Vlad's Rants

Guns: The 9mm and why it is a bad idea

One of my best friends from college is now making sure that his ass doesn't get shot off while patching up people in the desert. He went through medical school via Air Force ROTC and he is now paying it back with interest. I do not hear from him very often, but last weekend he sent me an email while in Germany for a quick break. We were discussing sidearms in passing and this is what he had to say:

Apparently the government believes in the power of suggestion. At least that's what they're telling me by deploying me with a 9mm Barretta and 2 clips. Yeah...I'm going to play by the rules when a guy with an AK wants me (the infidel) dead. I think I'll aim for a leg or an arm...NOT. If I get in a situation like that, I'm plugging 15 in his crotch and another 15 between his eyes and then I'm taking his AK.

Now my buddy is not what you would call a "gun guy" though he is surely not an anti either. Many have argued that the 9mm is a poor military round ( just browse Kim DuToit's blog for a lot of details about that) but leaving the technical specs aside, one of its greatest failings is that the folks who have to carry it do not trust it. I could have the power of a 50BMG and the recoil of a .22 Short, if the guys using it have no confidence in the round then it is useless.

I use to shoot a lot of 9mm in my CZ75 and one of the "house guns" is a Sig239 chambered for it (it fits my wife's hand well), but since I have been shooting a .45 a lot my opinion has changed. Because I'm not exactly rich I reload my own rounds and so I pick up my brass. Occasionally I get a couple of 9mm brass casing mixed in and I am always amazed about how small they look. I used to also reload for 9mm and I would again if I shot it more, but whenever I see those cases I wonder how I was able to handle them.

Regardless of my personal opinion, I seem to hear a lot of stories about how the troops are not happy with their side arm and ammunition. I suppose modern HP loadings would help, the military can only use ball ammo and the guys don't seem to trust it. In my opinion that is the round's greatest failure.

News Bits: Watch your step!

   I am reminded of that scene in 'Men in Black" where one of the characters walks down the sidewalk and does not step on a bug. The bug turns its head and says "Awfully nice of you" and walks away. Well, this may be soon a law in the U.K, Yup, according to this article in the Telegraph the british governemnt proposes to make it a crime to kill bugs or slugs in such a way that might be painfull or stressfull so please make sure you know where you step. Though I suppose if you kill the bug fast you would be ok, just make sure that you do not leave it wounded and thus torture him.
   How stupid is this? Well, it gets better. Now anyone younger then 16 can not own a pet. Oh goodie! Like they "owned" the dog or the cat before! The parents are those in charge anyway, but it would be nice for young kids to think themselves responsible.
   I guess the Brits are really trying to see what happens when you move far enough to the left stupid that you fall of the edge of the planet.
   Hey ... come arrest me for torturing my dog (well it was my wife but ...):

News: More UN abuse

   I've said it before and I'll say it again. The UN is tyrant giving power to the the cruel and baser cultures out there. Again, UN troops are acting as sex fiends..
   This is not new, in 2001 UN peacekeepers were accused of sex trafficking in Bosnia, and A UN policeman was charged with rape in East Timor.
   It seems that whenever the "World Community" complains about the US actions they forget that the actions of their own troops are generly worse. My theory is that you shouldn't send troops as peacekeepers, unless the country they came from has a culture of peace. You take soldiers from a country where ethnic cleansing and wholesale rape to out breed your enemy are normal, and you send them to "guard" a different country and you expect peace?
   Foolish at best.

News: The UN needs a beating

So after proving that they can not control anything more complicated then a sleepover, now the UN wants the Internet because apparently, a free medium of expression is not towards the good of the people, or something.

They say :

“Standardization is one of the essential building blocks of the Information Society,” reads the most recent draft of the WSIS Draft Declaration of Principles. “There should be particular emphasis on the development and adoption of international standards.

Wha .. ? You mean to tell me that the Internet doesn't have standards? Hmm, so I guess TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, NNTP, FTP, SSH, SSL, and so many others don't count. Not to mention how would it have gone so far if no machines can talk to each other?

