July 2010 – Page 13 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Coolest Hobby Ever

I am intrigued by this wingsuit jumping, but it looks highly hazardous, and I think I enjoy life a little too much to try it. Plus, I’d imagine I’d have to get my flabby ass in shape first, since I’m guessing myÂ ballisticÂ coefficient could use some work.

On another note, I never understood why suicidal people didn’t take up sports like this. I mean, if you think life sucks so bad you want to die, I would imagine strapping on a wing suit andÂ parachute, and throwing yourself off a fjord is going to clear things up for youÂ mightyÂ quickly.

Why We Won’t Negotiate

Joe Grace laments that Pennsylvania doesn’t have true gun registration, and notes about Lost and Stolen, the current law CeaseFire PA is pushing:

“Will it solve the problem?” Grace said. “No, but it is a step in the right direction.”

That right there is why we won’t give an inch. He really wants a mile. If he had to take it an inch at a time, that’s fine by him. The Brady Act was considered reasonable by many gun owners as well, and was quickly followed up with Brady II. Fortunately gun owners helped vote that Congress out before it could go anywhere. Dan Onorato seems like Joe Grace’s best buddy, in terms of supporting his agenda, and I’ve been less than impressed with what we’ve been able to accomplish in the PA House with the Democrats running things. If we don’t teach them a lesson this fall, the lesson is going to be that being in favor of gun control Pennsylvania doesn’t hurt you.

Caleb Gets Eaten by the Drama Llama

While I was happy that in the last episode of History Channel’s Top Shot, Caleb seemed to have finally learn his lesson about hostage shooting, it would seem that this episode caused Caleb to be eaten by the Drama Llama, having been eliminated after being compared to several species of the order Rodentia, and possibly the Mustelidae family as well (I’d have to go back and watch again).

Several people have stepped up to defend Caleb. Chris Byrne makes some very good points. Les Jones also makes some good points. I will stake out a middle position of saying Caleb is neither rat, nor fink, or any member of the Mustelidae family for what transpired on last night’s Top Shot. But I don’t agree he took the high road, because I’m not sure there’s much high road to be had. It’s not a shooting competition, where sportsmanship and excellence play the biggest role. It’s reality TV. Shooting is relatively incidental; a backdrop for the drama. Caleb was trying to survive the game, same as Adam.Â Any fan of reality TV shows knows that the nice guys often finish last. I’m not going to blame anyone for setting up voting blocks or otherwise thinking strategically about how to get to the end of this game. Adam probably figured he needed a voting block to get rid of some of the top shooters on his team if he wanted to have any prayer of winning. Caleb probably figured he was better off currying favor with the top shooters on the team. Unfortunately for Caleb, that turned out to be a bad political move, and you only get to make one of those, unless you’re a really good elimination shooter, which Caleb almost was.

On to the shooting. Â In the last episode before this one James made me cringe where in a shooting style that called for a more tactical stance he took a traditional high-power style offhand shooting stance — very good for accuracy, not very good for speed. In this episode I cringed when Caleb chose a tactical stance for what was looking like an accuracy game. I think the fact that the target was basically rotated 90 degrees threw them both off from what they practiced on, and evened things up a bit. I think a more traditional stance would have worked out better, because you would have been more stable, and still been able to work up a reasonable volume of fire needed to sever the rope. But this is arm chair stuff… if Caleb ever hosts the gun blogger competition he’s talked about, I totally want to try traditional vs. tactical stance and see which one works better for the rope shot. I suspect that kind of game is something a silhouette shooter would be good at — we don’t have all day to aim at our targets like slow-fire standing in high-power shooting, but we still have to hit with reasonably good accuracy at long distances.

In other news, I think I really need to get a flintlock muzzle loader. It looks like fun. Anyone know a decent brand? I know little about smoke poles.

Run Its Course?

This is the first news article I’ve seen about a drop in concealed carry permit applications from anywhere, but I guess like you eventually run out of other people’s money, you also eventually run out of gun nuts. Of course, this means we need to make more. Don’t forget, our opponents tell us we stand for a gun for every hand, everywhere, anywhere, no questions asked.

Patriotism on Display

According to TheNewspaper.com, some very patriotic citizens in Washington decided to decorate their town. Or rather, their local red light cameras.

