In the world of modern warriors the you have the “Ninjas” and the “Vikings”.
Ninjas like to have elegant and refined weapons. These are the guys (and gals) that like to shoot tricked and tuned AR-15’s and Glocks. They like manageable recoil from the 5.56 and 9mm cartridges. If a ninja shoots a bolt action rifle, you can bet it’s got a heavy barrel and a buttpad. Ninjas find hours of meticulous cleaning a meditative experience.
On the other hand you have Vikings. Warriors so burly that they choose weapons with little ergonomic flair, instead of adapting the weapon to them they adapt themselves to the weapon. They shoot AK’s and 1911’s. They like weapons that go BANG every time and pack a whallup at both ends. If a Viking shoots a bolt action rifle it’ll be a Mauser or Mosin, a full power battle rifle with a steel buttplate. Vikings don’t obsess about cleaning, they do it and get it done.
Now there are people who have traits of both Ninjas and Vikings. People who have the worst habits of both mistreat AR’s by never cleaning them and shooting crap ammo. People who have the best of both spend hours actually cleaning an AK, taking great care to know their weapons inside and out.
Now there is no point in arguing who is deadlier, Ninjas or Vikings. A warrior is a warrior. Sometimes the Ninja will win, sometimes the Viking will win.
So if deep in your soul there is a warrior with wild hair swinging an effective if crude axe, you are a Viking. If deep in your soul is sneaky little bastard who dresses in “tactical” black, you are a Ninja. If you dress in black, have wild hair, but deep down in your soul is a kid playing XBox, you might be a Mall Ninja.
AM, “The AK/AR difference”, American Mercenary, 2008-07-09.
February 7, 2017
QotD: The “Ninjas” and the “Vikings”
February 4, 2017
QotD: The US Army’s new pistol
It has set off the usual round of pontificating and second-guessing on forums and in blog posts as everybody asserts reasons why their own particular snowflake gun should have been picked. Expect flurries of comments about bore axis and “But plastic!” and grip angle from people who don’t shoot, except for the no doubt thousands of flawless rounds their Taurus or whatever has fired. (I’ll wager the couple of boxes they tell you it’s fired when they’re trying to sell it are a lot closer to the true round count than the thousands they claim when arguing on the internet. Logbook or GTFO, Sparky.)
Yeah, I carry a Glock. I’ve carried an M&P, and I’ll probably switch to a P320 in the next couple years when I get bored of working with Glocks. They’re pretty much interchangeable and, unlike a lot of other pistols I’ve sampled over the years, have all been largely trouble-free.
Personally, I think the MHS contest could have been as satisfactorily resolved by throwing a P320, an M&P, and a Glock 17 into a sack, spinning it around a few times, and reaching in and pulling one out. They all work fine, and if there’s a less crucial weapon in modern warfare than the pistol, it probably attaches to bayonet lugs.
Tamara Keel, “So…”, View from the porch, 2017-01-25.
February 1, 2017
Ace and the shitty tools of despair
Ace put up some shelves recently. He was not impressed with some of the tools he used:
I thought I had a drill that could drill (and drive screws) through studs. I did not. What I had was two pieces of shit which, combined together, made up a collection of shit that took up more space in my tool drawer than a single piece of shit would.
The things could not even push past the first eighth inch of drywall. The easiest part.
It’s like, “Hey, thanks Tool. Thanks for getting me past that first easy eighth inch. I’ll take it the rest of the way, now that you’ve gotten me off to such a swell start. You take a well-earned break, and get back to napping in that drawer. I’ll power through the rest of this with my forearms and my dinky little ratchet.”
I literally was just pushing on the drill to make a small starter hole for the screw, like it was a poorly-balanced nail with a pistol grip.
It’s a poor workman who blames his tools, but I think you can all agree I am a poor workman in the first place, and these really are shitty, shitty tools.
January 27, 2017
Monty Python – Coal Miner Son
Published on Apr 23, 2014
World renowned blue-collar play-wright at odds with his elitist coal-mining son.
H/T to Megan McArdle for the link.
January 26, 2017
Poor old Jeremy Corbyn’s bad time in the Commons
Guy Fawkes’ blog on Jeremy Corbyn’s latest terrible outing in the House of Commons:
Karl Marx famously remarked that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, and then as farce”. He was right. So right in fact that even his own ideological movement would be subject to the same principle. We had the famines, and the massacres, and the icepicks in the skull of the twentieth century: Marxism as tragedy. And now we have the farce, of which there is of course no finer a proponent than Jeremy Corbyn.
In this spirit, the Labour leader decided to come to PMQs today dressed in the most lurid brown suit known to man. One can only imagine the conversation in Holloway Road market:
“Morning Sir, how can we help you?”
“Oh hello there, I was wondering if you had any tailoring in the shade of human excrement? Preferably oversized too, of the sort a Uzbek goat herder would wear at a funeral? You know, a real statement piece?”
