Month: March 2009

All credit is debt

/ hsoi

From The Liberator Online, Vol. 14, No. 4‘s Persuasion Power Point by Michael Cloud, regarding the “credit crisis/crunch”:

Let’s examine the word they’re using to define the issue: “credit.” The word “credit” is one side of the coin. The flip side is the word “debt.” You can’t have one side of the coin without the other.

“All credit is debt,” wrote Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson. “Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. When they say the way to economic salvation is to increase credit, it is just as if they said the way to economic salvation is to increase debt: these are different names for the same thing seen from opposite sides.”

So why are the analysts and commentators only talking about “credit”?

Why aren’t beating the drum for “debt”?

They could claim: “To make corporations solvent, we must put them deeper in debt.”

Or: “Borrowing and debt are the lifeblood of American business.”

Or: “We have a debt crisis: the only remedy is to let business get further and further into debt.”

Or: “Unless major corporations can dramatically increase their financial liabilities, they can’t start turning a profit.”

Or: “Wall Street’s biggest problem is a lack of access to greater borrowing, more liabilities, and increased financial burdens.”

Or: “Major corporations are failing because they do not owe enough money, because they cannot run up a bigger debt.”

Or: “Businesses are failing because of a shortage of debt.”

Turn over the word coin. Take their sentences, their words, and replace the word “credit” with the word “debt.” Ask them whether they still believe it. Ask their listeners and readers whether they still want it.

Well worth your consideration, folks.

Sword training

/ hsoi

At the dojang today, all I did was sword training.

I don’t care for sword.

I know some people are totally enamoured with swords. There’s a Romantic notion about it. There’s great fantasy in it. But for me? I couldn’t care less. I’m practical. A sword is not practical. Sure it’s better than nothing, but it’s just not a practical weapon for the 21st century urban dweller. In my traditional martial arts training I prefer more practical weapons, such as a staff (especially short staff called “dan bong”); I’m looking forward to studying cane.

But for today. Sword.

So I look at it this way: it’s training, it’s discipline. I have a heavy (relatively-speaking) steel sword. Most people don’t like to use my sword because, while a gorgeous and well-balanced sword, it’s long and heavy: arms tire out. That’s why I like it, because it works out my shoulders, my arms, and most of all — my grip. It’s not just strength, it’s endurance.

And I care about grip for other areas of martial study. 🙂

 

Updated: I should clarify. I only have so much time and energy in a day to study and practice something. So with limited time and energy, I’d prefer to spend my finite resources on the things I find most productive and useful. Thus why I prefer to study things like staff or cane or firearms. But if I must study sword, and to progress in my martial art yes I must from time to time, then I might as well utilize that time towards productive ends. Maybe I’ll never be a master at wielding a sword, but if it’ll strengthen my grip, well, I found something useful to focus on.

A little financial lesson I learned

/ hsoi

Like most people, the past some months in my household have involved a lot of belt tightening and reexamination of financial situation. I’ve done my best to be responsible with the money I earn, currently having no debt other than the home mortgage, which is a reasonable mortgage at that. Live within your means; in fact, try to live well below your means. Still, I kept feeling a crunch. I had spent a bit beyond our means the past some months to stock up on various things, dipping into savings and such. I’m wanting to recover from that but was having a bit of a time digging out. It hit me what was going on and I wanted to try it. It’s only been a couple months so it’s a bit early to tell, but so far the results are promising so I thought I’d share.

What was going on was that I was paying too much towards credit cards every month. I use credit cards because of purchase protections, extended warranties, rewards, and other such side benefits. I pay them off in full every month. But that was the problem. When it came time for me to pay the bills, I always paid the full amount. For example, the billing cycle ends with a $500 balance, but between the end of the billing cycle and the time I get the bill in the mail then sit down to pay bills, I might have charged a few more things and might have $700 on the card. I always figured that I’ve already used the money, send it now or send it later didn’t matter I still had to send it, so I might as well zero out the card. Thus I’d write a check for $700 and zero out the card. Technically that’s a good thing to do, but it was having a subtle side-effect on me. I would look in Quicken and see that we had a zero balance so I would think to myself “ok, we can spend X amount”, but in reality, I had kinda robbed Peter to pay Paul. I try to shave off a good portion of my paycheck every pay period to put into savings, but to pay that credit card bill down to zero I might have to reduce or eliminate that savings. Thus I’d have a zero card balance, but I didn’t get to save as much as I wanted to. And so, I was treading water, paying bills, but not rebuilding my savings.

