Fundamentals

Reader 'cowboyup' sent in the following photo and commentary:

I recently bought a Savage Mark II .22 on a hunting trip for various reasons (hunting, plinking, etc.). After getting back to camp and setting up the gun, I sighted in at 25 yards. I was really impressed with the shot group that a .22 straight out of the box had. In no time I had a group of 5-6 shots inside of a dime. Mind you, i did have to dial the scope in, it was only bore sighted from the factory. I am not bragging over 25 yards by no means, if I can't hold a good group at that range, I have serious shooting issues. The purpose of this e-mail is to see what others have experienced with their rifles and how good of a group they hold and what other types to look at. One thing I do like is a good shooting gun, whether it be low range to high range on the price scale. (emphasis added)

We talk a lot in these posts about various makes and models of firearms, and the big manufacturers .. Ruger, S&W, Remington, etc. ... always get a lot of attention. But there are many, many manufacturers out there like Savage that don't get the headlines but continue to churn out quality firearms year after year.

The best shooting gun I have, bar none, is a little Savage M72 falling block single shot .22. If I had to pick "just one gun" out of the safe, it'd probably be that one, as it's deadly accurate and its simple mechanism will last forever with little to no maintenance required.

And it's probably also the cheapest gun in that safe. At the end of the day, quality isn't judged by what you paid ... it's judged by targets like the one above.

As Goes California ...

A new gun law proponents say helps law enforcement has driven Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger out of California, and affirmed the suspicions of firearms rights advocates that the measure is really about making handguns obsolete.

You mean requiring manufacturers to do something patently ridiculous causes them to choose to abandon a market? Shocking.

Also, c'mon Fox News ...

... a law that requires some handguns to have technology that imprints a tiny stamp on the bullet so it can be traced back to the gun ...

The microstamp doesn't go on the bullet, it goes on the primer and/or cartridge case.

In related news, sales of brass catchers are soaring (not to mention revolvers, which are exempt from this idiocy).

Gun Of The Week

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Posted by: andy at 09:55 AM | Comments (233)
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After hating on hockey in yesterday's gardening thread, I feel I must atone. Here's a thread for our hockey lovers. There is a game being played this afternoon (12:30 pm) at Yankee Stadium.

Below the jump, some hockey babes: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:02 AM | Comments (163)
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You think the GOP can't get any dumber but they manage to surprise you.

Bill Kristol announces on FTN that Coburn, Hatch and Burr will unveil a comprehensive GOP alternative to ObamaCare tomorrow.

— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) January 26, 2014

Here's what's wrong with this approach without knowing a damn thing about it (beyond the fact that Orin Hatch is involved).

Right now the focus is on ObamaCare and undoing the harm it's doing to individuals and the country as a whole. At this moment people identify as "ObamaCare opponents" and see other opponents as allies in the fight. This is the maximum number of people you will ever have united against ObamaCare. Once you start saying "not only are we against ObamaCare, we are for A, B and C" you start to fracture the anti-ObamaCare coalition and weaken it. You are taking a binary choice..supporters here, opoenents there and making it supporters vs. people who like the Senate GOP plan vs. people who don't like ObamaCare or the Senate GOP plan.

And once some GOP Senators release a plan, that makes it more likely that the House will release a plan so you will further fracture the unity of ObamaCare opponents. And best of all you'll fracture the GOP unity (such as it is).

Right now the media and Democrats have limited choices in covering ObamaCare...ignore it, pretend it isn't as bad as people know it is or complain that the GOP doesn't have a plan. Now the GOP will give them a new and exciting set of options...attacking the GOP plan (while pointing out how in some narrow areas ObamaCare might be better) and the differences in opinion among Republicans about what to do next. Which option do you think the media and Democrats will pick?

Republicans still hang on to this quaint idea that voters are moved by policy positions and white papers. Worst of all they think the media will accurately and fairly cover their policy positions and white papers. Neither is true.

And don't tell me the GOP has to run on something because Team GOP has spent the last year telling me you can't do anything affirmative with just the House (which will be amended to "you can't do anything affirmative with Obama in the White House" if the GOP gets the Senate).

There's zero upside to splitting the anti-ObamaCare coalition to push plans that will never become law while Obama is in the White House. Once again, the GOP is too stupid to understand reality.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:28 AM | Comments (243)
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This thread sponsored by your TSA.

