Memes Inside Memes

This is so epic. Self referential meme nesting. With a nod to Godwin's Law.

11-22-63

Stephen King has a new book out. The title is 11/22/63. It's a simple enough premise for a Stephen King book, there's one magical thing, a door from now to 1958. When you find it, what do you do with it? For anyone over 55, the title gives it away. You decide to change history, to stop the events of November 22, 1963. And yes, some of the book is about that.

But you have 5 years to live through to get there and that is the real story in this novel. The living, breathing heart of it is just this man's life as he lives it in a small town in America as it was. Because what happens when you live somewhere? You get connected, you grow rooted, and sometimes you fall in love.

Here's a review from the Cleveland Plain Dealer by Michelle McFee. It's clear she saw some of the same things I did. This is one of the best fiction stories I have read in a long time. He found a group of characters in a place and time and gave them life.

To Silent To Be Real

There's a pride and a sadness in this song that always spoke to me.

The 4 Rules

Really. All four. All the time. Because there is no taking the bullet back.

Carteach0 and I Collaborate

Carteach0 and I collaborated on a post about military surplus ammo. It's not definitive by any means, just we have learned so far, and it has raised as many questions as it answered.

The best thing about it is that the internet allowed Carteach0 and I to connect, share ideas and common interests, and put up a post together. Go and read it, if old ammo and even older rifles are of interest to ya'.

From Here to New Year's

Somewhere I had read an article about five years ago that talked about why Americans were overweight. There had been a study tracking adults over a long period and they found a very interesting trend. A large number of the people maintained their weight through the year, then gained approximately five pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's. That became the new normal weight and they would weigh that until the next holiday season where they would gain five more.

Even a guy who counts to twenty by taking off his shoes can see that if that trend continued for a decade, you would be fifty pounds overweight. Everything from today's leftovers, the extra cookies in the break room at work, on out to the egg nog punch at the Boxing Day party are all adding up. Come January you'll be letting the belt out a notch and it's not like most of us are going to lose it when the spring planting season kicks off and we're hitching up the team to plow the north field.

So I've set a goal to hold my weight even from here to New Year's. I'm at 180, give or take a pound or two. If I'm at 180 on New Year's Day, I can work on losing another five or so pounds in the spring. I want to train for my next Aikido test at 175.

Grandma's sugar cookie recipe will probably be my undoing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Borepatch has a post up about mission creep at Homeland Security. A serious comment on a serious issue, to be sure.

I, on the other hand, want to go with the obvious.



Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Cook the bird in the oven.

Another Question Or Three

Robert at My Tumultuous Adventure continues the discussion with a series of follow-questions.

Finally, I ask both you and ASM826, what should have been done? Should the public area have been given to them? For how long? Should they have then been responsibility for it's care and upkeep at that point? Should they be held liable for anything that happens in their zone as if it were their exclusive property (crimes, accidents, etc)?

I'll answer the last one first. No, of course not. No one, even a property owner on their own property, is held to be exclusively liable for the actions of others. If I trespass and then kill an endangered bird, the property owner is not at fault, I committed two crimes.

The other questions are where we work out the last clause of the 1st Amendment, isn't it? Should every protest require a permit from the very organization that is being protested? In a public area, what limits are appropriate? Who decides? There is some room for interpretation. There is some case law on the subject. My answers are not absolute, and they have fluidity at the edges.

The other questions are questions for the authorities and the police. How do you decide what level of protest you will allow? Where are protests permitted? When the protesters are non-compliant, or openly defiant, what responses are appropriate? How do the police handle a provocative group without inciting the protest to ratchet up?

Like the old saw about pornography, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." What I saw in that video was wrong. It was wrong if for no other reason than it was ineffective and provocative. The policeman and his superior have been suspended. The University head is under pressure. The protesters have renewed support from the student body, alumni, and some elements of the public. They have worldwide media coverage. It was the casual arrogance in the body language of the officer as he walked up and down the line spraying the contents of that canister at close range in the protesters faces that gives it away. It may not be illegal, but it was abusive.

