Speaking of guns…

April 9th, 2013

…stolen from my great and good friend RoadRich:

This is why I am such a big advocate of stricter knife control, and most importantly, a ban on assault knives. People don’t need knives that powerful for hunting… what are they planning to do, overthrow the caring, benevolent government? And those clips that hold more than one knife? Those… what are they called, ‘leatherman’ clips? Who needs those for so-called ‘hunting’? What are they hunting anyway, speaker wire and Phillips screws? Ban those too… because if even one person gets stabbed, even while trying to get at the tweezers, it is too many. Too many. Only the Army should be trying to clean a fish or strip a wire anyway.

The only thing I’d add to that is that I’m waiting for the victims of this particular act of violence to show up at a State of the Union address and testify before Congress, etc. etc. etc.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Knives, Law | Comments Closed

We have met the enemy…

April 9th, 2013

The LAT just put up a profile of noted gunsmith Terry Tussey.

I’ve heard of Mr. Tussey before. I’ve never had any work done by him, or handled any guns he’s worked on. But he is frequently mentioned in the pages of American Handgunner. I gather that he and the editor of AH are friends.

(I’m not implying that there’s anything wrong with that. Just saying.)

I’m happy to see this kind of thing in the LAT. I’m glad anytime I see gun ownership shown positively in the media.

But there are a couple of things that give me pause.

“Assault rifles and plastic guns are machines that shoot bullets,” Tussey says. “There is a big difference between machines that shoot bullets and firearms that shoot quickly, accurately and are beautiful.”

This comes across as kind of snobbish to me, even within the full context of the article. (Tussey is referring to “two revolvers purchased online” that cost “cost under $400 apiece” and are made of “polymer and metal”. No brand name is given.)

The reference to “plastic guns” also seems odd, given that:

He keeps a loaded 9mm Glock on his workbench and a 9mm Rohrbaugh in his pocket.

And then there’s this:

Tussey is sympathetic to efforts to restrict gun ownership, but he doesn’t believe any legislation would stop gun violence.
He favors background checks and hunter safety courses, and he can’t see a purpose for assault weapons or large-capacity magazines, but he is a passionate supporter of the 2nd Amendment.

“can’t see a purpose for assault weapons or high-capacity magazines”, but “is a passionate supporter of the 2nd Amendment”. Uh-huh.

I am hesitant to jump down Mr. Tussey’s throat: it is possible that he was misquoted or misrepresented by the LAT. I’ve used the contact form at his site to ask if this is the case, and will report back if I get any response.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | Comments Closed

High speed low drag tactical stuff.

April 8th, 2013

So Lawrence and I watched the latest SyFy channel disaster, “Chupacabra vs. the Alamo” Saturday night at the home of our friends who shall remain anonymous. (Thank you, anonymous friends!)

I’m hoping Lawrence will write a review so I don’t have to, but there’s one thing I did want to highlight.

Have any of you tactical operators given any thought to how you’re going to perform your tactical operations with an iPad (or other tablet) in one hand?

Are iPad operations something that’s covered in training these days? (Karl, I sense a great need.)

Posted in Guns, Movies, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

This Sporting Life.

April 8th, 2013

The Houston Astros won their opener…and have lost five straight games since.

(There are no MLB teams that have gone winless in this first week of the season. Houston, Miami, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and San Diego are all 1-5. Also, the blog widget I was using to display MLB standings hasn’t been updated in two years, and doesn’t seem to work with the current version of WordPress.)

Why should competing against men — “pushing the envelope,” as Griner called it — be a yardstick for her when the question people should be asking is: how will she fare next summer in the W.N.B.A. against the likes of Tina Charles and Sylvia Fowles?

Perhaps because nobody pays attention to the rapidly dying W.N.B.A.? This entire NYT article strikes me as condescending: Brittney Griner can make her own decisions about where she plays, and who she plays against. She doesn’t need the NYT telling her what to do.

(Seriously, I don’t understand why people are paying so much attention to Mark Cuban’s comments. He didn’t say anything that every other owner in the NBA hasn’t thought. If Fred Phelps could hit the 3-point shot and sell tickets, Cuban would be waving bundles of cash under his nose. So would every other NBA owner.)