So instead what I decided to do was just pay the required amount. Bill comes for $500, I pay $500. Sure that might mean at the time of the bill paying I leave $200 (going with the above example) on the card, but that’s fine. It does a few things. First, when I look in Quicken I see there’s already some sort of balance on the card, thus I’m reluctant to put more charges on the card thus spending less. Second, when I do my bill paying now I am saving in full or might be able to save a little more. And so far, that has really been paying off. It’s helped me curtail spending and keep my savings on a good pace.

Yeah, it’s a bit of slight-of-hand, it’s just mentally fooling myself. In the end it’s all about budgeting and such and keeping within your means. But for me, this change helped. I keep bills paid in full, no revolving balances on the cards, but I keep the monthly spending correct for the pay periods and don’t “overspend” because I miscalcuated. My savings is rebuilding at a good click, my spending is reigned in more.

Man… wish I had realized this years ago. 🙂

Cornyn on Federal firearms laws

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

From one of my US Senators, Sen. John Cornyn:

Dear Mr. Daub:

Thank you for contacting me about federal firearms laws. I appreciate having the benefit of your comments on this matter.

It is essential to safeguard the law-abiding citizen’s constitutional right to own and use firearms designed for legitimate purposes such as hunting, target shooting, collecting, and self-protection. Restricting this right runs counter to the intent of our Founding Fathers, who expressly guaranteed that citizens would retain the right to keep and bear arms.

As a former Texas Supreme Court Justice and Attorney General, I have firsthand knowledge of crime-fighting policies that work, and I believe that citizens’ Second Amendment rights should not be restricted because of the actions of criminals. Rather, we must respect the rights of law-abiding citizens and focus our attention on the source of violent crime: criminals who use firearms to commit crimes. I believe that strictly enforcing the law and meting out longer sentences for career criminals and those who use firearms when committing crimes will reduce crime more effectively than gun or equipment bans, which primarily serve to take firearms away from law-abiding citizens.

I appreciate the opportunity to represent Texans in the United States Senate, and you may be certain that I will continue working with my colleagues to protect our Second Amendment rights. Thank you for taking the time to contact me.

Sincerely,

JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator

517 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: (202) 224-2934
Fax: (202) 228-2856
http://www.cornyn.senate.gov

 

911 didn’t answer

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

An elderly woman in Parker County, Texas dials 911 repeatedly, and receives no answer, repeatedly.

Eventually the woman’s daughter and son-in-law arrived and were able to hold the intruder at gunpoint. Finally 911 gets through. Police are dispatched and arrive 13 minutes later… 13… minutes… later.

According to the article:

[Capt. Mike Morgan of the Parker County sheriff’s office] said he understands the family’s frustration. But he said records show that when 911 dispatchers answered the calls, the family had hung up.

Morgan said cellphone calls can take up to 30 seconds to connect in the dispatch center.

Cellphone technology is great, but it still has problems. When you’re in a situation like this, 30 seconds is going to seem like an eternity. Even still, how much evil can happen in 30 seconds time? And then, 13 minutes to respond.

As the saying goes, when seconds count, police are only minutes away.

While it’s nice to know there are other people in this world that are willing to keep you safe from harm, in the end the only person you can count on being around when you’re being attacked is you. You’re in the best position to preserve yourself. Ms. Hokett now knows that:

Hokett said she hopes she never needs 911 again. But just in case, she said her daughter bought her a shotgun that she has places near her bed.

All those things take time.

/ hsoi

It took 80 minutes for the Princeton campus alert system to notify students of a possible gunman on campus. (h/t to SayUncle).

With HB 1893 and SB 1164 up for consideration in the Texas Legislature, and after having spoken with my Texas State Representative about this, maybe we can look deeper into these campus safety systems.

From the article:

Greil then called Public Safety at 11:24 p.m. and spoke with them for 13 minutes, according to her phone records.

Within one minute of Greil’s call, Public Safety had contacted Borough Police, Cliatt said. Minutes later, Public Safety and Borough Police officers were canvassing the area. The officers had already begun their patrol at 11:29 p.m. when Public Safety received a second call with a similar report.

So basically, call goes in and it takes about 5 minutes before formalized law enforcement shows up on scene to start working. If we look at the Virginia Tech data, every minute Cho killed at least 3 people and shot a total of 4. So in 5 minutes of response time, a little math shows us that 20 people would be shot, at least 15 killed.  Now, it took 80 minutes before the campus alert system notified the students. Go ahead, do some math.

The article continues:

At 12:40 a.m., when the threat was found to be credible, the University sent out the first warning messages via the Princeton Telephone and E-mail Notification System (PTENS). Students told the ‘Prince’ that they received the message between 12:45 and 12:48 a.m.

So it took 76 minutes for them to determine the threat was credible. Then it took an additional 5-8 minutes before students received word. Go ahead, do the math.

