Zombie Blog!

 After almost a decade, I'm considering resurrecting this blog.  I'm stopped blogging because I was worn out, working hard, and decided to focus on family and friends on social media.  Well now social media is awful and the kid is old enough to take care of himself so perhaps I'll be coming back here more often.  Only time will tell.

Weaponlights: Bad Advice that Sort of Isn't.

Most of the bad advice in this article is accurate, but I take some exception with the following:

1. A firearm light or laser will just give away your position! 

In real life, the benefits of seeing where and/or what you’re shooting at far outweigh any realistic disadvantages of “giving away your position.” One more thing, make it a point to tell the hundreds of thousands of military and law enforcement personnel who mount lights and lasers on their guns specifically for the purpose of fighting in the dark that this is a tactical blunder. What do they know anyway?

While the complaint about giving away your position is overblown, it's still kind of true. Also the articles response to the issue uses a ton of BS and employs a tactical strawman about tactical ninjas on chandeliers (which I did not quote). However on military and police:

1. The military is possibly the worst example you can use. The Army uses passive night vision devices wherever possible because they know lights and lasers will give away their position. Likewise the lasers that the military mounts on their guns are typically IR-spectrum and only visible with NVGs. Again this prevents them from giving away their position as much. The primary reason for the laser is that the goggles get in the way of using iron sights on the rifle. The military would like to go to weapon mounted night vision so they don't have use active laser illumination at all. They still use white light for room clearing because it gives them better field of view compared to NVGs. They think the tradeoff in visibility is worth giving away their position.

2. Cops typically don't care about giving away their position which is why they yell things like "Police Officer!" and wear clearly marked uniforms with hiviz reflective elements.  Any most people will actively run away from cops rather than engage them.

The problem is that these are really side issues for civilians because:

3. Most people who have weapon lights are planning to use them for self defense within their own homes. Except that you have practical illumination you can use for target identification (which also doesn't give away your position) keyed to wall switches all over your home. You know exactly where all of these are and a potential home invader does not. This make a weapon light unnecessary for pure threat identification.

4. Because if you plan to check out a bump in the night, using a weapon light to do so is not ideal. That bump might be a housepet or your kid stumbling around. In fact this is far more likely than a home invader in most places. You do not want to point your firearm at your kid or pet.  It's a safety violation. So you need to train to illuminate with the off-beam flood of your weaponlight, or carry a standard flashlight which is not mounted on a deadly weapon, or just employ your tactical light switches.

5. This is also why CCWing with a weaponlight is also of limited use. You don't want to have to draw your weapon (and by implication threaten lethal force), just to light up an alley because you think someone might be down there. Or because you heard something. That gun shouldn't leave your holster unless lethal force might be required in a clear and present way. You want a normal harmless flashlight for shining down alleys, etc. Which means the weapon light is kind of redundant for target illumination and becomes another thing to carry.

6. The primary reason the police and military use flashlights and weapon lights is because they don't know where the light switches are. They also don't know which lights those switches turn on. They also have to operate places without power and illumination. The military operates in third world areas without light switches a lot. Cop conduct traffic stops on the side of the road or respond during an emergency when power is out. The cops probably don't want to be using their weapons lights in those cases because 3 and 4. And cops can't afford NVGs.

Notice, none of the things in 5 really apply to civilian using weaponlights except that the power might go out.

Hitchens on Mamet

Christopher Hitchens' review of David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge on the Dismantling of American Culture had this to say:

This is an extraordinarily irritating book, written by one of those people who smugly believe that, having lost their faith, they must ipso facto have found their reason.

That's funny because the same could be said of Hitchen's own book of atheist evangelism God is Not Great.

From Ace of Spades.

A Shooting Memorium

Stephen Camp died a few weeks ago at the age of 59 after a sudden brain aneurysm rupture. Camp was one of the foremost online authorities on the Browning Hipower and being fan of the gun, I had the pleasure of corresponding with him a few times about holsters and related gun accessories. He was a great, helpful, and humble guy. The gunblogosphere was much quieter about this than I expected. I'm guessing this is because Stephen was a gun board fixture not really a gun blog fixture.

Accordingly my hipower joined my buckmark at the range yesterday for my going-to-be-a-father's day shoot. I shot competently. That's the general word I'd use to describe most of my shooting. At 8-10 yards, I can easily cover the group from a single magazine with my hand. Unless it's the buckmark, then it's more like my palm. Not exactly precision target shooting, but not bad.

I wish I could say that inspired by Stephen Camp's memory, the 9mm was a veritable paper slaughtering deathray. Not especially, no. Having two different grain weights of ammo going through a fixed sight gun probably didn't help either. But I'm going to be naming the hipower Stephen nonetheless.

Constitutional Responses

According to the New York Times, Clarence Thomas is breaking with judicial ethics guidelines by supporting Federal historical conservation efforts related to the Gullah/Geechee peoples of the coastal south. Thomas is himself a member of that group. Althouse and Instapundit mention that the proper response to a Supreme Court Judge with inappropriate behavior is impeachment not passive aggressive editorials.

