Sunday, May 27, 2007
Album Review: The Killers Sam's Town
At the risk of a fairly unqualified veering into Lucas Hendrickson territory, this is one of the first album's I've cared about in a long time, at least enough to consider writing a review.
I don't listen to the radio much, if at all. I stopped watching MTV when they stopped being a music video channel, I dumped VH1 about the same time. I mostly listen to BBC or Fox, occasionally MSNBC on XM. Should I venture into FM radio territory, we finally have a JACK-FM clone in the Longview/Tyler area and I listen to that, i.e., mostly retro. I know what I like, I don't venture out too much. I like most everything except gangsta rap and hip-hop, I find them to be overly repetitive, profane or repetitively profane in the main.
So basically, I missed The Killers' first CD, which I will now have to go buy. My music listening mainly happens in the background of TV shows, so when I heard a song in the background of a party scene in the ER episode "Photographs & Memories" a couple of months ago, I had to run over to Heard On TV, a wonderful Web 2.0 database of music heard on TV shows. There I found the infectious tune was "Read My Mind" by The Killers.
Now, I had seen The Killers once when I mistakenly watched a portion of the MTV Video Music Awards, an experience that made me thankful for the more innocent (and musically-superior, IMO) MTV of my youth. I was a bit underwhelmed. I knew vaguely that they had a new album out back then, but at that time I didn't think about zipping over to their MySpace page or their artist page at Island and listening to any of their stuff. They seemed to me to be one in a series of the "The" bands: The Fray, The Shins, The Strokes, The Vines, etc. In other words, another derivative band at whose feet the declining fortunes of the music industry is more properly lain, rather than downloaders. And since I buy my CDs and rip them myself for listening, I don't like spending $15 for nothing, or for one good song.
(Note: I have since bought CDs by The Fray and almost the whole catalog of The Shins, and they're great. Still haven't gone there for The Strokes or The Vines, if you have and you enjoy them, good for you.)
"Read My Mind" stuck in my head, though, and I figured that Hastings had to have a used CD available for Sam's Town, and I was right. In addition to "Read My Mind", the best single on the album, I found another 13 little sonic jewels in the appropriately-named jewel case.
Knowing nothing about The Killers, I didn't know that lead singer Brandon Flowers had said that Sam's Town was going to be "one of the best albums of the last 20 years", and listening to it without much in the way of expectations or foreknowledge of his statement, I actually came to the same conclusion myself. It's the first really standout album I've heard since The Joshua Tree dropped in 1986 that I know I'll still be listening to in 20 years. I can understand why this level of arrogance might have peeved the reviewer at Rolling Stone, who panned the daylights out of the disc. It still went Platnium in the US and UK, so apparently critical disdain isn't all it's cracked up to be these days.
This is a derivative album of sorts, but derivative of things that I really like, being a child of the 1980s music scene. Their first album was apparently a well-received New Wave-esque effort, and I still think there's a lot of good stuff to mine in the 1980s. The Killers were declared by one source to be "the best British band to come from the United States", and there's a lot of British influences in the album, little hints of "Madworld" by Tears for Fears in "Bling (Confessions of a King)", a lot of U2-esque vocals and minimalist guitar work on "Read My Mind", synth tracks in the background that recall Depeche Mode and Erasure. There's an obvious Springsteen influence that somehow had penetrated my perception of the album before I'd heard it, but it's there and it really sounds good. There is some Cars-esque feel to "For Reasons Unknown", and for someone who prefers most of what the 80s produced to nearly anything recorded since, that's a good thing.
The Wife noted the limitations of Brandon Flowers voice, and the limitations are on display. He can't do what Bono does, he occasionally sounds like Bruce Springsteen trying to do Bono, which isn't always good. To use the American Idol term, he sounds a little "pitchy" in spots. But the instrumentations are spectacular, and the lyrics are engaging and often clever. She listens to less music than I do, I know what she likes and I bird-dog new material for her. She loves this one as much as I do.
Highly recommended.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Jack Bauer Tally: Season 6 and Finale
Well, the two-hour final was short on both combat and drama, unless you're Mike Doyle, in which case you're also short on eyes.
To summarize, Josh Bauer was taken to an offshore oil platform secretly owned by BXJ Technologies, the front company for Phillip Bauer. This involved a fake FB subcircuit board that exploded in Mike Doyle's face, blinding him and allowing Phillip Bauer's bad guys to abscond with the kid just as Jack and Bill Buchannan drove up. Bill had been called back into unofficial and borderline-illegal service by his wife, Karen Hayes, who used Bill to spring Jack from custody and interfere with Phillip Bauer's plot. Turns out the offer to give the US the FB subcircuit board was bogus, Big Daddy was working with the Chinese all along, and only Jack knew (or rather, felt) this to be the case.
Once the doublecross was exposed, the plan became to blow the FB subcircuit board, the oil platform and anyone on the oil platform into unusable shards with an F-18 strike, leaving Jack and Bill precious little time to get onto the platform and rescue Josh. Jack opened the back of the CTU Suburban nearby and retrieved weapons, then Jack and Bill got into a nearby CTU helicopter, stole it and headed out to the platform.
With Bill flying and Jack on weapons, Jack got three kills with the MP7 he got from the back of the Suburban, and another couple of kills with the USP after landing. He rescued Josh, confronted a blown-up and burnt Cheng (who was taken to the copter as a prisoner), and left his mortally-wounded father to die on the station, making a daring leap onto the ladder dangled from the chopper by Bill. Short of the beach, Jack leapt off the ladder into the ocean and waded ashore.
Jack then made his way to Ashley Raines' side at her father's house, confronted her father while holding a silenced Beretta 92F in his face about the lack of respect he'd gotten, and eventually decided to leave Audrey in the care of her father. The season ends.
In other developments, Chloe fainted because she's exhausted, dehydrated and pregnant. She and Morris make up. Karen and Bill get to retire, the VP Noah Daniels comes to the realization that it is actually hard to be the President. No word on Lisa Miller's condition, but then, do we care? We meet Milo Pressman's brother, who tells Nadia that Milo did what he did because he loved her, then disappears after cleaning out Milo's locker.
As far as season 7 goes, there will be one in January 2008. Allegedly there is a movie in the works as well. I would imagine that the "X" and "J" in "BXJ" are potential bad guys, and it's entirely possible that Big Daddy Bauer taking a shot to the lung from his grandson didn't kill him, it just made him meaner. It's an odd year in the cycle, meaning that it's time for a domestic or other white foreign terrorist and not an Islamic one. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.
Overall, the season was not bad but was substantially less good than prior seasons, IMO. The first four hours were good, there were a couple of good episodes, but this one was a little too diffuse and the side-plots like Chloe-Morris and Nadia-Mike-Milo were just, well, dull. Total Jack Bauer-derived body count is 40 by my count, mostly pistol kills. This season, Jack killed an average of 1.6 people an hour.
Technical Note
Personal Defense Weapon
In general terms, pretty much every weapon is a personal defense weapon, but PDW in this usage refers to a NATO specification issued in 1989 for a weapon for support troops and vehicle crews that is smaller than a rifle, and penetrates armor better than a submachinegun.
The first alternate weapons intended for support troops was the United States' M1 Carbine, developed just before and in the early years of World War II. Over six million M1 Carbines were manufactured, they were popular because they were light and accurate within a few hundred yards, with low recoil. The round was the .30 Carbine, in essence a long pistol cartridge firing a 110-grain full metal jacketed bullet at just under 2000 fps. The limitation of the M1 Carbine became apparent in World War II and were magnified in Korea, namely limited stopping power. The M1 Garand was heavy and bulky but things shot by it center-of-mass tended to stay horizontal, the M1 Carbine had less success and required more hits.
The P90 by FN Herstal, a Belgian company, was the first modern, armor-piercing PDW to hit the market. It uses a 5.7x28mm round, similar in bullet diameter to the 5.56x45mm NATO round the M16 uses, but only a little over half the case length. The projectile is long and tapered, and is composed in such a way to make it tumble in tissue after penetrating armor. The rounds are highly energetic, leaving the barrel at 2,350 fps. According to Herstal, the SS190 round used by the P90 will penetrate anything less than NIJ Level III armor.
The Heckler & Koch MP7 is a PDW that fires a 4.6x30mm cartidge, an even smaller diameter than the P90, if in a longer case. It looks a lot like an updated Uzi, with a collapsible stock and a fold-down front grip, with a magazine well in the pistol grip. It's been a bit more popular in sales than the P90, being adopted by special units of the military and police around the world. Again, it's a tiny bullet designed to penetrate armor and then tumble to increase damage potential.
Both of these weapons are answers in search of a question. The armor-piercing requirement almost guarantees a tiny bullet at high velocity, unfortunately NATO can't rewrite physiology and physics as easily as it can issue a RFP. Tiny bullets don't do much damage, unless they happen to hit the brain or spine. Maybe NATO needs to issue a specification for a gun that only hits the central nervous system, that would work better.
Jack would have been better served with a garden-variety M4 in 5.56x45mm or some variant of the FN FAL in .308. There is a pistol in the 5.7x28mm caliber for sale in the US, it's called the FN Five-seveN. The armor-piercing ammo being illegal in the US, you're left with what amounts to a .22 Super-Magnum, of limited utility for self-defense. The 4.6x30mm is supposedly getting a handgun version as well, the H&K UCP. Big deal. Another mouse that roars in press releases but doesn't do very well in ballistic gelatin is not something the world needs more of, in my opinion.
I'll take an M4 any day.
The Score for the season:
Jack+Bauer 24 PDW
To summarize, Josh Bauer was taken to an offshore oil platform secretly owned by BXJ Technologies, the front company for Phillip Bauer. This involved a fake FB subcircuit board that exploded in Mike Doyle's face, blinding him and allowing Phillip Bauer's bad guys to abscond with the kid just as Jack and Bill Buchannan drove up. Bill had been called back into unofficial and borderline-illegal service by his wife, Karen Hayes, who used Bill to spring Jack from custody and interfere with Phillip Bauer's plot. Turns out the offer to give the US the FB subcircuit board was bogus, Big Daddy was working with the Chinese all along, and only Jack knew (or rather, felt) this to be the case.
Once the doublecross was exposed, the plan became to blow the FB subcircuit board, the oil platform and anyone on the oil platform into unusable shards with an F-18 strike, leaving Jack and Bill precious little time to get onto the platform and rescue Josh. Jack opened the back of the CTU Suburban nearby and retrieved weapons, then Jack and Bill got into a nearby CTU helicopter, stole it and headed out to the platform.
With Bill flying and Jack on weapons, Jack got three kills with the MP7 he got from the back of the Suburban, and another couple of kills with the USP after landing. He rescued Josh, confronted a blown-up and burnt Cheng (who was taken to the copter as a prisoner), and left his mortally-wounded father to die on the station, making a daring leap onto the ladder dangled from the chopper by Bill. Short of the beach, Jack leapt off the ladder into the ocean and waded ashore.
Jack then made his way to Ashley Raines' side at her father's house, confronted her father while holding a silenced Beretta 92F in his face about the lack of respect he'd gotten, and eventually decided to leave Audrey in the care of her father. The season ends.
