The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Looks like I’m flying into Denver on Sunday morning the 31st for a meeting Monday morning, and then I’m on my own until my flight out at almost 10:00PM.
So, any readers in the Denver area want to get together Sunday or Monday? I’ll be staying in the Tech Center area of Greenwood.
UPDATE: Landed on time at 10AM. Got the rental car. Did a little driving around. Been in a traffic accident. Checked into the hotel. Now going for something to eat.
See everybody at 6PM.
Homes evacuated after major landslide on Whidbey Island
At least 17 homes have been evacuated after a major landslide overnight on Whidbey Island.Island County Sheriff Mark Brown said no one was hurt, but one home was destroyed by mud and debris when the slide happened in an area near Alderwood Street and South Fircrest Avenue just after 4 a.m.
“It’s a pretty massive slide,” he said.
Brown said a relief center for displaced residents has been established at a nearby community center.
It was not clear exactly what caused the slide, as there was no rain overnight in the area.
Check the link for pictures. For once the media didn’t exaggerate. It was a major slide.
So last year, I was given a Colt Pocket Hammerless Vest Pocket .25. It was the second-oldest gun in my safe. Now it’s third-oldest. This year, my father-in-law gave me his original 1917-vintage Colt 1911!
It’s pretty pitted, and appears to have been reblued some time in the past, but I believe the double-diamond walnut grip panels are original, and I know for a fact that it feeds and shoots hardball just fine. Not bad for a 96 year-old handgun.
Dunkin’ Donuts worker stops robbery — with hot coffee
When a man tried to rob a Dunkin’ Donuts in Connecticut on Saturday night, an employee acted quickly and stopped him with the closest weapon available — hot coffee.
The attempted robbery happened shortly after 11 p.m. at a Dunkin’ Donuts in West Haven, when a man pulled up to the drive-through and asked the clerk for change for a $100 bill, according to Sgt. David Tammaro, of the West Haven Police Department.
When the clerk refused to make the change, the man said this was a robbery and tried to climb through the drive-through window, police said.That is when the clerk threw hot coffee in man’s face, police said.
The man fled the area in a newer model white Ford Explorer without stealing anything, according to a news release from police.
When a man tried to mug Caleb a few years ago, he got a hot cup of Starbucks in his face, with the same result.
Which resulted in this coffee mug:
If you don’t recognize him, that’s Sgt. Schlock from Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary. And if you don’t recognize him, you should be ashamed of yourself!
Reader David Turner has sent me a follow-up on those targets. It seems that the manufacturer has taken them off their website and apologized:
We apologize for the offensive nature of our “No More Hesitation” products. These products have been taken offline due to the opinions expressed by so many, including members of the law enforcement community.
This product line was originally requested and designed by the law enforcement community to train police officers for unusually complex situations where split-second decisions could lead to unnecessary loss of life.
Consistent with our company mission as a training supplier (not a training methods company), we will continue to seek input from law enforcement professionals to better serve their training objectives and qualification needs. We sincerely appreciate law enforcement professionals for the risks they take in providing safety and defending freedom.
As InfoWars explains, though:
The company’s excuse that the targets were designed to help police prevent “unnecessary loss of life” is highly dubious given that the images were all of armed individuals termed “non-traditional threats,” designed to ensure “no more hesitation” from police officers encountering them.
As one respondent to the company explained, “Look, each of the supposed “threats” appeared to be in their own home settings. They were also all holding a weapon… It is obvious these paper targets were never intended to be decoy (don’t shoot targets). It is apparent this was designed to assist in desensitizing the trainee.”
In addition, the company had previously struck a different tone when it told Reason’s Mike Riggs that the targets were designed to combat, “hesitation on the part of cops when deadly force is required on subjects with atypical age, frailty or condition.”
Although the targets have been taken off the company’s website, it’s unclear whether or not they have been removed from sale entirely.
That’s a question I would like answered.
I occasionally take a break at the office and do a little web-surfing (yeah, shocker, no?). I have both Firefox 19.0 and IE 10.0 installed. Both load pages glacially slow. I’ve determined it’s because of Java scripts. If I turn off Java, BOOM! Pages load right now, but without much of the content. For example, checking my personal email, I have to use gmail’s standard HTML version of the page. The more versatile one doesn’t run w/o Java.
Anybody else have this experience? I’m tired of waiting for pages to load, but I can’t just turn Java off – too many pages are dependent on Java scripts. Suggestions?
