THE Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited
that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally,
transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.
They say to mountains, " Be ye removèd" They say to the
lesser floods " Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd - they are not afraid
of that which is high.
Then do the hill tops shake to the summit - then is the bed
of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping
and unaware.
The rest of the poem, as well as notes on the text, sources, references, etc., at the link.
Warning: Science and math, presented with a rather heavy Ukrainian accent. Mind you, she does a good job of making some pretty esoteric science understandable to the layperson, but some might be intimidated by the very concepts. (One might be tempted to turn on closed captioning, due to her accent. It might help, but I think they used a speech-to-text app, and it gets thrown off by homophones which aren't valid, due to... her accent.)
So that's an hour and a half of in-depth discussion of solar activity, including helioseismicity, sun spots, the corona, poloidal and toroidal magnetic fields...
... the gist of which is that Dr. Zharkova says that not only is the current (imminent, actually) sun spot cycle (25) going to be even lighter than the previous one (24, just ended), but she says that we are headed into a 30+ year Grand Minimum. (A sun spot cycle is usually about 11 years long, by the way.)
No solar activity means amateur radio continues to have poor propagation on the High Frequency bands, but, like the old George Carlin routine, it also means a mini-ice age, so I wouldn't sweat the propagation. As KB6NU points out in the blog post where I learned of this presentation, satellites are a workable alternative. (Yes, hams can and do use satellites. Yes they have their own issues.)
But, hey, at least that rig will be generating some heat...
A co-worker has asked me and another co-worker for advice...
Last weekend we took her to the gun show, looked around, convinced her that she didn't want a Taurus, or a Hi-Point, or a...
We'll hit the range with her, was supposed to be this weekend but now probably next.
So, elsewhere on the Internet, in a discussion of defense training for folks in the education business, someone trotted out the hoary chestnut "Just keep a can of wasp spray on your desk!"
I didn't like that advice the first time I heard it, on the basis that spraying folks with nerve agent seemed like a bad idea. If you need a less than lethal option, OC spray or Mace, or even one of those crappy stun guns they sell everywhere, would seem like a better idea.
Why? Because the label tells you not to use in an enclosed space, or to evacuate an enclosed space before use. Because these products generally have a warning that says something like "Illegal to use in a manner inconsistent with this labeling" as part of the safety precautions. Because of the possibility of some lawyer standing up in a courtroom and reading the label of the can, and challenging any suggestion that it was "less than lethal". Since you gave and/or took advice that this was useful as a self-defense tool, the issue of liability is greater than I was comfortable with.
Mind you, if you're attacked by a gang while spraying that wasp nest in the back year, it's what you have and they have it coming, but deliberately arming yourself with a bug bomb seems questionable.
I suppose the reason that wasp spray specifically gets recommended is that it shoots what seems to be a powerful stream for a relatively long range, and the target will curl up and drop when hit. It's a (relatively) little bitty bug, hit by a stream that is powerful relative to it's size, and formulated to it's biology.
So when someone said "Wasp Spray", I mentioned that I thought it was a bad idea, and sat back with a metaphorical bowl of popcorn and waited for the experts.
The concentration of pyrethrins in a typical wasp spray isn’t all
that high, but the amount of material in the stream which hits the
insect may weigh as much as it does; even in a small concentration, the
insect will get a huge dose of the poison relative to its weight. The
distillates which serve as the carrier are selected to get past the
bug’s exoskeleton and deliver the poison very rapidly. The result is the
effect described above: the insect loses its ability to control its
muscular functions in mid-air and drops to the ground, where it rapidly
dies.
When directed at a human, I can tell you from experience this doesn’t
happen. As I said at the top, several years ago I managed to spray
myself in the face with some wasp spray as I attempted to snuff out a
large nest. I wasn’t looking at the can as I shifted my grip to get the
spray into an difficult place, and I was wearing gloves so that I
couldn’t tell where the button was pointed. Instead of hitting the nest
the spray hit my face!
I was in no way incapacitated and had no problem walking into the
house, cleaning myself off, and checking the manufacturer’s website for
first aid procedures. I did notice some tingling and my vision was a
little blurry in one eye for a bit, but that was about the extent of it.
Mr. Cunningham also links to an American Preppers Network article with a detailed discussion of the chemical make-up of wasp spray, and of the differences between OC for humans and for bears, as well as a link to a news item about a couple who tried unsuccessfully to use wasp spray to "repel boarders" during a home invasion.
Plus, this video:
So, spraying wasp spray on a news crew filming the news in a public area put them in such distress they thought it was... windshield washer fluid.
It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.
What we should stop doing in the wake of any attack from anyone is
listening to the "talking" points of academics, politicians, or
psychologists who have no real world experience in most anything let
alone contending with dangerous armed men bent of committing evil. And
instead listen to dangerous, armed men who are committed to preserving
society.
Saturday morning at the NRA Annual Meeting in Nashville this year, we attended a Shooter Self-Care Class taught by Kelley Grayson of the blog Ambulance Driver Files - A Day in the Life.
The odds are good that even a police officer who totes a gun every day will never fire a shot off of the range, let alone get shot himself or have a partner do so. The statistics are even better for lawfully armed citizens. Nevertheless, as the amount of gun handling goes up, so does the chances of someone experiencing a gunshot wound.
