More on National ID...

Hypnagogue in comments here:

The problem with biometric ID cards is that they can be forged. Without strong encryption, this is folly. With strong encryption this is tyranny.

The problem is that the .gov acts like there was strong encryption on the Constitution and they don't have the right key to read it.

More on the topic from Anothergunchick.

Are they looking for a hill to die on?

As Frank James points out, biometric National Identification cards are about as sure a way to flip out a plurality of the population as I can think of. From privacy advocates to Left Behind fans, this would just pour kerosene on the opposition fire.

Go 'head, y'all! I think you should push for this one really, really hard.

I'm a Happy Hoosier.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that the standard for a Terry frisk is whether the officer reasonably suspects the person is “armed and dangerous.” “Armed” alone shouldn’t be enough...

Shootin' Buddy, sometimes known as "The Rosa Parks of Broad Ripple" for his run-in with the local Five-Oh over the dangerous crime of open-carrying a firearm in a coffee house, is no doubt pleased at this latest ruling from the Indiana Court of Appeals.

If merely having a visible firearm is probable cause to stop, demand papers, and pat down your pockets, then merely driving down the road is probable cause to pull you over, demand your operating license, and look in your trunk. In neither instance is there prima facie evidence of a crime being committed.

Xtreme training!!!1!!one!

One well-known trainer has opined that, with the increasing popularity of "tactical training", it seems like half everybody who's been 'in the sandbox' and has access to some acreage with a berm is going to set up a shooting school. As time goes on, I am increasingly believing this prediction. Exhibit A: Somebody tell me which school this is so that I never make the mistake of attending.

Obviously, somebody is making their money by selling tacticool to wannabes. Speaking as a tactical poser myself, I've both observed and participated in a reasonable amount of training; if I saw any of that happy mall ninja S&M horseplay going on on the line, I would leave without asking for a refund.

Any student that would take that class a second time would probably be happier if the instructors were wearing leather and chains and used riding crops.

Signs that a fad has jumped the shark:

When you can get your tramp stamp in the mall, twenty feet away from the people buying Snuggies and ShamWows, it's a sign that the fad has passed the fat point of the cool curve.

Press on regardless.

I have done some hare-brained things on motorcycles before in my life, many of them at Warp Factor 9, but these guys are lunatics. My palms broke into a sweat just watching the video...



(H/T to Nate.)

Pedal to the metal.

With the mercury flirting with the 60 degree mark today, Roomie and I saddled up the bicycles and took a leisurely ride to the grocery store; about a five mile round trip. My poor bike had spent the last two-plus months gathering cobwebs, so it was pleasant to get out on the road again.

I had forgotten how much I liked my shoot-me vest as a cycling garment; liberally festooned with pockets, I could keep a stupid amount of gear and knickknacks ready to hand without having to toss anything in the basket or carry a messenger bag. It's like a purse you wear!

Bobbi occasionally held the bars with one hand while waving her digicam about with the other, so pictures of one sort or another may get posted. (EDIT: Here are some now.)

Secret Sharer...

I've had the weirdest little hit-and-run troll pop up in my comments section.

I don't get a lot of 'em, but this one's a doozy. Weirdly cyclical, too.

He's a pottymouth, so don't click if you're easily offended: My Pet Troll.

Ain't he cute?

Bowdler, Grundy, Comstock, and Levco.

The Hoosier prosecutor who wanted to run the evil DVD dispensing machines out of Vanderburgh County, Indiana has backed off.

Maybe somebody pointed out to him that in order for the tots to get their hands on a copy of Saw XLVI or American Pie: Sorority Sisters from one of the automated kiosks, they'd need to have already boosted mommy or daddy's credit card, and their morals were therefore already far enough gone in lying and stealing that a simulated traumatic amputation or sorority shower scene was unlikely to damage them any further.

No word as to whether Reverend Moore is going to relent and let Vanderburgh County youth engage in dancing and rock music listening at this year's prom.

The malf controls.

There are two controls on the M1911 semiautomatic pistol that are designed to make it malfunction: One causes the slide to be frozen in its rearmost position and the other causes the pistol to vomit its magazine onto the ground. And yet every year people spend untold thousands of dollars trying to make these controls easier for their fingers to touch without leaving the normal firing position.

Weird, huh?

Yes, but what's it for?

Every now and again I mention my ownership of a carbine-length AR and immediately receive comments on the superiority of rifle-length 20" A2's for everything from shooting guys on distant hillsides in Afghanistan to winning DCM matches.

You know, I have no intention of competing in any high power matches with this carbine.

Nor either am I likely to find myself in Afghanistan with it.

Fantasy scenarios about roaming the zombie-infested wasteland with a colander strapped to your face and Ol' Bess attached to your bicep with a DCM-approved loop sling are all fun and fine, but they're not exactly the most plausible situations in the world. Apocalyptic idylls aside, that's not how I'm ever going to be using my long gun.

The most plausible scenario for me to need a long gun is somebody breaking into my house with enough warning for me to fetch a gun, in which case I'm going to grab a long gun and not a pistol (since a pistol is for come-as-you-are gunfights; if one has time to dress for the affair, one should perhaps consider something with a shoulder stock.) I'm not going to need to sling up or worry about flatter trajectory and wind values at 300 yards, since the longest possible shot in Roseholme Cottage is closer to ten yards, and is likely to be a lot closer than that. I'll be more worried about sight offset than trajectory.

The other possible scenario where I might need a long gun would be some type of Katrina-level natural disaster or urban unrest. Look, I live in a moderately-wooded, flat-as-a-pancake, urban area. There's hardly a structure over two stories within a mile of where I'm sitting. The only way I could even see over a hundred yards in a straight line is if I stood in the middle of the street, which is something I would not be doing. The other thing I wouldn't be doing is going looking for trouble; I'll be sticking right here and keeping an eye on my own patch and helping the neighbors.

So, while I appreciate your concerns, my carbine is just fine for my needs. Your needs may differ.

They report this like it's news.

Wow! Mahmoud's a Troofer! Who knew?

Must have been a slow news day.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, an earthquake.

These tremors are somehow America's fault, and can only be fixed by giving lots of money to Third World dictators so they can reupholster the presidential Bentley with fresh ocelot skins.

Since I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath...

...I shot Marksman on the classifier yesterday.

I'm sure I could have shaved a little bit of time by using the slide stop on reloads, and the "tactical reload" technique of trapping the old mag with your pinkie is molasses slow compared to ripping out the old one before fishing up a new one, but I was overall happy with my performance.

