stage presented in a single video, I have some new movies for your enjoyment.

This weekend we squadded with several people we haven't competed with together. Note that I have declined to present videos of two new shooters: Mike and his teenage daughter, Alex.

Squad member Sheri wore her new Match Shirt, and I was happy to gather her, SWMBO and new shooter Alex for a photo of The Ladies.

I don't know about you, but I still remember my first match in 1983. If videotaping competitor performance was the normal thing to do then, I would be grateful that nobody filmed my performance then. I'm repaying the sport by not showing the performance of new shooters today.

Mike and Alex, if you REALLY want to see how you did at this match -- email me. Everybody else, think back on your first match and remember: you don't want to know.

Actually, both Mike and Alex did just fine. They shot safe and, usually, accurately . When they ran into problems on the challenging stages, they took more time than other people in the squad. But they were never scary people and I would be proud to squad with them again.

There were six stages in this match. I had a limited number of photos from Stage 2 (AtoBtoC) so that stage is not represented in this album.

The five stages which ARE represented here are:

Stage 1: Paper Plates - 3mb download file size

This is the stage our squad started on. You start behind a barrier, dodge around the barrier to shoot at a half-dozen paper targets, then dodge around another barrier to engage six 8" plaes on a plate rack.

This is typical of the stages presented today. Essentially, you start out shooting fast and then you have to slow down and shoot slow to finish the stage. The people who won this stage never slowed down: they were so talented (or so skilled) that they never slowed down.

The only person I filmed was SWMBO, who did a fine job but not good enough to win the stage. She beat my time, didn't get as many points. We both shot the stage in 19.** seconds. Tenth place (out of 56 shooters) was 14.** seconds.


Stage 2: AtoBtoC - no photos or videos

I only filmed one shooter on this stage, and it was one of the new shooters, so I didn't publish the video. It was something a memory course with only four targets, and you had to shoot them from three different positions (with vision barriers restricting access to the targets.) It scored the best 6 hits on each target.

I thought I did a good job at getting all of my hits in 15 seconds. Tenth place was a Junior Production-Division competitor (Chris C.) who completed the stage in 10 seconds. I have decided not to be discouraged by being beaten by Chris C. in Production. This young man is a very tough competitor, and I look forward to the day when he beats me in every stage, instead of only half of the stages.

This should take him approximately 90 days.

I'm shooting Open, he's shooting Production.
I've been competing for 23 years, he has been competing for one year.

I never liked Chris.
Okay, that's a lie. I'm pleased that this sport allows a young man to experience competitive shooting in a safe environment, and especially that he can learn the joy of shooting VERY well. All of the Columbia Cascade Section Junior Squad are keen competitors, and as enthusiastic as a basketfull of pups. They are the hope for tomorrow, and a credit to coach Mike McCarters endless hours of instruction and example.

MD NOTE: This stage featured four very close targets, with the best six hits scoring. The scenario (you had to be there) was that you needed to engage each target at least once from three different shooting boxes. Lots of people took extra shots, so there were a lot of holes in these targets.

Fifty four shooters times a minimum of six holes for each shooters equals over 300 holes in each target. Because the targets were typically within six feet of the shooting boxes, most of the holes were in the A-zone. It was a hoser stage, so you know what it looked like when we got to the stage.

We were the second squad on the stage, and the targets were a mass of tape. We ran a couple of shooters through it, realized that we couldn't determine which holes were caused by the current shooter and which were the result of tape being blasted off holes made by earlier shooters, and replaced the targets.

Good news: the MD (Trevor) had already placed a replacement set of targets on the bay.
Bad news: there was only one set, and we expected to leave the stage with targets in the same shape as when we got there.

VERY good news: Trevor walked by as we were shooting, and I advised him that he needed at least two, maybe three sets of replacement targets. (There were six squads at the match.) He immediately brought us two more sets of targets, and we helped him to tape and paint the requisite hard-cover zones on those targets which needed it. This took less than five minutes, and it is a credit to the Dundee club (CVSC) and the Match Director (Trevor) that the response was so immediate and so helpful.