The responsible citizen will know how to do more than dial 911 and wait...
Now, the classes you usually hear about on the subject tend to be "Tactical Critical Casualty Care" or something of the sort, and are all about the sort of things that a SWAT Team member will need to know to provide casualty care under Dynamic Operational Conditions while Operating Operationally. The course requirements usually include a packet of QwikClot and a thousand rounds of ammunition.
Sounds like fun, but not what I need. Also, not what Kelly was teaching.
Here's the outline for the class:
Formulate a range safety plan
Discuss legally mandated reporting
Recognize and treat life-threatening injuries:
CPR/AED
Major hemorrhage control
Thoracic wounds
Recognize and treat secondary wounds:
Burns
Eye injuries
Impaled objects
Minor bleeding
After the jump, this turning into something of an uberpost, I'm just going to go into detail about a couple of things that were not in Kelly's SI article.
Via SayUncle, Publicola posts Publicola: A Few Things Volume One; in many cases, I was gonna say that, but couldn't find either the words or the time. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it...
For example:
It's Massey's Fault - House Retro Iced Tea Rub A Dub Step Mix
If a bill did not pass out of a committee, it is not the fault of
someone whose actions you disapprove of. If a law that further imposes
upon our Rights gets enacted, it is not the fault of someone whose words
you thought did not wax poetic enough. It's the fault of the damn
legislators. No one else's. Group punishment is a very old model, and
one that gunowners should not fall for. So if Person A, whose goals and
methods bear a passing resemblance to Person B, gets negative attention
somehow and is used as an excuse to deny Person B his Rights, then why
the hell don't ya blame the person that is actually responsible - the
legislator! - instead of said politicians scapegoat (Person A)?
Whatever open carrier is used as an excuse for not passing a
pro-gunowner law or for passing an anti-gunowner law, it's the
legislature to blame, not the open carrier. If you don't like his
tactics, then talk with him and try to change his mind. If that fails,
then accept that different people approach problems in a different
manner. Also accept that we ain't all in this together. I know a lot of
gunowners who'd leave me on the side of the road if they got national
reciprocity, a guaranteed low permit fee, and maybe sound suppressors
being a $5 tax and instant background check away. I know some that would
settle for far less. Whereas I want an end to all prior restraint based
gunowner control laws. No restrictions on owning or carrying anything.
So my goals are different than the goals of other gunowners. I think
this same difference is at the heart of the folks blaming other
gunowners for this or that. After all, a different method is used to get
5 yards to the 50 yard line than one used to get to the end zone that's
55 yards away. Some folks are happy on the 50. Others want the end
zone.
Blame the legislator. Or legislature. That guy with a gun yelling about
treason and his Rights being infringed - he didn't do anything to you,
other than become used as an excuse by folks who weren't really your
friends anyway (that'd be the legislators, btw). If you want to deride
him for being "not politically smart" or for "not helping" I can't stop
you. Though, I see no reason for one gunowner to turn on another if they
both want the same thing, that thing being freedom. But if you just
want the army to show up and stand there until you've negotiated like a
bunch of Scottish lords from a badly a-historic Mel Gibson flick, then
perhaps you shouldn't be so appalled when someone with less politically
savvy (and a few more vertebrae) than you have shows up, wanting to pick
a fight and maybe, just maybe win back his freedom.
Too long to be a Quote Of The Day...
My only objection is the suggestion that criticizing people for being married to counter-productive tactics is, in itself, counter-productive.
On the other hand, this same reasoning also applies to the whole "We lost, so I'll blame the NRA and SAF and GOA and JPFO and..."
We should have registered to operate "marine mobile".
The view from one of the shelters we used for Field Day. The device to the left is a bicycle repair stand used to support a vertical antenna, made of a 35' kite pole and wire. It worked pretty well for our Get On The Air Station, but eventually the wind kicked up and knocked it into the fence. The pole was cracked, but the antenna was still usable.
To the right is a Blue Sky Antenna the club bought with grant money for the city for emergency communications support. It's pretty nifty. Too bad they discontinued the model after we ordered this one...
It rained while we were setting up. The it stopped. Then it rained some more. Then it deluged. Then it let up for a but, then it really got serious and tried to drown us. Since we were local, when we got set up some of us went home to change.
We ran "2A", which means two radios, operating off mains, plus the GOTA station I mentioned above. I think we logged maybe 60 contacts, plus 10 or so for the GOTA. A few Northwest, including Canada, a few California, one or two from Nevada, Montana. One or two in the Midwest. Bunches in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina. Quite a few in Hawaii, a couple of Americans operating "DX" from Mexico...
The operator who logged that last gets teased because he's a Tech who is too busy building neat gadgets to test for General or Amateur Extra. (Need I point out that he had a Control Operator?)
Among "nifty gadgets" he brought out today, was a dipole antenna he built from electric fence tape (like this) used for horse pastures.
Worked great. I snapped a pic, I'll post it, eventually...
After the potluck dinner we tore down and packed up and I came home to a hot shower and a cold beer.
Even further winnage from Bruce Israel in comments::
I wonder if Shrodinger's cat could get out of the box by using Heisenberg and absolutely measuring his speed, resulting in him not knowing exactly where he was, and could therefore be outside the box?