Oddly I don't think I really shaved any time by using the LTC 9 over a .45ACP. Sure it's a 9mm, but it's an alloy Commander-size gun, which means you're not really gaining much of anything in the muzzle flip department over a 5" steel Government model. That fiber optic front sight was good for a couple tenths on the 20-yard strings, maybe.

Overheard in the Office:

RX: "You're missing the Oscars!"

Me: "Not really, no."

And oddly, I am not burning with curiosity over who won Best Best Boy, either.

I don't get the fuss over these types of award ceremonies. I already know what I thought the best movies of last year were; what do I care what other people, people I don't even know, thought?

Besides, there's no award for "Most Machine Guns and Dead Nazis".

"Handgun Shotgun Rifle" meme...

Not too long back, Jay at Firing Pin Journal asked:

One Handgun, One Rifle, One Shotgun. You are able to choose just one of each for self defense with NO modifications.

My answer was:

Handgun: The pistol on my hip. (Springfield Professional)
Shotgun: I’m not really shotgun kind of people.
Rifle: The carbine behind the door. (16″ M4gery on an RRA lower.)

Of course, the idea of one of each makes me nervous, as two or three identical copies are better. Guns break; at least they do if you're shooting enough. When one does, it's nice to be able to fill the holster with its identical twin while the other is off getting fixed.

This is why I'll feel a lot better when I get that second M4gery built. Suppose I go take a three-day carbine course this summer like I hope to and my weapon goes Tango Uniform halfway through day one? How silly will I feel if I can't yank a second one out and drive on?

I'm also a little confused by the "no modifications" thing. For example, my CCW pistol is a Springfield and its backup is an old Colt that was modified to feel exactly the same as much as possible (checkering, flat mainspring housing, long trigger, beavertail, 3-dot sights, same VZ Gatorback grips...) My carbine was built from a stripped lower; is that modified?

Bang bang shoot shoot.

Getting ready to go shooting with Caleb; I've let him talk me into running through an IDPA classifier to see how bad I really am. I'll be tickled if I score better than whatever comes below "Helen Keller".

I'll be shooting my Para LTC9, partly because it's got good sights and is ridiculously easy to shoot well, and partly because I'm a lot better stocked with 9mm ammo than .45ACP at the moment.

Patterns.

How come Lotus has made an "Esprit", an "Elan", an "Exige", a "Europa", an "Elite", but never an "Eater"?

This confuses me.

Okay, so some folks are holding a mock funeral for Internet Exploder* 6. Normally, this wouldn't rate an iota of attention from me because A) I haven't used any version of Exploder for at least five years and B) Going to a funeral for a web browser is about the most depressing and sad, yet marginally social, thing a nerd could do. However in reading the article, a purported factoid caught my eye:

IE8 commanded 22.5 percent of the browser market last month, according to NetMarketShare, an analytics firm. Despite its age, IE6 still held on to 19.8 percent of the market in February -- more than IE7. Overall, Internet Explorer remains by far the most commonly used Web browser, ahead of Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Huh?

I checked VFTP's SiteMeter:

Granted, that's just the last hundred visitors, and so it can be skewed pretty easily, like by that one person using IE6. So let's try a larger sample; Google Analytics can toss out the data for the last umpty-whatever users. The default setting is for the last month, and according to them, VFTP visitors have been browsing thusly:


Which again doesn't add up to a dominating share for IE. So what's up? Are y'all just that much more savvy than the 'net populace in general, or what?



PS: Although here's an interesting demographic nugget:


Note that people who come here from SurvivalBlog are using the browser that came in the box by an almost 2-to-1 margin. Mr. Rawles needs to get Borepatch to do a sermon on 'net security.


_________________________________________
*Normally I frown on clever spellings like "Windoze" or "Shrubya" or "Obambi" or whatever. I am guilty of a few myself, though: I've been calling it "Device Mangler" since Win 3.x, and "Exploder" for as long as there's been one. Heck, I refer to a certain AR-15 manufacturer as "Bushhamster" so often that I've accidentally written it that way in the Bound Book at least once. Mea maxima culpa.

Ow.

My head hurts.

I'm strongly considering writing off this whole "getting out of bed" thing as a bad idea and just try again tomorrow.

Is that a gun in your trunk, or are you just happy to work here?

The "guns-in-parking-lots" bill has passed the legislature and is bound for the governor's desk; it's all on my man Mitch now. The prez of the IN Chamber of Commerce is all sad clown about it.

Speaking of my man Mitch...

If it's just a game, why keep score?

Pistol competition is important. Unless they go to gun school, the local action pistol match is the only chance a lot of people will have to shoot from the holster, or on the move, or at moving targets, or under any kind of competitive or time pressure. Back in, oh, '94 or so, I was peripherally associated with a bunch of folks who had set up their own casual pistol matches. Intended as an alternative to the USPSA scene, which even at that time was increasingly dominated by expensive hardware, these matches were casual affairs oriented towards the kind of pistols most folks actually carried.

Stages were set up so that they could be cleared with a five-shot revolver, if you didn't mind reloading, and the only hard and fast gun rules were "No optics, no porting, no comps." Other than that, you only had to worry about everybody looking askance at your heater and accusing you of being a gamer. There weren't any "classes", nor any prizes, and while score was kept in a desultory fashion, everybody knew who the best handful of shooters were, and most folks were out to have fun rather than to "win".

Coincidentally, about that time, there was another group of shooters that wanted a more practical, CCW-oriented alternative to USPSA. Only they ruined it all with "classes" and "prizes" and vague, shadowy rulings. "No silly gamer stuff" only works as a rule when you have fifteen or twenty people who all know each other in real life and are pretty much on the same page regarding what does and doesn't qualify as "silly gamer stuff". That's a lot harder to do with a national organization, especially once there are prizes involved. Prizes lead to rulebooks, rulebooks lead to rules lawyers, and you wind up discouraging people from getting out there and getting involved.

Free Ice Cream at Marko's place!

If you like military-themed SF, Marko has a short story up for your reading enjoyment: "Lucky Thirteen."

Protip: How to cut down on high-profile killings.

The gunman was John Patrick Bedell...

You know, we could cut this thing out altogether if we'd just pass a law banning middle names.

Today In History: Please Mr. Custer...

