Fun with Paracord

Parachute cord is really useful stuff if you know how to use it. Stormdrane's Blog seems to have a lot of different ideas and options that range from belts to bookmarks.

Police Rifle

I guess that's how I'll start describing Mabel: a police-style Ar-15 rifle. But of course only cops should have guns...

Lawn Catan

For those sunny days when you just want to play outside. Some of the materials they used were actually pretty ingenious. As with standard Settlers, the the sure way to lose is still to get 9 points.

They Came From.... Behind

I'm bucking the trend that everyone must make a Porkins reference when they see this video of an amateur rocketry X-Wing braking up in mid air.

UPDATE: No one has pointed out that my Gold 5 title quote is inappropriate yet? I thought someone would have noticed that Gold squadron flies Y-wings not X-wings by now. I guess my readers are not the nerds I am looking for.

Property Rights

From Instapundit:

Message to Republicans: The entertainment industries are your enemies. They're one of the main sources of money for Democrats, and provide a lot of valuable free media for them, too. Why help them out? Especialy when you might actually pick up some youth votes by taking a different position?

Why? Because property rights are the foundation of free societies and you can't stop respecting them just because you don't like the property owners. You would think that a libertarian would understand those kind of principles.

Definitely Not a Motorcycle

According to my beloved wife, I'm not allowed to own a motorcycle. Something about probably killing myself. I believe I have now found a feasible automotive alternative: the Westfield Seven. This is a rough copy of the Lotus Seven now licensed by Caterham. The Westfield cars are built from kits and have a version which accepts Mazda Miata donor parts. Left hand drive versions are available in the US for a fair bit less than a Caterham. They'd be even more reasonable if the exchange rate improves.

No power anything, no doors, and seat-of-the-pants driving, but it still has seats with racing belts, a safety cage, and a roll bar. Close enough to a motorcycle. Now if only I had money, time, a garage to build it in, and a place to park it.

UPDATE: It seems I'm not the only person that compares the Seven (or Se7en) to a motorcycle. Here is quote from the late Colin Chapman, the Seven's creator:

The Seven was the car I dreamed about as a schoolboy. When I got the chance to build it, it was the most basic, lightest, high performance little car we could come up with... a student's car if you will – a four-wheeled motorbike.

This is from Jalopnik's two part trip up "The Dragon" with a group of Seven enthusiasts.

WWII and Tactics

McQ at QandO has been watching Ken Burn's new series The War. He likes what he's been seeing.

Meanwhile Kim du Toit is dispelling some bigotry spouted by David Frum towards the American fighting man of WWII:

It’s all very well to say that Americans win because they have more equipment than anyone else. Here’s the newsflash: that’s how we fight.

We are a technology-based society, and we have a giant economy with which to back our troops up.

From Band of Brothers in the WWII era: “Horses? What were you thinking? Say hello to General Motors, and Ford, and Chrysler!”

In Stephen Ambrose's book Citizen Soldiers, there is a story about two generally equivalent infantry units fighting over a medieval fortification in France. The Germans take the old fort and barricade themselves into a great defensive position. The American infantry tries to take it, but meet murderous resistance and have to fall back. So the Americans wheel over a 155mm howitzer and blow the hell out of the place. When they storm it, they capture it easily. After the fight, the Germans accused the Americans of poor soldiering because under the same conditions the Germans would have had to make do with what they had. The Americans replied that what they had was a 155mm howitzer thank-you-very-much and enjoy your stay as a POW with Uncle Sam.

An often-overlooked aspect of the war is that after Normandy, the US Army was actually employing something like modern combined arms doctrine. Not only did we have more stuff, but all our "inferior" units could cooperate efficiently to form a superior whole. If American infantry units ran into trouble, their first resort was to liberally apply high explosives via air or artillery or armor support. Most of the other Armies just couldn't do this. What was unfair or poor soldiering according to those Germans was actually an artifact of American tactical and strategic superiority.

When Bad News Comes from Bad Newsmakers

Captain of Crew of One is dissecting a recent CBS News report on assault weapons. Predictably, the weapons they display in their piece aren't actually assault weapons according to federal or state definitions. Most are handguns or shotguns. One is a muzzle-loading rifle. So much for expert reporting.