In other developments, Chloe fainted because she's exhausted, dehydrated and pregnant. She and Morris make up. Karen and Bill get to retire, the VP Noah Daniels comes to the realization that it is actually hard to be the President. No word on Lisa Miller's condition, but then, do we care? We meet Milo Pressman's brother, who tells Nadia that Milo did what he did because he loved her, then disappears after cleaning out Milo's locker.
As far as season 7 goes, there will be one in January 2008. Allegedly there is a movie in the works as well. I would imagine that the "X" and "J" in "BXJ" are potential bad guys, and it's entirely possible that Big Daddy Bauer taking a shot to the lung from his grandson didn't kill him, it just made him meaner. It's an odd year in the cycle, meaning that it's time for a domestic or other white foreign terrorist and not an Islamic one. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.
Overall, the season was not bad but was substantially less good than prior seasons, IMO. The first four hours were good, there were a couple of good episodes, but this one was a little too diffuse and the side-plots like Chloe-Morris and Nadia-Mike-Milo were just, well, dull. Total Jack Bauer-derived body count is 40 by my count, mostly pistol kills. This season, Jack killed an average of 1.6 people an hour.
Technical Note
Personal Defense Weapon
In general terms, pretty much every weapon is a personal defense weapon, but PDW in this usage refers to a NATO specification issued in 1989 for a weapon for support troops and vehicle crews that is smaller than a rifle, and penetrates armor better than a submachinegun.
The first alternate weapons intended for support troops was the United States' M1 Carbine, developed just before and in the early years of World War II. Over six million M1 Carbines were manufactured, they were popular because they were light and accurate within a few hundred yards, with low recoil. The round was the .30 Carbine, in essence a long pistol cartridge firing a 110-grain full metal jacketed bullet at just under 2000 fps. The limitation of the M1 Carbine became apparent in World War II and were magnified in Korea, namely limited stopping power. The M1 Garand was heavy and bulky but things shot by it center-of-mass tended to stay horizontal, the M1 Carbine had less success and required more hits.
The P90 by FN Herstal, a Belgian company, was the first modern, armor-piercing PDW to hit the market. It uses a 5.7x28mm round, similar in bullet diameter to the 5.56x45mm NATO round the M16 uses, but only a little over half the case length. The projectile is long and tapered, and is composed in such a way to make it tumble in tissue after penetrating armor. The rounds are highly energetic, leaving the barrel at 2,350 fps. According to Herstal, the SS190 round used by the P90 will penetrate anything less than NIJ Level III armor.
The Heckler & Koch MP7 is a PDW that fires a 4.6x30mm cartidge, an even smaller diameter than the P90, if in a longer case. It looks a lot like an updated Uzi, with a collapsible stock and a fold-down front grip, with a magazine well in the pistol grip. It's been a bit more popular in sales than the P90, being adopted by special units of the military and police around the world. Again, it's a tiny bullet designed to penetrate armor and then tumble to increase damage potential.
Both of these weapons are answers in search of a question. The armor-piercing requirement almost guarantees a tiny bullet at high velocity, unfortunately NATO can't rewrite physiology and physics as easily as it can issue a RFP. Tiny bullets don't do much damage, unless they happen to hit the brain or spine. Maybe NATO needs to issue a specification for a gun that only hits the central nervous system, that would work better.
Jack would have been better served with a garden-variety M4 in 5.56x45mm or some variant of the FN FAL in .308. There is a pistol in the 5.7x28mm caliber for sale in the US, it's called the FN Five-seveN. The armor-piercing ammo being illegal in the US, you're left with what amounts to a .22 Super-Magnum, of limited utility for self-defense. The 4.6x30mm is supposedly getting a handgun version as well, the H&K UCP. Big deal. Another mouse that roars in press releases but doesn't do very well in ballistic gelatin is not something the world needs more of, in my opinion.
I'll take an M4 any day.
The Score for the season:
| Method | Score | Notes |
| Biting A Carotid | 9.0 | -1 for lack of Universal Protocol |
| Shooting Curtis | -8 | -10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage |
| Shooting guard while handcuffed | 7.0 | +2 for while handcuffed |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife) |
| Handgun | 7.0 | +2 for disarm |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor, because suppressors are cool |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for through car window |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 10.0 | +5 for called headshot |
| Neck Snap | 7.0 | Always cool. |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Length of Chain | 8.0 | Strangled Fayed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for available cover |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Assault rifle | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Assault rifle | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Strangled | 7.0 | Chief Merc, +1 for choke, +1 for neck snap |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc Driver, +1 for one-handed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for sliding entry |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc while running |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| MP-7 | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| MP-7 | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| MP-7 | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| Net | 222.0 |
Jack+Bauer 24 PDW
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Crimson Trace Lasergrips
In watching the handgun market over the last 20 years, it's been interesting to see the transition from revolvers coexisting with semiautomatics to being completely eclipsed by them. I figured there would be a window where revolvers were cheap for a while due to overproduction, but it seems I misjudged the ability of firearms makers to anticipate (or even direct) the market. Revolvers that should be cheap because of a lack of demand are now more expensive because they're practically a specialty item, apparently revolver production was scaled down in close parallel to market demand. Other than "cowboy" models for the Single-Action Shooting Society and monster handcannons like the S&W 500 that would blow most semiautomatic pistol actions into shrapnel, there isn't a wide supply of revolvers to be had without some serious looking.
The one apparent exception to this is the small-frame revolver market. The J-Frame S&W and its various competitors from Ruger, Rossi, Taurus and Charter Arms is still an icon and is still in production 57 years after its introduction in 1950 as the "Chief's Special". It's visible on the hip of every overweight detective on most any cop show you may have watched. It's popular for several very good reasons: it's small, it's reliable and it shoots a decent round, usually a .38 Special or for the truly masochistic, a .357 Magnum.
These are commonly referred to as "Ladies' Guns", because they're small and fit well into a purse, but J-Frame S&Ws are not nearly so much fun to shoot as they are to carry. The recoil is stout, and is not mitigated by much in the way of mass of the gun itself. The sights are poor, limiting accuracy. Detractors put it in the "get off me" category, guns that are useful for extremely short-range encounters. While there are revolver aficionados that can hit targets at 25-50 yards with a snub-nose revolver that kind of accuracy takes practice, and practice with a J-Frame just isn't that much fun. I'm probably middle-of-the-road in recoil tolerance, I don't really notice a 9mm, I know I've fired a .40 S&W or .45 ACP, and .44 Magnums I don't consider enjoyable in the least. Shooting a .38 Special +P like Cor-Bon's 110-grain load is on par with shooting 240-grain bullets out of a full-size Dirty Harry-style .44 Magnum in terms of felt recoil. I can only hope it hurts as much to be hit by those bullets as it does to launch them in the first place. In my opinion, it's a "Ladies' Gun" only for ladies who don't flinch at recoil and practice regularly.
I got my J-Frame almost 10 years ago, it's a Smith & Wesson 639-2, with a shrouded hammer to allow single-action or double action shooting. It's very easy to carry, I have a Galco PH158 pocket holster I got a few years ago to replace an Uncle Mike's Pocket Professional that finally wore out from being carried around. The Galco breaks up the outline of the gun well, and it stays in your pocket well when drawing.
My main complaint with the J-Frame is the uncomfortable shooting of the thing, this is due in part to the small grips of a J-Frame and my giant meathook hands. The other issue is the sights, they're a channel-and-front-blade affair that can be very hard to see. Fortunately for me, there's a solution to both of those problems.
A company called Crimson Trace has been making laser sighting devices for years, and I finally bought one of their grip sets for my 638. The first time I saw a laser-aiming device it was on an .22LR submachinegun called the American-180 on (hold onto your hats, this is old) the TV show That's Incredible! back around 1980. Since then, the cost of laser diodes has come down to the point where you can buy lasers alongside the gum and nail clippers in the checkout aisle. Crimson Trace's lasers aren't that cheap, but they are fairly precision devices that have to withstand the force of recoil without losing alignment.
The only major drawback or lasers is that they don't tell you what you're shooting, you still have to identify a target, and it's usually better to use the sights. In a high-stress situation where you know what you want to hit, the red dot of a laser will tell you about where your shot will land, and for a firearm with such miserable sights to begin with, the laser is an upgrade from the channel-and-blade.
Normally, I'm not an overly mechanical person, and disassembling a firearm other than for routine cleaning isn't something I choose to do often. But installing the Lasergrips was about as simple as it comes. Besides the grips, the package includes instructions, a couple of screws, a pair of lithium coin batteries, a pair of teeny Allen wrenches (I guess the second one is in case you lose the first, they're really small) and warning stickers to go on the side of your gun to tell folks it's got a dangerous laser in it. In the picture below, the original grip is already off the gun, there is a single screw in the grip that comes out easily.
The Naked Gun, the grips and parts kit
The first thing to do is to snap in the batteries. They fit easily into the grip panels, and I got them right side up on the first try (the instructions tell you how to do this). The diode is at the upper left part of the grip, the activation panel is visible just below at the level of the battery.
I would say 'activation stud', but those are my fingers in the picture, so the last word would be redundant. Ha.
After that comes the not-complex process of putting in two screws. One is short, one is long. One is front, one is back. Again, the instructions help.
Activation pad is just below the trigger. The grips fill in behind the trigger guard, eliminating a pinch-spot during firing
There is a tiny switch in the base of the grip to turn off the sight should you need to do so. The instructions say this won't extend battery life. There is a serial number on the butt of the gun, but I blurred it out with GIMP. Don't get nosy, that number is between me and the BATFE.
And that's it. The laser is on the right side of the gun and projects forward and slightly upward. According to the manual the sight is indexed for 30 feet, and as this picture shows, it's pretty close. Should you feel smarter than the factory, there are two tiny adjustment ports that the Allen wrenches are used to manipulate. Don't ask me which does which, I didn't mess with it. The activation pad falls right under your ring finger, and it's easy and natural to use with a normal firing grip.
Stands out a bit, don't it?
The laser aperture is the little ridge at the top of the grip. It seems like it might be blocked by some part of your hand, but it doesn't work out that way. The five rounds beside it are the nasty Cor-Bon 110gr +P .38 Special rounds that normally live in the chamber. We hates them, me precious. I guess they do what I bought them to do, but goodness they hurt. I have some 135-grain Gold Dots that I will probably replace them with on the next trip to the range.
I generally carry a Bianchi Speed Strip with six Federal Nyclad rounds for a reload, speedloaders work but they're kind of bulky. The advantage of the Nyclads is that a) they perform well IRL and b) they don't get lead all over the inside of your pocket. The lead is sealed behind plastic, making it neater. There is no easy way to reload a J-Frame with a 2" barrel, the extractor rod is too short to fully eject the fired rounds, so you have to claw them out of the way to reload. If you have to reload a J-Frame, you're probably in over your head already, but always carry spare ammo.
And finally, back in the Galco where the 638 lives.
Crimson Trace Lasergrips are an easy install on J-Frame S&W revolvers, and increase the usability and controllability of these easy to carry and conceal pistols. I'll let you know how they work at the range, in my hands a J-Frame generally is wildly inaccurate beyond conversational distances, but we'll see if a good aiming point helps.
Crimson+Trace Lasergrips J-Frame
The one apparent exception to this is the small-frame revolver market. The J-Frame S&W and its various competitors from Ruger, Rossi, Taurus and Charter Arms is still an icon and is still in production 57 years after its introduction in 1950 as the "Chief's Special". It's visible on the hip of every overweight detective on most any cop show you may have watched. It's popular for several very good reasons: it's small, it's reliable and it shoots a decent round, usually a .38 Special or for the truly masochistic, a .357 Magnum.
