Shooting Revival In UK

This is some good news.

PUT down those golf clubs and go for your gun: shooting is fast becoming the social networking sport of choice.

A survey of 2,000 companies and 14,000 directors shows that shooting is soaring in popularity. A decade ago, toting a shotgun did not even feature among the most popular recreations listed by company directors. But the survey ranks shooting as the seventh most popular recreation, almost level with gardening.

“Though golf remains the directors’ favourite recreation, shooting has come from nowhere and continues its rise, despite the current politically correct climate,” said Allister Heath, editor of The Business magazine, which conducted the survey.

Nor is shooting’s popularity solely down to City bankers blasting off on corporate days out. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) saw its membership rise to 128,000 last year, up from 110,00 in 1996; the number of affiliated syndicates has jumped to 940 from just 370 in 1996.

A recent survey by economic consultants Pacec estimated that 480,000 people now participate in shooting and the sport generates 70,000 jobs. Many of the newcomers are women.

Hopefully this is a trend that will continue.

Son of Hogzilla

There's a new Hogzilla on the block and it looks like he outclasses his monstrous predecessor to some degree.

The hog hung snout down from a tree Friday in William Coursey's front yard, not far from where the avid hunter said he shot the beast. He said he hauled it to a truck weight station, which recorded the hairy hog at 1,100 pounds.

But Coursey believes his behemoth surpasses the famed super swine shot and killed in 2004 that weighed in at half a ton on the farm's scales. A team of National Geographic experts later confirmed "Hogzilla" didn't quite live up to the 1,000-pound, 12-foot hype, saying the beast was probably 7 1/2 to 8 feet long, and weighed about 800 pounds.

I can't wait to see the pictures and the inevitable Hogzilla 2 show on National Geographic!

UPDATE - Just found what appears to be a picture of the beast. It actually doesn't look all that big compared to the original. Estimated at 9 feet long but as we know from Hogzilla 1, hanging the hogs like that stretches them out a good deal.

Here are my posts on Hogzilla and another I dubbed Hogzilla's cousin, the latter which also tipped the scales at about 1100 pounds. It appears to be significantly larger than this latest find. No word on what Son of Hogzilla was taken with- if anyone catches the weapon/calibre used, please do let me know.

Murderers On The Run

Another signpost in the decline of once Great Britain. Two murderers escaped from prison and are on the run. Police refuse to release photographs to identify the murderers to the public for fears of breaching their human rights and data protection laws.

A spokesman for Derbyshire Police said: "When making a decision to release any photograph, police forces must take into account numerous factors including the public interest test, whether there is a strong local policing purpose and, of course, the Human Rights and Data Protection Acts.

"Photographs of named people that are in police possession are classed as data and their release is restricted by law.

"Acpo (Association of Chief Police Officers) guidance states that releasing a 'wanted' photograph of a named person should only happen in exceptional circumstances where officers believe that the named suspect may be a danger to the public."

Of course, in this day and age a murderers so-called "human rights" might be infringed if he's identified and apprehended by police before he murders again- no word about the human rights of any potential victims. And what exactly do police consider exceptional circumstances? Do they have to kill again before two escaped murderers are considered to be a threat to society? I would have thought that two fugitive killers on the run from the police might be considered a threat to public safety.

And, finally, why the hell were two murderers being held in an open prison in the first place?

Unbelieveable. I guess the police will extend their sympathies to the families of anyone unlucky enough to encounter these killers on the run- that seems to be the preferred choice over public servants actually doing their job these days.

Word 2007

This is the first I've read about the new Word program- and from the sounds of things I'll either be sticking with my trusty 2003 or switching over to one of the open source office programs. Microsoft have not only enhanced the product for the new release- including a direct-to-blog feature- but they've also decided to irritate the hell out of every single Word user on the planet by completely changing the layout.

Everything you've learned about Word over the years is now wrong. The familiar menu names - File, Edit, View, Insert, Format and the rest - are gone, replaced by cryptic new headers: Home, Insert, Page Layout, and Reference.