Justice Concerned With Justice

The blogosphere has been going on about Clarence Thomas's new book lately, but several of the interviews he's given have provided a lot of insight into him as a man. I loved Richard Miniter's Pajamas Media interview and the transcript of Rush Limbaugh's 90 minute marathon is just as good. For instance his take on legal writing legal opinions is refreshing:

So, in writing opinions, you are trying to take something, if it's complicated, you're trying to explain it in a way that as many people as possible can understand it. You're making their Constitution and their laws accessible to them. We talk about "accessibility" in terms of people with, say, disabilities in a wheelchair where a curb is like the Great Wall of China if someone is in a wheelchair. Well, you can use language and writing about the court or about the Constitution that sort of puts a Great Wall of China between them and their Constitution. My idea is simply to be able to explain it to all of my fellow citizens.

The unintelligibility of government pisses me off. It is nice to see someone in government doing something about it, not because he has to, but because he feels it is his responsibility to the people.

I also love that Thomas spends his breaks driving cross country in a big motorcoach with his corvette in tow, eating a truckstops, and talking to average joes.

Weekend Rentals

Amy and I rented a couple of movies for the first time in a long time. And we were reminded why we hadn't bothered in a while. My pick at our local Hollywood Video was 300. Amy chose with Catch and Release. Neither choice was without its shortcomings.

While 300 had some stirring images, it was just too comic book for me. Although there was some great imagery spaced throughout the piece and good action scenes, the narrative was just clunky. Large parts of it bore no resemblance to actual history and I like the actual history. All the movie made me want to do was read a better fictionalization of the Battle of Thermopylae, like Gates of Fire.

Catch and Release was marketed as a romantic comedy, but it isn't. The story opens with Gray at the funeral of her fiance Grady on the day they were to be married. It doesn't get much happier. The whole piece is largely Kevin Smith playing himself, Jennifer Garner looking sullen, and everyone else being varying degrees of horny or pathetic. Skip it.

Kicking It Old School

Feel the urge to play some classic Nintendo games, but you don't want to spend all day blowing into cartridges? Is downloading emulators and pirated roms hard on your soul? Behold, classic 8bit nintendo in Java format! Unfortunately you will be stuck using keyboard controls. I guess nothing is truly perfect.

22 Cravings

Dick's Sporting Goods has a .22lr Remington 597 with Scope for $140 after mail-in rebate. Hmm... I think I'll have to do some research on 597s. I shot one at Targetmaster a few years ago and I don't remember loving it. But I didn't hate it either and supposedly they've made some design improvements since then. I think it's worth a look.

UPDATE: Ever wondered at the fingerprints you've left on the internet and forgotten about? Take this:

I shot one at my range. I thought it was pretty mediocre in every way. Accuracy was bad, ergonomics were ok, and it had frequent feed/ extraction problems. My range doesn't show the rentals much love though so it may have just needed a good cleaning.

I wrote that about the 597 in August of 2004. I may have to rethink this. If I can't trust a reviewer as smart as that guy, then who can I trust.

UPDATE2: It seems that several of the improvements to the gun have occurred since my last review. The current generation of magazines (the ones that actually work) came out in 2005. Extractor changes have occurred as well.

UPDATE3: I went to Dick's today, but did not drive home with a new rifle. While the 597 they're selling looks and feels quite nice, it has one problem for someone looking for a training rifle. It doesn't have iron sights. Now it comes with a scope, so this isn't a problem for most people. But I need to learn to shoot with iron and without. Without sights it's really only a half a rifle.

Rhetorical Ambushes

MSNBC correspondent David Shuster rhetorically ambushed Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn with the name of dead soldier from her district. Fact checking later showed that Shuster was the one in error, the soldier wasn't from Blackburn's district at all. Instapundit had this to say:

Interestingly, though, it's a trap that, in its nature, underscores how historically low casualties are in this war. You wouldn't have heard that question in World War II, not only because the press would have been ashamed to ask it, but because casualties then were such that nobody could possibly keep track. That it can be asked in this war demonstrates not only the cheap-shot tendencies of a hopelessly partisan press, but also the small scale of the actual warfare.