These are commonly referred to as "Ladies' Guns", because they're small and fit well into a purse, but J-Frame S&Ws are not nearly so much fun to shoot as they are to carry. The recoil is stout, and is not mitigated by much in the way of mass of the gun itself. The sights are poor, limiting accuracy. Detractors put it in the "get off me" category, guns that are useful for extremely short-range encounters. While there are revolver aficionados that can hit targets at 25-50 yards with a snub-nose revolver that kind of accuracy takes practice, and practice with a J-Frame just isn't that much fun. I'm probably middle-of-the-road in recoil tolerance, I don't really notice a 9mm, I know I've fired a .40 S&W or .45 ACP, and .44 Magnums I don't consider enjoyable in the least. Shooting a .38 Special +P like Cor-Bon's 110-grain load is on par with shooting 240-grain bullets out of a full-size Dirty Harry-style .44 Magnum in terms of felt recoil. I can only hope it hurts as much to be hit by those bullets as it does to launch them in the first place. In my opinion, it's a "Ladies' Gun" only for ladies who don't flinch at recoil and practice regularly.
I got my J-Frame almost 10 years ago, it's a Smith & Wesson 639-2, with a shrouded hammer to allow single-action or double action shooting. It's very easy to carry, I have a Galco PH158 pocket holster I got a few years ago to replace an Uncle Mike's Pocket Professional that finally wore out from being carried around. The Galco breaks up the outline of the gun well, and it stays in your pocket well when drawing.
My main complaint with the J-Frame is the uncomfortable shooting of the thing, this is due in part to the small grips of a J-Frame and my giant meathook hands. The other issue is the sights, they're a channel-and-front-blade affair that can be very hard to see. Fortunately for me, there's a solution to both of those problems.
A company called Crimson Trace has been making laser sighting devices for years, and I finally bought one of their grip sets for my 638. The first time I saw a laser-aiming device it was on an .22LR submachinegun called the American-180 on (hold onto your hats, this is old) the TV show That's Incredible! back around 1980. Since then, the cost of laser diodes has come down to the point where you can buy lasers alongside the gum and nail clippers in the checkout aisle. Crimson Trace's lasers aren't that cheap, but they are fairly precision devices that have to withstand the force of recoil without losing alignment.
The only major drawback or lasers is that they don't tell you what you're shooting, you still have to identify a target, and it's usually better to use the sights. In a high-stress situation where you know what you want to hit, the red dot of a laser will tell you about where your shot will land, and for a firearm with such miserable sights to begin with, the laser is an upgrade from the channel-and-blade.
Normally, I'm not an overly mechanical person, and disassembling a firearm other than for routine cleaning isn't something I choose to do often. But installing the Lasergrips was about as simple as it comes. Besides the grips, the package includes instructions, a couple of screws, a pair of lithium coin batteries, a pair of teeny Allen wrenches (I guess the second one is in case you lose the first, they're really small) and warning stickers to go on the side of your gun to tell folks it's got a dangerous laser in it. In the picture below, the original grip is already off the gun, there is a single screw in the grip that comes out easily.
The Naked Gun, the grips and parts kit
The first thing to do is to snap in the batteries. They fit easily into the grip panels, and I got them right side up on the first try (the instructions tell you how to do this). The diode is at the upper left part of the grip, the activation panel is visible just below at the level of the battery.
I would say 'activation stud', but those are my fingers in the picture, so the last word would be redundant. Ha.
After that comes the not-complex process of putting in two screws. One is short, one is long. One is front, one is back. Again, the instructions help.
Activation pad is just below the trigger. The grips fill in behind the trigger guard, eliminating a pinch-spot during firing
There is a tiny switch in the base of the grip to turn off the sight should you need to do so. The instructions say this won't extend battery life. There is a serial number on the butt of the gun, but I blurred it out with GIMP. Don't get nosy, that number is between me and the BATFE.
And that's it. The laser is on the right side of the gun and projects forward and slightly upward. According to the manual the sight is indexed for 30 feet, and as this picture shows, it's pretty close. Should you feel smarter than the factory, there are two tiny adjustment ports that the Allen wrenches are used to manipulate. Don't ask me which does which, I didn't mess with it. The activation pad falls right under your ring finger, and it's easy and natural to use with a normal firing grip.
Stands out a bit, don't it?
The laser aperture is the little ridge at the top of the grip. It seems like it might be blocked by some part of your hand, but it doesn't work out that way. The five rounds beside it are the nasty Cor-Bon 110gr +P .38 Special rounds that normally live in the chamber. We hates them, me precious. I guess they do what I bought them to do, but goodness they hurt. I have some 135-grain Gold Dots that I will probably replace them with on the next trip to the range.
I generally carry a Bianchi Speed Strip with six Federal Nyclad rounds for a reload, speedloaders work but they're kind of bulky. The advantage of the Nyclads is that a) they perform well IRL and b) they don't get lead all over the inside of your pocket. The lead is sealed behind plastic, making it neater. There is no easy way to reload a J-Frame with a 2" barrel, the extractor rod is too short to fully eject the fired rounds, so you have to claw them out of the way to reload. If you have to reload a J-Frame, you're probably in over your head already, but always carry spare ammo.
And finally, back in the Galco where the 638 lives.
Crimson Trace Lasergrips are an easy install on J-Frame S&W revolvers, and increase the usability and controllability of these easy to carry and conceal pistols. I'll let you know how they work at the range, in my hands a J-Frame generally is wildly inaccurate beyond conversational distances, but we'll see if a good aiming point helps.
Crimson+Trace Lasergrips J-Frame
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Texas Gas Tax: Right Idea, Wrong Application
Now this is just a bad idea:
The Texas House last week voted to give motorists a summer break from the state’s 20-cents-per-gallon gas tax. State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, tacked the surprise measure onto a Senate gas tax collection bill.
He said a couple driving a pickup and a car could save more than $100 over the three months.
But such a tax break would cost the state $500 million to $700 million, and some predict the Senate won’t go along with it.
Gasoline prices are high. Get used to it. There are as many middle-class people in the Middle Kingdom as there are people, total, in the United States. For the rest of our lives we'll be bidding against them for petroleum, until the Indian middle class comes online, when we'll be bidding against them and the Chinese. A tax abatement doesn't change the underlying issue, which is that there are more people chasing gasoline than there were before.
My homeboy Senator John Cornyn is quoted later in the article:
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a speech last week that Democrats and Republicans need to work on a bipartisan energy plan that would provide meaningful relief to American consumers.
“There are a lot of laws the Congress can pass — we can even repeal laws — but we can’t repeal the law of supply and demand. And the only way we’ll see these gas prices come down is to form new supply.”
He said the country has gone from 324 refineries to 132, adding that it needs to remove “some of the regulatory impediments which have made it impossible to create a new refinery in this country in the last 30 years.
Emphasis added. Actually, Senator, we could also reduce demand. Take that $500-700 million dollars and make it a yearlong sales tax rebate on cars that get 30 MPG or better on the new EPA fuel efficiency standard and you'd do more to reduce demand than building a new refinery or three will do to increase supply. The chief beneficiaries of a sales tax suspension on gasoline would be people who use the most, while the chief beneficiaries of a sales tax reduction on new cars would be people who, by their purchase decision, choose to burn less gas in the future.
Believe it or not, people, gasoline prices going higher are the only way to get people to use less gas. If we use less gas, our refinery capacity is just fine. Our dependence on foreign oil is lessened. And gas prices will come down for a longer period of time than just the summer.
I don't care particularly if gasoline prices increase, it will make alternative domestic fuels like ethanol and syngas from coal more of a possibility -- and eventually, a necessity. But a tax-free summer will just make the fall that much less fun, and a couple of Gulf hurricanes hitting production facilities will easily undo the suspension of the state gasoline sales tax.
And lest you think this is a uniquely Texan idea, two state legislators from Illinois are proposing to eliminate the state's 5% sales tax on gasoline, permanently. Connecticut lawmakers are also consdiering a temporary gasoline tax reduction. Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota recently vetoed a 5 cent per gallon increase in Minnesota's gasoline tax as part of a transportation bill. As prices increase the short-term populist solution will be to eliminate gas taxes when states are flush with cash, and state budgets are extremely healthy this year.
I'm not a big fan of taxes in general, and further raising of gasoline taxes is not something I'll get behind very quickly. Diverting money from the economy to the hands of politicians is typically neither productive nor an economically-useful endeavor. If legislators want to take some of the money they're already getting and try to use it to "fix" a problem, then they should do the long-term smart thing and not the politically-expedient thing.
Don't treat the symptom, treat the disease.
Update 5/17/2007: The folks over at Ecotality, an environmental blog I frequent have cross-posted this. Thanks, Doug!
Texas gasoline tax alternative
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Jack Bauer Tally: Hour 22
Jack begins the episode in fine form. When the bad guys take Josh his nephew away, he gets kicked in the ribs for trying to calm down his sister-in-law. Kicking Jack in the ribs is always a bad move. When Josh is escorted out, Chief Merc attempts to move the CTU employees into secure holding rooms so they can get away without being followed. Jack tells Nadia, who is by now certainly ready to beat someone down, to watch for his move. In the hallway, Jack decks one of the mercs and engages Chief Merc in hand-to-hand, finally strangling Chief Merc with his own web gear and then going for the always-effective cervical dislocation. Nice.
Nadia is wrestling with one Merc and appears to be losing, which is unsurprising since she goes about a buck-oh-five, and surprise only lasts for so long. Down the hall, Morris finally gets to vent and obtains a quality choke hold on one merc, taking him down (and fulfilling my prediction from last week). Nadia is about to be seeing the business end of a G36 when Mike Doyle shoots her attacker through the glass and the fight is over. CTU is rescued!
Jack gets back in action into the sewer, following the Chinese and Josh to their assembly point. Just as the Chinese are pulling away, Jack pops out of the hole and, one-handed, manages to kill the driver of the (moving) lead vehicle through the driver's side window, blocking in the car with Josh. The CTU team pours into the building, Jack nails another guy who doesn't know the difference between cover and concealment and, with the assistance of covering fire makes another sliding entry behind the last rearguard, getting another pistol kill.
Cheng, Josh and another Chinese Expendable make it to the roof of the building, Jack kills the expendable with a shot to the head coming up the stairs and confronts Cheng, whose gun (a Glock) has apparently been shot empty. Passing up the chance for Instant Karma, Jack offers to let Cheng live if he tells him where Josh is. Josh is stuck hanging from pipes below the walkway, and Cheng gets away as Jack is rescuing Josh.
Big Daddy Phillip Bauer is understandably disappointed that his legacy Josh hasn't been successfully kidnapped, and tells Cheng the deal is off. He appears later in the episode.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Lisa Miller loses her cool and finally bashes her traitor boyfriend with a wine bottle and later a lamp, which doesn't prevent him from strangling her. As predicted (I'm 2 for 2), Tom 'Biscuit' Lennox arrives with a Secret Service team and BoyToy uploads the files to the KGB. Crisis averted, right?