Magnus Carlsen is the top-ranked chess player in the world, and “the first world No. 1 from a Western country since Bobby Fischer“.

Carlsen sits at the center of a campaign carefully constructed by him and his handlers to use his intelligence, looks and nimble news-media-charming skills to increase his profile outside the sport, as if he were a tennis or golf star. Not since the days of Fischer, Kasparov and Karpov has a player managed to move so deftly beyond the world of chess into the world at large.

More:

Carlsen has been profiled on “60 Minutes”; has modeled (along with Liv Tyler) for a major clothing label; has met Jay-Z at a Nets game; and has been offered a role, as a chess player, in the coming “Star Trek” film (the role fell through because of work-permit issues).

I’m waiting for him to show up in a commercial for Citizen Eco-Drive watches, myself.

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Also noted.

April 8th, 2013

Anne Smedinghoff was killed by an IED in Afghanistan on Saturday. Four other Americans, who have not been identified, were killed as well. Ms. Smedinghoff and the others were part of a “delegation accompanying the governor of Zabul Province to inaugurate a new school in Qalat, the provincial capital. She was to help deliver donated books.”

I note this here because I actually heard about it before the NYT covered the story. I don’t know exactly how I found this, so I can’t give credit, but there’s a very nice tribute to Ms. Smedinghoff at a blog called “Email From The Embassy”.

I think there’s a lot that could be said about the importance of books, but I will let the author of “Email” say much of what I want to say:

We find them where they are, and we give them these small gifts from America, about America. We teach them to read, to think critically, to smile broadly. We show them, through our books, that America is a vast and wonderful place, full of all sorts of people and amazing ideas. So: a small, small program. And yet so big. What could be bigger than a book, really?

This is what Anne died doing. It is important. Her work was important. And I’m betting that if she’d reached that school yesterday, she would’ve had an amazing story to tell. Those schoolchildren would have each gotten their own books, still smelling of glue from the print shop. At least one of those kids would have hugged her by way of thanks. And she would have gone home smiling.

Awful damn dusty in here. Maybe I need to clean the HEPA filter.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 8, 2013.

April 8th, 2013

It hasn’t been a good few days for the movies.

Noted documentary filmmaker Les Blank passed away on Sunday. NYT. LAT. Edited to add: A/V Club (they were late in getting their obit up).

My favorite Les Blank story:

Perhaps his best-known films concern Mr. Herzog, the German director of films like “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Stroszek.” To encourage his student and friend Errol Morris to finish his long-talked-about film on pet cemeteries, Mr. Herzog had said that when it was done he would eat his shoes. The impetus worked: Mr. Morris finished the film (“Gates of Heaven”) in 1978, and Mr. Herzog kept his promise, boiling his leather desert boots in duck fat (and stuffing them with garlic) at Chez Panisse, the celebrated restaurant in Berkeley, and consuming them — partly, anyway — onstage at a local theater. Mr. Blank turned it into a comic, and rather touching, 20-minute film about what artists do for the sake of art, appropriately titled “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” (1979).

Blank’s most famous film is another one involving Herzog: “Burden of Dreams” about Herzog and the making of “Fitzcarraldo”.

Margaret Thatcher: LAT. NYT. Battleswarm. I apologize if I seem to be giving her short shrift: my feeling is that everyone who doesn’t live under a rock is aware of her passing, and I am just linking to the obits here for the historical record.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Sniper followup.

April 7th, 2013

Two points of followup on “The War Within”:

  1. The “This Ain’t Hell” blog has a post up with some good discussion of the article by people who read it before it was pulled, pointing out various bits of bullshit.
  2. Speaking of reading the article before it was pulled, a source who wishes to remain anonymous provided me with a PDF of the original article. (You can also find a PDF attached to the “This Ain’t Hell” post.) Thank you, Anonymous Source! Unless and until I receive a DMCA request, you can find the article here.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | Comments Closed

Today in journalistic fraud.

April 5th, 2013

Philadelphia magazine recently ran a story called “The War Within” about John P. Boudreau, a former Marine sniper “who says he’s haunted by his actions in the Middle East”.