Stage 3: Steely Speed VII - 4mb download file size

This is a Classifier stage, which requires you to engage six steel targets (three Pepper Poppers, three U.S. Poppers) from behind a Bianchi Barricade.

The videos show SWMBO, Fish and me shooting the stage, and none of us strutted on the way home.

The 10th place finisher (Bill M., who is one of th B-Open shooters against whom I am directly competing) completed the stage in 4.77 seconds.

Nobody in my squad came close to this mark. In fact, I did fairly well and my squad-members congratulated me. I responded to the effect that "by this time, six people have beat my time on this stage". In the actual event, 10 people beat my time on this stage.

Four of them weren't competing in Open division.

I am terribly impressed!

Stage 4: The Rest Of The Steel - 6mb download file size

This stage features a lot of full-faced cardboard targets, and then forces the competitor to bear down to engage a lot of steel targets. I should mention that this match was a "rain match", which means that the usual lot of dirty tricks were avoided by the stage designers because they expected rain. It didn't rain on this day; instead, it was a beautiful warm day (forty degrees plus) with gusts of wind which tended to blow the targets ... both cardboard and steel ... down at the least opportune moment. No criticism to either the stage designers or the people who built the stages.

Those of us who shot the stage (which included both the stage designers ... MD Trevor and RM Bill) found that we needed to put weights on the target stands to encourage them to stand up during the occasional farts. Not our gasseous digestions, but the classic meteorlogical definition: "A short puff of wind."

You may find the cited reference doesn't acknowledge my definition of the word.

Deal with it.

I finished well behind the 10th place 13.55 seconds / 100 points, largely because I missed a 10" plate two times before I knocked it down. Like most of the stages in this match, winners were determined by their ability to hit small targets quickly.

In case it sounds like 'sour grapes' to you, this is the epitome of IPSC competition, and I do not object to the design of any of the stages. The opportunity to excel was present in every stage, and it was a challenging match.

This may have been the defining stage of the match, except for the stage which followed it ...



Stage 5: Pretty Easy - 16mb download file size (well, there were a lot of interesting videos)

"Pretty Easy" ... wasn't.

This stage prominently featured the Texas Star, and was the downfall of many competitors.

There was a 'hard cover' IPSC-target-shaped steel plate in front of the Star, and this scared the bejiminees out of many of the competitors. I'm not sure why, but I suppose it's part of the "Steel Targets Are Hard To Shoot" mindset, which is something that can screw the mind of any competitor who allows it to become a problem.

The thing to do is to just ... ignore the hardcover, and shoot the target you can see.

This is much like the shooting problem involved in any target with hardcover. It's another way in which the stage designer may choose to play with your mind, and allow you to defeat yourself.

It's worth a short note here to define the best way to engage the STAR rotating target, especially in reference to a hard-cover plate which obscures the targets during part of the rotatin.

First, realize that the hard-cover (as seen here) does not prohibit your engagement of the final target when the array is at rest. That means that, if you just wait a few seconds, the final plate WILL appear from behind the hardcover.

The trick is to coax it out from its hidey-hole as quickly as possible. That means that (unlike those stages where all targets in the Star are always visible), you want to make the rotation work for you.

The BEST way to shoot the Star, assuming it starts 'at rest' (the array isn't already rotating when you first engage it), is to shoot the top plate (on either side, if the top plate isn't" straight up"), then shoot the highest falling plate to slow it down or, ideally, even stop the rotational movement long enough to shoot the highest plate on the OTHER side.

If you do that with reasonable quickness, and accurately, you can essentially keep the array in balance. The falling-plate side is the heaviest, so by knocking off the highest falling plate you shift the weight to the OTHER side (the rising side), which then wants to move 'down'.

By going from one side to the other, you have the time to engage a plate which is either stopped (reversing direction), or moving very slowly.