Wrong. Suvorov the Russian President knows his agent has been compromised, and the KGB tail on the guy saw the whole thing go down. The Russians are massing on the border of some Central Asian country and planning to put a smack on the Americans there with mechanized forces. Apparently they haven't gotten the data on the Sensor Fused Weapon and still think mechanized assaults have some kind of prayer, but Russians have not traditionally been casualty-averse.
At this point, Vice-President Daniels gets a phone call from Big Daddy Bauer with a deal: the FB sub-circuit board for Josh and a ticket out of the country. Willing to let one kid be kidnapped in return for averting a war, CTU gets the order and the final scene is Josh Bauer flying off in a helicopter with Jack under a pile of CTU tactical officers.
The next episode is a two-hour season finale. From the previews, there is a large explosion, and a rather roasted-looking Cheng says to Jack, "You're too late." The simple solution is to give Josh Bauer a hideout gun to kill his evil grandpa after the exchange takes place, but having lost his dad that day I'm thinking Josh's head isn't in the right place. I'll go 50/50 that Josh is actually Jack's son. They will get the circuit board back, it appears Cheng will die. As with all seasons of 24, it's how they do it that's the fun part.
Technical Notes
1. Choke Holds
Properly used, a submission "choke hold" isn't choking at all.
The proper pressure points are over carotid arteries. There are pressure sensors in the carotid wall (called baroreceptors) that read blood pressure and tell the heart to slow down if the pressure in the vessel is too high. Now, they can't tell the difference between internal pressure which would require slowing the heart, and external pressure from a properly-executed choke hold, so with pressure on the carotids the vagus nerve is stimulated to slow the heart down. Blood pressure drops, and without enough forward flow in the carotids, unconsciousness takes 10-15 seconds. Of all the ways to incapacitate someone, this is the most effective, but it does require a firm grip and optimal position. Pressure should be applied to the sides of the neck, not the front. An improperly-executed choke hold will damage the larynx and could cause asphyxiation. Ideally, get the front of their neck in the crook of your elbow, your left arm behind their head and pull back with the right arm and push forward with the left. Proper positioning is shown in the figure below.
They'll only be out for 20 seconds or so, so remember Duvall's Law Of Horror Movie Situations: Never leave an enemy alive behind you. I'm sorry for the law enforcement folks on the ground, if some bonehead tries to hijack my plane and I can reach them I'm going for the choke hold, no submission, followed a vigorous cervical dislocation or liberal application of whatever weapon they managed to smuggle. Question somebody else. If I have to fight someone open-handed in a hijack situation, only one of us is getting up.
2. Run and Gun?
I have to differ a bit with Jack making full-speed running pistol shots. I'm no pistol master, but I've seen plenty of video of people who can run-and-gun on the IPSC circuit, and if people could run and shoot one-handed like that the IPSC folks would. When it comes to pistol shooting, if Rob Leatham, Jerry Miculek or Brian Enos can't do it in real life, most likely nobody else can, either. I'd rather see Jack stop and use two hands, or go prone coming out of the hole. Some people do shoot one-handed, in Modern Technique it's usually not by choice. I'll give Jack style points, in the tally, but I'm unimpressed. They did show Jack and Doyle holstering before jumping down into the hole to the sewer, so they do show good gun handling in the series. They just are willing to sacrifice it if the shot looks cool, which bothers me a bit.
3. Sociopaths
In the episode, Phillip Bauer is referred to as a 'sociopath', and this certainly seems applicable. There is evidence for a genetic basis for sociopathy, Graeme Bauer was certainly a chip off the old sociopathic block and Jack Bauer displays some sociopathic tendencies as well.
The rules don't apply to him, he has issues with authority when it suits him. He doesn't seem to have much of a problem killing people without hesitation when needed, and he's very willing to inflict pain without much in the way of remorse. He's not risk-averse, and the prospect of physical pain really doesn't seem to bother him. If Jack is a sociopath, this may explain why being held captive and tortured for almost two years has had little effect on him, he lacks the emotional capacity to be overly disturbed by the treatment. He makes a good undercover agent because he lies easily.
He does break the mold in that he's a good planner, something that most sociopaths aren't. His attachment to his wife and to a few others is a good sign but it doesn't mean he's not a sociopath. It means he's a well-adjusted person with a sociopath's brain: little emotional response to highly disturbing activities.
The estimated prevalence of sociopathy, or more properly, Antisocial Personality Disorder, is estimated to be as high as 5.8% of males and 1.2% of females, with higher numbers in some populations (i.e., prison). Sociobiology predicts that the trait of ASPD is retained in the human genome because it's useful to have some functionally fearless people in the gene pool. If you abuse a kid with ASPD genetics, you can end up with a really dangerous person, environment is thought to be slightly more predominant in the creation of a sociopath. On the other hand, if a person with abnormally low fear levels and a willingness to do risky things is connected to his parents and peers, you end up with the kind of people who'll HALO jump into combat, become test pilots or run into burning buildings to save others.
Not that every firefighter is a sociopath, but there are some folks walking around who just don't get scared like other people, and we need them, especially if they're socially-appropriate. If there's ever a genetic test or functional MRI screening for "limbic underactivation", it wouldn't surprise me to see a bunch of otherwise nice people doing dangerous jobs showing limited emotional responses to otherwise horrible things. People can learn to under-respond, I know I have for certain situations related to work, but there are some people that are just born to do it.
So, be nice to your kids.
The Score so far:
24 Jack+Bauer choke+hold run+and+gun sociopath
Nadia is wrestling with one Merc and appears to be losing, which is unsurprising since she goes about a buck-oh-five, and surprise only lasts for so long. Down the hall, Morris finally gets to vent and obtains a quality choke hold on one merc, taking him down (and fulfilling my prediction from last week). Nadia is about to be seeing the business end of a G36 when Mike Doyle shoots her attacker through the glass and the fight is over. CTU is rescued!
Jack gets back in action into the sewer, following the Chinese and Josh to their assembly point. Just as the Chinese are pulling away, Jack pops out of the hole and, one-handed, manages to kill the driver of the (moving) lead vehicle through the driver's side window, blocking in the car with Josh. The CTU team pours into the building, Jack nails another guy who doesn't know the difference between cover and concealment and, with the assistance of covering fire makes another sliding entry behind the last rearguard, getting another pistol kill.
Cheng, Josh and another Chinese Expendable make it to the roof of the building, Jack kills the expendable with a shot to the head coming up the stairs and confronts Cheng, whose gun (a Glock) has apparently been shot empty. Passing up the chance for Instant Karma, Jack offers to let Cheng live if he tells him where Josh is. Josh is stuck hanging from pipes below the walkway, and Cheng gets away as Jack is rescuing Josh.
Big Daddy Phillip Bauer is understandably disappointed that his legacy Josh hasn't been successfully kidnapped, and tells Cheng the deal is off. He appears later in the episode.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Lisa Miller loses her cool and finally bashes her traitor boyfriend with a wine bottle and later a lamp, which doesn't prevent him from strangling her. As predicted (I'm 2 for 2), Tom 'Biscuit' Lennox arrives with a Secret Service team and BoyToy uploads the files to the KGB. Crisis averted, right?
Wrong. Suvorov the Russian President knows his agent has been compromised, and the KGB tail on the guy saw the whole thing go down. The Russians are massing on the border of some Central Asian country and planning to put a smack on the Americans there with mechanized forces. Apparently they haven't gotten the data on the Sensor Fused Weapon and still think mechanized assaults have some kind of prayer, but Russians have not traditionally been casualty-averse.
At this point, Vice-President Daniels gets a phone call from Big Daddy Bauer with a deal: the FB sub-circuit board for Josh and a ticket out of the country. Willing to let one kid be kidnapped in return for averting a war, CTU gets the order and the final scene is Josh Bauer flying off in a helicopter with Jack under a pile of CTU tactical officers.
The next episode is a two-hour season finale. From the previews, there is a large explosion, and a rather roasted-looking Cheng says to Jack, "You're too late." The simple solution is to give Josh Bauer a hideout gun to kill his evil grandpa after the exchange takes place, but having lost his dad that day I'm thinking Josh's head isn't in the right place. I'll go 50/50 that Josh is actually Jack's son. They will get the circuit board back, it appears Cheng will die. As with all seasons of 24, it's how they do it that's the fun part.
Technical Notes
1. Choke Holds
Properly used, a submission "choke hold" isn't choking at all.
The proper pressure points are over carotid arteries. There are pressure sensors in the carotid wall (called baroreceptors) that read blood pressure and tell the heart to slow down if the pressure in the vessel is too high. Now, they can't tell the difference between internal pressure which would require slowing the heart, and external pressure from a properly-executed choke hold, so with pressure on the carotids the vagus nerve is stimulated to slow the heart down. Blood pressure drops, and without enough forward flow in the carotids, unconsciousness takes 10-15 seconds. Of all the ways to incapacitate someone, this is the most effective, but it does require a firm grip and optimal position. Pressure should be applied to the sides of the neck, not the front. An improperly-executed choke hold will damage the larynx and could cause asphyxiation. Ideally, get the front of their neck in the crook of your elbow, your left arm behind their head and pull back with the right arm and push forward with the left. Proper positioning is shown in the figure below.
They'll only be out for 20 seconds or so, so remember Duvall's Law Of Horror Movie Situations: Never leave an enemy alive behind you. I'm sorry for the law enforcement folks on the ground, if some bonehead tries to hijack my plane and I can reach them I'm going for the choke hold, no submission, followed a vigorous cervical dislocation or liberal application of whatever weapon they managed to smuggle. Question somebody else. If I have to fight someone open-handed in a hijack situation, only one of us is getting up.
2. Run and Gun?
I have to differ a bit with Jack making full-speed running pistol shots. I'm no pistol master, but I've seen plenty of video of people who can run-and-gun on the IPSC circuit, and if people could run and shoot one-handed like that the IPSC folks would. When it comes to pistol shooting, if Rob Leatham, Jerry Miculek or Brian Enos can't do it in real life, most likely nobody else can, either. I'd rather see Jack stop and use two hands, or go prone coming out of the hole. Some people do shoot one-handed, in Modern Technique it's usually not by choice. I'll give Jack style points, in the tally, but I'm unimpressed. They did show Jack and Doyle holstering before jumping down into the hole to the sewer, so they do show good gun handling in the series. They just are willing to sacrifice it if the shot looks cool, which bothers me a bit.
3. Sociopaths
In the episode, Phillip Bauer is referred to as a 'sociopath', and this certainly seems applicable. There is evidence for a genetic basis for sociopathy, Graeme Bauer was certainly a chip off the old sociopathic block and Jack Bauer displays some sociopathic tendencies as well.
The rules don't apply to him, he has issues with authority when it suits him. He doesn't seem to have much of a problem killing people without hesitation when needed, and he's very willing to inflict pain without much in the way of remorse. He's not risk-averse, and the prospect of physical pain really doesn't seem to bother him. If Jack is a sociopath, this may explain why being held captive and tortured for almost two years has had little effect on him, he lacks the emotional capacity to be overly disturbed by the treatment. He makes a good undercover agent because he lies easily.
He does break the mold in that he's a good planner, something that most sociopaths aren't. His attachment to his wife and to a few others is a good sign but it doesn't mean he's not a sociopath. It means he's a well-adjusted person with a sociopath's brain: little emotional response to highly disturbing activities.
