Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

January 2009

Range Report

We got to the range today just as they were opening; we wanted to finish our outing so we could get home to watch the NFC Championship Game. When we got to the range, it seemed that others had the same idea, because there were more shooters than usual for opening time. Nonetheless, we got a booth and set up for handgun practice.

We shot close to the usual number of rounds except I forgot to bring the second box of 9mm ammo; we did without them, however, since we had plenty of .38 special and shot the revolver more than usual.

two strikesWe had two anomalies – I should say “I” since Damsel’s shooting went without a flaw. One anomaly I had was a failure to feed when I was shooting Damsel’s Warthog. A little lube fixed the problem and all was normal after that. The second problem was a .45 round didn’t fire in the Glock 30. I ejected the magazine and the unspent round and saw that there was a dimple in the primer. When I reloaded the dimpled round back into the magazine, It fired normally. Damsel took a close up of the spent cartridge. You can see that the primer has two strikes on it. The .45 ammo I used in the Glock today was commercial reloads – we get a dud once in a great while.

18 Jan 2009 by Firearms Shooting

Methane on Mars

Scientists don’t yet know enough to say with certainty what the source of the Martian methane is, but this artist’s concept video depicts several possibilities. In this video, conjecture is offered for several possibilities. First, meteoric debris reacting with atmospheric particles possibly generating methane, next comet and meteor impacts creating chemical reactions resulting in methane production. Third, subsurface water, carbon dioxide and the planet’s internal heat combine to release methane, and, finally, living microbes actively producing methane as a waste product.

Whatever the process is, there is clear evidence that Mars is ‘farting’ methane.

17 Jan 2009 by Aerospace Astronomy Rocket Science

Hen and Chicks – 2009

The little eschevaria in a hanging basket in the patio has started to bloom in January. It’s a little early this year, but the temperatures here in Southern California have been warmer than normal this week, but last week, they were quite cold. It’s environmental ‘business as usual’ in California, as it has been for years. Click image 4 big.

Hen and Chicks Eschevaria

16 Jan 2009 by California Environment Home & Garden

A Chorus of AGW Skeptics

Al Gore‘s “scientific consensus” is starting to disintegrate. Statements to the effect of “the matter is already settled” are getting more and more difficult for many in the scientific community to endorse. 2008 is in the record books as overall being much cooler than the “experts” predicted.

Many who once embraced the possibility of anthropogenic global warming have recanted their positions. I’m guessing that they were in the bag for the alarmists, but now need to save their credibility when it is becoming obvious that we’re not headed into a global meltdown.

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), recently delivered a report and a speech to the Senate, where he profiled the growing dissent among the scientific community; the Senator presented a groundbreaking minority report of more than 650 scientists dissenting from climate Fears.

Below the fold is an excerpt from Inhofe’s “Consensus in Freefall” speech; go down the page to the quotations from scientists formerly “in the bag:”

Continue reading…

15 Jan 2009 by Global Warming

Rush to Ban Guns

US Representative Rush, D-ILL (should be DULL)Anti-gun Democrats just can’t wait to unleash the greatest barrage of harassment to legitimate gun ownership in the history of the US Congress. At the center of today’s anti-gun attitude is one Bobby Rush, a U.S. Representative from Illinois. He seems to be in a rush to deny gun ownership. Like Barack Obama, who once told John Lott that he didn’t think anyone should own a gun, Rush has adopted the same position and has taken the first steps toward the goal of eliminating all guns from private citizens.

According to David Codrea, of Guns Magazine, “This is nothing less than a declaration of war on American gun owners.”

World Net Daily reveals that this legislation would require that legitimate gun owners would have to comply with these ridiculous measures:

Among the more controversial provisions of the bill are requirements that all handgun owners submit to the federal government a photo, thumb print and mental heath records. Further, the bill would order the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer and owner’s address in America.

Rush thinks that just because some thug jumps on a Chicago bus and shoots and kills Blair Holt, a passenger on the bus, that ALL gun owners must be punished by having to obtain a Federal “Blair Holt” gun license.

Somebody ought to look at Bobby Rush’s mental health records.

Liberty Sphere has a run down of this and a bunch of other Second Amendment issues on the Round-Up.

14 Jan 2009 by Firearms Second Amendment Whacko Politics

Tribute Counter

A couple of days ago, our server upgraded the operating system, which managed to break some of the scripts I use for this site. It turned out to be a good thing, because I re-wrote some of the scripts using more up-to-date features. One of those features is AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript And XML which is said to be “JavaScript on Steroids” by some.

ttrib-stats.jpgI had been wanting to make the readout of the hit counter on the “Never Forget” tribute a dynamically-updated widget, so I went to work and made it happen. Now, when you look at the tribute statistics in the sidebar, you will see the counter update in (more or less) real-time as the tribute is served up to yet another website. The rate at which it increments is higher during day and evening hours in the U.S., so I presume most of the people seeing it are in the western hemisphere.

As of this posting, the counter is about ready to roll past 48 million hits – wow!

Disclaimer: if you don’t have JavaScript enabled, you will not see the counter.

13 Jan 2009 by Blogosphere Never Forget Technobabble

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