Month: February 2011

Failure or success in education depends upon the parents

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

Adam Carolla rants about why the public school system has failed. (h/t The Packing Rat) Some NSFW audio.

He’s right. Success or failure in school directly corresponds upon the level of involvement of the parent. My little sister spent 2 years as a grade school teacher in inner city Washington D.C.. It was most evident from the family culture there that it was the prime contributor to the student’s level of success or failure (mostly failure). I can speak from my own public school experience that parental involvement is the #1 factor in the success or failing of the student (which then corresponds to the success or failing of the school, the school system, etc.).

Trouble is, it’s not politically correct to talk about it (and Adam’s rant isn’t politically correct). Furthermore, the people who whine and care so much about public education, the Liberals and Democrats, have a huge voter base that pulls directly from those very groups that have the culture problem. Do you think they’re going to address the truly tough issues in a head-on and brutally honest fashion and risk alienating their voter base? Nope, because votes matter more than actually addressing and fixing real problems.

Furthermore, you can’t fix problems of culture by throwing more money at it. It’s harder to fix culture problems. Look at Chris Rock’s own rant about how you get more respect within the Black community coming home from prison than you do coming home from college.

So what sort of culture do you surround yourself with? What sort of culture do you surround and permit to surround your children? It’s not strictly a racial thing, but it does tend to fall along ethnic lines. Believe me, I know some Asians that are worthless and some Mexicans with more degrees on their wall than you. It’s the culture that you (and your children) are surrounded by. And don’t think it’s out of your control. Sure some parts may be, but that means you as the parent have to become even more involved. Yes it might mean you have to be strict, deny your child, say “no”, and be tough in how you raise them. It’s your job to be their parent, not their friend, not to “be cool” or any such notion.

Wonder why homeschooled kids do so well? Maybe it has something to do with that high level of parental involvement in their lives and education. Think about it.

Language as a Window into Social Relations

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

My time in higher education was spent studying “human/speech communication” — I studied how people communicate. So I find things like the following video to be interesting.

Note, the audio/video may be NSFW… there’s nothing overt like cussing or nudity, but it does talk about sex.

Why suppressors?

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Why suppressors (silencers) for firearms?

Because it’s polite.

Put it this way. Ever hear a car engine without a muffler? Probably not. So have you heard a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that’s so loud it rattles your fillings loose? Most motorcycles that are that loud are that loud because their exhaust pipes don’t have mufflers. Imagine if we didn’t mandate mufflers for cars and trucks? Imagine how loud and unbearable that would be, and how much damage it would do to your hearing.

Suppressors for firearms are no different. A gunshot can register 120-150dB or more (conversations are 60-70dB, rock concerts register maybe 115dB, jet engines are 140dB). Exposure to sounds that loud will damage your hearing. But more than that, all that noise is going to bother your neighbors.

A local gun range was putting on night shoot matches. While I’ve been unable to participate in them, it was not only a cool thing but was also one of the few opportunities people might have to practice shooting at night. Come on… if we’re all expecting home invasions in the middle of the night, wouldn’t it be good to be able to have practice shooting with flashlights in a low-light situation? Alas, they had to cancel the matches now and for the foreseeable future because of noise complaints. It’s understandable. I mean, if it’s 9:oo PM and there’s a lot of loud noise and I’m trying to get my kids to sleep, I’d complain too no matter what the source of the noise was.

Suppressors could help mitigate this situation.

I did a hog hunt at night where we used suppressed rifles. Why? because it was polite to the neighbors and land owners, as well as the local law enforcement.

We can buy suppressors here in Texas, but there are tons of legal hoops and expense to go through to get them. Why? We don’t cause people this much grief to get a new muffler for their car; in fact, if you didn’t have a muffler on your car you’d get in trouble for that! Why can’t I just go to the local gun shop, buy a suppressor, and be off and running… quietly?

“… with good shot placement…”

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

A lot of people consider .223 Remington to be an inadequate cartridge. I wouldn’t try taking an elephant with it, but with the right bullet and load it can certainly take deer and hogs.

But its use in that context always gets predicated with the statement: “with good shot placement”. Something like “yeah, .223 will work, but you have to have good shot placement”.

Is there any bullet that doesn’t work with good shot placement?

If you miss (the definition of “bad shot placement”), the bullet won’t work.

If you hit the deer on the left rear foot with a .45-70, while his day is going to suck, that still won’t “do the job”.

Any time you shoot you need to have good shot placement. The only way any bullet will do its job is to put it in the vital organs. I understand the point of the statement is because with larger, more powerful rounds, you can have a greater margin of error since it’ll hit the target with more oomph, do more damage, thus if you’re off you still have good chances of bringing down your quarry. But big-ass guns should not be a crutch for poor marksmanship.

I maintain that good shot placement should be a given and always in effect, no matter what you’re shooting.

Before I get all righteous in thinking we need to do away with this useless qualifying statement, is there any sort of situation where it’s a valid qualifier?