The effort for global control of the Internet is reportedly led by China, which allows its own citizens online access, but it is tightly controlled by a giant firewall and monitored by government surveillance.

Ahh I see now. So China has decided that they cant maintain their firewall anymore, and their folks could get around it anyway, so a better way would be to control what everyone sees. Hmm wonder who else is backing this up.

China has so far been joined in its efforts by representatives of Syria, Egypt, Vietnam and South Africa.

Other reports indicate that Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and Brazil may be on board, too.

Oh good, look at all the bastions of freedom jumping in. Tell me, is there one country listed above you would want to move to? I didn't think so.

Though the WSIS organization does not advocate specific plans for global management of the Net, it does suggest support for global principles. “The summit aims to jumpstart and speed access and adoption of new technologies through active collaboration and commitment from all,” said a WSIS information brief on its Web site

I see. So the point of this is also to force countries that have gotten their act together to pay for wiring those that have not. Nevermind the attempted robbery that this whole thing is, but who will be in charge of fixing it when the vietnames steal the wires for the copper, or the africans cut them up because it upsets their local tribal culture?

Hey UN ... If you are reading this .... FUCK YOU. The work of others is not for you to steal. Try to pull this kind of shit, and people in the US will start explaining to you the finer points of blanket parties in dark parking lots. And that goes to you too, China.

_{PS: sorry about the language, but this really pisses me off.}

Politics: The what now?

   I see that Gore is back bashing Bush. Burma Shave. Who cares, right?
   What got me though was this quote:

The second sponsor, the American Constitution Society, is a national organization of law students, professors, lawyers and others that says it seek to counter what it characterizes as the dominant, narrow conservative vision of American law today.

   What the fuck? Since when is there a conservative vision in law world? Do these people think that no one is paying attention to the 9th Circuit Court? Or to Supreme Court justices saying that they should base their opinions in European law as opposed to the US Constitution?
   I guess they are of the crowd that thinks that if you lie often and loud, people will believe anything.

Vlad's Pets: Odin, the American Bulldog

   In an earlier post I mentioned Inky, a dog we were considering adopting. Well, he is now home and he has been renamed to Odin.
   He is an American Bulldog, not the best known of breeds, but that is a plus in this day and age. I am really sadden to see the overbread Rotties and the sloped Shepherd out there.
   Anyway, he may not be the best of the breed, he can use some more muscle (which we are working on), but he is one amazingly sweet dog. He loves to please and learns so fast we have to wonder if he is making fun of us. This dog is so good natured that yesterday when my Kathy took him to the super petstore he had a cloud of fans, one of them going so far as to buy the dog a box of gourmet cookies.
   He loves his new back yard and plays like a loon:
   He also makes some incredible faces, equally when awake and when sleeping: More about him later ...

Rants: The whimp

   The emasculation of the American male is in full swing. Hey, I am not a woman hating, gin drinking, wife beater that thinks men need to be macho and show it. In fact, I find a lot of the modern alpha-male behaviour amusing. However It is quite clear to me that there is a massive push towards turning men into plush toys in this country.

   The latest example of this jumped out at me last night. I was reading and watching TV last night (I often combine the two), and I actually payed attention to a commercial which I must have seen 20 times already, but never actually allowed its content to pass my corneas. It seem to sell a home security system. Being paranoid, that's the kind of thing I have a mild interest in, but the remote monitoring systems never appealed to me, or at least not for the reasons they generally try to sell them to me for.

   Anyway, here is the little story they describe. The kids are playing video games in their room (like you do, because no one reads anymore, or uses Lego's or erector sets for that matter) and the mother gives the 5 minute warning for bed time, she walks into the bathroom to take her earrings off, while her husband brushes his teeth (as far as I can tell in a different bathroom across the county). In the middle of the exaggerated noises of their activities, a burglar uses a metal tool to open their kitchen window. The commercial asks: "Do you think they heard it?" after which the alarm goes off. Everyone come running into the hallway with the husband panicky asking "Whats going on??" (duh!, the burglar alarm went off, what do you think that means?) while the wife smartly gathers up the rugrats and answers the call from the security company who informs them that they have called the cops. The whole family is relived.