“Why you’re in luck Sir”, the merchant would say, his eyes lighting up, “we have this exquisite lounge suit right here, hewn from the very finest turd-brown Soviet polyester sent straight from Vladivostok. It’s going to set you back a grand though I’m afraid. Currency fluctuations post Brexit, you see sir, they really hit us humble artisans hard”.
Having parted with his cash Corbyn marched straight to Parliament no doubt feeling particularly buoyed by his pal Seumas’s six solid questions demanding the PM present a Brexit white paper immediately. But then, no! Disaster struck!
Up popped professional brown nose Chris Philp (formerly of the Remain campaign) to get things underway with a planted question about the need for a “government white paper laying out our vision for a global Britain”. The PM spent a few sentences name-checking other Tory Remainers who had also made such calls before calmly responding: “I can confirm that our plan will be set out in a White Paper published for the House”. This is the point at which more hip leaders would have dropped the mic or said “boom”.
January 20, 2017
Scarfolk Council announces that local prog rock band Beige will perform at the inaugural
Posting on their Google+ account from deep in the 1970s, Scarfolk Council made this announcement:
We’re proud to announce that Scarfolk’s very own prog-rock group Beige have been asked to reform & perform Space Minstrel in its entirety at Donald Trump’s inauguration tomorrow. https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2013/03/space-minstrel-by-beige-prog-rock-1978.html
January 17, 2017
January 14, 2017
“We call it diplomacy, minister”
Another brilliant bit of realpolitik from Yes, Minister, disguised as humour:
January 12, 2017
QotD: Scientific feuds
To the outside world the sheer nastiness of scientific feuds often comes as something of a surprise; politics, by contrast, is a relatively polite affair.
Matt Ridley, Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters, 1999.
December 31, 2016
QotD: Political Correctness and “Big Gay”
Well, I can’t speak for the massed ranks of conservatives, but I’m not the least “apoplectic with rage at the idea of a boy in a dress”. In what passed for a talent show in my last year at high school, me and the lads climbed into the fishnets and mini-skirts to do a truly terrible pop song and, as I generally do even in unpromising circumstances, I gave it my best. Afterwards, the ladies in attendance agreed that my legs were better than any of theirs. And they’re still pretty good, as you can see if you pre-order the Mann vs Steyn 2016 nude calendar.
Nor do I think it fair to take refuge in the old saw that conservatives are “terrified of their own sexuality”. Mine doesn’t scare me in the least, although it’s sent a date or two screaming for the exits. What “terrified” me and others about Caitlyn and her débutante’s balls was the ruthlessly enforced celebratory tone. When the Queen marks her Diamond Jubilee or the Duchess of Cambridge has a baby, you’re allowed to roll your eyes and say “God, aren’t you sick of these bloody royal parasites?” or “Who cares about one more sponger in the palace?” Even “state” media like the BBC and CBC accept that there are a wide range of views on the head of state. But if you watched the coverage of Caitlyn on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN et al you would have had no idea that there are people out there for whom this was not cause for joyous celebration. There was something not “terrifying” — not yet — but coercive and authoritarian in the uniformity of the mandatory jubilation. Even Fox News seemed to intuit that this was something that they had no choice but to cover in a life-affirming way.
I found that disturbing — because, at a stroke, everyone who matters from the Obamas to Hollywood seemed to have decided that this is one more area of discussion it’s safe to shut down, permanently. And there’s way too much of that. Look at it from your average imam’s point of view: Mike Huckabee is persona non grata because Big Gay didn’t like his dissing of Caitlyn, but when the Prophet Mo (PBUH) gets dissed Muslims are told tough, you gotta suck it up.
Mark Steyn, “The Moronization of the Republic”, SteynOnline, 2015-06-18.
December 29, 2016
QotD: Not Homeschooled
Tell me that one about how my home schooled kids aren’t going to be socialized again. I love that one. It’s a hardy perennial. Love that shite. Tell me again about how screwed my kids are because they’re not pressing meaningless buttons 24/7 on an iSlab on their Jitter stream or their FriendFace page.Tell me about how they’ll never be popular enough to be bullied if I’m not careful. They won’t even be eligible to get whooping cough.
Tell me the one about how my kids won’t be able to go on field trips to the museum if they’re not enrolled in school. I love that one, too. It’s totes adorb. It’s my favorite, except for my other favorites, which are my favorite favorites. My children never get the opportunity to be chaperoned by someone on the sex offender registry. Of course that’s better than being left at the museum like the other kid in the same story. I think. Pretty sure. Maybe the kid they left behind actually looked at something on the wall in the museum after the batteries in his iBrick ran out. Hey, could happen.
I’m with you, though; I doubt it. We all know if a school-age child’s iBinky battery runs out of electricity, they immediately lie down on the floor and die.
“Not Homeschooled”, Sippican Cottage, 2015-06-15.