Inexpensive target ideas

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

This is very cool! A website where you can design and then print your own custom targets. (h/t ENDO)  It’s quite full featured and it’s free!

Unless I need some sort of specific target, I like finding free target websites and just printing my own targets. I even made a few quick and dirty targets of my own:

I use those targets for dry fire practice. Buff color because it’s the color of cardboard. The dots are just useful to provide a small target, or multiple small targets. The scaled IPSC targets are of the size that, when I’m physically 2 yards away from the target, they will provide a scaled size simulating their distance (7 or 15 yards). All are intended to be printed out on a 8.5″x11″ piece of paper.

Another simple and inexpensive target solution is paper plates. Avoid the 9″ plates. Get the smaller “dessert” plates that are what? 5-6″ diameter? Aim small, miss small. 🙂  And you don’t need Chinet, the cheapest bulk paper plates at the grocery store are fine.

Do you get lots of cardboard? Maybe from packages/boxes being shipped to you. After a Costco trip we always end up with lots of cardboard. As a result, any cardboard that’s of a reasonable size I keep stacked in the garage. Quick and simple targets or target backers. I even cut out a crude template that replicates the IPSC A-Zones. Ten seconds tracing with a pen and viola, I’ve got a cheap simulation of an IPSC target, or at least, the zone that matters. To boot, this is a nice “green” solution, since I’m reusing the existing cardboard before ultimately recycling it.

If you want to talk recycling, how about junk mail? An 8.5″x11″ piece of paper can make a reasonable target for “defensive practice”. I still think it’s a bit large of a target area, but it’s fast and easy enough. Or if you want, since most junk mail letters will be tri-folded, cut it into strips along those fold lines for a smaller and more challenging target.

I just don’t feel like spending a lot of money on targets. By their nature they’re going to be destroyed and you can’t reuse them. Those “shoot and see” things are really nifty, but that cost adds up. I love shooting proper IPSC/IDPA targets, but at $0.50 each vs. $0.00 for recycling the cardboard from a UPS shipment? I know which math I prefer. Sometimes yes you need a specific target, yes you have to spend the money. But for general work, there are lots of inexpensive ways to get the job done just fine. Furthermore, I think the variety is good for your eyes and your skills.

Do you have any other suggestions for inexpensive or free target solutions?

Necessary tool support

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Yes, you need tools. Good tools. Things break, you have to fix them. Screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, hammers… and the many variants that exist of these things.

But sometimes we need things to support the tools. Tools alone don’t cut it.

WD-40.

Duct tape.

3-in-One oil.

Goo Gone.

Electricians tape. Masking tape. Teflon tape.

Liquid Wrench.

That last one is a favorite. I think my little vial of it is geez… maybe a couple of decades old. You only need a little bit, and you don’t need it all that often. But when you need it, nothing else works like it does. When the guy came this morning to install the new washing machine, of course he had to turn off the hot and cold water supplies. When he turned the hot supply back on, it started to leak from the valve stem. We could tighten it and get it to stop, but it didn’t really stop. Went to Lowes to get a replacement spigot. Trying to remove the old spigot? Oh my. I guess 25+ years of lime and calcium build-up, and the spigot would not budge. Liquid Wrench to the rescue. Soak it, tap on the spigot threads, crank and cuss… wipe off what was loosened, repeat numerous times cussing louder each time. I didn’t have a solid combination wrench large enough so I had to use adjustable combination wrenches (Craftsman), and I swear I was close to breaking them, it was that stubborn. Eventually, with more soaking and cranking, she gave. Thank you, Liquid Wrench.

All the prep work… oye

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

Now I remember why I don’t like reloading rifle cartridges.

All the prep work. 🙂

I’m finally getting back on the reloading wagon. After doing some clean and lube maintenance on the presses, I took 100 pieces of new .223 Remington Remington-brand brass and started the prep work on them. I opted to use the single-stage press and just did a full-length resize (small-base die) on all 100 pieces. I then trimmed the cases to 1.740″. Why that low? I’m going to use my new RCBS X-Die and, if I read all the directions correctly, you take the brass, do a full-length resize, then trim it 0.020″ under the max case length. Thus for .223 Rem it comes out to 1.740″. Run it through all the stations on the RCBS case prep tool (chamfer and debur the mouth, uniform the primer pocket, etc.). And then we’re done. Ugh. 100 cases took almost 2 hours. It’s just slow and tedious.

Once I finished all of that, I did set up the X-Die on the Hornady Lock-n-Load progressive press. Haven’t set up the rest of the progressive press yet. I’m curious to see how the X-Die works out, and of course if I set things up correctly. 🙂  I figure any time from here out when I deal with brass I’ll first use the single-stage press to do the full-length resize, trim it for the X-Die, then from here on out I hope I can skip all that prep work and can just go straight to the X-die on the progressive press. Hopefully in the long run that will save some time and trouble, yet still yield quality ammo.

