Warning Labels On Gas Pumps

The nannies in Cali are proposing that all gas pumps carry a label warning that the use of hydrocarbon fuel may lead to global warming. Except I bet that the actual labels say something about "climate disruption" instead in order to not seem quite so stupid.

This year after the last cold snap, if labels appeared on the pumps warning that purchase of gasoline might cause global warming I think I'd bring along my gas can and buy some extra on the off chance that it might help.

How The NICS System Works

Ever wonder why you don't see more people frog-marched out of gun shops for failing a NICS check? It's usually because a bit of further investigation is going on to insure that John Q. Public is not the same person as John Quaida Public.

The whole story here.

Also I suspect that the people I sometimes see leaving the gun show in handcuffs are shoplifters rather than felons trying to buy a gun although I have heard stories about potential buyers whose names lit up the boards at the CBI because of outstanding warrants.

"Please tell me which table you are at, and tell Mr. Jones that it will be about 15 minutes before his clearance comes through."

Right. And Mr. Jones' day is about to take a turn for the worse.

Econ 201 - The Even Years

Ever wonder why the economy seems to perk up right before an election? Ever notice that it seems to collapse in the quarter immediately following?

Wonder no more.

E-Postal - Gun Fun

What more perfect way to kill 2 or 3 birds with one stone than to 1) eat thanksgiving dinner, 2) go out shooting, and 3) work off some of that thanksgiving dinner in the process.

Here's my entry in the "other" class of this months postal match using my Pedal gun with the 12ga shell darts. This works out to an .875 dia projectile being shot thru a 1.05" barrel with no rifling. Fortunately the large projectile makes up for a lot of inaccuracy.

In case you're wondering about the Cryllic labeling, click the link and read the rules and the justification for this arrangement.

The gun was pulling a bit to the right which I didn't get corrected for until the end, hence the large number of toppings and condiments and the single meat.

Looks like a score of 18 so I matched my best score with the scoped carbine here. Again, if you can't shoot small groups, shoot big bore.

The rig is written up here
http://billllsidlemind.blogspot.com/2009/05/pedal-gun-fun.html
with all the details. The back yard looks better too.

An alternate barrel I have for the gun is 2 inches in diameter and shoots an empty caulk tube which might have been big enough to get me a 20.

Happy Turkey Day

Different parts of the country have different favorite dishes to serve up on Thanksgiving. Armadillo Chilli in Texas for example or lutefisk up in Minnesota.

Somewhere, presumably near Arkham MA, you don't eat the main dish, you are the main dish:

Image stolen from Ace of Spades.

QOTD - Humor

This time it's "Question Of The Day".

Q: What's the difference between Thanksgiving and Tax Day, April 15th?

A: On Thanksgiving, you stuff the turkey. On tax day the turkeys stuff you.

Innovation

About a hundred years ago the head of the U.S. patent office opined that just about everything that could be invented, had been invented. He was a bit premature in that assessment. From way back when, found at Theo Spark:

Pessimists like Peter here are always wrong. For example, where's the Oatmeal Bacon Stout?

Laser Weapon Watch

It even tells time.

Lerner E-Mails Found!

IRS Commissioner Koskinen it seems lied to congress about how they were lost and gone forever although he would be pleased if they wee ever found. Being pretty certain that they were safely stored with Jimmy Hoffa or something.

Koskinen may now be looking at perjury charges and Lerner may be looking at better than that unless she turns states witness.

Pass the popcorn.

Global Warming - The Science Behind It

A Rutgers researcher has advanced a theory that the current bitter cold is a result of the effects of global warming. She even has some fancy atmospheric science to back this up:

Here's the atmospheric physics behind the idea: Warm air expands, and naturally there is much more warm air at the equator than at the poles. Thus, the atmosphere is thicker at the equator, and the jet stream's motion is driven by the decline in atmospheric thickness as one moves in a poleward direction -- in effect, its atmospheric river flows "downhill," in Francis’s words. 

When I went to school, colder air was denser and warmer air was thinner. Pilots I know whose lives depend on knowing just how thick the air actually is, agree with me on this. Passing reference is made to a rather large typhoon (Nuri) that meandered all the way to the Bering Sea, up north of the jet streams usual path before dissipating. As far as I know, no one studied this very closely although it may well be that no one has published anything yet.

Keep an eye out for papers on the effect of typhoon Nuri on the jet stream.

Furgeson

Best idea yet for dealing with the expected troubles there: Make sure that everybody knows that the primary weapon will be the fire department. Think that sounds overly peaceful and non-violent?