If there was good and legal reasons to clear these protesters, I don't see what they were. This was not a city sidewalk, it was a sidewalk in a park-like setting. Other students were not being prevented from free movement. No imminent threat of violence was evident. In this case, letting them sit there until they got tired or hungry would have been a better decision.

Again, I want to thank all of the people who have taken the time to comment, as well as everyone who is reading and considering these ideas. This is how freedom works. It's messy and ambiguous. My answers aren't "right". They are just my answers today.

What Constitutes Assault?

Was the act of pepper spraying students for non-compliance an assault? Gunsmithing&Politics thinks it was. Robert thinks it was not. Pondering it myself and watching the video again, I want to turn the question around.

If, by chance, one of the students had popped up and grabbed the can of pepper spray, turned it around, and sprayed the policeman with it, would that have been assault? What response would you expect from the other police officers on the scene? What would the student have been charged with?

If one is assault, then why not the other? If acting to prevent further assault is justified to prevent injury to the policeman, then why didn't the other officers act to prevent injury to the students?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

As I Expected

As I expected, some, perhaps most, of my readers disagreed with my viewpoint on the last post. I'd like to offer Robert at My Tumultuous Adventure a link to his post on the subject. I recognize that there are plenty of laws to support his point of view.

So we have rights, some mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but those rights are now subject to being hedged in by laws and regulations. I submit that if I need a permit to exercise my 1st Amendment rights, that makes those rights into privileges subject to approval of whoever is issuing the permits. On this we will have to continue to disagree.

The use of tear gas, pepper spray, and pepper balls to disperse a riot seems justified when public safety is an issue. Close in spraying of pepper spray to punish people is not. It was use of force in a situation where no force was called for.

While the first comment on the previous post goes places I think are completely over the top, the second seems so willing to restrict the right to assemble and protest as to make the right meaningless. I feel the same way about permits to carry a firearm. If it's a right, who gets to decide if I can exercise it?

When They Do It To The Least Of Us

You don't have to watch much of this, the part you need to see is pretty much over in the first 50 seconds. These are college students and yes I suppose from the policeman's point of view they were being a pain in the ass. But here's my take. They weren't any threat to the policeman at all. They were peacefully assembled to protest something. Well within any interpretation of the 1st Amendment.

They weren't armed, they weren't committing any violence. The police are armed, dressed for a riot. Carrying the economy sized pepper spray dispensers. Carrying guns and batons and paintball guns loaded with pepper balls. Who did the provoking here?



I think the whole OWS movement is a bunch of misdirected crap, but what's the lesson these kids learned from this event? That they are powerless in the face of the weapons of the State? That peaceful protest will be met with force? I don't have to agree with your views or your beliefs to think that you have a right to assemble and protest, to seek redress for your grievances. I want the same rights for myself.

Here's a two minute history lesson. The firehoses come out at 1:50.

I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights, June 11, 1963

There's Nothing New Under The Sun

Looking back at old editions of Guns Magazine, I found an article in the July 1955 edition titled "Why Guns Blow Up". It starts on page 30.

The classic 20ga. shell in a 12ga. gun. Double charging a .357 Magnum. Modern smokeless powder in black powder guns. Loading the wrong size cartridge. Firing with a barrel obstruction.

If you were rewriting the article for publication today, some of the older mistakes would be less likely because those guns and calibers have become collectors items, not shooters. A few new issues have arisen. But for the most part everything they were writing about in 1955 is still happening.

Oh, and on page 50, where the article is continued, there is an ad for the Boys antitank rifle. You could have one shipped to your home, no paperwork, for $98.50 from Southeastern Shooters Supply in College Park, Md.

Old Ammo

Primers used to be made with a compound that left a corrosive salt residue in the firearm. U.S. made ammunition manufactured up to the mid 1950's is suspect, as is foreign made ammo up to about 1980. It's a problem, and if you've seen an older rifle that wasn't properly cleaned, it will have a dark, pitted bore.