Despite the fact that the land beyond the Euphrates had been swallowing up Roman armies at least since Crassus and 30,000 of his closest army buddies went walkabout and never came back, Roman emperors couldn't resist meddling in Persian politics.

On this day in 363AD, the Roman emperor Julian, his military reputation still surfing on the spankings he'd handed the Alamanni along the Rhine, marched his troops out of Antioch and into Sassanid Persia. It didn't really appear to be a "plan" kind of operation, as the army wandered around and dished out some random punitive damage to the Sassanid army and infrastructure before winding up camped outside of the capital at Ctesiphon.

Deciding against a lengthy siege, Julian decided to get all Xenophonic and march north, rather than back the way they'd come. He wound up taking a javelin through the liver during one of the innumerable skirmishes along the way, and the army was left in the hands of Jovian, a Serbian general who was no Alexander, if you know what I mean, and who some sources say was acclaimed emperor by accident. Shapur II soon brought the inept and harried Jovian to bay, and he signed away five provinces, three border forts, and a client kingdom to be named at a later date in order to be allowed to return to Roman territory and not take up a new career as Shapur's furniture.

The moral of the story? If you get a job working as a Roman emperor, stay on this side of the Euphrates.

Welcome to the (electric, folding, high-tech-looking) future.

In via email: It's not exactly a flying car, but it's still way futuristic-looking. Kinda like if Batman had a Segway.

Still, it's stupid expensive for something that's too slow for the street and too motorized for the Monon Trail. Do want, but only in a very abstract gadget-lust sort of way.

Officer, arrest that man!

Finally, three shadowy conspiracies laid to rest in one petulant outburst:

We assassinated President John F. Kennedy. We assassinated Martin Luther King. And we assassinated Robert F. Kennedy — and we’re proud of that.

Well, now we know who was on that grassy knoll. This deranged individual obviously should not be walking free.


(H/T to Unc.)

Off the shelf...

Currently rereading The Barbarian Princess by Florence King, writing pseudonymously as "Laura Buchanan".

It's really at its best if you've already read of how Miss King came to be writing a 5th Century bodice-ripper she originally wanted to title Sex and the Saxon Churl, the tale of which can be found starting on page 57 of The Florence King Reader:

My editor called as soon as he read it. "Go easy on the Latin. Sweet-savage readers can't handle that. You can have her scream desiste when she gets raped, though."

By page 59, I'm usually shrieking with laughter, and this from lines I darn near have memorized.

"Desistite!" (gang rape takes the plural)

This is great stuff. Just thinking of lonely housewives getting their introductions to Honorius, Alaric, and Hypatia as extras in a steamy romance novel makes me smile.

Eco-Friendly War.

Having received word that hang-glider-equipped terrorists might be about to attack, Indian security forces can load up their armor-plated golf carts and brace to repel boarders. No word if the Indian ground troops will attempt to bring down the gliders with lead-free ammunition, or whether the tangoes will be using bombs made from the newer biodegradable non-toxic plastique.

Indian 4-EnergyStar General Gupta said his troops are "...at standby, but can be powered up at the twitch of a mouse."

Don't go near the water?

What gun for jellyfish?

And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

So, some two-bit votesucker has floated the idea of putting Reagan's face on the $50 bill.

While I have no strong opinion on the matter one way or the other, I'll note that it would remove the face of the nepotistic scandal-ridden incompetent drunk that currently resides there, and that wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Why U.S. Grant's face is printed on banknotes in the first place has always confused me.

Speaking of confusing, other than playing slap-tickle with Marilyn Monroe and getting shot while still young and handsome, what did Kennedy do to get his mug on coinage?

Like a fever dream come true...

Tactical Golf Cart? How did I miss this?

No word as to whether the elite Food Court Team 6 at Mall of America will get to trial those babies in prototype form. (Although, even with their current Cushmans, they can be deployed at a “skater in progress” call anywhere in the mall in less than 20 minutes.)

Chicken and egg.

Certain subsets of the population seem to have a rather skewed view of who started the whole recent Starbucks thing.

Of course, it's probably no coincidence that these are the same people who get all confused about that "victim/perpetrator" terminology when a mugger gets shot.

Nothing to prove.

In my early years in the gun biz, I was pretty easy to talk into firing nearly anything. Between feeling like I needed to prove myself to the boys and the fact that some guys find it the height of humor to hand the li'l lady the Magnaboomer Loudenthumper and then giggle behind their hands like mischievous schoolboys as she steps to the line and flicks the safety off, I've found myself behind all manner of hard-recoiling beasts. I've shot assorted 10 gauge shotguns and a few .50BMG rifles, as well as less common ones, like .416 Rigby Ruger No.1s with heavy handloads; what was I supposed to do when someone asked "What's wrong? Chicken?"

After a few years of this, I finally stopped treating it like a dare. "No, I don't really want to fire your new .416 Weatherby," or "Thanks, I've shot plenty of .500 S&W already; I don't have anything to prove."

All through that time, I'd been bolstered by belief that "It's just loud and uncomfortable; the recoil can't physically hurt you." Except, as someone else with nothing to prove points out, over the years it most certainly can.

The Feel-Good Family Hit of the Summer!

In my sophomore year in high school I had one picture hanging in my locker. It was a black & white, postcard-sized photo of a skinny English guy behind a mic. Not Simon Le Bon or Sting, but an author. With that archness that comes so naturally to high school students, I'd completed the picture by scrawling in the corner "All the best in the new year, Eric. XXOO." Hardly anybody got it.

I still have the same tattered paperback copy of 1984 I had then, and it occurred to me that I hadn't read it since moving to Indy, so I pulled it out yesterday. It's one of a double-handful of books I generally reread every year or so, but letting it lie fallow an extra couple seasons has me looking at it in a different light yet again.

For some reason, this time 'round the egalitarian socialist Orwell's stifling class consciousness and intellectual snobbery is actually amusing enough to lift the overall tone of the book for me. In the scene where Winston walks past the proles huddled around a newspaper and talking animatedly, only to find that they're arguing over lottery numbers, my mind couldn't help but insert "Oh, Christ! Here comes one o' them Party wankers. Make like we're arguin' over nonsense!" The proles come and go as they please, buy what they can afford, and yet are portrayed as unfeeling animals simply because the author himself couldn't go into a pub or locker room without getting pantsed.