   Well, color me confused. If this the modern man, then by all means Murphy Brown was right to be a single mother. I sure hope that there some things wrong with that commercial. Lets take a look.

   A) If you have a burglar alarm, and you are confused about what is happening when it goes off, then you dumber then the average house plant. It is a loud siren. Which you have installed in your house. It tells you when people are breaking in. The siren has gone off. Figure it out! Sure you can wonder if the family pet has set it off or a deaf bat has flown into a window, but you shouldn't be that confused about it.

   B) The only person that does anything useful during the whole commercial is the wife/mother. Now look, I am not here to say that women are not perfectly capable of taking care of the house, kids, or invaders. I suspect that there is no difference between men and women, outside social pressures influencing their upbringing (biology and plumbing aside). I also am aware, that the folks making the commercial are playing more towards the fears of women and the sense of security that shrinks tell us they need, though in my house I am the one that worries about open windows while my wife gives me silly looks. However, unless they have selected the most slug like male on the lot, I would hope he would do more then stand around. Yet during the commercial (and break in) that is what he does.

   C) Everyone clusters around the phone. I don't know about you but if the alarm is blaring, I'm not having a chat with the nice man in Idaho. Personally I would get a gun and take my family in a defensible room, then call the police. But that is me. Yet I would hope that anyone would take some steps, beyond standing around. Pick up a bat, a hokey stick, anything. If the alarm company is not getting an answer they are still calling the cops. And regardless if you answer the phone or not, the cops will need at least 5 to 10 minutes to get there, so feeling all relaxed and secure after the nice man called is not that smart either. You have no idea if the intruder ran away, or if he decided that he has 5 minutes and he should make the most of it.

   There are two things that bothered me deeply about this commercial. The first is that it portraits the male as a useless appendage. This is not unique to this particular commercial, you can see it more and more on television and movies. I am all for women being self sufficient, but that doesn't mean that we need to make males dumber and less capable to achieve it. Look, there is not a limited pool of courage and competency in the world, where for women to have some, the men must loose it. There is plenty of room for a species in which both sexes can take care of the needs of their family. Men can't give birth and nurse, but beyond that men and women should have no real problems handling the same jobs.

   The second problem, which demeans both men and women, is that the security company encourage us to depend on others for our security. I maintain that this is more offensive to men, being that traditionally they are supposed to be the protector, but I think that women should be upset as well. I don't want this to be a rant about firearms, or self defence, but lets use logic here for a minute. I promise your head won't hurt to much before we are done. I have no problems with alarm systems, monitored or otherwise. But the dependence on police is absurd. Lets do a some simple math. Say you live in a town of maybe 5000 homes. The odds are your taxes pay for maybe 20 or 30 police personal. Almost half of those would be detectives, support staff and so on, but lets say that leaves you with 20 patrolmen in cars actually on the street. I suspect the day shifts are heavier, and there are vacations and sick days, so you might have 5 guys on the street during the night shift. That means if there is more then 1 incident per 1000 homes that night, you are getting placed on the queue. And if one officer is arresting a drunk driver, while another two are trying to keep a husband and wife from pulling each others hair out, while one is crawling behind a bush looking for a rabid dog, and the last is taking a rape report in the parking lot of a bar, you may get the lowest priority. Even during the best of times you may not see the lights of the police car for 10 minutes. Calling the police may work fine in a city like New York with hundreds or more on duty and a high population density, but in the suburban sprawl , they may have to travel a few miles to get to your house.

   And if you think about it, all you are doing is waiting for a guy to bring a gun to your house. Maybe you should have your own. Being all smug about not needing a gun as you wouldn't ever kill a human and then calling someone to come and kill an intruder for you is hypocritical at best.