To put it bluntly, Democrats don't want to use the I word. Not when Obama is violating the War Powers Act in Libya. Obama's defense is that it's not a war. The Libyan's military is so inferior to our own that they are no threat to us. Try not to thing about that one too hard or you might wake up your pregnant wife in the next room yelling things like "Then why are we there in the first place!" at your computer monitor. You know, like I did.

Instead they're putting a bipartisan group together to sue Obama in federal court. Really? Look if he's breaking federal law and you think it's important, impeach him. If you don't want to impeach him, then pass a bill that revokes the funding appropriation for activities in Libya. Then dare him to cross that line. If you don't have the votes for that then make political hay. Just don't think that the last one is really doing much of anything.

Some Light Blogging

So I haven't written anything here in a few months. There are many reasons for this. My wife is expecting our first child in two months. All of the meaningful parts of Blogger's backend is blocked at work. I can't even comment on Blogger blogs. I've also changed teams at work so that I'm actually working with military systems I like, which greatly restrains what I can actually post on without causing myself problems. But attempts to restrict gun rights in a misguided attempt to reduce domestic terrorism over at SayUncles roused me from semi-retirement.

I've already covered why restricting an enumerated right using the no-fly list is a bad idea on this blog. My uncle-in-law basically doesn't fly anywhere anymore because his name is common and therefore guaranteed to be on the list.

But more importantly, the whole logic is flawed. Terrorists everywhere basically start with guns. They did in Iraq. They did in Afghanistan. In Iraq they quickly moved to explosives. Things appear to be going the same way in the 'Stan. Why? Because when they start shooting at our soldiers, they expose themselves to US Troops. Then our soldiers kill them. The US military is rather good at it.

The way to get the terrorists to stop shooting people is to make it possible to easily shoot them back. Which means letting their future targets, Johnny and Jane American, both keep and bear arms. It's a strategy that is even written in our earliest founding documents. Perhaps help them get training in how to use these arms and how to recognize these threats. Is this the plan the left is proposing? Of course not. We must restrict constitutionally enumerated freedoms and have nothing to show for it. Thanks lefties.

Street Samurai

Cutting the cucumber in half lengthwise is pretty cool. Doing it to a soybean is amazing, especially when consider that is sword is wider than his target...

The 1911 Obsession

SayUncle is linking to an almost completely uninformed criticism of the 1911. I'm not going to direct link because it's honestly so poorly thought out it might be a gunblogosphere troll. I will quote his two major theses though:

It’s a 100-year old design. It needs tools to disassemble. It has unreliable magazines. It is finicky about ammo. And, as a single-action pistol, it is unsafe for 95% of its users to carry.

100 years old? Ok as if age really meant anything. In general a gun being in use 100 years after it was designed is proof of value not proof it is rubbish. I am reminded of one of my first blog posts back in 2004.

Tools to disassemble? No it doesn't. Field stripping most 1911s requires no tools. Detail stripping the 1911 can be done with tools the gun itself provides during the process. It is possible to screw this up with some manufacturers' full length guide rods, etc.

Unreliable magazines? There are 100 years of mags out there for the 1911. Some of them are bound to suck. Any gun can have unreliable mags and any automatic will be unreliable with a bad magazine including Glocks and Sigs.

Finicky about ammo? Maybe. The original wasn't designed to feed hollowpoints. You need a 1911 with a modern feed ramp geometry that fixes this. The original had a steel frame and so making the feedramp integral to the frame isn't a problem. If you buy one with a softer aluminum frame, get a ramped barrel so the feedramp is still steel. But I've met a lot of modern guns that still prefer one brand of hollowpoint to another.

The last bit about safety is crap. I would gladly take the 1911 with it's many redundant external safeties to the Glock with it's single non-redundant trigger safety. Yes you have to train with the 1911. But you have to train with everything so that 1911 is not special. The 1911 also has a great consistent trigger almost entirely because it is single-action.

Why does a reliable 1911 cost so much, and need so much gunsmithing?

Because it was designed before CNC machining became the dominant firearms technology. You can still get good cheap 1911s (~$400), they just have to come from cheaper labor countries like the Philippines or China. And they largely won't be target guns, they'll be ordnance grade guns.

The very expensive 1911s are because of people wanting everything. With cars you can have only have two items from this list: acceleration, handling, low cost. With guns the list is different but the concept is the same: accuracy, reliability, low cost. If you tighten up the tolerances to get accuracy, you lose most of the clearances required for reliability. Which means you need someone who knows what they're doing to keep both so you're paying for their expertise. For ordnance grade guns, you're typical getting reliability and service level accuracy for not much money.

Not Mine

The Anchoress notes that federal buildings must be warm for Michelle Obama to go in a sleeveless vintage Norman Norelli number without a hint of goosebumps. Unlike you know, every one else who has turned down their heat to fight rising energy prices and higher seasonal heating bills.

I've been working for the government for over eight years now. At no time in my service has the HVAC ever worked right. My building was built as temporary lab space for World War II and the Army has been using it in one way or another ever since. The HVAC has been fixed 3 times since I started working there, but it is still broken. This week highs outside were in the 30s and the AC was on inside. For over a week. To be fair, if they managed to get the heat working it would probably be far too warm to be comfortable.