----

But when you have a hardcover covering part of the plate, it's easier to shoot the top plate, then the highest plate on the side away from the hardcover. In this case, those are the plates on the left side because the hardcover is on the right side.

You probably (if you're following this lame description) thinking that this is counter-intuitive. If you keep shooting plates off the left side of the Star, wouldn't the Star rotate ever faster? The answer is that it takes a little time for the acceleration to occur, and you're removing energy with every plate you knock off.

But the rotation doesn't really start until you knock off the 2nd plate (top left), so the momentum doesn't have time to build. If you don't miss.

Besides, if you shoot the top left plate and then the top right plate, you set up a fast oscillation which makes it much more difficult to hit the plates unless you are willing to wait for the plates to slow down at the top of their arc ... or unless you're a very good shot. Most of us are not.

All you have to do is to shoot the top plate on the side opposite the hardcover, and do that five times is a row. Slow down enough to get the hits, and you end up looking pretty good on film.

WARNING: Do NOT shoot a low plate! That shifts the center of balance away from the bottom, where you want it to be, to the top, where you decidedly do NOT want it to be.

WARNING: Even more important, do NOT 'split plates'. That means that if you have three plates to shoot at it's better to shoot the falling plate but if you shoot the center plate you will have a Shooting Problem From Heck. Review the video and see what happens when you split the plates.

If you find yourself in that situation, shoot the highest plate, always. This shifts the balance to the lower levels, and they tend to dampen the rotational momentum so you have very slow movement.

Ultimately, I was very proud of my 15 second time on the stage, until I discovered that the good shooters were finishing the stage in 10 to 13 seconds.

Stage 6: Public Parking - 7mb download file size

This 31-round stage had a lot of challenging near-and-far targets, and was something of a memory course. They had snow-fencing vision barriers all over the place, and they put targets in places where you didn't immediately realizes there WERE places. They had seven steel targets, two of which activated 'clam-shell' type IPSC targets and the Pepper Poppers obscured US Poppers. Very challenging.

MD NOTE: It was also the slowest stage of the match, because the clamshells were WAY downrange and required the RO to walk far away from the center of the bay to score them. I'm not saying this is A Bad Thing; these were the targets which generally separated the winners from the losers. (I was a Loser, I had trouble hitting those little plates to activate the IPSC targets. Some shooters couldn't hit them at that range.)

But it took about 30 seconds for the RO to score those two targets, and multiplied by the 54 competitors that adds about 4 minutes to the clearance time for each of the six squads. Our squad finished on that stage, and the RM was bouncing up to recover scoresheets before we cleared the stage because ours was that far behind all the other squads, who had already finished the match.

It was a challenging stage, but when you include that time factor in the biggest stage in the match, you have to expect that the match is going to be slowed down. The MD and the RM knew that, and they made a conscious effort to minimize the effect. I'm grateful to Bill and Trevor for dealing with this so they didn't have to eliminate the difficult targets just for the sake of speeding up the match.

Unfortunately, the cold weather played merry hell with the batteries in the cameras, so we only got two full videos of this stage. Sure, I could have gone to the car and grabbed the warm battery stashed there for emergencies, but we were having too much time to leave the squad. At least the videos we DID get show me missing one of the US Poppers hidden behind a Pepper Popper, so you get an idea of how easy it was to foul your stage score on this stage.

You can see the scores from the match here.

INCIDENTAL NOTES:

1. I hope squadmember Doug J. got his 1911 fixed. On the very last stage (Stage 6, Public Parking) his pistol decided there was no good reason why it should eject cases, and he was left with a zero score on that stage. We're thinking it was a broken extractor, and hope he lets us know that he found the problem and will get it fixed in time for next match ... in two weeks, at ARPC. You can see Doug handle the Texas Star on the Stage 5 link.
2. Thanks again to Mike J. for bringing Alex to the match. She's a hard worker, a safe shooter, and cute as can be. Yes, I am aware that this is a sexist statement but we enjoyed her company and her dedication to Practical Pistol competition. We hope she and the rest of her family continue to participate in our own private exercise in public embarassment.
   