I have some of this ammo in 30.06, with headstamps from the '40s and '50s. It's been sitting in an ammo can, isolated from the newer stuff and the reloads. But if you never plan to shoot it, why keep it around? So yesterday I took it to the range, along with my 1903A3 and sent about 30 rounds down range, as practice ammo for upcoming Garand matches.

I had planned to clean it right away when I got home, but then it was time for dinner, so I set the '03 back in the safe next to the Garand.

Two hours later I came back. The 1903A3 had completely dissolved, leaving just the stock and sling and a pile of rust. The Garand next to it had pitted to the point that it will never be usable again. I took a picture of my folly:

Oops, sorry, got sidetracked by the gun forum warnings.

Actually, two hours later, I came back and got the '03 and cleaned it. I had a couple of ideas, using ammonia and then hot water to remove the salts, then a regular cleaning, but decided to look around the interwebz to see what was recommended. I found this thread on the CMP forum and used what I learned there in addition to my own ideas to clean the rifle.

My baseline idea is that this was the only ammo available for decades and all these old rifles used it. The rifles survived it then and have come down to us in serviceable condition. Proper cleaning is possible, just time consuming.

Don't Shoot Me 'Cause It Hurts!

Reposted from Way Up North because this is the best thing you gunnies will see this week.

Email and Reply

One of my sons wrote me in reply to my post about Penn State. Here is most of his email and my reply.

Hey dad,

Had some spare time and was reading your blog. find the comments thing to be a pain so I figured I'd just respond to you directly...read your post about Sandusky and found it pretty much to be on the mark but one thing I am curious about. Part of the reason everyone is upset is because raping kids is wrong. It also feels wrong, in the way that makes us hate the perpetrator, much more than a bank robber or a murderer or even a frat guy that "date" rapes girls.

But a lot of the moral outrage seems to be reserved for this guy McQueary, who clearly seems to not have done enough. He knew about a severe injustice and did next to nothing, or at least not enough, about it. It seems that if me or you or anybody I know or want to know walked in on that type of thing that they would stop it, tell the cops, and tell the media. Who gives a shit about football?

The thing seems to be that maybe this guy McQueary fulfilled his legal obligation (maybe) but certainly not his moral one. And all of us, atheist or Christian or Jew or whatever, have to agree that there are morals or there doesn't seem to be much point left in this life.

There is a problem though. Outside from the gut-wrenching disgust one feels when hearing about little boys being raped, the fact of the matter is that they were helpless, and people like McQueary knew about it, and did nothing to stop it. And perhaps by that standard, we are all failing miserably.

I can think of a dozen real life examples, but here is one. Certain people in prison get raped. It is almost certain that large numbers of these people are innocent of the crime they are in prison for, and much larger numbers of them certainly do not deserved to be raped. And by any standard, they are helpless. Just as helpless as those little kids. The word helpless literally meaning not able to help oneself. There is no relativity to the word. And yet where is our moral outrage? Where is our indignity? It is not a political issue. I have lost much of my taste for political labels, although it seems only a bleeding heart liberal would be working for prison reform. And I don't feel like doing it, and I'm sure you don't either.

It is easy to say that perhaps had we been the ones to walk in on child rape that we would have stopped it. It is harder to accept that perhaps much of humanity is on the moral low ground much of the time. Certainly an argument can be made for as how the two situations I described are not even close to equal, and maybe the argument would be somewhat valid. But arguments to get out of a moral obligation are the kind that lawyers, and politicians, and football coaches, and child molesters, and the people who cover up for them make. Perhaps it would be better to accept that we are failing, and do something about it.

Anyways, I think you get my point. Feel free to use it on your blog. Just trying to use that philosophy degree a little bit.

Love,
(the kid)

Well, there you go, I had showed him RAoP but didn't realize he was reading it on a regular basis. Since he wrote me, I wrote him back. Here's my reply.

Dear Kid,

A couple of thoughts.