Here’s the headline and subhead according to Google:

The War Within: Meet the Sniper Who Killed 2,200 People in Iraq

“killed 2,220 people in Iraq”? Alarm bells ringing yet? Carlos Hathcock, for comparison purposes, had 93 confirmed kills. Chuck Mawhinney is credited with 103: that makes him #1 on the Marine list. Vasily Zaytsev had 242 confirmed kills, and Simo Häyhä 505 with a rifle.

So this guy had about 22 times as many kills as Hathcock and Mawhinney, about nine times as many as Zaytsev, and four times as many as Simo Häyhä, the most bad-ass sniper ever? And nobody raised any questions: like, how did you get to 2,200 kills? After, say, kill #110, or #200, or somewhere long before #2,200, you’d think the Marines would be pulling this guy back to teach at the sniper school in Quantico (or Pendleton, or Lejeune).

So why didn’t they? And why haven’t I linked to the article yet, or even a Google cached version of it, so you can play “spot the problems” along with me?

Yep. It was all a fraud. The magazine, and the writer (a Philadelphia radio host) got suckered by Boudreau:

In a series of conversations on Wednesday and Thursday, Boudreau, who claims a residence in Chester County, acknowledged that much of what he had told Gargano over the preceding several months—information he had also confirmed to Philadelphia magazine’s fact-checker—was either embellished or flat-out fabricated.

The magazine hasn’t even been able to confirm that Boudreau was a Marine. The article has been pulled from their website. (Google returns a search result for the original article, but the article has also been pulled from Google’s cache. Bing seems to have it cached, but I can only read page 1 and the comments.)

I don’t thnk the magazine was acting in bad faith, but it does bring to mind an observation that’s not original to me. I wouldn’t suggest we abandon the all-volunteer military, but back when we had a draft, you could count on the fact that a large percentage of the population – including the guys in the newsroom – had served in the military and could spot military related bullshit when they head it. If we still had a draft, I can imagine a Philadelphia magazine editor telling the writer, “I was in the Marines as a scout sniper myself. I talked to this guy: he doesn’t even know what color the boathouse at Pendleton is.”

Layers of fact checking, indeed.

(Forgot the hattip to Lord Jim.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | 3 Comments »

Firing watch.

April 5th, 2013

Tim Pernetti is apparently out as Rutgers AD over the Mike Rice scandal.

Also out: Jimmy Martelli, aka “Baby Rice”, an assistant coach.

Both of these are being spun as “resignations”, but my reading between the lines is that they were more like “I’m quitting now before I officially get canned.”

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

April 5th, 2013

No kidding: this the actual quotation of the day in today’s NYT:

“It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the sad conclusion that political corruption in New York is indeed rampant and that a show-me-the-money culture in Albany is alive and well.”

-Preet Bharara, United States attorney in Manhattan.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Update.

April 5th, 2013

A long time ago, I wrote about the cases of Tyquan Knox and Michael Slider. Knox allegedly robbed a teenage girl, then tried to intimidate her and her mother into dropping charges against him. When that didn’t work, he killed the mother. Knox stood trial three times for the murder: the first two trials ended in hung juries, but Knox was convicted the third time and is serving life in prison.

Yesterday, Knox’s girlfriend, Keeairra Dashiell, was sentenced to “life in prison with the possibility of parole after 19 years” after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and attempted robbery. During the first two trials, she agreed to testify for the prosecution in return for a seven-year sentence:

Dashiell, however, proved to be a reluctant and unconvincing witness, often contradicting herself and getting caught in lies.

Noted #1:

After handing down the sentence, [Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael] Pastor spoke to Dashiell at length as she sat quietly next to her attorney with her head bowed. “You made horrific decisions and caused incalculable pain and suffering to others,” Pastor said in a somber tone. “You’re not entitled to pity.”

Noted #2: If this was reported at the time, I completely missed it. What ever happened to Detective Slider?

Taking in the emotional scene was Michael Slider, Henry’s uncle and a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. Slider was fired by the department in 2010 for leaking confidential information about the case after he became convinced that his fellow LAPD detectives had not done enough to protect Henry and Lark from Knox. After an appeals court threw out one of the department’s allegations against Slider and sent the case back to the LAPD for reconsideration, police officials relented and reinstated Slider.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Roger Ebert.

