Hell in a Handbasket

2003-06-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

LAST ONE OUT TURN OFF THE LIGHTS
Dean Esmay is one heck of a nice guy. He's so nice that he's trying to save the world from Blogger. I've taken him up on this very kind offer.

That means that I'm no longer going to be posting from this site. Instead I'm moving over here.

For those of you who want to type in the URL, it's HTTP://WWW.HELLINAHANDBASKET.NET.

I'll see everybody over at the new digs.

2003-06-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

POINTS TO PONDER

There are a couple of things I'd like to add concerning the post below.

First off is this travelogue by an American living in South Korea. He managed to get permission to take a trip to North Korea, and it's a pretty good read. (Link courtesy of blog goddess Natalie Solent, who got it from The Sound and Fury).

The second thing is an op-ed on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Thursday 6-5-03 edition. Seems some guy who claims to have been part of North Korea's WMD program escaped to South Korea by way of China. He claims that SK's "Sunshine Policy" is actually a plan to prop up the failing NK regime. Why? Because of the staggering burden that would be visited on the SK economy when they finally reunite with their sick, starving, bass-ackwards cousin from the north.

Hmm. Never thought of that. SK's refusal to abandon or even modify the obviously failed "Sunshine Policy" now makes sense.

This should be a lesson to me. I should always look at the money.

2003-06-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

WELL, IT'S OFFICIAL

I just saw this article on the Yahoo news server. It relates how the United States will move it's troops currently stationed in South Korea. They'll be moved far south, away from the DMZ. Now if the North should invade, it will be South Korean troops that will be at risk.

The problem lately has been one of PR campaigns that went wrong. In the past few years the South Korean government and media has engaged in a Sunshine Policy. This is where they've tried to be extra nice to North Korea with an eye towards eventual re-unification. Most voters in SK weren't alive during the Korean War, and they bought into the idea that the North Korean government was just a misunderstood regime that would respond to reason and friendly overtures.

Maybe this idea was worth a shot at one time, but it's very obviously a failure. North Korea has repeatedly violated agreements that they entered into concerning their WMD programs. Even faced with this evidence, most South Koreans aren't willing to give up on the idea that NK will come around some day, somehow, in some way.

The current President of South Korea, President Roh, was elected by promising the voters that SK would "forge it's own course" instead of simply following the American's lead. The Bush administration said fine, you can do it with a lower military commitment from the US. Less than 6 months after he was elected Pres. Roh made a trip to Washington with hat in hand. SAYING that SK was going to go it without the US is obviously easier said than done.

Except that Washington isn't buying what he's selling. Our troops will move south out of immediate danger and South Korean soldiers will do the heavy lifting from now on. They're certainly capable of it, but there's obvious reluctance on the Korean's part to stand in our place. If you read the article I linked to at the beginning you'll notice that we're going to pay $11 Billion for "base improvements". I take this as an obvious bribe to make the medicine go down easier.

In my opinion this is part of the Bush administration's policy to shake up the status quo if it needs to be shaken. South Korea wants to have more of a say with policy decisions about North Korea? Fine, they can put their own soldiers on the wall to take the brunt of an attack. Then they can go ahead and make all the decisions they want. We'll give supprt, we won't turn our back on them. But we won't let those who don't contribute their fair share to try and unduly influence our foreign policy decisions.

Notice, if you will, that this isn't a punishment. We're simply pulling back and letting SK do what they want. Not that I expect that to make a difference to the anti-Americans who are sure to claim that we're not discahrging our responsibilities.

2003-06-04T18:31:00.000-07:00

MEA CULPA

The title of this post is Latin for "My horrible fault!" It's used most often in the Catholic faith to indicate that someone is taking blame for a terrible sin, and they're humbly asking forgiveness.

Don't worry, this isn't a post about Catholicism specifically or even religion in general. Instead I'd like to discuss something really broad: cultural differences.

I'm over at Instapundit.com when I notice three posts that rang a bell. All of the posts were about journalistic inaccuracies and outright lies. Jeff Soyer at Alphecca has something similar every week where he discusses the media bias against guns on Yahoo.

Okay, so the guys who work for Big Journalism twist, spin and lie. What's new?

Nothing, really. But I notice that all of the posts mentioned above want some sort of negative impact to be visited upon those that have tried to push their own agendas at the expense of the truth. This got me to thinking.

One of the main pillars that our culture rests on is the concept of responsibility. You're responsible for your actions. If you screw up you pay the penalty, if it works out you reap the rewards. This is so ingrained in our society that those of you reading this are probably scratching your heads and saying "Well, DUH!" But it's important to realize that this is something that's almost unique in all of history, and it's an idea that really hasn't caught on in the rest of the world.

Case in point is the Arabic news agency, al-Jazeera. Before, during and after the invasion of Iraq al-Jaz would pump out the most idiotic drivel as if it was the unshakable truth. Our troops were getting slaughtered, the Iraqis were really tough, America was near collapse due to the dissent in our society, Saddam was a nice guy who'd never hurt anyone, blah blah blah. After the dust settled the anti-war people who were using al-Jaz reports to justify their own position were understandably embarrassed, but that was just here in the States and over in the UK. Most of the rest of the world still acts as if al-Jaz is a reputable source, and the agency is still going strong even though it's mostly disappeared from Western news sources.

Okay, so that's the Arabic world. What about something closer to home?

This post by Stephen den Beste puts it better than I ever could. France is upset that the American government is going to adopt policies that are unfavorable to their interests due to their efforts to thwart us at the UN. They even claim that the US is using the media to spread lies about them in an effort to enrage the US voters. (Think they might have a point because of the scandals in Big Journalism I mentioned at the beginning of the post? I think that proves that it's really hard to get away with such shenanigans here in the land of the 1st Amendment, and I don't think such efforts to lie would remain hidden for long).

The French have also insisted from the beginning that there would be no drawbacks to opposing what the US people see as being absolutely necessary to gain a measure of physical security. Most Americans who read those reports just couldn't figure that out at all. What the heck are those idiots thinking??? Of course there's going to be consequences!

Consider European society (or Canada for that matter). They sure pay lip service to some of our core values, but they have a much different take on the situation. Democracy? That means that the voters can go to the polls, but they'll keep going back and voting again and again until they vote in the way the government wants them to. (Example: the way the Treaty of Nice was put up for a vote in Ireland for the second time after the public turned it down). Personal responsibility? That means that you're expected to lay down and refuse to resist even if you're attacked by criminals. Don't worry about it. The government will handle it for you! No reason for you to even bother your silly little head about it.

One of the things that was endlessly discussed amongst the crew on the McFaul was this very subject, except they weren't concerned with the idea of personal responsibility in other countries. Instead they wanted to see more responsibility to be handed down from the Powers That Be. Just about everyone thought that a better, more efficient military force would be gained if people were held accountable. The more responsibility, the better and smoother things would run. Of course they were talking more about punishing the people who blew off work and dodged that responsibility, but I think you get the idea.

The main result of all of this is that people are more likely to take the initiative. If there's rewards for getting the job done in the best way then people will take chances, especially if they realize that the people who they depend on to hold up their end have an interest in avoiding failure. It's just my opinion, but I think that this is the major reason why the US is racing ahead of the rest of the world in just about every area. Technology, theoretical science, culturally, military might and influence in all spheres. There's a reason why American TV shows are shown all over the world, and why I can't find a single French or Italian comedy on any of my 129 cable channels. It's because these guys aren't trying hard enough to get ahead.

This leads to another specious conclusion. The rhetoric and posturing we've seen from France and most of the rest of the world since 9/11 shows which path they've chosen. They're not even trying to improve their own situation, instead they're trying to put the brakes on our own ever growing influence. It's like they've given up and admitted that they're never going to catch up, let alone get ahead.

Makes me glad to be an American.

2003-06-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

MORE PROOF THAT I'M A LAZY, LAZY BASTICH

The blogroll over on the right of the page is there for my convenience. I like to sit here on my blog like some sort of troll under a bridge and click on the links so I can read what other, more articulate and smarter bloggers are writing with the least amount of effort on my part.

But I noticed that I was clicking on the links at these other blogs, using them to direct me to even more crunchy blogosphere goodness. This kind of screws up the whole "least effort" philosophy.

So to continue to blog in the laziest way possible I've expanded the roll to the right. At this rate I'll fill up the page with links in a few years. Then I'll have to have two blogs, one for my posts and the other for clicking on the links.

2003-06-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

WE ALL KNOW WHEN THEY SCREW UP, HOWSABOUT WHEN THEY GET IT RIGHT?

I'm over at Lead and Gold and I read this post. Seems that Alphecca is asking for the biggest, most terrible gunfights ever seen at the movie theater. If you've seen a film where someone does something during a gunfight that makes you wince then drop on by and leave your opinion.

Okay, so we've all seen something that was so stupid we wondered why the other audience members didn't demand their money back. But how often have we seen movies where they get most of it right?

I think the best gunfight ever filmed (so far as accuracy goes) is the showdown at the end of The Way of the Gun. The director had a brother that was also a Navy SEAL, and he allowed him to choreograph the fights. Pretty good stuff.

James says check it out.

2003-06-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

WHAT IF YOU'RE UNLUCKY IN LOVE AND UNLUCKY IN CARDS?

Two friends of mine are Charles and Muriel Parrish. They, for some reason, think that I need to be taken care of in some way. Case in point is that thye're paying my tuition while I go back to college and earn my degree. In case you're wondering, they aren't related to me. They just decided that I could acheive better things if I got a little help.

Muriel is also one of the nicest people I've ever met. She decided that I don't get out enough and that it was a shame that I never met my significant Other. She's decided to change this.

So she met this nice librarian while walking her dog and they got to talking. Muriel thought we'd be perfect together and she asked the librarian if she would want to meet me. This young lady agreed.

But all this took place while I was away on the Tiger Cruise. To find out a little bit more about me, she did a Google search on my name and eventually found this very blog. Next thing you know she's telling Muriel that she doesn't want to have anything to do with me because I "said some incredibly disturbing things about guns!!!"

Well, heck. This was news to me. I haven't posted anything about guns in months. What was she talking about?

She was referring to this post, where I give some advice to those who have just gotten their concealed carry licenses and are wondering what type of holster to use. And this is what's so disturbing, so frightening?

What a weenie. I'm glad that I didn't waste any money on a first date.

2003-06-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

WE'LL KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING
On Monday the McFaul returned to her moorings at Norfolk, VA. Some of the Tigers got their gear together and piled it on the deck a few hours before we made port, anxious to feel solid ground beneath their feet again. I decided to take a turn through the ship for one last time. After making a pest of myself I drew my last glass of Blue Hawaiian and sat down in the Enlisted Mess.

There were many people who I never got a chance to speak to even though I wanted to. One of them was a compact fellow with the name "PHAM" on his coveralls. The few times I overheard him speaking in the P-ways I could tell that English was not his native language. Kathryn told me that he had been getting frustrated while trying to improve his English reading skills until he discovered the Harry Potter books. Now he's hooked and eagerly awaiting the next one (like most of us). But where is he from originally? Thailand? Laos? I don't know.

While I was in the Mess there were three crewmen sitting next to me, eating pancakes and watching a movie on the DVD player. They were joking amongst one another in Spanish, three other people whose native language wasn't my own. Out on deck women put on body armor and took up arms next to their male shipmates, ready to defend the McFaul against any threat. All of these different creeds, different cultures, different languages. An incredibly diverse group of people thrown together on a small steel needle that braves the world's oceans. But no matter what the differences, everyone is an American.

Just like me.

Our enemies look at all of these religions and the women who serve and feel themselves filled with an incredible rage. They think that this proves that we are decadent and immoral, and that it dooms us to failure. I think it's perfectly normal and don't think much about it one way or another, but I do think that it means that we can't lose.

In a few months the McFaul will be deployed. She and her crew will be far from home and the people who care for them. They'll be doing this, dealing with the stress and the bureacratic bullshit, because they know that they're protecting those they left at home. There's no higher calling.

I walked the McFaul's decks and I met her people, and I have to admit that I'll be worried about them a bit while they're gone. I'll probably check the news every day, looking to see if she was involved in an incident. So far as those would be stupid enough to actually attack her, I can't say that I'm too concerned for their welfare. The officers and enlisted serving on the McFaul are professionals so I doubt they'll ever feel a thing.

The McFaul has been assigned as part of the battle group around the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). There's more than 5,000 people on board the Enterprise, and their task is to protect America and our vital interests the world over. It's the McFaul's job to protect them while they do this extremely important job.

Inimici cavete.

2003-06-02T18:50:00.000-07:00

STEEL BEACH
So the crew of the McFaul trains all of the time. Nothing but training, maintenance and cleaning all day long. This is so they'll be ready if they're ever thrust into combat. Efforts are made to make this training as realistic as possible.

Yeah, it looks pretty fake. But this is a US warship and not a Hollywood back lot.

So the crew trains all of the time. What do they do to relax?

Just about every Sunday they haul out some charcoal grills and have a cookout on the deck (weather permitting, of course). They call this "The Steel Beach". But before everybody eats they have games on the Flight Deck. What kinds of games? They square off and see who can perform emergency procedures the best.

Since fire is one of the things that will definitely happen if the ship is ever damaged, fire control is of supreme importance. Seconds will count, so one of the competitions are to see who can get in the firefighting gear the quickest. One of the kid Tigers even got into the act.

Another interesting excercise they go through is to see if the crew can perform emergency repairs using materials they happen to have on hand. They test this by having members of the crew slap together a soft patch on a split pipe.

The idea is that someone will use one of the fire-resistant gloves they're always carrying to plug the hole, and then the twines is wrapped around it to form a seal. Then water is pumped through the pipe at 90 PSI to test the patch. As you can see by the next pic, this is easier in theory than practice.

So what do they get if they win? Bragging rights for the week. That's it.

Like most people reading this, I didn't think much about this. Friendly competition is a great and harmless way to try and motivate people. But it would appear that most non-Western cultures don't think of it in the same way.

Case in point is this article on StrategyPage.com. In the essay, James Dunnigan writes about what is needed to form an Arab army that can actually kick ass. One of the biggest hurdles is to get people from Arab cultures to accept the concept that competition can be freindly.

Which brings us to some serious cultural differences. Arab armies rarely get the kind of constructive competition you see in Western armies. That is because, for Arab soldiers, it is seen as safer to not compete, so no one is "disgraced" by losing, than it is to compete and improve everyone's skills. Of course there is competition in Arab society, in business as well as sports. But the concept of "losing gracefully" is not as readily accepted as it is in the West.

Hmmm. I'm glad that my culture and our military don't have the same problem.

2003-06-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

GETTING THE BIRD POOP OFF OF THE WINDOW
The USS McFaul (DDG-74) can really move! They really kicked it during the Tiger Cruise, and it certainly seemed that we were going faster than most speedboats. The actual max speed is classified, so I can't tell you the exact MPH that we were moving. This isn't because I was sworn to secrecy but because no one would tell me, either.

So they can get moving pretty fast. And the wind can whip up pretty well out there in the middle of the ocean. How do they see through the windows on the Bridge when the rain starts coming down and the seagulls start to poop? They do it the same way it's done on your car. They have wipers and little tubes for squirting detergent on the glass.

Sure beats ordering some enlisted guy to stand out there in a hurrican to keep the windows clean.

2003-05-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

IT'S LIKE A SHOTGUN DUEL AT TEN FEET
I've talked about firing the M60 and the .50 machine guns. As you can probably tell by the picture below, the .50 is about 12 times more powerful than the M60.

On the left is one of the spent shells from the M60, and the big guy to the right is one from the M2HB. But they both look positively sickly next to a spent shell from the 5"/54.

That's not all the gunpowder weapons that the McFaul has to defend herself with. There's also the Mk 15 Phalanx System. This is designed to shoot down missiles before they have a chance to hit the ship, and I once heard that they were even tested against ballistic 5" shells. Think about that for a minute, the gun can shoot down bullets before they hit.