I'm tempted to write a bit of fanfic told from the point of one of the proles seen with the newspaper, having his path brush past poor emo Winston's here and there. God knows that various nameless, faceless proles are used more or less as movable scenery in the book; Winston would never notice if one of the ones in the cell was one of the ones from the pub was one of the ones from the street or the tube. Except they'd never cross paths in Mr. Charrington's junk shop; the reason that place was always empty except for Winston is that every prole on the block knew Charrington was a narc.

Rock and roll never forgets.

Why, Alex! What a coincidence! We were just talking about you...

Pants on fire.

Some people are so opposed to the Guns In Parking Lots bill currently stuck in the sausage grinder down at the statehouse that they're willing to lie about it in black and white.

Today In History: Kids these days.

On this date in 986AD began the reign of the last Carolingian king of France: The dynasty that started out with guys nicknamed "The Hammer" and "The Great" went out with a whimper under the one-year reign of a kid known as "the Do-Nothing".

Oddly, Miss Manners never covered this one.

What's the polite and considerate way to say "Eww, ick!"?

Waning Moonbeam.

Speaking of the non-smoking section of the Hindenburg, Jerry Brown is making noises about running for governor again.

Meanwhile, in the non-smoking section of the Hindenburg...

Apparently having gotten all the deck chairs lined up neatly and therefore with nothing better to do for a few minutes, the California state legislature took the time to pass a resolution declaring the first week of March "Cuss Free Week".

You have got to be shitting me.

Well, at least that was five minutes they didn't spend legislating.



(H/T to Billy Beck.)

Spider-Man laid off!

Spider-Man's alter ego cannot escape the harsh realities of the current economic times and will lose his job in an issue of the Amazing Spider-Man hitting stores this week.

Peter Parker, official photographer of the mayor by day and New York City crime fighter by night, is going to face new challenges, including unemployment.

That's okay; given the politics at Marvel, I'm sure that everyone's new favorite superhero, Barack-Man, will bail out the Daily Bugle. It's too big to fail!

Nice work, goober.

Showing all the finely-honed judgment of a likkered-up college student, one Alexander Brill pulled his heater in a Bloomington, IN watering hole.

Brill faces felony charges of battery and intimidation with a deadly weapon and pointing a firearm.

(21-year-old glands + booze + gat) - a good grasp of consequences = This Is Going In Your Permanent Record.

Reply hazy, ask again later.

Someone's crystal ball was on the fritz that day:

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? -Clifford Stoll, making bold intarw3bz predictions in '95.

Of course, he probably also thought that DOS 6.22 was the bomb diggity shizznit. I especially like the way he brings up the mall; I think it's been at least six months since I set foot in one of those.

Incidentally, this was about the time that the office in which I worked received new Pentiums with Windows 95, replacing our DOS boxes running proprietary software. It was my first experience with an always-on, fat pipe internet connection. I helped our IT manager set them up, since I was at the height of my gamer geek grrl days. As we booted up the one on my desk, I noticed the Exploder icon and double-clicked it.

"Um, do you realize that this thing is live? I mean, I just clicked Exploder and I'm surfing and... Damn! This thing is fast!"

"Yes, it's just the standard install."

I blinked. "You mean all the machines in the office have a browser icon on the desktop?"

"Yes," she replied.

"And a fat pipe right to the Web?"

"Uh-huh."

"And this seems like a good idea to you?"

How innocent we were in those days...



(H/T to Neatorama.)

Corn spotted in Nebraska!

Glocks spotted in movies!

As anybody who has ever sat down in a movie theater knows, the Glock (there's only the one model) is the third most common handgun on the planet. The second most common is the Beretta 92. The Deagle Fifty is hands down the most ubiquitous; most people carry two in a double shoulder rig.

(Incidentally, the HK G36 is the most widely-issued rifle, and the T-6 Texan was used in combat by both sides in all theaters of WWII.)



(H/T to Unc.)

Brand loyalty.

CNNMoney.com has a piece up wondering how Toyota's latest PR woes will affect the rest of Japan's automakers. Me, I've never really understood how non auto enthusiasts figure out their strange perceptions of which automakers are "reliable" and which aren't.

Then again, "reliable" is another one of those vague words, like "peppy", that get used a lot and leave me puzzled. Do they mean "reliable" as in "will start and run forever with minimal maintenance" or do they mean "reliable" as in "I followed the manufacturer's service schedule religiously and the cruise still works after three years"?

There's different kinds of reliable. When I was dirt poor and needed a "bridge" car to last me until I could get something better, I bought an '84 Pontiac Trans Am. I did not buy it necessarily because it was a Trans Am, but because it was the newest car I found on short notice with a carburetted Chevy small-block V-8 and a GM Turbo Hydramatic transmission; a combination that will run like crap longer than most cars will run at all*, can be repaired by anybody, and every junkyard in America is full to the brim with spare parts. Plus, you know... hey, Trans Am? Anyway, it was reliable in the 'start up and run' sense, but it was also a mid-'80s GM car, which meant that somewhere around 75k or so miles, bits begin to fall off and subsystems start checking out, but you don't really need cruise control, AM/FM cassette, the dome light, or various small interior trim bits to get to and from work.

Same thing with applying "reliability" as a constant across an entire brand. BMW's E36 platform is the automotive equivalent of the cockroach; they're still everywhere on the roads and the newest one you see is twelve years old; they'll often go a quarter million miles without using anything but gas, tires, and oil. Conversely, a 750iL won't make it across a parking lot without breaking down. Most any little Japanese sedan from the '70s was reliable as all getout; they'd run 'til the body rusted off... if it had a manual transmission. Meanwhile, Japanese slushboxes of the time were purely awful; fragile, fussy little things.

So how will this latest Toyota thing affect the perceptions of the general consumer? I haven't a clue; you'll have to go ask a general consumer.



_____________________________
* To be technical, the "LG9 5.0L V8 engine/ THM 700R4 4-speed automatic transmission". To be untechnical: "The engine and/or transmission used in, not only the '84 Trans Am, but also in pretty much half every taxicab, pickup, Corvette, station wagon, police car, Camaro, and SUV sold by GM for over a decade." In other words, dirt is slightly less common.

Her lips must have been moving...

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

I think you meant "on", not "for", Madame Speaker.

Mmm-mm!

I just had pancetta and Swiss on rye. I think if more people did this, and more often, the world would be a better place. I'm fairly certain that the pancetta, which is the platonic ideal of bacon, combines with the cheese to release some sort of endorphins.