This is the story on most of the legacy buildings on most US military bases. Heat is central steam heat. The central plant has two settings, on and off. The setting is changed twice a year whether you need it or not. All the steam lines leak so the heat is never dispersed properly. Your building is either far too hot or way too cold. Because of this everyone has both an electric space heater and a fan at their desk. Every few years a contractor comes in and promises to work miracles for a reasonable fee, but then it breaks again in a year or two.

The right side of the blogosphere has this narrative going on that the Government functionaries are living in the lap of luxury while Rome burns. It's BS. Aging infrastructure is not just an issue with the interstate highway system.

RNC Politics

Rumor has it that Michael Steel is finally stepping down as RNC chair. Huzzah! Now Norm Coleman says he wants the job.

Hey I have an idea. How about we pick an RNC chair who actually has a history of winning elections. Steele was a joke in his native Maryland, mostly because Black Republicans are blatantly Uncle Tommed in the state. Coleman lost to Al Franken in a close race. Isn't there a decent Republican governor facing term limits somewhere?

Regular Maintenance

I was practicing my draw in the basement with the airsoft 1911 when I noticed that the thumbsnap on my holster was tending to disengage the airsoft's manual safety. Not so good, but I've never noticed it happening with the real thing. A quick walk to the safe and... huh the darn electronic lock is dead.

Pry off the access plate, find the key, open her up and well there's your problem. One of the AAs powering the lock leaked. Pull them out, clean it up, and it works fine with fresh batteries. Glad that didn't happen when it mattered. Need to start storing the emergency safe keys closer to the safes in case this ever occurs when it does.

Oh and my real 1911 has a much more positive safety detent than the airsoft so accidental disengages don't seem to be a problem. I may have to adjust the holster thumbsnap anyway to be double plus sure.

Obama on Mythbusters

The President is appearing on tomorrow's Mythbusters to commission Adam and Jamie to look into the myth of Archimedes mirror. For those not in the know, it's a device which was supposedly used to focus the power of the sun to set attacking Roman ships afire during the Siege of Syracuse.

The Mythbusters have addressed this one at least twice in the past. So it's been done multiple times before, they've had minor success, but never found it really workable, and now that Obama shows up the results are supposed to be different? A fine metaphor for modern liberalism indeed.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike, but IMAO has clips.

Hallelujah!

Tamara and Sebastian have already posted this, but I wanted to wait until the Christmas season was actually here.



Plus it's Handel's Messiah so it creates all sorts of wonderful tension between high artistes and the faithful. I'm surprised you didn't see a bunch of liberals sit down during that clip just to show the Christians what for.

Happy Thanksgiving!

And in honor of the holiday, I give you Breda's wonderful idea of brining a turkey in an empty refrigerator vegetable bin. Like most things of the internet it is a wonderful idea that is several days too late to be of use to you. But file it away for Christmas.

Not So Peak Oil

As I mentioned several years ago, the theory that underpins peak oil analysis is not especially sound. The output from a given deposit is bell-shaped. This is a sound empirical rule. You can aggregate all known deposits into a large bell shape. True enough. But this theory is only valid for known existing deposits. It doesn't take into account technology growth that allows for the exploitation of new fields or new sources of petroleum. You know, as is happening now.

Kid Needs a Haircut

Amy and I share Jalopnik's disdain for the annoying kid in skinny jeans and a Christopher Atkins haircut that Toyota is using as their spokesman in at least one current advertisement.

What is really sad is that while Toyota pisses all over the old Buicks in the commercial, they've basically become Buick.

It's a Casserole

This revelation about deep-dish pizza and others at Snowflakes in Hell and Clayton Cramer.

Wisdom for the Ages

Clayton Cramer's post of excerpts from Andrew Jackson's fairwell address contain some amazing stuff. Among the topics he discusses are taxes, duties, the expanding role of federal government, and corrupt politicians or businessmen profit from these.

Math for Everyone

Joanne Jacobs has a discussion about how much math is enough for students. She suggests that frankly, most people don't need everything they're taught even through high school. I think she mostly correct.

When it comes to practical skills for the general populace, the skills list is something like addition/subtraction, division/multiplication, ratios/percentages, and exponents. Any sort of budgeting will require these skills. Any sort of financial planning will require percentages, ratios, and exponents to calculate interest. Anything geometrical will likely require trigonometry sooner or later. Understanding simple concepts like basic computer modeling requires basic algebra, probability, and statistics is very useful for figuring out what people are talking about on the evening news.

I have a Bachelors and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. I know a fair amount of higher math. About the only thing I use on a regular basis are prob/stat, trig, and linear algebra. I haven't done calculus or differential equations in years. Why? Because in most fields the problem has either been solved and turned into a formula or it is unsolvable in closed form and will require some form of discrete simulation. For that matter a lot of "analysis" is simply reading tables for the proper part sizes.

Future Contestants for the Newlydead Game?

Turns out Bruce Campbell is an ordained minister and will be performing a wedding along with a large renewal ceremony at ZombCon. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the minister part. If you were Bruce Campbell, wouldn't you want to be able to manufacture holy water on demand?