The estimated prevalence of sociopathy, or more properly, Antisocial Personality Disorder, is estimated to be as high as 5.8% of males and 1.2% of females, with higher numbers in some populations (i.e., prison). Sociobiology predicts that the trait of ASPD is retained in the human genome because it's useful to have some functionally fearless people in the gene pool. If you abuse a kid with ASPD genetics, you can end up with a really dangerous person, environment is thought to be slightly more predominant in the creation of a sociopath. On the other hand, if a person with abnormally low fear levels and a willingness to do risky things is connected to his parents and peers, you end up with the kind of people who'll HALO jump into combat, become test pilots or run into burning buildings to save others.
Not that every firefighter is a sociopath, but there are some folks walking around who just don't get scared like other people, and we need them, especially if they're socially-appropriate. If there's ever a genetic test or functional MRI screening for "limbic underactivation", it wouldn't surprise me to see a bunch of otherwise nice people doing dangerous jobs showing limited emotional responses to otherwise horrible things. People can learn to under-respond, I know I have for certain situations related to work, but there are some people that are just born to do it.
So, be nice to your kids.
The Score so far:
| Method | Score | Notes |
| Biting A Carotid | 9.0 | -1 for lack of Universal Protocol |
| Shooting Curtis | -8 | -10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage |
| Shooting guard while handcuffed | 7.0 | +2 for while handcuffed |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife) |
| Handgun | 7.0 | +2 for disarm |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor, because suppressors are cool |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for through car window |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 10.0 | +5 for called headshot |
| Neck Snap | 7.0 | Always cool. |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Length of Chain | 8.0 | Strangled Fayed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for available cover |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Assault rifle | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Assault rifle | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Strangled | 7.0 | Chief Merc, +1 for choke, +1 for neck snap |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc Driver, +1 for one-handed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for sliding entry |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc while running |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| Net | 197.0 |
24 Jack+Bauer choke+hold run+and+gun sociopath
Don't Mess With Fred
Fred Thompson is the best candidate not running for President (yet).
This is obvious, because the yappy-poodle darling of the left, Michael Moore, put down his donut and ventured into the unaccustomed sunlight to pen this letter to Fred, calling him out on the subject of healthcare and Thompson's criticism of Michael Moore's publicity stunt of taking Ground Zero veterans to Cuba for treatment. Moore is under investigation by the US Treasury Department for possible violation of the travel ban to Cuba.
Apparently Mr. Moore is now an expert in healthcare, and in a typically winding, insulting and insinuating style he criticized Thompson's positions on healthcare relative to his, and challenged him to a debate.
Within the day we get Fred's response:
Yowch. Michael's not the only one with experience in the media. This is a Reaganesque slapdown, in 38 seconds, on the Internet and available in less time than it took Michael to write his letter. Keep those challenges coming, Scruffy, Fred's got a whole sack of 'Shhh!' with your name on it.
We need this guy to run. Now.
Fred+Thompson Michael+Moore slapdown
This is obvious, because the yappy-poodle darling of the left, Michael Moore, put down his donut and ventured into the unaccustomed sunlight to pen this letter to Fred, calling him out on the subject of healthcare and Thompson's criticism of Michael Moore's publicity stunt of taking Ground Zero veterans to Cuba for treatment. Moore is under investigation by the US Treasury Department for possible violation of the travel ban to Cuba.
Apparently Mr. Moore is now an expert in healthcare, and in a typically winding, insulting and insinuating style he criticized Thompson's positions on healthcare relative to his, and challenged him to a debate.
Within the day we get Fred's response:
Yowch. Michael's not the only one with experience in the media. This is a Reaganesque slapdown, in 38 seconds, on the Internet and available in less time than it took Michael to write his letter. Keep those challenges coming, Scruffy, Fred's got a whole sack of 'Shhh!' with your name on it.
We need this guy to run. Now.
Fred+Thompson Michael+Moore slapdown
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Fairness Doctrine
Dad and I are co-teaching a Wednesday night Bible study out of one of Max Lucado's books, The Great House of God. It's an examination of our relationship with God, using the Lord's Prayer as text and the metaphor of a house to examine different aspects of God.
Dad's part a couple of weeks ago was on the phrase "Hallowed be thy name". The gist of the lesson was respect for God, and being reverent. The text he used was the Book of Job, where Job makes the unfortunate mistake of asking questions of God at a time when God is prepared to answer. A humbling experience, as it turns out.
There's a lot about the Book of Job that "isn't fair". All his children die, his life's work is destroyed, all he's left with is a fairly unhelpful wife and three friends who are sure that Job brought the destruction on himself. I'm not sure we're far beyond Job's friends, many times as Western-educated people born of the Enlightnement and a rational worldview we assume a cause if an effect is noted. Even spiritually, it's hard for us to understand that bad things do happen to good people. Innocent children get cancer or have rotten parents, sometimes good parents die in car crashes or accidental drug overdoses or mysterious, lethal illnesses. So many unfair things seem to happen, at least they seem unfair to us.
This is such a common complaint with the people I discuss things with on the Internet. There is a burning desire to "make things fair", and what's interesting is how mutable the concept of 'fair' is depending on your position. Is fairness of outcome more important, or fairness of opportunity? There's one person who seems like a very committed 'social justice' Christian, and I can't help but marvel at what this good-hearted person considers fairness. As if it's a Godly requirement to support the increase of government-issued social benefits, rather than an individual responsibility to tend to the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the poor. I'm pretty sure their heart is in the right place, but it's wrong in my opinion to equate justice with fairness, and to consider that making the world fair through the support of one political opinion or another is the same as seeking God's Justice. The social Darwinists of the right don't come across much better but then most of them don't claim a moral imperative from God for their parsimony, either.
Another complaint of the left is that it's not fair that Westerners are so wealthy and those in the Third World so poor. An apparent lack of fairness in terms of equal distribution implies that the rules haven't been followed -- if it's not fair, someone must have cheated. And even if it's not the present generation that has cheated, all the inequity and unfairness in the world is pretty much due to white people exploiting other people. If fairness is your measuring stick, then yes, the world is unfair. And if the world is unfair, since everything should be fair (everybody just knows this, though there's little evidence for it), the search begins for the guilty party and the reparations are totalled up and an indigant bill submitted.
This concept of fairness is rather deeply ingrained, from early childhood. And for people that are determined to seek fairness in all things rather than God's mercy and justice, it's pretty easy to follow the Fair Fairy well off the straight and narrow. Because 'fair' is subjective, and flexible. For instance, it's fair for Al Gore to emit more carbon than some entire African towns because he's educating the rest of us, even though it's not fair for the average American to emit as much CO2 as we do. Al gets a pass, because...well, just because. Suddenly what is cut-and-dried fair is now a two-tier system of fairness: one for you enviro-sinners and one for a guy with a slide show and an Oscar. Some animals are more equal than others, and "fairness" is now no more of a guideline than any other, yet we sometimes hold to it like DiCaprio clinging to the door at the end of Titanic.
And so it got me thinking about fairness, and whether we can ever achieve fairness. I really don't think so, because fairness, despite its appeal to the objective, is inherently subjective. If you don't believe me, hang out with some five year-olds. If you want to see a discussion of fairness in action, give a group of them an unequal amount of some goody, and you'll get an immediate discussion of fairness. Scratch a kid and you'll find a lawyer underneath. Fairness is an unachievable externality, the only fairness we can hope to achieve on our own in this life is within ourselves, in the way we deal with others, and between our own ears. Even that requires constant evaluation of our motives and a careful ear toward our conscience. I certainly fail in this regard on a regular basis, and I'd be surprised if most of us don't manage to meet even our own definition of 'fairness' from time to time.
When it comes to Job, who had probably the best claim in the Bible to being treated unfairly, God is right there with the answer. God utterly destroys Job's claim of unfairness by pointing out how much Job doesn't know, how little he understands, Job's lack of divine perspective. Job to his credit, admits his mistake and shuts his mouth in the face of God's superior knowledge, and in faith with God's Justice (and more importantly at that particular time, God's Mercy). Job is a man of God, and manages to silence his inner five year-old. But the imperative to fairness runs deep, and it's hard to squelch. Some people in our society don't even try to stop it, it's a way of living for them. "That's Not Fair" is such a common rallying cry, and establishing fairness is justification for many things people otherwise might not do without the tug of making things fair. Selfishness is always present, fairness turbocharges selfishness by providing justification.
As Dad was discussing the difference between our fairness and God's justice, it got me thinking about The Judgement, the division between the faithful and the faithless. God divides the people, and the fact that God's been watching is a surprise to both groups. The sheep on the right hand, headed for Heaven and Eternal Life with God are just as surprised as the goats on the left, headed for Eternal separation. Both of them say, "When did we serve you, Lord?" and the answer is almost word-for-word the same to each. Equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome. The decision is God's, made by his divine sense of justice and mercy.
That got me wondering about the Last Battle from Revelation, when Satan's forces and God's collide, and Satan eventually loses. Who is going to pick up a weapon and fight the God of the Universe alongside Satan? And I finally got the answer: people who, in the face of God's justice, will say, "That's Not Fair!" The concept of fairness, misused, is the key that unlocks selfishness instead of Godliness, self-righteousness instead of God's righteousness. Fairness is mutable, and mutability is a wonderful opportunity for The Deceiver to slip in and provide ultimately unhelpful suggestions.
This of course presupposes that something of our lives here accompanies us to the afterlife, and while I have little in the way of Biblical reference to support this, the story of Lazarus and the poor man suggests that maybe there is. I believe this life is an opportunity to get ready for the next, to bend and shape our souls into the kind of people that are ready to live in their Father's House. Not that salvation is to be earned, nobody can do that, but that as we grow closer to God and understand more of what His nature is, we'll be ever more at home in the next environment. If what accompanies you into the afterlife is a belief in fairness without a sense of God, a demand for fairness that supercedes the knowledge of your place relative to God's that Job understands at the end of the book, then I can certainly see someone committed to fairness trying to lock horns with God's justice, and being mad enough to fight about it.
Fairness is overrated. As a guiding force for public policy or personal living, it's not reliable.
I'd much rather have mercy.
Dad's part a couple of weeks ago was on the phrase "Hallowed be thy name". The gist of the lesson was respect for God, and being reverent. The text he used was the Book of Job, where Job makes the unfortunate mistake of asking questions of God at a time when God is prepared to answer. A humbling experience, as it turns out.
There's a lot about the Book of Job that "isn't fair". All his children die, his life's work is destroyed, all he's left with is a fairly unhelpful wife and three friends who are sure that Job brought the destruction on himself. I'm not sure we're far beyond Job's friends, many times as Western-educated people born of the Enlightnement and a rational worldview we assume a cause if an effect is noted. Even spiritually, it's hard for us to understand that bad things do happen to good people. Innocent children get cancer or have rotten parents, sometimes good parents die in car crashes or accidental drug overdoses or mysterious, lethal illnesses. So many unfair things seem to happen, at least they seem unfair to us.
This is such a common complaint with the people I discuss things with on the Internet. There is a burning desire to "make things fair", and what's interesting is how mutable the concept of 'fair' is depending on your position. Is fairness of outcome more important, or fairness of opportunity? There's one person who seems like a very committed 'social justice' Christian, and I can't help but marvel at what this good-hearted person considers fairness. As if it's a Godly requirement to support the increase of government-issued social benefits, rather than an individual responsibility to tend to the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the poor. I'm pretty sure their heart is in the right place, but it's wrong in my opinion to equate justice with fairness, and to consider that making the world fair through the support of one political opinion or another is the same as seeking God's Justice. The social Darwinists of the right don't come across much better but then most of them don't claim a moral imperative from God for their parsimony, either.