(Of course, I understand that I have differing food ideas than most. At the blogmeet, when the waitress came around to take dessert orders, a few people ordered green tea ice cream, and I had another three pieces of white tuna sashimi.)

They like free stuff and they cannot lie...

Billy Beck links to an article pointing out that the cannibal pot is round in shape, and therefore has no "left" or "right" side.

Same planet, different worlds.

Sometimes I'm reminded that not everyone's on the same page as me:

A California sex offender suspected of abducting a girl in 1991 and keeping her captive for 18 years is suffering from "serious mental illness," defense attorneys say in court papers.

Well, no duh, counselor. Healthy, normal people don't abduct little girls and keep them as sex slaves.

"It appears that Phillip Garrido has been hearing [the] voices of angels for years," said documents filed Wednesday in El Dorado County Superior Court.

The "voices of angels"? Is he sure? Why don't we give him a chance to listen to them again and find out if they're the same voices, or different. Sorta 'kill two birds with one stone', as it were.

Save the mullet!

Not trusting his Aquanetted coiffure to the ravages of the tsunami-that-wasn't, Dog fled for the high ground and rhapsodized about the miracles of nature with Larry King. Easily the most surreal thing I've seen all morning...

Donkey, please!

Representative John Linder, from the north Atlanta 'burbs, has announced he's retiring. CNN reports that...

...[a] spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said Linder's decision to retire is another blow to House Republicans' aspirations in this midterm election year.

Donkey, please! John Linder, architect of the Fair Tax, has been in office since taking over from his predecessor, Bob Barr. This is the district whose idea of a Democrat was sending wookie-suited John Bircher Larry MacDonald off to Washington until the commies shot him down over the Sea of Japan. The burghers of Gwinnett are suddenly going to... what? Go all Cynthia McKinney on you or something?

Wookie Utopias?

Which novels have the best wookie-suiter utopias? My standard proselytizing books have always been The Probability Broach, Alongside Night, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and Voyage From Yesteryear.

Any others I should keep in stock?

(Kings of the High Frontier is narrow-focus and hard to get, Atlas Shrugged is quite the literary Dagwood and a sure cure for insomnia in non-bibliophiles, and Firefly is neither a book nor particularly Utopian...)

Sometimes I tickle myself...

From here:

Anybody who thinks that 9 .32" caliber pellets are the proper dose for a 3/4-ton carnivore is just asking to be reincarnated as a steaming pile of scat on an ice floe.

Just because I like y'all...

I'm reading Tom Diaz's 1999 bed-wetter, Making A Killing, a shocking expose of the gun industry, so you don't have to. Tom describes the firearms industry as a shadowy and impenetrable world that "makes the tobacco industry look like a model of transparency."

Since I have worked in and around that industry for some sixteen years, anybody got any questions they want answered? I'll even answer Tom's.

The ARs I'm not building.

So, as I mentioned, there were two types of AR that I was definitely not going to build on my stripped lower:

The first was a floating-barrel flat-top varminter. The reason for that is because not only do I not currently engage in any varmint hunting, but I'm also not at the rifle range very often, and when I am, shooting bitty groups from a bench just ain't my bag. (This is not to say that I have any particular problem with varmint hunting, but the opportunity just hasn't presented itself.)

The other was an AR pistol, which I personally think is about the most useless thing this side of a kickstand on a tank. Muzzle blast like a flash-bang grenade, the ballistics of a .22 Hornet, and no butt stock? Plus I have to go find a rifle range to shoot it? Where do I sign up for some of that action? No, thanks.

There's actually a third type I will not be building: When I said I was thinking about an "A2-style service rifle", some folks apparently thought I meant a "Service Rifle", which is a perfectly serviceable weapon that has been fruited up with pinhole sight apertures, heavy barrel, an archaic sling, and six pounds of lead weights inserted into every available orifice to make it better suited for target competition. I will not be building one of those. When I shoot from field positions, I generally do it under the assumption that my targets are not going to give me time to unroll my mat, buckle up my coat, sling up, and set up my spotting scope.

Fool-Proof Risk Management 101:

How To Avoid...

1. Death from parachute failure: Don't jump out of airplanes.
2. Death by bungee-jumping accident: Don't jump off of bridges.
3. Drowning: Avoid large bodies of water; take showers instead of baths.
4. Cutting your femoral wide open with a chainsaw: Don't use chainsaws.
5. Getting eaten by Orcinus orca: Stay away from the big fish tank.

Speaking of O. orca, I had no idea that there were both "nomad" and "villager" killer whale cultures, as it were, and the two do not seem to intermingle.

Hoosier Gun Owners Shivved In The Liver By House Democrats?

Caleb has the scoop.

As used by Tombstone PD SWAT!

Cowboy Tactical: Now that's funny, right there.



(H/T to Unc.)

Day of the Wookie.

As if the CPAC convention wasn't proof enough that November '10 is shaping up to be the Night Of The Long Bowcasters, now we have this:

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

If not even CNN could slant their question enough to get a vote of confidence for fed.gov...

The Health Department has issued a Smug Alert:

Slow Children At Play, Slow Cars In Park:

I drove by a new public building in our county the other night, looking the place over when I had a few minutes to kill. The first TWO ROWS of parking were posted. Not handicap. Not "county vehicles"... but "LEV/Fuel Efficient Vehicle Parking ONLY".

I suppose there has to be some sort of consolation prize for diving the sluggish little penalty boxes, else people wouldn't do it; it must be the big box of finger-wagging self-righteousness that comes with the car.

Sometimes I tickle myself...

From here:

"Speaking of Caligula, I think the Senate today would work better if we had the entire horse in there instead of just its ass."

Today In History: ...but you can't choose your family.

On this date in 364AD, one Flavius Valentinianus, age 42, was proclaimed emperor on the death of the short-lived emperor Jovian.

Valentinian I, as he became known, had impeccable military chops; his dad was a general and he grew up an army brat. He'd been in since he was eighteen and worked his way up through the officer ranks, serving everywhere from Britannia to Africa to Mesopotamia. A senior commander in the armies of Julian the Apostate, he'd been mentored by the best, and when he took the reins of empire, he immediately set about aggressively beating back the barbarian threats on the Rhine and Danube frontiers.

The problem was that the tradition of using co-rulers to help manage the sprawling empire was well underway, and Valentinian needed one to keep an eye on the east while thumped barbarian hordes in the west. He picked his brother, Valens.

