Quotulatiousness

January 29, 2020

M20A1B1 Super Bazooka – It’s a Super Bazooka. Need I Say More?

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Oct 2017

Sold for $1,380 (deactivated).

The US was one of the few major military powers that went into World War II without a substantial infantry antitank weapon. Most countries had an antitank rifle of some sort, but the US just had some marginal antitank rifle grenades. That was rectified in late 1942 when the M1 Rocket Launcher — aka the Bazooka — was introduced. Using a 2.36″ shaped charge warhead, it was able to penetrate about 4.7 inches of armor, which was effective through most of the war. A larger version went into development in 1943 though, because it was clear that the M1 would soon become obsolete.

The 3.5″ M20 Super Bazooka was adopted in late 1945 and put into production in 1948, with its first combat use coming in the Korean War. It was much more powerful, capable of penetrating 11 inches of armor plate. The launcher itself weighed just 13 pounds, with each rocket adding another 8.9 pounds. This, and the updated M20A1, would serve as the main US infantry antitank weapon until replaced by the 90mm recoilless rifle in the 1960s.

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From the comments:

WeirdHarold49
2 years ago

Since Ian forgot and Wikipedia knows:

Origin of the “bazooka” name

Shortly after the first prototype launcher and rockets had been tested by firing into the Potomac River, Skinner and Uhl took the new system to a competitive trial of various types of spigot mortar (at that time seen as the most promising way to deliver a shaped charge), which was held at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in May 1942. The new rocket launcher scored several hits on a moving tank while the five different mortars achieved none; this was a considerable achievement since the launcher’s sights had been fabricated that morning from a wire coat hanger. The trial was being watched by various senior officers, among them the Chief of Research and Engineering in the Ordnance Department, Major General Gladeon M. Barnes. Barnes was delighted by the performance of the system and fired it himself, but commented: “It sure looks like Bob Burns’ bazooka”. Bob Burns was a popular radio comedian, who used a novelty musical instrument which he had devised himself and called a “bazooka”.

QotD: The Golden Gate Bridge

Filed under: Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It’s the pride of every Californian that the Golden Gate Bridge’s pedestrian area remains remarkably free of nets, high fences, and other barriers to jumpers. A couple years ago, Tad Friend described this phenomenon, and the strange silence of both officials and local residents about how common Bridge suicides really are. Although officials worry that Steel might inspire copycat jumpers, my concern is that more attention to this topic will eventually drive park officials to put up some sort of unsightly barricades. The suicide-readiness of the Golden Gate Bridge is a luxury I have not (yet) availed myself of, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

Tim Cavanaugh, “Why Kill Yourself…”, Reason Hit and Run, 2005-01-20.

January 28, 2020

Classics Summarized: The Iliad

Filed under: Books, Greece, History, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 23 Jan 2015

I’m baaaaaaaack!

This one took me a while. The reason why should be pretty obvious. Enjoy your adorable murderfest.

Troy may be a good movie (though I have my doubts) but it sure as hell isn’t the Iliad.

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QotD: Drinking and driving

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I have another brochure on my desk. Actually, I’ve got a lot of stuff on my desk, including possibly a cat or two, but it’s the brochure that’s at the top of the pile. It comes from the Ontario government and it’s called Break The Law Pay The Price. Personally, I’d have put a comma in there somewhere, but the Ontario government laid off the punctuation guy in a cost-cutting drive. (I gather he lasted longer than the water inspection guy.)

According to BTLPTP, “Drinking drivers are responsible for one-quarter of all people killed on Ontario roads.” In other words, only 75 percent of Ontario traffic fatalities are the work of sober people. Either we have more drunks in Ontario or our sober drivers are better drivers than Britain’s. [Where “one in seven of all deaths on the road involve drivers who are over the legal limit.”]

Now, despite the damning evidence in these brochures that sober people are causing carnage on our roads, the people who know what’s good for us are busy trying to lower the legal blood alcohol limit. Early in 2001 the Quebec government announced that it was lowering the limit from eighty milligrams to fifty, throwing in a complete drinking ban for professional drivers — cabbies, bus drivers, and the like. This last measure was a reaction to — well, nothing at all. Were drunk ambulance drivers creating havoc on the roads of Quebec? No. But it gave the government of Quebec the appearance of having taken a strong stand on something. Predictably, the Ontario government immediately made noises about following suit.

Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.

January 27, 2020

Tank Chats #60 Valentine Bridgelayer | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 23 Nov 2018

The Valentine Bridgelayer, on a Valentine Mark I hull, was developed in 1943 during the Second World War. They were largely superseded by Churchill Bridgelayer, although some Valentine Bridgelayers were used in north-west Europe from 1944 to 1945, because the supply of Churchill Bridgelayers could not meet demand.

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QotD: The radicalization of the Republican Party

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

When the Democrats ran the House of Representatives for almost all of six decades, before 1995, they did not treat the Republican minority particularly well. So I can understand Newt Gingrich’s desire for revenge when he took over as Speaker of the House in 1995. But many of the changes he made polarized the Congress, made bipartisan cooperation more difficult, and took us into a new era of outrage and conflict in Washington. One change stands out to me, speaking as a social psychologist: he changed the legislative calendar so that all business was done Tuesday through Thursday, and he encouraged his incoming freshmen not to move to the District. He did not want them to develop personal friendships with Democrats. He did not want their spouses to serve on the same charitable boards. But personal relationships among legislators and their families in Washington had long been a massive centripetal force. Gingrich deliberately weakened it.

And this all happened along with the rise of Fox News. Many political scientists have noted that Fox News and the right-wing media ecosystem had an effect on the Republican Party that is unlike anything that happened on the left. It rewards more extreme statements, more grandstanding, more outrage. Many people will point out that the media leans left overall, and that the Democrats did some polarizing things, too. Fair enough. But it is clear that Gingrich set out to create a more partisan, zero-sum Congress, and he succeeded. This more combative culture then filtered up to the Senate, and out to the rest of the Republican Party.

Jonathan Haidt, “The Age of Outrage: What the current political climate is doing to our country and our universities”, City Journal, 2017-12-17.

January 26, 2020

Trudeau’s illogical gun ban will do nothing to reduce violent crime

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It will, on the other hand, infringe the rights of law-abiding Canadians and encourage otherwise law-abiding people to disobey the law. It won’t take a single lethal weapon out of the hands of criminals — because they’re already violating the laws that are in force today and won’t be deterred by yet another token rule they won’t obey. At the Post Millennial, D.J. Sumanik explains why the proposed ban is wrong:

Restricted and prohibited weapons seized by Toronto police in a 2012 operation. None of the people from whom these weapons were taken was legally allowed to possess them.
Screen capture from a CTV News report.

I chose the AR-15 for that video because it is the singular most demonized firearm on the planet. The rifle is used to scare uninformed citizens daily. Yet the same rifle has never been used for murder by a legal gun owner in Canada.

In fact, it’s only been used for murder one time in our country over the last 50 years by a gang. A far cry from the narrative that “assault weapons” are lurking in every corner of Canadian society waiting to murder our children.

Justin Trudeau is claiming this firearm and others like it are so deadly, so dangerous, and so extreme that they must be confiscated from every licensed Canadian gun owner across the country. But with only one murder in 50 years, and the gun almost certainly still being the murderer’s hand regardless if there was a ban, the numbers simply don’t add up. In fact they barely register. Semi-auto rifles are extremely rare for use in Canadian gun homicide […] handguns are the firearm of choice for most shootings. Semi-autos only make up a small percentage of rifles and shotguns in our country. So how does this add up to a federal ban costing $600 million in taxpayer money?

Short answer: It doesn’t.

Canada has roughly 2.2 million licensed gun owners who are monitored DAILY by RCMP for red flags. Most people don’t know that. It’s called continuous eligibility screening. If you step out of the line with the law, the cops show up and take your guns.

Some further thoughts.

If only 5 percent of Canadian gun owners were out there shooting up the streets, we’d have 110,000 deaths on our hands annually. According to StatsCan, 2018 left Canada with 249 tragic gun murders. The vast majority were by gangs fighting over drugs in urban centers. Even if you were to incorrectly assume every one of those shootings was a legal gun owner and not a gang member (yeah right) it means 99.9998868% of us pose no threat to society. Can you think of another demographic with that kind of track record? I certainly can’t.

Now, the lives lost in those incidents are valuable. 249 Canadian families are feeling daily pain. Something needs to change. Gang warfare can’t go unchecked. But to punish millions of innocent Canadians who hold such an excellent track record will not help. There’s a very simple truth in all of this: Taking my firearms away in the Yukon will not prevent gang homicide in Toronto.