Another complaint of the left is that it's not fair that Westerners are so wealthy and those in the Third World so poor. An apparent lack of fairness in terms of equal distribution implies that the rules haven't been followed -- if it's not fair, someone must have cheated. And even if it's not the present generation that has cheated, all the inequity and unfairness in the world is pretty much due to white people exploiting other people. If fairness is your measuring stick, then yes, the world is unfair. And if the world is unfair, since everything should be fair (everybody just knows this, though there's little evidence for it), the search begins for the guilty party and the reparations are totalled up and an indigant bill submitted.
This concept of fairness is rather deeply ingrained, from early childhood. And for people that are determined to seek fairness in all things rather than God's mercy and justice, it's pretty easy to follow the Fair Fairy well off the straight and narrow. Because 'fair' is subjective, and flexible. For instance, it's fair for Al Gore to emit more carbon than some entire African towns because he's educating the rest of us, even though it's not fair for the average American to emit as much CO2 as we do. Al gets a pass, because...well, just because. Suddenly what is cut-and-dried fair is now a two-tier system of fairness: one for you enviro-sinners and one for a guy with a slide show and an Oscar. Some animals are more equal than others, and "fairness" is now no more of a guideline than any other, yet we sometimes hold to it like DiCaprio clinging to the door at the end of Titanic.
And so it got me thinking about fairness, and whether we can ever achieve fairness. I really don't think so, because fairness, despite its appeal to the objective, is inherently subjective. If you don't believe me, hang out with some five year-olds. If you want to see a discussion of fairness in action, give a group of them an unequal amount of some goody, and you'll get an immediate discussion of fairness. Scratch a kid and you'll find a lawyer underneath. Fairness is an unachievable externality, the only fairness we can hope to achieve on our own in this life is within ourselves, in the way we deal with others, and between our own ears. Even that requires constant evaluation of our motives and a careful ear toward our conscience. I certainly fail in this regard on a regular basis, and I'd be surprised if most of us don't manage to meet even our own definition of 'fairness' from time to time.
When it comes to Job, who had probably the best claim in the Bible to being treated unfairly, God is right there with the answer. God utterly destroys Job's claim of unfairness by pointing out how much Job doesn't know, how little he understands, Job's lack of divine perspective. Job to his credit, admits his mistake and shuts his mouth in the face of God's superior knowledge, and in faith with God's Justice (and more importantly at that particular time, God's Mercy). Job is a man of God, and manages to silence his inner five year-old. But the imperative to fairness runs deep, and it's hard to squelch. Some people in our society don't even try to stop it, it's a way of living for them. "That's Not Fair" is such a common rallying cry, and establishing fairness is justification for many things people otherwise might not do without the tug of making things fair. Selfishness is always present, fairness turbocharges selfishness by providing justification.
As Dad was discussing the difference between our fairness and God's justice, it got me thinking about The Judgement, the division between the faithful and the faithless. God divides the people, and the fact that God's been watching is a surprise to both groups. The sheep on the right hand, headed for Heaven and Eternal Life with God are just as surprised as the goats on the left, headed for Eternal separation. Both of them say, "When did we serve you, Lord?" and the answer is almost word-for-word the same to each. Equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome. The decision is God's, made by his divine sense of justice and mercy.
That got me wondering about the Last Battle from Revelation, when Satan's forces and God's collide, and Satan eventually loses. Who is going to pick up a weapon and fight the God of the Universe alongside Satan? And I finally got the answer: people who, in the face of God's justice, will say, "That's Not Fair!" The concept of fairness, misused, is the key that unlocks selfishness instead of Godliness, self-righteousness instead of God's righteousness. Fairness is mutable, and mutability is a wonderful opportunity for The Deceiver to slip in and provide ultimately unhelpful suggestions.
This of course presupposes that something of our lives here accompanies us to the afterlife, and while I have little in the way of Biblical reference to support this, the story of Lazarus and the poor man suggests that maybe there is. I believe this life is an opportunity to get ready for the next, to bend and shape our souls into the kind of people that are ready to live in their Father's House. Not that salvation is to be earned, nobody can do that, but that as we grow closer to God and understand more of what His nature is, we'll be ever more at home in the next environment. If what accompanies you into the afterlife is a belief in fairness without a sense of God, a demand for fairness that supercedes the knowledge of your place relative to God's that Job understands at the end of the book, then I can certainly see someone committed to fairness trying to lock horns with God's justice, and being mad enough to fight about it.
Fairness is overrated. As a guiding force for public policy or personal living, it's not reliable.
I'd much rather have mercy.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Jack Bauer Tally: Hour 21
Now this is what I'm talkin' bout.
Jack's efforts to help resolve the FB sub-circuit board mess (we still don't know what "FB Sub-Circuit Board" stands for) are all for naught, he's sidelined by an otherwise sympathetic Nadia, who's waiting for her replacement from the oft-mentioned but never-seen District Office. Mike Doyle is suiting up a bunch of expendables (you can tell by their dark navy CTU Tactical uniforms) for a raid on the Bloomfield Chemical plant, where Audrey was held.
Skank-In-Chief Lisa Miller gets told to go back to her traitor lobbyist (redundant, I know) boy-toy to pass back information to the Russians that the FB sub-circuit board is secure. She gets a magic handbag with a camera that she just so happens to position so that she can be seen being disrobed and ravished by said boy-toy in the bedroom. She is understandably nervous, as is The Biscuit, who cares less about Lisa's naughty bits and more about the lobbyist uploading the digital bits of fake memos stored on Lisa's PDA about the crisis being over to his KGB handlers. No resolution on this count this week.
Being that Jack is cooling his heels and the tactical teams are en route to where they're just sure Cheng is located, of course Cheng and his mercenaries are planning an assault somewhere else. Jack Bauer abhors a vacuum, so the intended target of the mercenaries is of course CTU. The poorly-shaven Chinese hacker dude from last week shuts down all of CTUs systems and the baddies emerge from the sewer, spreading mayhem. Milo Pressman, (who looks remarkably like the son of the parking lot attendant who stole the Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) bravely identifies himself as the station chief, and gets capped in the head for his troubles. It saves Mike Doyle the trouble of doing it for himself to break the Nadia/Doyle/Milo triangle. Who says being a systems analyst isn't dangerous?
Jack of course knows the place is under attack immediately and when the security guard hesitates after opening the door he gets shot for his troubles. Jack deftly uses the dead body (did we really know he was dead?) as a shield, picking up the guard's pistol and getting fatal hits on the assault rifle-wielding merc while lying on his side. He picks up the pistol (a Beretta PX4, if my eyes don't deceive me), reloads, sprays some shots down the hall to give himself cover and moves out. He gets another couple of kills with the PX4 and manages to snag one of the G36Cs the bad guys are using.
Grame Bauer's recently-ex wife and Jack's torch-carrying ex-girlfriend, Heidi Petrelli from Heroes and her son who looks suspiciously like Jack are in a rest area, having been debriefed. The bad guys break in and grab the boy, who is apparently their target. Jack takes them out with two precise three-round bursts and away they go, walking through the endless maze of CTU corridors looking for an escape. The find an air vent with a big nasty torso-slicing fan, which Jack jams with the rifle. The boy makes it into the vent, then the bad guys are on them. Jack shoots his pistol empty (see a pattern), and unable to retrieve the rifle, surrenders. Heidi Petrelli and Jack are marched back down to the control room where everyone else is sitting morosely around the cooling body of Milo Pressman.
The kid comes back out of the shafts when Chief Mercenary promises to shoot his mom. Seeing as Chief Mercenary has already used his Glock 18 (the machine-pistol version) to kill once in the last six or seven minutes, this isn't a hollow threat.
As the episode ends, we find out that the guy fixing the FB sub-circuit board is none other than Big Daddy Bauer, and kidnapping his grandson is part of the plan, along with a relocation to China, safely away from the treason charges and the Avenging Angel Of Pistol Caliber Justice, i.e., Jack.
Previews show Lisa Miller's boyfriend figuring out he's been played. I predict a tactical Biscuit-raid to save her. Morris will show he's got a pair and make up with Chloe, I estimate his chances of survival to the end of the season at 2 out of 3, though with another wound. Jack will kill everybody, including his Dad. Heidi Petrilli and the kid will survive.
Technical Note:
The G36C, or Compact, is a shortened version of the Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle. The G36 is a .223 caliber assault rifle, it differs from the AR-15/M-16 in that is uses an operating rod to push the bolt back and reload the rifle after firing. The AR-15 series uses direct gas impingement to push the bolt back, which improves accuracy but adds fouling. The G36 body is almost all plastic, the G36C has a shorter barrel for, well, walking around in sewers, for example, and other indoor overwhelming firepower needs. It's a well-regarded weapon, though you wouldn't want to use the C-version for shots over 150-200m. The short barrel and resultant slower speed of the projectile mean there is less terminal damage, the shortened M4 version of the M16 has reduced lethality beyond 75m, according to Martin Fackler, the demigod of projectile injury.
The Glock 18 is a basically useless modification of an already-great firearm, the 9mm Glock 17. The 18 model is modified to fire in fully-automatic or semi-automatic based on the position of a switch on the slide, visible in the picture above. Chief Mercenary's Glock had a stainless slide, but it's the same gun.
The problem with the Glock 18, and most other machine-pistols, is that the moving mass of the slide is so light that the cyclic rate (rate of fire) is unbelievably high, around 1200 rounds per minute, or 20 rounds a second. This will empty a standard Glock 17 magazine in a little under a second. Even the extended 33-round mags made for the Glock 18 only give you a little more than 1.5 seconds of wildly inaccurate firing.
This is a video of this borderline-useless pistol in action:
Note the references to The Matrix. It's about the only place you can use a Glock 18 with any effectiveness. People skilled in firearms usage train for weeks and months to be accurate with a fully-automatic two-handed weapon like the MP-5, nobody is truly accurate with a full-auto pistol like a Glock 18. There are only a few in private hands in the US. There is a conversion device that replaces parts on the back of the slide and can turn pretty much any Glock into a fully-automatic pistol, but it's a) highly-illegal and b) turns a useful and reasonably accurate semi-automatic pistol into a useless and inaccurate fully-automatic pistol. If I want to see Fort Leavenworth, I'll take the visitor's tour, thanks.
Accurate fire is all that counts. Pros shoot semi-auto and hit their targets.
Jack gets five kills this week, three pistol and two assault rifle. An extra point to the assault rifle kills for three-shot bursts, that's good trigger control.
The Score so far:
Jack+Bauer 24 Glock+18 G36
Jack's efforts to help resolve the FB sub-circuit board mess (we still don't know what "FB Sub-Circuit Board" stands for) are all for naught, he's sidelined by an otherwise sympathetic Nadia, who's waiting for her replacement from the oft-mentioned but never-seen District Office. Mike Doyle is suiting up a bunch of expendables (you can tell by their dark navy CTU Tactical uniforms) for a raid on the Bloomfield Chemical plant, where Audrey was held.