The crew call the little pods "R2D2". Can't figure out why.

Looks more like one of those Daleks from the old Dr. Who TV show, except that the Mk 15 wouldn't be as handy to have around if the toilets on the McFaul should happen to clog.

I was present when they test fired the system but the angle was wrong for pictures. That gatling gun attached to the bottom of the dome is fed from an inner drum, and I did manage to get a picture of that when they started to disassemble the system for cleaning and maintenance.

Eventually they remove all of the moving parts, leaving the radar dome and the mounting frame.

Most of the people who visit here regularly are painfully aware that you have to clean your guns each and every time that they are fired. The Mk 15 is no different, but it takes 17 hours of maintenance to get it up and running again. That's due to all of the eletrical connections and aiming motors that have to be just right. If they're off by even the tiniest amount then the system can't do it's job. And I thought I had it tough cleaning everything in the gun safe every two months.

So why don't I have any spent 20mm shells for my collection? Because they fire depleted uranium rounds, and the public has the mistaken impression that DU is toxic. Even though it's just the shell that's left behind and not the sabot-jacketed round, the Navy disposes of the cases properly after every firing. This means that there's going to be a gap in my collection of spent shells for some time to come.

2003-05-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

THIS MACHINE ATE MY CARD
It used to be that the Captain of a ship would have a lockbox or a safe in his quarters. When the ship would dock into port he'd dole out a few coins to the crew so they could get gloriously drunk. On the McFaul it's done with an ATM.

It's not a bank ATM. Instead it draws on accounts through the ship's Bursar's Office. The crew can set it up so a portion of their pay is sent to an account on the ship. A special card is issued that will work in the ATM so they can get some cash when they're in port and (ahem) see the sights.

So what do they use their money for when they're at sea? To buy stuff in the Ship's Store.

2003-05-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

LISTEN!
The shaft wasn't that high. It couldn't have been more than twenty feet to the bottom, maybe twenty-five. To get on the ladder all I would have to do was hold on to the edge of the door, stand on the bottom edge and step off to the ladder. Piece of cake.

"Don't touch the edge!" Kathryn said, carefully pointing without touching. "And don't step on the bottom edge. We have to make sure to maintain as perfect a seal in here as possible."

Suddenly all that empty space looked more daunting than it should have. Kathryn leaned out of the hatch, grabbed one of the rungs of the ladder with one hand, and swung herself out. She paused for a minute and looked at me, concerned that I might be afraid of the drop. "Are you okay with this?"

Even if I was I'd never admit to it in front of her. "You betcha! Good to go!" I waited until she had gone down the ladder far enough so I wouldn't step on her hands, already planning on how I would fall when I missed the ladder so my plunging body wouldn't hit her. Then I leaned out and grabbed a rung with one hand, made a biiiigggg step to get my foot on the ladder, and pulled myself out into the shaft.

Like I said, piece of cake.

The above description would make one think that we were up on one of the McFaul's masts, what with all this talk of heights. Instead we were deep inside the ship. The spaces that hold the sonar equipment are piled one on top of the other, and this is how access is provided. The lower part of the shaft is below the water line, which means that climbing around in there was as close as I got to being on a submarine that trip.

Here's a pic of the shaft. I was looking straight up while straddling the watertight hatch that led to the submerged sonar dome, careful not to stand on anything that I wasn't supposed to.

Way up at the top you can barely make out Kathryn, peering down as she wondered what was taking me so long to get my big behind up the damn ladder. Notice the netting strung across the shaft at each deck, placed to catch someone if they should be thrown off the ladder in high seas. I suppose that I wouldn't have fallen far if I had missed that first rung.

All of this space is needed to fit the sonar system on board the ship. Submarines are, as you proably already realize, the weapon that invented stealth. And they're still the best at it. If the McFaul is to carry out her core mission of protecting against aggression then she needs to find these silent killers before they get close enough to launch their torpedoes. The result is that she's equipped with what is probably the most sophisticated ASW system in the world. And the reason that it's so effective is that it has a towed array to dramatically increase the effectiveness of her already affective sonar.

So what's a towed array? It's a long line of high-tech microphones towed behind the ship. Below is a pic of me leaning on the array's spool, sucking in my gut and trying to look manly.

Doesn't look too impressive, does it? The towed array doesn't look like much, either. In fact it resembles one of those PVC pipes that you buried in the back yard to help drain the garden. But don't let appearances lead you astray, this thing is sensitive enough to hear an idling engine a thousand miles away (the towed array, that is. Not me. I can barely hear an idling engine a hundred miles away).

I couldn't get anyone to tell me how long the array is (classified, I suspect). Just judging by eye I'd have to say it's probably about a mile, maybe. It's heavier than water, so it can sink down below thermal layers and listen for subs that are trying to be sneaky by diving deep. If the sea is calm and the McFaul isn't moving then the tip of the array could dip down below 5,000 feet, down where it's always dark and below freezing.

So far they haven't found Atlantis, though. Seems to me that someone isn't listening hard enough.

2003-05-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

GENTLE PERSUASION
Allow me to introduce you to Master Chief Kastler.

She's the top ranking NCO on board the USS McFaul. This means that she answers directly to the Captain, and one of her main jobs is to act as the enlisted crew member's advocate to the officers. She also tries to look out for the crew, and to help them achieve the most out of the time that they serve.

This would lead one to describe MDCM Kastler's job as being a den mother. This is a false analogy because she doesn't coddle anyone. Instead she tries to motivate them to get on out and take responsibility for their own actions.

Kastler and I talked for awhile. She's concerned about how the Navy's ships are aging.

"So how many new ships do we need to replace the ones that are due to retire? About three or four new ships need to be launched per year, and instead we're seeing only one or two. This means that many ships that reach the projected end of their service life are being kept around for longer than they should. The maintenance load is increasing, like the time they have to spend in port being repaired instead of being out in the ocean doing what they were built for. This should go on for awhile. What we should see is, in about twenty years things will get too much and there'll be about ten years of massive construction to replace most of the fleet."

We discussed her duties concerning motivating the crew. She stressed that support from the family is essential.

"The ones who have a lot of contact with their family are usually the ones that you want to have in the Navy. They're usually pretty motivated and want to get ahead, but they also have a lot of pressure to get out and come home. The ones who don't have that sort of support usually turn out to be the kind of people who you need to motivate more, and sometimes they really don't ever get it together."

Kastler has chosen the Navy as her career, and it's no surprise that her husband is also a lifer (I didn't meet the gentleman, so no pics). Both of them have worked out ways to use the skills they learned in the Navy in new and unique ways. One time it came in handy when it was atking some extra time to get the McFaul tied up to the dock, and Kathryn Woods was going to be late for a pistol competition.

"Until the phone and Internet lines are hooked up there's no real way to communicate with the shore. He (her husband.-Ed.) was sitting out in the parking lot, parked where I could see him from the Bridge. He started to blink his headlights in Morse, just saying Hello. I got on the signal lamp and told him what was going on. By the time the plank was in place and Woods went down it, he was waiting at the end of the pier right past the security checkpoint with his door open and a route already planned. He managed to get her there on time."

Talk about showing support for the crew!

2003-05-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

WATER RATIONS
Back in the days of the wooden hulls, water was carried around in wooden barrels. Unless someone wanted to go over the side and splash around in the ocean, bathing just didn't happen. (If someone DID bath in sea water they'd itch like crazy with all of the salt on their skin.)

When engines replaced sail power some of the heat from the ship's power plant could be used to boil water. The steam was collected and allowed to recondense, which resulted in fresh water for bathing or cooking.

Except that there wasn't enough. The old WWII ships had Water Hours, where people would be assigned a short period of time during the day when they could wash up. They didn't have showers like we do at home, either. They'd have really short shower times, and they'd have to turn the shower off while soaping up. From a civilian's standpoint it sucked but it was a great improvement over those wooden barrels.

The McFaul doesn't have to worry about that. There's certainly enough water to take a real shower, but the crew is encouraged to make it a short one. (Hey, there were over 60 people in my berthing and only 3 shower stalls!) The way they make all of this lovely water is through a reverse osmosis system. In the simplest possible terms it's a filter system that allows them to get fresh water from sea water.

It's not perfect. The water had an odd smell and taste to it. I was told it was due to the bromide that's present in sea water and that the RO system doesn't get rid of. Still, it was good enough. It was at least as good as some of that funky-tasting water you can get out of the water fountains at Rest Areas along America's highways, and it was better than most of them.

I suppose that's why the flavored fruit drinks were so popular in the Mess. Covered up the odd taste.

2003-05-27T14:21:00.000-07:00

WHADDYA MEAN THERE ISN'T A DOCK?
Getting on board the McFaul is easy if it's in port. But what about the times that there isn't a dock to tie up to, or when it would be more convenient to simple get on a boat and go somewhere? For that, there's the ship's launch.

The boat consists of a small rigid hull with a flexible kevlar skirt attached to the top. This provides better seaworthiness in high seas, as well as acting as a ready-made cushion for when the launch is next to another ship. The deisel engine is set low, at the bottom of the rigid hull. This increases stability but it means that the engine is always in sea water that sloshes over the side. As anyone who's been to sea can tell you, sea water is absolutely deadly to bare metal. It will rust in just a few days if you're not careful.

An officer I was talking to said it best. "Like anything else the Navy does, it works great just as long as you throw a lot of maintenance at it. Just as soon as you can't pay attention it all falls apart."

2003-05-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

DESTROYER MEN
You wouldn't think that the pic below is anything out of the ordinary. Just two guys with a strong family resemblance standing on the deck of a ship.

What you're looking at is two generations of a family that went to war on the sea. The gentleman to the left is Ray Regenerus, who served during the Viet Nam War on the USS Hanson (DD-32). Standing next to him is Lt. Scott Regenerus, who is currently serving on board the USS McFaul (DDG-74). Scott also happens to be Ray's son.

I talked with Ray about his experiences while on board the Hanson. He noticed differences between his ship and modern destroyers.

"We had more room to live in, which makes sense considering that there were more engineers on board. The McFaul makes do with surprisingly few people to keep the engines running. But, then again, the Hanson had a steam power plant, so I suppose that they needed the extra hands."

"We had torpedoes, sure. We even had ASROC torpedos that they'd equip us with every so often. They were brand new at the time, real cutting edge stuff. They'd line armed Marine guards up on the dock and bring them in a covered truck. We had to keep real tight security, mark down everybody we saw with a camera or making notes. Whenever we came in to port we'd have people on the deck looking for people who were looking at us. Then we'd radio the Shore Patrol and they'd pick them up."

"Our main weapon at the time was the twin 5" guns. We'd go up and down the coast all day, shooting off our magazine inland to support ground operations, then we'd go back and pick up more ammo and stores at night. Then it was back out to sea and we'd do it again. It got sort of boring after awhile. But the one thing that never got boring was the night sky out at sea. I loved it! You could see forever, and you could see everything. When I gained some rank they told me that I didn't have to stand deck watches at night anymore. That was the one thing I wanted to do! I even volunteered to do it, but they wouldn't let me."

Ray's time on board the Hanson made a great impression on him, so much that he knows what happened to his old ship. It was sold to Taiwan and rechristened the Liao Yang (DD-921). The veterans who served on her are trying to raise money so they can buy her back and turn her into a floating museum. I wish them luck.

Ray's son Scott and I had a chance to talk for a few minutes. The conversation quickly turned to politics. Scott had a few things to say about the current situation.

"If you take a look at out capabilities, they're really not all that much greater than they were ten years ago. The reason the Europeans are getting so vocal is that they let their own militaries slip so that they're now absolutely pitiful. It would take years for them to build up enough so they could compete with us, decades even, and I don't think they're even going to start to try any time soon. The only option they really have is to try and convince us to do what they want through diplomacy, or public opinion, or something."

"Hey, that's their problem!" I said.

"Not really. Or at least not wholly. Our State Department's job is to get us the resources we need to get the job done. That's gotten harder in the last few years as other countries realize just what they can bring to the table. Which is not much. So it's natural that they're going to hold on to what they have and try to gain the greatest leverage they can. This doesn't mean that we can't do what we have to without their help, and the Europeans aren't being realistic if they think they can stop us from doing something that we consider vital, but it does mean that it will be harder or more expensive."

It seems to me that Scott has a pretty firm grasp on the situation. He's going to get a chance to put it to good use, since he'll soon be transferred to US Naval Intelligence in Washington, DC. I'm glad that the Navy isn't wasting any of the resources they have at hand, just like I'm glad that Scott is on our side.

So what is it about destroyers? Those tiny fighting ships, where young people are thrown together in extremely crowded conditions and asked to do things that the rest of us consider impossible? It seems to either burn away childishness or to reinforce it. At any rate, the people who serve on destroyers become the persons that they'll be for the rest of their lives while they're there, good or bad. It's a milestone that makes a really big impression.

Case in point is this web page that has links to many sites that were set up by veterans to honor the ships on which they served.

2003-05-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

IT'S ONLY FIVE INCHES, BUT THEY'VE NEVER NEEDED MORE
Every one of the Tigers was excited when they told us we could be there when they test-fired the 5"/54 gun.

When I saw this thing, sitting on the deck, I thought that it looked a little bit like one of those small Imperial Walkers that were in the Star Wars movies before they started to suck so bad, but without the legs, of course. The numbers that make up the 5"/54's name refers to the caliber of the shell (5"), and how many times that number the barrel length is (54 times the 5" diameter. I'll let you guys do the math).

The shell itself is fired electrically. The "primer" is a contact where the electrical connection is made.

The charge is carried along the entire length of the shell by a tube inside the case. This is to make sure that the maximum amount of powder is exposed to the charge, just in case some of it has gotten wet and doesn't want to explode like it should. Seems very practical to me, worrying about water getting inside of a shell that's stored on a ship that travels around all of the world's oceans.

The gun is an actual, real, honest-to-God artillery piece and it's automatically fed from a 20 round drum located under the deck. Realizing that the 5" will do different things if loaded with different ammunition the drum is usually only kept loaded with ten rounds. This way they can have instant ready firepower yet still be able to empty the magazine and be ready to reload with what's needed in about five seconds.

I was on the Bridge when the gun fired. Radar checks, sonar pings and visually scanning the ocean were all done to make sure that there was nothing out there. Then the gun was fired once to check range. It made a really loud noise that I felt deep in my chest and a cloud of white smoke blew over me. Smelled just like going to the shooting range, except a bit more concentrated. The PA came on. "Five seconds to impact. Five, four, three, two, one...Impact!" Waaay out on the horizon a gout of water lifted from the surface of the ocean. It took almost fifteen seconds before it finally settled back.

"Check fire! Check fire! There's something in the water, halfway between us and the impact point! Get some eyes on it!"

This put my heart in my throat. Someone was out here? But it turned out to be some balloons from a children's birthday party, rolling across the sea. Some bit of trash that the wind carried all the way out there. As soon as they figured out what it was the serious business of blowing up the ocean could continue.

They fired four rounds at a time, with one half second intervals between each round. Artillery crews in the land-based armed forces call this short burst of quick-fire a "stonk". I have no idea what the guys in the Navy call it. Something nautical, probably.

After each sequence of rounds the PA would come on and the same guy would count down the seconds before impact. Then we'd watch a few pillars of water grow from the surface and, slowly, fall back again.

It was very impressive, what with the noise and all. But, impressive or not, the deck guns are some of the least effective ship-to-ship weapons that the McFaul has in her on-board arsenal. Her most effective weapon against surface ships is probably her Harpoon missiles, and there's no doubt that the best thing for an enemy submarine are the Mk46 torpedos that she carries. So why do they still have a gun at all?

The Navy is just trying to save the taxpayers some money. Sure, the robot kamikaze missiles that she's equipped with could destroy any ship that attacked the McFaul, but the gun is certainly good enough to take care of smaller craft without wasting a million dollars a shot. The gun also has the bonus of being able to provide support to infantry units ashore, as long as they're within range.

After the shoot, spent shell casings were being offered to the Tigers as souvenirs.