Furthermore, we as Canadians don’t discriminate against entire groups of people based on the actions of a few bad eggs. For instance, we don’t blame all Muslims in Canada for the actions of 9/11. How is it acceptable for Justin Trudeau to punish gun owners across Canada for gang violence?

When Anti-Semites Infight, Jews Still Die – Pogroms in Romania – WW2 – 074 – January 25, 1941

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Europe, History, Italy, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 25 Jan 2020

The British offensive in East-Africa takes off with some rapid advances. Meanwhile in Eastern-Europe, Romania is the stage of fierce anti-semitism, but also infighting between two of the groups causing the anti-semitism.

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Sources:
IWM (B 10600)
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
freemason by Kyle Tezak from the Noun Project
Letter by Mochammad Kafi from the Noun Project
ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf: Wehrli, Leo / Dia_247-08618
Private collection of Riggio family https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Philip Ayers – “The Unexplored”
Max Anson – “Ancient Saga”
Hakan Erikson – “Epic Adventure Theme 4”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Johannes Bornlof – “Last Man Standing 3”

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From the comments:

World War Two
2 days ago
Thank you all so much for reaching 400.000 subscribers! Thanks to all of your support and enthusiasm, more and more people get to see more and better content. In fact, from mid-February onwards, we are going to publish three WW2 videos a week, including Out of the Foxholes, Biographies, Special Episodes, War Against Humanity and a new series on the Homefronts. Not only that, we are also going to start a new series on the TimeGhost History Channel (http://www.youtube.com/c/timeghost). Our Patreons get to vote on what we’ll do next! So don’t miss out and change history here -> https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-timeghost-33300161
Cheers, Joram

You, your new DeLorean, and the LVMVMA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Many people — not all of them rabid fans of the Back to the Future movies — would like to own a DeLorean and it is going to be possible … eventually:

Photo of a DeLorean by grayesun is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Basically, the legislation [the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act of 2015], which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015, would allow companies to produce limited-run replica vehicles without being bound by certain safety and emissions standards. But after that administration ended, the law stalled because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn’t follow through with implementation.

“One problem, Espey explains, was that NHTSA hasn’t had a permanent administrator since the previous presidential election, and the acting administrator would not sign off on the regulations,” writes Hagerty. Thankfully, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) took matters into their own hands and filed a lawsuit, and now it looks like the law could take effect soon.

That means DMC is once again gearing up to sell new turnkey DeLoreans, and this time around they’ll have modern conveniences like power steering and cruise control (imagine that!) and potentially features like heated seats and smartphone integration (the future!).

While they’re not available to order just yet, interested buyers can fill out a non-binding pre-order form. Just don’t expect to hit 88 miles per hour in 2020; as Espey said, “There will be no cars produced under this legislation for at least a year, and that’s presuming the feds do their job this time and don’t drag it out for four more years.”

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

The Diamond of Collector FALs: The G-Series

Filed under: Europe, History, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Apr 2018

Sold for $17,250.

When the Browning Arms Company first began importing semiautomatic FAL rifles from FN in 1959, the submitted an example for evaluation, and ATF determined that it was not a machine gun. The rifle was made with a selector that could not be moved to the fully automatic position, and did not have the automatic sear required for full auto firing. This was acceptable at the time, and Browning would import 1,836 of these rifles (mostly standard configuration, but some heavy barrel and paratrooper patterns) by January 10, 1963. On that date, ATF changed its standard, and ruled the FAL as currently being imported now would be considered a machine gun subject to the NFA. In order to be acceptable now, the rifle must not be able to accept an automatic sear at all, not merely be made without one. However, ATF ruled that the previously imported guns would be grandfathered in, and remain legally owned as semiautomatic rifles. They were listed by serial number (an additional 12 guns were added in 1974 which were imported by “administrative error”), and remain exempted from the NFA to this day. For the FAL collector, these G-series rifles are desirable because they are completely authentic and original early FN production guns, without any of the design changes that would be required later for importation.