The article continues:

Executive Vice President Mark Burstein said he was “extremely satisfied” with the emergency response. “Both our Public Safety department and the Borough Police reacted quickly. The speed with which they responded was very reassuring,” Burstein said in an interview at around 2:30 a.m. Saturday. “Our notification systems worked well.”

Well, I guess the system functioned correctly, but even then 5-8 minutes is a very long time. Again, do the math.

The article continues:

Cliatt also praised the University’s response, adding that she did not believe the 80-minute gap between the first report and the notification of the campus community was unnecessarily long.

“The things that took place in that time period obviously took 80 minutes,” she said, noting that all “action steps” taken during this period were necessary. “Canvassing the area, getting access to prox information to see if various dorms had been accessed, convening the task force, putting together the alert message, all those things take time,” she explained.

All those things take time. Killing at least 3 people and shooting a total of 4 every minute… that takes time too.

The article continues:

Cliatt also emphasized that the University considers the fear and anxiety caused by emergency alerts when deciding whether a threat is sufficiently credible to merit issuing an alert. “The safety of our community is our top priority, and that includes both the physical and the emotional safety of our campus,” she said.

Ah, the emotional scarring of our children. Because fear and anxiety of the sheeple is more concerning and emotionally scarring than seeing your friend die in your arms, or a parent dealing with the loss of their child.

 

Thankfully in this situation it was just someone exercising poor judgement and I hope they are dealt with accordingly. But it still demonstrates failure of these systems to truly keep people safe.

Going fast

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Rob Leatham is one of the top competitive handgun shooters. In his blog he has an article about shooting fast, and he’s certainly one that knows that area well. While Rob’s article tilts towards the gaming/competition aspect of shooting, the fundamentals apply to any sort of activity, not just shooting.

Shooting fast is about shooting at the highest level of your ability, and that isn’t to say that you can’t raise your highest level even higher through practice and work. But speed that’s sloppy? That’s not speed. You have to be correct. You have to be accurate.

A few weeks ago when I was down in Houston for a black belt test, one of the things Master Alex spoke to us about was being fast, but sloppy fast isn’t fast, it’s just sloppy. One of the 5 principles of forms is “hands fast” but you must be correct, you must be accurate, you must be crisp and clean, then also be fast… never so fast as to lose those other aspects.

Remember years ago when the Pentium processor had floating point calculation errors? Back then it was a wicked fast chip, but I started saying “No one cares about the first person to get the wrong answer.” Fast may be important, but correct is more important. 

Ever have a group of kids, you ask them a question and there’s always those that shoot their hands up first, maybe before you even finished asking the question? Then you call on those kids and many times they don’t have the answer… they just wanted to be fast and first. 

So you see, it doesn’t matter what the realm is: shooting, martial arts, computers, or just life. Yes, being fast and first is important, but I would say being correct/accurate is more important. Slow down, work to be correct, work to be smooth. Speed will come.

First impressions from the other side

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I receive much of my firearms training through KR Training. After obtaining my NRA Instructors Certification, I figured I ought to get some “internship” experience, so on March 7th I volunteered to assist with classes. There were three classes being held: first was Basic Pistol 1, then Defensive Pistol Skills, and finally AT-1A Low Light Shooting. I’ve taken all of these classes as a student, but yesterday was my first time as an instructor. It’s certainly different being on “the other side”, and not just in the obvious “not a student but a teacher” sort of way.

What I’d like to talk about tho are not just my personal impressions and feeling from during and after the day’s events, but also some tips for folks that take classes (at KR Training or anywhere, and not even just firearms) and how they can get the most out of the classes.

First, let me state that overall the classes weren’t too bad. The students were of a wide variety: men and women, young and old, racially diverse, various walks of life (I say this for those that believe gun folks are only white male rednecks), and certainly different levels of knowledge, skills, and experience. People came to learn, and I’d like to believe they walked out of there all a little smarter and a little wiser. Hopefully they’ll take whatever they got from the courses they took and practice those skills, work to master them, and then come back for further training. Learning never stops.

Gear

Before you come to class, make sure you know what gear you need for the class. If the class description talks about drawing from a holster, it’s reasonable to assume you’ll need a holster. If it’s talking about drawing from concealment, it’s reasonable to assume the holster ought to be one that can be concealed. You also should make sure you have a way to conceal (e.g. large shirt, vest, coat, etc.). If you have a concealed handgun license and are coming to work more within that paradigm, it’s best to come equiped and dressed in the manner in which you carry. If you’re not sure what’s right or if what you have is right or if you need to get something else, ask well before the class starts (maybe when you first sign up). Certainly class time can be used to help you learn about gear and such things, and likely you will learn through your own choices, what the instructor teaches, observing the gear of others and how well it works for them, and so on. But if class time has to be taken to get gear right, that takes time away from the class, which is time away from you learning about other things.