Yes, the weak and helpless in a prison are a very vulnerable population. It is a very sad commentary on our "correctional" system that people, guilty or not, are at risk of being sexually assaulted in prison. I don't know what to do about it, but it is clearly any evil thing. They are comparable to the extent that if people with power know about it they should be morally obligated to act to prevent/stop it. There's no morally defensible viewpoint that justifies leaving people to be assaulted just because they have been convicted of a crime that includes jail time as a punishment.

McQueary was by no means the only person that knew about this. He is just one that we know about. This is at the heart of the crucifixion story. Innocence condemned because of the failure of supposedly righteous people to act on their moral beliefs. Most of the time I think we are just monkeys that have learned to use tools.

Any abuse of power in human relations, small or large, is an issue of morality. How we confront both ourselves and others in those situations is the true measure of who we are.

Dad

Your thoughts on this are welcome, too. I will post any thoughtful insights I get on this subject for all 10 of you to read.

Guest Post, With Math and Logic

I have a friend that tried blogging and found the need to have a steady stream of words day after day to be too much. To be fair, he has two young special needs children, along with a life and a wife and a job. Yesterday he got a few free minutes and wrote the following, then sent it to me as an unsolicited submission, asking that I consider it for Random Acts of Patriotism.

So here is my first guest post. Written by a good man who asked to be called Doble Troble. Warning! Math will be involved.

The Illogic of “Occupy” Protests

“We are the ninety-nine percent!”

What does this mean? It means that you represent essentially the entire population from which you come. This means that you are indistinguishable from any other individual. You are decidedly indistinct, and yet you are angry enough to protest against the remaining one percent of the population. In statistical terms, one percent is considered to be insignificant. One percent of a population is unrepresentative. It is an anomaly. It is nothing.

Those claiming to represent essentially the entire population are protesting against essentially nothing.

The “ninety-niners” claim that the “one-percenters” are greedy. “Five-percenters” like Barrack Obama, Michael Moore, Donald Sutherland, Mike Meyers, Lady Gaga and numerous others agree.

They all support redistribution of “one-percenter” wealth, apparently through Federal government action, although the specific mechanism to be used to create “fairness” remains unclear.

So what is it that “one-percenters” have that everyone else wants? It is 34% of our country’s net worth1. Isn’t it clearly unfair that so few should have so much? Maybe so!

What would happen if tomorrow Congress (comprised almost entirely of “five-percenters”) using authority vested by the “Commerce Clause” passed legislation to confiscate the net worth of “one-percenters” and then evenly distribute it among the ninety-nine percent?

OK, this requires math! Thirty-four percent of our country’s net worth, divided by ninety-nine percent of the population not subject to confiscation, means that everyone will receive an average of 0.34% increase in net worth! Finally! Justice!

Of course this also means that those exceedingly rare individuals who understand how to be productive at levels not appreciated by essentially everyone will no longer have the resources to do what they have done so exceedingly well.

What happens next?

Most “forty-seven-percenters” who actually pay Federal income tax can tell you right-away: recession if we’re lucky, depression if luck has nothing to do with it, and most-likely economic collapse.

You go, “ninety-niners”! In order to fundamentally change a system, you must first tear it down. Although you apparently don’t understand this, it is clearly what you are accomplishing. And what do you stand to gain? A one-time across-the-board “stimulus” of 0.34% in net worth. Enjoy that IPad upgrade (hopefully the internet won’t be impacted to the point that it becomes useless).


1 http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Homeland Security

Homeland Security stopped by. This post on sight picture/sight alignment has been one that gets hits almost every day. Normally I'd think it was someone trying to improve their marksmanship, but now I wonder.

Really, all the information is in the Marine Corps Rifle Marksmanship manual.


Click to biggify

Comparisons

The child molestation scandal at Penn State has been compared to the ongoing child molestation scandal within the clergy of the Catholic Church. This seems to me to be a valid point. Despite the vast scale of the Catholic Church and it's clergy, there are some similarities.