And clicking on a header no longer triggers a flurry of pull-down menus. Sure, Microsoft's bloated menus were a design catastrophe, but at least you knew where things were. No more. Now you get a long horizontal bar called "The Ribbon" that holds - no, hides - most Word commands. Although Mac OS X users will find the ribbon familiar, they will have no leg up in battle to learn the new Word: most commands are slightly, but devilishly, different.

Great. MS has decided that not only must Vista resemble Mac software, but now so too must its premier program- at the expense of every single current user. Mmm, will it actually woo any Mac users over to MS and PCs? I don't think so- and it may surely push a lot of Microsoft users away from the program. Open Office, for example, is ever so slightly different from Word. With the 2007 release, Open Office must surely look a lot more user friendly than the new Word; and it's free. Word 2007 is retailing at $229 for the program alone or $109.95 for the upgrade. Sounds like a bargain to me; pay over a hundred bucks for a program that no longer resembles the original, or download a look-alike for free. Tough decision.

At the moment I use Outlook and Word- one of the reasons is familiarity with the programs, they are just what I'm used to. I like the way they both are now. But why would I, or any other MS user, pay through the nose for an "enhancement" that renders all of our current expertise obsolete, when we can get the same functionality for free?

KKK For President?

Thanks to the Democrats a former Klansman is now third in line for the presidency. Isn't progress wonderful? I wonder how all those non-white Democrat voters feel now?

The Senate, as is typical, will get off to a slower start than the House, where rules and practice permit speedy debate and ensure tight majority power control over the agenda. After passage of a series of routine resolutions - including elevating 89-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., as President Pro Tempore, third in the line of presidential succession - the Senate floor will open up for speeches about the upcoming session.

More on the line of succession here.

Here's an example of the kind of man that is now a hop, skip and jump from being president-

Meanwhile, author Graham Smith recently discovered another letter Sen. Byrd wrote after he quit the KKK, this time attacking desegregation of the armed forces.

The ex-Klansman vowed never to fight "with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

Invasion

This isn't the first time- and likely won't be the last. How long before the US government does something about border security?

A U.S. Border Patrol entry Identification Team site was overrun Wednesday night along Arizona's border with Mexico.

According to the Border Patrol, an unknown number of gunmen attacked the site in the state's West Desert Region around 11 p.m. The site is manned by National Guardsmen. Those guardsmen were forced to retreat.The Border Patrol will not say whether shots were fired. However, no Guardsmen were injured in the incident.

The Border Patrol says the incident occurred somewhere along the 120 mile section of the border between Nogales and Lukeville. The area is known as a drug corridor. Last year, 124-thousand pounds of illegal drugs were confiscated in this area.

The Border patrol says the attackers quickly retreated back into Mexico.

Question is- why did they attack the site, and what happened after the Guard retreated?

Government Stupidity

Reading stories like this makes me wonder how the people who make decisions like this are actually able to function in the modern world.

Civil servants are used to dealing with red tape - but a group are now having to adjust to black tape to show them where to put things on their desks.

National Insurance staff in Longbenton, North Tyneside, are taking part in a pilot scheme on desk management.

It is part of the Lean programme brought in by consultants Unipart, which has already seen public sector workers told to clear their desks of personal items.

HM Revenue & Customs declined to say how much Unipart was paid, claiming it was a commercial matter.

But a spokesman for the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) claimed it was costing £7.4m nationally.

He said: "The scheme is demoralising and demeaning. Staff know how to order their desks themselves.

"We had a situation in some offices in Scotland where staff were asked 'Is that banana on your desk active or inactive?', meaning were they going to eat it? If not, it had to be cleared away."

Can someone explain how it costs over seven million pounds to be told to keep a clean desk? And this at a time when it's being reported that Britain's armed forces are not only living in appalling conditions but the Parachute Regiment are facing the coming years without any parachute training.

Seems to me that Labour should have been cutting the bureaucrats' budgets this past decade instead of the Armed Forces.

Rough Justice

Great story. The burglar involved stole the home-owner's handgun, among other items, but that didn't stop him getting his just desserts.

A Red Bird-area homeowner turned the tables on a gun-toting burglar Wednesday night, taking the weapon away from him and beating him up with it.

The suspect, identified by police as 21-year-old Marquis D. Anderson, ended up in a local hospital.