Check the weather report there

Wednesday Hi 41, Lo 22

Thursday Hi 36, Lo 21

Friday Hi 39, Lo 39

Saturday Hi 57, lo 44 40% chance of rain

Sunday Hi 56, Lo 38, 50% chance of rain

Monday Hi 44, Lo 29, 30%

 

Tuesday Hi 37, Lo 25 22mph wind

Not a week I'd want to be out getting soaked.

Local gun stores are selling everything they've got but the next problem is that all these new gun owners haven't even fired their new toys yet. On top of that I suspect no one's got a real plan about how they could be best put to use. If you're protecting your store, being on the roof with a couple of helpers works to keep the rioters back but organizing your neighbors to be on the ground at either end of the block keeps them off your block in the first place.

Zip Guns

There are probably several reasons a person should have one or two zip guns in his collection. First off is that if your locale is of the sort that allows "gun buy-backs" one could easily turn $5 worth of plumbing supplies into $50-100 worth of groceries. A good return on your investment. Of course it won't do to lash together 5 or 10 slam-fire shotguns and ask for one coupon each. The event sponsors will figure out right away that you're gaming the system and turn you away empty-handed. Keep it to one, and put some effort into it. Make it look like someone actually meant to use it.

Second is that in the event your regular shooting irons are confiscated, you can gin one of these up and don't have to be completely defenseless.

The rare collectable classic is the WWII Liberator, a 45ACP zip gun manufactured in an actual factory and intended to be used once or twice to ease the transfer of a Mauser from a German to a Frenchman, then discarded. Today the things command premium prices.

In the '50s this

sort of thing was easily whipped up in high school shop class and used to settle some hash between Vinnie and Rocco in the alley behind the drug store in Brooklyn. Chambered in 1/4" pipe .38 spl, you got one shot, best taken up close and personal, then you tossed it in the dumpster and departed the scene. Reload time is right up there with revolutionary war muskets. Of course in the '50s, every kid past the 5th grade knew that the lower section of a car antenna would accept a .22 cartridge and .22 was vastly more economical if noticeably less lethal.

Make one of these and fire a blank or two through it and it will have that "air of authenticity" that will improve the odds of the buyback people actually giving you anything for it.

Of course the journey is as important as the destination, and if you're looking at a long, cold winter and need something to keep you from going stir-crazy, you could put a bit more effort into the job just to see how much time you can waste. Now here

is a 3-barreled version of the above. 3 hammers on a common trigger

and quick-reloading break action. I'd hold out for at least $200 for something like this. $150 if you let me shoot video from a safe distance while you fire it.

Why the Broncos Lost

I assume it was because someone warned them about the DEA sweeps of the locker rooms last weekend. Thus the Broncos, forwarned, left all their goodies at home.

The Chargers home team simply swallowed all of theirs.

Note on update: I'm not much of a sports fan.

Get Used To It

In a fully developed police state you'll see cops running about with drawn guns all the time so exposing kids to the phenomenon at an early age will help keep them calm when the cops rush into a classroom, grab a problem student/dissident, and rush out.

Learning About Guns

Now circulating around the web.

The “Ruger 10/22″ earned its name from its ability to kill twenty-two people for every ten shots fired. #gunsense pic.twitter.com/Lzs1B2xGqh
— Liberal Hippie Queen (@andreajmarkley) November 12, 2014

O.K. I'm impressed. It usually takes multiple shots to even seriously injure someone. Only Quigly was able to bag 3 in one shot. I also have the feeling that my leg is being pulled. Just a bit.

So I took a look at her Twitter feed and I believe she's genuinely anti-gun. I'm still not sure which should impress me more: Her vivid imagination or her disconnect from reality. Or am I talking about the same thing here?

Election Fun

In Michigan a man showed up at the polling place to vote and was told he couldn't because he was officially dead. He did manage to talk the election officials there into giving him a ballot and letting him vote.

Could have been worse. In Illinois, he would have been told he was dead but then been given a ballot even though he had already voted once.

Gun Sales Declining

The Wall St. Journal (paywall) is noting that the major gun companies including Colt (Sciens Capital Management), Smith & Wesson Holding Co., and Remington / Bushmaster (Cerberus Capital Management) are facing financial problems due to declining sales. Problems range from declining profits to potential default on some bonds.

It would seem that the worlds greatest gun salesman, BHO has lost his edge and even in the face of projected massive riots in St. Louis, sales this year will lag the preceeding year for the first time since
2002.