And Now for the Rest of the Story
My sponsor, Kathryn, is assigned to Sonar. She was on duty while the 5" was being fired, and she was rather bored. When she heard the PA announce "Impact!", she'd start to count to herself. When the sound of the shell hitting the water reached the ship she marked bearing, and the seconds she had counted off allowed her to calculate range. All of this means that she knew where the shell hit to within a few yards, and she can also calculate the distance and bearing to another ship by the sound of the engines. If everything was going wrong, the radar was out and it was too dark to see, she could feed info to the Bridge that would allow them to aim and fire the gun.

Kathryn didn't think that this was all that interesting but I was certainly impressed. I asked her if she could tell where a golf ball splashed if someone hit it off of the Flight Deck. She hesitated, and then admitted that she could if the sea was calm and the engines weren't running. After all, ahe said, a golf ball doesn't make as much noise as an exploding artillery shell.

Considering that I've heard both when they hit something, I have to admit that she has a point.

2003-05-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

MEMORIAL DAY
Every member of the armed forces and veterans who have served in the past deserve our thanks. I'd like to present mine.

Thanks, guys. We owe you.

2003-05-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

SURGE PROTECTION
I've mentioned that living on board ship is rough. No privacy, your personal life put on hold, and nothing to do but perform maintenance and practice practice practice. This is an essential job, and we owe every one of the people who protect us by going to sea our thanks, but it's getting harder to find people willing to do it.

Seems that the Navy has noticed that keeping the ships on station for months results in lower new enlistments and a lower number of renewals. So they they're going to try something new.

According to StrategyPage.com, they're going to keep the carriers and all of their escort craft in port for longer periods of time. When trouble flares up they'll deploy more than one of the carriers at once. This strategy of keeping several carriers and their escorts ready to go is referred to as a "surge system". What the heck, it might just work.

The crews will approve, I think.

2003-05-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

HENRY AND ROBERT WHO?
An acquaintance at work asked me what the crew of the USS McFaul felt about the ruckus raised by some congressmen when Pres. Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for a speech. This puzzled me. I had heard that President Bush had given a speech on the flattop, mainly because most of the crew on the McFaul were somewhat envious, but I hadn't heard about any controversy.

The US Navy has a keen interest in the morale of their crews, and one of the ways that they try and keep it high is by allowing the guys on the ships access to the outside world. They do this through increased Email service and by trying to get their mail to the crews as fast as possible. But it's an imperfect world, and each ship out at sea doesn't have a T1 line connecting it to shore. InterNet access is spotty at best. Besides, there's more to worry about than some Congressmen trying to get their names in the paper.

So what was going on around the McFaul while Pres. Bush was on the Abraham Lincoln?

On the day that Bush delivered his speech, I was standing on the deck of the McFaul, watching something burning in the sea. The Ticonderoga class cruiser, the USS Gettysburg (CG-64) was racing around it at high speed. Two Coast Guard cutters passed us as they headed towards the Gettysburg as fast as they could, and we could see a helo orbiting the scene.

What the heck was going on?

Well, it seems that a boat out of Miami capsized in the night. 6 people clung to the hull for 12 hours until the Gettysburg's radar noticed the wreckage on the horizon. The Captain decided to turn the situation into a training excercise.

The survivors were picked up by helo, and the wreck was destroyed by naval gunfire so it would no longer be a menace to navigation. The McFaul asked more than once if assistance was required, but the Gettysburg kept insisting that they had everything well in hand.

So, six souls pulled from the hungry sea. No wonder I didn't hear about Waxman and Byrd's little appeal for attention. And no wonder that I couldn't care less.

2003-05-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

APOLOGIES FOR THE SILENCE
Sorry for the lack of posts on Friday and Saturday. I had to study for a MidTerm in Ancient Mediterranian Warfare (aced the test, BTW). Then I had to recover from a mere 5 hours of sleep spread out over three days.

But I've rested up some, and I'll start blogging up a storm for the next few days.

2003-05-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

MY NEMESIS
Want to see the one thing on the ship that I just couldn't get used to while I was there?

That little manhole is over one of the ladders that lead from one deck to another. Notice that it's part of a larger hatch cover, one that can be opened to provide more room if large peices of equipment need to be moved from one deck to another. Sure, they could have opened all of the larger hatch covers to provide a little more room for my (shall we say) ample frame, but that would have comprimised the McFaul's ability to create watertight compartments by simply slamming a hatch cover and dogging it down. There might have been very little danger of any damage while she was on a Tiger Cruise, but we're still at war and the McFaul is a warship. She has to be ready, just in case.

The problem I had with these hatches is that there's nothing but sharp angles and armor plate around one of them. I kept seeing myself slipping and breaking something in a fall. ("Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!" Probably a sign of my advancing age.) It didn't help that I wasn't used to the motion of the waves.

The crew don't have this problem. They just go up and down the stairs without any hesitation at all.

I'm sure that I would have developed this skill with practice, I just didn't spend enough time on the ship to become comfortable. Instead I would lower myself gingerly through the hole, careful not to scrape my shoulders, and then go down the stairs like I was climbing a ladder. Lucky for my ego that none of the crew laughed at me while I was doing this.

2003-05-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS IT ABOUT ATTRACTIVE WOMEN AND THEIR DESIRE TO BLOW STUFF UP?
Let me introduce you to GM3 Mallory.

When I heard that she was a Gunner's Mate like Peugh and Dadisman, I made the mistake of assuming that she was also involved in maintaining the small arms on board.

"I don't do any of that small fry stuff. Tomahawks! The really BIG guns!"

What Mallory was referring to were the Tomahawk cruise missiles that the USS McFaul are equipped with. They allow the ship to have an over-the-horizon strike capability that's far greater than any of it's other weapons, about the same as a WWII escort carrier with all of it's aircraft. It's amazing that they can pack all that firepower in such a tiny ship.

Mallory's jobs can be rather hazardous. The Tomahawks have to be loaded with some pretty volatile fuel to pack the greatest range into their limited gas tanks. One of the crew told me that the unofficial name of the fuel used is "Alien's Blood", becuase it's so toxic that it will cause some real problems if it ever leaks out of the Tomahawks special tanks. Apparently it will eat through several decks of the steel hull until it reaches the ocean.

I could use some of that stuff. There's some dandelions growing in my yard that I just can't get rid of. I didn't ask Mallory to help because she seemed rather enthusiastic about her job. I was afraid that she would simply target a Tomahawk to my front yard. This would probably take care of the dandelions, but it seemed a bit drastic to me at the time.

2003-05-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

WORKING WITH GUNS
Take a look at the picture below.

The young woman on the right is GMSN Carrie Dadisman and the fellow on the left is GM2 Jason Peugh. (I wanted to get seperate pics, but Dadisman insisted on having her pic taken with her boss. This certainly seems to have made Dadisman more cheerful about getting her pic taken, but Peugh seems to be rather self-concious.)

These are two of the individuals that are resonsible for the small arms on board ship, the stuff that I was talking about here. I saw Peugh bolting down the mounts for the M60 and the .50's when we were approaching Norfolk on the last day of the Tiger Cruise. He and I talked for a bit, and it seems that another of his duties is to familiarize the members of the crew with the weapons that they're required to carry while on picket duty. He and I both agree that helping the new student overcome their fear of the weapons is the first (and hardest) part.

"It's a big problem, with men and women both. They've been watching too much TV, been taught that the guns will hurt them as soon as they fire them. I've had people drop, I mean actually drop, a gun when they shoot it for the first time. Some of them are so scared that they're closing their eyes and flinching with every shot.

"It takes some time to overcome it. You just have to let them know that they're not going to get hurt and let them get used to it. Then they can get really enthusiastic."

Like most shooters, Peugh constantly works to improve his own skills. He also finds that working with a handgun is one of the most rewarding and challenging types of arms to work with. I'm sure that most of my readers will be gratified to hear that he's also a fan of 1911-style handgun chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge.

"I've got a Springfield match-grade 1911, and let me tell you, it makes a big difference. When you see the way the pattern shrinks due to the gun, confidence really soars. I think that's one thing that can really make someone enthused."

I'm sure that most of my readers would agree with that, particularly with Peugh's comments about the 1911 and the .45 ACP.

2003-05-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

UNREP
Onen of the procedures that the US Navy is most proud of is the Underway Replenishment, or UnRep. An emergency measure that was started in WWII to deal with a lack of bases in the Pacific Theater, UnRep is nothing more than having a tanker/supply ship rendezvous with a warship in the open ocean and pass over some fuel and supplies. Sounds boring, right? What if I told you that it's indescribably dangerous?

What I mean by that is that, should something go wrong, someone is almost certainly going to be killed or maimed for life. One of the two ships involved might even be lost. It's that serious.

The way this works is that a tanker ship pulls up next to the warship.

Notice the cranes on the tanker. They are for passing over the hoses needed to pump thousands of gallons of fuel over to the McFaul's tanks. Here's a better look at the hollow rubber octopus arms.

This is one of the dangers that come with this maneuver. Two ships, on the hight seas, bobbing and rolling around on the waves, both of them moving forward so the helmsman can steer. If they drift together then they're going to run into each other. If they drift apart the hoses connecting the two ships, the pipeline that's pumping hundreds of gallons of fuel, will pull loose. If that happens then there's going to be hundreds of gallons of fuel splashing across the deck, and if there's a spark....

Okay, so a constant distance has to be maintained no matter what the waves and the wind and the helmsman on the other ship does. Has to! So how do they gauge that sort of thing? By eye?

Kinda. They attach two lines to the tanker and toss them across the warship's deck. Little flags tied to the lines every few feet allow the guys on the Bridge to intsantly see how far apart the ships are. How do they keep tension on the line so it's always taught and the flags are easy to see? They put crew members out on the deck to hold on to the rope.

This is the really dangerous part. A sudden yank on the line and someone could be flying into a bulkhead, or even pulled overboard in a heartbeat. So notice how they're dressed. Hard hats. Non-slip boots. Life vests. They even have an enormous activated glo-stick attached to the vest, just in case.

Also notice what they're doing. The guy in back is checking the slack, making sure that feet don't get tangled in the free end. See the guy in the yellow hard hat and the blue life vest? He's a medic, waiting in the cold wind, just in case. Standing next to him is MCDM Kastler, who's the highest ranking enlisted person on the ship. Notice the white cord leading off her headphones. She's in direct communication with the Bridge, just in case.

The UnRep takes hours, so they have extra crews for the line detail. Some of them work, some of them were dozing on the deck away from the action (No pics of that. Didn't want the flash to wake anyone).

I've mentioned that this procedure is indescribably dangerous, and it is. But it's also not very risky. The safety checks that are followed make it routine. When deployed US warships go through an UnRep once or twice a week, and they're very proud of their safety record. No other navy in the world does this as often, as safely or as efficiently as the US Navy. This allows our warships to be deployed anywhere, and for longer periods of time.

There's a reason why they performed an UnRep on the last day I was on board, and it didn't have anything to do with showing off for the Tigers. Ever since 9/11 all US warships have to have a minimum of 80% capacity of fuel in their tanks when they put into port. If an attack is launched on the base they'll simply slip their moorings and steam for the open sea, ready to defend against other attacks or conduct rescue operations.

It's easy to think that we're at peace if you're a civilian. These guys can't ever forget that we're really at war.

2003-05-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

THE CLOCK THAT THE SHIP RUNS BY
Most people have heard about MRE's, those pre-packaged wonders that the military uses to feed the soldiers in the field. And why not? They're technological wonders that will keep for years under practically any conditions, as well as being so ergonomoically designed that they include toilet paper. But MRE's aren't served every meal, or even most meals. On board ship they're pretty much never served at all. Instead the crew eats what's called "A Rations". This is pretty much your standard bulk food service meals. But what about quality?

The Navy realizes that a major factor in morale is the quality of the food offered but they're also concerned with waste, cost and the time it takes to prepare the meals. I found an old PDF file that details an experiment with pre-packaged entrees (which the Navy referred to as "Advanced Foods". Go figure). The conclusions of the study was that the "Advanced Foods" reduced waste and prep time, but it added salt and fat to the diet while cutting back on variety. If the Navy has followed up on this then about 1/2 of the meals on board American warships are bulk pre-packaged food service entrees.

I've discussed the food served on board the McFaul here before. My sponsor for the Tiger Cruise, Kathryn Woods, was kind enough to send me an Email along with a picture of what happens to cornbread when the seas are rough.

Okay, enough backstory. How was the chow?

It wasn't bad at all! In fact I'd have to say that it was some of the best cafeteria food I've ever had. It was at least as good as the stuff you can get at one of those buffet restaurants, and it was better than most of them. I talked to one of my fellow Tigers who had been invited to spend some time on a US nuclear submarine, and he said that the entrees were better on the boomer mainly because the ingredients were better. Prime rib instead of meat loaf, lobster tails instead of frozen fish patties smothered in butter. But he also mentioned that the side dishes and desserts were identical.

So the food wasn't bad but the crew would endlessly complain. Listen to them and you'd think that we were still back in the days of Napoleonic wooden hulls, with hard tack and salt pork every single meal. I have to admit that it would become tedious after a while if they only served the same two entrees all the time (which happens every so often on deployment). Otherwise I'd have to say that there was room for improvement but I've certainly had to live on much worse.

Just as an aside, I noticed that the crew would be very concerned with their meals. They'd complain, sure, but they'd also arrange their whole day around when they'd get to eat. This is due to the fact that meal times are one of the few times they're actually allowed to take a break from the job, and food is a great stress reliever. As soon as they get off the ship food loses most of it's importance. Having the choice to eat what you want when you want, which is a freedom that they don't have while on board, might have something to do with it.

The mess crew are the great unsung heroes of the Navy. Everything including morale revolves arounf their efforts. And they do have what can be a daunting job. Look at the picture below, where the food for a single day has been moved out of the large storage freezers and is about to be taken into the kitchen.

That's over 900 pounds of food for more than 300 people. And they do it every single day, four meals with sides and fresh fruit and a stocked salad bar, for months at a time while on deployment.

I'm glad I don't have to scrub all of those pots and pans.

2003-05-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

WHERE THEY DO THE EATING
There's two places where people take thier meals on the McFaul. One is the Enlisted Mess (or maybe they call it the "Enlisted Galley". Never could get that right.). This is what it looks like.

Notice that the ship was rocking around a little when I took the pic, hence the tilt.

It's a clean, pleasant place to eat a meal. Right behind that wooden screen visible to the extreme left is a closed circuit television where the crew can view their favorite DVD's or videos. There's usually something playing on the TV.

I counted the seats, and about 60 people can sit down at any one time. They handle the great number of people who pass through every single meal by staggering the times that they can take a break from their job and grab some chow. It works pretty well.

The place where the officers eat is called the Wardroom.

The first thing I noticed was how the place resembled a conference room at a mid-sized business. That's pretty much it's secondary function. Planning sessions and meetings are conducted there all the time, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Whereas the enlisted members of the crew can eat what they want with no charge, the officers have to actually pay for their meals. It's a reflection of their better pay. At every meal they're offered a menu card where they circle what they want, and the cards are kept so they can settle up later. One compensation is that the officers are actually waited on at meals.

To take this picture I simply wandered up to the Wardroom and, after asking the kid Tiger playing video games if he'd mind if I included him in the picture, I let fly. I probably broke some protocol by walking into the Wardroom without an escort, but that's the advantage of being an ignorant civilian.

2003-05-19T05:47:00.000-07:00

DEPTH CHARGES? WE NO NEED NO STINKING DEPTH CHARGES!!!
Most people grow up watching war movies that are about the naval battles fought during World War II. And why not? It was the last time there were large-scale sea battles, with naval gunfire actually doing some good. Exciting stuff.

So people can be forgiven if they should happen to see some barrel shaped objects on a modern destroyer and think "Oh, those must be the depth charges. For attacking submarines, dontchya know?"

I know I did. But that just shows how much of a lubber I am.

