Final Protective Fire

Saturday, July 28, 2007

 

I quickly visited a link on Kos because of a posting on LGF and there had been some discussion about it on Patterico's blog. Good lord, they have really got some complete nutbars on Kos' site. How do these people feed themselves unassisted?

Robin 9:53 PM

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Friday, July 27, 2007

 

This is an interesting oped piece by Michael Burleigh in the Times. Its UK centric as he discusses the status of anti-terrorism measures in the UK, but this quote is, I think, especially important:

One of the puzzles of our time is why Britain scrupulously adheres to the Human Rights Act, when our allies and partners systematically flout the European Convention on Human Rights. Talk of human rights abuses invariably focuses on the US, with sneering TV documentaries about Guantanamo or CIA “extraordinary rendition”. But on much of the Continent they don’t allow civil liberty lawyers to turn terrorism into a risk-free activity.

Robin 3:59 PM

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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

 

We've been watching the Tour de France this summer. Interestingly, my wife and I were taking a shuttle van to the airport at the end of May and we were riding with a guy who was in the business of sports conditioning consulting, and consulted to several professional cyclists. In the half hour ride, we discussed the upcoming tour with him and expressed our dissatisfaction with how the sport had been handling doping and other cheating. We were big Floyd Landis fans and we are still puzzled about what credibility to give the lab results that resulted in Floyd's loss of the title. The trainer told us that he thought Vinokourov was the rider to follow this year.

Now, its gotten completely ridiculous. A handful of lesser lights have been thrown out of this Tour for doping, and then Vinokourov was thrown out together with the whole Astana team ( taking out then-fifth-place Andreas Kloden as well, although I've not seen any specific allegations against him ).

Now, after a brilliant defense of his yellow jersey, Michael Rasmussan was fired by team Rabobank and withdrawn from the Tour for lying to them about where he was training - the same issue that had earlier caused the Danish federation to expel him from the Danish cycling team for the upcoming Olympics.

Now I'm completely disgusted. Evidently the most honest sport in the world actually is Professional Wrestling. I've got to go to Vince McMahon for a sport with integrity. At least we all know how its fixed.

Robin 5:24 PM

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Monday, July 09, 2007

 

Glenn Reynolds notes a Popular Mechanics piece on a Taser round designed to be used in a shotgun and comments: "but it'll be pretty important to be sure that your 12-gauge is really loaded with Taser rounds when you think it is, and not, say, slugs. Or vice versa. I'm not sure that mixing nonlethal and lethal capabilities in the same weapon is a good idea, accident-wise."

Glenn makes a good point. If you use the same firearm for lethal and non-lethal ammunition, there will be an accident.

Many police departments who use non-lethal ammunition in shotguns, like rubber balls, use special bright orange stocks and have rules that such designated weapons are never loaded with lethal ammunition. You can find such stocks at some mail order firearms parts suppliers if you want to follow this scheme yourself.

Robin 9:12 PM

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