“It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure!”

What are the best ways to hop a moving railcar without spilling your Val-U-Rite? Which YMCAs have the comfiest cots? Which South of the Border clinics are best for infections “south of the border”? These and other pressing questions may – or may not – be addressed in future posts.

To get us started, I thought it might be fun to have the morons and moronettes share their recommended itinerary for a weekend visit to their hometown. If you were trying to impress someone visiting for a couple of days, where would you take him? And when would you recommend he visit your area?

Below the jump I present mine for my current home, Utah. (I tried not to cheat too much although it would require long days and a lot of driving.)
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:00 PM | Comments (261)
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For comments 'n' such.

Posted by: andy at 04:29 AM | Comments (319)
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In spite of submarine warfare causing the British and French great distress in World War I, it wasnÂ’t until 1915 that anyone came up with an effective means of attacking a submerged U-boat, the depth charge.

You’ve seen enough movies to have a basic grasp of what a depth charge is. A cylindrical container full of explosives rolled off the back of an escort ship that detonates when it reaches a preset depth, as determined by a hydrostatic firing device (know in the business as a “firing pistol” for some reason).

But simply rolling a few depth charges off the stern of a ship over the likely position of a submarine is very unlikely to yield any real effects on the target. Most depth charges weigh between 300 and 600 pounds. Roughly 1/2 to 2/3 that weight is explosive. And to be effective, a depth charge has to detonate within about 30 to 40 feet of the submarine. Given the extremely poor state of sensors in those days, coming that close would be more a matter of chance than tactics. Indeed, between 1915 and 1917, only 9 U-boats were sunk by depth charge. The linear pattern of depth charges meant a simple turn by the U-Boat could easily remove it from danger. The solution for the escort was to widen area covered by a single attack. Perhaps two ships could make parallel depth charge attacks? But there was seldom enough ships to allow this, nor were two ships likely close enough to be able to quickly coordinate an attack. Instead, the Y-Gun depth charge projector was invented.

The Y-Gun was basically a mortar with a single charge firing into two tubes arranged in a Y-shape. In each of the tubes was a piston that ended in a broad curved “lear” (leading to the pistons being know as arbors) that nestled a depth charge. Mounted on the centerline of a destroyer, when fired, a Y-Gun would send a depth charge about 40-50 yards to both port and starboard of the ship. Even such a modest increase in the square area of a depth charge pattern greatly increased the likelihood of a successful attack.

By the end of World War I, most destroyer types had at least one and and usually two Y-Guns aboard.

By the beginning of World War II, active sonar had improved to the point that, while not terribly effective as an area search weapon, it provided decent bearing and range information for an attacking escort. But ASW planners failed to understand the importance of determining the depth of a target sub. Some estimation could be made. The shape of the sonar beam and the way it angled through the water could provide a very rough trigonometric estimation of depth. The other serious improvement in technology was the rather simple idea of splitting a Y-Gun in half. The K-Gun fired one charge to one side. The advantage of this was that K-Guns could be mounted along the sides of an escort without displacing other weapons from centerline space. Even relatively small escorts could carry four, six, even as many as ten K-Guns. Combined with two chutes of depth charges, a pattern of charges could be laid on the suspected position of the target sub.

The uncertainty of the depth of the target meant that in addition to charges being delivered along the path of the attacking escort, and to the sides via the K-Guns, the attack had to be delivered at varying depths as well. Eventually the standard attack would evolve to be a “10 charge” attack. Essentially, two overlaying diamond shape patterns (with a fifth charge in the center) at two depths, above and below the suspected depth of the sub, to sandwich the target, or catch it as it attempted to turn away.

This double diamond attack was by far the most effective depth charge of the war. It had a whopping 5% success rate of sinking or seriously damaging its target.

One of the most serious shortcomings of the depth charge as an ASW weapon was that the attacking ship would lose contact with the target, depending on its depth, at a range of from 200 yards clear out to as much as 500 yards. Counting the time needed for the ship to travel that distance, and the further delay for the charges to sink, the target sub had significant time to maneuver to escape. And the explosion of the depth charges roiled the water, meaning

Later, weÂ’ll look to weapons and sensors that addressed these shortcomings.

Crossposted at my place.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:06 PM | Comments (66)
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For non-book related discussion.