If you must obtain (new) gear prior to the start of class, ensure you are familiar with it and that it’s set up and working right for you before you come to class. This would include your firearm. Ensure it’s running and working well and you know how to operate it. This of course doesn’t hold for beginner classes, like Basic Pistol 1. But if you’re beyond BP1 then you likely own your own gun and some gear to go with it, thus you’ll be better served if you know how to use it correctly. All firearms and most all gear come with some sort of instruction manual — read it. If it didn’t come with one, contact the manufacturer and ask for one, then read it.

Class is certainly an appropriate place to learn about gear, and you may even find that your choice of gear isn’t working out. If this is the case, don’t consider it an ego-blow but a learning experience. I mean, if you’re coming to these classes to learn how to use a firearm to defend your life, while yes equipment is last on the priorities of survival, it’s still important. Don’t use crappy gear. Be willing to seek out good gear. If the instructor is opinionated about what gear is good and what isn’t good, realize that there’s a lot of experience and knowledge behind that. For me, just watching the wide variety of guns at the various classes I’ve attended and seeing how many “fancy” guns just don’t run well, jam, malfunction, slow down the class, cause problems, inhibit the operator from learning (well, they learn something just not necessarily the class curriculum)…. realize that the instructor knowledge on gear tends to be informed. 

Take time to do your homework before class. Ask questions of those who know.

During Class

Hopefully you brought lots of magazines and something to carry them in on the line (e.g. magazine holsters). If you’re not on the line, be refilling those magazines. Filling magazines was the single most time-consuming part of class, so the more you use your downtime to keep magazines filled, the less overall downtime there is, the more time for learning useful stuff.

Take it slow and easy. You’re going to have nerves. I remember how nervous I was when I took these classes, and I saw numerous people that were nervous. Realize it’s natural, you’re not the only one, and if you’re nervous that’s generally a good sign because it likely means that you care about your performance and want to do well. But don’t let your nerves get the best of you. Yes, often the drills need to be run fast, but don’t run so fast that speed is your primary concern. You’re here to learn new things, no one expects you to be mastering those drills right out the gate. Go faster than a snail’s pace, but don’t just go for blazing speed. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Work to be smooth, even if you only go 75% speed. Work to be correct and learn the techniques correctly. Speed will come later.

There will be information overload. If you want to bring a little notepad and pen to keep in your back pocket to jot brief notes down, feel free to do this if it helps you retain information. Do check with the range officer(s) before you do this, in case there might be any safety policy to mind. Don’t worry if you forget something. You’ll retain more than you think, and if on the drive home you go over it in your head, if you get up the next day and practice and run through it, and work on it all in the days following, that will help with retention. If you forget something or aren’t clear, drop an email to the instructors and ask. And nothing says you can’t take the class again if you think that would help.

Safety

For me, this was the biggest thing. I’ve never had a loaded gun pointed at me so many times. It’s an experience. No one did it out of malice, it was usually out of a lack of awareness, a brief lapse, or flat out negligence. Now the total beginners you can’t blame because they don’t know any better — they are beginners, they are learning. But anyone else….

The only time your gun should be out and/or your hands touching it is because an instructor called you up to the line and told you to do so. Otherwise, the gun should remain in whatever safe manner and location, e.g. a holster. 

I don’t care what version of gun safety rules you want to follow, such as Jeff Cooper’s:

  1. All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
  2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. For those that insist this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target. This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60% of inadvertent discharges.
  4. Identify your target and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything you have not postively identified.

Or the NRA’s version:

  1. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
  2. Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
  3. Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

I don’t care which is your mantra, make it your mantra. Anyone can pick up a gun and shoot it, but what separates the skilled gun handler from the rest is what they do when they are not shooting. It’s that “off the line” gun handling skill that will take you further. I mean, all the “tacti-cool” knowledge in the world doesn’t mean squat if you end up shooting someone innocent (including yourself) due to negligent gun handling.

 

Overall, I enjoyed the day. I’ve come to realize one of my gifts is teaching, so this works well for me. I’ll be back… both as a teacher, and a student.

 

Updated: A gun safety rant.

Lack of stuff

/ hsoi

Hi folks.

Sorry for the lack of stuff. It’s been a very busy past few days topped off today by the ceiling fan in the master bedroom peeding out (Youngest turned on the light and said sparks came down). A few back and forths to Home Depot, and we’ve got ourselves a nice new and very pretty ceiling fan… goes with the fixtures from the master bathroom renovation we did a little while back. So… I’ve just been away from the keyboard and have much to catch up on.

More later….