The flip side of this is that we may well see some nice Christmas discounts and even better post Christmas sales on firearms. The decreasing sales should, in theory, be accompanied by greater availability of ammo.

QOTD - Next Election

Found at The Federalist:

Does Walker sizzle? Not exactly. Is he a particularly charismatic speaker? No, he isn’t. But does he sit upon a throne made of the skulls of his enemies? Yes, yes he does. The November 4 election proved that in a definitive fashion.

 I like Scott Walker. He has executive experience and a proven record of being able to deal with progs effectively.

Bike To Work

Today's high was 4 degrees, a record. Tonight's low is to  be -9, another record. So what could be more fun and tree-huggingly green than

Riding your bike to work. Light snow? Not a problem. Slippery pavement? Hah! A friend of mine used to do this regularly and his only complaint was that on days like this the derailleur would pack up with ice and refuse to shift.

Happy Anniversary!

I am informed by LinkedIn that I am celebrating my 1-year anniversary at work.

Pretty good for a 4-month temp gig eh?

Transportation - Winter

With the Polar Vortex scheduled to hit tomorrow, prepping the car is now required. For everyone here's a tip: If your car lives outdoors like mine does, put one of those 1500W under-the-desk heaters in the passenger foot well and run an extension cord back to a lamp timer in the nearest outlet. Set the timer to start about 1/2 hour before you plan to leave, and when you do, your car will be warm and frost free. Don't forget to unplug the heater and toss the end of the extension cord out of the car before backing out of the drive.

Several newer cars have power windows that need to roll down about 1/2" before the doors can be opened. This makes for a nice snug car but if the windows are covered with frozen water, they may not retract. I now have to carry a small scraper in my lunch bag to insure being able to get in to my Pretentious British Car. The heater trick will help in the morning. Not sure about getting home.

Motorcycles

Tomorrow is the 58th annual Harry's Roamers Turkey Run. It also looks like the last decent motorcycle riding day for the foreseeable future so I expect it to be well attended.

I'll be there.

I was there along with some 200 others. Played 2 hands and couldn't make a single pair using both of them. Oh Well.
There were some nice bikes

And trikes

And this establishment for people who get offended when Native Americans are referenced

The Sit-N-Bull Bar.

Gun Fun

Had a nice day today up at the Clear Creek County Sportsmans Club playing at IDPA with a Carbine side match. The IDPA part went well enough with me shooting well, but very slow as usual. Something about the venue up there with the narrower berms with actual vegetation on them and I can't seem to find more than 50% of my brass. That my CZ throws the brass about as far as the lead doesn't help. Shooting buddy remarked that if I were to use a CZ in 10mm, the brass would likely land in the adjacent berm and I'd never recover any of it.

The carbine match was interesting in that one fellow was shooting an AR in .300BLK. That is an integrally suppressed AR in .300BLK. Sounded like someone sneezing. Others ran the gamut from AR & AK to M14. Much noisier. Shooting Buddy used his Beretta Storm 9mm which has very little muzzle noise but a distinct crack from the very supersonic round. I used the Hi-Point 4095 which sounds much the same. Nice to see all the holes appearing in small groups so I guess it's time to re-arrange the furniture one more time. No feeding problems or anything else and the extra time I spent changing 10 round mags more or less matched the time the others spent clearing jams.

Next step will be to run some Dave Tubbs bullets through it to lap the barrel.

Dem Losses Due To Global Warming

At least in part since most of the Dem candidates who ran on that issue lost. For the first time that I'm aware of, we can now point to something and say with a high degree of certainty that it was caused by global warming.

Nov 4, 2014, a day that, for Al Gore anyway, shall live in infamy.

Colorado Politics

So how'd we do? Don't know yet. Due to unforseen yet not unsurprising snafus in a couple of very populous counties, the exact makeup of the Colorado house and Senate is still up in the air. It's possible that the R's have taken both houses. Then again, maybe not.

Colorado does not (yet) have the Chicago tradition of waiting until the votes are counted to find a couple of boxes of ballots in the trunk of a '78 Eldo abandoned in a seedy district all of which miraculously support the machine candidate. Give it time. All mail voting got its first real test drive yesterday and the extra attention it drew from hi-jinks attempted during the recall elections may have resulted in less tomfoolery than would otherwise have been seen.

In any case, the houses will be more narrowly divided which means that non of the fun laws, election fraud laws, and regulations will get repealed or even modified for another 2 years.

Update: Ch 9 is now projecting that the R's control the Senate by 1 seat, and the D's control the house by 1 seat. Several of those races were decided by less than 200 votes.