Very true. This was driven home in a meeting I had yesterday about the war. I can't talk about most of it, but one of the factoids I thought was interesting had to do with the relative death rates in various US Wars. About 200 people died per day in WWI, in WWII it was 300, in Korea it was 30, in Vietnam it was 20, in Iraq it is only 2.

And on the subject of ambushes, how about Ahmadinejad's trip to Columbia? It didn't quite turn out like I expected, thats for sure. I would like to point out one little thing though: Admadinejad is not a dictator. While the Presidency of Iran is not the figurehead position it once was, the real power in Iran lies not with the elected President but with the appointed Supreme Leader. If you want to call someone a brutal despot, you need to point your finger at Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Which Spongebob character are you?

You are Squidward! Lighten up a bit, won't you! You hate your job, but love you clarinet. You also think Spongebob is the most annoying person ever!
Take this quiz!



Via John the Methodist

Amazon MP3

Amazon just launched a new store where you can download mp3s for less than a dollar per track. Since I own a non-iPod non-iTunes MP3 player, this might be nice for singles. For whole albums, I'm probably still better off purchasing a CD and ripping them myself though.

The Thompson Mystique

Kim du Toit explains election strategy and unintentionally explains why Fred Thompson is doing so well despite his mediocre campaign appearances:

What we need to find in the primaries is a Stupid Party candidate who is religious “enough” for most conservatives; against high taxes “enough” to satisfy, say, the Heritage Foundation; hostile “enough” to Big Government, and pro-gun ownership “enough” to satisfy, say, me...

If we look at the current crop of Stupid Party front-runners, Giuliani fails on several issues, and makes the grade only on law-and-order and foreign policy; McCain fails dismally on most, scoring high only on the War On Terrorist Bastards; Romney fails on just about every point; and Thompson scores reasonably well in almost every area.

Thompson is doing so well because the Republican party is the party of American Conservatives and Thompson is the only Conservative running. It is that simple.

Ok that's not quite true. Duncan Hunter is probably a Conservative, but nobody knows who he is.

Delaware Gun Shows

When you live in a small state like Delaware, one of the regular annoyances is that big events don't come to your state. It usually doesn't matter because they're held in adjoining states with reasonable travel times. I really don't mind that the Delaware Highland Games is actually held at Fair Hill in Maryland. There is no law preventing me from crossing state lines in a kilt.

But there are exceptions where legal restrictions defeat the purpose of the trip. One such example is gun shows. I'm mostly a pistol shooter. Buying a pistol at a gun show in Pennsylvania or Maryland means having to pay to have it shipped to my FFL in Delaware and then paying my FFL for the trouble. No thanks. With all that paying, I'm better off staying at home. I've looked for Delaware guns shows that are actually in Delaware, but without much success.

Until now. Hopefully when the show comes around in a month, I'll still remember it. And I'll be able to figure out where the Shrine Building is. Time to pick up that 22 I've been wanting.

UAW Strikes

Starting at 11am, the GM and the UAW are on strike. The Canadian Auto Workers are expected to join in with a sympathy strike sometime this afternoon. Here's to hoping that GM comes out ahead on this one.

I do have some sympathy for the UAW, but I don't have that much. After some research on my part, I've come to realize that the union contract terms are ridiculous. It is one thing for them to stipulate factory working conditions, salary levels, or benefits. It is quite another for the workers to tell their company where cars can be manufactured. This strike is over the latter.

Autoblog reports that GM has enough inventory for a month or two. More than that and this could get interesting. If I were them, I'd start hiring scabs now using contract terms similar to Import-brand factory labor. If they're successful enough with that, they might not have to hire the union back at all.

Continental Dental Hygiene

According to Instapundit, French dental care is incredibly poor. My mind reels at the thought that the British might actually have the best teeth in Europe.

The Coming of Caspian

The movie poster for Prince Caspian is out and looks pretty cool. I join with John Wright in hoping that the Pevensie kids aren't such wusses in the new film.