Modern attack subs dive way too deep and they move way too fast for big cans of explosive to be of any use. By the time the depth charge had fallen all the way down to where the sub is lurking it would literally be miles away.

Instead those are giant inflatable life rafts. Should the unthinkable happen and the McFaul sinks, those barrels would be automatically released from the rack when it was ten feet down or so. Then the barrels pop open, the orange life raft inflates, and a nifty life-saving device heads back up to the surface.

I was told that they're stocked with enough food and water per raft to sustain thirty people for a week. The rafts in those six barrels alone could save more than half the crew, and there's more placed at strategic places around the superstructure. Another part of the design is that the rafts themselves are plenty large, easy to see from a search aircraft.

I just hope no one ever has to use them.

2003-05-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

SNACKING ON THE HIGH SEAS
SH2 Gorrell mentioned that one of his most important jobs is keeping the snacks well stocked in the Ship's Store. That's pretty apparent if one should glance inside the store itself.

Notice the items visible on the shelves. Snacks snacks snacks. Down towards the bottom they even have big boxes of Saltines and cans of Cheeze Whiz for sale so the budget-conscious Navy snacker can assemble their own crunchy refreshment. To the right is a smaller shelf that holds personal toiletries (soap, shampoo, towels, deoderant, shaving materials, feminine hygiene products). Nestled into the corner by the door is a refrigerator containing candy bars.

All in all, I'd have to say that about 2/3 of the shelf space is devoted to snacks, the rest to less tasty fare. What's really remarkable about this is that there's a cluster of vending machines bolted to the deck just a few steps away. Two Pepsi machines and a snack machine laden with the same items available in the Store, just packaged in smaller and more costly amounts.

I've also mentioned that there's always stuff to eat in the Enlisted Mess. Fresh fruit is just left there for anyone to grab, if nothing else. But the snacks that the crew have to pay for are very popular, much more so than they are in the civilian world. Added to that is the way that everyone would insist that morale would suffer if the snack supply would run out.

It took a few days for me to puzzle out, but I think that it's a way to cope with stress.

Most of us have a job so we can pay for our real life. We go home every day, devote some time to the family and our hobbies to relax and recharge, and then we sleep so we can get up and go do it again.

This isn't the way things happen on board ship. The stress is not insignificant, mainly because the job never ends and you can't get away from it. Personality conflicts will arise whenever more than two people get together, but there isn't any way to get away from someone who rubs you the wrong way. Sometimes they sleep just a few feet away from you, so even going to bed isn't a relief. And the crew is denied the most important of relationships, the support that family and loved ones provide, for months at a time. Considering all this, I'm not surprised that the crunchy snacks are brisk sellers.

I wonder if I have any Cheeze Whiz in my pantry?

2003-05-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MCFAUL, BUT IT IS ABOUT A US NAVY WARSHIP
Sorry to interrupt my scheduled postings about my trip on the USS McFaul but this is just too funny to let pass.

According to StrategyPage.com, a US submarine named the Connecticut (SSN 22) surfaced on the North Polar Ice Floe. While she was there a polar bear attacked the ship. These remarkable photos were taken of the bear attack.

I bet I know what was going through the bruin's mind. "With a seal this big I'm gonna eat like a king!"

2003-05-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

KEWL GRAPHIC!
My sponsor for the Tiger Cruise, Esperanto blogger Kathryn Woods, has just sent me a link to the US Naval Institute's graphic of an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. This should help you locate the places on the ship that I mention in my posts.

And it's really kewl!

2003-05-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

KEEPING BODY AND SOUL TOGETHER
My basic plan while on the Tiger Cruise was to wander around by myself as much as possible. I spent some time with my sponsor, of course, but I figured that the best way to get a feel for the ship and the people manning her was to simply walk around at all hours of the day or night and walk through any door that didn't have a warning label on it. This allowed me to meet a fair number of the crew, and to have private talks with them.

The first person to walk up to greet me (other than my sponsor) was SH2 Gorrell.

Mr. Gorrell's job essentially is to take care of the rest of the crew (there's more than one Ship's Serviceman. He doesn't have to do it all by himself). He does this by making sure that the laundry is in working order, that the soft drink and snack machines are well stocked, the change machines in front of the vending machines have change in them, and that the Ship's Store is open on time.

"That's the one thing that can ruin morale. The Ship's Store." he said. "If it's closed for too long or if we don't have enough snacks then people start to grumble right quick!"

"Snacks? But food for the enlisted is free, AND there's four meals a day. In fact, there's always something to eat in the Enlisted Mess. They really buy snacks?"

"Can't keep them on the shelves. It's the crunchy stuff that's popular. If we run out then I hear about it, alright."

Mr. Gorrell has a lovely wife and a beautiful baby daughter waiting for him at home, and he doesn't like to be away from his family any more than anyone else.

"When I first got here it took a little while to adjust, just like everyone. But I realized that people depend on me here on the ship and I should focus on my job and do it the best that I can. It wouldn't do anyone any good if I just thought about what I was missing at home and moped around. So I try to think about everyone else on the ship before me. After all, they wish that they were home just like I was."

Mr. Gorrell seems to actually try and live up to these ideals instead of simply pay lip service to them. He was always friendly, cheerful and ready to answer my dopey questions. Besides that, he was the only member of the crew that I talked to who never said "Not that I'm bitter or anything."

Now that's good morale!

2003-05-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

PETTY THEFT
Ask anyone who's held a job in law enforcement and they'll tell you without hesitation that anyone will commit a crime. I mean anyone! The crack addict might do it more often than the ordained minister, but that's only because the addict has less to lose if caught and a more pressing need for the money.

One of the things I did know about before the cruise was the overcrowding (and it is severly overcrowded). There would be no way to safeguard my belongings unless I could keep an eye on it or it was locked up somewhere, and there wasn't any place to lock it up. Since it would be futile to try and carry all of my gear around with me all of the time I made sure that I could carry the stuff that was too valuable to lose. This meant my wallet and my digital camera. I even brought along a few ziplock plastic sandwich bags so I could take those two items into the shower with me.

I did have a pocketful of change I didn't want to be burdened with. I piled my bags on my assigned rack when I'd roam the ship, the coins in a pile next to them with a little note that said "The only thing of any value here is this change. Help yourself." When I mentioned this to my sponsor she said with confidence "It'll be gone when you get back."

Except it wasn't. No one touched it, and it looked like no one even went through my bags the entire four days that I was aboard.

This was rather a surprise to me. I talked about it to SH2 Gorrell and he had an explanation.

"So, you're in Berthing One?" he said. "That's all Combat Systems down there. People from the same section look out for one another, or at least don't try to screw each other over. Now if you were in another berthing, with people piled together who work in different areas of the ship...."

Near as I can tell, there's three factors at work here. One of them is tribalism, "Us vs Them" that we're all familiar with from our own lives (how many times have you had a job where the different shifts would backbite each other at every oppurtunity?). Another one is simple self-interest, because no one wants to make the already stressful situation on board even worse. The third reason that no one tried to find something to pilfer is undoubtably because I was a special civilian guest, and if something of mine went missing the Captain and other officers would come down like a ton of bricks on everyone.

Not that I'll stop taking my wallet and camera into the shower with me if they invite me to do this again. I used to work in law enforcement myself, after all.

2003-05-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATO
One of the most anticipated part of the Tiger Cruise was the chance to shoot the ship's defensive small arms that are mounted on the rail. Every member of the crew has the chance to fire these weapons and become familiar with them, a good idea in case of an actual attack while the ship is tied up in port. Although they staged this excercise specifically for the Tigers, it isn't an unusual part of the crew's training.

But what to shoot? Aiming at a spot in the ocean and watching the water splash just isn't very helpful. A target is needed. That's where the Killer Tomato comes in. It's a really big orange balloon, shaped like a pyramid and made of a springy latex. It will take an amazing amount of damage before ripping or deflating, the springy material that it's made of closing up whenever a bullet pokes a hole in it.

That portly gentleman with the green cowboy hat and the Joker's grin is me, and I stand at 5"10". The hat adds another inch, maybe. Notice how the Tomato looms over me, taunting me with it's height and provocative orange hue. How tall would you say that is? Twelve feet?

The Tomato is weighted on the bottom by tying an empty .50 ammo can to it. It's set adrift and the ship orbits the balloon. The range and angle to the target is constantly changing, helping to train the crew in proper use of adjusting sights. AND it's a ton of fun.

The safety of the civilians on board was a major concern. No one was allowed to approach the guns unless they were wearing protective gear. After waiting my turn I armored up and tried out the M60 light machinegun.

This is a larger pic so you can see some details. Notice that little orange pyramid out there on the waves? That's the Tomato, the huge ballon that dwarfed me when I was standing in front of it. The sights were set at 300 yards, but they were of little use with the shifting range. The trick is to aim as well as you can, shoot a small burst, and watch where the bullets splash. Then you correct your aim and repeat. Eventually you manage to walk your fire onto the target. It's trickier than it sounds, but you get the hang of it quickly enough.

In the pic above you can see a spent cartridge flying out of the ejection port on the right side of the gun. Just to the right of the Tomato you can make out the splash where my rounds were falling.

After the M60 it was time for the twin M2HB.

This might look dramatic but the mount was firmly bolted to the deck and recoil was non-existant. Since the energy of the reaction was sent through the hull, the sound is transmitted through the steel and you can hear the firing guns all over the ship. Short bursts were absolutely neccessary when firing the .50, since the round is so friggin' huge and generates so much heat that the barrels can literally erode and melt under sustained fire.

All in all, a very effective method of training the crew in the use of the ship's defensive weapons. Makes me wish I was a millionaire. I'd buy a yacht and some giant balloons, collect full auto weapons, and go far out to sea every weekend to hone my skills. After a few years the mountain of spent brass that rolled overboard would poke above the waves and become a hazard to navigation.

2003-05-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

CORRUPTING OUR NATION'S YOUTH
The adult Tigers were allowed to shoot the M60 and the twin M2HB's, but the kids weren't totally ignored. Steps were set up around a single M2HB mount, and the kids donned protective armor and waited patiently for their chance to shoot the Killer Tomato.

In fact they waited in line with considerably more patience than the adult Tigers did. When their turn came they stepped up, listened to the instructions and let fly. I can't swear to it, but it seemed to me that they managed better accuracy than the adults.

I've mentioned here before that women seem to gain shooting skills faster than men, but I've never actually trained a child before. I might just have missed my calling, because there was one little girl there that really impressed me.

Her name is Kiersten Deutsch, and she did everything right the first time. She carefully oriented herself behind the gun to acheive a good sight picture and tripped off a short burst.

After checking to see the fall of the shot she corrected her aim and sent another short burst downrange. Then she corrected again. Third time was the charm and she nailed the Tomato after that. And she kept on target with all the rest of her rounds. She has the natural talents that is required of all excellent shooters: a keen eye, a steady hand and nerves of steel. If she has an interest in the shooting sports then she could possibly train herself up to be a champion.

I talked to her Daddy because Keirsten was too shy to talk to a big ol' hairy-scary guy like me. She's seven now, and she'll be eight in June of 2003. Do you guys know what that means?

We only have about ten years more before she starts to show up at the matches to kick our butts! Better get our fun in now before we get humiliated.

Below is a pic of Kiersten so we can recognize her when the dark day of her first competition arrives.

2003-05-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

ALL AVAILABLE HANDS TO THE FLIGHT DECK!
Imagine the setting for a moment. Try to put yourself there.

Above there's a darkening sky, overcast, nothing but grey clouds. Below there's the ever changing sea, water poisoned by salt stretching from horizon to horizon.

But there's a ship down there, a slim steel needle steaming north. As your get closer you can see that on the Flight Deck, the flat part of the ship all the way in the back, a battle rages.

The defender's are tenacious, desperate, fighting for their lives. The children are trapped and huddle in small spaces as far from the fighting as possible. The attackers bulk huge, in their physical prime, masters of the close-in assault and hand-to-hand combat.

Soon numbers begin to tell. The defenders fall back, barricading themselves behind doors that they brace with whatever they can find. The agressors are prepared for this, they've brought the tools they need to force the barricades. The doors begin to buckle.

It was movie night on the McFaul, and they were showing The Lord of the Ring: the Two Towers.

But you can't rush these things. First there was MidRats, Midnight Rations, the last meal of the day before lights out. On that day it was Buffalo chicken wings, potatoes au graten, fried cheese sticks and some vegetable medley that no one seemed to be interested in. Then it was time to walk down into your berthing, grab a blanket from your rack, and head on out through the Flight Deck airlock.

The screen was large enough so everyone could easily see it. People settled down. Someone passed out bags of microwaved popcorn. ("Police those colonels when you're done!" Heh. Well, it was funnier in a military setting.)

When the light had faded enough the movie was started. It's a long film, and some of the kid Tigers fell asleep in their blankets or curled up on their Daddy's lap. The clouds cleared and the stars came out when the movie was halfway through. While animated trees held council I felt the ship rolling under my back and picked out the ancient constellations. Orion the Hunter, striding across the sky with his dagger in his belt. Sirius the Dog Star, forever following his master. Ursa Major, an old friend of mine that's often helped me get oriented when I've gone camping. Jupiter, largest and most volatile of the wandering stars.

Members of the crew told me that they have movie night about once a month, weather permitting. That means that it's hardly routine, but it's common enough so that it's not considered a special event. It'll be a long time before I forget that night, though.

2003-05-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

DESCRIBING COLOR TO A BLIND MAN
Many people who have never served will ask people in the military what it’s like, wanting to know how active duty life is different from their own routine. Most of the people they ask will stop and think about it for a minute, chewing their answer over in their mind before replying with an emphatic “It sucks!”

This is not very descriptive, but it’s probably the best that they can come up with in a very short period of time. The problem is that life in the military is so different from civilian life, with so many alien pressures and stresses and concerns, that it’s virtually impossible to describe what it’s like to actually live inside military society to someone who has never experienced it before.

From May 2, 2003 through May 5 I participated in a Tiger Cruise on the USS McFaul (DDG-74). This is where a member of the crew can sponsor a friend or family member to come aboard for a few days and see how things get done. I count myself as being very fortunate to be offered this opportunity.

I’ve decided to write about my experience in a series of posts. Although many of the posts will detail the ship and it’s capabilities, my main purpose is to provide a glimpse into the unique society that exists inside a tiny steel can that is often in the middle of a very large and dangerous ocean.

I wasn’t taking notes or recording any of the conversations that I had while aboard and there was plenty for me to take in, so my recollections might be off. Any errors that are made are entirely my own fault, and both apologies and retractions are but an Email away.

2003-05-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

VITAL STATISTICS
Sometimes it’s important to give some background so people will understand what you’re trying to describe. With this in mind, let’s go over the numbers that describe a ship like the McFaul.

The USS McFaul (DDG-74) is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The "G" in it's call letters (DDG-74) means that it's equipped with guided missiles, weapons that increase the range and effectiveness of the vessel far beyond the horizon. Just as a basis for comparison, if the McFaul was equipped with a helicoptor (to increase the range of her sensors) and had an unlimited amount of missile reloads she could easily take on and destroy a WWII carrier task force all by her lonesome.

To my lubber eyes the McFaul looked reasonably large but the US Navy has only one class of deep-water warships that are smaller, the Oliver Hazard Perry class of frigates, which are about 1/2 the size of the Arleigh Burke class destroyers. Surprisingly, they stuff almost the same number of people on the OHP ships. People I talked to who have served on frigates always made sure to mention how miserable the living conditions are, and I certainly believe them.

If you want a map of the passageways inside the ship (called "P-ways". Heh), take an old ladder out into your backyard and throw it down on the ground. Then take a pointy stick and scratch the outline of a ship around it. That's pretty much it, two long P-ways running down the long axis of the ship with short P-ways joining them every so often.

Except that it's not so simple. Stuff gets in the way. Bulkheads, watertight doors, equipment, compartments and structural supports all keep the cross P-ways from going all the way across. So, to keep your map accurate, take an axe to all but two of the rungs and raggedly chop them off. NOW you have a chart that will help you navigate inside the skin of the ship.