"When the police got him, he wasn't able to talk," said Steven Flowers, a neighbor whose home was also burglarized. "He got beat bad. I wish it had been me [who delivered the beating]. I would have done the same thing."

And here's a line that you just have to love seeing in the press-

When police arrived, they found the unconscious burglar in a pool of blood on the hallway floor.

Note too that he stole one handgun from one home and was trying to steal two more. So much for gun laws that make it harder for the law-abiding to purchase firearms.

The "Only Ones" In Mexico

I wonder what a similar experiment would turn up in a major US city?

TIJUANA – The city's entire 2,300-member municipal police force has been ordered to turn in its weapons, leaving doubt Thursday about who would be patrolling this city of more than 1.5 million residents.

The surprise directive from Mexico's Defense Secretariat comes a day after President Felipe Calderon ordered Operation Tijuana, a major offensive against organized crime in the city. More than 3,000 soldiers and federal agents are being sent to the city with the aim of tackling the city's crime problems.

Federal officials were expected to conduct ballistics tests on the weapons, apparently to see if they could link any of the weapons to the many killings that have been attributed to drug cartels.

Human Endurance

Incredible.

Over the next 14 years, Karnazes challenged almost every known endurance running limit. He covered 350 miles without sleeping. (It took more than three days.) He ran the first and only marathon to the South Pole (finishing second), and a few months ago, at age 44, he completed 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days, one in each of the 50 states. (The last one was in New York City. After that, he decided to run home to San Francisco.) Karnazes' transformation from a tequila-sodden party animal into an international symbol of human achievement is as educational as it is inspirational.

Worth reading the whole thing- including how he eats pizza while running!

Left-Handed Materials

Predator invisibility cloak comes another step closer!

For the first time ever, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have developed a material with a negative refractive index for visible light. Ames Laboratory senior physicist Costas Soukoulis, working with colleagues in Karlsruhe, Germany, designed a silver-based, mesh-like material that marks the latest advance in the rapidly evolving field of metamaterials, materials that could lead to a wide range of new applications as varied as ultrahigh-resolution imaging systems and cloaking devices.

The discovery, detailed in the Jan. 5 issue of Science and the Jan. 1 issue of Optic Letters, and noted in the journal Nature, marks a significant step forward from existing metamaterials that operate in the microwave or far infrared – but still invisible –regions of the spectrum. Those materials, announced this past summer, were heralded as the first step in creating an invisibility cloak.

Metamaterials, also known as left-handed materials, are exotic, artificially created materials that provide optical properties not found in natural materials. Natural materials refract light, or electromagnetic radiation, to the right of the incident beam at different angles and speeds. However, metamaterials make it possible to refract light to the left, or at a negative angle. This backward-bending characteristic provides scientists the ability to control light similar to the way they use semiconductors to control electricity, which opens a wide range of potential applications.

The development doesn't just have military applications though- with this new tech it's hoped that scientists will have vastly improved imaging ability; to see into human cells or detect diseases in unborn babies.

"Scientific" Thoughts

Online magazine Edge interviewed scientists about their predictions for the coming years. Some of it seems to make sense- one who specialises in treating autistic children notes that the digital age will make life better for them as they find it easy to interact with computers. Another notes medical developments which, by the middle of the century, might make it possible for people to lead active and healthy lives beyond the age of 100.

Others seem to be living in cloud-cuckoo land. Philosopher Daniel Dennett and noted anti-theist Richard Dawkins both believe that religion will disappear within a few decades because of TV, the internet and scientific advances towards a theory of everything. Sure, because TV and the internet have a noted history of not spreading disinformation, myth and the most outlandish lies. That really will help to eliminate the faith of millions of people. I don't think I've ever heard such balderdash promoted as deep thought before.

Also flying in the face of reality are Steven Pinker and John Horgan who foresee a decline in violence and an end to warfare. Jihad on the rise, a rapidly military-modernising China, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East- all sure signs that war may end soon.

"Scientists" indeed.

