“This stresses the importance of compliance, and not littering.” No shit, Sherlock…

Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of while reading this story was a post-apocalyptic game set in a dystopian future which is controlled by a nanny-state government led by slug-like aliens?

My family came from a diverse set of places on this Earth– if I were to turn over enough stones, I could claim relatives from Scandinavia, Mongolia, the river valleys of Germany, the mountain slopes in Northern Ireland, and the highlands of Scotland.  I do claim these relatives, and I claim their legacy… and their legacy was a search, a struggle to find a free land.

I am an American.  Why would I wear the oppression my ancestors bore as part of my identity?  Should I wear the scars my German ancestors gained from the Romans?  Or perhaps the ones gained by my Irish ancestors under the care of the British?  Or should I simply leave off all hyphens, prefixes and suffixes and say that I’m from here?

(H/T I Own The World)

As you can guess, the numbers the media has been throwing out have been lowballed.  (In the figures by CBS, by a few hundred thousand…)  Compare the crowd at the rally with the crowd from the “I Have A Dream” speech, and then with a few other crowd sizes, and it becomes apparent that there was a good-sized crowd.  (Waiting for somebody on the left to claim it’s all clones.  Yes, we’ve built our own Grand Army of the Republic, lefties…)

Of course, the commentary from said leftists has become… well, to be blunt, the sheep from Animal Farm had more cognitive ability than the commentators I’ve seen so far.  Case in point (via I Own The World):

The damn teabaggers and right wing Beckheads had the nerve to plant people in the crowd with trash bags coordinating cleaning up after themselves. Typical conservative selfishness that stops the union park service from work and earning a living. What right to they have to take jobs from the hard working men and women in DC. Their selfish, self-centered, and malicious manners make me sick.

So… not trashing our nation’s capital is selfish, because we’re somehow taking the bread from the mouths of union workers.  This would explain the condition the Coronation crowd left D.C. in– “Hurricane Latrina.”  (No, I didn’t think that one up.)  Also, I’m laughing at the “hard working” bit.  Then there’s the fact that (apparently) the entire crowd was “white trash,” complete with Igloo coolers and beer helmets.

The funniest part is that the left is becoming unhinged at Beck holding the rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. King’s speech.  “The Ultimate Thumb In the Eye,” they’re saying.  I have to ask… why?  Dr. King was a registered Republican– as was his father– and Republicans were seen as the defenders of civil liberties until 1964, when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act into law.  (Ironically, LBJ opposed the CRA in 1957, when he was Senate Majority Leader during Eisenhower’s time as President.  You have to make hay when the Sun shines, I guess.)

So, all in all, it was a good rally– no-one got hurt (even though the Black Panthers and Al Sharpton promised they’d show up… ), the place was left in better shape (oh, the poor park employees with nothing to do…), and a large chunk of money ($5 million plus) was raised to help out a very good cause.

*My old college was set up with a commons surrounded by a large group of class buildings, with parking lots surrounding all these, a ring road feeding the parking lots, then auxiliary buildings around the outside of the ring road.  The new one is a hodgepodge of lots, a trolley system that makes no sense (wait, there’s no trolley stop anywhere near Building XYZ, why is that lot restricted to Resident only?), and a sheer mass of red tape.

I remember Katrina because I was, indeed, getting the blazes away from said storm– in the form of going to Lakeland for an engineer’s seminar.  One of the other groups was from Pensacola, and they were getting reports that even that far away, the storm was doing some decent damage.  Even before the news began covering it, everyone at the conference (all of us civil and structural engineers) knew that New Orleans would flood.  We also knew that N’Awlins was going to suffer great loss of life, due to the lack of evacuations.  (The highest estimate was around 5% of the population– 15,000 or more.)

We all shook our heads– didn’t these people understand what was coming for them?  I had Opal pass right over my head in ’95– along with close hits from Georges in ’98, Allison in ’01, and Frances and Ivan in ’04.  Heck, Cindy in ’04 went into almost the same area…

(H/T Linoge for reminding me… like the news coverage hasn’t…)

* Doing the math, a 125 MPH wind produces 40 (125^2 * .00256) pounds a square foot of pressure, but a 175 MPH wind creates 78.4 (175^2 * .00256) PSF.  (What’s sad is that I had to look this up– I used to have to know these calculations by heart.)  At some point below 175 MPH, the wind would have turned the low-pitched roofs on the coat into wings, and ripped them from the buildings.  Notice that in footage and photos from hurricane zones, the roofs that survive have a moderate pitch– usually around 45 degrees.  This allows the wind to blow over them, but not so quickly as to produce lift… like a spoiler on an aircraft’s wing.  Sorry, I worked as a structural engineer, this is fascinating to me….