This internal layout is neccessary considering all of the equipment that has to be crammed inside, but it does make getting around a pain until you learn how to do it. For the first day or so I'd turn a corner and find a solid steel wall right in front of my nose. Then I'd have to backtrack and figure out another route. This wasn't as frustrating as it sounds. There really wasn't all that much space to walk around in, and it doesn't take long to get your bearings and memorize distinctive landmarks....uh, shipmarks.

2003-05-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

MOTTOS TO STIR THE BLOOD
The USS McFaul is attached to Destroyer Squadron XVIII.

The Squadron has a motto, and it’s Inimici Cavete. If my Latin hasn’t failed me then that means ”Enemies Beware”. The McFaul has her own motto, and it’s “Honor, Courage, Sacrifice”. It might just be the result of a classical education but I think I prefer the Squadron’s motto over the ship’s.

The crew likes to joke that the motto really is “Sacrifice, Sacrifice, Sacrifice”. It’s just one of the ways that they try to lighten the mood and cope with the everyday stress that life aboard ship brings.

Another way is to say “Not that I’m bitter or anything.” There were some days when this would be said every five sentences or so. Maybe that should be the motto of the ship.

2003-05-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS FALSE
The plan was for the McFaul to leave Ft. Lauderdale, FL with the invited civilians aboard (the Tigers, in Navy parlance). Four days and three nights later it would dock in Norfolk, VA.

I arrived in the dead of night and had to go through some checkpoints before I could approach the ship. Local police and sheriff deputies provided the first tier of security, serious guys who were awake and alert at 02:00 hours (2:00 AM). They actually took the time to look at my ID. Stare at the picture, then look at the face of the person holding it. Then back at the little plastic card to read all the other info.

“Ohio, huh?” they’d say after they saw my driver’s license (I’m from Columbus, OH). I was with two people in Navy uniforms, but they had their ID checked as well. Ft. Lauderdale is known as a wild and wooly party town because of the drunken college kids that spend their spring breaks down there, but I seriously doubt that anything is going to happen if local law enforcement has anything to say about it.

The second layer of security was Navy personnel on duty. More ID checks and my bags were searched. Then I was allowed to board and my ID was given the once-over yet again at the top of the gangplank. I must have looked honest, because they didn’t bother to check to see if I was who I claimed again during the rest of the cruise.

When the ship left port the next morning it was escorted out of the harbor by very fit armed men in tiny motorboats operated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

This might seem rather odd, all of these different law enforcement agencies providing physical protection for one of the US Navy’s newest and most deadly warships. But they were the guys who know the area, they have the equipment, and they’re definitely not screwing around. Eventually they're going to be replaced by agents working for the US Dept. of Homeland Security. I just hope that anything the Homeland Security guys put together is half as professional.

2003-05-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS!
The last line of defense is, of course, the crew. Since many of my readers are interested in firearms and self defense I’ve decided to take a moment and mention the different small arms that are available to defend the ship. If this subject doesn’t interest you then please skip on down. There’s plenty of crunchy goodness towards the center.

Armed crew members are on deck and standing watch every time the ship enters, leaves or stays in port. They’re armed with pump action 12 guage shotguns, the excellent M14 rifle, and the M92 Beretta autoloader. There’s also a .50 M2HP twin mount, a single M2HB, and an M60 light machine gun on it’s own mount.

They wouldn’t let me fire an M14 or one of the shotguns. They also didn’t offer to stand around and watch in slack jawed amazement while I demonstrated my skill with one of the 9mm autoloaders. This was probably for the best since I would be sure to choke under the pressure and hit the magazine release by mistake when I drew the handgun, causing all to laugh with amusement and scar my very soul to the roots. BUT they did have a lapse of reason for long enough for me to try out the twin fifty and the M60. I’ll talk about that particular experience tomorrow.

2003-05-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

YOU CAN TELL IT WAS BUILT WAY BEFORE CAPTAIN KIRK
The McFaul is essentially an airtight steel can, and the pressure inside of the ship is kept higher than that outside to prevent biological agents and poison gas from entering. Access to the interior of the ship is through two airlocks. Going “inside of the skin of the ship” is just like I imagined climbing into a 1950's space ship would be like, all heavy steel doors and whistling wind making ghost fingers that tug at your clothes. Even though I was bone tired from driving for the past 29 ½ hours I still thought it was too kewl for words.

There are other hatches and doors opening directly to the outside. One time I had my head up my butt and opened the wrong door. It tried to slam open, the interior pressure pushing it out, but it was prevented by the stops (sort of a steel latch designed to keep this sort of thing from happening).

Okay, I opened the wrong door. Now I had to close it. It was a bit of a struggle and I had to put the book I was carrying down on the deck so I could use both hands. When I was done and the wind noise stopped I heard someone laughing behind me.

It was one of the crew. He was very gracious abiut it when I apologized. "Happens to everyone at one time or another, Sir." he said. I didn't mind him having a laugh at my expense. Getting laughed at was the least that I deserved.

One of the airlocks is on the Flight Deck, and the other is one deck up. My sense of having been transported into an old Amazing issue was reinforced when I saw two decontamination chambers that had been set up inside of the higher lock. They even had round glass windows so the medical staff could peer in and see how their patients were doing.

Walking around inside reinforces the spaceship impression. Everything was steel plates, jutting structural supports, with wires and pipes running along the passageways for a few feet before disappearing into the bulkheads. The other detail that jumps out at you is the firefighting equipment at hand.

Just about everyone I passed in the P-way had a little roll of cloth strapped to their coveralls, gloves and a hood made of fire retardant material that they could slip on so they could get to the equipment behind a wall of flame without the flesh bubbling off of their bones.

This makes perfect sense if one considers that the McFaul has been built with the expectation that it will have to go into combat one day. If unfriendly strangers shoot at you then sometimes they will score a hit. Considering that there’s nowhere to go on the ocean, and that the fumes produced by a fire will poison the air inside the hull in seconds, then this obsession with killing the fire before it kills you and your shipmates is certainly worth the effort. In fact, I felt like I was slacking off after a day or so because I didn’t know how to fight a fire below decks. They take it that seriously.

2003-05-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

A MIXTURE OF HIGH TECH AND HEAVY METAL
I’ve mentioned before that the McFaul is one of the US Navy’s newest and most advanced ships, and it is. It has the capability to monitor an incredibly huge space, air and surface and deep ocean depths, and deny that space to the enemy. But that doesn’t mean that it’s all Star Trek control panels and blinking lights. In fact, most of the systems on board wouldn’t be all that unfamiliar to a seaman from 50 years ago.

The picture shows how solid state electronics are nestled up against digital equipment (the monitor screen looks funky because of all of the power cables running through the room, creating magnetic fields).

Whenever possible the designers opted for robust equipment that could take a pounding. To my civilian sensibilities it looked a bit odd, mainly because we’ve been taught by endless ads that it isn’t high tech unless it looks like it was though up by a design team that lives somewhere out of this gravity well. But there’s no denying the fact that the stuff I’m using to type these words would be useless junk long before most of the vital systems on the McFaul even noticed any undue strain.

Sometimes the old ways have a definite advantage. If a vessel took so much damage in Star Trek that the doors wouldn’t work, then Scotty would phaser a hole in the wall and yank a few wires, or they’d simply get into the next compartment through all of those comfortably roomy air ducts. The designers thought of that when they were building the McFaul, and they scattered a few tools around to help when buckled doors don’t want to cooperate. Except that it looks more like Dungeons and Dragons than Star Trek.

2003-05-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

LIKE A NOIR MOVIE, EXCEPT I WASN’T ON A TRAIN
There’s more than 300 people in the McFaul’s crew, and that was very apparent to me when I was shown to my assigned berthing (“berthing” is the bunkroom where you sleep, and your “rack” is the bunk where you do the sleeping). First, there’s the smell.

The crew spends a significant amount of time cleaning the ship, and it was considerably cleaner and tidier than most apartments I’ve been in. But there’s still more than 300 freakin’ people living right on top of each other! I never counted each bunk in my berthing, mainly because there was always someone sleeping down there and I didn't think they'd appreciate a lubber stomping through their space, but there had to be at least 60 men living down there. All these guys shared a bathroom with two urinals, three toilets, five sinks and three shower stalls. The urinals were the source of most of the odor, which makes sense if you consider that at least 60 men would pop in at all hours of the day to use them. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t unsanitary. The waste was kept away from people. But it didn’t smell like a field of posies, either.

You can see how crowded the sleeping arrangements are by the picture below.

If you think that this looks a lot like those old movies that show Pullman sleeper trains, you’re right. It’s pretty much exactly the same, little bunks with thin mattresses and a reading light, curtains that you can draw for a semblance of privacy. In both instances it’s done to make the most efficient use of space as possible. The only real difference is that these Navy bunks have canvas straps attached under the mattress that clip to the bottom of the bunk above you. This is so you don’t get thrown out of your rack during rough weather, and the straps on the middle bunk are visible in the picture.

In the old days there was room for a little chest where each sailor kept his personal belongings. That’s a thing of the past. Now storage space is built under the mattress itself.

This is called a “coffin locker”, and it works reasonably well. The only real problem is that there’s not a great deal of space available for each person. This causes some problems so far as morale is concerned, but there really isn’t much that can be done about it.

Notice how gloomy it is down there. Oh, there were lights, and you could see your way around, but it's kept shadowed so the people off duty can get some sleep. During the evening hours the regular lights were turned off and red lamps down on the deck come on. When this happens there's pretty much only enough light to see where you're putting your feet. Lucky thing I had the SureFire flashlight I use for low-light handgun drills or else I would have fallen and broken my neck a dozen times before I got used to it.

All that red light looked really odd. Made me think of being in the Hall of the Mountain King, except without the dwarves making a racket.

2003-05-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

BOUNCING AROUND
So here I was, walking around this steel building and it kept moving under my feet. Very disconcerting. It took about a day for me to get used to it by pretending that I was inside a really big bus with a maniac driver who was speeding like crazy and weaving through traffic in a dangerous way. This was, strangely enough, a comfort to me.

The problem is that destroyers are such small ships. They’re eminently sea worthy, and can weather some really rough seas, but just about any wave is noticeable. I was fortunate in that the sea was very calm for the first few days until I got used to the motion. I wasn’t so fortunate when I mentioned the pitching to my sponsor. Kathryn looked at me with a profoundly pitying look, like I was a particularly dim witted ‘tard, and said “It’s really gentle, James. I don’t even feel anything.”

‘Tard I might be, but I was wise enough to know when to cut my losses and shut up after that.

We rounded Cape Hatteras on the last night I spent aboard and the sea got kind of rough. I’m very fortunate in that I’m not particularly susceptible to motion sickness and I rather enjoyed it. Or I did until I got up to move around. It wasn’t a problem while I was lying down on my rack, but it was decidedly unpleasant when I was going up or down ladders. There was an UnRep (“Underway Replenishment”) scheduled for the early morning and I didn’t want to miss it. I spent a few hours hanging around the Enlisted Mess sipping colorful and sugary faux-fruit drinks until I felt that I could handle it. Luckily I did, because if I threw up what I had been drinking it would have looked like Walt Disney had exploded in the P-way (“passageway”).

I’ve mentioned Kathryn before and I’m not above doing it again. A pic of her is below so you can put a face with the name.

2003-05-15T14:52:00.000-07:00

ALL FOR TODAY
I think that will take care of you for today. Late night tomorrow there will be pics of me firing the M60, the twin M2HB, and even pics of the dread monster that we were defending the ship from.

Go to bed.

2003-05-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'VE BEEN DISTRACTED LATELY
I know that I said that I'd talk about my trip on the USS McFaul, but something came up on Sunday when I got back into town.

Some yahoo in a pickup truck must have taken umbrage at my little Geo Metro. He powered me off the road and into the side of a hill.

The car rolled several times and the roof collapsed. I was lucky in that it just didn't collapse where my pointy little head happened to be.

So I've been a bit distracted over the past few days. I'll have plemty of posts (and plenty of pictures) on Thursday evening.

Promise!

2003-04-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

TWO WEEK NOTICE
The woman who runs this Esperanto language blog has convinced the US Navy to let me on one of their destroyers as a guest. The USS McFaul (DDG-74) is going to be the lucky ship.

This means that I'll be away from hi-speed internet connection until Sunday, May 11 (hey, that's my birthday!). I might (just might) be able to post a word or two to let you guys know how things are going. I'll certainly try, so check back in every other day or so and see if the pixels have been updated.

And if the McFaul is lost with all hands, it's probably because I was wondering what that big red switch was for.

2003-04-29T15:05:00.000-07:00

I DON'T THINK HE'S LISTENING
LT. Smash has a letter for Pres. Chirac. It's logical and well reasoned.

Not that logic or reason has made any impression on the French lately.

(Link courtesy of Prof. Reynolds.

2003-04-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

BY "ASYLUM" THEY DON'T MEAN "CRAZY HOUSE"
I don't remember who said it, but I read a post in one of the blogs that said we should grant citizenship to the Iraqi who tipped US forces off to Private Lynch's location when she was being tortured by Saddam's henchmen. (If anyone out there reading this knows which blog I'm talking about, send me an Email and I'll link to it.)

I just read where the US is granting asylum to that man.

It's not citizenship, but it's still pretty good. If he learns English and applies himself I'm sure that he could take the oath one day. I'd like to be there to shake his hand and hand him an American flag if he ever does.

2003-04-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

THE VALUE OF TALK
Just saw this article. The headline was "Koreas Agree to Resolve Nuclear Crisis".

Okay, whatever. I figured that South Korea had simply decided to start paying off North Korea, like the US had been doing under Pres. Clinton. But read the article and you'll soon find out that it's not that at all. In fact, the two Koreas did little more than strive to come to an agreement.

"South and North Korea will thoroughly consult each other's position on the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and will continue cooperation to resolve this issue peacefully through dialogue," the joint communique said.

Okay. This does what, exactly? The situation is changed how?

2003-04-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

WRAP SOME LEATHER AROUND THAT GUN
So you've taken the safety courses. You've gone to the range religiously until your skill is honed to a keen edge. You've suffered through the background test, the endless wait while the bureacracy decides if you're trustworthy. Now you're the proud recipient of a Concealed Carry Permit. You're ready to join the ranks of those that care for the safety of themselves and others, and you're about to go out in public with the means to defend against violent criminal attack.

I'm glad you're here. But now that you can carry concealed, how are you going to do it?

Most gunfighters have very strong opinions about the model and caliber of handgun that they consider necessary for defense. They're almost as emotional when it comes to the gunleather they use to haul around their shootin' irons. Ask someone with experience for advice and they'll fill your ear with the only holster and carry method that will work.

My take on it is that everyone is different. One size doesn't fit all. You're going to have to go out there and make your own decision as to what's right for you.

But there are a few things I can do to keep you from making false starts. I might even save you some money. Heck, everyone likes that!

Something Borrowed
Everybody I've ever met who carries concealed has a bunch of holsters rattling around the closet back home. Every one of them tried a few different ways to lug the gun around before settling on the one method that worked best for them. If you should be lucky enough to know someone like that, ask them about their cast offs. They probably will sell them to you cheap.

Another point on this topic is gun stores. Most of them have some old holsters that they'll sell at bargain basement prices. Before buying new, take some time to call some of the local shops and see if they have a "Bargain Bin" you can root around in. It's certainly worth your time.

Leather or Plastic
Ask the people who carry all the time what they use and most will say that they prefer leather. This mainly due to the fact that it does a superior job of protecting your gun, and it lasts much longer than nylon holsters.

But it's expensive. Usually twice as expensive as nylon. Might as well save the cash and try out various nylon rigs first, and then decide if you want leather later.

One of the largest manufacturers of holsters made from nylon and kydex holsters is Uncle Mike's. They have a truly impressive selection to choose from. I'd suggest that you browse through the online catalog just to see what options are available.