December 24, 2016
Repost – Hey Kids! Did you get your paperwork in on time?
If you hurry, you can just get your Santa’s Visit Application in before the deadline tonight!
December 22, 2016
The Libertarian Holiday Gift Guide
Published on Dec 20, 2016
Don’t know what to get the libertarians on your holiday list? We’ve got you covered!
A bit of Laundry Files fanfic
If you haven’t read any of the Laundry Files novels by Charles Stross, this fanfic won’t be of much interest. On the other hand, if you have, I think you’ll enjoy it.
The Howard/O’Brien Relate Counseling Session Transcripts – Part 1
cstrossSummary:
Bob and Mo obviously have some issues, and have made a date with a relationship counselor. But there are problems …
Repost – ‘Tis the season to hate the senders of boastful holiday letters
Gregg Easterbrook receives the perfect, perfect holiday letter:
Don’t you hate boastful holidays letters about other people’s fascinating lives and perfect children? Below is one Nan and I received last week.
Dear Friends,
What a lucky break the CEO sent his personal jet to pick me up from Istanbul; there’s plenty of room, since I have the entire aircraft to myself, to take out the laptop and write our annual holiday letter. Just let me ask the attendant for a better vintage of champagne, and I’ll begin.
It’s been another utterly hectic year for Chad and I and our remarkable children, yet nurturing and horizon-expanding. It’s hard to know where the time goes. Well, a lot of it is spent in the car.
Rachel is in her senior year at Pinnacle-Upon-Hilltop Academy, and it seems just yesterday she was being pushed around in the stroller by our British nanny. Rachel placed first this fall in the state operatic arias competition. Chad was skeptical when I proposed hiring a live-in voice tutor on leave from the Lyric Opera, but it sure paid off! Rachel’s girls’ volleyball team lost in the semifinals owing to totally unfair officiating, but as I have told her, she must learn to overcome incredible hardship in life.
Now the Big Decision looms — whether to take the early admission offer from Harvard or spend a year at Julliard. Plus the whole back of her Mercedes is full of dance-company brochures as she tries to decide about the summer.
Nicholas is his same old self, juggling the karate lessons plus basketball, soccer, French horn, debate club, archeology field trips, poetry-writing classes and his volunteer work. He just got the Yondan belt, which usually requires nine years of training after the Shodan belt, but prodigies can do it faster, especially if (not that I really believe this!) they are reincarnated deities.
Modeling for Gap cuts into Nick’s schoolwork, but how could I deprive others of the chance to see him? His summer with Outward Bound in the Andes was a big thrill, especially when all the expert guides became disoriented and he had to lead the party out. But you probably read about that in the newspapers.
What can I say regarding our Emily? She’s just been reclassified as EVVSUG&T — “Extremely Very Very Super Ultra Gifted and Talented.” The preschool retained a full-time teacher solely for her, to keep her challenged. Educational institutions are not allowed to discriminate against the gifted anymore, not like when I was young.
Yesterday Rachel sold her first still-life. It was shown at one of the leading galleries without the age of the artist disclosed. The buyers were thrilled when they learned!
Then there was the arrival of our purebred owczarek nizinny puppy. He’s the little furry guy in the enclosed family holiday portrait by Annie Leibovitz. Because our family mission statement lists cultural diversity as a core value, we named him Mandela.
Chad continues to prosper and blossom. He works a few hours a day and spends the rest of the time supervising restoration of the house — National Trust for Historic Preservation rules are quite strict. Corporate denial consulting is a perfect career niche for Chad. Fortune 500 companies call him all the time. There’s a lot to deny, and Chad is good at it.
Me? Oh, I do this and that. I feel myself growing and flowering as a change agent. I yearn to empower the stakeholders. This year I was promoted to COO and invited to the White House twice, but honestly, beading in the evening means just as much to me. I was sorry I had to let Carmen go on the same day I brought home my $14.6 million bonus, but she had broken a Flora Danica platter and I caught her making a personal call.
Chad and I got away for a week for a celebration of my promotion. We rented this quaint five-star villa on the Corsican coast. Just to ourselves — we bought out all 40 rooms so it would be quiet and contemplative and we could ponder rising above materialism.
Our family looks to the New Year for rejuvenation and enrichment. Chad and I will be taking the children to Steamboat Springs over spring break, then in June I take the girls to Paris, Rome and Seville while Chad and Nicholas accompany Richard Gere to Tibet.
Then the kids are off to camps in Maine, and before we know it, we will be packing two cars to drive Rachel’s things to college. And of course I don’t count Davos or Sundance or all the routine excursions.
I hope your year has been as interesting as ours.
Love,
Jennifer, Chad, Rachel, Nicholas & Emily(The above is inspired by a satirical Christmas letter I did for The New Republic a decade ago. I figure it’s OK to recycle a joke once every 10 years.)