The most important one is that the real problem is not the individual offender. While heinous, his crimes are isolated to his personal actions. The real problem is the people that become aware of the offender and participate in covering up the offenses. To protect the offender becomes more important than justice for the victims and more important than preventing further offenses.

Bishops and Cardinals in the Catholic Church did some moral calculus that I cannot fathom and decided that the innocence of the children in their dioceses was less important than "protecting the church". There are even cases where parents who became aware of their child's abuse were told by clergy to keep silent for the good of the church. Here's one. There are many more.

I don't attend Mass anymore. I stopped giving money a few years before that. If you want to get the attention of people that care about an organization more than they care about any moral standard of human behavior, you have to figure out what will concern them. It's money. Money runs the show. All those church buildings and rectories and retreat centers take money to heat, light, and maintain. Since the Church is completely dependent on the donations of the laity, the laity holds the power. All they have to do is take it.

The Penn State football program is the same in this way. It is money driven. Penn State's mission statement and charter says it clearly:

Penn State is one of four "state-related" universities (along with the University of Pittsburgh, Temple University, and Lincoln University), institutions that are not state-owned and -operated but that have the character of public universities and receive substantial state appropriations. (Bolded by me)

Cut off the flow of money until they feel the pain. Do the same to Sandusky's charity victim pool.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
--Matthew 5:13

The Right Response

Had a friend email me and ask me why I hadn't commented on the Penn State/Sandusky news. So here goes.

I think it's bigger than has been reported. I think this "charity" and it's donors may be involved in something far more monstrous than one man taking advantage of his power and position. Somehow people that do these these things find one another and when they have power, it may not be worth your life to cross them.

There hasn't been any believable explanation for why Mike McQueary didn't respond by stopping the abuse he was witnessing and then calling the police. The best explanation is that he was afraid, not for his job, but for his life, and possibly for the lives of his family. To just walk away and then call your dad for advice is otherwise incomprehensible.

This post, titled Remedial Masculinity by Dr. Leon Podles lays out the only honorable course of action. Here's a quote:

If you need a reminder of what to do if you walk into a shower area and find a grown man thrusting behind a boy bracing with his arms against a wall, you could do worse than the following.

You: Move away from the boy. I’m talking to you old man. Stand back. Do it now.

Man: Aw, come on, we’re just horsing around.

You: Shut up and move away from the boy. Kid? Kid, look at me. Turn around and look at me. Go get dressed. You’re going to the hospital.
(More at the link)

Because it isn't just that moment in the shower, is it? And it isn't just Mike McQueary. Joe Paterno knew. So did others, including the athletic director and the VP for finance at the university. Every day, every damned day every one of them didn't report this, they choose their life and their career and their own comfort over the ongoing abuse of children. Every morning when they woke up and decided to go to work, they knew that their silence was enabling evil. That sometime, today, tomorrow, the next day, next week, a 10 year old boy was going to be anally raped and any one of them could have stopped it, but instead they choose to be silent. I'm sure it seemed like the expedient thing to do.

Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish."
--John 11:49-50

NC Disarms Everyone On Campus

NC disarms everyone but law enforcement on all school campuses including universities.
This is the result.

Two Fayetteville State University students were robbed at gunpoint in their dorm room early Sunday, in what CBS affiliate WRAL reports was the fourth armed robbery within student housing this year.

It's not safer. It doesn't even feel safer. It just makes it a pretty good bet that the criminals are not going to run into armed resistance.

Saturday Morning Range Time

Went out to the range to accuracy test some old military 30.06 ammo. Got the idea from a post over at Carteach0's site and I just mailed him the results along with some pictures. I expect he'll edit and put it up soon.

It was a beautiful November day. After we got done with the 30.06, we shot a AR-15, a Ruger SP101, a Kimber 1911, a Hi-Power and a Walther 380 just for fun. A good time with good friends at a great range.

Nov 10th and 11th

November 10th is the Birthday of the Marine Corps.

November 11th is Veteran's Day.

Take some time to remember.



Find a veteran. Thank them.

