If we didn’t have Van Halen, we wouldn’t have metal and hard rock as we know it. Everything about the band, from the music, composition, Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing, David Lee Roth’s stage presence, off-stage partying, you name it. If Van Halen hadn’t been around, rock & metal wouldn’t have been what it was.
Here’s one of my favorite Van Halen tracks, “Unchained”.
Bobby McFerrin at the 2009 World Science Festival, demonstrating how music is just a part of us.
Very cool.
I cannot stand modern “self-defense” tactics that teach things like just being passive, just give them what they want, if you just do what they ask you they won’t hurt you, blah blah blah.
Before she died, Butz talked to a neighbor, Albert Barrientes, saying of the attacker: “He told us if we did what he asked us to do, he wouldn’t hurt us. He lied, he lied.”
If someone has put you in honest fear of your life, if they have broken into your house, attacked you, threatened you with grevious harm, or anything of this ilk, that person has demonstrated they are irrational, dangerous, and untrustworthy. What makes you think they won’t harm you further? Why should you trust anything they have to say after the actions they’ve already presented?
Commenter RevolverRob quotes Clint Smith from Thunder Ranch:
“Nobody has ever complained of having too much ammunition during a gunfight.”
Amen.
I make no bones about the fact that I like capacity. It’s one reason I like 9mm handguns over other calibers like .40 S&W and .45 ACP. Since all pistol rounds suck about the same, I think it’s useful to consider other aspects such as capacity. If .45 ACP and 9mm will both get the job done, and I can carry twice as many 9mm rounds well… hopefully I won’t need them, but gosh it’s nice to have them if you do. We’re back to one of those old adages for why you carry: better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. So, nice to have more ammo if you can, eh?
Put it this way. I opted to carry only a 5-shot snub-nose revolver a little while ago, and just when I opted to do that I had an incident that had potential to be ugly. Thankfully nothing came of it and that we did have rifles, but boy those 5 rounds just didn’t feel like enough. Maybe if it was just one guy it’d be OK, but again we like to say that “2 is 1, 1 is none”, to be aware of that which you can’t see, and all that stuff. So if it did wind up being 2 or more attackers, would those 5-6 rounds be enough?
Going through my morning blogs and news rolls and get to the Once Upon a Win website with this entry about dangerous playgrounds.
Ah yes, real playgrounds, from our youth.
You see, when we went up for the funeral, as I mentioned, the town was so small they didn’t even have a stop sign on the main drag. But there at the community center was a playground. A joyous playground that I’m sure would make some of the neaüveux parents of today just shit their pants with fear. 🙂
See-saws… and without handles too!
A big metal slide.
Various swing sets, with various sorts of seats from repairs over the years…. all guaranteed to burn the back of your thighs.
A tractor. Yes. A tractor. Just a big farming tractor, obviously disabled, but just mounted there for the kids to play on. Reminds me of when I was in 2nd grade, the school I went to had a giant gutted fire truck on the playground. I’m sure the “safety pencil and a circle of paper” folks of today would be calling their lawyers. But oh how joyous it was.
A hill with pipes. Just a big 4-way intersection drain pipe that was above ground, but then dirt piled over it. Talk about a great place to make a fort or other things that can just spur a child’s imagination.
A couple “merry-go-round” sorts of things.
Blacktop with basketball hoops.
Monkey bars.
All sorts of things. All made out of metal. No plastic. No rubberized or mulched areas to protect the precious snowflakes from falling and risking a skinned knee. It was just a glorious playground to behold, where kids can be kids, they can use their imaginations, and if they happen to get hurt they learn how to shake it off and keep playing.
It’s good to know that somewhere in America there’s still a place where kids can be kids and learn things that will be useful to them as they become adults, and not further the wussification of America.
How did this happen?
We now have a new cat in the house. Well, kitten.
If I remember the story correctly, my in-laws were driving and saw this little kitten lying on the road. They stopped to check it out (they rescue many animals; seems to have become an informal hobby), thinking it was dead. Turns out, it was only stunned (pining for the fjords no doubt), but was covered in fire ants and was probably going to die. They took it to the vet, got her checked out, shots, all that. Kitty seems to be OK. They were going to give her away, and being as small and young as she is (we estimate 2-3 months old) I know there’d be no problem with that because the cute is strong with this one.