Yeah, we had a little bit of winter here in the Old Pueblo yesterday.
…but now I want to build a shrine to him. And I now understand why Piers Morgan moved to the U.S.
Clarkson punched him.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_2ZsMFY0fg?rel=0]
And doesn’t want him back.
I’ve done this every January 1st since 2007, but I almost skipped it this year. I think burnout is getting to me. But I decided to do it anyway, so here we go.
January brought the single most popular post here ever. My dad sent me the link in an email, and since I put it up on January 11 (according to Google Analytics) it’s drawn 396,497 hits: That’s not Recoil, THIS is RECOIL. And 144 comments without a peep from Markadelphia. Yup, a YouTube video. Somebody ELSE’s YouTube video.
In February another YouTube video post became the #2 all-time traffic draw with 129,711 hits so far and counting: THIS Might Make Me Want to Try Shotgunning. Why do I bother with überposts?
In March, we lost another blogger. Newbius passed away. I know more people online who have died than I know in meatspace, and as I get older that list gets longer. The first death of an online personality that really affected me was when Acidman passed in June of 2006. Rob Smith is, in a way, responsible for the existence of this blog. But it’s still a shock when someone known to you is no longer there. Fair winds to them all.
I had another very popular post – again, someone else’s work – when I posted the story of J. David Phillips and his last-ditch self-defense: The .25ACP and “Stopping Power”
April brought us the conclusion of the GOP primary race, and the Quote of the Year that predicted, somewhat, the outcome in November:
Given how the GOP field has been winnowed, this has really just been a race to determine the form Gozer the Traveler takes.
So this just means the giant Sloar is off the table and means is we’re looking between the moving Torb and the Staypuff Marshmellow man.— Jack
And, of course, the accompanying T-Shirt. Also in April, I drank the Kool-Aid and bought an M&P9.
Speaking of traditions, May 1 is now Victims of Communism Day. I intend to commemorate it every year. I bought a new AR lower. Those are thin on the ground these days. And TSM turned nine years old and drew its 3,000,000th visitor, and that ain’t bad.
Instead of original content (who reads that?) in June I posted a series of Quotes of the Day from educator John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education. Twelve of them, in fact.
In July, the Supreme Court ruled on the Constitutionality of Obamacare. A 5-4 decision, written by Chief Justice Roberts, said it was. I took exception.
I was introduced to the concept of “hyperindividualism.” And finally, on the event of Milton Friedman’s 100th birthday, I posted a video of an excellent speech he gave in 1978 at the University of Chicago. I strongly recommend you watch it.
In relation to that video, in early August I posted a Quote of the Day in apposition to one from the video illustrating the ongoing decline Friedman warned about, preceded the previous day by a QotD that illustrates why I think this is happening. Meanwhile in Sarah Brady Paradise, their criminals have apparently started using hand-grenades. I thought that only happened in Mexico. How’s that gun control (on an island no less) working out for them?
September brought the Seventh Annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous, but this year instead of driving, I got to fly up. In a Cessna 310. Still haven’t won a gun there, though. And over in Sarah Brady Paradise, a cop-killer used a hand-grenade in the double-murder of two female Bobbys. And Markadelphia returned to the comment threads. If you see a post with 50+ comments, chances are Markadelphia is in it at least once.
October brought us a preview of coming attractions I thought should be shared, and another from closer to home. I finally concluded that Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change is bullshit based on the evidence in hand. And I made my grandson a kick-ass Halloween costume.
November. Ah yes, November. I think the country reached the point of no return in November. Honestly, it happened long before November, but the election ended any speculation on the question. As I said, OUR Austerity Riots are going to be SPECTACULAR!
And finally, December. First post of the month, How We “Lost the Culture War.” Not an überpost, but I’ve kinda lost my enthusiasm for those. There was some good news – Illinois’ ban on concealed carry was found unconstitutional. And we had another mass shooting, this time involving twenty dead first-graders. For the gun-banners, they couldn’t have dreamed of a better pool of blood to dance in. But Newtown, Connecticut is not Dunblane, Scotland. America’s response? There’s not an AR-15 left on a gun store shelf, nor a standard-capacity magazine to fit one. Seven thousand AR-15 rifles sold in Arizona in ten days, according to the Arizona State Rifle & Pistol Association.
SPECTACULAR, I tell you.
2013? Maybe there’s something behind Triskaidekaphobia after all.
Happy New Year, y’all.