Seeing the red, white, and blue flying is usually enough to make me smile. Seeing red, white, and blue used this creatively to get in the way of government revenue sources that do nothing for “public safety,” well, that just warms my heart.

Boeing 787 Dreamers in Virtual Service

That past few weeks, the officially licensed version of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has become available for X-Plane. They won’t go into actual service for a few more months yet, but you can fly them in X-Plane. I bought it almost as soon as I got the e-mail, but this weekend I finally got to try it out on a cross country flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. I’m really surprised by much of the detailed 3D modeling artistry that goes into making these planes, so I’m happy to highlight the work. I have one shot that shows the wing-flex model. The Dreamliner is actually kind of scary in that regard. The wingtips will be well over the fuselage during flight. Most of the buttons and dials you see in the cockpit you can actuate with the mouse just like you would in the real version. Here are some of the shots from the trip. Takeoff from a muggy day in Philly, ascent to cruising altitude over Virginia, Sunset over New Mexico, twilight descent and finally landing in Los Angeles at night. Gives some idea of the detail that went into the model, as well as the X-Plane experience.

I wanted to do one with sound, because I think the model designers did a really nice job of incorporating sound into their model. The radio is just random X-Plane radio chatter, which I normally leave off, though you can actually fly with live air traffic control on VATSIM. The depths of loserdom you can descend into with flight simulators these days is astounding. I think this is all part of a plot by the military to train the next generation for the future UAV wars with the Chinese. But let me say, as long as I’m listening to flying instructions from some thirteen year old Canadian kid, there’s no way we’re losing that fight. The Chinese are barely discovering flight while our kids are piloting intercontinental airliners through the virtual skies. I know which side I’m betting on in that fight.

I do all my own flying in these, which you can probably tell by some of the over-controlling and various other issues, but it’s been a long time since I killed any virtual passengers :)

The Michael Bellesiles Saga Continues

Jim Lindgren is continuing to research Bellesiles news claims over at Volokh:

I have now read through every DoD casualty report from last fall for both Iraq and Afghanistan and news obituaries for most of them, and I have found none that was even remotely possible as the case that Bellesiles wrote about in the Chronicle. This post discusses the serious questions this raises for the veracity of Bellesiles account.

Go read the whole thing. Lindgren boils it down to this:

That leaves two Iraqi War deaths by hostile small arms fire during his course, one on Nov. 4 and another on Nov. 22. The newspaper accounts of both deaths do indicate a sniper as the killer, but both deaths are reported as occurring on the same day as the soldiers were shot, so they cannot be the source of Bellesilesâ€™s tale of a wounded soldier languishing for weeks, at one point perhaps too injured to be flown to Germany.

I’m still finding it difficult to believe he’s crazy enough to still be spinning tales from whole cloth, but I don’t rule out the possibility that he is a pathological liar.

Joyce Foundation Reduced to Persuasion

They are trying to convince Chicagoans not to buy guns. This convinces me they don’t have much confidence they are going to be able to throw up much in the way of obstacles. But it’s a free country, and Joyce is free to mislead people about the dangers of guns. The real victory is that they would seem to no longer believe they can count on force of law to do this for them, and must now fall back to how we’re supposed to do things in a free society: persuasion.

Gun License Fees in Bucks and Montgomery Counties

Some are upset at the $46 dollar fee our sheriff charges. Apparently they still offer the state standard license, for the state fixed price:

Both Donnelly and Ricci said they give residents the option of paying $25 for a paper license, but applicants must provide their own photographs if they choose the cheaper option.

“If you want to upgrade that license we provide another service,” Ricci said. “If you want a plastic one that looks like a driver’s license, you pay $46.”

I should note that if the end result of this is that we all have to go back to the big paper licenses, I’m going to be pissed. I’m happy to pay extra for the credit card sized plastic license. I do believe the Sheriffs need to make it clear the paper license is available, and make sure everyone knows that. They do mention it on their web site, but it seems that the satellite offices are unaware.

NRA Runs Anti-Kagan Ad

Looks like NRA is running an ad on the Kagan issue (warning, ad will auto play on that link):

This would seem to refute those who claimed their opposition to her would be half-hearted or insincere. Producing and running ads isn’t a cheap business.