The Coolest Gun Blogster Ever

Michael Bane, "The Coolest Gun Blogster Ever", has a new project in the offing: Downrange TV.

He refers to it as "just a placeholder" so far, but I'm thinking it will revolutionize gun-blogging because it will be (ta daaa!) a Video Blog!

Okay, I'm just supposin' here, but judging from the 'placeholder' evidence there will be a lot of quality content available in the future at this website.

I spent a little time at the "Placeholder" website, and one of the more interesting videos was a short interview with Bill Laughridge (Cylinder and Slide) who had built a "Browning 1908" in .45acp caliber. The interview, apparently filmed at the 2007 S.H.O.T. show ( and incidentaly titled The Coolest Gun 1908 Ever" ... get it?) featured Laughridge's Bespoke 1908 Prototype. It's a fine looking pistol, although I would have preferred it without the Grip Safety, and according to Laughridge it took 110 man-hours to produce and is available for the low low price of $8,000. He says he already has an order for 1908C&S#2 (my nomenclature; I have no idea whether it has a real serial number). If you want one, get your order in early.

Getting back to the main story, I'm excited about Bane's new website.

I don't know how he expects to find the time to produce it. He (already besides his television show) produces The Bane Blog as well as the online Shooting Gallery.

Doesn't matter. The only thing the website is missing (besides more videos ... "please sir, I want more!") is a Theme Song.

Gotcha coming and going

Alleged Carjacker gets shot in the buttocks.

One of the more interesting words in the English language ... buttocks.

South Carolina Gangbanger (what else?) tries to steal a car from the people riding in it.
Bad Guy stuck his gun in the stomach of a man getting into his car in a WalMart parking lot.

The lady passenger opened the glove compartment, pulled out a pistol, and shot the Gangbanger in the buttocks. It took her five shots, but she finally got a D-zone hit. Hit the ass in the ass, so to speak.

Lesson 1: Always escort your lady to the car, open the door for her, help her in. She just might save your ... er ... ass.

Lesson 2: Get some shooting lessons for your lady. Five shots ... come on! SWMBO wouldn't have wasted so much ammunition on a low-value target.


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Military shows off new Ray Gun

No, this isn't Ronald Ray-Gun (as referenced by Liberal opponents to his Strategic Defense Initiative .. aka Star Wars.)

"The military calls its new weapon an 'active denial system,' but that's an understatement. It's a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire."

Airman Blaine Pernell, 22, of suburban New Orleans, said he could have used the system during his four tours in Iraq, where he manned watchtowers around a base near Kirkuk. He said Iraqis constantly pulled up and faked car problems so they could scout out U.S. forces.

"All we could do is watch them," he said. But if they had the ray gun, troops "could have dispersed them."

USPSA Rules: 1.5.1.1

At the Tri County Gun Club (TCGC) match today, I raised a protest against a stage which was designed such that Limited 10, Production and Single Stack Division competitors would clearly find themselves at a disadvantage.

Specifically, two four-target arrays ( scoring: best two hits per target) were presented such that they could only be engaged from a single firing position. That is, this stage required a minimum of 16 rounds to be fired from a signle position.

I protested that this was not an IPSC-legal stage, because it required more than 9 shots to be fired from a single position.

This was a 31-round course of fire, but regardless of the number of rounds required the situation was patently unsupportable by one of the following USPSA rules:

1.2.1 General Courses of Fire:

1.2.1.1 “Short Courses” must not require more than 9 rounds to
complete and no more than 2 shooting locations.

1.2.1.2 “Medium Courses” must not require more than 16 rounds to complete and no more than 3 shooting locations. Course design and construction must not require more than 9 scor­ing hits from any single location or view, nor allow a com­petitor to eliminate a location or view in the course of fire by shooting all available targets at an earlier location or view.