Now let's examine the different types of holsters available.

Belly Bands
This type of holster has become popular over the past few years, mainly due to the fact that it provides decent concealement without forcing someone to buy clothes that are a different size. If the rig is fancy enough, you can even carry several extra items along with your gun. You can even wear it under a business suit without too much trouble. Sort of like one of those money belts.

The problem is one of accessibility. Work on your fast draw? Don't make me laugh! Usually you have to untuck your shirt or unbutton it or something before you can draw your weapon. Really, really slow.

Ankle Holsters
These rigs provide really good concealment for small guns, but they're rather uncomfortable. And by "uncomfortable" I mean "friggin' torture".

It's not that they're painful. It's just that it takes a great deal of patience to get used to having this heavy weight strapped to one foot. Take a step with one on and your foot swings out in front of you with a great deal of force. It either feels like your limping or that you're kicking a field goal. Still, it's an option, particularly if you happen to live in a state with liberal enough gun laws so a holdout gun isn't illegal.

Fanny Pack Holsters
These are a pretty good idea. They provide places for extra items like wallet, keys, extra ammo, cough drops, stuff like that. And you can just strap it on over your regular clothes and go to town. The only problem is that it's the first thing that the crooks want to steal. If they should suspect that you have a gun, they'll do just about anything to keep you from reaching in there. Still, it's a good all-around system.

In the same vein are purses with gun compartments, but they can be costly. This idea has even spawned various luggage and equipment cases with handgun compartments. (Click on the last link and check out the belt buckle with the combination lock built in. Heh.)

None of these are bad ideas, but you can probably just empty out an interior pocket of your standard purses and equipmet cases and use that. Save some money.

Belt Holsters
There's a reason why this is the most popular style of holster. It offers reasonable concealement, quick access in an emergency, control and comfort. Just scroll around on this page and see if anything strikes your fancy.

Inside the Pants Holster
Pretty similar to a belt holster, except it rides inside against your underwear (and you do want to wear some underwear if you use this type of holster). This provides most of the advantages of a belt hoster (quick accessibility and control), but the gun is better concealed at the expense of comfort. Perfect if you want to leave the jacket at home and go about your day with an untucked T-shirt, but the gun can pinch some fat or jab you in the ribs if you're not careful when sitting down. It'a also a real pain to get at the gun if you're in your car with the seatbelt on. But, on the plus side, it seems to be the favorite of off-duty police officers.

If this sounds right for you, then buy pants that are 2 inches larger than those you normally buy. Use an all-leather belt, and avoid those ultra-thin ones that are all the rage with yuppie business suits.

Shoulder Holsters
Just like everything else in life, these have advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that it's a comfortable way to carry your gun, no matter if you're walking around or sitting down somewhere. It also holds the gun out of the way when you're using your hands. The disadvantages are that it's tough to conceal unless you're wearing a coat or business suit jacket. If you can't imagine going anywhere without the pin stripes on then this might be just the ticket.

Anyway, remember my advice. Try a few different systems until you find the one you're most comfortable with.

2003-04-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

MORE THAN THEY BARGAINED FOR
According to this article, some people hiding in a crowd of protesters fired on US troops in Iraq. The firing went on for 30 minutes, so the people who were doing the shootin' came loaded for bear.

I figured something like this might happen, but I never thought that anyone would be so stupid. Now I'm interested in what's going to happen next. If the people behind this are smart, they'll avoid doing it again and let the Arab PR guys go to work. If they're stupid, they'll try and do it again. If it does happen again, then it's only a matter of time before we find out what's going on and who's doing it.

Anyone want to bet that Iran is behind it? Could be Syria, or Jordan, I suppose. Maybe even Saudi Arabia. But the smart money would be on Iran.

2003-04-26T18:19:00.000-07:00

CLUELESS IN KYOTO
A recent editorial in the Japanese Times shows that the Japanese just don't get it. The op-ed says that the spate of rhetoric from the Axis of Weasels over the liberation of Iraq is far more damaging than any benefits we might gain from the recent war. The author also drags out the tired old "Arab street" bogeyman, stating that increased tensions over our victory might lead to a "clash of civilizations" between the US and the Islamic world.

Somebody should clue this guy in. For one thing, it's "increased tensions" from the 9/11 attacks that led to the American decision to seek out and put an end to support that terrorist organizations receive. Since the majority of Arab states either actively support terrorism or ignore it by refusing to actively pursue and arrest wanted terrorists, it looks to me like this "clash of civilizations" has already started. But it wasn't the US who fired the first shot.

So far as the Weasels are concerned, they tried very hard to stop the US from pursueing an action that's seen as being vital to our self defense and security. Sure, they can disagree, but doing anything in their power to prevent actions that America perceives as essential to saving lives? It's fair to say that it isn't the US who's destroying international relations.

The author ends by stating that the Japanese government has been a supporter of the US invasion, mainly due to fears about North Korea. He voices the wish that the US and Japan can defuse the situation "wisely" by using diplomacy.

What are they feeding people in the Land of the Rising Sun, anyway? Stupid pills? Hello! Diplomacy has already failed! North Korea admitted last year that they continued with their nuclear development program in direct violation of an agreement they had with the US. We held up our end, they decided to "unilaterally" ignore the deal and just go ahead with it anyway.

I figure that all that seaweed they eat must be screwing with their brains.

2003-04-26T01:47:00.000-07:00

BUILT LIKE A YUGO
I was over at StrategyPage and I came across this item (no permalinks at SP, so look for the post from April 25, 2003). The post talks about how the 25mm automatic cannon (or "Bushmaster") that's mounted on the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle was able to chew through the thin side armor on the turret of the Iraqi T-72 Main Battle Tank.

This is extraordinary! The T-72 is one of the most copied and exported of all Soviet weapons systems (besides the AK-47, of course). Plenty of countries use them. And they're vulnerable to the armored truck we use to ferry infantry around!

The Bradley also has a missile launcher mounted on it. It fires TOW anti-tank missiles, and it was incredibly controversial when this modification was first introduced. The critics said that having two anti-tank missiles will encourage the crews to try and stand up to MBT's, something that the Bradley is most definately NOT designed to do. Predictions of slaughtered infantry platoons and burning Bradleys were thick and heavy.

The first Gulf War proved the critics wrong, and now the secondary armament has proven to be effective. Going up against American equipment is turning out to be a good way to meet your maker right quick.

Anyone want to buy some Soviet Main Battle Tanks? I bet you could pick them up cheap after this.

2003-04-26T01:19:00.000-07:00

TALK ABOUT TYPECASTING
When looking for links to the post below, I found out that the actor that plays Wolverine in the X-Men movies, Hugh Jackman, is working on a film where he plays van Helsing, famed slayer of Dracula.

Mr. Jackman isn't the one being typecast. Instead it's Kate Beckinsale, an actress who also stars in the vampire flick UnderWorld.

I suppose it's not so bad. Some people work in the business for decades before finding the role for which you were born. Looks like Ms. Beckinsale lucked out and found it before she got too old.

2003-04-26T01:07:00.000-07:00

MONSTER MASH
I mentioned in the post below that I don't much like thriller type movies. Having some homicidal maniac come for me with a knife ...well, considering some of the stuff I have in the gun safe it would make for a really short movie. If I was away from home it still wouldn't be that long a show, since I'm smart enough to improvise an effective hand-to-hand weapon from practically anything.

Monster movies are different. Guns usually aren't all that effective against the monsters you see in the movies, but I'm sure that I'd still find a use for them.

I came across two new monster flicks that are soon to be released, both of which have plenty of undead creatures wandering around and plenty of guns used against them. They could be fun or they could be a bore.

The first one is a slick, big-budget vampire film called UnderWorld. It's about a war between vampires and werewolves, and some of the special effects that are shown in the trailer could mean that there might be something worth seeing. It stars ultra-thin Endlish actress Kate Beckinsale as one of the vampires. She's best known to American audiences as the nurse that the two pilots had the hots for in the indescribably dreadful Pearl Harbor, but I'm not going to hold that against her.

The other movie is an Australian direct-to-video made with no budget entitled Undead. Yet another zombie movie, but this one might be fun in a guilty-pleasures kind of way. Watch the trailer and make note of the farmer with the floppy hat and all of the guns tucked away in his bib overalls. I have to admit that there's a resemblance, but I'm more overweight than he is and my beard is more neatly trimmed.

2003-04-26T00:53:00.000-07:00

GOIN' TO THE MOVIES
I don't much like thriller movies. The movies that attract the good reviews usually reveal the critic's own prejudices. The plot has some homicidal rednecks threaten beautiful yuppie families with violence. Every so often they have violent rednecks attack each other. None of the yuppies own a gun, or bother to get one when they know that the rednecks are after them. It's pitiful.

Even though it has gotten good reviews from the usual suspects, tonight I went to see the new John Cusack movie, Identity. I was very pleasantly surprised!

Mr. Cusack plays a character who's competent, concerned for others and able to think on his feet. You don't often see that in this type of movie.

The plot also was....different. It pulled the rug out from under you about 2/3 of the way through ("Aha! It's not what you thought at all!") This will probably strike some as being too contrived, or too cutesy. But it does have the virtue of being entertaining.

Go see it. Highly recommended.

2003-04-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

BIRTHDAY!
The Pork Chop Express is one year old!

Drop on by and wish Jack a happy birthday!

2003-04-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

JACK'S PISSED
I mean "pissed" in the American definition of the term, not the English or Australian one.

Computer expert Jack Burton has a post up on his blog, discussing this item. He's upset by it. So am I.

The article discusses a new way that software companies can force you to pay for their products. They'll simply imbed a utility in your operating system that will make it impossible for you to copy software.

Okay, no problem with that. I think that people who sell software should be paid for it. Intellectual property might be non-physical, but it's still property. Copying it for resale without paying the guy who has the copyright is just plain wrong.

But it simply doesn't stop there. The utility in question, Palladium, will also make it more difficult (or even impossible) for you to copy software or shareware that you're entitled to use.

Well, that's still just an inconvenience. What alarms me is that, to make sure that things go as planned, they'll have to actually monitor your computer, and all of the files on it.

"It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with the vendor.

Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely."

Excuse me? Remotely monitor my files? What, are these guys on drugs?

2003-04-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

MORE THOUGHT ABOUT RANGE
I received an Email from a reader, suggesting that I look into some sort of device to help me gauge distance. There are a few choices available.

Laser Range Finders
These devices have become famous recently due to the targeting system on the M1 Abrams. They were originally developed with gunnery in mind, but they certainly have some civilians useas as well.

This is a pretty good example of one of the more useful models. It doubles as a binocular set, and it's marketed for the hunter/outdoorsman demographic.

Finding the range to target is crucial if the first shot from an artillery piece, and a few of them can lob a shell so far that the rotation of the Earth have to be included in the calculations. This means that not only do the cannon-cockers have to figure out where the target is on the surface of the planet, but they also have to figure out where the gun is (and what direction they're shooting).

A few of the civilian laser range finders have a GPS system incorporated into the unit. It certainly is a good idea to have some sort of land navigation device with you when you're out in the wilderness, but I'm not certain that most hunters would need to calculate the rotation of the planet when they're shooting at a deer.

Bottom line is that I really don't need a set of binoculars to be attached to the range finder, but it's tough to find one that doesn't have some sort of optics built in. Another consideration is the price. I really don't want to spend $150.00 USD minimum just to hone my ability to tell how far away stuff is.

Optical Range Finders
Back in WWI, they had optical devices to find range. Extremely accurate, they enabled the artillery of the day to provide pin-point fire support, sometimes striking enemy trenches just yards away from friendly troops. But they're sort of oversized for my purposes.

There are smaller examples available, but most of these high end models cost even more than the laser devices.

Golf to the rescue! Tiny, lightweight optical range finders are available through mail order. And they're very reasonably priced.

Something like that might be what I'm looking for.

2003-04-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

I WISH I COULD WRITE AS PURTY
I wrote about buying back Iraqi antiquities previously (just scroll down to the post AN IDEAL WORLD OR A REALISTIC ONE?. Blogger is being a butthead about links again).

The best post I found about the subject is right here. Go read it. You'll be glad that you did.

I wouldn't bother to read the Comments section, though. Most of those guys don't have a clue.

(Link courtesy of The Chicago Boyz)

2003-04-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

THIS IS BIZARRE
I just found the following Email in my free Yahoo account.

"Dear Sir

I am writing in order to establish long-term and mutually profitable
cooperation with you and your organization.

Our company represents interests of a large wood industry manufacturer
located in Latvia. We are ready to produce euro pallets and deliver
them to the desired location according to all international commercial
terms. Since we are a direct producer, the desired condition for us is an
annual contract starting from 20.000 pallets.

Please let us know the amount of pallets you may require and we
will respond with an attractive business offer.

--
Best regards,

Marketing Department
ESH Group

mailto:contacts@esh.lv

www.esh.lv

Wood from Latvia. Heh heh.

What puzzles me about this is this whole "Euro pallets" thing. Can't figure that one out. I suppose that the pallets groan, creak and complain if there's any weight put on them, and then fall apart if someone tries to put a load on them that American pallets can handle just fine.

Other than that, I wonder why I keep getting Email from European firms trying to sell me industrial products. I must have an Email address similar to someone who runs a shipping company.

Either that or they come across this blog when they do a Google search. If they do it must puzzle those guys terribly.

2003-04-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

IT'S LIKE A CROSS BETWEEN THE PROTECTION RACKET AND THE SHELL GAME
A few days ago, Erica posted this post on her blog. She was wondering about the story that 20/20 had run concerning a chemical weapons dump in Russia.

I left a comment on her blog, pointing out that the Russians that 20/20 had interviewed were grossly exaggerating the lethality of the weapons. Sure, no one wants to be on the receiving end of a poison gas attack. But these guys made it seem that one of their artillery shells would kill tens of thousands.

The problem with that is that you'd have to tackle each of the 50,000 victims, hold them down, and spoon a tiny grain of the nerve agent into their nostril. Maybe then you'd be able to stretch the shell's payload far enough to actually kill that many people. No, instead you need TONS of the stuff to saturate an area, and it's extremely unlikely that an outlaw terrorist organization will be able to set up an attack with that much ordnance.

So they're blowing smoke, saying that the problem is much greater than it really is. Why would they do that? Mainly because the US was going to pay for the destruction of the nerve agents, but we've decided to hold up the payments. I'm sure that there were plenty of hands dipping into the cookie jar but now there's not going to be any more refills. The Russians are inviting American media outlets to come and view the deplorable security measures, something that's profoundly stupid if things are as they say they are. After all, they have an ongoing problem with Chechnya terrorists. How credible is it that a terrorist organization would sneak into Russia just to steal weapons to use against the US? Isn't it more likely that home grown terrorists would use it in Russia?

Okay, so they're trying to scare the American voters into untying the purse strings. I doubt it will work.

So now the Russians are trying another tack. For decades the American street has been berated with tales from anti-war types about the dangers of nuclear....well, nuclear anything. It's gotten so bad that people will accept as a fact that the two cities in Japan that were nuked in WWII were poisoned by radiation, even though you can stay at luxury hotels built on ground zero at both cities.

Knowing this extreme and irrational fear, the Russians are now trying to extort money with fears of the nuclear boogy man. Notice that the article mentions that "International donors have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars ..." to the Russians.

Hey, isn't the reactor in the Ukraine? So why talk to us about it? Sure, it's nice to help but we have other projects in the works right now.

2003-04-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

"INTERMITTENT" MEANS "NOT VERY OFTEN"
Midtem week at college. 600 pages of dead Greek guys bloviating to read before Friday.

I'll get back to generating stuff that'll bore you to tears in a few days. Until then it will be sparse, but there should be something new every day.

2003-04-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

AT HOME WITH THE RANGING
My vision has always been lousy. Severly nearsighted, that was me. If my feet were bare and I didn't have my glasses on I could see this big ol' blob on the end of my leg. I could tell it was a foot because of the shape, but those little blobs sticking off the end of it? I couldn't see clearly enough to say for certain that they were toes.