Exempt serial number list: http://www.gseriesfal.com/docpages/91…

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QotD: An Aboriginal woman’s view of Australia Day

Filed under: Australia, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

We can project all sorts of fantasies onto our Aboriginal ancestors. There is scant record of their individual exploits or characters, and very few colonial Aborigines left behind a documented account of their experiences. I could, therefore, decide that my foremothers were courageous warriors of the resistance, or mysterious keepers of ancient feminine wisdoms, or I could envision them as victims and martyrs, enduring the humiliations of colonisation with grace and dignity. These romantic fantasies would be accepted as fact, and my “truth” would be applauded. My own (arguably more plausible) vision is that my Aboriginal foremothers had the good sense to form alliances with the settlers, and that they improved their own lives and their children’s prospects as a result.

I don’t begrudge any Aboriginal person a desire to fill in the blanks in their histories with romanticism, particularly given the rewards on offer. The story of white injustice and black tragedy has become the most acceptable Aboriginal tale to tell, and is now the only perspective on Aboriginal history — despite that dearth of documented accounts — that could possibly be accepted as authentic and true. To suggest that our story is not all about victimhood is bad enough; to suggest that modernity was in any way a blessing is double-plus ungood crimethink.

[…]

Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption — along with frontier warfare and disease — rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture. In contrast, the Aboriginal men held no wealth, treated their women appallingly, and there were few taboos to prevent women from straying — and so stray they did. The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain. Modern-day Aboriginal women who mourn the loss of traditional culture have rocks in their heads. (Metaphorically, that is. Back then, it would have been literally.)

Kerryn Pholi, “Something More: An Alternative Perspective on Australia Day”, Penthouse.au, 2018-01-22.

January 25, 2020

Miscellaneous Myths: Tantalus

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 24 Jan 2020

Tantalus! The number one dude known for his eternal punishment in Hades, perhaps second only to Sisyphus

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Petition against the Trudeau government’s proposed “military-style assault rifle” ban goes over 100,000 signatures

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

There may be little point in protesting, as the Trudeau government has a track record of ignoring what Canadians want to do what it intends regardless, but you can still sign the petition here (if you do sign, remember to click the confirmation link in the email you’ll receive after signing the petition). In the Post Millennial, Sam McGriskin reports that the petition has enough confirmed signatures to be the second-largest in Canadian history:

E-petitions can be open for 30, 60, 90 or 120 days for signature based on what the petitioner prefers. The petitions get a government response within 45 days of their opening. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair is overseeing the “buyback program” which Blair estimates could cost anywhere from $400 to $600 million.

Blair’s office did not respond to request for comment from The Post Millennial. His office was asked what the minister’s response is to over 100,000 Canadians calling on the government to drop what many experts see as a completely ineffectual action to curb gun violence. Blair was also asked about fellow Liberal MP Marcus Powlowsk’s letter addressed to him that opposed the gun ban (Powlowsk has since retracted the letter) and Winnipeg Police constable calling the ban “nonsense”.

“When we seize handguns, the handguns are always almost 100% in the possession of people who have no legal right to possess them. They’re almost always stolen or illegally obtained,” said Const. Rob Carver. “I simply don’t see how as a 27-year-old veteran, how adding another layer of law will make any difference, anywhere in this country.”

In Powlowski’s letter to Blair he wrote, “Over the course of the past three months, I have heard a wide variety of views on this proposed ban. I believe it is my role to ensure that these views are brought to your attention for consideration.”

“Given that there is currently no legal definition for a ‘military-style assault rifle’ in Canada, some community members I have spoken with are skeptical that a ban based on this term would make sense as a coherent firearm policy,” the letter continued.

In a CBC interview in the summer of 2018, Blair said that most of the gun crime is committed by illegal handguns smuggled in from the U.S. and he was skeptical of a gun ban being effective in combating gun crime. His position changed drastically once he was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the public safety minister.

Variants of the AK-47

The Liberal voters in downtown Toronto and other major cities want the government to “do something” about gun crimes, but nothing the government can do is going to make much of a difference for people who are already violating multiple laws, so all they can do is make things worse for those who are already obeying the laws as they stand. In the real world, this makes no sense, but in the fantasy world of electoral politics, the government needs to be seen to be “doing something” … and this, stupid as it may be, counts as “something”.

Swedish K: The Carl Gustav m/45B and the Port Said

Filed under: Europe, History, Middle East, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Jan 2020

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During the 1930s, Sweden acquired an assortment of different submachine guns, including Bergmanns, Thompsons, and Suomis. As World War Two progressed, they decided that they really needed to standardize on a single caliber and model of gun, and requested designs from both the Carl Gustav factory and Husqvarna. The Carl Gustav design won out, and was adopted as the m/45.