While Valentinianus had been off covering himself in blood and glory as a man among men, commanding the legions of Rome, his brother had been... Well, tending the family estates is honest work, nobody's saying it's not, but it probably didn't adequately prepare young Valens for the challenges he was going to face as Official Eastern Imperial Sidekick.

I know you are, but what am I?

Apparently at yesterday's circus, Senator McCain (?-AZ) complained about the emperor's choice of music, saying it didn't go well with the flames.

Barry, like he does whenever his string is pulled, retorted with his usual "The election is over," apparently thinking that the unspoken codicil to that is "...and so I should get to do whatever I want."

Then McCain said "Neener neener neener."

And Barry replied "Nuh-uh, I'm rubber, you're glue. What bounces off me, sticks to you!"

High school student government debates were models of maturity compared to these clowns.

QotD: Ain't nobody's business edition.

Seen at Joe Huffman's:

As a friend of mine in the cell phone manufacturing business once told me, "I don't know exactly what's in the phone software. But I do know the phone only has one battery."

If you don't want Big Brother knowing where you are, leave the verdammt thing at home. I'm assuming that everyone knows not to say anything on one that they wouldn't want played back for a judge.

We are so screwed.

Ready for some health care? 'Cause you're about to get you some.

Next up: Cap 'n' Tax!

We'll kill this economy if it's the last thing we do!

While we're talking about strange vehicle mishaps...

...here're a couple of my more interesting tales of underway woe:

1) The Pontiac Fiero was an almost entirely parts-bin car. Except for the body and the large visible chunks of the interior, nearly everything was sourced from extant GM vehicles: The front suspension came from the T-bodies (think "Chevette") and the rear suspension and drivetrain was basically the FWD X-body's (think "Citation") turned 180°. The parking brake handle came from the C4 Corvette, and was sandwiched between the driver's seat and the door.

To operate the parking brake, you'd raise the handle, which would ratchet the brakes on, and then lower it again so you could exit the vehicle without fouling your undercarriage on the brake lever. To take the parking brake off again, you'd pull the lever up, push the button on the end, and lower it. In other words, whether the brake was on or off, the lever was down; your only indication of the different status was the "BRAKE" idiot light on the dash.

You can see where I'm going with this, right?

I never actually used the parking brake, what with my car having the V-6 engine and a granny gearchanger. But apparently I messed around with it one day... Did you know that it was possible to disengage a Fiero's parking brake enough to turn the light off, but still have the brake slightly engaged? And that if you drive half a dozen miles or so down I-85 in Atlanta with a caliper dragging, you'll boil the brake fluid and be rewarded with an horrific smell and a pedal that goes to the floor?

Luckily I noticed on the interchange before my off-ramp, and between there and the Armour Drive traffic light at the bottom of the ramp, I was able to pump some life back into the system, but it was a pretty hair-raising experience.


2) The Honda 700 Interceptor had a hydraulic clutch. The lever was only attached to the bike by the pivot screw, since it just operated a piston on the master cylinder. Once upon a time, immortal in the way that only 20-year-olds can be, I was riding home from work at about... oh... 100mph or so, northbound on GA400 (easy to do during morning rush hour, since the northbound lanes were deserted and the southbound ones were a parking lot.) Tooling blissfully along, something twinkled briefly in my peripheral vision as it fell off the handlebar. It was the screw from the clutch lever.

Followed almost immediately by the departure of the lever itself.

Oh.

Crap.

In what remains to this day one of my more virtuoso performances at the helm of a motor vehicle, I somehow managed to drift across three lanes of light traffic, downshifting from 5th to Neutral without the clutch, and bring the bike to a halt on the shoulder of the road. I then had to detach myself from the bike, walk back, and dodge traffic to get my clutch lever, laying in the road out by the median. It was more of a hike than I expected; it takes a bit of road to coast down from the far side of the Ton.

A crude pivot was MacGyvered from a small twig of Georgia pine lying by the side of the road, and using this and a deathgrip to hold the lever on the bar, I rode to the Honda dealership for a replacement part, and all was well as ended well.

Human ingenuity knows no bounds...

I've been present for the launch of a saboted blueberry muffin, but I ain't never seen a Wiener Cannon before.

Do a search on "NHTSA" and "Pedal Misapplication".

When the Audi 5000 story ("I was pressing the brake as hard as I could and the car hurtled demonically through a playground full of orphans and right into a nunnery!") hit 60 Minutes back in the day, I demonstrated its basic fallacy to friends by climbing behind the wheel of my Dodge Coronet, pointing right into the apartment, and flooring the gas pedal with the brakes pressed to the floor. The Mopar V-8, which had a starter motor more potent than the Audi five-banger, was easily held stationary by the pathetic drum brakes that possessed a mere fraction of the braking power provided by the 4-wheel discs on the Kraut sedan.

If I’d screwed up behind the wheel, I’d like to think I'd have the integrity to admit it, rather than go play “pin-the-tail-on-the-scapegoat”, which the owner of this ‘96 Camry, (equipped with neither ECB nor ECT,) is obviously trying to do.

I’m sure he’s found a lawyer who doesn’t know a master cylinder from a throttle position sensor to take his case, though.


(H/T to Unc.)

Maybe for thee, but not for me.

Both JayG and Carteach0 have reviews of Lasermax guide rods up. While I agree with both of them about the quality of the product, I'm skeptical of its utility for me on a carry gun.

I've had Lasermaxes in a couple of guns, the last one being a G23C back in... '01? '02? I gave up on the concept myself, at least for CCW, because of the need to operate an extra button to get the laser dot up and running. I'd imagine a real-life incident with my Glock would have run something like:

"Holy $#!+!!!"

BANGBANGBANGBANG!

*pant-pant-pant*

Oh, wait... *click* ...and on comes the laser.

Still, a useful training aid, or maybe on a housegun where one would presumably have more warning before use.

I probably shouldn't...

...but sometimes I can't resist.

A "commenter" at Marko's munchkin ranch this AM:

I am very interested in a sugar-free living. I currently have a sweet-tooth, and am finding it difficult to find meal plans, what to eat for snacks, etc. While diabetes is not something that runs in my family, I am still concerned and would like to be smart and take a proactive approach to my health. Any tips or advice?

Finding myself with an extra few minutes on my hands, I tried to pretend that I was a drone in a Chongqing spam sweatshop:

I am very interested in a spam-free living. I currently have an ad fetish, and am finding it difficult to find pop-up windows, Chicom trojans, and malware-infested Lithuanian porn sites. While identity theft is not something that runs in my family, I am still concerned and would like to be smart and take a proactive approach to not falling prey to 419 scammers. Any tips or advice?