For years I had heard about eye surgery that would correct vision problems. Eighteen months ago I decided to take the plunge, and I had laser eye surgery. Now my dominant eye is 20/20, and my off eye is 20/30. No more glasses.

Surprisingly, this has had very little effect so fas as my shooting ability is concerned. I wondered about this for some time, but the answer why came to me when I went frisbee golfing with some friends of mine. I found that I was overestimating the ranges to the targets every time. The length of each hole was from 150 feet to 320 feet, but I could've sworn that it was the same range in yards!

The reason was that I could see more clearly, and I was used to 38 years of judging distances by how blurry stuff looked. It didn't bother me when I was at the shooting range because I was so used to it. The target is right there, so it has to be 50 yards away. Or whatever.

This has gotten me to thinking. Since my old methods of judging distance isn't going to work anymore, what can I do to estimate range?

The easiest way is the oldest. I found a busy intersection with plenty of foot traffic and I paced off 100 yards. Then I sat there with my fist held out at arm's length, closed one eye and stared at my thumb sticking up in the air, measuring people's height against the digit. This works for just about everyone, but there's differences due to the size of people's hands. Bigger thumbs mean that only the nail should be used, smaller hands (like mine) mean that the entire thumb is the yardstick.

This takes some time to get used to. I'm going to do it every day for a few months until I get the hang of it. I'll let you know if anyone thinks that I'm hitching and offers me a ride.

2003-04-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

AN IDEAL WORLD VIEW OR A REALISTIC ONE?
So some looters swarmed into the Baghdad museum and carried off everything they could. (Some profoundly ignorant people are claiming that this makes the US a bunch of war criminals, but we'll discuss that another time.)

The official policy of most archaelogical organizations is to never ever pay for artifacts. The idea is that no one would ever actually steal any treasures from our past if they didn't profit from it.

This is sheer idiocy. I've known this for decades, ever since my first trip to Gettysburg, PA. Many of the veterans of the battle, years later, bought monuments that they placed in the park. These monuments usually featured a bronze statue in a realistic combat pose, almost always with a soild brass musket as part of the display. Most of these statues have lost their hands.

Vandals broke off their hands at the wrist so they could take the bronze musket home with them. This happened long before there was any fascination with the Civil War or the Battle of Gettysburg. These morons just wanted a souvenir.

Last week Hershel Shank, editor of the Biblical Archeaological Review, suggested that this policy was less than realistic. If you want to actually preserve stolen antiquities then you're going to have to pay the people that have them. If museums don't want to do it then private individuals will certainly cough up the bucks in order to fill out their own collections. If that happens then these cultural and historical treasures will be lost.

I don't have a problem with that. Sometimes you just have to recognize the fact that reality trumps idealism.

2003-04-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

WHY WE THINK WE LOSE ALL THE TIME WHEN WE ALMOST ALWAYS WIN
This op-ed in the OpinionJournal discusses the simularities between the long struggle against Communism and the present War on Terror.

It's a pretty good read, but the thing that caught my attention was the following remark.

"Americans love to believe an odd notion that history keeps disproving: that once we have fixed the outside world, it ought to have the good grace to stay fixed."

All too true. We do like to beleive that. And it's an endless source of frustration to us that it never seems to work out that way.

Take our recent victory in Iraq. While the situation has hardly deterioated, and good work is being done to lay the foundation for a democratic government, we also have people who're trying to cash in.

But the author, R. James Woolsey, argues that we win almost all of the time. He points to the increasing number of democracies as proof.

"The victory has been remarkable. In the 89 years since August 1914, the world has gone from having about a dozen democracies (and in those only men voting) to, by Freedom House's count, 121 today--89 free, 32 partly free. This is literally an order-of-magnitude increase, to over 60% of the world's governments--an extraordinary development within a single human lifetime. Many of these countries became democracies during and at the end of the Cold War, and relatively few did so by force of American arms (although our military capabilities, including nuclear deterrence, protected the democracies while we undermined the communist system)."

Well, he has a point.

2003-04-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

I FEEL EYES BURNING HOLES IN THE BACK OF MY BLOG
Swen the Coyote has mentioned to me, via Email, that I am also mirrored on some foreign server. It would appear that everyone in Swen's blogroll is mirrored, and everyone in my own blogroll is also taking up space on someone's hard drive.

What, is someone trying to save the entire BlogoSphere? Eventually he'll run out of space. Either that or his computer will go mad from the blather.

2003-04-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

REGRETS
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has now expressed "regrets" for some remarks he made about the US. He called the remarks "exaggerated".

I hope that he regrets them a whole lot more before this is over and done with.

2003-04-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

GUESS WHAT!!!
Kathryn just told me she made the US Navy Pistol Team!

I think she's one of the alternates, since she said that she's ranked 72 out of 100 positions. But how many times does one of your former students get to be counted with some of the best pistoleros on the planet?

Good job, Kathryn!

2003-04-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

LOOKING FOR WORK?
The Guardroom has on-line applications for police jobs opening up in Iraq. You have to have at least 10 years unbroken experience, I suppose because it's some sort of administration position. Maybe you'll make police chief of Tikrit!

Maybe Jack Burton is interested. It'd be great to have someone I know working in Iraq. I would have a free place to stay if I decide to visit the cradle of civilization.

2003-04-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

LIES AND VIDEOTAPE
I'm watching CNN right now (I know, I know. Sue me for supporting the supporters of dictators) They're showing a tape that appeared on some Arab TV network that supposedly shows Saddam in the middle of a crowd. The tape was allegedly shot while that now famous statue was being toppled less than a mile away.

Whatever. I notice that "Saddam" isn't armed while he waves and presses the flesh. This indicates to me that it's one of his doubles, since Saddam and his sons were always (always!) packing when they met the public in the past.

Wouldn't you have a firearm if you were him?

2003-04-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

I SUPPOSE "OLD AND BORING" COULD ALSO APPLY TO ME
Really good post over at boone country about the .38 Special. Mr. Henry discusses why it shouldn't be looked on as a has-been just yet.

It'll be worth your time if you're interested in the subject.

2003-04-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

MONKEY ON MY BACK
Yet another good post from The Monkey (see below for the first one).

Our simian friend considers recent complaints about how the US is so overwhelmingly powerful. He points out that the world power closest to the US is China. The only reasonable way that there could be a challenge to our own superiority is if China gains a great deal more influence and power in the coming years.

"Like it or not, we face a rather simple choice - the world can live in the shadow of a humane, functional democracy, or it can live in the shadow of something worse. If there is a practical, defensible alternative I'd love to hear it."

Anyone want to answer that?

2003-04-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

SOUND WISDOM
You'd be denying yourself a very good post if you don't go on over and read what The Monkey has to say about affirmative action.

My take on this has always been that everyone should get an equal chance and how far they get is their problem. Now that we have laws on the books making racism and sexism illegal, and the laws are actually enforced, I figure the time for affirmative action is past. (We also have numerous cases where someone tried to manipulate the law for their own unfair advantage, but one problem at a time.)

One of the ways to look at it is that I'm entitled to all of the AA goodies. After all, I'm a unique individual. No one else is like me, so I represent my own demographic. It would be unfair to lump me in a category due to my race, age, sex or culture.

For some reason this arguement doesn't seem to carry much weight with people.

2003-04-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

STORY TIME
This post over at The Fat Guy about someone who (supposedly) died from his own farts has opened the gate to Memory Lane. It's a pretty good story.

Back in the 1960's, a police officer in my town was working the night shift (or "C Company", as it's called). He was downtown at HQ when the manager of a nearby motel reported a murder. He responded, and a photgrapher for a local newspaper went along for the ride (reporters actually hung out with cops in those days to get their stories).

When they arrived at the motel the manager was nowhere to be found. A TV was playing loudly from one of the upper rooms, so they figured that the person there was at least awake and could tell them what happened. After they climbed the stairs they noticed that the room next to the TV watcher's had it's door open, so they stuck their heads in to see what was what. And they found a dead body.

It was pretty far gone. It was of a white male in his mid-40's, and it was lying naked on the bed. The room was strewn with empty booze bottles, trash, and rotten food. The stench of rotten meat and excrement was almost overpowering. The corpse was fish-belly white, with the skin mottled and bruised in spots. The gasses caused by decay had bloated the body up and stretched the skin, and it exuded gas from time to time. The only other prominant feature was that the internal pressure had (ahem) caused the body to mimic a state of extreme arousal.

Well, it was obvious that there was no helping the poor bastard. The photographer wanted to get a shot of the corpse before they exited the scene, and the officer didn't think that an extra minute or two before they left to call in the meat wagon was going to hurt anything. The only problem was that, no matter how the photographer aimed his camera, he couldn't get a good shot of the dead man's face without the (ahem) member poking it's way into the frame.

The officer was an obliging sort. He decided to break the tension on the tissues, so he pulled out his nightstick and gave the offending appendage a mighty whack.

And the corpse grabbed it's crotch and sat up screaming! It stared at the cop and the guy with the camera for a second before scurrying in the bathroom and locking the door.

Seems that the dead guy was a street drunk who came into some money. He'd rented the room and was in the third week of a glorious drunk. He'd soiled his clothes earlier, so he had stripped them off in the tub and left them while he slept off the three bottles of ripple he'd consumed (hence the smell, and I suppose the gas as well).

When the manager was found it turned out that he had heard a police show playing on the loud TV next door to the drunk's room, and had confused it for an actual murder. No harm done.

Except for the poor bastard hiding in the motel bathroom, I suppose.

I can't for the life of me remember where I first heard this story. Maybe Jack Burton can help. I remember discussing this story with him in a Denny's parking lot about twelve years ago.

2003-04-18T20:47:00.000-07:00

FRENCHING
Stephen den Beste has another excellent post about France. Mr. den Beste seems to think that the French elite are in the beginning stages of damage control: They want to maintain power and priviledge as long as possible while France spirals down into disaster.

This might well be true. The one thing that seems to puzzle most non-French observers is what they were thinking over the past two years. They've indulged in a rather passionate anti-American policy that's been a vast mistake. Any realistic benefits they might have gained through this policy have been destroyed by pursueing it too enthusiastically (which means that they don't know when it's time to shut the heck up). It's tough for anyone to make a credible arguement that this has all been part of a carefully thought out strategy.

I think that they've pretty much gone stupid. France seems to be revelling in a flash of renewed importance by opposing the world's only super power. The fact that it played well with the mob of muttering, unassimilated immigrants that they're so afraid of just made things worse. It also didn't help any when Germany decided to go along and follow their lead. Watching those scary Germans dance to their tune must have been pretty heady stuff for the French.

As far as Mr. den Beste's analysis concerning the economy and France's future money crunch, I'm afraid that I have no opinion. Economics was never my strong suit. Instead I'm interested in law enforcement and the military, and as far as both of those areas are concerned France is facing some serious problems.

2003-04-18T05:12:00.000-07:00

LOOKS LIKE A RIFLE WITH THE STOCK BROKEN OFF
A friend of mine sent me this link. It's to Smith and Wesson's website, where they're advertising their new Most Powerful Handgun in the World, the .500 S&W Magnum. (Click here for a larger view)

Notice that they have a sling on the gun. A sling on a revolver.

I'm wondering what this handgun can do that my .30-06 couldn't do better, and at a fraction of the price.

2003-04-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

PUTTING IT IN PERSPECTIVE
Open a newspaper or listen to the news and there's a good chance that there will be some reporter waxing eloquent about the looting in Iraq. The point they want to make is that the US failed (failed, do you hear!) in it's war in Iraq because people are now stealing everything that isn't nailed down. The clear implication is that things would be better off if Cowboy Bush and the savage American military had left well enough alone and hadn't deposed the Ba'athist regime ("Hitler wasn't perfect, but at least there was less crime!").

Blog goddess Natalie Solent has the perfect rebuttal. She compares the way the freed black slaves looted the shops and homes of their former masters, all while the triumphant northern troops ignored the lawlessness while there was a war to fight. (Blogger is having fits again. Just click this link and look for the post entitled SNAP!)

2003-04-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

THEY ACT AS IF IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Prof. Reynolds links to this post on blarg.net. The post is about how a case agianst the US is going to be presented before the ICC, charging the US and the UK with war crimes.

The post puzzled me at first, because the writer sounds as if he's an American who carefully proof reads his work. The reason why this puzzled me is that the author seems to assume that the ICC has validity somehow. I'm certain that there are Americans that actually think that these NGOs have some sort of authority, and that the US should just surrender it's sovereignty and ignore the Constitution and generally screw it's citizens over, but they're few and far between.

The light dawned when I went to the bio section and noticed that the author, Jurjen, was originally from The Netherlands, and I have to admit that I've never met anyone from the Netherlands who didn't tell me that there were laws on the books when there wasn't any book, let alone a law. This doesn't mean that everyone from the Netherlands has weird ideas about what people and countries should do, but Jurjen certainly isn't helping me find any.

Case in point is this post, where Jurjen not only admits to having worked at the UN before, but he also takes some well known bloggers to task for being overly critical of the United Nations. In the post, Jurjen tries to argue that the problems that the UN has had with credibility, effectiveness and anti-Americanism is all the fault of (of course) the United States.

Well, whatever. My problem with the UN is that it simply isn't effective, although the anti-Americanism that they seem to revel in lately certainly isn't helping me think warm and fuzzy thoughts, either. Jurjen seems to agree, because the post seems to argue that the UN would actually fulfill it's purpose if....the US would get more involved by ignoring what it's citizens want and going along with the rest of the world's wishes.

I think I detect a unifying theme, here.

2003-04-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
In the same post where Swen the Coyote alerted us to two new blogs, he also discusses the minimum training that a person needs before he would consider them to be minimally proficient. Swen considers 3000 rounds to be the lowest number of rounds needed.

Hmmm. 3000 rounds. Seems excessive.

I'm certainly the last person to disparage extra training. But I'd have to say that all of my students are at the low end of proficiency when they go through my course, and I offer 1000 rounds. In fact the vast majority didn't need that much, and only two people needed more (and both of them were aged and had arthritis).

Maybe Swen just has more stringent requirement than I do. I used to hang a T-shirt (size Medium) on the target stand and have the student fire from 50 feet. If they can hit it every time at slow and medium speed, and 80% at fast speed, then I figure they can do the job of protecting themselves.

Now I use a cardboard cutout that's the same size as a T-shirt. Ran out of medium tees (I wear an X-Large, in case anyone's wondering).

This might seem to be rather odd to some, shooting at some dirty laundry. But it actually gives the student a very good idea of the target zone where they should be placing their shots. And my test is a bit tougher than most, since the target provided is smaller than these standard handgun targets.

2003-04-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOGOSPHERE
Swen the Coyote has given us all a heads up to go and check out Lead and Gold and boone country. Both are nice blogs, and I'm very interested in what their authors have to say.

2003-04-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

LIGHT IN THE POCKETBOOK, BUT THEY STILL GO BANG
Recently I've received a slew of Emails from people (if you think that 6 Emails constitute a "slew"). It would appear that there are actually some people who read my series on surplus guns, but these guys don't want some old worn out gun. They want a brand new, shiny, factory fresh handgun that doesn't cost too much for self-defense. Two of them are even thinking of getting their CCW permits. Since I've always advocated that suggesting a specific model or type of gun to a new shooter is folly until they find out what works best, they want me to suggest some manufacturers that produce quality products at reasonable prices.

Hmmm. Good question. A little bit tricky, but I'll try my best.

First off, please realize that just about every big-name gun manufacturer puts out a low-end model. Of course, what some of them consider low-end might still mean that it's pretty pricey. Conversely, just about every firm that specializes in good guns at a reasonable price also has a few fancy-schmancy models in the inventory to help you unburden your bank account of unwanted cash. Keep your eyes open at the gun store and you can pick up a big name gun for less money, but watch out for handguns that are tricked out.

So far as revolvers are concerned, you'd be hard pressed to find anything better than Charter Arms. They make rugged, no frills revolvers geared for off-duty carry. Highly recommended.