Rereading the last iterating of my plan, I think it’ll work out. I don’t see any need to change plans. The one thing I’m not sure about tho is my sights. See, the particular AR I’ll be using presently has irons, and will have an Aimpoint CompM4s as soon as it gets here. Will that be an accurate enough scope for the load development? I’m not sure. I mean, a 2 MOA dot, trying to develop an accurate load… I’m not sure I’ll get there. Trouble is, I don’t have another scope to go around. What I might end up doing is taking the scope off my 6.8 SPC hunting rifle and putting it atop my Rock River Arms upper. Thing is there, that’s a stainless steel barrel, 1:8 twist, Wylde chamber and well…. should I work to develop for that when it’s not what I’ll generally use? Conversely, shooting the load out of both uppers would help me determine what’s going to be more general-purpose useful out of any upper I have. So… I’m not sure yet how I’ll do the testing. But I guess I need to go figure that out before I start loading.

Yes, fights go to the ground

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

What with MMA being so hot these days, a common refrain to anyone studying martial arts is about how you need to have ground fighting skills because “all fights go to the ground”. Or maybe not all fights, but a large majority, or some other number pulled out of the air.

How much truth is there to the statement of fights going to the ground?

LowTechCombat pointed me to this article: Do Most Fights Go to the Ground?

So over a period of three months I designed an implemented an exploratory study with the expressed interest of trying to see if there was any validity in the claim that 90 to 95 percent of fights go to the ground or that most fights go to the ground. Over 300 street fights were analyzed during this study. The results were clarifying as well as totally unexpected.

Enter the joy of YouTube, which if you quickly search it you’ll find thousands of videos of people fighting. While the study was certainly not in-depth and more study truly should be done (and use venues other than YouTube, since that could have a “posting/content bias”), I do think the conclusion sheds some light:

So, there you have it; an exploratory study to try to find out if 90 to 95 percent of fights end up on the ground. The results offered in this study indicate that 90 to 95 percent is too high of a percentage rate. It is probably closer to 42% where both fighters hit the ground and 72% where at least one fighter ends up on the ground.

In the final analysis, an overwhelming majority of fights did end where at least one fighter ended up on the ground at some point. As this was an exploratory study, more are definitely needed to explore this topic and other grappling or MMA related issues. However, what was probably the most important finding in this study is that if you are untrained and are the first person to end up on the ground in a fight there is a good chance that you will lose and the best you can hope for is that no victor can be declared.

So yup. You can expect ending up on the ground. Now, I might be curious to know if going to the ground ended up being “an issue”. For instance, A punched B, B went to the ground, fight was over. So yes, B went to the ground so you tally one in the “went to the ground” column. But did B’s going to the ground have any greater implications? That is, the whole “fights go to the ground” issue is predication on the notion that because fights go to the ground you need to have some skills to deal with that situation (thus you must learn BJJ). So if B hit the ground and the fight was over, there really wasn’t need for skills or awareness or to even get back up. I’m not sure if this matters or if this is important, but I am going to contact the author of the study to see what he thinks. I guess it’s trying to find out not just if a fight goes to the ground, but since that assertion is made to imply you need to gain ground skills well, I think it’s worth a consideration if that is warranted. Of course, I’d say yes… but still, let’s discuss.

The best part of the study, however, is the greater implications for avoiding the fight in the first place. Truly, that’s the take-home from this:

  • Most fights are not spontaneous. There’s an incubation period. There are things that lead up to the fight and, if minded, the fight could have been avoided.
  • Be mindful of your personal space and don’t let people get close to you. I think about the book Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere because that’s what this is about.
  • Don’t be rude. Trash talking (either you doing it or them doing it to you) usually winds up with someone getting hit mid-sentence.
  • Fight or leave. If the fight is inevitable, either turn it on hard and fast, or go home immediately. Posturing and posing will get you hurt.
  • Multiple attackers will always have a massive advantage.
  • Getting mounted will put you at a severe disadvantage. Avoid it at all costs.
  • Don’t be the first one to go to the ground.

 

Fishing spots?

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Alright local folk. I’m looking for spots to go fishing. I need your input.

1. Needs to be relatively nearby (e.g. South/Southwest Austin, but anywhere that’s not too far a drive I’ll accept).

2. Needs to be accessible and fishable from the bank. I don’t have a boat.

3. Free is best, cheap is OK. I’m hoping this could be something where I could slip off to for a couple of hours on a weekday morning every so often. So, not having to spend a lot of money is a plus. Kiddos would probably go with me too, so again low to no cost is ideal.

And of course, if you have any specific input about what sort of fish are there, what they’re biting on, any particular good techniques for that body of water, all input welcome. 🙂

Thanx.

Sunday Metal – Mötley CrĂĽe – Paperback Writer

/ hsoi

Check this. April 25, 1981. Mötley CrĂĽe’s second concert ever, opening for Y&T at The Starwood.

And they are covering The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”.

They do a pretty good job with the cover, but it is an interesting choice in songs. Apparently they dropped the song from the setlist shortly thereafter.