It was a very simple open-bolt, tube-receiver, fixed-firing-pin design chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition. The original guns were built around Finnish Suomi magazines, both 71-round drums and 50-round “coffin” mags. After the war these were replace by a new 36-round traditional box magazine, and magazine well adapters were fitted to the guns which precluded the use of the larger mags. The new magazines were much more convenient to carry, less expensive, and more reliable.

The name “Swedish K” comes form the full designation: Kulsprutepistol m/45. The guns were used by American special operations forces in Vietnam until the Swedish government stopped export sales to the US, at which point the Navy commissioned Smith & Wesson to produce the Model 76 submachine gun (essentially a copy of the m/45). The design was also licensed by Egypt, which also licensed the AG-42 Ljungman rifle at the same time. The Egyptian copy was called the Port Said, and shows the features fo the original Swedish m/45 pattern, where the guns in Swedish service were mostly updated to the m/45B pattern.

Photo of m/45C with bayonet from: http://www.gotavapen.se/index_eng2g.htm

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Refuting the pessimism of Malthus

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Greece, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest edition of Anton Howes’ Age of Invention newsletter, he looks at the predictions of that old gloomy Gus, Thomas Malthus:

The Malthusian trap. For Malthus, as population increases exponentially and food production only linearly, a point where food supply is inadequate will inevitably be reached.
Graph by Kravietz via Wikimedia Commons.

For economies before the Industrial Revolution, population growth was an important and ever-present brake on prosperity — an observation most famously articulated by the Reverend Thomas Malthus. Writing at the end of the eighteenth century, he warned against the promises of improvement. Whereas the optimists looked at the acceleration of innovation around them and claimed infinite horizons for increasing living standards, Malthus pessimistically argued that population would always catch up. Although a new agricultural technology might briefly increase the amount of available food, the inexorability of population growth meant that it would soon be eaten up by extra mouths to feed. The population would end up larger than it was before the new technology, but with that population eventually no richer than it had been to begin with. Economic historians call this the Malthusian regime, or the Malthusian Trap.

Thomas Malthus.
Portrait by John Linnell, 1834, via Wikimedia Commons

Fortunately, Malthus’s pessimism would prove unfounded. Economy after economy has managed to escape the trap. British output had already been outpacing its population for two centuries by the time he was writing — England’s agricultural output alone had increased 171% while its population had grown 113% (not even taking into account the fact that it also increasingly relied on imported food, paid for by its other industries). And in the decades and centuries that followed, England’s output continued to shoot ahead, widening the lead. Output per capita rose and rose, to the extent that Malthus’s worries about overpopulation are now usually applied to resources other than food.

But while Malthus is famous for the theory, he wasn’t its inventor. Well before Malthus, the people who actually lived in the trap seem to have recognised its effects. Concerns about overpopulation may have led to the Garland or Flower Wars of the Aztec Empire and its neighbours: after a series of famines in the 1450s, the local states reportedly began to engage in ritual battles, with the losers captured and sacrificed to the gods. Still earlier, in ancient Greece, the young men of a settlement might be formally conscripted to go forth and colonise other islands and coastlines. They were typically banned from returning home for several years, and in at least one case slingers were posted on the shore to kill any of the colonists who tried to make a break for home. In a whole host of pre-industrial societies, “surplus” infants were often simply exposed to the elements.

By the sixteenth century, with the rise of print culture, Malthusian rationales were being clearly articulated. Here’s Richard Hakluyt writing in 1584, over two hundred years before Malthus:

    Through our long peace and seldom sickness (two singular blessings of Almighty God) we are grown more populous than ever heretofore; so that now there are of every art and science so many, that they can hardly live one by another, nay rather they are ready to eat up one another.

It’s a direct statement of the Malthusian regime in action, expressed by one of England’s most influential Elizabethan intellectuals, and written specifically for the attention of the queen. Hakluyt thanked god for the recent and unusual lack of mass death, but now worried about overpopulation leading to low wages and unemployment. And he went on to list many other effects. Hakluyt argued that the misery would lead to unrest, thievery, begging, and “other lewdness”. The prisons filled up, where the poor either “pitifully pine away, or else at length are miserably hanged.”

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