And as a result…. we have a new cat.
We get to the in-laws yesterday and get told about the kitten (they kept it in the bathroom because some of the dogs would probably play too rough). Kids go to visit and of course, instant love and cries of “Oh Dad, can we keep it?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
So what do kids do when Dad denies them? Turn to Mom.
Wife sees kitty. Falls in love.
“Honey, please?”
“N…..” *begrudging groan* “Fine.”
Later Wife tells me she was having a talk with Daughter. “Mom, I know why Dad said we could have the cat. Because he can’t say no to you.” 🙂 Damnit… my secret is out.
I said we could bring home kitty on one condition: trial period. We have two other cats, which I shall refer to as Gordita and Twitchy. Gordita and Twitchy are very well bonded to each other. I wasn’t sure how a 3rd wheel would work into this, especially a little kitten that doesn’t know its place (yet). Furthermore, Gordita may be a little runty butterball, but I’ve never seen a cat that fights with such intensity or has such lightly quick reflexes and awareness — she’s amazing. I wasn’t sure if she might scrap, and if so if kitten might be honestly harmed. Twitchy is the wild card. She’s nicknamed Twitchy for a reason. I wasn’t sure if she might smack kitten around, or if Twitchy might go and hide under the bed never to be seen again… that’s not good either. So, I told Wife and kids that keeping the kitten required a trial period just in case there were integration issues. Honestly, I didn’t expect any real issues, but better safe than sorry.
So we get kitten home and start the integration. Little kitten is first introduced to the litter box (vital!). We kept her shut in the laundry room for a bit while we unpacked and said Hi to the other cats. Then we let kitten out and she started to meow. Immediately other 2 cats come slinking down the stairs in search of this new meow. Much curiosity ensues. Good thing is kitten isn’t totally inept and is old enough to scrap. There’s lot of sniffing, poking at each other, and kitten knows how to turn sideways and make herself big. But she also seems to know she’s a little thing by comparison.
Gordita follows her around trying to watch every moment. Twitchy was a little wary and freaked at first, but eventually just watched from a distance. Eventually, Gordita lost interest and Twitchy got to a point where as long as kitten didn’t invade personal space, she’d be fine else get a hiss, growl, and perhaps a smack. And that’s about where things are as of this morning. Kitten is running around learning where things are and playing with anything she finds on the floor. Oh, and the strange kitten she saw staring back at her from the reflection in the dishwasher… that one will be dealt with later. 😉 Other 2 cats are just going about their business, watching kitten, ignoring kitten, ensuring kitten stays out of their personal space.
I think we’re going to be keeping her. *sigh*
Oh, and Oldest named her. He said the first thing that came into his head and the other two kids liked it, so, it’s official.
Ritz Bitz
Ritzy for short.
🙂
An Iowa school system is considering jamming student phones.
The FTC did say such jamming equipment wasn’t legal, but that doesn’t matter. Student’s are disobeying the rules and using their phones, so we’re just going to jam them.
Trouble is, the jamming equipment isn’t discriminatory. So I trust that teacher and administrator phones would also be jammed. Plus, any parent or other visitor to the school, their phones would be jammed. How far would the jamming signals go? Could someone driving by the school be infringed upon?
The school system says they’ll disable the system during an emergency.
Oh yeah, I’d like to see that happen.
Quick! The school is burning down! Turn off the jamming system so people can call the fire department!
Oh noes! An active shooter situation! Turn off the jamming system! Vital seconds were already lost, lives were already lost as a result… and oh the lawsuit that will probably ensue.
Look. I understand it’s bothersome that teenagers have no self-control and keep using their phones. Welcome to teenagers, and welcome to trying to teach them greater responsibility. But such blanket measures are not going to solve the problem; in fact, they’re only going to create bigger problems.
So the TomTom finally got unpacked and set up, and we set off using it. Wife’s Granddaddy’s funeral was yesterday up in middle of nowhere Texas. It’s a joke to estimate how small a town is by the traffic control devices. Does it have a stop light? if so, how many? No stop light? Does it have just a flashing red or yellow light at some “major” intersection? How about a Stop sign? or maybe just a Yield sign? Or no signs at all… where everyone in town knows each other so you can just wave each other by? Well, this town was so small I don’t think there were any traffic devices as you went down “main street”. Yeah, that small. So, since it was way up in north Texas and I had never been there before, might as well try out this navigation device and see what happens.