My context-sensitive Google ads should be interesting for a couple of days...

The strange knowledge I have...

Bobbi walks into the office this morning and looks over to see Slinky, the three-pound geriatricat, sitting in her litterbox, looking dejected.

"Oh, what's wrong, Slinky?"

"Performance anxiety," I supplied helpfully, "She just had her butt positioned in the litterbox, and she was kinda tentative about the whole peeing thing to begin with..."

"So she's just waiting in there 'til the feeling comes again?"

"Yup, pretty much. Do you know, it's sad that I've become a leading authority on your cat peeing. I've watched her so many times in the past two years to make sure she didn't pee over the edge, I could write a book: On The Micturitions of Slinky."

QotD: Civics 101.

From Marko:

The Constitution doesn’t grant rights, period. The Constitution lays out what government may do, and the Bill of Rights lays out what government may not ever do, under any circumstances. Nowhere in there does it “grant” any rights to the citizenry…not even in the Bill of Rights, which merely recognizes certain individual rights.

Eloquently stated. I think a huge mistake was made by calling it the "Bill of Rights" in the first place, rather than the "Bill of Restrictions" or the "List Of Stuff That Means We Break Out The Torches And Pitchforks".

A puzzler, and no mistake...

This morning, upon awakening, I blurted out "Zombie robot clowns!" rather loudly and for no immediately discernible reason.

This has now got me stumped, because where exactly would zombie robot clowns fit in the Taxonomy of Modern Dangers? Both the zombies and the Killer Space Robots are independents, like the Face-Eating Monkeys, and not tied in with the ninja-vampire faction or the loose pirate-hippie-werewolf collective, but the whole "clown" thing throws an x factor into the calculation...

Also, what gun for zombie robot clowns?

Gah.

While on the eMac, I let a tremendous amount of computer chores slide. For instance, I'm even behinder than usual on email. Seeing as how it's beddy-bye time at Roseholme, I'll take a snow shovel to the inbox first thing in the AM, as soon as I'm done using it on the sidewalks, (if the TeeWee Weather Gnomes are to be believed.)

Uncrippled. Sort of.

I have successfully installed the new power supply in the old PC, and am off the eMac.

The hard drive is definitely making noise. I hope to have the situation rectified soon.

PDW Pr0n:

Frank James has a pretty cool post up on the trendy "Personal Defense Weapons": The FN P90 and HK MP7.

Dodging the herd.

On the way downtown to have breakfast with Shootin' Buddy, my cellie rang.

"Hello?"

"Hi! Where are you?"

"Just crossing... Just crossing 10th Street."

If I sounded frazzled, it was because I was hurtling through the predawn pogonip down Meridian, cheek-by-jowl in a herd of the fifth most dangerous species of driver: the Precaffeinated Yuppie Commuter. (One lane to a customer, pal! Hey, it's the long skinny one on the right! We only get the one shade of green! You can't take your half out of the middle!)

Fortunately, I made it to Le Peep without experiencing any idiot-induced drama of the type Breda did on her recent commute.

Interestingly, two tables away at the restaurant was Former Democrat Mayor Bart Peterson. I'm not sure if my subsequent "Wah-wah-wah-waaahhh" was audible or not. (Of course, his GOP successor is doing his best to join him in ignominy by hanging out with the yellow lines and dead 'possums. Remember: "Bipartisan" is Latin for "Disliked by Everybody.")

Charlie don't surf, Spartans don't ice dance.

The original Olympics were a celebration of military virtues, with events directly relating to warfighting skills like spear-throwing, running away, sword fighting, and beating the crap out of people with your bare hands. There was no "synchronized swimming" in Ancient Greece.

Putting aside the fact that the entire concept of the Winter Olympics is suspect, with the exception of the Simo Hayha Memorial Biathlon (which should use Bolshevik silhouettes as targets for the sake of authenticity,) what the heck is up with an event that includes a "kiss and cry" area? Not even the Theban Sacred Band would be caught dead in a "kiss and cry" area.

In the name of science!

Wired magazine tests some ballistic vests because, hey, shooting stuff!

Every now and then, I've considered getting a vest, but so far the fact that I really don't need one for anything has stopped me (for a change.)

AFK, BRB

Off to meet Shootin' Buddy for breakfast. I'm going to order huevos rancheros, because it's so much fun to say.

As it turns out...

...the thermostat was hunky-dory.

The flammensensen/sparkenmacher gizmo, on the other hand, had macht mit der kaputten.

All is fixed, and the denizens of Roseholme Cottage are slowly thawing.

What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on out there?

Already having a publicly-accessible list of sex offenders, a couple of California lawmakers have decided that it would be swell if their state had one for dog-kickers, too.

Next up, a publicly accessible list of people who don't separate the clear glass from the colored glass in their recycling bins.

(And, yes, I am well aware that one of the best signs of a budding monster is torturing animals as a child, but being juvenile offenses, one would presume that these would not make the list...)

An important message...

...from the Please, Please, Pleese Get An iLife Foundation:

The officiant wore a black turtleneck. The rings were brought in attached to a first-generation iPod. And the bride and groom both said iDo. What more could you hope for from an Apple store wedding?

I predict it will be buggy and missing a few crucial features, and will probably only last until one of them discovers Spouse G2.

The single worst thing about using Apple products is that people might think you're one of these iBorgs.

You can tell it's Monday.

Overslept. Woke up to a very chilly house, thanks to a thermostat which apparently expired quietly in the night. Feelin' cranky.

Things are tough all over.

Apparently the current steep unemployment rate beats the stuffin' out of Egg McMuffin.

I find this easy to believe due to my observations while working at the outpost of the Vast Petroleum Conspiracy, which was co-located with an outpost of the Vast Fast Food Conspiracy. On weekdays, lunch and dinner business at Mickey D's was best described as "steady", but breakfast was a madhouse, with people four or five deep at the registers and a line of cars snaking around the building as though they were giving dollar bills away at the drive-thru window. This entire crowd would evaporate at 9:00AM sharp, which would seem to correlate strongly with the customers being in a "going to work" condition.

Now let us praise Lethargia, the goddess of slack.

The snow is melting, I have a tummy full of sushi, and it very much feels like the tag end of a Sunday, where it just doesn't seem worth it to spin up any fresh projects before calling it a night.