Skank-In-Chief Lisa Miller gets told to go back to her traitor lobbyist (redundant, I know) boy-toy to pass back information to the Russians that the FB sub-circuit board is secure. She gets a magic handbag with a camera that she just so happens to position so that she can be seen being disrobed and ravished by said boy-toy in the bedroom. She is understandably nervous, as is The Biscuit, who cares less about Lisa's naughty bits and more about the lobbyist uploading the digital bits of fake memos stored on Lisa's PDA about the crisis being over to his KGB handlers. No resolution on this count this week.
Being that Jack is cooling his heels and the tactical teams are en route to where they're just sure Cheng is located, of course Cheng and his mercenaries are planning an assault somewhere else. Jack Bauer abhors a vacuum, so the intended target of the mercenaries is of course CTU. The poorly-shaven Chinese hacker dude from last week shuts down all of CTUs systems and the baddies emerge from the sewer, spreading mayhem. Milo Pressman, (who looks remarkably like the son of the parking lot attendant who stole the Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) bravely identifies himself as the station chief, and gets capped in the head for his troubles. It saves Mike Doyle the trouble of doing it for himself to break the Nadia/Doyle/Milo triangle. Who says being a systems analyst isn't dangerous?
Jack of course knows the place is under attack immediately and when the security guard hesitates after opening the door he gets shot for his troubles. Jack deftly uses the dead body (did we really know he was dead?) as a shield, picking up the guard's pistol and getting fatal hits on the assault rifle-wielding merc while lying on his side. He picks up the pistol (a Beretta PX4, if my eyes don't deceive me), reloads, sprays some shots down the hall to give himself cover and moves out. He gets another couple of kills with the PX4 and manages to snag one of the G36Cs the bad guys are using.
Grame Bauer's recently-ex wife and Jack's torch-carrying ex-girlfriend, Heidi Petrelli from Heroes and her son who looks suspiciously like Jack are in a rest area, having been debriefed. The bad guys break in and grab the boy, who is apparently their target. Jack takes them out with two precise three-round bursts and away they go, walking through the endless maze of CTU corridors looking for an escape. The find an air vent with a big nasty torso-slicing fan, which Jack jams with the rifle. The boy makes it into the vent, then the bad guys are on them. Jack shoots his pistol empty (see a pattern), and unable to retrieve the rifle, surrenders. Heidi Petrelli and Jack are marched back down to the control room where everyone else is sitting morosely around the cooling body of Milo Pressman.
The kid comes back out of the shafts when Chief Mercenary promises to shoot his mom. Seeing as Chief Mercenary has already used his Glock 18 (the machine-pistol version) to kill once in the last six or seven minutes, this isn't a hollow threat.
As the episode ends, we find out that the guy fixing the FB sub-circuit board is none other than Big Daddy Bauer, and kidnapping his grandson is part of the plan, along with a relocation to China, safely away from the treason charges and the Avenging Angel Of Pistol Caliber Justice, i.e., Jack.
Previews show Lisa Miller's boyfriend figuring out he's been played. I predict a tactical Biscuit-raid to save her. Morris will show he's got a pair and make up with Chloe, I estimate his chances of survival to the end of the season at 2 out of 3, though with another wound. Jack will kill everybody, including his Dad. Heidi Petrilli and the kid will survive.
Technical Note:
The G36C, or Compact, is a shortened version of the Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle. The G36 is a .223 caliber assault rifle, it differs from the AR-15/M-16 in that is uses an operating rod to push the bolt back and reload the rifle after firing. The AR-15 series uses direct gas impingement to push the bolt back, which improves accuracy but adds fouling. The G36 body is almost all plastic, the G36C has a shorter barrel for, well, walking around in sewers, for example, and other indoor overwhelming firepower needs. It's a well-regarded weapon, though you wouldn't want to use the C-version for shots over 150-200m. The short barrel and resultant slower speed of the projectile mean there is less terminal damage, the shortened M4 version of the M16 has reduced lethality beyond 75m, according to Martin Fackler, the demigod of projectile injury.
The Glock 18 is a basically useless modification of an already-great firearm, the 9mm Glock 17. The 18 model is modified to fire in fully-automatic or semi-automatic based on the position of a switch on the slide, visible in the picture above. Chief Mercenary's Glock had a stainless slide, but it's the same gun.
The problem with the Glock 18, and most other machine-pistols, is that the moving mass of the slide is so light that the cyclic rate (rate of fire) is unbelievably high, around 1200 rounds per minute, or 20 rounds a second. This will empty a standard Glock 17 magazine in a little under a second. Even the extended 33-round mags made for the Glock 18 only give you a little more than 1.5 seconds of wildly inaccurate firing.
This is a video of this borderline-useless pistol in action:
Note the references to The Matrix. It's about the only place you can use a Glock 18 with any effectiveness. People skilled in firearms usage train for weeks and months to be accurate with a fully-automatic two-handed weapon like the MP-5, nobody is truly accurate with a full-auto pistol like a Glock 18. There are only a few in private hands in the US. There is a conversion device that replaces parts on the back of the slide and can turn pretty much any Glock into a fully-automatic pistol, but it's a) highly-illegal and b) turns a useful and reasonably accurate semi-automatic pistol into a useless and inaccurate fully-automatic pistol. If I want to see Fort Leavenworth, I'll take the visitor's tour, thanks.
Accurate fire is all that counts. Pros shoot semi-auto and hit their targets.
Jack gets five kills this week, three pistol and two assault rifle. An extra point to the assault rifle kills for three-shot bursts, that's good trigger control.
The Score so far:
| Method | Score | Notes |
| Biting A Carotid | 9.0 | -1 for lack of Universal Protocol |
| Shooting Curtis | -8 | -10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage |
| Shooting guard while handcuffed | 7.0 | +2 for while handcuffed |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife) |
| Handgun | 7.0 | +2 for disarm |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor, because suppressors are cool |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for through car window |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 10.0 | +5 for called headshot |
| Neck Snap | 7.0 | Always cool. |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Length of Chain | 8.0 | Strangled Fayed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for available cover |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Net | 163.0 |
Jack+Bauer 24 Glock+18 G36
Monday, May 07, 2007
Jack Bauer Tally: Hours 18, 19 and 20
I haven't written much because to be honest, there hasn't been much to write about. This has been the dullest few hours of 24 since Kim met the mountain lion.
Jack swiped the 'FB sub-circuit board' from Mike Doyle at gunpoint, stole his car and headed off to meet Chang with a brick of C4 and a deathwish. After ditching the tracker under some powerlines (thank you, electromagnetic interference), he got to the meet point early and rigged the building to explode. Mike followed him and got there just before the Chinese, who were bringing the soon-to-be-revealed-as-catatonic Audrey Raines. Mike got a team in place, but not quite, and as he found out Chang was about to kill Audrey he capped a guard and everything fell apart.
One of Chang's guards immediately shot Jack at close range with what looked like a Heckler & Koch G36. Jack managed to recover enough to shoot the guard and one other, the only two kills in the last three hours. Chang and his remaining homies got away with the FB sub-circuit board in a plethora of black Hummer H1s, and was lost to tracking. Jack was arrested (again) and taken back to CTU (again) along with Audrey, who as it turns out can't generate much in the way of a complete sentence.
Chang had the gizmo, which includes a part of the decryption algorithm for Russian military equipment, analyzed by one of the apparently countless goateed hackers with intimate knowledge of foreign military systems in the Los Angeles area. The circuit board doesn't work, but nobody but Chang knows that. The Russians know the Chinese have the board because Lisa Miller, the skanky blond the VP has been having an affair with, has been two-timing the VP with a KGB mole.
Audrey was evaluated by a psychiatrist from 'District' (where is that, actually?), who declared her to be a catatonic due to torture and pharmaceuticals and immediately prescribed a regimen to improve her cognitive functions, consisting of torture and pharamceuticals. Mike Doyle let himself be overpowered by Jack, who opened and open-hand can on the psychiatrist and squirreled Audrey away to some dark corner of the CTU complex, and got her to say one word, which led CTU to a chemical factory where Chang is apparently holed up. Big Daddy Raines, the ex-SecDef, told Jack in no uncertain terms that he is not to see Audrey ever again, and stated (correctly, given his history), that Jack is cursed and everyone he loves dies or gets kicked off the series. I don't know if he included Edgar Stiles in this list, but the effect is the same.
Yawn. This is getting to be as bad as Spiderman 3. There's no crying in Spiderman!
Technical Note: Body Armor
The fact that Jack was wearing body armor should not have protected him from an assault rifle at 15 feet. Not all body armor is created equal.
All body armor is for the most part created the same way: fibers of some exceptionally strong material (Kevlar, Twaron, Spectra -- all plastics) are woven into layers and multiple thicknesses of these super-strong fibers are sewn together to make "soft" body armor. The reason soft body armor works is that rather than the kinetic energy of an incoming bullet staying on a tiny point where the bullet impacts, the individual weaved fibers spread the force out over a larger area, meaning that the energy is dissipated into the vest.
The National Institute of Justice has developed a testing system whereby soft body armor is tested to determine its ability to resist penetration and deformation against a variety of standard bullets. Penetration isn't the only thing, deformation is important as well. If a bullet doesn't penetrate a vest but it does allow your chest to be compressed so far it breaks ribs and does equivalent damage, it's not adequate. The NIJ "Levels" are as follows:
Level I will stop low-velocity .38 Special, up to 850fps or a .22 LR at up to 1050 fps. Virtually no vests on the street today are Level I.
Level IIA is equivalent to 16 layers of Kevlar and will stop a 9mm FMJ bullet at up to 1090 fps, or a .357 hollowpoint at up to 1,250 fps. This is good for most street situations.
Level II is equivalent to 22 layers of Kevlar and will stop a 9mm FMJ at up to 1175 fps or a .357 Magnum hollowpoint at up to 1,390 fps. You will likely get less blunt trauma from the force of a bullet compared to level IIA.
Level IIIA is equivalent to 30+ layers of Kevlar and will stop a 9mm FMJ at up to 1400 fps or a .44 Magnum at up to 1400 fps. The 9mm speed is typical for bullets coming out of longer barrels, i.e., submachineguns.
Note how the increase in velocity changes the number of Kevlar layers needed. A 10% increase in velocity separates Level II and Level IIA. This is because velocity is the major determining factor in force, from the equation f=mv^2, where the velocity is squared. To protect against a 10% increase in velocity you have to up the Kevlar thickness by about 35%. To protect against a 40% increase in velocity you need almost 100% more Kevlar between you and the bullet.
Note also the absence of any mentioned rifle bullets in this crowd. Rifles have incredible velocity compared to pistols, a 9mm at 1400fps is considered a "hot" bullet. A .223 (the caliber of the M16, and the G36 the Chinese dude used to shoot at Jack) is considered to be loafing at under 2500fps. Standard .308 rounds do about 2,700 fps out of a rifle barrel. It would take a mattress of Kevlar to have a prayer of stopping a rifle bullet, and most people can't pull off wearing a mattress inconspicuously.
To get above Level IIIA, you need something much sturdier than even Kevlar. At present, the two choices are metal or ceramic composites. The metal can be steel or titanium, the composite is some kind of borosilicate thing that sounds expensive because it is expensive. This is called a "trauma plate", and is worn outside the body armor in a pocket on the front and back of the fabric that holds the armor panels together, called a "carrier". The job of the trauma plate is to absorb the energy of the bullet and/or fragment it, so that the force that comes out of the back of the trauma plate and hits the rest of the vest can be dissipated by the vest itself.