1.2.1.3 “Long Courses” must not require more than 32 rounds to complete. Course design and construction must not require more than 9 scoring hits from any single location or view, nor allow a competitor to eliminate a location or view in the course of fire by shooting all available targets at an earlier location or view.

(Emphasis added)

The match director determined that, while this ruling was generally applicable, the stage design was permissible because it was a Level 1 match and was not required to comply with all USPSA rules.

I suspect he was mistaken in that the most nearly applicable rule ( 1.1.5.1) states:

1.1.5.1 Level I and Level II matches are not required to comply strictly with the freestyle requirements or round count lim­itation

... but this is clearly not applicable. Rule 1.1.5 states:

1.1.5 Freestyle – IPSC matches are freestyle. Competitors must be permitted to solve the challenge presented in a freestyle manner, and to shoot targets on an “as and when visible” basis. Courses of fire must not require mandatory reloads nor dictate a shooting position or stance, except as specified below. However, conditions may be created, and barriers or other physical limitations may be constructed, to compel a competitor into shooting positions or stances.

During the course of this match, I did video a few competitors as they shot this stage.

The stage design required starting in "Box A", which was downrange and on the left side of the bay. The only targets which were permissible to engage were in the four-target array directly in front of the box "A".

Another array was presented on the right side of the bay, equidistant from the back berm. This array consisted of six steel targets: three Pepper Poppers and three US Poppers. The three targets in the front were forward-falling targets, and the three targets in the rear fell normally to the rear. The targets in the front of the array were aligned with the rear targets, so that they partially or fully obscurred the targets in the rear of the array.

Ten yards Uprange of this array, was "Box B". From this box, the competitor was permitted to engage only the steel-target array.

Box "C" was located 30 yards uprange of "Box B".

Downrange of "Box C", and only one or two yards uprange of "Box B", were two 4-target arrays which could obviously be engaged from "Box C".

The course of fire was established so that the steel-target array downrange of "Box B" could be engaged from either "Box B" at 10 yards, or from "Box C" at 30 yards.

Whatever arrangement the competitor chose to make for the engagement of the steel targets in front of "Box B", eight 2-round targets MUST be engaged from "Box C".

I realize that this description is confusing. I did film two competitors on this stage. One chose to engage the steel targets, as well as the two uprange arrays, from "Box C". The other compettior chose to engage the steel targets from "Box B", and the two uprange arrays from "Box C".

You can view the stage from both approaches at

http://jerrythegeek.arpc-ipsc.org/gallery/7t1/7t16_003

This is a 6mb WMV video, and I apologize for the size of the file download. But it does demonstrate the situation much more clearly than the foregoing description.

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There was another equally controversial stage in this match, which allowed the competitor to engage all targets from a single position. This 18-round course of fire was obviously in violation with the previously cited rule 1.2.1.2:

1.2.1.2 “Medium Courses” must not require more than 16 rounds to complete and no more than 3 shooting locations. Course design and construction must not require more than 9 scor­ing hits from any single location or view, nor allow a com­petitor to eliminate a location or view in the course of fire by shooting all available targets at an earlier location or view.

That is, all targets were possible to engage from a single location.

I didn't challenge this stage because the MD, while well-intentioned, was clearly intractible.

You may view a half-dozen ways to engage this stage at:

http://jerrythegeek.arpc-ipsc.org/gallery/7t1/7t15_001

Note that if there were legal fault-lines on this stage which defined the 'back of the box', the question would have been avoided. Lines painted on a gravel surface were obviously not intended to serve this purpose.

If you can provide a different interpretation to this rule, as it applies to these two stages, I hope you will comment for my personal edification.

Incidently, you can see all of the videos we filmed at this match (there are two more) at:

http://jerrythegeek.arpc-ipsc.org/gallery/7t1

Finally, just for fun, here's a YouTube video of the first stage we shot. Unfortunatly, I only have one competitor illustrated.

Me.