First, the geek part of me just got a silly giggle out of it. It’s just a new toy and it’s fun to play with. When we first left the house and I programmed in the way to get to my in-laws (first stop), I was totally a kid playing around. I’d play with the points of interest on the map. I got a kick out of how it could estimate your speed and how it would know the speed limit for the road you were on and then set off an alarm if you drove too fast (Wife was driving, so it was funny once the kids understood what the beeping was, how they would prod Mom about driving too fast). 🙂 I also had it set off an alarm when we’d pass schools. Wow, didn’t realize how many schools there were; everywhere we went.
I stuck the TomTom on the windshield so everyone could see it. I didn’t like how the speaker was so quiet. It’s loud enough if everything else is silent, but once you account for road noise, maybe a little bit of music playing, it’s tough to hear. I think a really geeky thing would be integrating it with the car stereo.
I was impressed with the maps being as complete as they were, tho they didn’t give me directions to my in-law’s house… just up to their main road. They live in the country, and while the maps knew about all the roads no problem, they couldn’t get the house number. Oh well.
Since we had it on a female voice, we kept personifying the device. Eventually Wife dubbed the device my new girlfriend, because she kept nagging “turn left, turn left, turn left”. 🙂
While I didn’t always find the device necessary to help us get around, what became the most useful part was the estimates. It could tell us how many more miles to go, how much time was remaining. This was the most useful part because it was a very long day of driving and inevitably you got the “how much longer?” questions from the kids. While it’s not a problem to estimate and figure it out yourself, being able to just glance at the screen and give an answer was very useful.
The device is nifty, and I do think on longer trips we’ll certainly bring it along as there’s no harm in doing so. Based off the one trip I don’t see massive amounts of gain in having such a device, so I am happy this was a gift and not my own money spent. Frankly, I think there might be more gain in a combined device. For instance, this TomTom ONE 130 isn’t “real GPS” but rather satellite triangulation (I believe). You get something like an iPhone 3GS, that’ll be “real GPS”, apparently TomTom is going to be bringing their software to iPhone, then you have all the additional things like Internet access and phone to more fully get around and get information and well… that I think could be more useful, or rather, a more cost-effective solution than a single dedicated device.
By the end of the day, I had pretty much ignored the device (tho the “girlfriend” ribbing from Wife remained) 🙂 The novelty had worn off pretty quickly. But there’s a place for such a device. Again, it’ll get brought along on trips. The true utility of the device still to be determined.
Joe Merchant tells of his experiences in a urban rifle course.
Reminds me of KR Training’s Defensive Long Gun course.
It reads like Joe went through a similar thing as I did. That combat shooting and bullseye/accuracy shooting are two different things. We do so much shooting against paper targets and there’s so much ingrained in us for whatever reason, that when we shoot we want to shoot fast and try to put every bullet through the same hole on the paper. That we want these really tight and small groups. If we don’t shoot that, we’re a terrible shot. Well, this is true if what you’re shooting for us slow accuracy. But if what you’re trying to do is defensively shoot and stop the bad guy from attacking you, then you need to shoot faster and have combat accuracy.
That is, fast or accurate? Which do you want? You can’t have both. Sure you can and should have both to some extent, but ultimately the faster you go the harder it will be to be pin-point accurate, and the more accurate you strive to be the slower you will be. So say in a combat situation, to get them all in the A-Zone of an IPSC target is acceptable: that’s still getting it in vital areas… maybe not through all the same hole, but it’s also arguable that’s better because it’s spreading the trauma out over a larger area and ultimately doing more damage than if you put ’em all through the same hole.
Bottom line: this is a mental matter that you have to come to terms with. That when you’re shooting and evaluating your results, you have to consider what your goal is and if you’re meeting that goal. If you’re shooting for combat, don’t be upset if you’re not making a 1″ group… be upset if you’re not hitting the A-Zone, but if they’re all there and there fast enough, then you’re doing OK.
Stuff From Hsoi 