For autoloaders I'd suggest Llama Handguns. They don't have a website themselves, but instead market their products under a variety of brand names here in the US. One of the most recognized is Bersa or Bersa Thunder. Other brand names that Llama uses are Firestorm or SGS Firestorm. (Just ask at the gunshop. They'll know what you want to look at.)

Well, that's a pretty good start. I'm sure that you can find something that suits your needs from those two.

2003-04-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME
Anyone who's been reading the newspapers has seen a news article or an op-ed piece where some Ivory Tower blowhard sounds off on the "American hegemon", followed very quickyl by the American Empire. They think this is witty, insightful. Full of historical precedence. Not to mention the fact that it proves that they not only are educated but they also have a colossal nuclear brain.

At least it proves it in their own mind, but they really don't need all that much convincing.

Being an uneducated sod who reads more than is good for me, I thought that I'd explain all the nuances that these guys are trying to evoke when they trot out their favorite snotty phrase. Ready?

They mostly are trying to make an allusion to the Delian League, which was a collection of Greek city-states that got together to try and attack Ancient Persia. Seems that Persia had already invaded Greece and had barely been stopped. The Greeks figured that they'd better take the fight to the Persians before they got their act together and stomped the Greek city-states once and for all.

But things went sour for the Delian League. The city-states were required to provide a certain number of warships and fighting men every year. If they balked at sending their sons off to a war in a foriegn land they could pay a tribute in money instead. Pretty soon most of them were paying the tribute and Athens had all the military power. If any city wanted out they would be attacked by Athens and forced back into the League.

Eventually they dropped the fiction of it being a mutual self-defense pact and everybody admitted that it was an Empire!

The "No War" types think that all this is almost exactly what's happening today. They're seriously deluded.

For one thing, I missed the part about forcing other nations to pay tribute. Looks like the US has even allowed the NATO members to reduce their commitment over the years (gotta pay for those socialist entitlement programs, dontchya know). The recent debacle at the United Nations over the war in Iraq has proven that the US won't force anyone to come along if the don't wanna, we just won't let them hold us back if we think lives are at stake. Steven den Beste even makes a pretty good case for the US to reduce our commitment in South Korea while pressuring others to shoulder a fair share of the burden. Hardly see any empire forming here. In fact, just the opposite.

But none of these guys ever let the facts stop them before, so I doubt they're about to start now.

Just remember: Hegemon. Empire. Ohh, just scares you down to your pennyloafers, doesn't it?

2003-04-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

BETTER THAN A PASSPORT ANY DAY
Prof. Reynolds has been keeping abreast of a series of disturbing events. It would seem that tourists who are driving across the Sahara are disappearing. This all takes place in Algeria.

I have no idea why people would want to drive across the Sahara. We have perfectly good desterts here in the US, and people generally don't disappear when driving through them. AND you can get some mighty fine barbecue at the roadside restaurants (ummm, barbecue!). Don't think you'll have much of a chance of a pig roast in an Islamic country.

Anyway, barbecue aside, Prof. Reynolds now links to this article from the Telegraph that reports that the tourists were kidnapped and still alive, but no one seems to know who did the grabbin' and what they might want in exchange for some slightly used tourists. The article does hint that Islamic militants might just be behind all this.

This is why I don't want to drive across the Sahara. They won't let me pack the contents of the gun safe along with me.

That and the lack of barbecue. Bet those hostages aren't going to get any.

2003-04-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

PROFESSIONAL ADVICE
I found this article on Slate about Saddam's information minister, Mohammed Al-Sahhaf. You know him. He's the guy who kept insisting that the Coalition forces were being destroyed far from Baghdad while our troops were actually sampling the wines in Saddam's palaces. Well, the guys at Slate thought it would be a good idea if they asked some PR professionals their advice on how to improve Mr. Al-Sahhaf's job performance.

The guy who gave the most puzzling answer was someone named Bobby Zarem.

At first, he says, "I didn't know if it was real or not, so I didn't make a judgment about it." Now that he's satisfied U.S. forces really are winning, he doesn't want to comment on al-Sahhaf. "I want them all killed," he says. "I don't think anyone is listening or cares."

It's not really clear who he wants killed, is it?

My favorite is the response that guy named Frank Mankiewicz gave.

"I would advise him to go to the only remaining store in Iraq and buy himself a white flag," Mankiewicz says. "It will stand him in good stead."

Well, that's for sure.

2003-04-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU
I've always like stories about hoaxes. There's just something about a good scam that appeals to me. Probably because most of them are so transparent that I can't fathom the gullibility of the people who actually buy into the hokum.

You can spend a few lunch breaks at work browsing through The Museum of Hoaxes. It's pretty good, even though the writing is a little dry.

One of the most topical is the Gallery of Birth Hoaxes, which includes info on the latest hoax concerning cloning. (That one was so obvious that not even the news media was taken in.)

For those of you who are fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 it would seem that the voice of Gypsy, Jim Mallon, was involved in a hoax during his college years. You can read all about it by clicking on this link.

2003-04-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

MORE MEDIA BIAS
I'd have to say that the anti-war, anti-Bush administration bias is pretty well established in the media. Sometimes it's just an attempt to manufacture drama from nothing, so the news will spin a story where nothing much is happening into a full blown crisis. Sometimes they simply don't like authority and everything the government does is bad bad bad.

Case in point is an item I found over at The Guardroom. Click on the links to find a story about the recent Oakland protest on a dock where a ship bearing supplies for our troops in Iraq were being loaded. The protest was broken up when police fired non-lethal ammunition into the crowd.

Most media outlets will report that but they'll leave out the fact that the protesters were throwing things at the police, including sharp-edged metal scrap they had found. The news will also forget to mention that six longshoremen, who were standing around waiting for the protest to end so they could get back to work, were attacked and injured by the crowd of peace loving anti-war activists.

But if they told the whole story then no one would have been interested.

2003-04-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

I WISH I WAS THERE WITH AN EMPTY DUFFLE BAG
Just read this news article, which describes a Saddam love bunker that the Marines found.

Besides proof positive that, when it came to decorating, Saddam had exactly the kind of taste that I did when I was a 16 year old Dungeons and Dragons player, they also found the following items.

"...they found more than 6,000 Berretta pistols, 650 Sig Sauer pistols, 248 Colt Revolvers, 160 Belgian 7.65 mm pistols, 12 cases of Sterling submachine guns and four cases of anti-tank missiles all still in the unopened original boxes. There were also tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition mortars and cases of old handguns and heavy machine guns."

I'd heard that people would give Saddam weapons for his birthday. Looks like he had a particular fondness for Beretta handguns.

All of those lovely handguns still in their boxes. I think I could find some room in the gun safe for a few of them

2003-04-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

PEOPLE ARE SURPRISED BY THIS?
Just about everyone in the BlogoSphere (and not a few mainstream journalists) are pissin' and moanin' about CNN's collusion with Iraqi censors.

CNN is spinning this as a matter of necessity. If they wanted to get access then they had to go along, and ten$ of million$ of adverti$sing revenue was riding on their decision. At least, they're saying, they could provide SOME coverage.

So they didn't tell the truth. So they shape public opinion, which translates into public policy when elections roll around. Does anyone out there really think that they actually want to tell the truth?

Being interested in self-defense issues, I know that most mainstream media outlets certainly don't bother to tell what's what when it comes to gun ownership. They've all got an agenda they're trying to push, even if it is attempting to make an exciting story when nothing much is going on.

Bottom line is that these guys are, first and foremost, entertainers. They need to get the ratings, they need to get the big advertising revenue, they need people to get excited. Otherwise everybody would just read the blogs and ignore them completely. (heh) The idea that they actually are defenders of truth, or that they are dedicated to some sort of purpose more noble than getting paid, is naivete of the first water.

Not that I don't wish that they'd actually live up to the ethics they claim to hold dear. I'm just realistic enough to realize that it'll never happen.

2003-04-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

REALLY GOOD SUGGETION
Kevin over at Chinpokomon has a really good suggestion. I'm not holding my breath, though.

2003-04-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

IF YOUR VIEW OF REALITY GETS TOO "DIFFERENT" THEN YOU'RE INSANE
Swen the Coyote brings us this article from the NY Times. The Times brings us the scene from a Cairo coffee house, where all of the Arab patrons insist that the US bought Saddam off for our victory. They also insist that the scenes from Baghdad showing average Iraqis dancing with joy are staged.

I think the most revealing passage in the article is a paragraph that details the Arab's views of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

That was a bad time, said Saleh Soleiman, a shopkeeper. "But we had our victory in 1973," he added, referring to Egypt's early rout of the Israelis from the Sinai in the first stages of a war Israel eventually won. Those days are relived constantly here.

"We had our victory in 1973"???? Getting your butt kicked up around your ears was a victory?

Most people can walk in to a Las Vegas casino and notice that, should they gamble, their money keeps shrinking. Sure they win every once in a blue moon, but they lose so many times that the rare times they actually get a return is insignificant.

Someone with a gambling problem doesn't see it like that. They just see the wins. The mounting debts, the catastrophic financial situation, that's just temporary until they hit the BIG MONEY! And they know that they're going to win it sometime because they won $5.00 on a Scratch-'N-Win lottery ticket!

I think it's about time that the Islamic world in general and the Arab world in particular stops playing the ponies and starts to try and get the check for the mortgage payment in the mail on time.

2003-04-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

ROGER AND MIKE
Roger Ebert, the guy who writes movie reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times, has been one of Michael Moore's biggest supporters. It's not that Mr. Ebert thinks that Mr. Moore is a genius who crafts perfect documentaries, even though he always mentions that he admires the craft that Moore brings to his work. Instead Mr. Ebert really, really agrees with the message that Moore is trying to spread. Mr. Ebert is one of those people who live in Chicago, a city that has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, and it would appear that he thinks that it isn't enough.

Kudos go to Mr. Ebert for his attempts at being fair. He's been bombarded with Email from people who've researched "Bowling for Columbine" and found numerous errors, and he's mentioned the debate and even printed where people could go to see the evidence themselves. But Mr. Ebert has shown a great deal of support for Mr. Moore even when it hasn't been warranted. Case in point is this Q&A column that Mr. Ebert writes. The article was written before the Oscar ceremony, and Mr. Ebert deftly dodges the question as to why a "documentary" that is largely fasified material is still up for the little statuette.

"...somehow you know, watching it, that Moore has granted himself poetic license."

This is even though Mr. Moore presents the film as a true documentary, instead of a work of interpretation.

AND another excerpt. "All I know is that "Bowling for Columbine" is a brilliant polemic."

So the rules about a documentary having to be, you know, factual and stuff, can be ignored as long as the film maker implies that he's granted himself leeway to bend the truth and ignore the facts (or even just make stuff up). And all of the criteria that every other documentary film maker has to follow before their work is considered for the big prize is tossed out the window for controversial films.

I see. I didn't know that these guidelines the Academy had in place for so many decades were so flexible. Glad ol' Roger clued us in about that.

Last week Mr. Ebert printed another Q&A article that has a decidedly less forgiving tone. It would appear that Mr. Moore has finally gotten Mr. Ebert's goat.

So what has Moore done to piss off the most influential movie critic in America? Well, it would appear that Mr. Moore lied about being booed at the Academy Awards!

Yeah, I know, it was televised and all that. But Mr. Moore says that it was just 5 stagehands booing him (can't trust those blue-collar guys who work with their hands to figure out the genius that is Moore). 5 guys. Never mind what everyone there heard, or what the television audience saw and heard. It was just five guys.

I figure that Mr. Moore can get in Mr. Ebert's good graces easily enough. All he has to do is whip up another pack of lies about how Bush stole the Presidency.

2003-04-11T23:17:00.000-07:00

WORDS OF WISDOM
You should strive to avoid a conversation like this one.

HER: "Do these pants make me look more fat?"

ME: (puzzled) "How can pants make you look more fat?"

Oh, one other thing. When they say that they admire men who're honest, they're not being honest themselves.

2003-04-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

WANNA SEE A NEAT PICTURE?
Found over at The Monkey.

2003-04-11T06:08:00.000-07:00

REFLECTED GLORY
I've mentioned Kathryn Woods before. She sent me the Email that I turned into this post. She also runs her own Esperanto language blog. But the main reason that I want to talk about her right now is that I taught her to shoot.

Yeah, so what? I've taught more people than I can count to shoot. But Kathryn was the most gifted pin-point handgun shooter I've ever met.

Let me tell you a little story. I loaned her the money to buy her first handgun, a surplus Smith and Wesson 9mm with low profile sights. Completely unremarkable, no after market gunsmithing at all. She named it "Barnaby" (she always names her guns).

She was always very precise. Tiny groups, great control and discipline, fierce concentration. If I ever faced down a hostage taker I knew who I'd want next to me to snake a round past the innocent's ear on it's way to the perps eye. She was that good.

She'd hear me talking about people who took their giant, long barrelled monstrosities to the rifle range to shoot at long distances. She decided that she wanted to do that. With Barnaby. The unmodified, out-of-the-box 9mm with low profile sights. AND she didn't want to use any sort of brace, just shoot it off-hand (in the shooting sports "off-hand" means that the gun is only supported by your own hands).

So we went to an outdoor range and I set the target up at 50 yards, figuring that she'd probably hit it once or twice and I could praise her to the skies for at least hitting something. Except that she started to hit it every time. In fact, she was getting four inch groups. Did I mention that it was at 50 yards?

The OSU Rifle Team just happened to be at that range that day. A few of them looked over to see what this strange woman was doing, shooting a little handgun at a rifle range. When they saw her groups they went and pointed it out to other members of the team. Eventually they were all gathered about twenty feet behind the line, whispering to each other and passing a pair of binoculars around. It was all due to Kathryn's talent and effort, but it was still a proud day for me.

Okay, so she's good. Competition material if ever I saw it. The reason I'm taking a walk down memory lane now is that Kathryn just sent me an Email. She's going to compete this weekend in the All Navy Rifle and Pistol Matches. Some of the finest pistoleros on the planet will be there, and she's going to take her turn to step up to the line and have a go of it. It's all due to her own talent and effort, but this is another proud day for me.

If any of you are interested in giving her a note of encouragement, please click on this link and leave a comment. If you're curious about what she's talking about in the post I'm afraid that this English speaker can't help.

2003-04-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
I just read this news item on the Yahoo server. The article reports that Shi'ite protestors stormed Iraq's embassy in Tehran, Iran. It's off the Reuters news wire, and it has been significantly altered since it first appeared.

The article first reported that 200 Iraqis climbed over the wall of the empty embassy and indulged in some vandalism and theft. The vandalism was certainly understandable, but what was being stolen wasn't. See, it appears that the "protestors" were carrying off the embassy documents.

The fixtures and furniture, sure. Nothing like a few ashtrays or toilet seats to make a looter's heart grow warm. But documents?

It seems that about 200,000 Iraqis live in Iran, most of them refugees from Saddam's reign of terror. I'm sure that the secret police wanted to return a few of the more vocal and visible to the loving embrace of Iraq's prisons and torture camps. But, to do that, they would have to have informers to tell the snatch-and-grab teams where to find these juicy targets. And the informers would want to get paid. The embassy staff would probably want to make darn sure that there was a paper trail of where the payoff money went in case a few of those secret police guys I mentioned earlier got the silly idea in their heads that someone was skimming a little off the top.

And so a crowd of 200 Iraqis show up at the empty embassy after the fall of Baghdad to tear the place apart looking for documents. Anyone see where I'm going with this?

But the article doesn't say that now. Good ol' Reuters! They've managed to turn a story about some thugs trying to destroy evidence into an anti-American screed.

Why am I not surprised?

2003-04-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

LIGHT BLOGGING
Like most people, I've been spending my time over the past three weeks watching the news and trying to keep my life moving along in a normal fashion. I'll still spend a lot of time watching the news, but I think it's time I spent more time generating copy so you guys can be bored to tears.