April 5th, 2013

Thinking about what I wanted to write, I came to the realization that I’ve already written much of what I wanted to say: he was a huge influence on how I think about movies (for which I am grateful), his views on what is and is not art were questionable, and many of the political views he expressed later in his life were appalling. (Roger should have spent more time reading Mencken.)

Chicago Sun-Times. NYT. LAT.

A/V Club. Onion. There are several posts at Jimbo’s site, but this one in particular seems to be worth highlighting.

This whole thing is kind of odd, taken in the light of Roger’s April 2nd blog post, where he talks about launching a Kickstarter campaign to bring back “At the Movies”, relaunching RogerEbert.com, and various other projects. I wonder how things went downhill that fast.

And I also wonder what’s going to happen to RogerEbert.com. My understanding is that Ebert et al planned to move the site to their own servers, and off the Sun-Times site. That’s fine. But I went to the site for the first time in weeks yesterday and realized that I wasn’t all that interested any longer; only one of the current reviews was written by Ebert. Many of the others were written by Richard Roper (who I only tolerated because he was on the same show as Ebert), Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Jim Emerson, and other reviewers who I don’t find interesting. I’m hoping the site stays up as an archive of Ebert’s writing (and it’d be nice if it also archived “At the Movies”), but it isn’t a place I’m going to go for movie criticism any longer.

That’s a little mean, but it is also the truth. Let’s end on an upbeat note. Or two.

They don’t make them like that any more. (Actually, they do, but only for the SyFy channel.)

I couldn’t find their “Worst Movies of 1992” show online, but here’s their original review of “Shining Through”, which was their pick for worst movie that year (this clip does include the strudel scene):

Someone’s done an IMDB list of all of Siskel and Ebert’s worst movies of the year, just in case you’re interested. A Google search will turn up clips from some, but not all, of those episodes.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

This is probably going to shake a few people up.

April 4th, 2013

“Being Gay at Jerry Falwell’s University”.

When I think of Jerry Falwell, I don’t think about him the way Bill Maher does. I think about the man who would wear a huge Blue Afro wig to our school games, or the man who slid down a waterslide in his suit, or the man who would allow himself to be mocked during our coffeehouse shows. I think about the man who reminded us every time he addressed our student body that God loved us, that he loved us, and that he was always available if ever we needed him.

I never told Dr. Falwell that I was gay; but I wouldn’t have been afraid of his response. Would he have thought homosexuality was an abomination? Yes. Would he have thought it was God’s intention for me to be straight? Yes. But would he have wanted to stone me? No. And if there were some that would’ve wanted to stone me, I can imagine Jerry Falwell, with his fat smile, telling all of my accusers to go home and pray because they were wicked people.

Posted in 2013, Clippings, Reading list | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 4, 2013.

April 4th, 2013

The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that Roger Ebert has passed away.

Their servers appear to be overwhelmed at the moment, and I have not seen this reported elsewhere. I’m going to give this a bit of time, and will probably have more to say later on.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

“…jackass legislation”

April 4th, 2013

I am a great admirer of H.L. Mencken. I have been since I was in high school (mumble mumble) years ago.

But I had not previously encountered this particular essay.

The new law that it advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men. The gunman today has great advantages everywhere. He has artillery in his pocket, and he may assume that, in the large cities, at least two-thirds of his prospective victims are unarmed. But if the Nation’s proposed law (or amendment) were passed and enforced, he could assume safely that all of them were unarmed.

Also noted:

What would become of the millions of revolvers already in the hands of the American people if not in New York, then at least everywhere else? (I own two and my brother owns at least a dozen, though neither of us has fired one since the close of the Liberty Loan drives.)

I would be very interested in knowing what revolvers Mencken and his brother owned. I’d be even more interested in owning one of Mencken’s revolvers, but I suspect the associational value puts that out of my price range.

(It does not come as a great shock to me that Mencken was pro civil rights: his “A New Constitution for Maryland” included a provision establishing the right to keep and openly carry arms. But encountering an essay of Mencken’s that I haven’t previously read, and is relevant to my interests…that lights up my whole day.)

(Hattip on this one to the amazing Roberta X.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Guns, History, Law | 1 Comment »

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