   Both of these two complains of mine, can be seen quite often on the idiot box. It is become quite clear that there is a sustain campaign out there aimed at emasculating the American male. I even understand why. I doubt there is any image that annoys liberals more then the American Cowboy. The Steson Man is in many ways the biggest danger to a liberal because the base of the liberal philosophy is that the plebes can not take care of themselves, and thus the Government and the enlightened leaders should be telling everyone how to live. However one of the most enduring images in the American psyche is the blended specter of John Wayne swaggering down the dusty street, with the superimposed frame Harry Callahan asking if you feel lucky, and the shadow of Sgt York single handed taking on the Krauts. It is hard to tell people to let other do for them, when the popular heros did for themselves.

   But then you hardly see John Wayne on TV these days. The new male icon is Dr. Phil.

Worth Reading: French Fools

If you worry about American inner city crime and poverty, I am not here to tell you that it is not a problem. In fact I am think it is a problem even larger then most of us realize. At least most of the Americans know it exists. However on the other hand we have the french. This long but amazing article has been making the rounds in the blog world but it should be read by everyone. And because their problems are were not big enough, it seems that about a third of the french are ready to vote communist in the next elections. No wonder they are posturing and grandstanding. They have nothing else left.

Vlad's Pets: Snuggles

   I've decided to put up some info about my pets. I doubt anyone cares, but I do and guess what? It's my website. There is no particular order or schedule by which I choose which pets go up when, but most likely it will be when one of them does something special.
   Well, Snuggles is special all around. A couple of years ago when Sandy (another one of our cats) died, my wife decided that she wanted a replacement "bed cat" that would join her for naps. So on to shelters she went and eventually found this small fluffy cat. She was a girl, fixed, about 5 years in age. When my wife picked her up, she climbed on her shoulder and started purring, and the deal was sealed.
   And off to the vet the cat went, just to make sure she was all OK. She wasn't. She was more like 10-15 years old, had FIV (feline HIV), 3 teeth, and a bad heart. And of yeah, she was a boy. Hmm .. So much for the vets at that shelter. But by now it was to late, having already clawed its way in to our family.
   The first thing you need to know about Snuggles is that he doesn't care. He doesn't care that he is sick, he runs around like maniac. He doesn't care that he has heart trouble, and he only cares a very little bit that we force feed him pills every night. He doesn't care that soaking wet he is still a few pounds smaller then any of our other cats, he still bats them in the head. He doesn't care if you pick him up and make him dance, he still purrs. He doesn't care if you fold his ears, he doesn't care if other cats steal his food, he doesn't mind if he gets a bath, and he loves to be dried with the hair blower. His ability not to care is what got him posted today, for an event described further down.
   When you bring and adult cat into a house with other cats,. they all tend to be stressed for a while. When we brought him home, the other cats sure were, hissing and bitching. He looked around, went upstairs, climbed into bed, and went to sleep. He still does that a lot.

   Also, for some reason, this cat got addicted to me, which makes my wife complain all the time. I don't know why this cat likes me so much. I torture him, I pluck him (which he enjoys and purrs at, but he hates to be combed. He is a wierdo), I mush his face, I stand him up on his rear legs and make him dance, I hold him down for his nightly pill, and if I lay down for 10 seconds, he will come running and jump on my chest. I don't understand him. But he sure is cute.

   He also has no fear. He comes and welcomes anyone that comes into the house. Kathy and I are considering adopting a dog. So last night we had the number one contender come by and visit. Obviously one of our main worries is the the dog doesn't view the cats as food. However most of our furred rugrats ran away and hid in the bedroom when Inkydink, the American Bulldog came to visit. Can you blame them?

   But not Snuggles. This dumb cat walked right by the caged dog to get pet. We didn't quite yet trust the dog, so we didn't let him get to close, but on a leash he come pretty close to licking Snuggles before the cat decided to move. All the while the rest of the cats are watching from the top of the stairs, with their heads poking around the corner.
   Another one of the less enduring traits that Snuggles posses is that he needs to be where you are, regardless if that inconveniences you. More about that later.

Worth Reading: This just took my breath away

Rush over and read this and I don't care if you have to pee first. My favorite line:

Remember: the Right is full of people who are Resentful and Angry, but the Left is Pissed and Discontented, which is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.

Very nice ....