Level III armor will stop at least six rounds .308 Winchester round at 2,750 fps. This is equivalent to 6mm of steel, 13mm of ceramic, or 25mm of extra polyethylene (Spectra).
Level IV armor will stop at least one round of .30-06 military M2 armor piercing ammo at 2,850 fps. This is equivalent to 12mm of specially-treated steel, or 18mm of ceramic.
You could wear a plate without the armor, but the impact would be equivalent to standing on home plate while Barry Bonds swings at a hanging curveball. Or worse. The soft body armor is very important.
And strangely enough, soft body armor is non knife-proof. The force of a knife is over such a small surface area that it can split the armor and still injure you.
The only way that Jack could be wearing body armor and take short-range hits from an assault rifle and not die is if he was wearing Level III armor (hard and soft armor) and was shot in the trauma plate. Otherwise, he'd have big bloody holes front and back. The other possible solution to how he could be wearing body armor and survive is if he was wearing Dragon Skin from Pinnacle Armor.
Dragon Skin is an update of an old concept: scale mail. An outer jacket of large discs of metal were sewn into an overlapping pattern. Swords and arrows would have to pierce the individual metal discs, each of which could rely on its overlapping neighbors for structural support. Dragon Skin replaces the discs of metal with roughly 1" discs of ceramic, in a matrix of Kevlar. For its weight, it tests out better than any other armor and is less than an inch thick. Instead of being a single inflexible plate, it's many small discs that flex easily, enabling it move when the wearer moves. It's certified Level III, and it stops AK rounds as well as .223 rounds. What's more, it will take a number of hits without quitting. The ceramic trauma plate typically shatters in the process of absorbing the energy from the bullet, meaning within a few hits your Level IV vest has gone to a Level IIIA vest with a pocket of gravel on the front. Individual Dragon Skin armor discs may shatter, but the rest of the vest is intact, and it takes just plain bad luck to take enough hits on one spot to let one get through.
Dragon Skin has seen use by Special Forces in the Afghanistan and Irsq campagins, it's popular because it's light and apparently reliable. Pinnacle has been trying to get their flexible Level III/IV system into the mainstream with the DoD, but they've been hitting some roadblocks in getting the Army to replace their Interceptor system with the Pinnacle SOV-3000. I would guess the main roadblock would be the $3-5000 it costs to outfit every ground-pounder with a new Pinnacle SOV-3000.
In summary, soft body armor isn't bullet-proof, it's bullet-resistant. To survive .223 shots at close range, Jack Bauer had to be wearing NIJ Level III or better armor, either with a trauma plate or Dragon Skin flexible armor with integrated armor scales.
Jack got two kills from the ground. Yawn.
The Score so far:
Jack+Bauer 24 body+armor
Jack swiped the 'FB sub-circuit board' from Mike Doyle at gunpoint, stole his car and headed off to meet Chang with a brick of C4 and a deathwish. After ditching the tracker under some powerlines (thank you, electromagnetic interference), he got to the meet point early and rigged the building to explode. Mike followed him and got there just before the Chinese, who were bringing the soon-to-be-revealed-as-catatonic Audrey Raines. Mike got a team in place, but not quite, and as he found out Chang was about to kill Audrey he capped a guard and everything fell apart.
One of Chang's guards immediately shot Jack at close range with what looked like a Heckler & Koch G36. Jack managed to recover enough to shoot the guard and one other, the only two kills in the last three hours. Chang and his remaining homies got away with the FB sub-circuit board in a plethora of black Hummer H1s, and was lost to tracking. Jack was arrested (again) and taken back to CTU (again) along with Audrey, who as it turns out can't generate much in the way of a complete sentence.
Chang had the gizmo, which includes a part of the decryption algorithm for Russian military equipment, analyzed by one of the apparently countless goateed hackers with intimate knowledge of foreign military systems in the Los Angeles area. The circuit board doesn't work, but nobody but Chang knows that. The Russians know the Chinese have the board because Lisa Miller, the skanky blond the VP has been having an affair with, has been two-timing the VP with a KGB mole.
Audrey was evaluated by a psychiatrist from 'District' (where is that, actually?), who declared her to be a catatonic due to torture and pharmaceuticals and immediately prescribed a regimen to improve her cognitive functions, consisting of torture and pharamceuticals. Mike Doyle let himself be overpowered by Jack, who opened and open-hand can on the psychiatrist and squirreled Audrey away to some dark corner of the CTU complex, and got her to say one word, which led CTU to a chemical factory where Chang is apparently holed up. Big Daddy Raines, the ex-SecDef, told Jack in no uncertain terms that he is not to see Audrey ever again, and stated (correctly, given his history), that Jack is cursed and everyone he loves dies or gets kicked off the series. I don't know if he included Edgar Stiles in this list, but the effect is the same.
Yawn. This is getting to be as bad as Spiderman 3. There's no crying in Spiderman!
Technical Note: Body Armor
The fact that Jack was wearing body armor should not have protected him from an assault rifle at 15 feet. Not all body armor is created equal.
All body armor is for the most part created the same way: fibers of some exceptionally strong material (Kevlar, Twaron, Spectra -- all plastics) are woven into layers and multiple thicknesses of these super-strong fibers are sewn together to make "soft" body armor. The reason soft body armor works is that rather than the kinetic energy of an incoming bullet staying on a tiny point where the bullet impacts, the individual weaved fibers spread the force out over a larger area, meaning that the energy is dissipated into the vest.
The National Institute of Justice has developed a testing system whereby soft body armor is tested to determine its ability to resist penetration and deformation against a variety of standard bullets. Penetration isn't the only thing, deformation is important as well. If a bullet doesn't penetrate a vest but it does allow your chest to be compressed so far it breaks ribs and does equivalent damage, it's not adequate. The NIJ "Levels" are as follows:
Level I will stop low-velocity .38 Special, up to 850fps or a .22 LR at up to 1050 fps. Virtually no vests on the street today are Level I.
Level IIA is equivalent to 16 layers of Kevlar and will stop a 9mm FMJ bullet at up to 1090 fps, or a .357 hollowpoint at up to 1,250 fps. This is good for most street situations.
Level II is equivalent to 22 layers of Kevlar and will stop a 9mm FMJ at up to 1175 fps or a .357 Magnum hollowpoint at up to 1,390 fps. You will likely get less blunt trauma from the force of a bullet compared to level IIA.
Level IIIA is equivalent to 30+ layers of Kevlar and will stop a 9mm FMJ at up to 1400 fps or a .44 Magnum at up to 1400 fps. The 9mm speed is typical for bullets coming out of longer barrels, i.e., submachineguns.
Note how the increase in velocity changes the number of Kevlar layers needed. A 10% increase in velocity separates Level II and Level IIA. This is because velocity is the major determining factor in force, from the equation f=mv^2, where the velocity is squared. To protect against a 10% increase in velocity you have to up the Kevlar thickness by about 35%. To protect against a 40% increase in velocity you need almost 100% more Kevlar between you and the bullet.
Note also the absence of any mentioned rifle bullets in this crowd. Rifles have incredible velocity compared to pistols, a 9mm at 1400fps is considered a "hot" bullet. A .223 (the caliber of the M16, and the G36 the Chinese dude used to shoot at Jack) is considered to be loafing at under 2500fps. Standard .308 rounds do about 2,700 fps out of a rifle barrel. It would take a mattress of Kevlar to have a prayer of stopping a rifle bullet, and most people can't pull off wearing a mattress inconspicuously.
To get above Level IIIA, you need something much sturdier than even Kevlar. At present, the two choices are metal or ceramic composites. The metal can be steel or titanium, the composite is some kind of borosilicate thing that sounds expensive because it is expensive. This is called a "trauma plate", and is worn outside the body armor in a pocket on the front and back of the fabric that holds the armor panels together, called a "carrier". The job of the trauma plate is to absorb the energy of the bullet and/or fragment it, so that the force that comes out of the back of the trauma plate and hits the rest of the vest can be dissipated by the vest itself.
Level III armor will stop at least six rounds .308 Winchester round at 2,750 fps. This is equivalent to 6mm of steel, 13mm of ceramic, or 25mm of extra polyethylene (Spectra).
Level IV armor will stop at least one round of .30-06 military M2 armor piercing ammo at 2,850 fps. This is equivalent to 12mm of specially-treated steel, or 18mm of ceramic.
You could wear a plate without the armor, but the impact would be equivalent to standing on home plate while Barry Bonds swings at a hanging curveball. Or worse. The soft body armor is very important.
And strangely enough, soft body armor is non knife-proof. The force of a knife is over such a small surface area that it can split the armor and still injure you.
The only way that Jack could be wearing body armor and take short-range hits from an assault rifle and not die is if he was wearing Level III armor (hard and soft armor) and was shot in the trauma plate. Otherwise, he'd have big bloody holes front and back. The other possible solution to how he could be wearing body armor and survive is if he was wearing Dragon Skin from Pinnacle Armor.
Dragon Skin is an update of an old concept: scale mail. An outer jacket of large discs of metal were sewn into an overlapping pattern. Swords and arrows would have to pierce the individual metal discs, each of which could rely on its overlapping neighbors for structural support. Dragon Skin replaces the discs of metal with roughly 1" discs of ceramic, in a matrix of Kevlar. For its weight, it tests out better than any other armor and is less than an inch thick. Instead of being a single inflexible plate, it's many small discs that flex easily, enabling it move when the wearer moves. It's certified Level III, and it stops AK rounds as well as .223 rounds. What's more, it will take a number of hits without quitting. The ceramic trauma plate typically shatters in the process of absorbing the energy from the bullet, meaning within a few hits your Level IV vest has gone to a Level IIIA vest with a pocket of gravel on the front. Individual Dragon Skin armor discs may shatter, but the rest of the vest is intact, and it takes just plain bad luck to take enough hits on one spot to let one get through.
Dragon Skin has seen use by Special Forces in the Afghanistan and Irsq campagins, it's popular because it's light and apparently reliable. Pinnacle has been trying to get their flexible Level III/IV system into the mainstream with the DoD, but they've been hitting some roadblocks in getting the Army to replace their Interceptor system with the Pinnacle SOV-3000. I would guess the main roadblock would be the $3-5000 it costs to outfit every ground-pounder with a new Pinnacle SOV-3000.
In summary, soft body armor isn't bullet-proof, it's bullet-resistant. To survive .223 shots at close range, Jack Bauer had to be wearing NIJ Level III or better armor, either with a trauma plate or Dragon Skin flexible armor with integrated armor scales.
Jack got two kills from the ground. Yawn.
The Score so far:
| Method | Score | Notes |
| Biting A Carotid | 9.0 | -1 for lack of Universal Protocol |
| Shooting Curtis | -8 | -10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage |
| Shooting guard while handcuffed | 7.0 | +2 for while handcuffed |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife) |
| Handgun | 7.0 | +2 for disarm |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor, because suppressors are cool |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for through car window |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 10.0 | +5 for called headshot |
| Neck Snap | 7.0 | Always cool. |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Length of Chain | 8.0 | Strangled Fayed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Net | 135.0 |
Jack+Bauer 24 body+armor
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