How We Store Information

I don't know if I could vote for Rick Perry, but I sympathize with him today. It's a hard moment when you can't come up with a piece of information. There you are, trying to think of a name or a date, while the person or persons you were talking to wait for you to finish your thought.



To have it happen while the cameras are running is worse.

The worst problem of this sort I ever had was with the name of Walter Matthau. Long before the internet, when he was still alive and making movies, I could not keep his name in my memory banks. I would be able to think of the movies, I could see his face, quote lines from the films, and still his name was in some dead spot I could not access. It didn't happen once, it happened so often that my wife would bring him up just to watch me struggle.

I finally wrote his name on the wall of the hall closet. I would just get up, go open the door, and read the name. Then I was okay, I could hold onto it while we talked. After a while, it got so I could just think about opening the closet and reading the name written on the wall and I could come up with the name. That was 30+ years ago. We were renting that house. But I still had to imagine walking around the corner by the bathroom, opening the door, and looking at the words I had written to come up with the name for this post.



He was a funny guy, I liked him as an actor. You know the one, ummm, ummm, did the "Odd Couple" and the original "Taking of Pelham 1-2-3". What the heck is his name?

When Water Flows Uphill

Bill Whittle breaks it down in little words.

The Cripple Creek Line

The Cripple Creek Line was the original name. It was built along the New River, eventually reaching the town of Galax. The Norfolk and Western bought the line and ran it until 1985. Here's some more history. There's more and lots of pictures at this site hosted by Virginia Tech. They asked for no reposting so I am settling for a link to this picture of one of the bridges we crossed as it looked when the trains were running.

If I had seen the picture before we went on the trip, I would have tried to get a current shot from the same vantage point. Here's one I did take, looking down at the structure of the bridge.



It's a park now, 57 miles of hiking, biking, and equestrian trail. It is a scenic park, the facilities are well maintained, and we had a great time.

But something has been lost. The industries that made the line profitable are gone, the rails taken up. The energy that led people to dig and blast and build bridges just to build a spur line railroad is gone, too.

November Camping

November camping at Foster Falls in the New River State Park. The sun is just coming up, you can see it lighting the trees at the top the hillside. It was in the mid-twenties at night, made it to about fifty during the day.

We were there to bicycle a section of abandoned railroad that has been turned into a trail. Pictures of that in the next post.

Blogroll Addition

The Miller joins the blogroll. Lots of good gunnie stiff to be had at the link. His recent post about Pez dispensers is what I wanted to share with you. Click that link and look at what he found. A Pez dispenser shaped like a gun, designed to shoot the candy out the barrel. His observations on this are priceless.

We were visiting seller after seller. It's a very social hobby. That's when I saw the PEZ handgun. I shit you not. A toy that was designed for kids to shoot themselves IN THE MOUTH.

Where Henry Ford Once Built Model Ts

Where Henry Ford built his first assembly lines, the city has turned out the lights. No one builds anything there anymore, it's not really in decline, it's in free fall.

In late August, contractors from DTE Energy Co. began rolling through the streets, taking out two-thirds of the light poles.

When You can't Defend Yourself

When you can't legally defend yourself, you get this. Gun and machete attacks on restaurant customers. Here's the store video.

The Center Does Not Hold

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

--William Butler Yeats

The Answer To Last Month's Question

On October 14th, 2011, in relation to the OWS protests, I asked the question, "How long before the riot starts?"

The answer was 19 days.

From The Onion

Things can be funny and sad. Truth is where you find it. Here's a quote.

According to researchers, these long- forgotten people once flourished between western New York state and Illinois, erecting highly distinctive steel and brick structures wherever they went, including many buildings thought to have held hundreds of paid workers at a time..."It's a complex and intriguing set of rituals we're still trying to fully understand," Mueller added. "But it appears as if their entire society was centered around creating, out of thin air, actual jobs that paid an actual living wage."

Forget the 1%

Found in my email.

Congratulations

There's a new Marine in the family over at 3 Boxes of B.S.