Note: If you haven’t already, go visit Lance’s YouTube channel. The man has a true gift for music.

It is unquestionably awesome that these two television shows exist [...] but of the gunblogs I keep track of, I seem to be the first mentioning this show… which means some PR weenie seriously screwed up.  — Linoge

It’s embarrassing because I had a draft post done about this and put it to the side.  I suck at that whole “fastest with the mostest” bit…  (cough)

So… erm… there are actually four shows– but it’s treated as one block– and if you watch the intro and exit bumpers for the segments, there are actually six different programs, but two are just short segments.  The four major shows are Practical Tactical, Because Lives Depend On It, What If, and Conceal & Carry School.  Each focuses on a different aspect of self-defense, with a bit of overlap.  For an example, Because Lives Depend On It covers tactics and skills, while What If covers a historical situation and walks the viewer through it, pointing out possible actions an armed citizen could take.

Conceal & Carry School is the interesting one, though.  Take a group of people with wildly varying skill levels, toss them in a classroom and training setting, and then watch them go through the course while covering their background.  It’s interesting watching the different personalities and skill levels mesh– one of the most brash individuals (a tattooed radio DJ) is also one of the slowest to catch up with a drill… which makes for interesting footage.  What’s great is that they have a decent variety of backgrounds, though– everything from the DJ to the Hispanic salon owner who’s been the victim of a hate crime.

But Linoge is right– these shows are promoted so poorly that it’s not funny.  Heck, I wouldn’t even know about The Don’t Be A Victim block if it wasn’t for the fact that I ran across it one Saturday morning.  The same goes for Outdoor Channel’s Wednesday Night At the Range or Sportsman’s Channel’s Lock and Load Thursdays.  Even worse is the fact that the listing for Lock And Load Thursdays no longer contains Modern Rifle Adventures… which was broken out from Guns & Ammo TV to give it more space.  Seriously, Dick Metcalf and J. Guthrie crossing the continent hunting with ARs… and it gets bumped?  Maybe if you had advertised the Allie Brock* episode, guys, this wouldn’t have to be so…

Which brings up the question of what makes a good show?  Most shooting shows have one or two of the things that bring in guys– guns and humor– but they need the third– women.   Some of the shows in these three blocks have great content, but they fall flat on the other two.  Some aren’t so great with regards to content, but they’ve learned that you have to lure the buck closer before you bag him.  Now, I’m not saying that a show would go so far as to have a smart, good looking young woman literally ride in on a horse to replace a co-host mid-season***, but you have to balance education with entertainment– think Bill Nye and Alton Brown.

Hey, better late than never, eh?

*Allie Brock was a guest on one of the episodes.  Elk hunting with ARs, teaching a young shooter… and did I mention she’s a 6′ tall blond?

** Yes, she literally rode in on a horse in her first episode.  In shorts.  Airgun sales probably went up 5% after that episode aired…  Heck, I haven’t fired an airgun in years and I still watch the show…

Between mowing, trying to finish cleaning*, cleaning the household blasters and feeding Patrol Donkey and Sentry Goose**, it’s hard to find the time to scribble.  But I do have to comment on this video.  My comment is– these people vote; maybe we should rethink that whole universal franchise thing?

* I have books everywhere.  Because I have no book-case built yet.  But to clean everything else, I need to move the books.

** The neighbor’s farm went belly-up, and he sold everything but one donkey and his geese.  Donkeys dislike being alone, so Jake promptly figured out how to get out and began wandering the area.  He makes an excellent night watchman with his partner, the sole surviving goose.  (Oddly enough, a Chinese goose, not a Cotton Patch goose, even though he does weed…  and Cotton Patch geese are rare now?)  Some people hire a security company– I use nature’s own intruder alarm.

2.  Does your institution require reams of paperwork for admittance, graduation, and/or sending you a paper copy of your grades?

3.  Have you ever had to stop and check that you have not mistakenly wandered in to your local DMV?

4.  Does the class roster remind you of a shell game run by Superman?

5.  Are there more coffee shops on campus than cafeterias?

If you answered yes to three or more of these questions, you are in a state-run educational institution.  So as to save you the time and effort of completing your degree, simply remember this phrase: “¿Quiere papas fritas con eso?”

(One week before classes begin, they monkey with the schedule and drop a class required for my degree.  Luckily, it’ll be held in the spring semester– of 2012.  Now I have to figure out a replacement class that won’t screw up my commuting days…)