Lawyers Ask To Not Argue Law

It seems incredible but it's true- the prosecution in the Wayne Fincher case have asked the judge to prohibit Fincher's defence team from arguing the Constitution in his case. In other words, lawyers are asking that matters of law- as they pertain to the defendant alone- should be excluded from the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Johnson filed the motion asking U.S. District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren to preclude Fincher and his attorney, Oscar Stilley, from arguing matters of law to the jury as a defense. The government believes Fincher wants to argue the gun charges are unconstitutional and that the prosecution must prove an "interstate nexus" for the firearms, according to the motion.

They don't want that pesky Constitution to get in the way of them winning.

Covering Up For Terrorism

LGF reports on a recently declassified document which proves that the US government knew that Yasser Arafat had personally ordered the murder of two United States diplomats, Cleo Noel and George Moore back in 1973.

So why was Bill Clinton posing for photo ops with this scumbag instead of having him arrested on terrorism charges involving the murder of American citizens?

Despicable.

Hidden News

If Murdoc hadn't pointed this out I wouldn't have discovered the news from reading the headlines today- they continue the "situation gravely deteriorating in Iraq" theme. Actually, for US troops over there, things actually seem to be getting better.

The Marine deaths reported Friday brought the number of U.S. military fatalities in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2,996, icasualties.org said, with 816 of them occurring this year. Last year, 846 American service members died; in 2004, the figure was 848.

The number of U.S. wounded is also down this year — 5,676 compared with 5,947 in 2005 and 8,001 in 2004.

So while casualties and deaths are down the news is ignored. Heaven forbid that a major media outlet actually publish some heartening news from Iraq.

Gun Safety

Thankfully the woman involved in this incident wasn't hurt badly- but it's a warning to all shooters to remain safety conscious at all times, even when hot brass is down your top!

Police said Anna Herrera-Gomez was practicing with a 9 mm gun at the H&H Gun Range in Oklahoma City when a hot shell casing fell down the front of her shirt.

She jumped as the hot metal touched her skin and reached for her chest. Police said that's when she accidentally shot herself in the leg."Of course, we train for this, but unbeknownst to us, we had a gentlemen on the range who was a trained EMT. (He) took care of it immediately, and even though it was a shooting, it was actually very minimal," said H&H Gun Range owner Miles Hall.

Hall said the woman was embarrassed more than anything else.

A lucky escape for her.

Saddam Executed

Justice at last.

Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator who spent his last years in captivity after his ruthless regime was toppled by a U.S.-led coalition, was hanged before dawn Saturday for crimes committed during his reign.

Hussein's death came in "a blink of the eye" after his executioner activated the gallows just after 6 a.m. (10 p.m. Friday ET), Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told CNN.

"This dark page has been turned over," Rubaie said. "Saddam is gone. Today Iraq is an Iraq for all the Iraqis, and all the Iraqis are looking forward. ... The [Hussein] era has gone forever."

Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas!

Here's one of my favourite "Christmas songs", Louis Armstrong's Winter Wonderland, set to a slideshow of photos from the 50s and 60s.

Gun Rights

Okay, listen up American gun owners because this is an important one- War on Guns has posted a letter received from the FAA regarding their declaration that the 2nd Amendment is a collective, not an individual, right.

Thank you for your comments on the human space flight requirements. This rule, including its security requirements, underwent coordination and review within the executive branch. It was reviewed and approved by the Executive Office of the President.

Here's the comment on this-

When John Ashcroft penned his "individual rights" opinion, it made headlines around the world. Terms like "sea change" were thrown about, and we were told how significant the opinion was for gun rights. The Bradys went nuts. 18 state attorneys general followed suit and drafted their own letter of concurrence. And this was used to tremendous advantage to convince gun owners to throw their support behind the Bush administration.

But now we have it from one of the top attorneys in that administration that the "collective rights" language "was reviewed and approved by the Executive Office of the President."

David Codrea of War on Guns has sent another letter asking for further clarification but as he points out, this is important news- and news that will probably not receive much attention at all. Perhaps it's time for gun owners in the US to start contacting their representatives about this matter now rather than later.

Spread the word.

Peace In Our Time

Imagine a world in which Hollywood was filled with people like David Zucker...



Hat tip to Clayton Cramer for this one.