Colorado Politics

Now don't get cocky, but as of COB tonight ballots turned in by party affiliation statewide are:

Statewide (TOTAL: 1,463,766):
D: 469,900 (32.1%)
R: 590,653 (40.3%)
U: 403,213 (27.6%)

Expected total turnout will be about 2.2M +/- some so the above total represents about 2/3 of the total vote. The unaffiliated bloc historically breaks similar to the R/D ratio so I'm not expecting the margin to change all that much.

It's being said that the down-ticket races are trending R as well. I would assume that ticket-splitting is in fact fairly rare.

Per the polls, the Governors race is very close, effectively even. If the D's don't show up however...

How To Write A Political Ad

Getting to the root of the problem without singling anyone in particular out, unless you want to use a specific person in the ad of course. This one is from England:

H/T to Samizdata for the find.

Attention Rince Priebus, Ryan Call, et.al:
This is the sort of thinking the Republican party has been missing since about 1900.
Here Daniel has an MBA from Harvard and has landed a minimum-wage ($1xx,xxx) job as a policy adviser for a career Democrat. Etc, etc. Give him all your money and he’ll help stop global warming, restart the economy, unionize your schools, bring green mass transit to your front door and have the entire United Nations singing Kum-by-yah in 150-part harmony.

If you have a job, remember there are many Daniels who depend on you for your generous support.

Transportation - Bugs In The System

Cruising back from the range in the pretentious not-quite-a-sports-car, I stopped for a light, and when I stepped on the gas, the dashboard lit up like a Las Vegas slot machine informing me that:
1. Stability control failure! (red light) and
2. Engine on failsafe mode! (yellow light)
3. OMG! We're all gonna die!

Well maybe not number 3 but halfway through a notoriously busy intersection is NOT where you want your get-up-and-go to suddenly disappear.

Failsafe mode is an odd one as it sets the engine to a fast idle and nothing you do will change this. It also means that if you're on level ground, the car will eventually get up to 35mph. Better than hitch hiking, but not so hot on a 55mph roadway. Stability control is the annoying (normally) yellow light that tells you that you've gotten too enthusiastic with the loud pedal on a slippery surface and turns your V-8 into a V-4 or something until all your tires are turning at the same rate.

 Got off onto a secondary road and limped 3 miles to my mechanic. Told him the story and noted the look of amazement on his face as he admitted he had never heard of such a thing happening. I have to wonder about that as with British cars, anything is possible.

He plugged in his code reader, stared at the numbers in amazement, erased the codes, and the car now runs fine. Still no clue as to the cause. From conversations on the Pretentious British Car site, an OBD reader/eraser seems like a good thing to have along with you so I bought one. That and keeping fingers crossed.

Look What The Dog Dragged In

Actually it looks like the Dawg just dragged himself in after a rather lengthy hiatus. Yep, Law Dog is back with his wit, wisdom, and observations on life, the universe and the Texas penal system.

Click the link over in the left-hand column under humor.

The .22 Shortage Abates

At least for me as the replacement shipment arrived safe and sound with D'wife signing for it this morning. I'm now covered for the foreseeable future, or at least the next 4-6 months even if I take my daughter out with me.

Again kudos to Target Sports USA for prompt handling and a reasonable price.

Science Marches Onward

Whether we want it to or not.  It now seems that smart phones will soon be able to act as personal lie detectors. Cool app, no?

"Dear, I have to work late at the office."

"Sure. When you get home, your stuff will be out on the front lawn."

Of course the possibilities go far beyond that. Texting, which contains no facial or verbal clues, will become VERY popular although this could become the communications equivalent of taking the fifth, depending on the topic.

I for one look forward to carrying my new phone in my shirt pocket with the camera peeking over the pocket top, and a Bluetooth earbud to inform me of who it is that's walking up to me with a friendly greeting. Potentially a very popular app for people in my age demographic and for pols who are expected to remember everyone they ever shook hands with over the last 20 years or so.

Elections will change somewhat as the technology spreads to your TV with no Democrat ever again appearing live on camera. Still pictures only, questions sent by text or e-mail, and will be answered the same way. Next we will see an AI, Max Headroom II acting as a spokesman for a candidate, passing on answers in a friendly, trustworthy manner. This lays the groundwork for the first AI candidate for public office. The new candidate, Max Headroom III will never have a problem with "tells" giving away the game to suspicious voters. MH3 will of course be a proxy for a real person. MH4 will be smart enough to dupe even the person he's supposed to be fronting for.

May you live in interesting times.