As annoying as the snow was, I feel sad watching it melt. This is probably the residue of childhood, where the sight of the melting snow meant it was back to school in the morning.

The Blogmeet was fun, and we even had a surprise attendee in the person of PA State Cop, talented raconteur and easy winner of this month's Cup of Turonistan.

Intermission.

Sitting on the porch, reading a shiny new copy of Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter, and waiting for Shootin' Buddy to show up so we can head to the Blogmeet.

I've got extra proselytizing copies of Eat the Rich, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, Give War a Chance, and Holidays in Hell to hand out when I get there. 

Don't be square, be there.

Fundamentally Unserious.

In the tradition of great statesmen like Sonny Bono, Al Franken, the Governator, and Jesse "The Body" Ventura, The Nation (whose editorial board looks like a cross between the Legion of Doom and the Island of Misfit Toys*) is apparently all aboard the John Cougar Mellencamp for Senator train.

*Srsly. Lani Guinier, Toni Morrison, and Tom Hayden? All they need is Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy and the dude that bites the heads off chickens, and they'd have the complete collection.

Apologies...

I was supposed to be writing something, but first I had to go to the grocery store, and then my little "news" tab in this strange Mac browser served up the bizarro saga of Amy Bishop.

This isn't crazy: This is merely the result of a life of never being told "no"; a life full of self-esteem boosting, where everybody else is sent over from central casting to be extras in The Great Life Of Dr. Bishop. This is what happens when the culture of Everybody's A Winner spends forty years enabling a pure-t sociopath.

Owie.

I have a blister on my thumb from loading Ruger mags yesterday. It had been way too long since I'd last been to the range.

EDIT: Incidentally, we went shooting yesterday at the new Applied Ballistics indoor range in Lafayette. I was very, very impressed with the facility, which was well-lit, well-ventilated, clean and had a friendly and helpful staff. If you're in the Lafayette area, check them out.

Infinite (or nearly so) possibilities.

Hardly anything presents such a challenge to the imagination as a stripped AR lower sitting on the desk in front of you. About the only things I know I won't build on it are a heavy-barrel varminter or a pistol.

Here's what I'm torn between:

1. Another M4gery; to serve as a backup to my current carbine and a more-or-less permanent home for my rimfire kit.
   
2. A 9mm dedicated indoor/pistol range carbine.
   
3. A 20" M16A2-style service rifle.
   

Most likely it'll be the first one, but I can't make up my mind...

Per Sedunum Ad Astra

Frank has a post up announcing the news that the Spanish gunmaker Astra is back, or at least its name is. And now it's Swiss. And it makes AR-15s and 1911s, because there just aren't enough people making AR and 1911 clones on this planet, apparently.

Couldn't they have done something original and Swiss, like Stgw.57 and P210 clones? Or brought back the Astra SIG knock-offs?

Handicap.

Roomie scored me a power supply the day before yesterday, but I haven't gotten around to bolting it into the old machine. I'm still doing all my blogging and web-surfing on the eMac, which is holding up pretty well, considering that it was a low-end machine when it was introduced six years ago. 

Still, not being able to boot up my old tower makes me realize how much stuff I had free-floating in my "My Documents" file just waiting to be used. I need to get that power supply installed this afternoon.

Our nanny marches on.

Raise your hand if you think sticking a paper tube full of shredded leaves into your face and setting it on fire is a perfectly safe thing to do. Nobody?

Okay, how about if I write "light" on the side of the tube before you set it on fire. Still nobody?

Well, the .gov thinks you're too dumb to figure it out without their help. and passed sweeping legislation last summer, complete with all kinds of new regulations about labeling and packaging. But apparently just complying with the regulations isn't enough. Cigarette packs won't say "light" on them anymore, but they will still come in different-colored packs, and your betters are positively incontinent about it:

“They’re circumventing the law,” said Gregory N. Connolly, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. “They’re using color coding to perpetuate one of the biggest public health myths into the next century.”

Oh. Emm. Gee. Greg. Whatever shall we do? Let's pass more laws!

Posting delay.

Roomie caught me off guard by frying up some bacon and eggs this AM.

Posting will resume after I put them in my face.

Holster pr0n:

Michael Bane shows off his 1911 rig for Wild Bunch class SASS shooting.

That's pretty cool right there.

The purpose of the Internet.

Thanks to Atom Smasher, I have discovered the reason Al Gore invented the intarw3bz: Because if he hadn't, we never would have seen the adventures of Axe Cop.

No pretentious hipster can do Dada like a five-year-old kid. 

I think the intertubes better start warming up its acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize.

Almost as good as the "Twinkie Defense"...

The whackjob professor in Alabama allegedly failed her saving throw vs. Crazy.

Whatever. As long as they keep her in a +3 Cell of Holding until they get around to juicing her up with a Potion of Executing.

Barney Fife goes Federal.

In all, 243 firearms were lost in both agencies during that period, according to the January report from Inspector General Richard Skinner. Of those, 36 were lost because of circumstances beyond officers' control -- for instance, ICE lost a firearm during an assault on an officer. Another 28 were lost even though officers had stored them in lockboxes or safes.

But 74 percent, or 179 guns, were lost "because officers did not properly secure them," the report said.

Nice work, Barney Fife.

Leaving your heater in a public restroom should be an automatic crash-landing. I don't care if you stopped to pee on the way to your retirement party: Leave the public's pistol lying around where any hoodlum or toddler can get their grubby paws on it, and you should exit the doors with enough velocity to bounce when you hit pavement.

This is one of many things that stems from the "Only Ones" mentality so rightly derided in parts of the blogosphere. People who don't even like guns, who have been culturally conditioned to actively dislike them, are issued one and expected to suddenly embrace it and care for it.

You know how come I don't leave my gat in the bathroom? Because I had to pay my own hard-earned dough for it, I'm packing it because I want to and not because my boss makes me, and most importantly, I don't have a powerful .gov employee's union to cover my arse from legal responsibility if I leave it lying around.

The plight of the Na'vistinians.

Look for a lot more protesters painting themselves blue and trying to link their cause to sympathetic cartoon savages in the future.

The villagers have compared their situation to the popular film "Avatar" because of the barrier's proximity to their village.

Yeah, except for the part where the Na'vi didn't stuff their drawers full of semtex and auto-destruct in pizza parlors and you aren't nine feet tall with USB plugs at the end of your ponytails; other than that, there's no difference.