This morning's open thread brought to you by birds of prey: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:48 AM | Comments (33)
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"She'll Pay For This"

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the award-winning AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

Did you know that the central theme of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the evil of racism? No? Well, then, you should be thankful that we have Margaret E. Wright-Cleveland of Florida State University to tell us these things. In an article that polls a number of "experts" as to what is the greatest American novel, she proclaims:

A land defined and challenged by racism, America struggles with how to understand and move beyond its history...Twain confronts American history head-on and tells us this: White people are the problem...

If the Great American Novel both perceptively reflects its time and challenges Americans to do better, Huck Finn deserves the title. Rendering trenchant critiques on every manifestation of whiteness, Twain reminds us that solving racism requires whites to change.

Now it's obvious that Margaret E. Wright-Cleveland of Florida State University very much believes this. But I thought it would have been taught in Crit. Lit. 101 not to read your own attitudes and beliefs back into authors who lived in earlier centuries and most likely had different assumptions and modes of thinking due to living in a culture different than ours. Otherwise, objective meaning is lost and books become nothing but Rorschach ink blots upon which you merely project your own prejudices and fears.

The education writer E. D. Hirsh is best known for for his book on cultural literacy, but he is also the author of an earlier work, Validity in Interpretation, which lays out a systematic and detailed defense of the idea that the meaning of the text is determined solely by the intent of the author. It's written more for an academic than for a popular audience, so it can be a bit dry, but if you stick with it, it's quite good.

Now, I'm sure that Margaret E. Wright-Cleveland of Florida State University would no doubt argue that what she said was in fact Twain's intended meaning. But if I were to read a book and conclude that an author who lived many years before me somehow had managed to have beliefs that coincide exactly, 100% with mine, shouldn't that give me pause? Shouldn't I be even the least bit skeptical? Like that silly biography I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that populated Norman Rockwell's paintings with all manner of sexual sub-texts that every viewer and art critic somehow had missed until she came along and pointed them out to us, there's no end to the foolishness you can get into once you sacrifice objective meaning and substitute your own.

The New Republic actually has a pretty good article you can read on a similar theme:

Proust was a neuroscientist. Jane Austen was a game theorist. Dickens was a gastroenterologist. That’s the latest gambit in the brave new world of “consilience,” the idea that we can overcome the split between “the two cultures” by bringing art and science into conceptual unity—which is to say, by setting humanistic thought upon a scientific foundation.That’s the latest gambit in the brave new world of “consilience,” the idea that we can overcome the split between “the two cultures” by bringing art and science into conceptual unity—which is to say, by setting humanistic thought upon a scientific foundation.

Which is kind of like substituting your own meaning for the author's. The TNR piece goes on to a scathing review of Jane Austen, Game Theorist by Michael Suk-Young Chwe, and indirectly, Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:49 AM | Comments (215)
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(I apologize for the prolonged hiatus, my groovy and beloved babies. Life doth intervene.)

Articles like this make me wonder if the bien pensant journalist-and-pundit class knows any actual poor people. I was born poor, grew up poor, and spent a good chunk of my 20's poor. Not genteel poor, either -- I mean hard, stony-bottom, empty-pocket poor. I come from poor people.

Poor people don't think about money in the same way that more well-off people do. When you're poor, money -- and the lack thereof -- informs your every moment, waking and sleeping. You know exactly, at any given moment, how much money you have, down to the penny. How much in the bank, how much in your jeans, how much in the coffee can on the counter at home. Every purchase is a choice -- if I buy this six-pack now, that means hot dogs instead of hamburger for dinner tomorrow; if I pay my cable bill, that means that instead of dinner and a movie my best girl and I get to spend a night at home watching the TV. You triage your bills -- rent comes first, then heat. Then...you decide: cable or cellphone? Who can you put off the longest? How long can you float things?
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Posted by: Monty at 04:48 PM | Comments (235)
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Would you?

I so would. And I'd laugh and scream and giggle like a little girl the entire way down.

The slide's drop is so steep, it is almost at a right-angle to the ground. Thrill-seekers will need to climb 264 steps to reach the top where they will wait on a deck made from railroad tanker cars. They will then be sent hurtling down into the pool below.

The exact height of the Verruckt has not being revealed but bosses say it will be taller than the current record holder, the 134.5ft Insano slide in Fortaleza, Brazil.

Oh yeah!

So, are you Moron enough?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:53 PM | Comments (302)
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